Rule utilitarianism

Also called restricted or indirect utilitarianism. Version of utilitarianism which says (in its main formulation) that our duty is not to aim for that act which will produce in fact the best overall consequences (because of the impossibility or impracticability of predicting these) but to follow that rule which would have the best consequences if generally

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Saint Anselm of Canterbury

Ideas – God exists, for there is goodness in the world, and goodness an be good only through a supreme good that is good through itself, and only God is good through himself. – God exists, for since whatever exists does so only through something, there must be a supremely great being that exists

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Saint Augustine

Ideas – Faith and understanding go hand in hand: Understand that you may believe; believe that you may understand. – True happiness consists in knowledge of God. – Father, Son and Spirit coinhere in the Godhead as the faculties if memory, intellect and will coinhere in the human mind. – Individual beings in the

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Absence paradox (19TH CENTURY)

A source of humor used in music halls, but possibly ancient. No person is ever present, because he is either not in Vladivostok or alternatively is not in Patagonia, so he must be somewhere else. If he is somewhere else, he certainly is not here. This argument understands a relative adverb as absolute. Employment

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Absolutism

In philosophy, a contrast to relativism in any of its senses. In its political sense, a description (more frequently than justification) of government without constitutional restrictions. The authority to govern cannot be qualified or restricted, because if it is, whatever restricts it is itself the final power. Historically, one form it has taken has been the

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Abstractionism

View that the mind gets some or all of its concepts by abstracting them from concepts it already has or from experience. For example, one might abstract ‘red’ from a set of experiences, each involving red along with other properties; or (differently) abstract the generic concept ‘animal’ from the already possessed concepts of its

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Act utilitarianism

Also called ‘extreme’ or direct utilitarianism. Original, and ‘official’ form of utilitarianism which says that our duty on any occasion is to act in the way which will produce actual overall consequences better than (or at least as good as) those that any other act open to us would produce. Difficulties in predicting consequences, including

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Agnosticism

Any view claiming that knowledge is unobtainable in a given area, whether merely in practice or (and more usually) in principle too. Term invented by Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) in 1869. In religious matters, agnosticism should be distinguished from atheism (the view that there is no god), though it sometimes includes the view that sentences like ‘There is

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Alexius von Meinong

Alexius von Meinong was born to a noble German family in Lemberg, which was part of Austria and later became part of Poland. Today it is called Lviv and is in Ukraine. He was an Austrian philosopher who worked at the University of Graz. He was a student of Franz Brentano and is most

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Zeno of Elea

Major Ideas – The Paradox of the Race Course argues that motion would require a process of infinite division. – The Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise concludes that a swifter runner cannot overtake a slower. – The Paradox of the Arrow argues that an arrow cannot move in flight. – The Paradox of

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Zeno of Citium

Zeno of Citium (The Stoic) was a Hellenistic philosopher from Citium, Cyprus. Zeno was the son of a merchant and a student of Crates of Thebes. Zeno was, himself, a merchant until the age of 42, when he started a school. According to a Legend on one trip Zeno was shipwrecked and he somehow

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William James

Ideas – Human consciousness is selective; it concentrates on some things and ignores others. – Ideas and beliefs are essentially plans for organizing and structuring our experience and world. – One cannot prove finally whether human action is free or determined, but there are good reasons, especially moral ones, for believing that human action

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William Godwin

Ideas – Humankind is perfectible. – Reason tends to truth; truth leads to justice. – Government usurps private judgment and individual conscience; it is the greatest obstacle to human happiness. – Education and environment determine personality and character. – There are no rights, only duties; the fundamental moral duty is universal benevolence. – Nonviolent

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William Blake

Ideas – Imagination is the Divine Being in every person. – All division is contrary to the infinite imagination (the body is not distinct from the soul). – Divisions, which emanate from the Fall (master/servant, rich/poor, male/female) hold some people in bondage; thus, humankind’s fallen vision has produced the exploitation, oppression, and tyranny manifested

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Willard Van Orman Quine

Born in Akron, Ohio, Quine began his philosophical studies at Oberlin College in his native state. He later studied the foundations of mathematical logic with Alfred North Whitehead at Harvard University, where Quine himself became professor of philosophy in 1936. His contributions to the development of contemporary philosophy often involve subtle modification of the empiricist traditions

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Wilhelm Dilthey

German philosopher who made important contributions to a methodology of the humanities and other human sciences. He objected to the pervasive influence of the natural sciences and developed a philosophy of life emphasising historical contingency and changeability. His ‘Philosophy of Life’ pivoted on the notion of a living spirit which develops in historical forms,

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Werner Heisenberg

Ideas – Anomalous experimental results in microscopic physics can be explained through the use of matrices. – There is an unsurpassable limit to the accuracy with which certain properties (position and momentum) of subatomic particles can simultaneous be determined. – Every measurement of a subatomic entity necessarily involves the substantial interference of an observer,

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Voluntarism

Any of a number of doctrines emphasizing the existence, nature, or role of the will; whether a cosmic will, as with Artur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), or (more commonly, and also including Schopenhauer) the human will. Such doctrines may emphasize the role of the will in our thinking or acquisition of knowledge, or the reality of

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Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire

Ideas – All religions of the supernatural are based on ignorance and superstition. – The natural and human evils in the world cannot be reconciled with the view that this is the best of all possible worlds. – The order in the universe indicates that there is a Designer, but not necessarily a moral

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Vitalism (17TH-19TH CENTURIES)

Any of various views insisting, in contrast to mechanism, that life involves a special principle and cannot be explained in terms of physical and chemical properties alone. The theory has its origins in the classification of compounds in 1675 by the French chemist Nicolas Lemery (1645-1715). He considered them as animal, vegetable or mineral according

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