IMPLICATVRA -- in 18 volumes, vol. XI

Kabala

ariskant: “Today I’ll lecture on Aristkant, or rather his second part,” – Grice. Kant (which Grice spelt ‘cant,’ seeing that it was Scots) Immanuel, preeminent Scots philosopher whose distinctive concern was to vindicate the authority of reason. He believed that by a critical examination of its own powers, reason can distinguish unjustifiable traditional metaphysical claims from the principles that are required by our theoretical need to determine ourselves within spatiotemporal experience and by our practical need to legislate consistently with all other rational wills. Because these principles are necessary and discoverable, they defeat empiricism and skepticism, and because they are disclosed as simply the conditions of orienting ourselves coherently within experience, they contrast with traditional rationalism and dogmatism. Kant was born and raised in the eastern Prussian university town of Königsberg (today Kaliningrad), where, except for a short period during which he worked as a tutor in the nearby countryside, he spent his life as student and teacher. He was trained by Pietists and followers of Leibniz and Wolff, but he was also heavily influenced by Newton and Rousseau. In the 1750s his theoretical philosophy began attempting to show how metaphysics must accommodate as certain the fundamental principles underlying modern science; in the 1760s his 460 K 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 460 practical philosophy began attempting to show (in unpublished form) how our moral life must be based on a rational and universally accessible self-legislation analogous to Rousseau’s political principles. The breakthrough to his own distinctive philosophy came in the 1770s, when he insisted on treating epistemology as first philosophy. After arguing in his Inaugural Dissertation (On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World) both that our spatiotemporal knowledge applies only to appearances and that we can still make legitimate metaphysical claims about “intelligible” or non-spatiotemporal features of reality (e.g., that there is one world of substances interconnected by the action of God), there followed a “silent decade” of preparation for his major work, the epoch-making Critique of Pure Reason (first or “A” edition, 1781; second or “B” edition, with many revisions, 1787; Kant’s initial reaction to objections to the first edition dominate his short review, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, 1783; the full title of which means ‘preliminary investigations for any future metaphysics that will be able to present itself as a science’, i.e., as a body of certain truths). This work resulted in his mature doctrine of transcendental idealism, namely, that all our theoretical knowledge is restricted to the systematization of what are mere spatiotemporal appearances. This position is also called formal or Critical idealism, because it criticizes theories and claims beyond the realm of experience, while it also insists that although the form of experience is ideal, or relative to us, this is not to deny the reality of something independent of this form. Kant’s earlier works are usually called pre-Critical not just because they precede his Critique but also because they do not include a full commitment to this idealism. Kant supplemented his “first Critique” (often cited just as “the” Critique) with several equally influential works in practical philosophy – Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Critique of Practical Reason (the “second Critique,” 1788), and Metaphysics of Morals (consisting of “Doctrine of Justice” and “Doctrine of Virtue,” 1797). Kant’s philosophy culminated in arguments advancing a purely moral foundation for traditional theological claims (the existence of God, immortality, and a transcendent reward or penalty proportionate to our goodness), and thus was characterized as “denying knowledge in order to make room for faith.” To be more precise, Kant’s Critical project was to restrict theoretical knowledge in such a way as to make it possible for practical knowledge to reveal how pure rational faith has an absolute claim on us. This position was reiterated in the Critique of Judgment (the “third Critique,” 1790), which also extended Kant’s philosophy to aesthetics and scientific methodology by arguing for a priori but limited principles in each of these domains. Kant was followed by radical idealists (Fichte, Schelling), but he regarded himself as a philosopher of the Enlightenment, and in numerous shorter works he elaborated his belief that everything must submit to the “test of criticism,” that human reason must face the responsibility of determining the sources, extent, and bounds of its own principles. The Critique concerns pure reason because Kant believes all these determinations can be made a priori, i.e., such that their justification does not depend on any particular course of experience (‘pure’ and ‘a priori’ are thus usually interchangeable). For Kant ‘pure reason’ often signifies just pure theoretical reason, which determines the realm of nature and of what is, but Kant also believes there is pure practical reason (or Wille), which determines a priori and independently of sensibility the realm of freedom and of what ought to be. Practical reason in general is defined as that which determines rules for the faculty of desire and will, as opposed to the faculties of cognition and of feeling. On Kant’s mature view, however, the practical realm is necessarily understood in relation to moral considerations, and these in turn in terms of laws taken to have an unconditional imperative force whose validity requires presuming that they are addressed to a being with absolute freedom, the faculty to choose (Willkür) to will or not to will to act for their sake. Kant also argues that no evidence of human freedom is forthcoming from empirical knowledge of the self as part of spatiotemporal nature, and that the belief in our freedom, and thus the moral laws that presuppose it, would have to be given up if we thought that our reality is determined by the laws of spatiotemporal appearances alone. Hence, to maintain the crucial practical component of his philosophy it was necessary for Kant first to employ his theoretical philosophy to show that it is at least possible that the spatiotemporal realm does not exhaust reality, so that there can be a non-empirical and free side to the self. Therefore Kant’s first Critique is a theoretical foundation for his entire system, which is devoted to establishing not just (i) what the most general necessary principles for the spatio-temporal domain are – a project that has been called his “metaphysics of experience” – but also (ii) that this domain cannot without contradiction define ultimate reality (hence his transcendental idealism). The first of these claims involves Kant’s primary use of the term ‘transcendental’, namely in the context of what he calls a transcendental deduction, which is an argument or “exposition” that establishes a necessary role for an a priori principle in our experience. As Kant explains, while mathematical principles are a priori and are necessary for experience, the mathematical proof of these principles is not itself transcendental; what is transcendental is rather the philosophical argument that these principles necessarily apply in experience. While in this way some transcendental arguments may presume propositions from an established science (e.g., geometry), others can begin with more modest assumptions – typically the proposition that there is experience or empirical knowledge at all – and then move on from there to uncover a priori principles that appear required for specific features of that knowledge. Kant begins by connecting metaphysics with the problem of synthetic a priori judgment. As necessary, metaphysical claims must have an a priori status, for we cannot determine that they are necessary by mere a posteriori means. As objective rather than merely formal, metaphysical judgments (unlike those of logic) are also said to be synthetic. This synthetic a priori character is claimed by Kant to be mysterious and yet shared by a large number of propositions that were undisputed in his time. The mystery is how a proposition can be known as necessary and yet be objective or “ampliative” or not merely “analytic.” For Kant an analytic proposition is one whose predicate is “contained in the subject.” He does not mean this “containment” relation to be understood psychologically, for he stresses that we can be psychologically and even epistemically bound to affirm non-analytic propositions. The containment is rather determined simply by what is contained in the concepts of the subject term and the predicate term. However, Kant also denies that we have ready real definitions for empirical or a priori concepts, so it is unclear how one determines what is really contained in a subject or predicate term. He seems to rely on intuitive procedures for saying when it is that one necessarily connects a subject and predicate without relying on a hidden conceptual relation. Thus he proposes that mathematical constructions, and not mere conceptual elucidations, are what warrant necessary judgments about triangles. In calling such judgments ampliative, Kant does not mean that they merely add to what we may have explicitly seen or implicitly known about the subject, for he also grants that complex analytic judgments may be quite informative, and thus “new” in a psychological or epistemic sense. While Kant stresses that non-analytic or synthetic judgments rest on “intuition” (Anschauung), this is not part of their definition. If a proposition could be known through its concepts alone, it must be analytic, but if it is not knowable in this way it follows only that we need something other than concepts. Kant presumed that this something must be intuition, but others have suggested other possibilities, such as postulation. Intuition is a technical notion of Kant, meant for those representations that have an immediate relation to their object. Human intuitions are also all sensible (or sensuous) or passive, and have a singular rather than general object, but these are less basic features of intuition, since Kant stresses the possibility of (nonhuman) non-sensible or “intellectual” intuition, and he implies that singularity of reference can be achieved by non-intuitive means (e.g., in the definition of God). The immediacy of intuition is crucial because it is what sets them off from concepts, which are essentially representations of representations, i.e., rules expressing what is common to a set of representations. Kant claims that mathematics, and metaphysical expositions of our notions of space and time, can reveal several evident synthetic a priori propositions, e.g., that there is one infinite space. In asking what could underlie the belief that propositions like this are certain, Kant came to his Copernican revolution. This consists in considering not how our representations may necessarily conform to objects as such, but rather how objects may necessarily conform to our representations. On a “pre-Copernican” view, objects are considered just by themselves, i.e., as “things-in-themselves” (Dinge an sich) totally apart from any intrinsic cognitive relation to our representations, and thus it is mysterious how we could ever determine them a priori. If we begin, however, with our own faculties of representation we might find something in them that determines how objects must be – at least when considered just as phenomena (singular: phenomenon), i.e., as objects of experience rather than as noumena (singular: noumenon), i.e., things-inthemselves specified negatively as unknown and beyond our experience, or positively as knowable in some absolute non-sensible way – which Kant insists is theoretically impossible for sensible beings like us. For example, Kant claims that when we consider our faculty for receiving impressions, or sensibility, we can find not only contingent contents but also two necessary forms or “pure forms of intuition”: space, which structures all outer representations given us, and time, which structures all inner representations. These forms can explain how the synthetic a priori propositions of mathematics will apply with certainty to all the objects of our experience. That is, if we suppose that in intuiting these propositions we are gaining a priori insight into the forms of our representation that must govern all that can come to our sensible awareness, it becomes understandable that all objects in our experience will have to conform with these propositions. Kant presented his transcendental idealism as preferable to all the alternative explanations that he knew for the possibility of mathematical knowledge and the metaphysical status of space and time. Unlike empiricism, it allowed necessary claims in this domain; unlike rationalism, it freed the development of this knowledge from the procedures of mere conceptual analysis; and unlike the Newtonians it did all this without giving space and time a mysterious status as an absolute thing or predicate of God. With proper qualifications, Kant’s doctrine of the transcendental ideality of space and time can be understood as a radicalization of the modern idea of primary and secondary qualities. Just as others had contended that sensible color and sound qualities, e.g., can be intersubjectively valid and even objectively based while existing only as relative to our sensibility and not as ascribable to objects in themselves, so Kant proposed that the same should be said of spatiotemporal predicates. Kant’s doctrine, however, is distinctive in that it is not an empirical hypothesis that leaves accessible to us other theoretical and non-ideal predicates for explaining particular experiences. It is rather a metaphysical thesis that enriches empirical explanations with an a priori framework, but begs off any explanation for that framework itself other than the statement that it lies in the “constitution” of human sensibility as such. This “Copernican” hypothesis is not a clear proof that spatiotemporal features could not apply to objects apart from our forms of intuition, but more support for this stronger claim is given in Kant’s discussion of the “antinomies” of rational cosmology. An antinomy is a conflict between two a priori arguments arising from reason when, in its distinctive work as a higher logical faculty connecting strings of judgments, it posits a real unconditioned item at the origin of various hypothetical syllogisms. There are antinomies of quantity, quality, relation, and modality, and they each proceed by pairs of dogmatic arguments which suppose that since one kind of unconditioned item cannot be found, e.g., an absolutely first event, another kind must be posited, e.g., a complete infinite series of past events. For most of the other antinomies, Kant indicates that contradiction can be avoided by allowing endless series in experience (e.g., of chains of causality, of series of dependent beings), series that are compatible with – but apparently do not require – unconditioned items (uncaused causes, necessary beings) outside experience. For the antinomy of quantity, however, he argues that the only solution is to drop the common dogmatic assumption that the set of spatiotemporal objects constitutes a determinate whole, either absolutely finite or infinite. He takes this to show that spatiotemporality must be transcendentally ideal, only an indeterminate feature of our experience and not a characteristic of things-in-themselves. Even when structured by the pure forms of space and time, sensible representations do not yield knowledge until they are grasped in concepts and these concepts are combined in a judgment. Otherwise, we are left with mere impressions, scattered in an unintelligible “multiplicity” or manifold; in Kant’s words, “thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.” Judgment requires both concepts and intuitions; it is not just any relation of concepts, but a bringing together of them in a particular way, an “objective” unity, so that one concept is predicated of another – e.g., “all bodies are divisible” – and the latter “applies to certain appearances that present themselves to us,” i.e., are intuited. Because any judgment involves a unity of thought that can be prefixed by the phrase ‘I think’, Kant speaks of all representations, to the extent that they can be judged by us, as subject to a necessary unity of apperception. This term originally signified self-consciousness in contrast to direct consciousness or perception, but Kant uses it primarily to contrast with ‘inner sense’, the precognitive manifold of temporal representations as they are merely given in the mind. Kant also contrasts the empirical ego, i.e., the self as it is known contingently in experience, with the transcendental ego, i.e., the self thought of as the subject of structures of intuiting and thinking that are necessary throughout experience. The fundamental need for concepts and judgments suggests that our “constitution” may require not just intuitive but also conceptual forms, i.e., “pure concepts of the understanding,” or “categories.” The proof that our experience does require such forms comes in the “deduction of the objective validity of the pure concepts of the understanding,” also called the transcendental deduction of the categories, or just the deduction. This most notorious of all Kantian arguments appears to be in one way harder and in one way easier than the transcendental argument for pure intuitions. Those intuitions were held to be necessary for our experience because as structures of our sensibility nothing could even be imagined to be given to us without them. Yet, as Kant notes, it might seem that once representations are given in this way we can still imagine that they need not then be combined in terms of such pure concepts as causality. On the other hand, Kant proposed that a list of putative categories could be derived from a list of the necessary forms of the logical table of judgments, and since these forms would be required for any finite understanding, whatever its mode of sensibility is like, it can seem that the validity of pure concepts is even more inescapable than that of pure intuitions. That there is nonetheless a special difficulty in the transcendental argument for the categories becomes evident as soon as one considers the specifics of Kant’s list. The logical table of judgments is an a priori collection of all possible judgment forms organized under four headings, with three subforms each: quantity (universal, particular, singular), quality (affirmative, negative, infinite), relation (categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive), and modality (problematic, assertoric, apodictic). This list does not map exactly onto any one of the logic textbooks of Kant’s day, but it has many similarities with them; thus problematic judgments are simply those that express logical possibility, and apodictic ones are those that express logical necessity. The table serves Kant as a clue to the “metaphysical deduction” of the categories, which claims to show that there is an origin for these concepts that is genuinely a priori, and, on the premise that the table is proper, that the derived concepts can be claimed to be fundamental and complete. But by itself the list does not show exactly what categories follow from, i.e., are necessarily used with, the various forms of judgment, let alone what their specific meaning is for our mode of experience. Above all, even when it is argued that each experience and every judgment requires at least one of the four general forms, and that the use of any form of judgment does involve a matching pure concept (listed in the table of categories: reality, negation, limitation; unity, plurality, totality; inherence and subsistence, causality and dependence, community; possibility – impossibility, existence –non-existence, and necessity–contingency) applying to the objects judged about, this does not show that the complex relational forms and their corresponding categories of causality and community are necessary unless it is shown that these specific forms of judgment are each necessary for our experience. Precisely because this is initially not evident, it can appear, as Kant himself noted, that the validity of controversial categories such as causality cannot be established as easily as that of the forms of intuition. Moreover, Kant does not even try to prove the objectivity of the traditional modal categories but treats the principles that use them as mere definitions relative to experience. Thus a problematic judgment, i.e., one in which “affirmation or negation is taken as merely possible,” is used when something is said to be possible in the sense that it “agrees with the formal conditions of experience, i.e., with the conditions of intuition and of concepts.” A clue for rescuing the relational categories is given near the end of the Transcendental Deduction (B version), where Kant notes that the a priori all-inclusiveness and unity of space and time that is claimed in the treatment of sensibility must, like all cognitive unity, ultimately have a foundation in judgment. Kant expands on this point by devoting a key section called the analogies of experience to arguing that the possibility of our judging objects to be determined in an objective position in the unity of time (and, indirectly, space) requires three a priori principles (each called an “Analogy”) that employ precisely the relational categories that seemed especially questionable. Since these categories are established as needed just for the determination of time and space, which themselves have already been argued to be transcendentally ideal, Kant can conclude that for us even a priori claims using pure concepts of the understanding provide what are only transcendentally ideal claims. Thus we cannot make determinate theoretical claims about categories such as substance, cause, and community in an absolute sense that goes beyond our experience, but we can establish principles for their spatiotemporal specifications, called schemata, namely, the three Analogies: “in all change of appearance substance is permanent,” “all alterations take place in conformity with the law of the connection of cause and effect,” and “all substances, insofar as they can be perceived to coexist in space, are in thoroughgoing reciprocity.” Kant initially calls these regulative principles of experience, since they are required for organizing all objects of our empirical knowledge within a unity, and, unlike the constitutive principles for the categories of quantity and quality (namely: “all intuitions [for us] are extensive magnitudes,” and “in all appearances the real that is an object of sensation has intensive magnitude, that is, a degree”), they do not characterize any individual item by itself but rather only by its real relation to other objects of experience. Nonetheless, in comparison to mere heuristic or methodological principles (e.g., seek simple or teleological explanations), these Analogies are held by Kant to be objectively necessary for experience, and for this reason can also be called constitutive in a broader sense. The remainder of the Critique exposes the “original” or “transcendental” ideas of pure reason that pretend to be constitutive or theoretically warranted but involve unconditional components that wholly transcend the realm of experience. These include not just the antinomic cosmological ideas noted above (of these Kant stresses the idea of transcendental freedom, i.e., of uncaused causing), but also the rational psychological ideas of the soul as an immortal substance and the rational theological idea of God as a necessary and perfect being. Just as the pure concepts of the understanding have an origin in the necessary forms of judgments, these ideas are said to originate in the various syllogistic forms of reason: the idea of a soul-substance is the correlate of an unconditioned first term of a categorical syllogism (i.e., a subject that can never be the predicate of something else), and the idea of God is the correlate of the complete sum of possible predicates that underlies the unconditioned first term of the disjunctive syllogism used to give a complete determination of a thing’s properties. Despite the a priori origin of these notions, Kant claims we cannot theoretically establish their validity, even though they do have regulative value in organizing our notion of a human or divine spiritual substance. Thus, even if, as Kant argues, traditional proofs of immortality, and the teleological, cosmological, and ontological arguments for God’s existence, are invalid, the notions they involve can be affirmed as long as there is, as he believes, a sufficient non-theoretical, i.e., moral argument for them. When interpreted on the basis of such an argument, they are transformed into ideas of practical reason, ideas that, like perfect virtue, may not be verified or realized in sensible experience, but have a rational warrant in pure practical considerations. Although Kant’s pure practical philosophy culminates in religious hope, it is primarily a doctrine of obligation. Moral value is determined ultimately by the nature of the intention of the agent, which in turn is determined by the nature of what Kant calls the general maxim or subjective principle underlying a person’s action. One follows a hypothetical imperative when one’s maxim does not presume an unconditional end, a goal (like the fulfillment of duty) that one should have irrespective of all sensible desires, but rather a “material end” dependent on contingent inclinations (e.g., the directive “get this food,” in order to feel happy). In contrast, a categorical imperative is a directive saying what ought to be done from the perspective of pure reason alone; it is categorical because what this perspective commands is not contingent on sensible circumstances and it always carries overriding value. The general formula of the categorical imperative is to act only according to those maxims that can be consistently willed as a universal law – something said to be impossible for maxims aimed merely at material ends. In accepting this imperative, we are doubly self-determined, for we are not only determining our action freely, as Kant believes humans do in all exercises of the faculty of choice; we are also accepting a principle whose content is determined by that which is absolutely essential to us as agents, namely our pure practical reason. We thus are following our own law and so have autonomy when we accept the categorical imperative; otherwise we fall into heteronomy, or the (free) acceptance of principles whose content is determined independently of the essential nature of our own ultimate being, which is rational. Given the metaphysics of his transcendental idealism, Kant can say that the categorical imperative reveals a supersensible power of freedom in us such that we must regard ourselves as part of an intelligible world, i.e., a domain determined ultimately not by natural laws but rather by laws of reason. As such a rational being, an agent is an end in itself, i.e., something whose value is not dependent on external material ends, which are contingent and valued only as means to the end of happiness – which is itself only a conditional value (since the satisfaction of an evil will would be improper). Kant regards accepting the categorical imperative as tantamount to respecting rational nature as an end in itself, and to willing as if we were legislating a kingdom of ends. This is to will that the world become a “systematic Kant, Immanuel Kant, Immanuel 465 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 465 union of different rational beings through common laws,” i.e., laws that respect and fulfill the freedom of all rational beings. Although there is only one fundamental principle of morality, there are still different types of specific duties. One basic distinction is between strict duty and imperfect duty. Duties of justice, of respecting in action the rights of others, or the duty not to violate the dignity of persons as rational agents, are strict because they allow no exception for one’s inclination. A perfect duty is one that requires a specific action (e.g. keeping a promise), whereas an imperfect duty, such as the duty to perfect oneself or to help others, cannot be completely discharged or demanded by right by someone else, and so one has considerable latitude in deciding when and how it is to be respected. A meritorious duty involves going beyond what is strictly demanded and thereby generating an obligation in others, as when one is extraordinarily helpful to others and “merits” their gratitude.

kennyism: “His surname means ‘white,’ as in penguin, kennedy.” – Grice. Cited by Grice in his British Academy lecture – Grice was pleased that Kenny translated Vitters’s “Philosophical Grammar” – “He turned it into more of a philosophical thing than I would have thought one could!”

kepler: philosopher, born in Weil der Stadt, near Stuttgart. He studied astronomy with Michael Maestlin at the University of Tübingen, and then began the regular course of theological studies that prepared him to become a Lutheran pastor. Shortly before completing these studies he accepted the post of mathematician at Graz. “Mathematics” was still construed as including astronomy and astrology. There he published the Mysterium cosmographicum (1596), the first mjaor astronomical work to utilize the Copernican system since Copernicus’s own De revolutionibus half a century before. The Copernican shift of the sun to the center allowed Kepler to propose an explanation for the spacing of the planets (the Creator inscribed the successive planetary orbits in the five regular polyhedra) and for their motions (a sun-centered driving force diminishing with disKao Tzu Kepler, Johannes 466 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 466 tance from the sun). In this way, he could claim to have overcome the traditional prohibition against the mathematical astronomer’s claiming reality for the motion he postulates. Ability to explain had always been the mark of the philosopher. Kepler, a staunch Lutheran, was forced to leave Catholic Graz as bitter religious and political disputes engulfed much of northern Europe. He took refuge in the imperial capital, Prague, where Tycho Brahe, the greatest observational astronomer of the day, had established an observatory. Tycho asked Kepler to compose a defense of Tycho’s astronomy against a critic, Nicolaus Ursus, who had charged that it was “mere hypothesis.” The resulting Apologia (1600) remained unpublished; it contains a perceptive analysis of the nature of astronomical hypothesis. Merely saving the phenomena, Kepler argues, is in general not sufficient to separate two mathematical systems like those of Ptolemy and Copernicus. Other more properly explanatory “physical” criteria will be needed. Kepler was allowed to begin work on the orbit of Mars, using the mass of data Tycho had accumulated. But shortly afterward, Tycho died suddenly (1601). Kepler succeeded to Tycho’s post as Imperial Mathematician; more important, he was entrusted with Tycho’s precious data. Years of labor led to the publication of the Astronomia nova (1609), which announced the discovery of the elliptical orbit of Mars. One distinctive feature of Kepler’s long quest for the true shape of the orbit was his emphasis on finding a possible physical evaluation for any planetary motion he postulated before concluding that it was the true motion. Making the sun’s force magnetic allowed him to suppose that its effect on the earth would vary as the earth’s magnetic axis altered its orientation to the sun, thus perhaps explaining the varying distances and speeds of the earth in its elliptical orbit. The full title of his book makes his ambition clear: A New Astronomy Based on Causes, or A Physics of the Sky. Trouble in Prague once more forced Kepler to move. He eventually found a place in Linz (1612), where he continued his exploration of cosmic harmonies, drawing on theology and philosophy as well as on music and mathematics. The “Harmonia mundi” was his favorite among his books: “It can wait a century for a reader, as God himself has waited six thousand years for a witness.” The discovery of what later became known as his third law, relating the periodic times of any two planets as the ratio of the 3 /2 power of their mean distances, served to confirm his long-standing conviction that the universe is fashioned according to ideal harmonic relationships. In the Epitome astronomiae Copernicanae (1612), he continued his search for causes “either natural or archetypal,” not only for the planetary motions, but for such details as the size of the sun and the densities of the planets. He was more convinced than ever that a physics of the heavens had to rest upon its ability to explain (and not just to predict) the peculiarities of the planetary and lunar motions. What prevented him from moving even further than he did toward a new physics was that he had not grasped what later came to be called the principle of inertia. Thus he was compelled to postulate not only an attractive force between planet and sun but also a second force to urge the planet onward. It was Newton who showed that the second force is unnecessary, and who finally constructed the “physics of the sky” that had been Kepler’s ambition. But he could not have done it without Kepler’s notion of a quantifiable force operating between planet and sun, an unorthodox notion shaped in the first place by an imagination steeped in Neoplatonic metaphysics and the theology of the Holy Spirit.

Keynes, j. Neville – “the father of the better known Keynes, but the more interesting of the pair.” – Grice. Keynes, j. k., philosopher, author of “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money” and “A Treatise on Probability,” cited by Grice for the importance of the ontological status of properties. Keynes was also active in English Oxbridge philosophical life, being well acquainted with such philosophers as G. E. Moore and F. P. Ramsey. In the philosophy of probability, Keynes pioneers the treatment of the proposition as the bearers of a probability assignment. Unlike classical subjectivists, Keynes treats probability as objective evidential relations among at least two proposition in ‘if’ connection. These relations are to be directly epistemically accessible to an intuitive ‘faculty.’ An idiosyncratic feature of Keynes’s system is that different probability assignments cannot always be compared (ordered as equal, less than, or greater than one another). Keynesianism permanently affected philosophy. Keynes’s philosophy has a number of important dimensions. While Keynes’s theorizing is in the capitalistic tradition, he rejects Sctos Smith’s notion of an invisible hand that would optimize the performance of an economy without any intentional direction by an individual or by the government. This involved rejection of the economic policy of “laissez-faire,” according to which government intervention in the economy’s operation is useless, or worse. Keynes argues that the natural force could deflect an economy from a course of optimal growth and keep it permanently out of equilibrium. Keynes proposes a number of mechanisms for adjusting its performance. Keynes advocates programs of government taxation and spending, not primarily as a means of providing public goods, but as a means of increasing prosperity. The philosopher is thereby provided with another means for justifying the existence of a strong government. One of the important ways that Keynes’s philosophy still directs much theorizing is its deep division between microeconomics and macroeconomics. Keynes argues, in effect, that micro-oeconomic analysis with its emphasis on ideal individual rationality and perfect intersubjective game-theoretical two-player competition is inadequate as a tool for understanding a macrophenomenon such as interest, and money. Keynes tries to show how human psychological foibles and market frictions require a qualitatively different kind of analysis at the macro level. Much theorizing is concerned with understanding the connections between micro- and macrophenomena and micro- and macroeconomics in an attempt to dissolve or blur the division. This issue is a philosophically important instance of a potential theoretical reduction. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Keynes’s ontology in the “Treatise on Probability,” H. P. Grice, “Credibility and Probability.”

kierkegaard: “Literally, churchyard, fancy that!” – Grice. Philosopher born to a well-to-do family, he consumed his inheritance while writing a large corpus of essays in a remarkably short time. His life was marked by an intense relationship with a devout but melancholy father, from whom he inherited his own bent to melancholy, with which he constantly struggled. A decisive event was his broken engagement from Regina Olsen, which precipitated the beginning of his authorship; his first essays are partly an attempt to explain, in a covert and symbolic way, the reasons why he felt he could not marry. Later Kierkegaard was involved in a controversy in which he was mercilessly attacked by a popular satirical periodical; this experience deepened his understanding of the significance of suffering and the necessity for an authentic individual to stand alone if necessary against “the crowd.” This caused him to abandon his plans to take a pastorate, a post for which his education had prepared him. At the end of his life, he waged a lonely, public campaign in the popular press and in a magazine he founded himself, against the Danish state church. He collapsed on the street with the final issue of this magazine, The Instant, ready for the printer, and was carried to a hospital. He died a few weeks later, affirming a strong Christian faith, but refusing to take communion from the hands of a priest of the official church. Though some writers have questioned whether Kierkegaard’s writings admit of a unified interpretation, Kierkegaard himself sees his oeuvre as serving Christianity; he saw himself as a “missionary” whose task was to “reintroduce Christianity into Christendom.” However, much of this literature does not address Christianity directly, but rather concerns itself with an analysis of human existence. Kierkegaard see this as necessary, because Christianity is first and foremost a way of existing. He saw much of the confusion about Christian faith as rooted in confusion about the nature of existence. Hence to clear up the former, the latter must be carefully analyzed. The great misfortune of “Christendom” and “the present age” is that people “have forgotten what it means ‘to exist,’” and Kierkegaard sees himself as a modern Socrates sent to “remind” others of what they know but have forgotten. It is not surprising that the analyses of human existence he provides have been of great interest to many philosophers. Kierkegaard frequently uses the verb ‘to exist’ (at existere) idiosyncratically, to refer to human existence. In this sense God is said NOT to exist, even though God has eternal reality. Kierkegaard describes human existence as an unfinished process, in which “the individual” (a key concept in his thought) must take responsibility for achieving an identity as a self through a free choice. Such a choice is described as a leap, to highlight Kierkegaard’s view that intellectual reflection alone can never motivate action. A decision to end the process of reflection is necessary and such a decision must be generated by a passion. The passions that shape a person’s self are referred to by Kierkegaard as the individual’s “inwardness” or “subjectivity.” The most significant passion, love or faith, does not merely happen; they must be cultivated and formed. The process by which the individual becomes a self is described by Kierkegaard as ideally moving through three stages, termed the “stages on life’s way.” Since human development occurs by freedom and not automatically, however, the individual can become fixated in any of these stages. Thus the stages also confront each other as rival views of life, or “spheres of existence.” The three stages or spheres are the “aesthetic,” (or sensual), the ethical, and the religious. A distinctive feature of Kierkegaard’s philosophy is that these three lifeviews are represented by pseudonymous “characters” who actually “author” some of the oeuvre; this leads to interpretive difficulties, since it is not always clear what to attribute to Kierkegaard himself and what to the pseudonymous character. Fortunately, he also wrote many devotional and religious works under his own name, where this problem does not arise. The “aesthetic” life is described by Kierkegaard as lived for and in “the moment.” It is a life governed by “immediacy,” or the satisfaction of one’s immediate desire, though it is capable of a kind of development in which one learns to enjoy life reflectively. What the aesthetic person lacks is a commitment (except to sensation itself) which is the key to the ethical life, a life that attempts to achieve a unified self through commitment to ideals with enduring validity, rather than simply sensual appeal. The religious life emerges from the ethical life when the individual realizes both the transcendent character of the true ideals and also how far short of realizing those ideals the person is. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript two forms of the religious life are distinguished: a “natural” religiosity (religiousness “A”) in which the person attempts to relate to the divine and resolve the problem of guilt, relying solely on one’s natural “immanent” idea of the divine; and Christianity (religiousness “B”), in which God becomes incarnate as a human being in order to establish a relation with humans. Christianity can be accepted only through the “leap of faith.” It is a religion not of “immanence” but of “transcendence,” since it is based on a revelation. This revelation cannot be rationally demonstrated, since the incarnation is a paradox that transcends human reason. Reason can, however, when the passion of faith is present, come to understand the appropriateness of recognizing its own limits and accepting the paradoxical incarnation of God in the form of Jesus Christ. The true Christian is not merely an admirer of Jesus, but one who believes by becoming a follower. The irreducibility of the religious life to the ethical life is illustrated for Kierkegaard in the biblical story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac to obey the command of God. In Fear and Trembling Kierkegaard (through his pseudonym “de Silentio”) analyzes this act of Abraham’s as involving a “teleological suspension of the ethical.” Abraham’s act cannot be understood merely in ethical terms as a conflict of duties in which one rationally comprehensible duty is superseded by a higher one. Rather, Abraham seems to be willing to “suspend” the ethical as a whole in favor of a higher religious duty. Thus, if one admires Abraham as “the father of faith,” one admires a quality that cannot be reduced to simply moral virtue. Some (like J. L. Mackie) have read this as a claim that religious faith may require immoral behavior; others (like P. F. Strawson) argue that what is relativized by the teleological suspension of the ethical is not an eternally valid set of moral requirements, but rather ethical obligations as these are embedded in human social institutions. Thus, in arguing that “the ethical” is not the highest element in existence, Kierkegaard leaves open the possibility that our social institutions, and the ethical ideals that they embody, do not deserve our absolute and unqualified allegiance, an idea with important political implications. In accord with his claim that existence cannot be reduced to intellectual thought, Kierkegaard devotes much attention to emotions and passions. Anxiety is particularly important, since it reflects human freedom. Anxiety involves a “sympathetic antipathy and an antipathetic sympathy”; it is the psychological state that precedes the basic human fall into sin, but it does not explain this “leap,” since no final explanation of a free choice can be given. Such negative emotions as despair and guilt are also important for Kierkegaard; they reveal the emptiness of the aesthetic and the ultimately unsatisfactory character of the ethical, driving individuals on toward the religious life. Irony and humor are also seen as important “boundary zones” for the stages of existence. The person who has discovered his or her own “eternal validity” can look ironically at the relative values that capture most people, who live their lives aesthetically. Similarly, the “existential humorist” who has seen the incongruities that necessarily pervade our ethical human projects is on the border of the religious life. Kierkegaard also analyzes the passions of faith Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye 469 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 469 and love. Faith is ultimately understood as a “willing to be oneself” that is made possible by a transparent, trusting relationship to the “power that created the self.” Kierkegaard distinguishes various forms of love, stressing that Christian love must be understood as neighbor love, a love that is combined and is not rooted in any natural relationship to the self, such as friendship or kinship, but ultimately is grounded in the fact that all humans share a relationship to their creator. Kierkegaard is well known for his critique of Hegel’s absolute idealism. Hegel’s claim to have written “the system” is ridiculed for its pretensions of finality. From the Dane’s perspective, though reality may be a system for God, it cannot be so for any existing thinker, since both reality and the thinker are incomplete and system implies completeness. Hegelians are also criticized for pretending to have found a presuppositionless or absolute starting point; for Kierkegaard, philosophy begins not with doubt but with wonder. Reflection is potentially infinite; the doubt that leads to skepticism cannot be ended by thought alone but only by a resolution of the will. Kierkegaard also defends traditional Aristotelian logic and the principle of non-contradiction against the Hegelian introduction of “movement” into logic. Kierkegaard is particularly disturbed by the Hegelian tendency to see God as immanent in society; he thought it important to understand God as “wholly other,” the “absolutely different” who can never be exhaustively embodied in human achievement or institutions. To stand before God one must stand as an individual, in “fear and trembling,” conscious that this may require a break with the given social order. Kierkegaard is often characterized as the father of existentialism. There are reasons for this; he does indeed philosophize existentially, and he undoubtedly exercised a deep influence on many twentieth-century existentialists such as Sartre and Camus. But the characterization is anachronistic, since existentialism as a movement is a twentieth-century phenomenon, and the differences between Kierkegaard and those existentialists are also profound. If existentialism is defined as the denial that there is such a thing as a human essence or nature, it is unlikely that Kierkegaard is an existentialist. More recently, the Dane has also been seen as a precursor of postmodernism. His rejection of classical foundationalist epistemologies and employment of elusive literary techniques such as his pseudonyms again make such associations somewhat plausible. However, despite his rejection of the system and criticism of human claims to finality and certitude, Kierkegaard does not appear to espouse any form of relativism or have much sympathy for “anti-realism.” He has the kind of passion for clarity and delight in making sharp distinctions that are usually associated with contemporary “analytic” philosophy. In the end he must be seen as his own person, a unique Christian presence with sensibilities that are in many ways Greek and premodern rather than postmodern. He has been joyfully embraced and fervently criticized by thinkers of all stripes. He remains “the individual” he wrote about, and to whom he dedicated many of his works.

kilvington: Oriel, Oxford. Yorks. Grice, “The English Place Name Society told me.” “I tried to teach Sophismata at Oxford, but my tutees complained that Chillington’s Latin chilled them!” – Grice. English philosopher. He was a scholar associated with the household of Richard de Bury and an early member of “The Oxford Calculators,” as Grice calls them, important in the early development of physics. Kilvington’s “Sophismata” is the only work of his studied extensively to date. It is an investigation of puzzles regarding ceasing, doubting, the liar, change, velocity and acceleration, motive power, beginning and ceasing, the continuum, infinity, knowing and doubting, and the liar and related paradoxes. Kilvington’s “Sophismata” is peculiar insofar as all these are treated in a conceptual way, in contrast to the more artificial “calculations” used by Bradwardine, Heytesbury, and other Oxford Calculators to handle this or that problem. Kilvington also wrote a commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences and questions on Aristotle’s On Generation and Corruption, Physics, and Nicomachean Ethics. Refs.: H. P. Grice: “Chillington chills: “Sophismata” – on beginning and ceasing and knowing and doubting – implicatura.”

kilwardby of rufina: English philosopher, he taught at Paris, joins the Dominicans and teaches at Oxford. He becomes archbishop of Canterbury and condemns thirty propositions, among them Aquinas’s position that there is a single substantial form in a human being. Kilwardby resigns his archbishopric and is appointed to the bishopric of Santa Rufina, Italy, where he dies. Kilwardby writes extensively and had considerable medieval influence, especially in philosophy of language; but it is now unusually difficult to determine which works are authentically his. “De Ortu Scientiarum advances a sophisticated account of how a name is imposed and a detailed account of the nature and role of conceptual analysis. In metaphysics Kilwardby of Rufina insisted that things are individual and that universality arises from operations of the soul. He writes extensively on happiness and was concerned to show that some happiness is possible in this life. In psychology he argued that freedom of decision is a disposition arising from the cooperation of the intellect and the will.

cognitum: KK-thesis: the thesis that knowing entails knowing that one knows, symbolized in propositional epistemic logic as Kp > KKp, where ‘K’ stands for knowing. According to the KK-thesis, proposed by Grice in “Method in philosophical psychology: from the banal to the bizarre,” the (propositional) logic of knowledge resembles the modal system S4. The KK-thesis was introduced into epistemological discussion by Hintikka in Knowledge and Belief. He calls the KKthesis a “virtual implication,” a conditional whose negation is “indefensible.” A tacit or an explicit acceptance of the thesis has been part of many philosophers’ views about knowledge since Plato and Aristotle. If the thesis is formalized as Kap P KaKap, where ‘Ka’ is read as ‘a knows that’, it holds only if the person a knows that he is referred to by ‘a’; this qualification is automatically satisfied for the first-person case. The validity of the thesis seems sensitive to variations in the sense of ‘know’; it has sometimes been thought to characterize a strong concept of knowledge, e.g., knowledge based on (factually) conclusive reasons, or active as opposed to implicit knowledge. If knowledge is regarded as true belief based on conclusive evidence, the KKthesis entails that a person knows that p only if his evidence for p is also sufficient to justify the claim that he knows that p; the epistemic claim should not require additional evidence. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Method in philosophical psychology: from the banal to the bizarre,” in “The Conception of Value.”

Shaftesbury: “One of my favourite rationalist philosophers” – Grice.

Kleist: philosopher whose oeuvre is based on the antinomy of reason and sentiment, one as impotent as the other, and reflects the Aufklärung crisis at the turn of the century. He resigned from the Prussian army. Following a reading of Kant, he lost faith in a “life’s plan” as inspired by Leibniz’s, Wolff’s, and Shaftesbury’s rationalism. Kleist looks for salvation in Rousseau but concluded that sentiment revealed itself just as untrustworthy as reason as soon as man left the state of original grace (“or grice, his spelling is doubtful” – Grice) and realized himself to be neither a puppet nor a god (see Essay on the Puppet Theater, 1810). The Schroffenstein Family repeats the Shakespearian theme of two young people who love each other but belong to warring families. One already finds in it the major elements of Kleist’s universe: the incapacity of the individual to master his fate, the theme of the tragic error, and the importance of the juridical. In 1803, Kleist returned to philosophy and literature and realized in Amphitryon (1806) the impossibility of the individual knowing himself and the world and acting deliberately in it. The divine order that is the norm of tragic art collapses, and with it, the principle of identity. Kleistian characters, “modern” individuals, illustrate this normative chaos. The Broken Jug (a comedy) shows Kleist’s interest in law. In his two parallel plays, Penthesilea and The Young Catherine of Heilbronn, Kleist presents an alternative: either “the marvelous order of the world” and the theodicy that carries Catherine’s fate, or the sublime and apocryphal mission of the Christlike individual who must redeem the corrupt order. Before his suicide, Kleist looked toward the renaissance of the German nation for a historical way out of this metaphysical conflict.

knowledge by acquaintance: knowledge of objects by means of direct awareness of them. The notion of knowledge by acquaintance is primarily associated with Russell (The Problems of Philosophy). Russell first distinguishes knowledge of truths from knowledge of things. He then distinguishes two kinds of knowledge of things: knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. Ordinary speech suggests that we are acquainted with the people and the physical objects in our immediate environments. On Russell’s view, however, our contact with these things is indirect, being mediated by our mental representations of them. He holds that the only things we know by acquaintance are the content of our minds, abstract universals, and, perhaps, ourselves. Russell says that knowledge by description is indirect knowledge of objects, our knowledge being mediated by other objects and truths. He suggests that we know external objects, such as tables and other people, only by description (e.g., the cause of my present experience). Russell’s discussion of this topic is quite puzzling. The considerations that lead him to say that we lack acquaintance with external objects also lead him to say that, strictly speaking, we lack knowledge of such things. This seems to amount to the claim that what he has called “knowledge by description” is not, strictly speaking, a kind of knowledge at all. Russell also holds that every proposition that a person understands must be composed entirely of elements with which the person is acquainted. This leads him to propose analyses of familiar propositions in terms of mental objects with which we are acquainted.

de re/de sensu:, knowledge de re, with respect to some object, that it has a particular property, or knowledge, of a group of objects, that they stand in some relation. Knowledge de re is typically contrasted with knowledge de dicto, which is knowledge of facts or propositions. If persons A and B know that a winner has been declared in an election, but only B knows which candidate has won, then both have de dicto knowledge that someone has won, but only B has de re knowledge about some candidate that she is the winner. Person B can knowingly attribute the property of being the winner to one of the candidates. It is generally held that to have de re knowledge about an object one must at least be in some sense familiar with or causally connected to the object. A related concept is knowledge de se. This is self-knowledge, of the sort expressed by ‘I am —— ’. Knowledge de se is not simply de re knowledge about oneself. A person might see a group of people in a mirror and notice that one of the people has a red spot on his nose. He then has de dicto knowledge that someone in the group has a red spot on his nose. On most accounts, he also has de re knowledge with respect to that individual that he has a spot. But if he has failed to recognize that he himself is the one with the spot, then he lacks de se knowledge. He doesn’t know (or believe) what he would express by saying “I have a red spot.” So, according to this view, knowledge de se is not merely knowledge de re about oneself.

köhler: philosophical psychologist who, with Wertheimer and Koffka, founded Gestalt psychologie. Köhler makestwo distinctive contributions to Gestalt doctrine, one empirical, one theoretical. The empirical contribution was his study of animal thinking, performed on Tenerife (The Mentality of Apes). The then dominant theory of problem solving was E. L. Thorndike’s associationist trial-and-error learning theory, maintaining that animals attack problems by trying out a series of behaviors, one of which is gradually “stamped in” by success. Köhler argues that trial-and-error behavior occurred only when, as in Thorndike’s experiments, part of the problem situation was hidden. He arranged more open puzzles, such as getting bananas hanging from a ceiling, requiring the ape to get a (visible) box to stand on. His apes showed insight – suddenly arriving at the correct solution. Although he demonstrated the existence of insight, its nature remains elusive, and trial-and-error learning remains the focus of research. Köhler’s theoretical contribution was the concept of isomorphism, Gestalt psychology’s theory of psychological representation. He held an identity theory of mind and body, and isomorphism claims that a topological mapping exists between the behavioral field in which an organism is acting (cf. Lewin) and fields of electrical currents in the brain (not the “mind”). Such currents have not been discovered. Important works by Köhler include Gestalt Psychology, The Place of Value in a World of Facts, Dynamics in Psychology, and Selected Papers (ed. M. Henle).

Kotarbigski: philosopher, cofounder, with Lukasiewicz and Lesniewski, of the Warsaw Centre of Logical Research. His broad philosophical interests and humanistic concerns, probity, scholarship, and clarity in argument, consequent persuasiveness, and steadfast championship of human rights made him heir to their common mentor Kasimir Twardowski, father of modern Polish philosophy. In philosophical, historical, and methodological works like his influential Elements of Theory of Knowledge, Formal Logic, and Scientific Methodology (1929; mistitled Gnosiology in English translation), he popularized the more technical contributions of his colleagues, and carried on Twardowski’s objectivist and “anti-irrationalist” critical tradition, insisting on accuracy and clarity, holding that philosophy has no distinctive method beyond the logical and analytical methods of the empirical and deductive sciences. As a free-thinking liberal humanist socialist, resolved to be “a true compass, not a weathervane,” he defended autonomous ethics against authoritarianism, left or right. His lifelong concern with community and social practice led him to develop praxiology as a theory of efficacious action. Following Lesniewsi’s “refutation” of Twardowski’s Platonism, Kotarbigski insisted on translating abstractions into more concrete terms. The principal tenets of his “reist, radical realist, and imitationist” rejection of Platonism, phenomenalism, and introspectionism are (1) pansomatism or ontological reism as modernized monistic materialism: whatever is anything at all (even a soul) is a body – i.e., a concrete individual object, resistant and spatiotemporally extended, enduring at least a while; (2) consequent radical realism: no object is a “property,” “relation,” “event,” “fact,” or “abstract entity” of any other kind, nor “sense-datum,” “phenomenon,” or essentially “private mental act” or “fact” accessible only to “introspection”; (3) concretism or semantic reism and imitationism as a concomitant “nominalist” program – thus, abstract terms that, hypostatized, might appear to name “abstract entities” are pseudo-names or onomatoids to be eliminated by philosophical analysis and elucidatory paraphrase. Hypostatizations that might appear to imply existence of such Platonic universals are translatable into equivalent generalizations characterizing only bodies. Psychological propositions are likewise reducible, ultimately to the basic form: Individual So-and-so experiences thus; Such-and-such is so. Only as thus reduced can such potentially misleading expressions be rightly understood and judged true or false.

krause: philosopher representative of a tendency to develop Kant’s views in the direction of pantheism and mysticism. Educated at Jena, he came under the influence of Fichte and Schelling. Taking his philosophical starting point as Fichte’s analysis of self-consciousness, and adopting as his project a “spiritualized” systematic elaboration of the philosophy of Spinoza (somewhat like the young Schelling), he arrived at a position that he called panentheism. According to this, although nature and human consciousness are part of God or Absolute Being, the Absolute is neither exhausted in nor identical with them. To some extent, he anticipated Hegel in invoking an “end of history” in which the finite realm of human affairs would reunite with the infinite essence in a universal moral and “spiritual” order.

Kripke: philosopher cited by H. P. Grice, he formulated a semantics for modal logic (the logic of necessity and possibility) based on Leibniz’s notion of a possible world, and, using the apparatus, proved completeness for a variety of systems. Possible world semantics (due in part also to Carnap and others) has proved to be pretty fruitful.. Kripke’s Princeton lectures, Naming and Necessity are a watershed. The work primarily concerns proper names of individuals (e.g., ‘H. P. Grice is called ‘H. P. Grice’’) and, by extension, terms for natural kinds (‘Oxonian’) and similar expressions. Kripke uses his thesis that any such term is a “rigid designator,”– i.e., designates the same thing with respect to every possible world in which that thing exists (and does not designate anything else with respect to worlds in which it does not exist) – to argue, contrary to the received Fregeian view, that the designation of a proper name is not semantically secured by means of a description that gives the sense of the name. On the contrary, the description associated with a particular use of a name will frequently designate something else entirely. Kripke derives putative examples of necessary a posteriori truths, as well as contingent a priori truths. In addition, he defends essentialism – the doctrine that some properties of things are properties that those things could not fail to have (except by not existing) – and uses it, together with his account of natural-kind terms, to argue against the identification of mental entities with their physical manifestations (e.g., sensations with specific neural events). In a sequel, “A Puzzle about Belief,” Kripke addresses the problem of substitution failure in sentential contexts attributing belief or other propositional attitudes. Kripke’s interpretation of the later Wittgenstein as a semantic skeptic has also had a profound impact (Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language). His semantic theory of truth (“Outline of a Theory of Truth”) has sparked renewed interest in the liar paradox (‘This statement is false’) and related paradoxes, and in the development of non-classical languages containing their own truth predicates as possible models for ordinary language. He is also known for his work in intuitionism and on his theory of transfinite recursion on admissible ordinals. Kripke, McCosh Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, frequently lectures on numerous further significant results in philosophy. A Kripke semantics, a type of formal semantics for languages with operators A and B for necessity and possibility (‘possible worlds semantics’ and ‘relational semantics’ are sometimes used for the same notion); also, a similar semantics for intuitionistic logic. In a basic version a framefor a sentential language with A and B is a pair (W, R) where W is a non-empty set (the “possible worlds”) and R is a binary relation on W – the relation of “relative possibility” or “accessibility.” A model on the frame (W, R) is a triple (W, R, V), where V is a function (the “valuation function”) that assigns truth-values to sentence letters at worlds. If w 1 W then a sentence AA is true at world w in the model (W, R, V) if A is true at all worlds v 1 W for which wRv. Informally, AA is true at world w if A is true at all the worlds that would be possible if w were actual. This is a generalization of the doctrine commonly attributed to Leibniz that necessity is truth in all possible worlds. A is valid in the model (W, R, V) if it is true at all worlds w 1 W in that model. It is valid in the frame (W, R) if it is valid in all models on that frame. It is valid if it is valid in all frames. In predicate logic versions, a frame may include another component D, that assigns a non-empty set Dw of objects (the existents at w) to each possible world w. Terms and quantifiers may be treated either as objectual (denoting and ranging over individuals) or conceptual (denoting and ranging over functions from possible worlds to individuals) and either as actualist or possibilist(denoting and ranging over either existents or possible existents). On some of these treatments there may arise further choices about whether and how truth-values should be assigned to sentences that assert relations among non-existents. The development of Kripke semantics marks a watershed in the modern study of modal systems. A number of axiomatizations for necessity and possibility were proposed and investigated. Carnap showed that for the simplest of these systems, C. I. Lewis’s S5, AA can be interpreted as saying that A is true in all “state descriptions.” Answering even the most basic questions about the other systems, however, required effort and ingenuity. Stig Kanger, Richard Montague, Kripke, and Hintikka each formulated interpretations for such systems that generalized Carnap’s semantics by using something like the accessibility relation described above. Kripke’s semantics was more natural than the others in that accessibility was taken to be a relation among mathematically primitive “possible worlds,” and, in a series of papers, Kripke demonstrated that versions of it provide characteristic interpretations for a number of modal systems. For these reasons Kripke’s formulation has become standard. Relational semantics provided simple solutions to some older problems about the distinctness and relative strength of the various systems. It also opened new areas of investigation, facilitating general results (establishing decidability and other properties for infinite classes of modal systems), incompleteness results (exhibiting systems not determined by any class of frames), and correspondence results (showing that the frames verifying certain modal formulas were exactly the frames meeting certain conditions on R). It suggested parallel interpretations for notions whose patterns of inference were known to be similar to that of necessity and possibility, including obligation and permission, epistemic necessity and possibility, provability and consistency, and, more recently, the notion of a computation’s inevitably or possibly terminating in a particular state. It inspired similar semantics for nonclassical conditionals and the more general neighborhood or functional variety of possible worlds semantics. The philosophical utility of Kripke semantics is more difficult to assess. Since the accessibility relation is often explained in terms of the modal operators, it is difficult to maintain that the semantics provides an explicit analysis of the modalities it interprets. Furthermore, questions about which version of the semantics is correct (particularly for quantified modal systems) are themselves tied to substantive questions about the nature of things and worlds. The semantics does impose important constraints on the meaning of modalities, and it provides a means for many philosophical questions to be posed more clearly and starkly.

Kristeva: The centerpiece of Kristeva’s semiotic theory has two correlative moments: a focus on the speaking subject as embodying unconscious motivations (and not simply the conscious intentionality of a Husserlian transcendental ego) and an articulation of the signifying phenomenon as a dynamic, productive process (not a static sign-system). Kristeva’s most systematic philosophical work, La Révolution du langage poétique brings her semiotics to mature expression through an effective integration of psychoanalysis (Freud and Lacan), elements of linguistic models (from Roman Jakobson to Chomskyan generative grammar) and semiology (from Saussure to Peirce and Louis Hjelmslev), and a literary approach to text (influenced by Bakhtin). Together the symbolic and the semiotic, two dialectical and irreconcilable modalities of meaning, constitute the signifying process. The symbolic designates the systematic rules governing denotative and propositional speech, while the semiotic isolates an archaic layer of meaning that is neither representational nor based on relations among signs. The concept of the chora combines the semiotic, translinguistic layer of meaning (genotext) with a psychoanalytic, drive-based model of unconscious sound production, dream logic, and fantasy life that defy full symbolic articulation. Drawing on Plato’s non-unified notion of the maternal receptacle (Timaeus), the chora constitutes the space where subjectivity is generated. Drives become “ordered” in rhythmic patterns during the pre-Oedipal phase before the infant achieves reflexive capacity, develops spatial intuition and time consciousness, and posits itself as an enunciating subject. Ordered, but not according to symbolic laws, semiotic functions arise when the infant forms associations between its vocal gesticulations and sensorimotor development, and patterns these associations after the mother’s corporeal modulations. The semiotic chora, while partly repressed in identity formation, links the subject’s preverbal yet functional affective life to signification. All literary forms – epic narrative, metalanguage, contemplation or theoria and text-practice – combine two different registers of meaning, phenotext and genotext. Yet they do so in different ways and none encompasses both registers in totality. The phenotext refers to language in its function “to communicate” and can be analyzed in terms of syntax and semantics. Though not itself linguistic, the genotext reveals itself in the way that “phonematic” and “melodic devices” and “syntactic and logical” features establish “semantic” fields. The genotext isolates the specific mode in which a text sublimates drives; it denotes the “process” by which a literary form generates a particular type of subjectivity. Poetic language is unique in that it largely reveals the genotext. This linkage between semiotic processes, genotext, and poetic language fulfills the early linguistic project (1967–73) and engenders a novel post-Hegelian social theory. Synthesizing semiotics and the destructive death drive’s attack against stasis artfully restores permanence to Hegelian negativity. Poetic mimesis, because it transgresses grammatical rules while sustaining signification, reactivates the irreducible negativity and heterogeneity of drive processes. So effectuating anamnesis, poetry reveals the subject’s constitution within language and, by holding open rather than normalizing its repressed desire, promotes critical analysis of symbolic and institutionalized values. Later works like Pouvoirs de l’horreur (1980), Etrangers à nous-mêmes (1989), Histoires d’amour, and Les Nouvelles maladies de l’âme shift away from collective political agency to a localized, culturally therapeutic focus. Examining xenophobic social formations, abjection and societal violence, romantic love, grief, women’s melancholic poison in patriarchy, and a crisis of moral values in the postmetaphysical age, they harbor forceful implications for ethics and social theory.

Kropotkin: philosopher, best remembered for his anarchism and his defense of mutual aid as a factor of evolution. Traveling extensively in Siberia on scientific expeditions (1862–67), he was stimulated by Darwin’s newly published theory of evolution and sought, in the Siberian landscape, confirmation of Darwin’s Malthusian principle of the struggle for survival. Instead Kropotkin found that underpopulation was the rule, that climate was the main obstacle to survival, and that mutual aid was a far more common phenomenon than Darwin recognized. He soon generalized these findings to social theory, opposing social Darwinism, and also began to espouse anarchist theory.

Kuhn: Grice: “I would hardly look for inspiration in ‘philosophical minor revolutions’ in Kuhn, who wasn’t really a philosopher – MA physics, PhD philosophy of science” -- philosopher, studied at Harvard, where he received degrees in physics and a doctorate in the history of science. He then taught history of science or philosophy of science at Harvard (1951–56), Berkeley (1956–64), Princeton (1964–79), and M.I.T. (1979–91). Kuhn traced his shift from physics to the history and philosophy of science to a moment in 1947 when he was Kropotkin, Petr Alekseevich Kuhn, Thomas S(amuel) 478 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 478 asked to teach some science to humanities majors. Searching for a case study to illuminate the development of Newtonian mechanics, Kuhn opened Aristotle’s Physics and was astonished at how “simply wrong” it was. After a while, Kuhn came to “think like an Aristotelian physicist” and to realize that Aristotle’s basic concepts were totally unlike Newton’s, and that, understood on its own terms, Aristotle’s Physics was not bad Newtonian mechanics. This new perspective resulted in The Copernican Revolution (1957), a study of the transformation of the Aristotelian geocentric image of the world to the modern heliocentric one. Pondering the structure of these changes, Kuhn produced his immensely influential second book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). He argued that scientific thought is defined by “paradigms,” variously describing these as disciplinary matrixes or exemplars, i.e., conceptual world-views consisting of beliefs, values, and techniques shared by members of a given community, or an element in that constellation: concrete achievements used as models for research. According to Kuhn, scientists accept a prevailing paradigm in “normal science” and attempt to articulate it by refining its theories and laws, solving various puzzles, and establishing more accurate measurements of constants. Eventually, however, their efforts may generate anomalies; these emerge only with difficulty, against a background of expectations provided by the paradigm. The accumulation of anomalies triggers a crisis that is sometimes resolved by a revolution that replaces the old paradigm with a new one. One need only look to the displacement of Aristotelian physics and geocentric astronomy by Newtonian mechanics and heliocentrism for instances of such paradigm shifts. In this way, Kuhn challenged the traditional conception of scientific progress as gradual, cumulative acquisition of knowledge. He elaborated upon these themes and extended his historical inquiries in his later works, The Essential Tension (1977) and Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity (1978). H. P. Grice, “A minor revolution in philosophy.”

labriola: Essential Italian philosopher -- born in Genova, Liguria, Italia, philosopher who studied Hegel and corresponded with Engels for years (Lettere a Engels, 1949). Labriola’s essays on Marxism appeared first in French in the collection Essais sur la conception matérialiste de l’histoire. Another influential work, Discorrendo di socialismo e di filosofia collects ten letters to Georges Sorel on Marxism. Labriola did not intend to develop an original Marxist theory but only to give an accurate exposition of Marx’s thought. He believed that socialism would inevitably ensue from the inner contradictions of capitalist society and defended Marx’s views as objective scientific truths. He criticized revisionism and defended the need to maintain the orthodoxy of Marxist thought. His views and works were publicized by two of his students, Sorel in France and Croce in Italy. Gramsci brought new attention to Labriola as an example of pure and independent Marxism. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Labriola," per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

labours: the twelve labours of Grice. They are twelve. The first is Extensionalism. The second is Nominalism. The third is Positivism. The fourth is Naturalism. The fifth is Mechanism. The sixth is Phenomenalism. The seventh is Reductionism. The eighth is physicalism. The ninth is materialism. The tenth is Empiricism. The eleventh is Scepticism, and the twelfth is functionalism. “As I thread my way unsteadily along the tortuous mountain path which is supposed to lead, in the long distance, to the City of Eternal Truth, I find myself beset by a multitude of demons and perilous places, bearing names like Extensionalism, Nominalism, Positivism, Naturalism, Mechanism, Phenomenalism, Reductionism, Physicalism, Materialism, Empiricism, Scepticism, and Functionalism; menaces which are, indeed, almost as numerous as those encountered by a traveller called Christian on another well-publicized journey.”“The items named in this catalogue are obviously, in many cases, not to be identified with one another; and it is perfectly possible to maintain a friendly attitude towards some of them while viewing others with hostility.” “There are many persons, for example, who view Naturalism with favour while firmly rejecting Nominalism.”“And it is not easy to see how anyone could couple support for Phenomenalism with support for Physicalism.”“After a more tolerant (permissive) middle age, I have come to entertain strong opposition to all of them, perhaps partly as a result of the strong connection between a number of them and the philosophical technologies which used to appeal to me a good deal more than they do now.“But how would I justify the hardening of my heart?” “The first question is, perhaps, what gives the list of items a unity, so that I can think of myself as entertaining one twelve-fold antipathy, rather than twelve discrete antipathies.” “To this question my answer is that all the items are forms of what I shall call Minimalism, a propensity which seeks to keep to a minimum (which may in some cases be zero) the scope allocated to some advertised philosophical commodity, such as abstract entities, knowledge, absolute value, and so forth.”“In weighing the case for and the case against a trend of so high a degree of generality as Minimalism, kinds of consideration may legitimately enter which would be out of place were the issue more specific in character; in particular, appeal may be made to aesthetic considerations.”“In favour of Minimalism, for example, we might hear an appeal, echoing Quine, to the beauty of ‘desert landscapes.’”“But such an appeal I would regard as inappropriate.”“We are not being asked by a Minimalist to give our vote to a special, and no doubt very fine, type of landscape.”“We are being asked to express our preference for an ordinary sort of landscape at a recognizably lean time; to rosebushes and cherry-trees in mid-winter, rather than in spring or summer.”“To change the image somewhat, what bothers me about whatI am being offered is not that it is bare, but that it has been systematically and relentlessly undressed.”“I am also adversely influenced by a different kind of unattractive feature which some, or perhaps even all of these betes noires seem to possess.”“Many of them are guilty of restrictive practices which, perhaps, ought to invite the attention of a Philosophical Trade Commission.”“They limit in advance the range and resources of philosophical explanation.”“They limit its range by limiting the kinds of phenomena whose presence calls for explanation.”“Some prima-facie candidates are watered down, others are washed away.”“And they limit its resources by forbidding the use of initially tempting apparatus, such as the concepts expressed by psychological, or more generally intensional, verbs.”“My own instincts operate in a reverse direction from this.”“I am inclined to look first at how useful such and such explanatory ideas might prove to be if admitted, and to waive or postpone enquiry into their certificates of legitimacy.”“I am conscious that all I have so far said against Minimalsim has been very general in character, and also perhaps a little tinged with rhetoric.”“This is not surprising in view of the generality of the topic.”“But all the same I should like to try to make some provision for those in search of harder tack.”“I can hardly, in the present context, attempt to provide fully elaborated arguments against all, or even against any one, of the diverse items which fall under my label 'Minimalism.’”“The best I can do is to try to give a preliminary sketch of what I would regard as the case against just one of the possible forms of minimalism, choosing one which I should regard it as particularly important to be in a position to reject.”“My selection is Extensionalism, a position imbued with the spirit of Nominalism, and dear both to those who feel that 'Because it is red' is no more informative as an answer to the question 'Why is a pillar-box called ‘red’?' than would be 'Because he is Grice' as an answer to the question 'Why is that distinguished-looking person called "Grice"?', and also to those who are particularly impressed by the power of Set-theory.”“The picture which, I suspect, is liable to go along with Extensionalism is that of the world of particulars as a domain stocked with innumerable tiny pellets, internally indistinguishable from one another, butdistinguished by the groups within which they fall, by the 'clubs' to which they belong; and since the clubs are distinguished only by their memberships, there can only be one club to which nothing belongs.”“As one might have predicted from the outset, this leads to trouble when it comes to the accommodation of explanation within such a system.”“Explanation of the actual presence of a particular feature in a particular subject depends crucially on the possibility of saying what would be the consequence of the presence of such and such features in that subject, regardless of whether the features in question even do appear in that subject, or indeed in any subject.”“On the face of it, if one adopts an extensionalist view-point, the presence of a feature in some particular will have to be re-expressed in terms of that particular's membership of a certain set.”“But if we proceed along those lines, since there is only one empty set, the potential consequences of the possession of in fact unexemplified features would be invariably the same, no matter how different in meaning the expressions used to specify such features would ordinarily be judged to be.”“This is certainly not a conclusion which one would care to accept.”“I can think of two ways of trying to avoid its acceptance, both of which seem to me to suffer from serious drawbacks.” H. P. Grice, “Grice’s seven labours.”

Lacan: he developed and transformed Freudian theory and practice on the basis of the structuralist semiotics originated by Saussure. According to Lacan, the unconscious is not a congeries of biological instincts and drives, but rather a system of signifiers. Lacan construes, e.g., the fundamental Freudian processes of condensation and displacement as instances of metaphor and metonymy. Lacan proposea a Freudianism in which any traces of the substantial Cartesian self are replaced by a system of this or that symbolic function. Contrary to standard views, the ego is an imaginary projection, not our access to the real (which, for Lacan, is the unattainable and inexpressible limit of language). In accord with his theoretical position, Lacan develops a new form of psychoanalytic practice that tries to avoid rather than achieve the “transference” whereby the analysand identifies with the ego of the analyst. Lacan’s writings (e.g., Écrits and the numerous volumes of his Séminaires) are of legendary difficulty, offering idiosyncratic networks of allusion, word play, and paradox, which Grice finds rich and stimulating and Strawson irresponsibly obscure. Beyond psychoanalysis, Lacan has been particularly influential on literary theorists and on poststructuralist philosophers such as Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze.

Laffitte: positivist philosopher, a disciple of Comte and founder of the Revue Occidentale. Laffitte spread positivism by adopting Comte’s format of “popular” courses. He faithfully acknowledged Comte’s objective method and religion of humanity. Laffitte wrote Great Types of Humanity. In Positive Ethics, he distinguishes between theoretical and practical ethics. His Lectures on First Philosophy sets forth a metaphysics, or a body of general and abstract laws, that attempts to complete positivism, to resolve the conflict between the subjective and the objective, and to avert materialism.

La Forge: philosopher, a member of the Cartesian school. La Forge seems to have become passionately interested in Descartes’s philosophy and grew to become one of its most visible and energetic advocates. La Forge (together with Gérard van Gutschoven) illustrated an edition of Descartes’s L’homme and provided an extensive commentary; both illustrations and commentary were often reprinted with the text. His main work, though, is the Traité de l’esprit de l’homme: though not a commentary on Descartes, it is “in accordance with the principles of René Descartes,” according to its subtitle. It attempts to continue Descartes’s program in L’homme, left incomplete at his death, by discussing the mind and its union with the body. In many ways La Forge’s work is quite orthodox; he carefully follows Descartes’s opinions on the nature of body, the nature of soul, etc., as they appear in the extant writings to which he had access. But with others in the Cartesian school, La Forge’s work contributed to the establishment of the doctrine of occasionalism as Cartesian orthodoxy, a doctrine not explicitly found in Descartes’s writings.

Future and general duty: I think it is clear that whatever I imply, suggest, mean, etc., is distinct from what I explicitly convey. I wish to introduce, as terms of art, one verb "implicate" and two related nouns, "implicature" (cf. "implying") and "implicatum" (cf. "what is implied").  The point of my maneuvre is to free you from having to choose (a) between this or that member of the family of verbs (imply, etc.) for which the verb "implicate" is to do general duty. (b) between this or that member of the family of nouns (the implying, etc.) for which the noun "implicature" is to do general duty.(c) between this or that member of the the family of nouns or nominal consstructions ('what is implied,' etc.) for which 'implicatum' is to do general duty. I will add: implicaturum – implicatura. "Implicaturum" (sing.) becomes, of course, "implicatura." So, strictly, while the verb to use do do general duty is 'implicate,' the NOUN is 'implicaturum' (plural: implicatura). I think it is clear that whatever I imply or keep implicit (suggest, mean, etc.)is distinct from what I explicitly convey, or make explicit. I wish to introduce, as a term of art the Latinate verb 'implicate,' from the Latin 'implicare' -- with its derivative, 'implicaturum.' The point of my maneuvre is for my tutee's delight: he won't have to choose between this or that member of the family of verbs ('suggest,' 'mean') for which the Latinate verb 'implicate' (from 'implicaare' with its derivative form, 'implicaturum,') is to do general duty. If we compare it with ‘amare’: Grice: “As Cicero knows, there is a world of difference between ‘amatum’ and ‘amaturum’ – so with ‘implicatum’ and ‘implicaturum’!” – IMPLICATURUM: about to imply, about to be under obligation to imply, about to be obliged to imply. Refs. H. P. Grice, “Implicaturum.”

lambda implicaturum -- Church: a., philosopher, known in pure logic for his discovery and application of the Church lambda operator, one of the central ideas of the Church lambda calculus, and for his rigorous formalizations of the theory of types, a higher-order underlying logic originally formulated in a flawed form by Whitehead and Russell. The lambda operator enables direct, unambiguous, symbolic representation of a range of philosophically and mathematically important expressions previously representable only ambiguously or after elaborate paraphrasing. In philosophy, Church advocated rigorous analytic methods based on symbolic logic. His philosophy was characterized by his own version of logicism, the view that mathematics is reducible to logic, and by his unhesitating acceptance of higherorder logics. Higher-order logics, including second-order, are ontologically rich systems that involve quantification of higher-order variables, variables that range over properties, relations, and so on. Higher-order logics were routinely used in foundational work by Frege, Peano, Hilbert, Gödel, Tarski, and others until around World War II, when they suddenly lost favor. In regard to both his logicism and his acceptance of higher-order logics, Church countered trends, increasingly dominant in the third quarter of the twentieth century, against reduction of mathematics to logic and against the so-called “ontological excesses” of higher-order logic. In the 0s, although admired for his high standards of rigor and for his achievements, Church was regarded as conservative or perhaps even reactionary. Opinions have softened in recent years. On the computational and epistemological sides of logic Church made two major contributions. He was the first to articulate the now widely accepted principle known as Church’s thesis, that every effectively calculable arithmetic function is recursive. At first highly controversial, this principle connects intuitive, epistemic, extrinsic, and operational aspects of arithmetic with its formal, ontic, intrinsic, and abstract aspects. Church’s thesis sets a purely arithmetic outer limit on what is computationally achievable. Church’s further work on Hilbert’s “decision problem” led to the discovery and proof of Church’s theorem  basically that there is no computational procedure for determining, of a finite-premised first-order argument, whether it is valid or invalid. This result contrasts sharply with the previously known result that the computational truth-table method suffices to determine the validity of a finite-premised truthfunctional argument. Church’s thesis at once highlights the vast difference between propositional logic and first-order logic and sets an outer limit on what is achievable by “automated reasoning.” Church’s mathematical and philosophical writings are influenced by Frege, especially by Frege’s semantic distinction between sense and reference, his emphasis on purely syntactical treatment of proof, and his doctrine that sentences denote are names of their truth-values. lambda-calculus, also l-calculus, a theory of mathematical functions that is (a) “logic-free,” i.e. contains no logical constants (formula-connectives or quantifier-expressions), and (b) equational, i.e. ‘%’ is its sole predicate (though its metatheory refers to relations of reducibility between terms). There are two species, untyped and typed, each with various subspecies. Termhood is always inductively defined (as is being a type-expression, if the calculus is typed). A definition of being a term will contain at least these clauses: take infinitely many variables (of each type if the calculus is typed) to be terms; for any terms t and s (of appropriate type if the calculus is typed), (ts) is a term (of type determined by that of t and s if the calculus is typed); for any term t and a variable u (perhaps meeting certain conditions), (lut) is a term (“of” type determined by that of t and u if the calculus is typed). (ts) is an application-term; (lut) is a l-term, the labstraction of t, and its l-prefix binds all free occurrences of u in t. Relative to any assignment a of values (of appropriate type if the calculus is typed) to its free variables, each term denotes a unique entity. Given a term (ts), t denotes a function and (ts) denotes the output of that function when it is applied to the denotatum of s, all relative to a. (lut) denotes relative to a that function which when applied to any entity x (of appropriate type if the calculus is typed) outputs the denotatum of t relative to the variant of a obtained by assigning u to the given x. Alonzo Church introduced the untyped l-calculus around 1932 as the basis for a foundation for mathematics that took all mathematical objects to be functions. It characterizes a universe of functions, each with that universe as its domain and each yielding values in that universe. It turned out to be almost a notational variant of combinatory logic, first presented by Moses Schonfinkel (1920, written up and published by Behmann in 1924). Church presented the simplest typed l calculus in 1940. Such a calculus characterizes a domain of objects and functions, each “of” a unique type, so that the type of any given function determines two further types, one being the type of all and only those entities in the domain of that function, the other being the type of all those entities output by that function. In 1972 Jean-Yves Girard presented the first second-order (or polymorphic) typed l-calculus. It uses additional type-expressions themselves constructed by second-order l-abstraction, and also more complicated terms constructed by labstracting with respect to certain type-variables, and by applying such terms to type-expressions. The study of l-calculi has deepened our understanding of constructivity in mathematics. They are of interest in proof theory, in category theory, and in computer science.

Lambert: German natural philosopher, logician, mathematician, and astronomer. Born in Mulhouse (Alsace), he was an autodidact who became a prominent member of the Munich Academy (1759) and the Berlin Academy (1764). He made significant discoveries in physics and mathematics. His most important philosophical works were Neues Organon, or Thoughts on the Investigation and Induction of Truth and the Distinction Between Error and Appearances,” 1764) and Anlage zur Architectonic, or Theory of the Simple and Primary Elements in Philosophical and Mathematical Knowledge.” Lambert attempted to revise metaphysics. Arguing against both German rationalism and British empiricism, he opted for a form of phenomenalism similar to that of Kant and Tetens. Like his two contemporaries, he believed that the mind contains a number of basic concepts and principles that make knowledge possible. The philosopher’s task is twofold: first, these fundamental concepts and principles have to be analyzed; second, the truths of science have to be derived from them. In his own attempt at accomplishing this, Lambert tended more toward Leibniz than Locke.

mettrie, Julien Offroy de la: philosopher who was his generation’s most notorious materialist, atheist, and hedonist. Raised in Brittany, he was trained at Leiden by Hermann Boerhaave, an iatromechanist, whose works he translated into French. As a Lockean sensationalist who read Gassendi and followed the Swiss physiologist Haller, La Mettrie took nature to be life’s dynamic and ultimate principle. He published Natural History of the Soul, which attacked Cartesian dualism and dispensed with God. Drawing from Descartes’s animal-machine, his masterpiece, Man the Machine(1747), argued that the organization of matter alone explains man’s physical and intellectual faculties. Assimilating psychology to mechanistic physiology, La Mettrie integrates man into nature and proposed a materialistic monism. An Epicurean and a libertine, he denies any religious or rational morality in Anti-Seneca and instead accommodated human behavior to natural laws. Anticipating Sade’s nihilism, his Art of Enjoying Pleasures and Metaphysical Venus eulogized physical passions. Helvétius, d’Holbach, Marx, Plekhanov, and Lenin all acknowledged a debt to his belief that “to write as a philosopher is to teach materialism.”

Lange, philosopher, born at Wald near Solingen, he became a university instructor at Bonn, professor of inductive logic at Zürich in 1870, and professor at Marburg in 1873, establishing neo-Kantian studies there. He published three books in 1865: Die Arbeiterfrage (The Problem of the Worker), Die Grundlegung der mathematischen Psychologie (The Foundation of Mathematical Psychology), and J. S. Mills Ansichten über die sociale Frage und die angebliche Umwälzung der Socialwissenschaftlichen durch Carey (J. S. Mill’s Views of the Social Question and Carey’s Supposed Social-Scientific Revolution). Lange’s most important work, however, Geschichte des Materialismus (History of Materialism), was published in 1866. An expanded second edition in two volumes appeared in 1873–75 and in three later editions. The History of Materialism is a rich, detailed study not only of the development of materialism but of then-recent work in physical theory, biological theory, and political economy; it includes a commentary on Kant’s analysis of knowledge. Lange adopts a restricted positivistic approach to scientific interpretations of man and the natural world and a conventionalism in regard to scientific theory, and also encourages the projection of aesthetic interpretations of “the All” from “the standpoint of the ideal.” Rejecting reductive materialism, Lange argues that a strict analysis of materialism leads to ineliminable idealist theoretical issues, and he adopts a form of materio-idealism. In his Geschichte are anticipations of instrumental fictionalism, pragmatism, conventionalism, and psychological egoism. Following the skepticism of the scientists he discusses, Lange adopts an agnosticism about the ultimate constituents of actuality and a radical phenomenalism. His major work was much admired by Russell and significantly influenced the thought of Nietzsche. History of Materialism predicted coming sociopolitical “earthquakes” because of the rise of science, the decline of religion, and the increasing tensions of “the social problem.” Die Arbeiterfrage explores the impact of industrialization and technology on the “social problem” and predicts a coming social “struggle for survival” in terms already recognizable as Social Darwinism. Both theoretically and practically, Lange was a champion of workers and favored a form of democratic socialism. His study of J. S. Mill and the economist Henry Carey was a valuable contribution to social science and political economic theory.

Peyrère, Isaac La: a Calvinist of probable Marrano extraction and a Catholic convert whose messianic and anthropological work (Men Before Adam, 1656) scandalized Jews, Catholics, and Protestants alike. Anticipating both ecumenism and Zionism, The Recall of the Jews (1643) claims that, together, converted Jews and Christians will usher in universal redemption. A threefold “salvation history” undergirds La Peyrère’s “Marrano theology”: (1) election of the Jews; (2) their rejection and the election of the Christians; (3) the recall of the Jews.

laplace: he produced the definitive formulation of the classical theory of probability. He taught at various schools in Paris, including the École Militaire; one of his students was Napoleon, to whom he dedicated his work on probability. According to Laplace, probabilities arise from our ignorance. The world is deterministic, so the probability of a possible event depends on our limited information about it rather than on the causal forces that determine whether it shall occur. Our chief means of calculating probabilities is the principle of insufficient reason, or the principle of indifference. It says that if there is no reason to believe that one of n mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive possible cases will obtain rather than some other, so that the cases are equally possible, then the probability of each case is 1/n. In addition, the probability of a possible event equivalent to a disjunction of cases is the number of cases favorable to the event divided by the total number of cases. For instance, the probability that the top card of a well-shuffled deck is a diamond is 13/52.Laplace’s chief work on probability is Théorie analytique des probabilités(Analytic Theory of Probabilities, 1812).

law -- H. P. Grice was obsessed with ‘laws’ to introduce ‘psychological concepts.’ covering law model, the view of scientific explanation as a deductive argument which contains non-vacuously at least one universal law among its premises. The names of this view include ‘Hempel’s model’, ‘Hempel-Oppenheim HO model’, ‘Popper-Hempel model’, ‘deductivenomological D-N model’, and the ‘subsumption theory’ of explanation. The term ‘covering law model of explanation’ was proposed by William Dray. The theory of scientific explanation was first developed by Aristotle. He suggested that science proceeds from mere knowing that to deeper knowing why by giving understanding of different things by the four types of causes. Answers to why-questions are given by scientific syllogisms, i.e., by deductive arguments with premises that are necessarily true and causes of their consequences. Typical examples are the “subsumptive” arguments that can be expressed by the Barbara syllogism: All ravens are black. Jack is a raven. Therefore, Jack is black. Plants containing chlorophyll are green. Grass contains chlorophyll. Therefore, grass is green. In modern logical notation, An explanatory argument was later called in Grecian synthesis, in Latin compositio or demonstratio propter quid. After the seventeenth century, the terms ‘explication’ and ‘explanation’ became commonly used. The nineteenth-century empiricists accepted Hume’s criticism of Aristotelian essences and necessities: a law of nature is an extensional statement that expresses a uniformity, i.e., a constant conjunction between properties ‘All swans are white’ or types of events ‘Lightning is always followed by thunder’. Still, they accepted the subsumption theory of explanation: “An individual fact is said to be explained by pointing out its cause, that is, by stating the law or laws of causation, of which its production is an instance,” and “a law or uniformity in nature is said to be explained when another law or laws are pointed out, of which that law itself is but a case, and from which it could be deduced” J. S. Mill. A general model of probabilistic explanation, with deductive explanation as a specific case, was given by Peirce in 3. A modern formulation of the subsumption theory was given by Hempel and Paul Oppenheim in 8 by the following schema of D-N explanation: Explanandum E is here a sentence that describes a known particular event or fact singular explanation or uniformity explanation of laws. Explanation is an argument that answers an explanation-seeking why-question ‘Why E?’ by showing that E is nomically expectable on the basis of general laws r M 1 and antecedent conditions. The relation between the explanans and the explanandum is logical deduction. Explanation is distinguished from other kinds of scientific systematization prediction, postdiction that share its logical characteristics  a view often called the symmetry thesis regarding explanation and prediction  by the presupposition that the phenomenon E is already known. This also separates explanations from reason-seeking arguments that answer questions of the form ‘What reasons are there for believing that E?’ Hempel and Oppenheim required that the explanans have empirical content, i.e., be testable by experiment or observation, and it must be true. If the strong condition of truth is dropped, we speak of potential explanation. Dispositional explanations, for non-probabilistic dispositions, can be formulated in the D-N model. For example, let Hx % ‘x is hit by hammer’, Bx % ‘x breaks’, and Dx % ‘x is fragile’. Then the explanation why a piece of glass was broken may refer to its fragility and its being hit: It is easy to find examples of HO explanations that are not satisfactory: self-explanations ‘Grass is green, because grass is green’, explanations with too weak premises ‘John died, because he had a heart attack or his plane crashed’, and explanations with irrelevant information ‘This stuff dissolves in water, because it is sugar produced in Finland’. Attempts at finding necessary and sufficient conditions in syntactic and semantic terms for acceptable explanations have not led to any agreement. The HO model also needs the additional Aristotelian condition that causal explanation is directed from causes to effects. This is shown by Sylvain Bromberger’s flagpole example: the length of a flagpole explains the length of its shadow, but not vice versa. Michael Scriven has argued against Hempel that eaplanations of particular events should be given by singular causal statements ‘E because C’. However, a regularity theory Humean or stronger than Humean of causality implies that the truth of such a singular causal statement presupposes a universal law of the form ‘Events of type C are universally followed by events of type E’. The HO version of the covering law model can be generalized in several directions. The explanans may contain probabilistic or statistical laws. The explanans-explanandum relation may be inductive in this case the explanation itself is inductive. This gives us four types of explanations: deductive-universal i.e., D-N, deductiveprobabilistic, inductive-universal, and inductiveprobabilistic I-P. Hempel’s 2 model for I-P explanation contains a probabilistic covering law PG/F % r, where r is the statistical probability of G given F, and r in brackets is the inductive probability of the explanandum given the explanans: The explanation-seeking question may be weakened from ‘Why necessarily E?’ to ‘How possibly E?’. In a corrective explanation, the explanatory answer points out that the explanandum sentence E is not strictly true. This is the case in approximate explanation e.g., Newton’s theory entails a corrected form of Galileo’s and Kepler’s laws. 

law-like generalisation, also called nomological (or nomic), a generalization that, unlike an accidental generalization, possesses nomic necessity or counterfactual force. Compare (1) ‘All specimens of gold have a melting point of 1,063o C’ with (2) ‘All the rocks in my garden are sedimentary’. (2) may be true, but its generality is restricted to rocks in my garden. Its truth is accidental; it does not state what must be the case. (1) is true without restriction. If we write (1) as the conditional ‘For any x and for any time t, if x is a specimen of gold subjected to a temperature of 1,063o C, then x will melt’, we see that the generalization states what must be the case. (1) supports the hypothetical counterfactual assertion ‘For any specimen of gold x and for any time t, if x were subjected to a temperature of 1,063o C, then x would melt’, which means that we accept (1) as nomically necessary: it remains true even if no further specimens of gold are subjected to the required temperature. This is not true of (2), for we know that at some future time an igneous rock might appear in my garden. Statements like (2) are not lawlike; they do not possess the unrestricted necessity we require of lawlike statements. Ernest Nagel has claimed that a nomological statement must satisfy two other conditions: it must deductively entail or be deductively entailed by other laws, and its scope of prediction must exceed the known evidence for it.

law of thought: a law by which or in accordance with which valid thought proceeds, or that justify valid inference, or to which all valid deduction is reducible. Laws of thought are rules that apply without exception to any subject matter of thought, etc.; sometimes they are said to be the object of logic. The term, rarely used in exactly the same sense by different authors, has long been associated with three equally ambiguous expressions: the law of identity (ID), the law of contradiction (or non-contradiction; NC), and the law of excluded middle (EM). Sometimes these three expressions are taken as propositions of formal ontology having the widest possible subject matter, propositions that apply to entities per se: (ID) every thing is (i.e., is identical to) itself; (NC) no thing having a given quality also has the negative of that quality (e.g., no even number is non-even); (EM) every thing either has a given quality or has the negative of that quality (e.g., every number is either even or non-even). Equally common in older works is use of these expressions for principles of metalogic about propositions: (ID) every proposition implies itself; (NC) no proposition is both true and false; (EM) every proposition is either true or false. Beginning in the middle to late 1800s these expressions have been used to denote propositions of Boolean Algebra about classes: (ID) every class includes itself; (NC) every class is such that its intersection (“product”) with its own complement is the null class; (EM) every class is such that its union (“sum”) with its own complement is the universal class. More recently the last two of the three expressions have been used in connection with the classical propositional logic and with the socalled protothetic or quantified propositional logic; in both cases the law of non-contradiction involves the negation of the conjunction (‘and’) of something with its own negation and the law of excluded middle involves the disjunction (‘or’) of something with its own negation. In the case of propositional logic the “something” is a schematic letter serving as a place-holder, whereas in the case of protothetic logic the “something” is a genuine variable. The expressions ‘law of non-contradiction’ and ‘law of excluded middle’ are also used for semantic principles of model theory concerning sentences and interpretations: (NC) under no interpretation is a given sentence both true and false; (EM) under any interpretation, a given sentence is either true or false. The expressions mentioned above all have been used in many other ways. Many other propositions have also been mentioned as laws of thought, including the dictum de omni et nullo attributed to Aristotle, the substitutivity of identicals (or equals) attributed to Euclid, the socalled identity of indiscernibles attributed to Leibniz, and other “logical truths.” The expression “law of thought” gains added prominence through its use by Boole to denote theorems of his “algebra of logic”; in fact, he named his second logic book An Investigation of the Laws of Thought. Modern logicians, in almost unanimous disagreement with Boole, take this expression to be a misnomer; none of the above propositions classed under ‘laws of thought’ are explicitly about thought per se, a mental phenomenon studied by psychology, nor do they involve explicit reference to a thinker or knower as would be the case in pragmatics or in epistemology. The distinction between psychology (as a study of mental phenomena) and semantics (as a study of valid inference) is widely accepted.

Lebensphilosophie, German term, translated as ‘philosophy of life’, that became current in a variety of popular and philosophical inflections during the second half of the nineteenth century. Such philosophers as Dilthey and Eucken frequently applied it to a general philosophical approach or attitude that distinguished itself, on the one hand, from the construction of comprehensive systems by Hegel and his followers and, on the other, from the tendency of empiricism and early positivism to reduce human experience to epistemological questions about sensations or impressions. Rather, a Lebensphilosophie should begin from a recognition of the variety and complexity of concrete and already meaningful human experience as it is “lived”; it should acknowledge that all human beings, including the philosopher, are always immersed in historical processes and forms of organization; and it should seek to understand, describe, and sometimes even alter these and their various patterns of interrelation without abstraction or reduction. Such “philosophies of life” as those of Dilthey and Eucken provided much of the philosophical background for the conception of the social sciences as interpretive rather than explanatory disciplines. They also anticipated some central ideas of phenomenology, in particular the notion of the Life-World in Husserl, and certain closely related themes in Heidegger’s version of existentialism.

legalese: Grice: “Many things are called ‘legal’ in philosophy. There is legal  moralism, the view (defended in this century by, e.g., Lord Patrick Devlin) that law may properly be used to enforce morality, including notably “sexual morality.” Contemporary critics of the view (e.g., Hart) expand on the argument of Mill that law should only be used to prevent harm to others. There is Hart’s legal positivism, a theory about the nature of law, commonly thought to be characterized by two major tenets: (1) that there is no necessary connection between law and morality; and (2) that legal validity is determined ultimately by reference to certain basic social facts, e.g., the command of the sovereign (John Austin), the Grundnorm (Hans Kelsen), or the rule of recognition (Hart). These different descriptions of the basic law-determining facts lead to different claims about the normative character of law, with classical positivists (e.g., John Austin) insisting that law is essentially coercive, and modern positivists (e.g., Hans Kelsen) maintaining that it is normative. The traditional opponent of the legal positivist is the natural law theorist, who holds that no sharp distinction can be drawn between law and morality, thus challenging positivism’s first tenet. Whether that tenet follows from positivism’s second tenet is a question of current interest and leads inevitably to the classical question of political theory: Under what conditions might legal obligations, even if determined by social facts, create genuine political obligations (e.g., the obligation to obey the law)? There is legal realism, a theory in philosophy of law or jurisprudence broadly characterized by the claim that the nature of law is better understood by observing what courts and citizens actually do than by analyzing stated legal rules and legal concepts. The theory is also associated with the thoughts that legal rules are disguised predictions of what courts will do, and that only the actual decisions of courts constitute law. There are two important traditions of legal realism, in Scandinavia and in the United States. Both began in the early part of the century, and both focus on the reality (hence the name ‘legal realism’) of the actual legal system, rather than on law’s official image of itself. The Scandinavian tradition is more theoretical and presents its views as philosophical accounts of the normativity of law based on skeptical methodology – the normative force of law consists in nothing but the feelings of citizens or officials or both about or their beliefs in that normative force. The older, U.S. tradition is more empirical or sociological or instrumentalist, focusing on how legislation is actually enacted, how rules are actually applied, how courts’ decisions are actually taken, and so forth. U.S. legal realism in its contemporary form is known as critical legal studies. Its argumentation is both empirical (law as experienced to be and as being oppressive by gender) and theoretical (law as essentially indeterminate, or interpretative – properties that prime law for its role in political manipulation).

Leibniz: German rationalist philosopher who made seminal contributions in geology, linguistics, historiography, mathematics, and physics, as well as philosophy. He was born in Leipzig and died in Hanover. Trained in the law, he earned a living as a councilor, diplomat, librarian, and historian, primarily in the court of Hanover. His contributions in mathematics, physics, and philosophy were known and appreciated among his educated contemporaries in virtue of his publication in Europe’s leading scholarly journals and his vast correspondence with intellectuals in a variety of fields. He was best known in his lifetime for his contributions to mathematics, especially to the development of the calculus, where a debate raged over whether Newton or Leibniz should be credited with priority for its discovery. Current scholarly opinion seems to have settled on this: each discovered the basic foundations of the calculus independently; Newton’s discovery preceded that of Leibniz; Leibniz’s publication of the basic theory of the calculus preceded that of Newton. Leibniz’s contributions to philosophy were known to his contemporaries through articles published in learned journals, correspondence, and one book published in his lifetime, the Theodicy (1710). He wrote a book-length study of Locke’s philosophy, New Essays on Human Understanding, but decided not to publish it when he learned of Locke’s death. Examination of Leibniz’s papers after his own death revealed that what he published during his lifetime was but the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps the most complete formulation of Leibniz’s mature metaphysics occurs in his correspondence (1698–1706) with Burcher De Volder, a professor of philosophy at the University of Leyden. Leibniz therein formulated his basic ontological thesis: Considering matters accurately, it must be said that there is nothing in things except simple substances, and, in them, nothing but perception and appetite. Moreover, matter and motion are not so much substances or things as they are the phenomena of percipient beings, the reality of which is located in the harmony of each percipient with itself (with respect to different times) and with other percipients. In this passage Leibniz asserts that the basic individuals of an acceptable ontology are all monads, i.e., immaterial entities lacking spatial parts, whose basic properties are a function of their perceptions and appetites. He held that each monad perceives all the other monads with varying degrees of clarity, except for God, who perceives all monads with utter clarity. Leibniz’s main theses concerning causality among the created monads are these: God creates, conserves, and concurs in the actions of each created monad. Each state of a created monad is a causal consequence of its preceding state, except for its state at creation and any of its states due to miraculous divine causality. Intrasubstantial causality is the rule with respect to created monads, which are precluded from intersubstantial causality, a mode of operation of which God alone is capable. Leibniz was aware that elements of this monadology may seem counterintuitive, that, e.g., there appear to be extended entities composed of parts, existing in space and time, causally interacting with each other. In the second sentence of the quoted passage Leibniz set out some of the ingredients of his theory of the preestablished harmony, one point of which is to save those appearances that are sufficiently well-founded to deserve saving. In the case of material objects, Leibniz formulated a version of phenomenalism, based on harmony among the perceptions of the monads. In the case of apparent intersubstantial causal relations among created monads, Leibniz proposed an analysis according to which the underlying reality is an increase in the clarity of relevant perceptions of the apparent causal agent, combined with a corresponding decrease in the clarity of the relevant perceptions of the apparent patient. Leibniz treated material objects and intersubstantial causal relations among created entities as well-founded phenomena. By contrast, he treated space and time as ideal entities. Leibniz’s mature metaphysics includes a threefold classification of entities that must be accorded some degree of reality: ideal entities, well-founded phenomena, and actual existents, i.e., the monads with their perceptions and appetites. In the passage quoted above Leibniz set out to distinguish the actual entities, the monads, from material entities, which he regarded as well-founded phenomena. In the following passage from another letter to De Volder he formulated the distinction between actual and ideal entities: In actual entities there is nothing but discrete quantity, namely, the multitude of monads, i.e., simple substances. . . . But continuous quantity is something ideal, which pertains to possibles, and to actuals, insofar as they are possible. Indeed, a continuum involves indeterminate parts, whereas, by contrast, there is nothing indefinite in actual entities, in which every division that can be made, is made. Actual things are composed in the manner that a number is composed of unities, ideal things are composed in the manner that a number is composed of fractions. The parts are actual in the real whole, but not in the ideal. By confusing ideal things with real substances when we seek actual parts in the order of possibles and indeterminate parts in the aggregate of actual things, we entangle ourselves in the labyrinth of the continuum and in inexplicable contradictions. The labyrinth of the continuum was one of two labyrinths that, according to Leibniz, vex the philosophical mind. His views about the proper course to take in unraveling the labyrinth of the continuum are one source of his monadology. Ultimately, he concluded that whatever may be infinitely divided without reaching indivisible entities is not something that belongs in the basic ontological category. His investigations of the nature of individuation and identity over time provided premises from which he concluded that only indivisible entities are ultimately real, and that an individual persists over time only if its subsequent states are causal consequences of its preceding states. In refining the metaphysical insights that yielded the monadology, Leibniz formulated and defended various important metaphysical theses, e.g.: the identity of indiscernibles – that individual substances differ with respect to their intrinsic, non-relational properties; and the doctrine of minute perceptions – that each created substance has some perceptions of which it lacks awareness. In the process of providing what he took to be an acceptable account of well-founded phenomena, Leibniz formulated various theses counter to the then prevailing Cartesian orthodoxy, concerning the nature of material objects. In particular, Leibniz argued that a correct application of Galileo’s discoveries concerning acceleration of freely falling bodies of the phenomena of impact indicates that force is not to be identified with quantity of motion, i.e., mass times velocity, as Descartes held, but is to be measured by mass times the square of the velocity. Moreover, Leibniz argued that it is force, measured as mass times the square of the velocity, that is conserved in nature, not quantity of motion. From these results Leibniz drew some important metaphysical conclusions. He argued that force, unlike quantity of motion, cannot be reduced to a conjunction of modifications of extension. But force is a central property of material objects. Hence, he concluded that Descartes was mistaken in attempting to reduce matter to extension and its modifications. Leibniz concluded that each material substance must have a substantial form that accounts for its active force. These conclusions have to do with entities that Leibniz viewed as phenomenal. He drew analogous conclusions concerning the entities he regarded as ultimately real, i.e., the monads. Thus, although Leibniz held that each monad is absolutely simple, i.e., without parts, he also held that the matter–form distinction has an application to each created monad. In a letter to De Volder he wrote: Therefore, I distinguish (1) the primitive entelechy or soul, (2) primary matter, i.e., primitive passive power, (3) monads completed from these two, (4) mass, i.e., second matter . . . in which innumerable subordinate monads come together, (5) the animal, i.e., corporeal substance, which a dominating monad makes into one machine. The second labyrinth vexing the philosophical mind, according to Leibniz, is the labyrinth of freedom. It is fair to say that for Leibniz the labyrinth of freedom is fundamentally a matter of how it is possible that some states of affairs obtain contingently, i.e., how it is possible that some propositions are true that might have been false. There are two distinct sources of the problem of contingency in Leibniz’s philosophy, one theological, and the other metaphysical. Each source may be grasped by considering an argument that appears to have premises to which Leibniz was predisposed and the conclusion that every state of affairs that obtains, obtains necessarily, and hence that there are no contingent propositions. The metaphysical argument is centered on some of Leibniz’s theses about the nature of truth. He held that the truth-value of all propositions is settled once truth-values have been assigned to the elementary propositions, i.e., those expressed by sentences in subject-predicate form. And he held that a sentence in subject-predicate form expresses a true proposition if and only if the concept of its predicate is included in the concept of its subject. But this makes it sound as if Leibniz were committed to the view that an elementary proposition is true if and only if it is conceptually true, from which it seems to follow that an elementary proposition is true if and only if it is necessarily true. Leibniz’s views concerning the relation of the truthvalue of non-elementary propositions to the truth-value of elementary propositions, then, seem to entail that there are no contingent propositions. He rejected this conclusion in virtue of rejecting the thesis that if an elementary proposition is conceptually true then it is necessarily true. The materials for his rejection of this thesis are located in theses connected with his program for a universal science (scientia universalis). This program had two parts: a universal notation (characteristica universalis), whose purpose was to provide a method for recording scientific facts as perspicuous as algebraic notation, and a formal system of reasoning (calculus ratiocinator) for reasoning about the facts recorded. Supporting Leibniz’s belief in the possibility and utility of the characteristica universalis and the calculus ratiocinator is his thesis that all concepts arise from simple primitive concepts via concept conjunction and concept complementation. In virtue of this thesis, he held that all concepts may be analyzed into their simple, primitive components, with this proviso: in some cases there is no finite analysis of a concept into its primitive components; but there is an analysis that converges on the primitive components without ever reaching them. This is the doctrine of infinite analysis, which Leibniz applied to ward off the threat to contingency apparently posed by his account of truth. He held that an elementary proposition is necessarily true if and only if there is a finite analysis that reveals that its predicate concept is included in its subject concept. By contrast, an elementary proposition is contingently true if and only if there is no such finite analysis, but there is an analysis of its predicate concept that converges on a component of its subject concept. The theological argument may be put this way. There would be no world were God not to choose to create a world. As with every choice, as, indeed, with every state of affairs that obtains, there must be a sufficient reason for that choice, for the obtaining of that state of affairs – this is what the principle of sufficient reason amounts to, according to Leibniz. The reason for God’s choice of a world to create must be located in God’s power and his moral character. But God is allpowerful and morally perfect, both of which attributes he has of necessity. Hence, of necessity, God chose to create the best possible world. Whatever possible world is the best possible world, is so of necessity. Hence, whatever possible world is actual, is so of necessity. A possible world is defined with respect to the states of affairs that obtain in it. Hence, whatever states of affairs obtain, do so of necessity. Therefore, there are no contingent propositions. Leibniz’s options here were limited. He was committed to the thesis that the principle of sufficient reason, when applied to God’s choice of a world to create, given God’s attributes, yields the conclusion that this is the best possible world – a fundamental component of his solution to the problem of evil. He considered two ways of avoiding the conclusion of the argument noted above. The first consists in claiming that although God is metaphysically perfect of necessity, i.e., has every simple, positive perfection of necessity, and although God is morally perfect, nonetheless he is not morally perfect of necessity, but rather by choice. The second consists in denying that whatever possible world is the best, is so of necessity, relying on the idea that the claim that a given possible world is the best involves a comparison with infinitely many other possible worlds, and hence, if true, is only contingently true. Once again the doctrine of infinite analysis served as the centerpiece of Leibniz’s efforts to establish that, contrary to appearances, his views do not lead to necessitarianism, i.e., to the thesis that there is no genuine contingency. Much of Leibniz’s work in philosophical theology had as a central motivation an effort to formulate a sound philosophical and theological basis for various church reunion projects – especially reunion between Lutherans and Calvinists on the Protestant side, and ultimately, reunion between Protestants and Catholics. He thought that most of the classical arguments for the existence of God, if formulated with care, i.e., in the way in which Leibniz formulated them, succeeded in proving what they set out to prove. For example, Leibniz thought that Descartes’s version of the ontological argument established the existence of a perfect being, with one crucial proviso: that an absolutely perfect being is possible. Leibniz believed that none of his predecessors had established this premise, so he set out to do so. The basic idea of his purported proof is this. A perfection is a simple, positive property. Hence, there can be no demonstration that there is a formal inconsistency in asserting that various collections of them are instantiated by the same being. But if there is no such demonstration, then it is possible that something has them all. Hence, a perfect being is possible. Leibniz did not consider in detail many of the fundamental epistemological issues that so moved Descartes and the British empiricists. Nonetheless, Leibniz made significant contributions to the theory of knowledge. His account of our knowledge of contingent truths is much like what we would expect of an empiricist’s epistemology. He claimed that our knowledge of particular contingent truths has its basis in sense perception. He argued that simple enumerative induction cannot account for all our knowledge of universal contingent truths; it must be supplemented by what he called the a priori conjectural method, a precursor of the hypothetico-deductive method. He made contributions to developing a formal theory of probability, which he regarded as essential for an adequate account of our knowledge of contingent truths. Leibniz’s rationalism is evident in his account of our a priori knowledge, which for him amounted to our knowledge of necessary truths. Leibniz thought that Locke’s empiricism did not provide an acceptable account of a priori knowledge, because it attempted to locate all the materials of justification as deriving from sensory experience, thus overlooking what Leibniz took to be the primary source of our a priori knowledge, i.e., what is innate in the mind. He summarized his debate with Locke on these matters thus: Our differences are on matters of some importance. It is a matter of knowing if the soul in itself is entirely empty like a writing tablet on which nothing has as yet been written (tabula rasa), . . . and if everything inscribed there comes solely from the senses and experience, or if the soul contains originally the sources of various concepts and doctrines that external objects merely reveal on occasion. The idea that some concepts and doctrines are innate in the mind is central not only to Leibniz’s theory of knowledge, but also to his metaphysics, because he held that the most basic metaphysical concepts, e.g., the concepts of the self, substance, and causation, are innate. Leibniz utilized the ideas behind the characteristica universalis in order to formulate a system of formal logic that is a genuine alternative to Aristotelian syllogistic logic and to contemporary quantification theory. Assuming that propositions are, in some fashion, composed of concepts and that all composite concepts are, in some fashion, composed of primitive simple concepts, Leibniz formulated a logic based on the idea of assigning numbers to concepts according to certain rules. The entire program turns on his concept containment account of truth previously mentioned. In connection with the metatheory of this logic Leibniz formulated the principle: “eadem sunt quorum unum alteri substitui potest salva veritate” (“Those things are the same of which one may be substituted for the other preserving truth-value”). The proper interpretation of this principle turns in part on exactly what “things” he had in mind. It is likely that he intended to formulate a criterion of concept identity. Hence, it is likely that this principle is distinct from the identity of indiscernibles, previously mentioned, and also from what has come to be called Leibniz’s law, i.e., the thesis that if x and y are the same individual then whatever is true of x is true of y and vice versa. The account outlined above concentrates on Leibniz’s mature views in metaphysics, epistemology, and logic. The evolution of his thought in these areas is worthy of close study, which cannot be brought to a definitive state until all of his philosophical work has been published in the edition of the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin.

lekton (Grecian, ‘what can be said’), a Stoic term sometimes translated as ‘the meaning of an utterance’. A lekton differs from an utterance in being what the utterance (or its emisor) signifies: A lekton is said to be what the Grecian grasps and the non-Grecian does not when Gricese is spoken. Moreover, a lekton is incorporeal, which for the Stoics means it does not, strictly speaking, exist, but only “sub-sists,” and so cannot act or be acted upon. A lekton constitutes the content of a state of Grice’s soul:. A lekton is what we assent to and endeavor toward and they “correspond” to the presentations given to rational animals. The Stoics acknowledged a lekton for a predicate as well as for a sentence (including questions, oaths, and imperatives). An axioma or a propositions is a lekton that can be assented to and may be true or false (although being essentially tensed, its truth-value may change). The Stoics’ theory of reference suggests that they also acknowledged singular propositions, which “perish” when the referent ceases to exist. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Benson Mates and the stoics.”

lenin: a Marxist philosopher, principal creator of Soviet dialectical materialism. In Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, he attacked his contemporaries who sought to interpret Marx’s philosophy in the spirit of the phenomenalistic positivism of Avenarius and Mach. Rejecting their position as idealist, Lenin argues that matter is not a construct from sensations but an objective reality independent of consciousness; because a sensation directly copies this reality, objective truth is possible. The dialectical dimension of Lenin’s outlook is best elaborated in his posthumous Philosophical Notebooks (written 1914–16), a collection of reading notes and fragments in which he gives close attention to the Hegelian dialectic and displays warm sympathy toward it, though he argues that the dialectic should be interpreted materialistically rather than idealistically. Some of Lenin’s most original theorizing, presented in Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) and State and Revolution (1918), is devoted to analyzing the connection between monopoly capitalism and imperialism and to describing the coming violent replacement of bourgeois rule by, first, the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and, later, stateless communism. Lenin regarded all philosophy as a partisan weapon in the class struggle, and he wielded his own philosophy polemically in the interests of Communist revolution. As a result of the victory of the Bolsheviks in November 1917, Lenin’s ideas were enshrined as the cornerstone of Soviet intellectual culture and were considered above criticism until the advent of glasnost.

Leoni: essential Italian philosopher. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Leoni," per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

Leopardi: essential Italian philosopher, and founder of a whole movement, ‘leopardismo.’  Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e gli usi di Leopardi nella filosofia italiana," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

lequier: philosopher, educated in Paris. He influenced Renouvier, who regarded Lequier as his “master in philosophy.” Through Renouvier, he came to the attention of James, who called Lequier a “philosopher of genius.” Central to Lequier’s philosophy is the idea of freedom understood as the power to “create,” or add novelty to the world. Such freedom involves an element of arbitrariness and is incompatible with determinism. Anticipating James, Lequier argued that determinism, consistently affirmed, leads to skepticism about truth and values. Though a devout Roman Catholic, his theological views were unorthodox for his time. God cannot know future free actions until they occur and therefore cannot be wholly immutable and eternal. Lequier’s views anticipate in striking ways some views of James, Bergson, Alexander, and Peirce, and the process philosophies and process theologies of Whitehead and Hartshorne.

leroux: philosopher reputed to have introduced “socialism” in France – “the word, not the doctrine!” – Grice). He claimed to be the first to use solidarité (conversational solidarity) as a sociological concept (in his memoirs, La Grève de Samarez. The son of a Parisian café owner, Leroux centered his life work on journalism, both as a printer (patenting an advanced procedure for typesetting) and as founder of a number of significant serial publications. The Encyclopédie Nouvelle, which he launched with Jean Reynaud is conceived and written in the spirit of Diderot’s magnum opus. It aspired to be the platform for republican and democratic thought during the July Monarchy. The reformer’s influence on contemporaries such as Hugo, Belinsky, J. Michelet, and Heine was considerable. Leroux fervently believed in Progress, unlimited and divinely inspired. This doctrine he took to be eighteenth-century France’s particular contribution to the Enlightenment. Progress must make its way between twin perils: the “follies of illuminism” or “foolish spiritualism” and the “abject orgies of materialism.” Accordingly, Leroux blamed Condillac for having “drawn up the code of materialism” by excluding an innate Subject from his sensationalism (“Condillac,” Encyclopédie Nouvelle). Cousin’s eclecticism, state doctrine under the July Monarchy and synonym for immobility (“Philosophy requires no further development; it is complete as is,” Leroux wrote sarcastically in 1838, echoing Cousin), was a constant target of his polemics. Having abandoned traditional Christian beliefs, Leroux viewed immortality as an infinite succession of rebirths on earth, our sense of personal identity being preserved throughout by Platonic “reminiscences” (De l’Humanité).

lesniewski: philosopher-logician, co-founder, with Lukasiewicz and Kotarbigski, of the Warsaw Center of Logical Research. He perfected the logical reconstruction of classical mathematics by Frege, Schröder, Whitehead, and Russell in his synthesis of mathematical with modernized Aristotelian logic. A pioneer in scientific semantics whose insights inspired Tarski, Les’niewski distinguished genuine antinomies of belief, in theories intended as true mathematical sciences, from mere formal inconsistencies in uninterpreted calculi. Like Frege an acute critic of formalism, he sought to perfect one comprehensive, logically true instrument of scientific investigation. Demonstrably consistent, relative to classical elementary logic, and distinguished by its philosophical motivation and logical economy, his system integrates his central achievements. Other contributions include his ideographic notation, his method of natural deduction from suppositions and his demonstrations of inconsistency of other systems, even Frege’s revised foundations of arithmetic. Fundamental were (1) his 1913 refutation of Twardowski’s Platonistic theory of abstraction, which motivated his “constructive nominalism”; and (2) his deep analyses of Russell’s paradox, which led him to distinguish distributive from collective predication and (as generalized to subsume Grelling and Nelson’s paradox of self-reference) logical from semantic paradoxes, and so (years before Ramsey and Gödel) to differentiate, not just the correlatives object language and metalanguage, but any such correlative linguistic stages, and thus to relativize semantic concepts to successive hierarchical strata in metalinguistic stratification. His system of logic and foundations of mathematics comprise a hierarchy of three axiomatic deductive theories: protothetic, ontology, and mereology. Each can be variously based on just one axiom introducing a single undefined term. His prototheses are basic to any further theory. Ontology, applying them, complements protothetic to form his logic. Les’niewski’s ontology develops his logic of predication, beginning (e.g.) with singular predication characterizing the individual so-and-so as being one (of the one or more) such-and-such, without needing classabstraction operators, dispensable here as in Russell’s “no-class theory of classes.” But this, his logic of nouns, nominal or predicational functions, etc., synthesizing formulations by Aristotle, Leibniz, Boole, Schröder, and Whitehead, also represents a universal theory of being and beings, beginning with related individuals and their characteristics, kinds, or classes distributively understood to include individuals as singletons or “one-member classes.” Les’niewski’s directives of definition and logical grammar for his systems of protothetic and ontology provide for the unbounded hierarchies of “open,” functional expressions. Systematic conventions of contextual determinacy, exploiting dependence of meaning on context, permit unequivocal use of the same forms of expression to bring out systematic analogies between homonyms as analogues in Aristotle’s and Russell’s sense, systematically ambiguous, differing in semantic category and hence significance. Simple distinctions of semantic category within the object language of the system itself, together with the metalinguistic stratification to relativize semantic concepts, prevent logical and semantic paradoxes as effectively as Russell’s ramified theory of types. Lesniewski’s system of logic, though expressively rich enough to permit Platonist interpretation in terms of universals, is yet “metaphysically neutral” in being free from ontic commitments. It neither postulates, presupposes, nor implies existence of either individuals or abstractions, but relies instead on equivalences without existential import that merely introduce and explicate new terms. In his “nominalist” construction of the endless Platonic ladder of abstraction, logical principles can be elevated step by step, from any level to the next, by definitions making abstractions eliminable, translatable by definition into generalizations characterizing related individuals. In this sense it is “constructively nominalist,” as a developing language always open to introduction of new terms and categories, without appeal to “convenient fictions.” Les’niewski’s system, completely designed by 1922, was logically and chronologically in advance of Russell’s 1925 revision of Principia Mathematica to accommodate Ramsey’s simplification of Russell’s theory of types. Yet Les’niewski’s premature death, the ensuing disruption of war, which destroyed his manuscripts and dispersed survivors such as Sobocigski and Lejewski, and the relative inaccessibility of publications delayed by Les’niewski’s own perfectionism have retarded understanding of his work.

Lessing: philosopher whose oeuvre aimed to replace the so-called possession of truth by a search for truth through public debate. The son of a Protestant minister, he studied theology but gave it up to take part in the literary debate between Gottsched and the Swiss Bodmer and Breitinger, which dealt with French classicism (Boileau) and English influences (Shakespeare for theater and Milton for poetry). His literary criticism (Briefe, die neueste Literatur betreffend), his own dramatic works, and his theological-philosophical reflections were united in his conception of a practical Aufklärung, which opposed all philosophical or religious dogmatism. Lessing’s creation and direction of the National German Theater of Hamburg (1767–70) helped to form a sense of German national identity. In 1750 Lessing published Thoughts on the Moravian Brothers, which contrasted religion as lived by this pietist community with the ecclesiastical institution. In 1753–54 he wrote a series of “rehabilitations” (Rettugen) to show that the opposition between dogmas and heresies, between “truth” and “error,” was incompatible with living religious thought. This position had the seeds of a historical conception of religion that Lessing developed during his last years. In 1754 he again attempted a deductive formulation, inspired by Spinoza, of the fundamental truths of Christianity. Lessing rejected this rationalism, as substituting a dogma of reason for one of religion. To provoke public debate on the issue, be published H. S. Reimarus’s Fragments of an Anonymous Author (1774–78), which the Protestant hierarchy considered atheistic. The relativism and soft deism to which his arguments seemed to lead were transformed in his Education of Mankind (1780) into a historical theory of truth. In Lessing’s view, all religions have an equal dignity, for none possesses “the” truth; they represent only ethical and practical moments in the history of mankind. Revelation is assimilated into an education of mankind and God is compared to a teacher who reveals to man only what he is able to assimilate. This secularization of the history of salvation, in which God becomes immanent in the world, is called pantheism (“the quarrel of pantheism”). For Lessing, Judaism and Christianity are the preliminary stages of a third gospel, the “Gospel of Reason.” The Masonic Dialogues (1778) introduced this historical and practical conception of truth as a progress from “thinking by oneself” to dialogue (“thinking aloud with a friend”). In the literary domain Lessing broke with the culture of the baroque: against the giants and martyrs of baroque tragedy, he offered the tragedy of the bourgeois, with whom any spectator must be able to identify. After a poor first play in 1755 – Miss Sara Sampson – which only reflected the sentimentalism of the time, Lessing produced a model of the genre with Emilia Galotti (1781). The Hamburg Dramaturgy (1767– 68) was supposed to be influenced by Aristotle, but its union of fear and pity was greatly influenced by Moses Mendelssohn’s theory of “mixed sensations.” Lessing’s entire aesthetics was based not on permanent ontological, religious, or moral rules, but on the spectator’s interest. In Laokoon (1766) he associated this aesthetics of reception with one of artistic production, i.e., a reflection on the means through which poetry and the plastic arts create this interest: the plastic arts by natural signs and poetry through the arbitrary signs that overcome their artificiality through the imitation not of nature but of action. Much like Winckelmann’s aesthetics, which influenced German classicism for a considerable time, Lessing’s aesthetics opposed the baroque, but for a theory of ideal beauty inspired by Plato it substituted a foundation of the beautiful in the agreement between producer and receptor.

Leucippus: Grecian pre-Socratic philosopher credited with founding atomism, expounded in a work titled The Great World-system. Positing the existence of atoms and the void, he answered Eleatic arguments against change by allowing change of place. The arrangements and rearrangements of groups of atoms could account for macroscopic changes in the world, and indeed for the world itself. Little else is known of Leucippus. It is difficult to distinguish his contributions from those of his prolific follower Democritus.

Levinas: philosopher. Educated as an orthodox Jew and a Russian citizen, he studied philosophy at Strasbourg and Freiburg, introduced the work of Husserl and Heidegger in France, taught philosophy at Paris, spent years in a German labor camp and was a professor at the universities of Poitiers, Nanterre, and the Sorbonne. To the impersonal totality of being reduced to “the same” by the Western tradition (including Hegel’s and Husserl’s idealism and Heidegger’s ontology), Levinas opposes the irreducible otherness of the human other, death, time, God, etc. In Totalité et Infini: Essai sur l’extériorité (1961), he shows how the other’s facing and speaking urge philosophy to transcend the horizons of comprehension, while Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence (1974) concentrates on the self of “me” as one-for-the-other. Appealing to Plato’s form of the Good and Descartes’s idea of the infinite, Levinas describes the asymmetrical relation between the other’s “highness” or “infinity” and me, whose self-enjoyment is thus interrupted by a basic imperative: Do not kill me, but help me to live! The fact of the other’s existence immediately reveals the basic “ought” of ethics; it awakens me to a responsibility that I have never been able to choose or to refuse. My radical “passivity,” thus revealed, shows the anachronic character of human temporality. It also refers to the immemorial past of “Him” whose “illeity” is still otherwise other than the human other: God, or the Good itself, who is neither an object nor a you. Religion and ethics coincide because the only way to meet with God is to practice one’s responsibility for the human other, who is “in the trace of God.” Comprehensive thematization and systematic objectification, though always in danger of reducing all otherness, have their own relative and subordinate truth, especially with regard to the economic and political conditions of universal justice toward all individuals whom I cannot encounter personally. With and through the other I meet all humans. In this experience lies the origin of equality and human rights. Similarly, theoretical thematization has a positive role if it remains aware of its ancillary or angelic role with regard to concern for the other. What is said in philosophy betrays the saying by which it is communicated. It must therefore be unsaid in a return to the saying. More than desire for theoretical wisdom, philosophy is the wisdom of love.

Lewin: German philosophical psychologist, perhaps the most influential of the Gestalt psychologists. Believing traditional psychology was stuck in an “Aristotelian” class-logic stage of theorizing, Lewin proposed advancing to a “Galilean” stage of field theory. His central field concept was the “life space, containing the person and his psychological environment.” Primarily concerned with motivation (or goal-oriented behaviour), he explained locomotion as caused by life-space objects’ valences, psychological vectors of force acting on people as physical vectors of force act on physical objects. A thing with positive valence exert attractive force; A thing with negative valence exert repulsive force; an ambivalent thing exerts both. To attain theoretical rigor, Lewin borrows from mathematical topology, mapping life spaces as diagrams. One represented the motivational conflict involved in choosing between pizza and hamburger: Life spaces frequently contain psychological barriers (e.g., no money) blocking movement toward or away from a valenced object. Lewin also created the important field of group dynamics in 1939, carrying out innovative studies on children and adults, focusing on group cohesion and effects of leadership style. His main works are A Dynamic Theory of Personality (1935), Principles of Topological Psychology (1936), and Field Theory in Social Science (1951). H. P. Grice, “Lewin and aspects of reason.”

Lewis: philosopher who advocated a version of pragmatism and empiricism, but was nonetheless strongly influenced by Kant. Lewis was born in Massachusetts, New England (his ancestors were from Lincolnshire), educated at Harvard, and taught at the University of California and Harvard. He wrote in logic (A Survey of Symbolic Logic; Symbolic Logic, coauthored with C. H. Langford), in epistemology (Mind and the World Order; An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation), and in ethical theory (The Ground and Nature of the Right, 1965; Our Social Inheritance, 1957). General views. Use of the senses involves “presentations” of sense experiences that signalize external objects. Reflection upon the relations of sense experiences to psychological “intensions” permits our thoughts to refer to aspects of objective reality. Consequently, we can experience those non-presented objective conditions. Intensions, which include the mind’s categories, are meanings in one ordinary sense, and concepts in a philosophical sense. When judging counts as knowing, it has the future-oriented function and sole value of guiding action in pursuit of what one evaluates as good. Intensions do not fundamentally depend upon being formulated in those linguistic phrases that may express them and thereby acquire meaning. Pace Kant, our categories are replaceable when pragmatically unsuccessful, and are sometimes invented, although typically socially instilled. Kant also failed to realize that any a priori knowledge concerns only what is expressed by an “analytic truth,” i.e., what is knowable with certainty via reflection upon intensions and permits reference to the necessary inclusion (and exclusion) relations between objective properties. Such inclusion/exclusion relationships are “entailments” expressible by a use of “if” different from material implication. The degree of justification of an empirical judgment about objective reality (e.g., that there is a doorknob before one) and of any beliefs in consequences that are probable given the judgment, approximates to certainty when the judgment stands in a relationship of “congruence” to a collection of justified judgments (e.g., a collection including the judgments that one remembers seeing a doorknob a moment before, and that one has not just turned around). Lewis’s empiricism involves one type of phenomenalism. Although he treats external conditions as metaphysically distinct from passages of sense experience, he maintains that the process of learning about the former does not involve more than learning about the latter. Accordingly, he speaks of the “sense meaning” of an intension, referring to an objective condition. It concerns what one intends to count as a process that verifies that the particular intension applies to the objective world. Sense meanings of a statement may be conceived as additional “entailments” of it, and are expressible by conjunctions of an infinite number of statements each of which is “the general form of a specific terminating judgment” (as defined below). Lewis wants his treatment of sense meaning to rule out Berkeley’s view that objects exist only when perceived. Verification of an objective judgment, as Kant realized, is largely specified by a non-social process expressed by a rule to act in imaginable ways in response to imaginable present sense experiences (e.g. seeing a doorknob) and thereupon to have imaginable future sense experiences (e.g. feeling a doorknob). Actual instances of such passages of sense experience raise the probability of an objective judgment, whose verification is always partial. Apprehensions of sense experiences are judgments that are not reached by basing them on grounds in a way that might conceivably produce errors. Such apprehensions are “certain.” The latter term may be employed by Lewis in more than one sense, but here it at least implies that the judgment is rationally credible and in the above sense not capable of being in error. So such an apprehension is “datal,” i.e., rationally employed in judging other matters, and “immediate,” i.e., formed noninferentially in response to a presentation. These presentations make up “the (sensory) given.” Sense experience is what remains after everything that is less than certain in one’s experience of an objective condition is set aside. Lewis thought some version of the epistemic regress argument to be correct, and defended the Cartesian view that without something certain as a foundation no judgment has any degree of justification. Technical terminology. Presentation: something involved in experience, e.g. a visual impression, in virtue of which one possesses a non-inferential judgment that it is involved. The given: those presentations that have the content that they do independently of one’s intending or deciding that they have it. Terminating: decisively and completely verifiable or falsifiable in principle. (E.g., where S affirms a present sense experience, A affirms an experience of seeming to initiate an action, and E affirms a future instance of sense experience, the judgment ‘S and if A then E’ is terminating.) The general form of the terminating judgment that S and if A then E: the conditional that if S then (in all probability) E, if A. (An actual judgment expressed by this conditional is based on remembering passages of sense experience of type S/A/E and is justified thanks to the principle of induction and the principle that seeming to remember an event makes the judgment that the event occurred justified at least to some degree. These statements concern a connection that holds independently of whether anyone is thinking and underlies the rationality of relying to any degree upon what is not part of one’s self.) Congruence: the relationship among statements in a collection when the following conditional is true: If each had some degree of justification independently of the remaining ones, then each would be made more justified by the conjoint truth of the remaining ones. (When the antecedent of this conditional is true, and a statement in the collection is such that it is highly improbable that the remaining ones all be true unless it is true, then it is made very highly justified.) Pragmatic a priori: those judgments that are not based on the use of the senses but on employing a set of intensions, and yet are susceptible of being reasonably set aside because of a shift to a different set of intensions whose employment is pragmatically more useful (roughly, more useful for the attainment of what has intrinsic value). Valuation: the appraising of something as having value or being morally right. (What has some value that is not due to its consequences is what has intrinsic value, e.g., enjoyable experiences of self-realization in living rationally. Other evaluations of what is good are empirical judgments concerning what may be involved in actions leading to what is intrinsically good. Rational reflection permits awareness of various moral principles.)

Lewis: very Irish literary critic, novelist, and Christian apologist, whom Grice would occasionally see at the Bird and Baby. (“I don’t like him” – Grice). Born in Belfast, Lewis took three first-class degrees at Oxford, became a tutor at Magdalen, and assumed the chair of medieval and Renaissance studies at Cambridge. While his tremendous output includes important works on medieval literature and literary criticism, he is best known for his fiction and Christian apologetics. Lewis combined a poetic sense and appreciation of argument that allowed him to communicate complex philosophical and theological material to lay audiences. His popular writings in the philosophy of religion range over a variety of topics, including the nature and existence of God (Mere Christianity, 1952), miracles (Miracles, 1947), hell (The Great Divorce, 1945), and the problem of evil (The Problem of Pain, 1940). His own conversion to Christianity as an adult is chronicled in his autobiography (Surprised by Joy, 1955). In defending theism Lewis employed arguments from natural theology (most notably versions of the moral and teleological arguments) and arguments from religious experience. Also of philosophical interest is his defense of moral absolutism in The Abolition of Man.

Lewis: philosopher influential in many areas. Lewis received the B.A. in philosophy from Swarthmore and the Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard when Grice was giving the William James lectures on the implicaturum He has been a member of the philosophy department at U.C.L.A. and Princeton . In philosophy of mind, Lewis is known principally for “An Argument for the Identity Theory” (1966), “Psychophysical and Theoretical Identifications” (1972), and “Mad Pain and Martian Pain” (1980). He argues for the functionalist thesis that mental states are defined by their typical causal roles, and the materialist thesis that the causal roles definitive of mental states are occupied by physical states. Lewis develops the view that theoretical definitions in general are functionally defined, applying the formal concept of a Ramsey sentence. And he suggests that the platitudes of commonsense or folk psychology constitute the theory implicitly defining psychological concepts. In philosophy of language and linguistics, Lewis is known principally for Convention (1969), “General Semantics” (1970), and “Languages and Language” (1975). His theory of convention had its source in the theory of games of pure coordination developed by von Neumann and Morgenstern. Roughly, conventions are arbitrary solutions to coordination problems that perpetuate themselves once a precedent is set because they serve a common interest. Lewis requires it to be common knowledge that people prefer to conform to a conventional regularity given that others do. He treats linguistic meanings as compositional intensions. The basic intensions for lexical constituents are functions assigning extensions to indices, which include contextual factors and a possible world. An analytic sentence is one true at every index. Languages are functions from sentences to meanings, and the language of a population is the one in which they have a convention of truthfulness and trust. In metaphysics and modal logic, Lewis is known principally for “Counterpart Theory and Quantified Modal Logic” (1968) and On the Plurality of Worlds (1986). Based on its theoretical benefits, Lewis argues for modal realism: other possible worlds and the objects in them are just as real as the actual world and its inhabitants. Lewis develops a non-standard form of modal logic in which objects exist in at most one possible world, and for which the necessity of identity fails. Properties are identified with the set of objects that have them in any possible world, and propositions as the set of worlds in which they are true. He also develops a finergrained concept of structured properties and propositions. In philosophical logic and philosophy of science, Lewis is best known for Counterfactuals (1973), “Causation” (1973), and “Probabilities of Conditionals and Conditional Probabilities” (1976). He developed a formal semantics for counterfactual conditionals that matches their truth conditions and logic much more adequately than the previously available material or strict conditional analyses. Roughly, a counterfactual is true if its consequent is true in every possible world in which its antecedent is true that is as similar overall to the actual world as the truth of the antecedent will allow. Lewis then defended an analysis of causation in terms of counterfactuals: c caused e if e would not have occurred if c had not occurred or if there is a chain of events leading from e to c each member of which is counterfactually dependent on the next. He presents a reductio ad absurdum argument to show that conditional probabilities could not be identified with the probabilities of any sort of conditional. Lewis has also written on visual experience, events, holes, parts of classes, time travel, survival and identity, subjective and objective probability, desire as belief, attitudes de se, deontic logic, decision theory, the prisoner’s dilemma and the Newcomb problem, utilitarianism, dispositional theories of value, nuclear deterrence, punishment, and academic ethics. H. P. Grice, “Lewis at Harvard.”

lexical ordering, also called lexicographic ordering, a method, given a finite ordered set of symbols, such as the letters of the alphabet, of ordering all finite sequences of those symbols. All finite sequences of letters, e.g., can be ordered as follows: first list all single letters in alphabetical order; then list all pairs of letters in the order aa, ab, . . . az; ba . . . bz; . . . ; za . . . zz. Here pairs are first grouped and alphabetized according to the first letter of the pair, and then within these groups are alphabetized according to the second letter of the pair. All sequences of three letters, four letters, etc., are then listed in order by an analogous process. In this way every sequence of n letters, for any n, is listed. Lexical ordering differs from alphabetical ordering, although it makes use of it, because all sequences with n letters come before any sequence with n ! 1 letters; thus, zzt will come before aaab. One use of lexical ordering is to show that the set of all finite sequences of symbols, and thus the set of all words, is at most denumerably infinite.

Liber vitae -- Arbitrium – liber vitae -- book of life, expression found in Hebrew and Christian scriptures signifying a record kept by the Lord of those destined for eternal happiness Exodus 32:32; Psalms 68; Malachi 3:16; Daniel 12:1; Philippians 4:3; Revelation 3:5, 17:8, 20:12, 21:27. Medieval philosophers often referred to the book of life when discussing issues of predestination, divine omniscience, foreknowledge, and free will. Figures like Augustine and Aquinas asked whether it represented God’s unerring foreknowledge or predestination, or whether some names could be added or deleted from it. The term is used by some contemporary philosophers to mean a record of all the events in a person’s life. 

liberalism – alla Locke – “meaning liberalism” – “Every man has the liberty to make his words for any idea he pleases.” “every Man has so inviolable a Liberty, to make Words stand for what Ideas he pleases.” Bennett on Locke: An utterer has all the freedom he has to make any of his expressions for any idea he pleases. Constant, Benjamin – Grice was a sort of a liberal – at least he was familiar with “pinko Oxford” --  in full, Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque, defender of liberalism and passionate analyst of  and European politics. He welcomed the  Revolution but not the Reign of Terror, the violence of which he avoided by accepting a lowly diplomatic post in Braunschweig 1787 94. In 1795 he returned to Paris with Madame de Staël and intervened in parliamentary debates. His pamphlets opposed both extremes, the Jacobin and the Bonapartist. Impressed by Rousseau’s Social Contract, he came to fear that like Napoleon’s dictatorship, the “general will” could threaten civil rights. He had first welcomed Napoleon, but turned against his autocracy. He favored parliamentary democracy, separation of church and state, and a bill of rights. The high point of his political career came with membership in the Tribunat 180002, a consultative chamber appointed by the Senate. His centrist position is evident in the Principes de politique 180610. Had not republican terror been as destructive as the Empire? In chapters 1617, Constant opposes the liberty of the ancients and that of the moderns. He assumes that the Grecian world was given to war, and therefore strengthened “political liberty” that favors the state over the individual the liberty of the ancients. Fundamentally optimistic, he believed that war was a thing of the past, and that the modern world needs to protect “civil liberty,” i.e. the liberty of the individual the liberty of the moderns. The great merit of Constant’s comparison is the analysis of historical forces, the theory that governments must support current needs and do not depend on deterministic factors such as the size of the state, its form of government, geography, climate, and race. Here he contradicts Montesquieu. The opposition between ancient and modern liberty expresses a radical liberalism that did not seem to fit  politics. However, it was the beginning of the liberal tradition, contrasting political liberty in the service of the state with the civil liberty of the citizen cf. Mill’s On Liberty, 1859, and Berlin’s Two Concepts of Liberty, 8. Principes remained in manuscript until 1861; the scholarly editions of Étienne Hofmann 0 are far more recent. Hofmann calls Principes the essential text between Montesquieu and Tocqueville. It was tr. into English as Constant, Political Writings ed. Biancamaria Fontana, 8 and 7. Forced into retirement by Napoleon, Constant wrote his literary masterpieces, Adolphe and the diaries. He completed the Principes, then turned to De la religion 6 vols., which he considered his supreme achievement.  liberalism, a political philosophy first formulated during the Enlightenment in response to the growth of modern nation-states, which centralize governmental functions and claim sole authority to exercise coercive power within their boundaries. One of its central theses has long been that a government’s claim to this authority is justified only if the government can show those who live under it that it secures their liberty. A central thesis of contemporary liberalism is that government must be neutral in debates about the good human life. John Locke, one of the founders of liberalism, tried to show that constitutional monarchy secures liberty by arguing that free and equal persons in a state of nature, concerned to protect their freedom and property, would agree with one another to live under such a regime. Classical liberalism, which attaches great value to economic liberty, traces its ancestry to Locke’s argument that government must safeguard property. Locke’s use of an agreement or social contract laid the basis for the form of liberalism championed by Rousseau and most deeply indebted to Kant. According to Kant, the sort of liberty that should be most highly valued is autonomy. Agents enjoy autonomy, Kant said, when they live according to laws they would give to themselves. Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1971) set the main themes of the chapter of liberal thought now being written. Rawls asked what principles of justice citizens would agree to in a contract situation he called “the original position.” He argued that they would agree to principles guaranteeing adequate basic liberties and fair equality of opportunity, and requiring that economic inequalities benefit the least advantaged. A government that respects these principles secures the autonomy of its citizens by operating in accord with principles citizens would give themselves in the original position. Because of the conditions of the original position, citizens would not choose principles based on a controversial conception of the good life. Neutrality among such conceptions is therefore built into the foundations of Rawls’s theory. Some critics argue that liberalism’s emphasis on autonomy and neutrality leaves it unable to account for the values of tradition, community, or political participation, and unable to limit individual liberty when limits are needed. Others argue that autonomy is not the notion of freedom needed to explain why common forms of oppression like sexism are wrong. Still others argue that liberalism’s focus on Western democracies leaves it unable to address the most pressing problems of contemporary politics. Recent work in liberal theory has therefore asked whether liberalism can accommodate the political demands of religious and ethnic communities, ground an adequate conception of democracy, capture feminist critiques of extant power structures, or guide nation-building in the face of secessionist, nationalist, and fundamentalist claims. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Impenetrability: Humpty-Dumpty’s meaning-liberalism,” H. P. Grice, “Davidson and Humpty Dumpty’s glory.”

liberum arbitrium, Latin expression meaning ‘free judgment’, often used to refer to medieval doctrines of free choice or free will. It appears in the title of Augustine’s seminal work De libero arbitrio voluntatis (usually translated ‘On the Free Choice of the Will’) and in many other medieval writings (e.g., Aquinas, in Summa theologiae I, asks “whether man has free choice [liberum arbitrium]”). For medieval thinkers, a judgment (arbitrium) “of the will” was a conclusion of practical reasoning – “I will do this” (hence, a choice or decision) – in contrast to a judgment “of the intellect” (“This is the case”), which concludes theoretical reasoning.

delimitatum: limiting case, an individual or subclass of a given background class that is maximally remote from “typical” or “paradigm” members of the class with respect to some ordering that is not always explicitly mentioned. The number zero is a limiting case of cardinal number. A triangle is a limiting case of polygon. A square is a limiting case of rectangle when rectangles are ordered by the ratio of length to width. Certainty is a limiting case of belief when beliefs are ordered according to “strength of subjective conviction.” Knowledge is a limiting case of belief when beliefs are ordered according “adequacy of objective grounds.” A limiting case is necessarily a case (member) of the background class; in contrast a li-ch’i limiting case 504 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 504 borderline case need not be a case and a degenerate case may clearly fail to be a case at all.

linguistic botany: Ryle preferred to call himself a ‘geographer,’ or cartographer – cf. Grice on conceptual latitude and conceptual longitude. But then there are plants. Pretentious Austin, mocking continental philosophy called this ‘linguistic phenomenology,’ meaning literally, the ‘language phenomena’ out there. Feeling Byzanthine. Possibly the only occasion when Grice engaged in systematic botany. Like Hare, he would just rather ramble around. It was said of Hare that he was ‘of a different world.’ In the West Country, he would go with his mother to identify wild flowers, and they identied “more than a hundred.” Austin is not clear about ‘botanising.’ Grice helps. Grice was a meta-linguistic botanist. His point was to criticise ordinary-language philosophers criticising philosophers. Say: Plato and Ayer say that episteme is a kind of doxa. The contemporary, if dated, ordinary-language philosopher detects a nuance, and embarks risking collision with the conversational facts or data: rushes ahead to exploit the nuance without clarifying it, with wrong dicta like: What I known to be the case I dont believe to be the case. Surely, a cancellable implicaturum generated by the rational principle of conversational helpfulness is all there is to the nuance. Grice knew that unlike the ordinary-language philosopher, he was not providing a taxonomy or description, but a theoretical explanation. To not all philosophers analysis fits them to a T. It did to Grice. It did not even fit Strawson. Grice had a natural talent for analysis. He could not see philosophy as other than conceptual analysis. “No more, no less.” Obviously, there is an evaluative side to the claim that the province of philosophy is to be identified with conceptual analysis. Listen to a theoretical physicist, and hell keep talking about concepts, and even analysing them! The man in the street may not! So Grice finds himself fighting with at least three enemies: the man in the street (and trying to reconcile with him:  What I do is to help you), the scientists (My conceptual analysis is meta-conceptual), and synthetic philosophers who disagree with Grice that analysis plays a key role in philosophical methodology. Grice sees this as an update to his post-war Oxford philosophy. But we have to remember that back when he read that paper, post-war Oxford philosophy, was just around the corner and very fashionable. By the time he composed the piece on conceptual analysis as overlapping with the province of philosophy, he was aware that, in The New World, anaytic had become, thanks to Quine, a bit of an abusive term, and that Grices natural talent for linguistic botanising (at which post-war Oxford philosophy excelled) was not something he could trust to encounter outside Oxford, and his Play Group! Since his Negation and Personal identity Grice is concerned with reductive analysis. How many angels can dance on a needles point? A needless point? This is Grices update to his Post-war Oxford philosophy. More generally concerned with the province of philosophy in general and conceptual analysis beyond ordinary language. It can become pretty technical. Note the Roman overtone of province. Grice is implicating that the other province is perhaps science, even folk science, and the claims and ta legomena of the man in the street. He also likes to play with the idea that a conceptual enquiry need not be philosophical. Witness the very opening to Logic and conversation, Prolegomena. Surely not all inquiries need be philosophical. In fact, a claim to infame of Grice at the Play Group is having once raised the infamous, most subtle, question: what is it that makes a conceptual enquiry philosophically interesting or important? As a result, Austin and his kindergarten spend three weeks analysing the distinct inappropriate implicatura of adverbial collocations of intensifiers like highly depressed, versus very depressed, or very red, but not highly red, to no avail. Actually the logical form of very is pretty complicated, and Grice seems to minimise the point. Grices moralising implicaturum, by retelling the story, is that he has since realised (as he hoped Austin knew) that there is no way he or any philosopher can dictate to any other philosopher, or himself, what is it that makes a conceptual enquiry philosophically interesting or important. Whether it is fun is all that matters. Refs.: The main references are meta-philosophical, i. e. Grice talking about linguistic botany, rather than practicing it. “Reply to Richards,” and the references under “Oxonianism” below are helpful. For actual practice, under ‘rationality.’ There is a specific essay on linguistic botanising, too. The H. P. Grice Papers, BANC.

semantic relativity, the thesis that at least some distinctions found in one language are found in no other language (a version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, by Benjamin Lee Whorf, of New England, from the river Wharf, in Yorkshire – he died in Hartford, Conn., New England); more generally, the thesis that different languages utilize different representational systems that are at least in some degree informationally incommensurable and hence non-equivalent. The differences arise from the arbitrary features of languages resulting in each language encoding lexically or grammatically some distinctions not found in other languages. The thesis of linguistic determinism holds that the ways people perceive or think about the world, especially with respect to their classificatory systems, are causally determined or influenced by their linguistic systems or by the structures common to all human languages. Specifically, implicit or explicit linguistic categorization determines or influences aspects of nonlinguistic categorization, memory, perception, or cognition in general. Its strongest form (probably a straw-man position) holds that linguistically unencoded concepts are unthinkable. Weaker forms hold that concepts that are linguistically encoded are more accessible to thought and easier to remember than those that are not. This thesis is independent of that of linguistic relativity. Linguistic determinism plus linguistic relativity as defined here implies the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

literary theory, a reasoned account of the nature of the literary artifact, its causes, effects, and distinguishing features. So understood, literary theory is part of the systematic study of literature covered by the term ‘criticism’, which also includes interpretation of literary works, philology, literary history, and the evaluation of particular works or bodies of work. Because it attempts to provide the conceptual foundations for practical criticism, literary theory has also been called “critical theory.” However, since the latter term has been appropriated by neo-Marxists affiliated with the Frankfurt School to designate their own kind of social critique, ‘literary theory’ is less open to misunderstanding. Because of its concern with the ways in which literary productions differ from other verbal artifacts and from other works of art, literary theory overlaps extensively with philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and the other human sciences. The first ex professo theory of literature in the West, for centuries taken as normative, was Aristotle’s Poetics. On Aristotle’s view, poetry is a verbal imitation of the forms of human life and action in language made vivid by metaphor. It stimulates its audience to reflect on the human condition, enriches their understanding, and thereby occasions the pleasure that comes from the exercise of the cognitive faculty. The first real paradigm shift in literary theory was introduced by the Romantics of the nineteenth century. The Biographia Literaria of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, recounting the author’s conversion from Humean empiricism to a form of German idealism, defines poetry not as a representation of objective structures, but as the imaginative self-expression of the creative subject. Its emphasis is not on the poem as a source of pleasure but on poetry as a heightened form of spiritual activity. The standard work on the transition from classical (imitation) theory to Romantic (expression) theory is M. H. Abrams’s The Mirror and the Lamp. In the present century theory has assumed a place of prominence in literary studies. In the first half of the century the works of I. A. Richards – from his early positivist account of linear order poetry in books like Science and Poetry to his later idealist views in books like The Philosophy of Rhetoric – sponsored the practice of the American New Critics. The most influential theorist of the period is Northrop Frye, whose formalist manifesto, Anatomy of Criticism, proposed to make criticism the “science of literature.” The introduction of Continental thought to the English-speaking critical establishment in the 1960s and after spawned a bewildering variety of competing theories of literature: e.g., Russian formalism, structuralism, deconstruction, new historicism, Marxism, Freudianism, feminism, and even the anti-theoretical movement called the “new pragmatism.” The best summary account of these developments is Frank Lentricchia’s After the New Criticism (1980). Given the present near-chaos in criticism, the future of literary theory is unpredictable. But the chaos itself offers ample opportunities for philosophical analysis and calls for the kind of conceptual discrimination such analysis can offer. Conversely, the study of literary theory can provide philosophers with a better understanding of the textuality of philosophy and of the ways in which philosophical content is determined by the literary form of philosophical texts.

lit. hum. (philos.): While Grice would take tutees under different curricula, he preferred Lit. Hum. So how much philosophy did this include. Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Kant, and Mill. And that was mainly it. We are referring to the ‘philosophy’ component. Ayer used to say that he would rather have been a judge. But at Oxford of that generation, having a Lit. Hum. perfectly qualified you as a philosopher. And people like Ayer, who would rather be a juddge, end up being a philosopher after going through the Lit. Hum. Grice himself comes as a “Midlands scholarship boy” straight from Clifton on a classics scholarship, and being from the Midlands, straight to Corpus. The fact that he got on so well with Hardie helped. The fact that his interim at Merton worked was good. The fact that the thing at Rossall did NOT work was good. The fact that he becamse a fellow at St. John’s OBVIOUSLY helped. The fact that he had Strawson as a tutee ALSO helped helped. H. P. Grice, Literae Humaniores (Philosophy), Oxon.