bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Materialism in the philosophy of mind
Authors: Robinson Howard
Published: September 2018

Materialism – which, for almost all purposes, is the same as physicalism – is the theory that everything that exists is material. Natural science shows that most things are intelligible in material terms, but mind presents problems in at least two ways. The first is consciousness, as found in the ‘raw feel’ of subjective experience. The second is the intentionality of thought, which is the property of being about something beyond itself; ‘aboutness’ seems not to be a physical relation in the ordinary sense.

There have been three ways of approaching these problems. The hardest is eliminativism, according to which there are no ‘raw feels’, no intentionality and, in general, no mental states: the mind and all its furniture are part of an outdated science that we now see to be false. Next is reductionism, which seeks to give an account of our experience and of intentionality in terms which are acceptable to a physical science: this means, in practice, analysing the mind in terms of its role in producing behaviour. Finally, the materialist may accept the reality and irreducibility of mind, but claim that it depends on matter in such an intimate way – more intimate than mere causal dependence – that materialism is not threatened by the irreducibility of mind. The first two approaches can be called ‘hard materialism’, the third ‘soft materialism’.

The problem for eliminativism is that we find it difficult to credit that any belief that we think and feel is a theoretical speculation. Reductionism’s main difficulty is that there seems to be more to consciousness than its contribution to behaviour: a robotic machine could behave as we do without thinking or feeling. The soft materialist has to explain supervenience in a way that makes the mind not epiphenomenal without falling into the problems of interactionism.
Nominalism
Authors: Loux Michael J.
Published: September 2018

‘Nominalism’ refers to a reductionist approach to problems about the existence and nature of abstract entities; it thus stands opposed to Platonism and realism. Whereas the Platonist defends an ontological framework in which things like properties, kinds, relations, propositions, sets and states of affairs are taken to be primitive and irreducible, the nominalist denies the existence of abstract entities and typically seeks to show that discourse about abstract entities is analysable in terms of discourse about familiar concrete particulars.

In different periods, different issues have provided the focus for the debate between nominalists and Platonists. In the Middle Ages, the problem of universals was pivotal. Nominalists like Abelard and Ockham insisted that everything that exists is a particular. They argued that talk of universals is talk about certain linguistic expressions - those with generality of application - and they attempted to provide an account of the semantics of general terms rich enough to accommodate the view that universals are to be identified with them.

The classical empiricists followed medieval nominalists in being particularists, and they sought to identify the kinds of mental representations associated with general terms. Locke argued that these representations have a special content. He called them abstract ideas and claimed that they are formed by removing from ideas of particulars those features peculiar to the particulars in question. Berkeley and Hume, however, attacked Locke’s doctrine of abstraction and insisted that the ideas corresponding to general terms are ideas whose content is fully determinate and particular, but which the mind uses as proxies for other particular ideas of the same sort.

A wider range of issues has dominated recent ontological discussion, and concern over the existence and status of things like sets, propositions, events and states of affairs has come to be every bit as significant as concern over universals. Furthermore, the nature of the debate has changed. While there are philosophers who endorse a nominalist approach to all abstract entities, a more typical brand of nominalism is that which recognizes the existence of sets and attempts to reduce talk about other kinds of abstract entities to talk about set-theoretical structures whose ultimate constituents are concrete particulars.
Ontology
Authors: Craig Edward
Published: September 2018

The word ‘ontology’ is used to refer to philosophical investigation of existence, or being. Such investigation may be directed towards the concept of being, asking what ‘being’ means, or what it is for something to exist; it may also (or instead) be concerned with the question ‘what exists?’, or ‘what general sorts of thing are there?’ It is common to speak of a philosopher’s ontology, meaning the kinds of thing they take to exist, or the ontology of a theory, meaning the things that would have to exist for that theory to be true.
Relativism
Authors: Craig Edward
Published: September 2018

Someone who holds that nothing is simply good, but only good for someone or from a certain point of view, holds a relativist view of goodness. Protagoras, with his dictum that ‘man is the measure of all things’, is often taken to be an early relativist. Quite common are relativism about aesthetic value, about truth in particular areas such as religious truth, and (arising from anthropological theory) about rationality. There are also a number of ways of answering the question ‘relative to what?’ Thus something might be said to be relative to the attitudes or faculties of each individual, or to a cultural group, or to a species. Relativism therefore has many varieties; some are very plausible, others verge on incoherence.
Structuralism
Authors: Culler Jonathan
Published: September 2018

The term ‘structuralism’ can be applied to any analysis that emphasizes structures and relations, but it usually designates a twentieth-century European (especially French) school of thought that applies the methods of structural linguistics to the study of social and cultural phenomena. Starting from the insight that social and cultural phenomena are not physical objects and events but objects and events with meaning, and that their signification must therefore be a focus of analysis, structuralists reject causal analysis and any attempt to explain social and cultural phenomena one-by-one. Rather, they focus on the internal structure of cultural objects and, more importantly, the underlying structures that make them possible. To investigate neckties, for instance, structuralism would attempt to reconstruct (1) the internal structure of neckties (the oppositions – wide/narrow, loud/subdued – that enable different sorts of neckties to bear different meanings for members of a culture) and (2) the underlying ‘vestimentary’ structures or system of a given culture (how do neckties relate to other items of clothing and the wearing of neckties to other socially-coded actions).

Ferdinand de Saussure, the founder of structural linguistics, insists that to study language, analysts must describe a linguistic system, which consists of structures, not substance. The physical sound of a word or sign is irrelevant to its linguistic function: what counts are the relations, the contrasts, that differentiate signs. Thus in Morse code a beginner’s dot may be longer than an expert’s dash: the structural relation, the distinction, between dot and dash is what matters.

For structuralism, the crucial point is that the object of analysis is not the corpus of utterances linguists might collect, that which Saussure identifies as parole (speech), but the underlying system (la langue), a set of formal elements defined in relation to each other and which can be variously combined to form sentences. Arguing that the analysis of systems of relation is the appropriate way to study human phenomena, that our world consists not of things but of relations, structuralists often claim to provide a new paradigm for the human sciences. In France, structuralism displaced existentialism in the 1960s as a public philosophical movement. Philosophically, proponents of structuralism have been concerned to distinguish it from phenomenology.
Suicide, ethics of
Authors: Edwards Paul
Published: September 2018

Suicide has been condemned as necessarily immoral by most Western religions and also by many philosophers. It is argued that suicide defies the will of God, that it is socially harmful and that it is opposed to ‘nature’. According to Kant, those who commit suicide ‘degrade’ humanity by treating themselves as things rather than as persons; furthermore, since they are the subject of moral acts, they ‘root out’ morality by removing themselves from the scene.

In opposition to this tradition the Stoics and the philosophers of the Enlightenment maintained that there is nothing necessarily immoral about suicide. It is sometimes unwise, causing needless suffering, but it is frequently entirely rational and occasionally even heroic. Judging by the reforms in laws against suicide and the reactions to the suicides of prominent persons in recent decades, it appears that the Enlightenment position is becoming very generally accepted.
Infinity
Authors: Moore A.W.
Published: September 2018

The infinite is standardly conceived as that which is endless, unlimited, immeasurable. It also has theological connotations of absoluteness and perfection. From the dawn of civilization, it has held a special fascination: people have been captivated by the boundlessness of space and time, by the mystery of numbers going on forever, by the paradoxes of endless divisibility and by the riddles of divine perfection.

The infinite is of profound importance to mathematics. Nevertheless, the relationship between the two has been a curiously ambivalent one. It is clear that mathematics in some sense presupposes the infinite, for instance in the fact that there is no largest integer. But the idea that the infinite should itself be an object of mathematical study has time and again been subjected to ridicule. In the nineteenth century this orthodoxy was challenged, with the advent of ‘transfinite arithmetic’. Many, however, have remained sceptical, believing that the infinite is inherently beyond our grasp.

Perhaps their scepticism should be trained on the infinite itself: perhaps the concept is ultimately incoherent. It is certainly riddled with paradoxes. Yet we cannot simply jettison it. This is why the paradoxes are so acute. The roots of these paradoxes lie in our own finitude: it is self-conscious awareness of that finitude which gives us our initial sense of a contrasting infinite, and, at the same time, makes us despair of knowing anything about it, or having any kind of grasp of it. This creates a tension. We feel pressure to acknowledge the infinite, and we feel pressure not to. In trying to come to terms with the infinite, we are trying to come to terms with a basic conflict in ourselves.
Native American philosophy
Authors: Whiteley Peter M.
Published: September 2018

Native American philosophies are multiple and multiply different, though with some palpable commonalities. Cosmologically, Native American thought posits phased differentiations of form from a primordial void. Form is fundamentally animate, and widespread metaphysical premises indicate a pervasive animism. The relationship between language and reality is grounded in the semiotic manipulation of animate forces. Encompassing force – like Siouan wakan or Iroquoian orenda – is the originating source of human ontology and subjectivity, which are strongly characterized by ideas of consciousness and will. Mind is critically informed by transcendental experience (dreams, visions and so on) as well as by reason. Ethically, the harnessing of individual energies to specified social goals is discursively and dramatically prominent especially in ritual performance. Ethical principles are extended to non-human ‘persons’ (particularly animals and deific forms) who operate within the human moral compass. Native American reason emphasizes analogy (especially in Lévi-Strauss’ interpretations) and aetiology, and there is a central concern with formal composition and decomposition. The latter is strongly evident in the ubiquitous philosopher-figure ‘Trickster’ – a subversive transgressor of constituted order.
Process philosophy
Authors: Griffin David Ray
Published: September 2018

In the broad sense, the term ‘process philosophy’ refers to all worldviews holding that process or becoming is more fundamental than unchanging being. For example, an anthology titled Philosophers of Process(1965) includes selections from Samuel Alexander, Henri Bergson, John Dewey, William James, Lloyd Morgan, Charles Peirce and Alfred North Whitehead, with an introduction by Charles HARTSHORNE. Some lists include Hegel and Heraclitus. The term has widely come to refer in particular, however, to the movement inaugurated by Whitehead and extended by Hartshorne. Here, process philosophy is treated in this narrower sense.

Philosophy’s central task, process philosophers hold, is to develop a metaphysical cosmology that is self-consistent and adequate to all experienced facts. To be adequate, it cannot be based solely on the natural sciences, but must give equal weight to aesthetic, ethical and religious intuitions. Philosophy’s chief importance, in fact, derives from its integration of science and religion into a rational scheme of thought. This integration is impossible, however, unless exaggerations on both sides are overcome. On the side of science, the main exaggerations involve ‘scientific materialism’ and the ‘sensationalist’ doctrine of perception. On the side of religion, the chief exaggeration has been the idea of divine omnipotence. Process philosophy replaces these ideas with a ‘panexperientialist’ ontology, a doctrine of perception in which nonsensory ‘prehension’ is fundamental, and a doctrine of divine power as persuasive rather than coercive.
Will, the
Authors: Pink Thomas
Published: September 2018

As traditionally conceived, the will is the faculty of choice or decision, by which we determine which actions we shall perform. As a faculty of decision, the will is naturally seen as the point at which we exercise our freedom of action – our control of how we act. It is within our control or up to us which actions we perform only because we have a capacity to decide which actions we shall perform, and it is up to us which such decisions we take. We exercise our freedom of action through freely taken decisions about how we shall act.

From late antiquity onwards, many philosophers took this traditional conception of the will very seriously, and developed it as part of a general theory of specifically human action. Human action, on this theory, is importantly different from animal action. Not only do humans have a freedom of or control over their action which animals lack; but this freedom supposedly arises because humans can act on the basis of reason, while animal action is driven by appetite and instinct. Both this freedom and rationality involve humans possessing what animals are supposed to lack: a will or rational appetite – a genuine decision making capacity.

From the sixteenth century on, this conception of the will and its role in human action met with increasing scepticism. There was no longer a consensus that human action involved mental capacities radically unlike those found in animals. And the idea that free actions are explained by free decisions of the will came to be seen as viciously regressive: if our freedom of action has to come from a prior freedom of will, why shouldn’t that freedom of will have to come from some yet further, will-generating form of freedom – and so on ad infinitum?

Yet it is very natural to believe that we do have a decision making capacity, and that it is up to us how we exercise that capacity – that it is indeed up to us which actions we decide to perform. The will-scepticism of early modern Europe, which persists in much modern Anglophone philosophy of action, may then have involved abandoning a model of human action and human rationality that is deeply part of common sense. We need to understand this model far better before we can conclude that its abandonment by so many philosophers really was warranted.
Teleology
Authors: Woodfield Andrew
Published: September 2018

Teleology is the study of purposes, goals, ends and functions. Intrinsic or immanent teleology is concerned with cases of aiming or striving towards goals; extrinsic teleology covers cases where an object, event or characteristic serves a function for something.

Teleological explanations attempt to explain X by saying that X exists or occurs for the sake of Y. Since the question ‘For what purpose… ?’ may be construed either intrinsically or extrinsically, such explanations split into two broad types: those that cite goals of an agent, and those that cite functions.

The history of Western philosophy and science has been characterized by major debates about the logic, legitimacy and proper domains of these types of explanation. They still raise problems in contemporary biology and psychology. The modern debates have progressed considerably from the earlier ones, although continuities do exist.
Postcolonialism
Authors: Quayson Ato
Published: September 2018

The term ‘postcolonialism’ is sometimes spelled with a hyphen – post-colonial – and sometimes without. There is no strict general practice, but the hyphenated version is often used to refer to the condition of life after the end of colonialism while the non-hyphenated version denotes the theory that attempts to make sense of this condition. The term is regularly used to denote both colonialism and imperialism even though these refer to different historical realities.

Like postmodernism and poststructuralism, postcolonialism designates a critical practice that is highly eclectic and difficult to define. It involves a studied engagement with the experience of colonialism and its past and present effects at the levels of material culture and of representation. Postcolonialism often involves the discussion of experiences such as those of slavery, migration, suppression and resistance, difference, race, gender, place and analysis of the responses to the discourses of imperial Europe, such as history, philosophy, anthropology and linguistics. Since conditions under imperialism and colonialism proper are as much the subject of postcolonialism as those coming after the historical end of colonialism, postcolonialism allows for a wide range of applications and a constant interplay between the sense of a historical transition, a cultural location and an epochal condition. Postcolonialism is seen to pertain as much to conditions of existence in former colonies as to conditions in diaspora. Both are frequently linked to the continuing power and authority of the West in the global political, economic and symbolic spheres and the ways in which resistance to, appropriation of and negotiation with the West’s order are prosecuted. However the term is construed, there is as much focus on the discourse and ideology of colonialism as on the material effects of colonial subjugation. Because it has its source in past and continuing oppression, postcolonialism furthermore has affinities with multicultural, feminist, and gay and lesbian studies.
Egyptian cosmology, ancient
Authors: Ray John D.
Published: September 2018

Ancient Egypt has left us no systematic philosophy in the modern sense. However, there is abundant evidence that the Egyptians were concerned with all the usual problems of existence. The answers to these questions were mostly expressed through the use of myth, or commentary upon myth. Though complex and polytheistic, Egyptian religion provided a subtle means of commentary upon a range of theological, ethical and psychological questions. The range and quality of Egyptian technical achievements presupposes a degree of theoretical knowledge, some of which has survived and some of which can be reconstructed, either from Egyptian texts themselves, or from commentaries in the classical authors. Until recently much of the latter has been dismissed as inaccurate, but modern scholars are increasingly inclined to agree with the high value which Greek commentators placed on Egyptian thinking.
Fatalism
Authors: Craig Edward
Published: September 2018

‘Fatalism’ is sometimes used to mean the acceptance of determinism, along with a readiness to accept the consequence that there is no such thing as human freedom. The word is also often used in connection with a theological question: whether God’s supposed foreknowledge means that the future is already fixed. But it is sometimes explained very differently, as the view that human choice and action have no influence on future events, which will be as they will be whatever we think or do. On the face of it this is barely coherent, and invites the assessment that fatalism is simply an expression of resigned acceptance.
Intensionality
Authors: Christmas Simon
Published: September 2018

The truth or falsity of many sentences depends only on which things are being talked about. Within intensional contexts, however, truth values also depend on how those things are talked about, not just on which things they are. Philosophers and logicians have offered different analyses of intensional contexts and the behaviour of terms occurring within them.
Gehlen, Arnold (1904–76)
Authors: Turner B.S.
Published: September 2018

Gehlen, a Professor of Sociology, is now widely recognized as the founder of ‘philosophical anthropology’. He has had a significant impact on both social philosophy and sociology. Concerned with the relationships between biology, environment and institutions, Gehlen was influenced by contemporary developments in biological science and by Friedrich Nietzsche. He provided an original perspective on the conventional nature/nurture debate. His thought is controversial, partly because he was closely associated with National Socialism.
Mannheim, Karl (1893–1947)
Authors: Longhurst Brian
Published: September 2018

The sociologist Karl Mannheim moved from an initial concern with philosophical issues concerning cultural change, via the development of an original approach to the sociology of knowledge, to a concern with social planning and the sociology of education. He is most enduringly known for his sociology of knowledge, and in particular for his book Ideology and Utopia (1936). Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge is concerned with an analysis of how groups develop specific forms of knowledge based on more general styles of thought during processes of competition over power. He distinguishes ideological forms of thought, which seek to defend the existing order, from utopian forms that attack it.
Maruyama Masao (1914–96)
Authors: Kersten Rikki
Published: September 2018

Maruyama Masao was a political philosopher and scientist, and a pioneering historian of Japanese political thought. He provoked fierce controversy among his peers, analysing subjects such as war guilt, responsibility, fascism and nationalism in popular journals in the early postwar years. Influenced by Neo-Kantian thinking, and the young Marx, Maruyama articulated a philosophy of democracy for postwar Japan that identified autonomy as the fulcrum of democratic legitimacy. His writings on late Tokugawa era Neo-Confucian philosophy remain seminal works in the field of Tokugawa intellectual history.
New Zealand, philosophy in
Authors: Nola Robert
Published: September 2018

Philosophy as an academic discipline in New Zealand came into its own during the late 1930s under the influence of J.N. Findlay and Karl Popper. Arthur Prior was the first New Zealand philosopher to gain prominence and to inaugurate original research into logic and its application to philosophy. This tradition was continued by local philosophers such as Max Cresswell and Richard Sylvan (formerly Routley) and those from overseas who found the developing analytical ethos congenial, such as George Hughes, Krister Segerberg and Pavel Tichý. New Zealand philosophy found its footing within analytic philosophy, not so much on the side of philosophy of language, but in logic used both as an analytic tool and as a subject in its own right. Philosophers also explored what would have then been regarded by many elsewhere as ‘fringe’ logics, such as modal and tense logics; these however have now become mainstream within both logic and metaphysics.

The current philosophical scene is one that allows as much diversity as might be possible in a small country with a small number of academic philosophers. Their preoccupations are very much those that one would find in many universities elsewhere. But whereas earlier philosophical interests were based on philosophical connections with the UK, now these have become quite minor compared with the very strong connections with philosophy in Australia and the USA. Although philosophy has found a firm and energetic place in New Zealand, it remains to consider whether there is a distinctive New Zealand philosophy, and to ask what that might even be. Earlier philosophers were much more willing to take on unconventional and unfashionable points of view and turn them into viable philosophical positions; even though that is still the case, there is much more of a seamless connection with philosophy elsewhere. However, there are applications of philosophy to local matters that often have to do with relations with the indigenous Maori, the nature of the New Zealand state, which sees itself as both a bi-cultural and a multi-cultural society, the nature of New Zealand’s social and cultural identity, and local ethical issues that arise in respect to, for example, medicine, biotechnology and the environment. Most of these, of course, are concerns elsewhere also; but the local context calls for work by local philosophers in a way for which others cannot substitute.
Romania, philosophy in
Authors: Petreu Marta , Muntean Ioan , Flonta Mircea
Published: September 2018

The origins of Romanian philosophical thinking can be traced back to the late Middle Ages. The first attempts were made in monasteries and princely courts; the language used was Church Slavonic or Latin. The first original philosophical work in Romanian dates from 1698 and was written by Dimitrie Cantemir, Prince of Moldavia. The first Romanian philosophical school, the Transylvanian School, formed in Transylvania at the end of the eighteenth century, was an expression of Enlightenment ideas. Romanian philosophical thinking in the nineteenth century was imbued with the ideas of the Enlightenment and Kantianism.

Romanian modern culture and, implicitly, modern Romanian philosophy were born in the second half of the nineteenth century, under the influence of Titu Maiorescu, a major cultural personality. At the peak of its evolution between the two world wars, Romanian philosophy had the following characteristic features: it was closely related to literature, in the sense that most Romanian philosophers were also important writers; it showed excessive preoccupation with the issue of Romanian identity; it was involved in Romania’s historical, political and ideological debates, fuelling attitudes in favour of or against Westernization and modernization; it synchronized quickly with Western philosophical thinking; and it was (and still is) lacking in ethical thought.

During the first half of the twentieth century, Romanian philosophers focused mainly on discussing the status of metaphysics and its right to existence, followed by any individual efforts to set up an original philosophical system; secondly, they were interested in the issue of identity, the theme of Romanian-ness, which led to the development of the philosophy of culture and history, and to the involvement of philosophers in politics. The most important original philosophical constructions were those of Lucian Blaga and Constantin Noica.

During the communist regime, an initial period of complete stagnation of independent thinking was followed, at the beginning of the 1960s, by a relative liberalization that favoured research in logic, the philosophy of science, and the writing of literary-philosophical essays.

Romanian philosophy since 1989 has made efforts to restructure its institutional framework, reclaim the formerly forbidden fields, and synchronize - through translations and studies - with contemporary world philosophy.
Blaga, Lucian (1895–1961)
Authors: Flonta Mircea
Published: September 2018

Poet, playwright, essayist and philosopher, Blaga was the most interesting and original Romanian thinker of the first half of the twentieth century. His philosophical ideal was a system of thought which he conceived as a systematic and speculative construction and an explanation of the meaning of human life based on a metaphysical vision of the nature of existence. Within the framework of this metaphysical outlook Blaga elaborates a philosophical cosmology, a philosophy of knowledge, a philosophy of culture and a philosophy of values. He did not pretend that his metaphysical conjectures represent contributions to an impersonal knowledge of the absolute: rather, he considered them as free creations of the conceptual imagination which cannot claim universal recognition. Blaga’s work occupies a special place in Romanian philosophical thought: it is both without precedent and without a significant sequel.
Action at a distance
Authors: French Steven
Published: September 2018

Action at a distance is typically characterized in terms of some cause producing a spatially separated effect in the absence of any medium by which the causal interaction is transmitted. Historically it has been viewed with suspicion; Leibniz famously accused Newton of introducing ‘occult’ forces because according to his theory, gravity appeared to act at a distance. However, the grounds for ruling it out are not always so clear. One might insist that all forces are ‘contact forces’, but why should this be so? Alternatively, it could be argued that if action at a distance is accepted, then certain ‘facts’ about physical interactions would be left unexplained: the nature of Newton’s law of gravitation might be explicable if some underlying medium is presupposed, but otherwise it simply has to be accepted as a brute feature. But this assumes that the ‘nature’ of physical laws requires this sort of explanation. Finally, if it is acknowledged that such action at a distance cannot be instantaneous, on pain of violating Special Relativity, then it turns out that there are problems satisfying conservation of energy. Again, even this consequence can be side-stepped if one were to adopt an anti-realist view of energy.

With the development of field theories and Einstein’s liberation of physics from the grip of the ether, it appeared that action at a distance had been pushed out of the picture by the beginning of the twentieth century. However, the non-local nature of quantum entanglement appears to have allowed it back in. Of course the form of this putative quantum action at a distance is very different from the classical kind: for one thing, it cannot be used instantaneously to send information and so there is still ‘peaceful co-existence’ with Special Relativity. Again, however, its acceptance depends on certain assumptions – on how one understands quantum entanglement, for example. Shifting the focus to violation of a form of ‘separability’ between systems, rather than locality, may allow us to accept quantum holism without having to swallow action at distance as well.
Dispositions
Authors: Mumford Stephen
Published: September 2018

Disposition is a term used in metaphysics usually to indicate a type of property, state or condition. Such a property is one that provides for the possibility of some further specific state or behaviour, usually in circumstances of some specific kind. Terms such as causal power, capacity, ability, propensity, and others, can be used to convey the same idea.

The general criterion for something to be a disposition is that the appropriate kind of behaviour, the so-called manifestation, need not be actual. Hence, something can be disposed to break though it is not broken now. The disposition is thought to be a persisting state or condition that makes possible the manifestation.

Because dispositions make other events or properties possible, they are often understood in relation to conditional sentences. Something being fragile is somehow related to the conditional that if it is dropped, it will break. The antecedent of the conditional identifies the stimulus for the disposition. The consequent identifies the manifestation of the disposition.

Philosophers are increasingly interested in dispositions because many properties seem to be essentially dispositional in nature. To say that something is soft means that it is disposed to deform when pressed. It is difficult to identify a property that does not have some dispositional aspect. Even the fundamental properties of physics, such as spin, charge and mass, appear to be dispositional. This has led some to the conclusion that all properties are dispositions or at least bestow dispositions. In the philosophy of mind, many mental ascriptions carry dispositional implications. For example, to have a belief is to be disposed to behave in an appropriate way in certain circumstances. There are a number of philosophical problems that arise from dispositions, however. Are they real properties in their own right or are they in some way derived from other elements? How are dispositions distinguished from other things? What is the precise relation a disposition bears to its manifestation?
Dispositions
Authors: Mumford Stephen
Published: September 2018

‘Disposition’ is a term used in metaphysics usually to indicate a type of property, state or condition. Such a property is one that provides for the possibility of some further specific state or behaviour, usually in circumstances of some specific kind. Terms such as ‘causal power’, ‘capacity’, ‘ability’, ‘propensity’, and others, can be used to convey the same idea.

The general criterion for something to be a disposition is that the appropriate kind of behaviour, the so-called manifestation, need not be actual. Thus, something can be disposed to break though it is not broken now. The disposition is thought to be a persisting state or condition that makes possible the manifestation.

Because dispositions make other events or properties possible, they are often understood in relation to counterfactual conditional sentences. Something being fragile is somehow related to the conditional that if it is dropped, it will break. The antecedent of the conditional identifies the stimulus for the disposition. The consequent identifies the manifestation of the disposition.

Philosophers are increasingly interested in dispositions because many properties seem to be essentially dispositional in nature. Thus, to say that something is soft means that it is disposed to deform when put under pressure. It is difficult to identify a property that does not have some dispositional aspect. Even the fundamental properties of physics, such as spin, charge and mass, appear to be dispositional. This has led some to the conclusion that all properties are dispositions, or at least that they bestow dispositions. In the philosophy of mind, many mental ascriptions carry dispositional implications. For example, to have a belief is to be disposed to behave in an appropriate way in certain circumstances. There are a number of philosophical problems that arise about dispositions, however. Are they real properties in their own right or are they in some way derived from other elements? How are dispositions distinguished from other things? What is the precise relation a disposition bears to its manifestation?
Motion
Authors: Huggett Nick
Published: September 2018

Motion is a kind of change, so it is worth beginning with change generally. Change is puzzling because it requires something both to remain the same (so one thing changes) and to become different (so change has occurred), a contradiction according to some pre-Socratic philosophers. Aristotle’s analysis of change dissolved the paradox: an underlying subject must remain the same thing, but which properties inhere in it change. But then what causes change? According to Aristotle things possess forms, or ideal states, and change in order to achieve them: the form of an acorn is an oak so the acorn grows to become an oak. In the seventeenth century, Aristotle’s account was superseded by a mechanistic understanding of change. According to Descartes the only fundamental properties of bodies are geometrical – shape, size and motion – and all other properties are to be explained in terms of them: all physical change is merely change in the geometrical arrangements of bodies caused by their collisions with one another. The success of Newton’s theory of planetary motion showed that Descartes’ picture was incomplete, and that a limited number of forces, such as gravity, are also needed to account for change.

Turning to motion specifically, we first ask what causes it. Is it, as the Aristotelians came to believe, ‘impetus’: moving bodies possess an internal force that overcomes their natural resistance to motion? Following Galileo, modern science takes constant, straight-line motion to be natural, requiring no cause, and inertia (or momentum) as a measure of how much external force is required to bring a body to rest. Second, there is the question of whether motion is always relative; or do the laws of physics support a sense of motion in which ‘x moves’ – without mention of a reference body – is determinately true or false? In fact almost all interpretations of motion in almost all systems of mechanics (Aristotle’s, Descartes’, Newton’s, relativity) imply that there is such a sense.
Nihilism, metaphysical
Authors: Coggins Geraldine
Published: September 2018

Metaphysical nihilism is an answer to the question ‘could there have been nothing?’ In recent analytic philosophy this tends to be interpreted as ‘could there have been no concrete objects?’ There are three ways of answering this question. The first is metaphysical nihilism, which answers in the affirmative: ‘there could have been nothing’. The second and third answers give negative replies. The second answer is based on the ontological argument for the existence of God. This argument leads us to claim that there is a necessarily existing object. If there is one object which must exist, then there could not have been nothing, there had to be this one object. The third answer also claims that there could not have been nothing but does not rely on the existence of a necessary object. This view is that whilst there had to be something, there is no one particular object which had to exist.
Properties
Authors: Daly Chris
Published: September 2018

Asked to describe a given tomato, you might cite its redness, its size and its age. In doing so, some philosophers would claim, you have cited some of the tomato’s properties. A property is what is variously called a feature, quality, attribute or (as some philosophers put it) a way that something is. A property is supposed to be an entity that things (including particulars, such as tomatoes or people) have.

The topic of properties is part of ontology (the study of what there is). The topic involves two key issues. The first issue concerns the nature of properties. That is, it concerns what sorts of entities properties are. One important question here is whether properties are located in space and time. Some philosophers follow Plato in thinking that properties are located in neither space nor time. Others follow Aristotle in thinking that properties are located in space and time. Another question is whether distinct individuals can literally have one and the same property. The view that they can takes properties to be repeatable entities, or universals. A rival view takes properties to be nonrepeatable entities, or particulars.

The second issue concerns the existence of properties. Given a view about the nature of properties – a view about what properties are supposed to be – there is then an issue about whether there are any such entities. The traditional debate typically took properties to be universals. Realists about universals argued that universals exist, whereas nominalists argued that they do not. With greater recognition emerging during the last century of other ways of thinking of properties, the debate about the existence of properties has become many-sided.

Philosophers who agree both about what properties are, and that properties so understood exist, may find other grounds for disagreement. This raises a subsidiary class of issues. For instance, do particulars exist in addition to properties? A given apple is edible, sweet to taste, and so on. Some philosophers argue that the apple is only a ‘bundle’ of these and other properties. Other philosophers disagree, and take the apple to be a ‘bare particular’ which has various properties, but is distinct from them. Other disagreements concern which properties exist, and how to classify them. For instance, is there a genuine distinction between so-called primary and secondary qualities? Again, is there a genuine distinction between so-called dispositional and nondispositional (or categorical) properties?
Truth, identity theory of
Authors: Candlish Stewart
Published: September 2018

It is sometimes suggested that a fundamental shortcoming of the correspondence theory of truth is that it fails to do justice to the thought that if we are to speak the truth, what we state should not just correspond to, but actually be, a fact. The identity theory of truth typically appears as a response to this suggestion: its proponents may urge, for example, that the frequently made claim ‘A proposition is true if and only if it corresponds to a fact’ should be replaced by ‘A proposition is true if and only if it is a fact’. It is common to think about truth in terms of a distinction between proposition and fact: more generally, between that which itself may be true or false (often called the truth-bearer), and that in virtue of which the truth-bearer is true (often called the truth-maker). But according to the identity theory this habit is mistaken: when something is true, no such distinction can be made, for truth consists in identity with fact. This theory has generally been omitted from textbook discussions of truth, but nevertheless emerges periodically, sometimes under other labels, in the writings of a number of philosophers. Because of its austerity, it is not an easy theory to defend – for example, in some versions a consistent account of falsehood is hard to formulate, while in others it is unclear what its positive content is – and, partly in consequence, identity theorists tend to appeal to the resources of other accounts of truth.
A posteriori
Authors: Moser Paul K.
Published: September 2018

A prominent term in theory of knowledge since the seventeenth century, ‘a posteriori’ signifies a kind of knowledge or justification that depends on evidence, or warrant, from sensory experience. A posteriori truth is truth that cannot be known or justified independently of evidence from sensory experience, and a posteriori concepts are concepts that cannot be understood independently of reference to sensory experience. A posteriori knowledge contrasts with a priori knowledge, knowledge that does not require evidence from sensory experience. A posteriori knowledge is empirical, experience-based knowledge, whereas a priori knowledge is non-empirical knowledge. Standard examples of a posteriori truths are the truths of ordinary perceptual experience and the natural sciences; standard examples of a priori truths are the truths of logic and mathematics. The common understanding of the distinction between a posteriori and a priori knowledge as the distinction between empirical and non-empirical knowledge comes from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787).
Knowledge, causal theory of
Authors: Swain Marshall
Published: September 2018

Epistemologists have always recognized the importance of causal processes in accounting for our knowledge of things. In discussions of perception, memory and reasoning, for example, it is commonly assumed that these ways of coming to know are fundamentally causal. We perceive things and thus come to have knowledge about them via complex causal processes; memory is, at least in part, the retention of previously gained knowledge through some sort of causal process; and reasoning is a causal process that takes beliefs as inputs and generates beliefs as outputs.

A causal theory of knowledge is a form of externalism and is based on the fundamental idea that a person knows some proposition, p, only if there is an appropriate causal connection between the state of affairs that makes p true and the person’s belief in p. Although this kind of theory has roots that extend to ancient times, contemporary versions attempt to make more precise the nature of the causal connections required for knowledge. The causal theory is closely related to other forms of externalist theories, such as the conclusive reasons theory, information-theoretic views and the various forms of reliabilism.
Charity, principle of
Authors: Feldman Richard
Published: September 2018

The principle of charity governs the interpretation of the beliefs and utterances of others. It urges charitable interpretation, meaning interpretation that maximizes the truth or rationality of what others think and say. Some formulations of the principle concern primarily rationality, recommending attributions of rational belief or assertion. Others concern primarily truth, recommending attributions of true belief or assertion. Versions of the principle differ in strength. The weakest urge charity as one consideration among many. The strongest hold that interpretation is impossible without the assumption of rationality or truth.

The principle has been put to various philosophical uses. Students are typically instructed to follow the principle when interpreting passages and formulating the arguments they contain. The principle also plays a role in philosophy of mind and language and in epistemology. Philosophers have argued that the principle of charity plays an essential role in characterizing the nature of belief and intentionality, with some philosophers contending that beliefs must be mostly true. A version of the principle has even served as a key premise in a widely discussed argument against epistemological scepticism.
Commonsensism
Authors: Chisholm Roderick M.
Published: September 2018

‘Commonsensism’ refers to one of the principal approaches to traditional theory of knowledge where one asks oneself the following Socratic questions: (1) What can I know?; (2) How can I distinguish beliefs that are reasonable for me to have from beliefs that are not reasonable for me to have? and (3) What can I do to replace unreasonable beliefs by reasonable beliefs about the same subject-matter, and to replace beliefs that are less reasonable by beliefs that are more reasonable? The mark of commonsensism is essentially a faith in oneself – a conviction that a human being, by proceeding cautiously, is capable of knowing the world in which it finds itself.

Any inquiry must set out with some beliefs. If you had no beliefs at all, you could not even begin to inquire. Hence any set of beliefs is better than none. Moreover, the beliefs that we do find ourselves with at any given time have so far survived previous inquiry and experience. And it is psychologically impossible to reject everything that you believe. ‘Doubting’, Peirce says, ‘is not as easy as lying’. Inquiry, guided by common sense, leads us to a set of beliefs which indicates that common sense is on the whole a reliable guide to knowledge. And if inquiry were not thus guided by common sense, how would it be able to answer the three Socratic questions with which it begins?