Golden rule

‘Do as you would be done by’, or ‘Treat others as you would have them treat you’. Apart from the New Testament (Matthew 7.12) the rule occurs as far back as Confucius (551-479 BC) in his Analects (15.23; compare 5.11). Etymology The term “Golden Rule”, or “Golden law”, began to be used widely in the early 17th century

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Goodman’s paradox (20TH CENTURY)

Linguistic theory (also known as the ‘new riddle of induction’) concerning the concept of confirmation or prediction, developed by the American philosopher Nelson Goodman (1906-1998). According to Goodman, it is possible to define a vocabulary in such a way that, given a choice between two possibilities, it is as likely that the possibility which runs counter to

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Haecceitism

Literally: ‘thisnessism’. Theory deriving from Johannes Duns Scotus (c. 1266-1308), with roots in Aristotle, that as well as ordinary general properties there are special properties (haec-ceitie or thisnesses) necessarily associated each with just one individual. Socrates has the property of Socrateity and Plato that of Platonity. Traditional Aristotelianism individuated objects by their matter, which as such

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Hedonism

Set of doctrines shared between philosophical psychology and ethics. Ethical hedonism says either that pleasure alone (or ‘happiness’, which is usually not distinguished from pleasure by hedonists) is ultimately good, or that every action should aim to maximize pleasure; in neither case need the pleasure be the agent’s (a point that is often forgotten,

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Hempel’s paradox (20TH CENTURY)

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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Hermeneutics

LITERALLY, THE STUDY OF INTERPRETATION. The term was originally associated with biblical studies, but a philosophical tendency has been developed especially by Friedrich Schleiermacher(1768-1834), Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), and Hans-Georg Gadamer(1900-2002). Dilthey emphasized the need in human studies (Geisteswissenschaften) for an empathetic understanding (usually called by the German term, Verstehen) which went beyond mere external description. (Compare also the philosophy

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Historicism

TERM USED FOR DIFFERENT AND INDEED INCOMPATIBLE THEORIES. It has two main senses. First, that historical events must be seen in their uniqueness and can only be understood against the background of their context. In this sense it is akin to the emphasis on Verstehen in Wilhelm Dilthey’s hermeneutics. The second sense is that of Karl Raimund

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Holism

Any view which emphasizes the whole of something as distinct from its parts. In particular, this doctrine says that the whole in question cannot be predicted from or explained in terms of its parts (also see emergence theories); or else that the whole is more important than its parts (as in, for example, collectivist political

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Holistic explanation

EXPLANATION OF A KIND CLAIMED TO BE ESPECIALLY REQUIRED IN THE SPHERES OF PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE AND THE ACTIONS OF A RATIONAL AGENT, WHERE EXPLANATIONS CANNOT BE GIVEN IN TERMS OF SINGLE FACTORS (BELIEFS, DESIRES, AND SO ON) BUT ONLY IN TERMS OF WHOLE SYSTEMS OF SUCH FACTORS INTERRELATED IN COMPLEX WAYS. However, the elaboration

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Principle of humanity

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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Hume’s law

DERIVED FROM THE SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHER DAVID HUME (1711-1776), AN INFORMAL NAME FOR A DISTINCTION (RATHER LIKE THE FACT/VALUE DISTINCTION) BETWEEN STATEMENTS OF FACT AND UTTERANCES WITH AN ‘OUGHT’ IN THEM. In his Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Hume claimed (as usually interpreted) that the latter could never be logically derived from the former, and this

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Hylozoism

TREATMENT OF MATTER, OR PARTS OF THE MATERIAL WORLD, AS INTRINSICALLY ALIVE. Where animism tends to view the life as taking the form of discrete spirits, and panpsychism tends to refer to strictly philosophical views like that of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), hylozoism refers largely to views such as those of the earliest Greek philosophers (6th and 5th centuries BC).

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Hypothetico-deductive method

Scientific method whereby science should set up testable hypotheses and then try to falsify them, rather than trying to confirm them directly by accumulating favourable evidence. Introduced by the English scholar William Whewell (1794-1866) and developed especially by the Austrian philosopher Karl Raimund Popper (1902-1994). Those hypotheses which – despite severe tests – survive unfalsified are

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Idealism

Any view saying that reality is in some way mental, or depends intrinsically – and not just causally – on mind (not necessarily the human mind). The term may also apply to features of some philosophy, but is connected for philosophers with ‘idea’ rather than, as in popular usage, with ‘ideal’ in the sense

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Ideal utilitarianism

Version of utilitarianism which (in contrast to hedonistic utilitarianism) does not take pleasure to be the only, or even necessarily the main, value. The version of English empiricist George Edward Moore (1873-1958) emphasized aesthetic values and certain personal relationships, and was especially influential on the Bloomsbury Set during the early 20th century. Also see: falsificationism, inductivism, deductivism, improbabilism Source: G E Moore, Principia

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Ideational theories of meaning

Theories which say that words have meaning by standing for ideas, thoughts or concepts, and so on. Such theories are found in Aristotle’s (4th century BC) early work De Interpretatione (On Interpretation), especially chapters 1-4; and in the writing of English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704). They have the advantage over naming theories of meaning in that they provide a

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Law of identity

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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Identity of indiscernibles

One part of Leibniz’s law, saying that if what appear to be two or more things have all their properties in common they are identical and so only one thing. In its widest and weakest form, the properties concerned include relational properties such as spatiotemporal ones and self-identity. A stronger version limits the properties to

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Identity theory of mind

Theory, coming primarily from Australia in the 1950s, that various mental phenomena are identical with certain cerebral or neuro-physiological phenomena. (The names ‘brain process theory’ and ‘central state materialism’ are sometimes used for these two alternatives, respectively; more generally, the theory is called simply materialism or pysicalism, though both these terms have other uses too.)

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Identity theory of predication

Theory that subject/predicate statements are really identity statements, so that ‘X is red’ means ‘X is identical with some red thing’. This is in effect the same as the theory Geach traces back to Aristotle (384-322 BC), but which is criticized even earlier by Plato (c.427-c.347 BC) in the Sophist, and treats predation in terms of a two-term

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