bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
al-Baghdadi, Abu ’l-Barakat (fl. c.1200–50)
Authors: Langermann Y. Tzvi
Published: September 2018

A maverick philosopher, respected medical authority, and seemingly somewhat tempestuous individual, Abu ‘l-Barakat al-Baghdadi produced one voluminous work (the Kitab al-mu‘tabar) in which the philosophical views current in his day – principally associated with the name of Ibn Sina – were subjected to a penetrating analysis, and many interesting alternatives suggested. His most provocative ideas concern self-awareness, the physics of motion and the idea of time.
Ibn Paquda, Bahya (fl. early 12th century)
Authors: Goodman L.E.
Published: September 2018

Bahya ibn Paquda, the chief exponent of Jewish pietism, gave that ecumenical strand of thought and practice a markedly philosophical cast, preferring the intellectual to the fideistic side of pietist tradition, and embracing rationalism as the ally of faith rather than rejecting it as an enemy. Drawing selectively from Muslim as well as Jewish sources, Bahya’s spiritual vademecum, al-Hidaya ila fara’id al-qulub (The Book of Guidance to the Duties of the Heart), was widely studied ever since its composition, especially in its medieval Hebrew translation, and parts of it are even included in the liturgical meditations of the Ten Days of Penitence. In it, Bahya thematizes his materials carefully, using his own sense of the reasonable to structure pietism as a philosophical system, controlling the monistic penchant of mysticism and disciplining the ascetic tendencies of the devotional cast of mind. Maimonides found Bahya’s asceticism excessive and rejected Bahya’s related leanings towards predestinarianism and resignation; but he quietly adopted Bahya’s moral and intellectual interpretation of the mystic quest for unity with God, fell into step with his predilection for spiritual immortality as distinguished from bodily resurrection, echoed his affirmation of God’s absolute unity and simplicity, and concurred in his admiration for negative theology, the theology of divine transcendence.
Voluntarism, Jewish
Authors: Lazaroff Allan
Published: September 2018

Voluntarism with respect to humanity and divinity became a powerful current in medieval Jewish philosophy, partly in response to the Neoplatonic doctrine of eternal and necessary emanation, which seemed to rob God of the freedom to create, and partly in response to predestinarianism. Solomon ibn Gabirol and Hasdai Crescas were among the Jewish philosophers whose metaphysics gave pride of place to the divine will over intellect, like medieval Christian voluntarists. For many other Jewish thinkers, the centrality of actions sets voluntarism firmly into the context of moral responsibility rather than of metaphysics. Predestinarian arguments like those of Abner of Burgos seemed to Jewish thinkers to rob human beings of moral responsibility. Among the typical defenders of Jewish voluntarism against these arguments was Abraham Bibago.
Jewish philosophy, contemporary
Authors: Levinson Henry S. , Malino Jonathan W.
Published: September 2018

Jewish philosophy is pursued by committed Jews seeking to understand Judaism and the world in one another’s light. In this broad sense, contemporary Jewish philosophy maintains the central focus of classical, medieval and Enlightenment Jewish philosophy. But a certain kind of traditionalism distinguishes many contemporary Jewish philosophers from their predecessors: an effort to show how Judaism maintains continuity and coherence despite historical change. Jewish thinkers who are traditionalists in this sense are no longer preoccupied with showing non-Jewish philosophers how Judaism fares when evaluated by universal reason, as their classical, medieval and modern predecessors were. Nor is their chief concern with exhibiting the good reasons for remaining Jewish and not converting to Christianity or Islam, as was that of many earlier Jewish thinkers. One work that sets an agenda for many of these traditionalists is Franz Rosenzweig’s Der Stern der Erlösung (The Star of Redemption) (1921). Like Rosenzweig, (1) they often reject the Enlightenment demand for a transcendental propaedeutic as a prelude to asking substantive questions. Instead, they address Jewish thought, ethics and experience head on. (2) None among this group thinks of his work as beholden primarily and inevitably to standards of thought articulated first and foremost outside distinctively Jewish experience. (3) The six points of Der Stern der Erlösung (The Star of Redemption) – Creation, Revelation, Redemption, God, Israel, and the World – mark the large themes they aim to define or the categories through which they propose, explore and defend their claims. Besides traditionalism thus understood, contemporary Jewish philosophy, particularly among philosophers with analytic training, is marked by efforts philosophically to reanimate the classic texts of medieval Jewish philosophy, especially the work of Moses Maimonides.
Halakhah
Authors: Zohar Noam J.
Published: September 2018

The central ideal of rabbinic Judaism is that of living by the Torah, that is, God’s teachings. These teachings are mediated by a detailed normative system called halakhah, which might be translated as ‘the Way’. The term ‘rabbinic law’ captures the form of halakhic discourse, but not its range. Appropriate sections of halakhah have indeed served as the law of Jewish communities for two millennia. But other sections relate to individual conscience and religious observance and are enforceable only by a ‘heavenly court’.

Although grounded in Scripture, halakhah’s frame of reference is the ‘oral Torah’, a tradition of interpretation and argument culminating in the twenty volumes of the Talmud. God’s authority is the foundational norm, but it is only invoked occasionally as superseding human understanding. Indeed, the rabbis disallowed divine interference in their deliberations, asserting, in keeping with Scripture, that Torah is ‘not in heaven’ (Bava Metzia 59b, citing Deuteronomy 30: 12).

Given the lack of binding dogma in Judaism, halakhic practice has often been regarded as the common denominator that unites the Jewish community. The enterprise of furnishing ‘reasons of the commandments’ (ta’amei ha-mitzvot), central to many thinkers in Judaism, accordingly reveals a great diversity of orientations. These range, in medieval Judaism, from esoteric mystical doctrines to Maimonides’ rational and historical explanations; and among modern writers, from moral positivism to existentialism.
Eschatology
Authors: Davis Stephen T.
Published: September 2018

Eschatology is the study of or doctrine about the end of history or the last things. Eschatology is a branch of Christian theology, and the term still finds its primary home in that context, but it is also used broadly to cover any theory about the end of human life or of the world.

There are many types of eschatological theory. Some of the most important are those of Plato, Vedāntic Hinduism, Karl Marx and Christianity. The contemporary philosopher of religion who makes most use of eschatology in his thinking is doubtless John Hick. There are several issues that are of interest to philosophers in the area of eschatology. Among them are such questions as whether there is good reason to believe that human life and/or history are moving towards a final end; whether personal identity problems are solvable in the eschaton (the end-state); whether eschatological considerations can help philosophers address other philosophical problems (for example, the problem of evil); whether the very notion of disembodied survival of death is coherent; and how (in Christian theology especially) immortality of the soul and bodily resurrection are related.
Existentialist theology
Authors: Evans C. Stephen
Published: September 2018

Existentialist theology is a term used to describe the work of a number of theologians, chiefly from the twentieth century, whose writings were strongly influenced by the literary and philosophical movement known as existentialism. Because of the diversity of the movement, it is difficult to say much that is illuminating about existentialist theology as a whole. In general, however, these theologians attempt to understand God in relation to the situation of the concretely existing human individual. Their analysis of human existence is one that emphasizes the freedom of individuals to shape their own identities through choices, and the paradoxical, ambiguous or even absurd character of the reality that humans encounter. Religious faith is seen as closely related to feelings of alienation and despair; faith may grow out of such emotions or it may provide the key to overcoming them, or both these relations may be present at once.

Though the designation of any particular theologian as ‘existentialist’ is a controversial matter, Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann and Paul Tillich are among the more important thinkers whose work exhibits existentialist themes. The entire movement has been strongly influenced, directly or indirectly, by the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher-theologian Søren Kierkegaard, while the works of the Russian novelist Fëdor Dostoevskii and the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, both from the late nineteenth century, have also been important.
Forgiveness and mercy
Authors: Murphy Jeffrie G.
Published: September 2018

Forgiveness and mercy are regarded as virtues in many moral and religious traditions, although different traditions will emphasize different aspects. The Christian tradition, for example, tends to emphasize purity of heart as the core of the virtue of forgiveness, whereas the Judaic tradition gives priority to the social dimension of reintegration into the covenanted community. Forgiveness involves the overcoming of anger and resentment, and mercy involves the withholding of harsh treatment that one has a right to inflict. Both allow for healing, but some critics would say that this healing may come at too high a price. Forgiveness, if carried to extremes, can lapse into servility, entailing a loss of self-respect. There are similar paradoxes associated with mercy, particularly in the context of punishment; too strong an emphasis on mercy can lead to a departure from justice. Clearly, though both forgiveness and mercy are obvious virtues, there are difficulties in putting them into practice in the complex situations that make up everyday reality. Recently there has been considerable discussion in philosophy and law of the role that apology might play in earning forgiveness or mercy.
Heaven
Authors: Zagzebski Linda
Published: September 2018

In Christian theology, heaven is both the dwelling place of God and the angels, and the place where all who are saved ultimately go after death and judgment to receive their eternal reward. The doctrine of the resurrection of the body requires that heaven be a place because it must contain the glorified bodies of the redeemed, but heaven is more theologically important as a state than as a place. This state is traditionally described as involving the most intimate union with God without the elimination of the individual human personality (the beatific vision); it is a state of perfect bliss beyond anything possible on earth. In high medieval theology, the happiness of heaven is understood to be so great that it is even beyond the capability of human nature to enjoy without divine aid. There are varying views on the nature of heavenly society, however, with some theologians (Augustine, Aquinas, Bonaventure) arguing that perfect happiness will be derived from the love of God alone, while others (for example, Giles of Rome) stress the joy that will be derived from the company of the elect. More recently, interest in the nature of heaven has declined, and Christian theology has tended to play down its importance.
Occasionalism
Authors: Hasker William
Published: September 2018

Occasionalism is often thought of primarily as a rather desperate solution to the problem of mind–body interaction. Mind and body, it maintains, do not in fact causally affect each other at all; rather, it is God who causes bodily movements to occur ‘on the occasion of’ appropriate mental states (for example, volitions), and who causes mental states, such as sensations, on the occasion of the corresponding bodily states (for example, sensory stimulation).

This characterization, while correct so far as it goes, is seriously incomplete. Occasionalists have seen the lack of real causal influence between mind and body as merely a special case of the more general truth that no two created beings ever causally affect each other. The one and only ‘true cause’ is God, with created beings serving as the occasions for his causal and creative activity, but never as causes in their own right. (The one possible exception to this is that created agents may themselves bring about their own acts of will; this is necessary if they are to be in any sense free agents.) Occasionalism has always been held primarily for religious reasons, in order to give God the honour due to him as the Lord and ruler of the universe. It has never, however, been a majority view among philosophical theists.
Pantheism
Authors: Yandell Keith E.
Published: September 2018

Pantheism contrasts with monotheism (there is one God), polytheism (there are many gods), deism (God created the world in such a way that it is capable of existing and operating on its own, which God then allows it to do) and panentheism (in God there is a primordial and unchanging nature, and a consequent nature that changes and develops). Etymologically, pantheism is the view that Deity and Cosmos are identical. Theologically, it embraces divine immanence while rejecting divine transcendence. If atheism is the denial that anything is divine, pantheism is not atheism; if atheism is the claim that there is no Creator, Providence, transcendent Deity, or personal God, pantheism is atheistic.

Spinoza, perhaps the paradigm figure for pantheism, was described by some as ‘a God-intoxicated man’ and by others as an atheist. On his account, only God or Nature exists, a single, necessarily existing substance whose modes and qualities exhaust reality. Conceivable equally properly as physical or as mental, God or Nature is no proper object of worship, creates nothing, grants freedom to none, hears no prayer, and does not act in history. Personal immortality, on Spinoza’s view, not only does not occur, but is logically impossible. It is one thing to value nature so highly that one calls it a divinity, another to believe in God in any monotheistic sense.

This much said, it must be admitted that ‘pantheism’ is not easy to define precisely. As conceived here, pantheism need not be a variety of materialism, and if it is materialistic it includes a high view of the worth of matter. Yet ‘pantheism’ has served as a term of abuse, and as another term for ‘atheism’ and ‘materialism’ and ‘deism’, terms bearing quite different senses.
Sacraments
Authors: Braine David
Published: September 2018

The Christian theory of ‘sacraments’ underlies ideas of a general ‘sacramentality’ in the universe whereby ordinary things have religious significance by their own nature or by virtue of some hidden power within them. The pre-Christian Latin word sacramentum meant a non-returnable gift marking the taking on of some binding obligation; more informally it meant an oath, and later a secret or mystery. Latin theology turned it to Christian use, initially in rough translation of the Greek mysterion, applied to the Church, to the Scriptures and to Old as well as New Testament rites. The word then became the predominant medieval and modern term specifically designating those rites in permanent use in the Church which human authority was conceived not to be free to abolish, add to or change in their essentials.

Each such rite presupposes that the creaturely things used have some aptitude which allows or invites the particular ritual use concerned, that is, which presupposes some more general sacramental potential in natural things. The conceptual tools developed in Catholic theology – ‘effective sign’, ‘matter and form’, ‘sacrifice’, ‘authority’, ‘power’ and ‘institution’ – sharpen enquiry into the phenomenology of rituals within many different religious traditions.
Sanctification
Authors: Allen Diogenes
Published: September 2018

Sanctification, the process of becoming holy, is closely connected to justification, although Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians differ on how closely. According to the Roman Catholic Church, sanctification takes place in justification. In justification, sins are forgiven and there is an infusion of sanctifying grace, whereby one is made just and holy; this is what it is to be sanctified. In this state of grace, one merits heaven. Nonetheless, there is room for spiritual growth in the Christian life (though this is not called sanctification, as it would be in Protestantism) because concupiscence remains and appetites are still not fully under control. Justification is the beginning of a new life (the life of grace) in which we may grow towards integrity, the proper use of appetites; moreover, the gifts of faith, hope and charity, which enable one to perform meritorious works, can also increase. The state of grace, which is the result of justification, can be lost by mortal sin, but can be fully restored through the sacrament of penance.

Protestants teach that in justification one’s sins are forgiven and one is fully reconciled to God, but that one is not wholly sanctified (that is, renewed or made holy). Luther’s formula that we are simul iustus et peccator (both just and sinner) is widely accepted by Protestants. Justification is only the beginning of sanctification, which, most Protestants believe, is never completed in this life. The exceptions are Methodists and members of some holiness churches (groups that either broke away from Methodism or were influenced by it).
Trinity
Authors: Howard-Snyder Dan
Published: September 2018

The doctrine of the Trinity is central to Christian theology. The part of the doctrine that concerns us here may be stated in these words: although the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are different persons, each is the same God as the other; they are not three Gods, but exactly one God.

These words arguably imply a contradiction. For example, if the Father is not the same person as the Son, then the Father is not identical with the Son; thus, if each is a God, there are at least two Gods, which contradicts the claim that there is exactly one God. Analytic theologians have responded to this line of argument and others related to it. Each response aims to model a consistent doctrine of the Trinity, one that provides the resources to reject such arguments while retaining Trinitarian orthodoxy. We can classify these attempts by distinguishing those according to which there is no numerical sameness without identity from those according to which there is numerical sameness without identity. Attempts in the first group tend to raise worries about consistency with orthodoxy. Attempts in the second group tend to raise worries about intelligibility.
Troeltsch, Ernst Peter Wilhelm (1865–1923)
Authors: Seban Jean-Loup
Published: September 2018

Ernst Troeltsch was a theologian, sociological historian, and philosopher of religion and history. He aimed to reconcile theology with modern scientific culture by grounding his philosophy of religion on historical analysis, and is regarded as the systematician of the ‘history of religion school’. He is famous for his critical appraisal of the Protestant Reformation, which, he argued, had retarded the development of modern culture.
Natural theology
Authors: MacDonald Scott
Published: September 2018

Natural theology aims at establishing truths or acquiring knowledge about God (or divine matters generally) using only our natural cognitive resources. The phrase ‘our natural cognitive resources’ identifies both the methods and data for natural theology: it relies on standard techniques of reasoning and facts or truths in principle available to all human beings just in virtue of their possessing reason and sense perception. As traditionally conceived, natural theology begins by establishing the existence of God, and then proceeds by establishing truths about God’s nature (for example, that God is eternal, immutable and omniscient) and about God’s relation to the world.

A precise characterization of natural theology depends on further specification of its methods and data. One strict conception of natural theology – the traditional conception sometimes associated with Thomas Aquinas – allows only certain kinds of deductive argument, the starting points of which are propositions that are either self-evident or evident to sense perception. A broader conception might allow not just deductive but also inductive inference and admit as starting points propositions that fall short of being wholly evident.

Natural theology contrasts with investigations into divine matters that rely at least in part on data not naturally available to us as human beings. This sort of enterprise might be characterized as revelation-based theology, in so far as the supernatural element on which it relies is something supernaturally revealed to us by God. Revelation-based theology can make use of what is ascertainable by us only because of special divine aid. Dogmatic and biblical theology would be enterprises of this sort.

Critics of natural theology fall generally into three groups. The first group, the majority, argue that some or all of the particular arguments of natural theology are, as a matter of fact, unsuccessful. Critics in the second group argue that, in principle, natural theology cannot succeed, either because of essential limitations on human knowledge that make it impossible for us to attain knowledge of God or because religious language is such as to make an investigation into its truth inappropriate. The third group of critics holds that natural theology is in some way irrelevant or inimical to true religion. They argue in various ways that the objectifying, abstract and impersonal methods of natural theology cannot capture what is fundamentally important about the divine and our relation to it.
Voluntarism
Authors: Leftow Brian
Published: September 2018

Voluntarism is a theory of action. It traces our actions less to our intellects and natural inclinations than to simple will or free choice. Applied to thinking about God’s actions, voluntarism led late medieval philosophers to see the world’s causal and moral orders as finally rooted in God’s sheer free choice, and to take God’s commands as the source of moral obligation. Medieval voluntarism helped pave the way for empiricism, Cartesian doubt about the senses, legal positivism and Reformation theology.
Theology, political
Authors: Lutz-Bachmann Matthias
Published: September 2018

The concept of political theology was the subject of important controversies in European, and especially German, philosophy, social science and jurisprudence in the twentieth century. After the First World War, a debate took place between the jurist Carl Schmitt, an influential right-wing critic of parliamentary democracy in the Weimar Republic, and the theologian Erik Peterson. Another debate was occasioned by a new, leftist political interpretation of biblical texts in the years after 1960. In that context, ‘political theology’ designates philosophical positions influenced by neo-Marxist philosophies, such as the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. The earlier controversy between Schmitt and Peterson played a role in this later debate as well. Johann Baptist Metz is probably the most important representative of political theology in the later controversy.
Transcendence
Authors: Westphal Merold
Published: September 2018

The concept of transcendence has its primary home in philosophical theology. Drawing on symbols of height that are widespread in prereflective religious life, it suggests that God or the gods are above and beyond the worlds of nature and history and thus above and beyond ourselves as individuals and communities. In philosophical reflection the spatial metaphors are translated into the concept of difference or alterity. Thus, as Rudolf Otto puts it, the holy is that which is ‘wholly other’.

We can distinguish three modes of divine transcendence. Cosmological transcendence, by which theism is distinguished from pantheism, signifies that, while there cannot be the world without God, there can be God without the world. The world does not emanate from God out of necessity; creation is a free act of purposive choice. Epistemic transcendence signifies that God is mysterious and incomprehensible, in two ways. First, God’s being exceeds our ability to bring it without remainder into our conceptual and linguistic frames of reference. Second, God’s knowledge of the worlds of nature and history and thus of ourselves as individuals and communities is qualitatively superior to our own knowledge and self-knowledge. Ethical-religious transcendence signifies that God’s transcendence is that of a person who sees us and speaks to us in a voice not our own. The prereflective background here is the biblical experience of covenant in which the speech acts by which God defines our identity and agenda are promises and commands. The philosophical concept correlative to this experience is that of inverted intentionality. Human consciousness is not just its own directed attention to whatever ‘objects’ it can perceive, think, remember, imagine, desire and so forth. In addition, we are aware of being addressed by a voice not our own and called to a vocation we did not initiate. We can welcome this calling as a divine gift or defend against it as a threat to freedom and autonomy.
Agricultural ethics
Authors: Comstock Gary L.
Published: September 2018

Agricultural ethics is the study of moral issues raised by farming. These include: human interference with the course of nature; the effects of certain agricultural practices on present social conditions, and on the conditions under which future generations will live; the treatment of animals, especially when its aim is human advantage; and the value of farming as a human activity in itself.
Bioethics
Authors: Frey R.G.
Published: September 2018

While bioethics, a part of applied ethics, is usually identified with medical ethics, in its broadest sense it is the study of the moral, social and political problems that arise out of biology and the life sciences generally and involve, either directly or indirectly, human wellbeing. Thus, environmental and animal ethics are sometimes included within it. In this regard, bioethics can be of broader concern than is either medical/biomedical ethics or the study of the moral problems that arise out of new developments in medical technology.

The interrelated issues of who or what has moral status, of what justifies a certain kind of treatment of one creature as opposed to another, and whether, if a creature has moral status, it can lose it, have proved especially important issues in this broadest sense of bioethics. The philosophical task of probing arguments for soundness appears essential to deciding these issues.

As a part of applied ethics, bioethics is exposed to the difficulty that (1) we do not agree in our moral convictions and principles about many of the cases that feature in bioethics, (2) we do not agree in the moral theories in which our moral principles find their home and by which we try to justify them, and (3) we do not agree in the test(s) of adequacy by which to resolve the disagreements at the level of moral theory. We seem left with no way of deciding between contending principles and theories.
Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb (1714–62)
Authors: Townsend Dabney
Published: September 2018

The German philosopher Baumgarten is known primarily for his introduction of the word ‘aesthetics’ to describe the affects of art and nature, which in the course of the seventeenth century replaced the older theory of beauty. Baumgarten derived the term from the Greek aisthanomai, which he equated with the Latin sentio (1739: 79). He understood it to designate the outer, external or bodily sense, as opposed to the inner sense of consciousness. Thus aesthetics is the realm of the sensate, of sense perception and sensible objects. Baumgarten understood his usage to be consistent with classical sources, but he was aware also that he was extending logic and science into a new realm. Baumgarten’s importance lay in adapting the rationalism of Leibniz for both the study of art and what came to be known after Kant as the aesthetic.
A priori
Authors: Moser Paul K.
Published: September 2018

An important term in epistemology since the seventeenth century, ‘a priori’ typically connotes a kind of knowledge or justification that does not depend on evidence, or justification, from sensory experience. Talk of a priori truth is ordinarily shorthand for talk of truth knowable or justifiable independently of evidence from sensory experience; and talk of a priori concepts is usually talk of concepts that can be understood independently of reference to sensory experience. A priori knowledge contrasts with a posteriori knowledge, knowledge requiring evidence from sensory experience. Broadly characterized, a posteriori knowledge is empirical, experience-based knowledge, and a priori knowledge is nonempirical knowledge. Standard examples of a priori truths are the truths of mathematics, whereas standard examples of a posteriori truths are the truths of the natural sciences.
Doubt
Authors: Williams Michael
Published: September 2018

Doubt is often defined as a state of indecision or hesitancy with respect to accepting or rejecting a given proposition. Thus, doubt is opposed to belief. But doubt is also contrasted with certainty. Since it seems intelligible to say that there are many things we believe without being completely certain about them, it appears that we may not have a unitary concept of doubt.

Although doubt is often associated in philosophy with scepticism, historically the relation between the two is complex. Moreover, some philosophers deny that sceptical arguments have any essential connection with inducing doubts.

Sceptical doubts, as philosophers understand them, differ from ordinary doubts in their depth and generality. We all have doubts about some things. But the philosophical sceptic wonders whether we ever have the slightest reason to believe one thing rather than another. However, the reasonableness of such doubts – and even their intelligibility – remains controversial. The various attitudes philosophers adopt with respect to the status of sceptical doubts characterize the main approaches to epistemological theory.
Epistemic logic
Authors: Hintikka Jaakko , Halonen Ilpo
Published: September 2018

Modern treatment of epistemic logic began in the 1950s when some philosophers noticed (as scholastics had done before them) certain regularities in the logical behaviour of the concept of knowledge (for example, that knowing a conjunction is equivalent to knowing all its conjuncts) and began to systematize them. Initially these regularities were presented in the form of an axiomatic-deductive system, as in other branches of logic. Later, questions began to be asked concerning the model theory on which such an ‘epistemic logic’ is based. Still later, the concrete interpretation of this model theory has become an issue. In this way, gradually a bridge has begun to be forged from purely logical questions to such central epistemological questions as those concerning the objects of knowledge, different kinds (or even senses) of knowledge (and their interrelations), the intensional character of knowledge, the de dicto versus de re distinction, and so on.
Knowledge, concept of
Authors: Klein Peter D.
Published: September 2018

The branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and extent of human knowledge is called epistemology (from the Greek epistēmē meaning knowledge, and logos meaning theory). Knowledge seems to come in many varieties: we know people, places and things; we know how to perform tasks; we know facts. Factual knowledge has been the central focus of epistemology.

We can know a fact only if we have a true belief about it. However, since only some true beliefs are knowledge (consider, for example, a lucky guess), the central question asked by epistemologists is ‘What converts mere true belief into knowledge?’. There are many, and often conflicting, answers to this question. The primary traditional answer has been that our true beliefs must be based upon sufficiently good reasons in order to be certifiable as knowledge. Foundationalists have held that the structure of reasons is such that our reasons ultimately rest upon basic reasons that have no further reasons supporting them. Coherentists have argued that there are no foundational reasons. Rather, they argue that our beliefs are mutually supporting.

In addition to the constraints upon the overall structure of reasons, epistemologists have proposed various general principles governing reasons. For example, it seems that if my reasons are adequate to affirm some fact, those reasons should be adequate to eliminate other incompatible hypotheses. This initially plausible principle appears to lead directly to some deep puzzles and, perhaps, even to scepticism. Indeed, many of the principles that seem initially plausible lead to various unexpected and unwelcome conclusions.

Alternatives to the primary traditional answer to the central epistemic question have been developed, in part because of the supposed failures of traditional epistemology. These alternative views claim that it is something other than good reasons which distinguishes (mere) true beliefs from knowledge. Reliabilists claim that a true belief produced by a sufficiently reliable process is knowledge. Good reasoning is but one of the many ways in which beliefs can be reliably produced. The issue of whether the objections to traditional epistemology are valid or whether the proposed substitutes are better remains unresolved.
Alchemy
Authors: Pereira Michela
Published: September 2018

Alchemy is the quest for an agent of material perfection, produced through a creative activity (opus), in which humans and nature collaborate. It exists in many cultures (China, India, Islam; in the Western world since Hellenistic times) under different specifications: aiming at the production of gold and/or other perfect substances from baser ones, or of the elixir that prolongs life, or even of life itself. Because of its purpose, the alchemists’ quest is always strictly linked to the religious doctrine of redemption current in each civilization where alchemy is practised.

In the Western world alchemy presented itself at its advent as a sacred art. But when, after a long detour via Byzantium and Islamic culture, it came back again to Europe in the twelfth century, adepts designated themselves philosophers. Since then alchemy has confronted natural philosophy for several centuries.

In contemporary thought the memory of alchemy was scarcely regarded, save as protochemistry or as a branch of esotericism, until interest in it was revived by C.G. Jung. Recent research is increasingly showing the complexity of alchemy and its multiple relation to Western thought.
Causation
Authors: Cartwright Nancy
Published: September 2018

Two opposed viewpoints raise complementary problems about causation. The first is from Hume: watch the child kick the ball. You see the foot touch the ball and the ball move off. But do you see the foot cause the ball to move? And if you do not see it, how do you know that that is what happened? Indeed if all our experience is like this, and all of our ideas come from experience, where could we get the idea of causation in the first place?

The second is from Kant. We can have no ideas at all with which to experience nature – we cannot experience the child as a child nor the motion as a motion – unless we have organized the experience into a causal order in which one thing necessarily gives rise to another. The problem for the Kantian viewpoint is to explain how, in advance of experiencing nature in various specific ways, we are able to provide such a complex organization for our experience.

For the Kantian the objectivity of causality is a presupposition of our experience of events external to ourselves. The Humean viewpoint must find something in our experience that provides sufficient ground for causal claims. Regular associations between putative causes and effects are the proposed solution. This attention to regular associations connects the Humean tradition with modern statistical techniques used in the social sciences to establish causal laws.

Modern discussions focus on three levels of causal discourse. The first is about singular causation: about individual ‘causings’ that occur at specific times and places, for example, ‘the cat lapped up the milk’. The second is about causal laws: laws about what features reliably cause or prevent other features, as in, ‘rising inflation prevents unemployment’. The third is about causal powers. These are supposed to determine what kinds of singular causings a feature can produce or what kinds of causal laws can be true of it – ‘aspirins have the power to relieve headaches’ for example.

Contemporary anglophone work on causality has centred on two questions. First, ‘what are the relations among these levels?’ The second is from reductive empiricisms of various kinds that try to bar causality from the world, or at least from any aspects of the world that we can find intelligible: ‘what is the relation between causality (on any one of the levels) and those features of the world that are supposed to be less problematic?’ These latter are taken by different authors to include different things. Sensible or measurable properties like ‘redness’ or ‘electric voltage’ have been attributed a legitimacy not available to causal relations like ‘lapping-up’ or ‘pushing over’: sometimes it is ‘the basic properties studied by physics’. So-called ‘occurrent’ properties have also been privileged over dispositional properties (like water-solubility) and powers. At the middle level where laws of nature are concerned, laws about regular associations between admissible features – whether these associations are deterministic or probabilistic – have been taken as superior to laws about what kinds of effects given features produce.
Confirmation theory
Authors: Kuipers Theo A.F.
Published: September 2018

The result of a test of a general hypothesis can be positive, negative or neutral. The first, qualitative, task of confirmation theory is to explicate these types of test result. However, as soon as one also takes individual hypotheses into consideration, the interest shifts to the second, quantitative, task of confirmation theory: probabilistically evaluating individual and general hypotheses in the light of an increasing number of test results. This immediately suggests conceiving of the confirmation of an hypothesis as increasing its probability due to new evidence.

Rudolf Carnap initiated a research programme in quantitative confirmation theory by designing a continuum of probability systems with plausible probabilistic properties for the hypothesis that the next test result will be of a certain kind. This continuum of inductive systems has guided the search for optimum systems and for systems that take analogy into account.

Carnapian systems, however, assign zero probability to universal hypotheses. Jaakko Hintikka was the first to reconsider the confirmation of such hypotheses and using Carnap’s continuum for this purpose has set the stage for a whole spectrum of inductive systems of this type.
Biological function
Authors: Neander Karen
Published: September 2018

Biologists ascribe functions to biological traits. For example, they tell us that it is the function of the heart to pump blood and that it is a function of the pancreas to control blood glucose levels. Philosophers attempt to understand the nature of these function ascriptions and their role in biology. Such function ascriptions are prima facie puzzling since they seem to be teleological and normative: teleological because they seem to tell us what something is for; normative because they underwrite claims about systems functioning properly or about dysfunction.

There are a number of theories of function available. Those with most currency in philosophy of biology attempt to naturalize the notion of function and so they reject the idea that it is irreducibly value-laden or that it must involve the idea of divine design. Four influential theories are as follows. The etiological theory says that the function of a phenotypic trait is what it was selected for (e.g. by natural selection). The systemic theory says that functions are capacities to contribute to complexly achieved capacities of containing systems. The propensity theory says that functions are contributions to fitness that make traits apt for future selection. And a statistical theory says that normal functions are statistically typical contributions to fitness.

Two different types of functional explanation are operational and remote (or evolutionary) explanations. Operational explanations ascribe functions to a system’s parts to explain how the system operates. They answer questions of the form, ‘how does this work?’ Evolutionary explanations explain the ‘rationale’ of a trait, why it was preserved in the population. They answer questions of the form, ‘why is this here?’ or ‘why did this evolve?’ Some philosophers claim that distinct notions of function are used in these two types of explanation.
Critical theory
Authors: Geuss Raymond , Bernstein J. M.
Published: September 2018

The term ‘critical theory’ designates the approach to the study of society developed between 1930 and 1970 by the so-called ‘Frankfurt School’. A group of theorists associated with the Institute for Social Research, the School was founded in Frankfurt, Germany in 1923. The three most important philosophers belonging to it were Max Horkheimer, Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno and Herbert Marcuse. The project was renewed by the second- and third-generation critical theorists, most notably, Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth.

Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse feared that modern Western societies were turning into closed, totalitarian systems in which all individual autonomy was eliminated. In their earliest writings from the 1930s they presented this tendency towards totalitarianism as one result of the capitalist mode of production. In later accounts they give more prominence to the role of science and technology in modern society, and to the concomitant, purely ‘instrumental’, conception of reason. This conception of reason denies that there can be any such thing as inherently rational ends or goals for human action and asserts that reason is concerned exclusively with the choice of effective instruments or means for attaining arbitrary ends.

‘Critical theory’ was to be a form of resistance to contemporary society; its basic method was to be that of ‘internal’ or ‘immanent’ criticism. Every society, it was claimed, must be seen as making a tacit claim to substantive (and not merely instrumental) rationality; that is, making the claim that it allows its members to lead a good life. This claim gives critical theory a standard for criticism which is internal to the society being criticized. Critical theory demonstrates in what ways contemporary society fails to live up to its own claims. The conception of the good life to which each society makes tacit appeal in legitimizing itself will usually not be fully propositionally explicit, so any critical theory will have to begin by extracting a tacit conception of the good life from the beliefs, cultural artefacts and forms of experience present in the society in question. One of the particular difficulties confronting a critical theory of contemporary society is the disappearance of traditional substantive conceptions of the good life that could serve as a basis for internal criticism, and their replacement with the view that modern society needs no legitimation beyond simple reference to its actual efficient functioning, to its ‘instrumental’ rationality. The ideology of ‘instrumental rationality’ thus itself becomes a major target for critical theory.
Modulación Indirecta para el Convertidor Matricial Directo
Authors: Vazquez NIMROD , Diosdado Raúl , Huerta Héctor , Osorio René , Vázquez Eslí , Hernández Claudia
Published: September 2018

Los convertidores matriciales han sido estudiados y propuestos para diferentes aplicaciones.  Hay dos tipos de convertidores matriciales: los llamados indirectos y los directos, cada uno con sus ventajas y desventajas. Para el convertidor matricial indirecto se utilizan dos moduladores ya que está compuesto de dos etapas claramente definidas: un rectificador y un convertidor cd/ca; esto permite el uso de técnicas de modulación y control tradicionales. Por el contrario, el convertidor matricial directo se compone de una sola etapa, por lo que se considera un solo modulador o controlador; es decir que se usa un modulador directo.
En este artículo se propone un modulador indirecto, pero para el convertidor matricial directo; esto es, se utilizan dos moduladores virtuales: un modulador para una etapa de entrada o rectificadora y otro para la etapa de salida o inversora; ciertamente ambos moduladores son unidos de forma que se generan las señales de control para el convertidor matricial de una sola etapa. Se presenta el análisis, operación y discusión de la propuesta, pero también resultados de simulación y experimentales que confirman la operación del sistema.
Control Óptimo Aplicado a Campos de Colectores Solares Distribuidos
Authors: R. Rubio Francisco , Navas Sergio J. , Ollero Pedro , Lemos Joao M. , Ortega Manuel G.
Published: September 2018

En este trabajo se describe el control de una planta solar de colectores cilíndrico parabólicos cuando la radiación solar está sometida a variaciones debidas al paso de nubes. El objetivo de las estrategias de control desarrolladas es optimizar la potencia generada, a diferencia de otras estrategias que persiguen el mantenimiento de la temperatura de salida del campo solar. El modelo desarrollado de la planta solar incluye tanto el campo solar con todos sus lazos, como el sistema de generación de potencia y el sistema de almacenamiento. Así mismo se modela el paso de las nubes con diferentes tamaños de cobertura del campo solar. Se desarrollan diferentes estrategias de control para maximizar la potencia generada y al mismo tiempo intentar producir dicha potencia el máximo de tiempo posible y con las menores variaciones.