Philosophy Pages | Dictionary | Study Guide | Logic | F A Q s | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| History | Timeline | Philosophers | Locke | |||
| Philosophy Pages | Dictionary | Study Guide | Logic | F A Q s | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| History | Timeline | Philosophers | Locke | |||
English theologian and philosopher.In an extended correspondence withLeibniz, Clarke defendedNewtonian concepts of space andtime against Leibniz's relational notions.Clarke's publishedDiscourses Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion and the Truth and Certainty of Christian Revelation (1705) andDemonstration of the Being and Attributes of God (1711) employedLocke's methods of demonstration against thedeists, to prove the existence and nature of god, the human obligation to worship, and the fundamental rules of morality.This view, shared by theCambridge Platonists, became a target ofHume's criticism of natural religon.
Recommended Reading:Leibniz and Clarke: Correspondence, ed. by Roger Ariew (Hackett, 2000).
Any collection or group of things, whether natural or arbitrary.Intraditional logic, classes are designated bycategorical terms.
Also seeEB.
Features ofideas considered as mental entities, without regard for their external relation to objects they are supposed to represent.An idea isclear if its content is precise and detailed; otherwise, it is obscure.An idea isdistinct if it can be distinguished from any other idea, confused if it cannot.(Although the two notions are formally distinct, they are commonly supposed to coincide, on the grounds that clarity is anecessary and sufficient condition for distinctness.)Descartes held that theclarity and distinctness of our ideas is acriterion for the truth of what we believe.
English mathematician and philosopher.Arguing thatbelief in uncertain propositions is a public act with moral consequences, Clifford endorsed a wide-rangingagnosticism,asserting in"The Ethics of Belief" (1879)that "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything on insufficient evidence."
English philosopher and playwright.She endorsed the philosophical methods ofLocke inDefense of Mr. Locke's Essay of Human Understanding (1702).InRemarks upon some Writers in the Controversy concerning the Foundation of Moral Virtue and Moral Obligation (1743),Cockburn defended the demonstrably rational morality ofClarke against the promotion of individual self-interest emphasized byHobbes,Shaftesbury, andHutcheson.
Recommended Reading:The Works of Mrs. Catharine Cockburn (Thoemmes, 1998).
"I think, therefore I am." Latin translation ofthe first truth thatDescartes believed to escape his radicalmethod of doubt.
Recommended Reading:René Descartes,Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, tr. by Donald A. Cress (Hackett, 1999) andThe Cambridge Companion to Descartes, ed. by John Cottingham (Cambridge, 1992).
The portion of human experience comprising thought,knowledge,belief, andinference(as opposed tosensation,volition, or feeling).
Recommended Reading:David Braddon-Mitchell and Frank Jackson,The Philosophy of Mind and Cognition (Blackwell, 1996) andMind As Motion: Explorations in the Dynamics of Cognition, ed. by Robert F. Port and Timothy Van Gelder (MIT, 1998).
Also seeEB.
Interdisciplinary effort to study and explain the processes of human thought as a system of symbol manipulation or computational rules.
For an excellent on-line guide to cognitive science, seeJoe Lau.
Recommended Reading:Cognitive Science: An Introduction, ed. by David W. Green (Blackwell, 1996);A Companion to Cognitive Science, ed. by William Bechtel and George Graham (Blackwell, 1999);Patricia Smith Churchland,Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of Mind/Brain (Bradford, 1990);Barbara Von Eckardt,What is Cognitive Science? (Bradford, 1995);Justin Leiber,An Invitation to Cognitive Science (Blackwell, 1991); andValerie Gray Hardcastle,How to Build a Theory in Cognitive Science (SUNY, 1996). |
Also seeEB,Barry Smith,SEP oncognitive science andneuroscience,Andrzej Chmielecki,Neb Kujundzic,Henrique de Morais Ribeiro, andDPM.
Belief that a proposition istrue to the extent that it agrees with other true propositions.In contrast with thecorrespondence theory's emphasis on an independent reality, this view supposes that reliable beliefs constitute an inter-related system, each element of which entails every other.Thus, suchidealists asBradley,Bosanquet, andBlanshard all defended versions the coherence theory.
Recommended Reading:Nicholas Rescher,The Coherence of Theory of Truth (U Press of America, 1987);Linda Martin Alcoff,Real Knowing: New Versions of the Coherence Theory (Cornell, 1996);Alan R. White,Truth (Anchor, 1970); andThe Current State of the Coherence Theory, ed. by John W. Bender (Kluwer, 1989). |
Also seeSEP,EB,Michael Huemer, andDPM.
English philosopher. Influenced byHegel,Cook Wilson, andCroce, Collingwood explored the implications ofidealism foraesthetics and the philosophy of history inSpeculum Mentis (1924),Essay on Philosophical Method (1933),The Principles of Art (1938),andThe Idea of History (1946).Collingwood proposed that historical understanding be achieved through empathetic reconstruction of the thoughts that motivated the actions of historical figures.
Recommended Reading:Aaron Ridley,Collingwood (Routledge, 1999);Giuseppina D'Oro,Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience (Routledge, 2002);Philosophy, History and Civilization: Essays on R. G. Collingwood, ed. by David Boucher (U of Wales, 1996); andWilliam H. Dray,History As Re-Enactment: R. G. Collingwood's Idea of History (Oxford, 1999).
Also seeSEP onCollingwood andhis aesthetics,EB.
Shared possession of property by all members of a society; hence, thepolitical movement, fostered byMarx andEngels, that encourages formation of a proletarian state for the purpose of overcoming the class-structures andalienation of labor that characterize capitalistic societies.
Recommended Reading:The Communist Manifesto, ed. by Frederic L. Bender (Norton, 1988);Peter Singer,Marx: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2000);Terry Eagleton,Marx (Routledge, 1999); andIntroduction to Marx and Engels: A Critical Reconstruction, ed. by Richard Schmitt, Keith Lehrer, and Norman Daniels (Westview, 1997). |
Arule of replacement of the forms:
( p ∨ q ) ≡ ( q ∨ p )( p • q ) ≡ ( q • p )
Example:"Either Spot is brown or Tabby is white." is equivalent to"Either Tabby is white or Spot is brown."
Although trivial in ordinary language, the commutativity ofdisjunction andconjunction is asignificant feature of the propositional calculus.
Also seeEB.
Belief that thecausal determination of human conduct is consistent with thefreedom required for responsible moral agency.
Recommended Reading:Peter Van Inwagen,An Essay on Free Will (Oxford, 1986);Robert Audi,Action, Intention, and Reason (Cornell, 1993); andHilary Bok,Freedom and Responsibility (Princeton, 1998).
Also seeSEP(for) and(against),EB, andDieter Wandschneider.
Theclass of all and only those things that are not included in the class designated bya categorical term.Thus, for example,things that go bump in the night is the complement ofthings that don't go bump in the night, andvice versa.
Also seeEB.
A feature of formal systems whose axioms orrules of inference are adequate for the demonstration of every true proposition or for thejustification of every valid argument.Thus, the addition of any unprovable formula to a complete system necessarily results in a contradiction.Thepropositional calculus is complete in this sense, but(asGödel showed) higher-order versions ofquantification theory are not.
Recommended Reading:Willard V. O. Quine,Mathematical Logic (Harvard, 1981) andRaymond M. Smullyan,Godel's Incompleteness Theorems (Oxford, 1992).
Also seeEB.
Theinformal fallacy of framing an issueas if it involved genuine alternatives while implicitly assuming the truth of the desired conclusion.
Example:"Do you expect Peter to speak for thirty minutes or fifty? In either case, you acknowledge that he will be long-winded."
Denying the presumption that lies behind both alternatives (in this case, that Peter will speak for at least thirty minutes) would eliminate the supposed evidence that the conclusion is true.
Theinformal fallacy of attributing some feature of the members of a collection to the collection itself, orreasoning from part to whole.
Example:"Each of the elements in this compound (NaCl) is poisonous to human beings; therefore, this compound is itself poisonous to human beings."
French philosopher.As an early exponent ofpositivism, Comte was a founder of the discipline of sociology.In an earlyletter to M. Valat, Comte identified a methodological culture of science.HisCours de philosophie positive(Course in Positive Philosophy) (1830-1842) traces the historical development of philosophy from its origins in theological and metaphysical thought to its culmination in observational science, especially the discipline of sociology.Comte proposed inSystème de politique positive (System of Positive Polity) (1851)that political development should follow a similar path, resulting in a highly-organized communitarian state.Discours sur l'Ensemble du positivisme (A General View of Positivism) (1848)offers a convenient summary of his views.
Recommended Reading:Auguste Comte,Introduction to Positive Philosophy, ed. by Frederick Ferre (Hackett, 1988);Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings, ed. by Gertrude Lenzer (Transaction, 1998);Comte: Early Political Writings, ed. by H.S. Jones (Cambridge, 1998); andMary Pickering,Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge, 1993). |
Also seeEmmanuel Lazinier,SEP,EB,ELC, andAndy Blunden.
