Meliorism

Doctrine that the universe is becoming progressively and inevitably better. This may be for religious reasons involving the working out of some grand design, or for reasons connected with late 18th-century optimism concerning inevitable progress and the perfectibility of man, inspired by scientific and technological progress and revolutionary political ideas. In theology it can

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Melissus of Samos (5TH CENTURY BC)

Melissus of Samos, a Greek philosopher of the Eleatic School, was born probably not later than 470 B.C. According to Diogenes Lartius, he was not only a thinker, but also a political leader in his native town, and was in command of the fleet which defeated the Athenians in 442. The same authority says

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Mereology

Literally, ‘theory of parts’. Term introduced by the Polish logician Stanislaw Lesniewski (1886-1939) to cover a theory which used the whole/part relation as a substitute for the class-membership relation to deal with the structure of classes in ways that would avoid various difficulties connected with the vicious CIRCLE PRINCIPLE and the theory of types. (The

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Metalanguage (1943)

Standard distinction, applied to linguistics by Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev (1899-1965). Also discussed by Roman Jakobson (1896-1982). Language about language: metalanguage is a system of notation, descriptive terms, and so on, for an ‘object language’. Metalanguage may be related to natural language – terms like ‘passive’, ‘auxiliary’ -or an abstract notation as in symbolic

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Michael A. E. Dummett

Michael Dummett was born in 1925. He attended Sandroyd School and Winchester College, and served in the armed forces from 1943 to 1947. Although he was educated within the traditions of the Anglican Church at Winchester, by the age of 13 he regarded himself as an atheist. In 1944 however, he was received into

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Michel de Montaigne

Ideas – An acceptance of the duality of the human condition (man’s spiritual aspirations counterbalanced by the physical limitations of the body) enables man to pursue the masterpiece of living well. – A life committed to moderation is superior to one that has allowed excesses and extremes. – The senses through which man knows

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Miguel de Unamuno Y Jugo

Ideas – History is the immediate historic moment that is happening, while intrahistory is an eternal, historical present. – The intrahistory of Spain is its soul, that which is genuinely pure and vital. – The landspace, language, and art of Castile express the soul of Spain. – To find the soul of Spain is

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Modal realism

Term used for the theory, going back to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), of ‘possible worlds’; used to analyze necessity and possibility and similar notions, which are known as modal notions. The actual world is regarded as merely one among an infinite set of logically possible worlds, some nearer to the actual world and some more remote.

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Monism

Any view claiming to find unity in a certain sphere where it might not have been expected. The main forms of monism have been: a strong form, claiming that there is only one object (Eleaticism, Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)); and a weaker form, claiming that there is only one kind of object, and

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Moral sense theories

Theories postulating a special moral sense which either enables us to perceive special moral qualities of virtue and vice in action (which thereupon affect us favorably or unfavorably), or else simply arouses feelings of approval or disapproval in us on contemplating the ordinary qualities of actions (it is not always clear which alternative is

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F. A. Moritz Schlick

Moritz Schlick, the founder of the Vienna Circle, was born on April 14, 1882 in Berlin. After studying in both Heidelberg and Lausanne, he returned to Berlin to complete his doctorate in physics under the direction of Max Planck. Schlick then held teaching positions at the universities of Rostock and Kiel before taking the position

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Moses Maimonides

Ideas – The study of philosophy and traditional Jewish law can be brought into harmony. – The existence of God is subject to rational demonstration. – Unity, incorporeality, and priority are qualities of God. – Prophecy is a degree of mental and moral perfection to which all may aspire. – The entire Torah is

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Mysticism

A type of religious attitude (appearing in many guises and within many religions from antiquity onwards) emphasizing various practices – ascetic, contemplative, or other – for obtaining knowledge of and unification with God or spiritual reality by means not open to reason and not relying on dogma. Mystics claim to achieve this knowledge or

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Naive realism

Theory that we see the world as common sense supposes we do; that is, directly and without recourse to special intermediate ‘sensations’, ‘sense-data’, ‘images’ and so on which some other views involve {see also REPRESENTATIONALISM). We need not, however, always be free from error, any more than common sense thinks we are. Properly speaking,

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Naming theories of meaning

Also called denotative or referential theories. Theories which equate the meaning of a word with an object it stands for (like the ‘fido’-fido theory), or else with the word’s relation to such an object. Proper names form the primary class, but general words can stand for abstract objects (‘dog’ for doghood, ‘red’ for the color

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Naturalism

Any view holding that things in general, or things in some sphere under investigation, are all of one kind (as opposed to being of radically different kinds), and are amenable to study by scientific methods, without appeal to supernatural intervention or special kinds of intuition. In art or literature, any of a variety of

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Naturalized epistemology

A notion introduced explicitly by Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) though with roots going back to David Hume (1711-1776). The idea is that since it is impossible to achieve a satisfactory justification for our claims to knowledge we should cease to look for one, and construct a scientific account -in purely ‘natural’ terms and without reference to justification

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Necessitarianism

Term occasionally used for the view that everything that happens is necessitated. The view that every event has a cause is the same, unless causation is distinguished from necessitation. Also see: determinism Source: R R K Sorabji, Necessity, Cause and Blame (1980), chapter 2 Necessitarianism is a metaphysical principle that denies all mere possibility; there is exactly one

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Performative (or speech act) theory of negation

Theory that analyzes negation in terms of a special kind of linguistic activity, negating or denying; so that to say, for example, ‘It’s not raining’ may indeed be (as anyone would agree in straightforward cases) to deny that it is raining, but is also to utter a sentence which gets its meaning from that

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Negative utilitarianism

Version of utilitarianism which replaces the maximization of good by the minimization of evil. Supporters of the theory, who include Karl Raimund Popper (1902-1994), say that by aiming at removing evils rather than achieving positive goods we shall avoid the disadvantages of utopianism usually incurred by those who try to plan for a perfect world. To take an extreme example,

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