Picture theory of meaning

Theory which treats declarative sentences (as against commands and so on) as pictures of facts (if true) or possible facts (otherwise). A notable example of the theory is Tractates (1921) by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). Each element in the sentence (bar certain connectives and so on) stands for something, be it an object or a quality or

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Physicalism

Term variously used. For Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970), a member of the Vienna circle, it said that all scientific statements could be reduced to statements about ordinary physical objects (or else spatiotemporal points), such sentences having to be publically verifiable. For others it has meant that any meaningful statement can be translated into the language of physics. Currently,

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Phenomenology

Literally, ‘the description or study of appearances’. Any detailed study of a phenomenon can be called a phenomenology, but the theory normally so called is associated with Franz Brentano (1838-1917) and (especially) Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and their followers, including several existentialists. ‘Phenomena’ for Husserl were the objects of experience or attitudes (in the sense in which even a non-existent fortune

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Phenomenalism

Literally, ‘appearanceism’. Any theory which explains a given subject-matter in terms of appearances, without needing to postulate anything else (see also reductionism), much as facts about the average man are reduced to facts about ordinary men. The most notable 19th century phenomenalist was John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). Phenomenalists in the 20th century (for example, Alfred Jules Ayer (1910-1989)) usually

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Law or principle of bivalence

Theory that every proposition is either true or false. Possible objections are of two kinds. First, can we decide what counts as a proposition in the relevant sense? Second, might not the principle fail for some presumably genuine propositions; for example, ‘Jones was brave’ (where Jones died peacefully after a life entirely devoid of

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Boo Hurrah theory

Slightly disrespectful title for emotivism as a theory of ethics, because it analyzes moral judgments as expressions of unfavorable or favorable emotion. History David Hume’s statements on ethics foreshadowed those of 20th century emotivists. Emotivism reached prominence in the early 20th century, but it was born centuries earlier. In 1710, George Berkeley wrote that language in general often

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British empiricists

Name applied primarily to John Locke (1632-1704), George Berkeley (1685-1753), and David Hume (1711-1776), with lesser figures such as Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and Thomas Reid (1710-1796). Also see: empiricism, subjective idealism, regulatory theory of causation, bundle theories, continental rationalists In philosophy, empiricism is a theory that states that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience.[1] It is one of several views of epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empiricism emphasizes the role of empirical evidence in the formation of ideas, rather

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Bundle theories

Theories that analyze a given item as a mere bundle of items of some other kind; where the first item would normally be thought of as something substantive and independent, the other items being somehow related to it, or dependent on it and owing their existence to it. There are two main examples. The

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Category mistake

Term introduced by English philosopher Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976) for cases where we talk of something in terms appropriate only to something of a radically different kind. For example, ‘The Prime Minister is in London, and the Foreign Secretary is in Paris, and the Home Secretary is in Bristol, but where is the Government?’ The Government is

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Causal realism

The view that substantive causal connections exist in reality, as opposed to the reductionist approach of the regularity theory of causation. Abstract Causal realism is the view that causation is a structural feature of reality; a power inherent in the world to produce effects, independently of the existence of minds or observers. This article suggests

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Causal theories of meaning

Theories which explain the meaning of a word or sentence in terms of its effect on the hearer, or in terms of the cause of its utterance by the speaker. Such theories are also sometimes called ‘stimulus/response theories’, and they have some kinship with behaviorism. An objection is that most such views ignore the roles

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Causal theories of perception

Any theory which says that the object of perception plays a causal role in the perception itself. The object may cause us to have a certain experience without itself being perceived (we may have to infer its existence, or ‘construct’ it from experiences rather as we ‘construct’ the average man from real men: also

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Causal theory of knowledge

Any theory which says that to know a truth one must believe it and one’s belief must stand in a certain causal relation to the truth itself. For example, I know that Caesar crossed the Rubicon if his doing so caused some historian to write a book saying so, which caused my local library

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Causal theory of names

Theory advanced especially by American philosophers Saul Kripke (1940- ) and Hilary Putnam (1926- ) that whether a currently used name names a certain object depends on whether current use of the name causally depends on its use by people who originally dubbed the object with that name. ‘Homer’ names whatever person the Greeks used it (or a

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Chain of being (4TH CENTURY BC – 18TH CENTURY)

Also called the great chain of being and scala natura. Based on ideas of Plato (c.427-c.347 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC), but popularized in biology in the writings of German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), French naturalist Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1720-1788), and Swiss philosopher Charles Bonnet (1720-1793). This is the influential concept that all of nature – from non-living matter

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Principle of charity

Principle named by Neil L. Wilson – in Review of Metaphysics (1958-59), page 532 – that when interpreting another speaker, especially of an unknown language, we should make those assumptions about his intelligence, knowledge, sense of relevance and so on, that will make most of what he says come out true. Also see: principle of

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Confirmation principle

Alternative name for a weak version of the verifiability principle, whereby in order to be meaningful a statement must, if not a tautology, be confirmable or disconfirmable by observation. Origins Although verificationist principles of a general sort—grounding scientific theory in some verifiable experience—are found retrospectively even with the American pragmatist C.S. Peirce and with the French conventionalist Pierre Duhem[2] who fostered instrumentalism,[3] the vigorous

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Nativism

Any view claiming that something is innate, such as ideas or perceptual faculties. Also see: innate ideas Arguments presented for immigration restriction Main article: Opposition to immigration According to Joel S. Fetzer, opposition to immigration commonly arises in many countries because of issues of national, cultural, and religious identity. The phenomenon has been studied especially in Australia, Canada, New Zealand,

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Methodological theories (1943)

The term ‘methodological’ is prefixed to terms – such as behaviorism, holism, individualism, skepticism and solipsism – to indicate that the doctrine in question is being taken to prescribe a certain method rather than to make a substantive claim about reality. This is irrespective of whether or not the prescription is based on such a substantive claim (in the case of holism and individualism it

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Universalizability

A complex and controversial notion which has been used both to distinguish the moral from the non-moral and to distinguish the moral from the immoral – two jobs which tend to get in each other’s way. ‘What if everyone did that?’ is often a relevant question in moral contexts; but ‘did what exactly?’. The

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