Diogenes of Sinope

Diogenes was a Cynic philosopher of Sinope. His father, Icesias, a banker, was convicted of debasing the public coin, and was obliged to leave the country; or, according to another account, his father and himself were charged with this offense, and the former was thrown into prison, while the son escaped and went to

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Donald Herbert Davidson

Davidson studied at Harvard, under Alfred North Whitehead, among others, and wrote a dissertation on Plato’s Philebus. His interests at this time were mainly in the “history of ideas,” broadly construed, but under the influence of W. V. Quine, whom he often credits as his mentor, he began to gradually turn toward the more rigorous methods and

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Double aspect theory of mind

Theory that mind and body, or mental events and some cerebral events, are two aspects of a single thing. The theory resembles neutral monism but is more limited, applying only to certain cerebral (or perhaps neural) events. It is often attributed to Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), but interpretations of him differ. When the body becomes privileged and usurps the

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Double effect doctrine

Ethical doctrine, associated especially though not exclusively with Roman Catholicism. Though we may not intentionally produce evil, we may intentionally do (in pursuit of a suitably greater good) what we foresee will in fact produce evil, provided we regard this evil as an unwanted side-effect which we would avoid if possible. The occurrence of

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Double negation principle

Principle that, for any proposition P, P logically implies not-not-P, and not-not-P logically implies P. Classical logic accepts both these halves of the principle, but intuitionist logic accepts only the first half, and not the second. This is because it accepts the law of contradiction (and so, given P, cannot allow not-P), but rejects

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Dualism

Any view which analyzes a given subject-matter, be it the universe as a whole or merely some area of concern, in terms of exactly two fundamentally distinct and opposed ideas. Reality may be divided into matter and spirit, a person into body and soul, propositions into analytic and synthetic, judgments into factual and evaluative,

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Eclecticism and syncretism

Periods of philosophical innovation are often followed by periods of consolidation (some would say, decline) when progress is sought by selecting features from different philosophers, regarded as opposed to one another, and combining them to form a unified whole. Alternatively it may be claimed that the philosophers were not really opposed to each other

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Edmund Husserl

Ideas – The edifice of scientific knowledge must be built up by rigorously securing each step through direct direct intuitive insight, without presuppositions. – Phenomenology provides a founding ‘first philosophy’ for all knowledge by its method of describing the essence of ‘the things themselves’ as they are constituted in consciousness. – The ultimate foundation

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Edward Sapir

Edward Sapir was born in Lauenburg, Germany in 1884 to an orthodox Jewish family. He emigrated to the United States in 1889 and lived in New York City. He received his Bachelors Degree in 1904 and his Ph.D. in 1909 from Columbia University where he came under the influence of Franz Boas. He taught

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Theory of effluxes / effluences

Theory associated with Greek atomism and its revival in the corpuscularian philosophy of the 17th century as well as by non-atomists like Empedocles (5th century BC). It holds that objects continually emit films from their surfaces, which cause them to be perceived, much as we ourselves might explain smell. Lucretius(1st century BC) also uses the

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Egocentric predicament

Term coined by Ralph Barton Perry (1876-1957) for the idea that all our knowledge of the world must take the form of mental representations within our own minds (sensations, images, ideas, and so on), which the mind then operates upon in various ways. Thus we can never have any direct contact with reality outside our minds,

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Egoism

In ordinary speech, selfishness (also called ‘egotism’, a word never used in philosophy). As a philosophical doctrine egoism is either psychological egoism (for which see hedonism), or ethical egoism, which contrasts with universalism and altruism. Like them it is a form of consequentialism, and prescribes that everyone should always act so as to maximize his own

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Eleaticism

A movement in 5th century BC Greek thought stemming from Parmenides of Elea (in southern Italy) and his two main disciples Zeno of Elea (not the Stoic) and Melissus of Samos. The main tenet was an insistence that any kind of change was impossible, and so (on the usual interpretation) was any kind of plurality. Reality was one and

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Emergence theories

Theories of the development of some phenomenon (e.g. life consciousness) where something emerges out of a background from which it could not have been predicted and in terms of which it cannot be fully explained. What emerges may be a law of nature, or a science, though this would normally be because of emergent

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Emotive theory of truth

A theory developed to parallel emotivism in ethics, the point being that what criterion of truth we adopt (e.g. logical intuition, faith, workability, verifiability) depends upon our emotions or attitudes. Also see: pragmatic theory of truth Source: B Savery, ‘The Emotive Theory of Truth’, Mind

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Emotivism

Theory that value judgments, including moral judgments, do not state facts (though they appear to), but are expressions of emotions or attitudes. (Also see: Boo Hurrah Theory.) The theory, a form of speech act theory, arose under the influence of logical positivism (though it had antecedents in the 18th century) because of the difficulties of finding verification conditions

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Empedocles

Empedocles was born in Acragas on the south coast of Sicily. The name Acragas is Greek, while the Latin name for the town was Agrigentum. Later the town was called Girgenti and more recently it became known by its present name of Agrigento. It was one of the most beautiful cities of the ancient

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Empiricism

Any theory emphasizing sense-experience (including introspection) rather than reason or intuition as the basis for either some or all of our knowledge; ‘basis’ referring usually to justification, though sometimes to psychological origin. Empiricism can concern either propositions or concepts, rejecting (most) a priori ones; for John Locke (1632-1704) all concepts (‘ideas’) were empirical, but propositions connecting

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Empiriocriticism

A name for the version of positivism developed by Austrian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach(1838-1916) and the German Richard Avenarius(1843-1896), and coming between the original positivism of Auguste Comte (1798-1857) and the later logical positivism. Science on this view aims at the most economical  in his Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1908 translated by Abraham Fineberg (1947)). Source: E Mach, Popular Scientific Lectures

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Epictetus

Major Ideas – Only bodies exist, but bodies are combinations of two fundamental principles, logos, a rational principle, and physis, a creative principle. – God is nature: Logos, the rational principle, accounts for the order and unity of the universe; nature is thus intelligent and intelligible. – Because God is nature, the universe as

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