descriptions, theory of

Theory invented by English philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) in 1905 to show how denoting phrases like ‘the present king of France’ could still have meaning though there is nothing for them to denote. Russell claimed that the grammatical form of ‘The present king of France is bald’ is misleading as to its logical form,

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effluxes, theory of

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 theory to explain dreams

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epistemic closure, principle of

Principle that, where P and Q are propositions, if we know that P, and know that P logically entails Q, we know that Q. Sometimes said to support skepticism, because if I know that, for example, I am holding a pen, and know that if I am holding a pen I am not merely dreaming

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excluded middle, law of

One of the traditional three laws of thought (along with the laws of identity and contradiction). Every proposition is either true or not true. This is weaker than the law of bivalence (every proposition is true or false), since if there is a third truth value excluded middle can still hold, though bivalence will fail. (However, bivalence is sometimes treated as

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greatest happiness principle

The canonical statement of Mill’s utilitarianism can be found in his book, Utilitarianism. Although this philosophy has a long tradition, Mill’s account is primarily influenced by Jeremy Bentham and Mill’s father James Mill. John Stuart Mill believed in the philosophy of utilitarianism, which he would describe as the principle that holds “that actions are right in the proportion as they tend

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hedonistic utilitarianism

Also known as the confirmation paradox, it was discovered by Carl Gustav Hempel (1905-1997). The statement ‘All prime ministers live at 10 Downing Street’ tends to be confirmed by finding a kennel containing a dog, because this is an example of a dwelling that is not 10 Downing Street which is the home of a non-prime-minister;

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humanity, principle of

PRINCIPLE NAMED BY RICHARD E GRANDY IN 1973 AS A SUPPLEMENT TO THE PRINCIPLE OF CHARITY. It says that when interpreting another speaker we must assume not simply that he is intelligent and so on, but that his beliefs and desires are connected to each other and to reality in a way that makes him

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hylomorphism

his article is about the concept of hylomorphism in Aristotelian philosophy. For the concept in computer science, see Hylomorphism (computer science). Hylomorphism (or hylemorphism) is a philosophical theory developed by Aristotle, which conceives being (ousia) as a compound of matter and form. The word is a 19th-century term formed from the Greek words ὕλη hyle, “wood, matter”, and μορφή, morphē, “form”. Matter and form Further information: Aristotle’s biology

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identity, law of

One of the traditional three laws of thought, the other two being the laws of contradiction and excluded middle. ‘Everything is what it is and not another thing’, or (where ‘P’ is any proposition) ‘If P then P’. The English empiricist George Edward Moore (1873-1958) took the first quotation above as the motto for his book Principia Ethica (1903), attributing

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ideology

An ideology (/ˌʌɪdɪˈɒlədʒi/) is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially as held for reasons that are not purely epistemic,[1][2] in which “practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones.”[3] Formerly applied primarily to economic, political, or religious theories and policies, in a tradition going back to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, more recent use treats the term as mainly

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impossibility of a gambling system, principle of the

Principle that a properly defined collective (see frequency theory of probability) will be random in a sense that makes it impossible to construct a system for predicting results with any greater probability than would be possible without the system. The principle was named by the German mathematician and philosopher Richard von Mises (1883-1953). The key condition is

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indifference, principle of

The fundamental principle of statistical theory that unless there is a reason for believing otherwise, each possible event should be regarded as equally likely. In this crude form, the principle leads to paradoxes because we can group the alternatives in different ways: the next flower I meet might be blue or red, so its

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internal relations, doctrine of

Doctrine that all relations are internal to their bearers, in the sense that they are essential to them and the bearers would not be what they are without them. Some relations are clearly internal in this sense (four would not be four unless it were related to two by being its square), and some

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limited independent variety, principle of

Principle adopted by English economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) to underpin his Bayesian approach to induction by finding a justification for assigning the relevant probabilities. The principle says that, for at least that sphere we are investigating, the number of objects and qualities it contains may be infinite, but the number of independent groups into which

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mean, doctrine of the

The doctrine of Aristotle (384-322 BC) that moral virtue can be defined as a disposition concerned with choice and lying in a mean. Any given virtue lies between two extremes, for example courage lies in a mean between rashness and cowardice. The mean, however, is not an arithmetical mean, but is ‘relative to us’; that is,

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meaning, theories of

Discussed BC in both Greek philosophy and Indian linguistics. Much theoretical progress in latter half of the 20th century. An elusive concept which has been theorized from many different perspectives: meaning as use, as behaviour, as intention, as concepts, as images, as truth-conditions, and so on. It is best to disperse the term into

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negation, performative theory of

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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new riddle of induction

“Grue and bleen” redirects here. For the linguistic term “grue”, used for translation from natural languages, see Distinction of blue and green in various languages. Grue and bleen are examples of logical predicates coined by Nelson Goodman in Fact, Fiction, and Forecast to illustrate the “new riddle of induction” – a successor to Hume’s original problem. These predicates are unusual because their application is time-dependent;

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Ockham’s Razor

Occam’s razor, Ockham’s razor, Ocham’s razor (Latin: novacula Occami), or law of parsimony (Latin: lex parsimoniae) is the problem-solving principle that “entities should not be multiplied without necessity”,[1][2] or more simply, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. The idea is attributed to English Franciscan friar William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347), a scholastic philosopher and theologian who used a preference for simplicity to defend the idea of divine miracles. This philosophical razor advocates that

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organic unities, principle of

Principle that a whole may have a value which is different from, and not predictable on the basis of, the values of its parts. The attractiveness, for example, of a picture cannot normally be predicted from that of each color-patch taken separately. The principle was made much of by George Edward Moore (1873-1958), who distinguished his

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