uncovering the workings of external reality and seemingly knew of themselves that these virtually overflowing burdens of nothing, in that were about the physical substrates of human consciousness, the business of examining the distributive contribution in dynamic functionality and structural foundation of mind became the province of social scientists and humanists. Adolphe Quételet proposed a ‘social physics’ that could serve as the basis for a new discipline called sociology, and his contemporary Auguste Comte concluded that a true scientific understanding of the social reality was quite inevitable. Mind, in the view of these figures, was a separate and distinct mechanism subject to the lawful workings of a mechanical social reality.
More formal European philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant, sought to reconcile representations of external reality in mind with the motions of matter-based on the dictates of pure reason. This impulse was also apparent in the utilitarian ethics of Jerry Bentham and John Stuart Mill, in the historical materialism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and in the pragmatism of Charles Smith, William James and John Dewey. These thinkers were painfully aware, however, of the inability of reason to posit a self-consistent basis for bridging the gap between mind and matter, and each remains obliged to conclude that the realm of the mental exists only in the subjective reality of the individual.
The fatal flaw of pure reason is, of course, the absence of emotion, and purely explanations of the division between subjective reality and external reality, of which had limited appeal outside the community of intellectuals. The figure most responsible for infusing our understanding of the Cartesian dualism with contextual representation of our understanding with emotional content was the death of God theologian Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900. After declaring that God and ‘divine will’, did not exist, Nietzsche reified the ‘existence’ of consciousness in the domain of subjectivity as the ground for individual ‘will’ and summarily reducing all previous philosophical attempts to articulate the ‘will to truth’. The dilemma, forth in, had seemed to mean, by the validation, . . . as accredited for doing of science, in that the claim that Nietzsche’s earlier versions to the ‘will to truth’, disguises the fact that all alleged truths were arbitrarily created in the subjective reality of the individual and are expressed or manifesting the individualism of ‘will’.
In Nietzsche’s view, the separation between mind and matter is more absolute and total than previously been imagined. Based on the assumption that there is no really necessary correspondence between linguistic constructions of reality in human subjectivity and external reality, he deuced that we are all locked in ‘a prison house of language’. The prison as he concluded it, was also a ‘space’ where the philosopher can examine the ‘innermost desires of his nature’ and articulate a new message of individual existence founded on ‘will’.
Those who fail to enact their existence in this space, Nietzsche says, are enticed into sacrificing their individuality on the nonexistent altars of religious beliefs and democratic or socialists’ ideals and become, therefore, members of the anonymous and docile crowd. Nietzsche also invalidated the knowledge claims of science in the examination of human subjectivity. Science, he said. Is not exclusive to natural phenomenons and favors reductionistic examination of phenomena at the expense of mind? It also seeks to reduce the separateness and uniqueness of mind with mechanistic descriptions that disallow and basis for the free exercise of individual will.
Nietzsche’s emotionally charged defense of intellectual freedom and radial empowerment of mind as the maker and transformer of the collective fictions that shape human reality in a soulless mechanistic universe proved terribly influential on twentieth-century thought. Furthermore, Nietzsche sought to reinforce his view of the subjective character of scientific knowledge by appealing to an epistemological crisis over the foundations of logic and arithmetic that arose during the last three decades of the nineteenth century. Through a curious course of events, attempted by Edmund Husserl 1859-1938, a German mathematician and a principal founder of phenomenology, wherefor to resolve this crisis resulted in a view of the character of consciousness that closely resembled that of Nietzsche.
The best-known disciple of Husserl was Martin Heidegger, and the work of both figures greatly influenced that of the French atheistic existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. The work of Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre became foundational to that of the principal architects of philosophical postmodernism, and deconstructionist Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. It obvious attribution of a direct linkage between the nineteenth-century crisis about the epistemological foundations of mathematical physics and the origin of philosophical postmodernism served to perpetuate the Cartesian two-world dilemma in an even more oppressive form. It also allows us better to understand the origins of cultural ambience and the ways in which they could resolve that conflict.
The mechanistic paradigms of the late in the nineteenth century was the one Einstein came to know when he studied physics. Most physicists believed that it represented an eternal truth, but Einstein was open to fresh ideas. Inspired by Mach’s critical mind, he demolished the Newtonian ideas of space and time and replaced them with new, ‘relativistic’ notions.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), was a French philosopher, dramatist, novelist, and political journalist, who was a leading exponent of existentialism. Jean-Paul Sartre helped to develop existential philosophy through his writings, novels, and plays. Much of Sartre’s work focuses on the dilemma of choice faced by free individuals and on the challenge of creating meaning by acting responsibly in an indifferent world. In stating that ‘man is condemned to be free,’ Sartre reminds us of the responsibility that accompanies human decisions.
Sartre was born in Paris, June 21, 1905, and educated at the Écôle Normale Supérieure in Paris, the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, and the French Institute in Berlin. He taught philosophy at various lycées from 1929 until the outbreak of World War II, when he was called into military service. In 1940-41 he was imprisoned by the Germans; after his release, he taught in Neuilly, France, and later in Paris, and was active in the French Resistance. The German authorities, unaware of his underground activities, permitted the production of his antiauthoritarian play The Flies (1943; trans. 1946) and the publication of his major philosophic work Being and Nothingness (1943; trans. 1953). Sartre gave up teaching in 1945 and founded the political and literary magazine Les Temps Modernes, of which he became editor in chief. Sartre was active after 1947 as an independent Socialist, critical of both the USSR and the United States in the so-called cold war years. Later, he supported Soviet positions but still frequently criticized Soviet policies. Most of his writing of the 1950s deals with literary and political problems. Sartre rejected the 1964 Nobel Prize in literature, explaining that to accept such an award would compromise his integrity as a writer.
Sartre's philosophic works combine the phenomenology of the German philosopher Edmund Husserl, the metaphysics of the German philosophers Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Martin Heidegger, and the social theory of Karl Marx into a single view called existentialism. This view, which relates philosophical theory to life, literature, psychology, and political action, stimulated so much popular interest that existentialism became a worldwide movement.
In his early philosophic work, Being and Nothingness, Sartre conceived humans as beings who create their own world by rebelling against authority and by accepting personal responsibility for their actions, unaided by society, traditional morality, or religious faith. Distinguishing between human existence and the nonhuman world, he maintained that human existence is characterized by nothingness, that is, by the capacity to negate and rebel. His theory of existential psychoanalysis has by its asserting the inescapable responsibilities of all individuals for whom of their own decisions are made by the recognition of one's absolute freedom of choice. The necessary and, perhaps, prerequisite concernment for a continuing authentic human existence. His plays and novels express the belief that freedom and acceptance of personal responsibility are the main values in life and that individuals must rely on their creative powers rather than on social or religious authority.
In his later philosophic work Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960; trans. 1976), Sartre's emphasis shifted from existentialist freedom and subjectivity to Marxist social determinism. Sartre argued that the influence of modern society over the individual is so great as to produce serialization, by which he meant loss of self. Individual power and freedom can only be regained through group revolutionary action. Despite this exhortation to revolutionary political activity, Sartre himself did not join the Communist Party, thus retaining the freedom to criticize the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. He died in Paris, April 15, 1980.
The part of the theory of design or semiotics, that concerns the relationship between speakers and their signs. the study of the principles governing appropriate conversational moves is called general pragmatics, applied pragmatics treats of special kinds of linguistic interactions such as interviews and speech asking, nevertheless, the philosophical movement that has had a major impact on American culture from the late 19th century to the present. Pragmatism calls for ideas and theories to be tested in practice, by assessing whether acting upon the idea or theory produces desirable or undesirable results. According to pragmatists, all claims about truth, knowledge, morality, and politics must be tested in this way. Pragmatism has been critically spoken of in the traditional Western philosophy, especially the notional values that are absolute truths and absolute values. Although pragmatism was popular for a time but in France, England, and Italy, most observers believe that it encapsulation an American faith in know-how and basic practicality and an equally American distrust of abstract theories and ideology.
Pragmatists were to assume that all theories and institutions as tentative hypotheses and solutions. For this reason they believed that efforts to improve society, through such means as education or politics, must be geared toward problem solving and must be ongoing. Through their emphasis on connecting theory to practice, pragmatist thinkers attempted to transform all areas of philosophy, from metaphysics to ethics and political philosophy.
Pragmatism sought a neutral ground between traditional ideas about the nature of reality and radical theories of nihilism and irrationalism, which had become popular in Europe in the late 19th century. Traditional metaphysics assumed that the world has a fixed, intelligible structure and that human beings can know absolute or objective truths about the world and about what constitutes moral behavior. Nihilism and irrationalism, on the other hand, denied those very assumptions and their certitude. Pragmatists today still try to steer a middle course between contemporary offshoots of these two extremes.
The ideas of the pragmatists were considered revolutionary when they first appeared. To some critics, pragmatism’s refusal to affirm any absolutes carried negative implications for society. For example, pragmatists do not believe that a single absolute idea of goodness or justice exists, but rather that these concepts are changeable and depend on the context in which they are being discussed. The absence of these absolutes, critics feared, could result in a decline in moral standards. The pragmatists’ denial of absolutes, moreover, challenged the foundations of religion, government, and schools of thought. As a result, pragmatism influenced developments in psychology, sociology, education, semiotics (the study of signs and symbols), and scientific method, as well as philosophy, cultural criticism, and social reform movements. Various political groups have also drawn on the assumptions of pragmatism, from the progressive movements of the early 20th century to later experiments in social reform.
Pragmatism is best understood in its historical and cultural context. It arose during the late 19th century, a period of rapid scientific advancement typified by the theories of British biologist Charles Darwin, whose theories suggested to many thinkers that humanity and society are in a perpetual state of progress. During this same period a decline in traditional religious beliefs and values accompanied the industrialization and material progress of the time. In consequence it became necessary to rethink fundamental ideas about values, religion, science, community, and individuality.
The three most important pragmatists are American philosophers Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Peirce was primarily interested in scientific method and mathematics; his objective was to infuse scientific thinking into philosophy and society, and he believed that human comprehension of reality was becoming ever greater and that human communities were becoming increasingly progressive. Peirce developed pragmatism as a theory of meaning - in particular, the meaning of concepts used in science. The meaning of the concept ‘brittle,’ for example, is given by the observed consequences or properties that objects called ‘brittle’ exhibit. For Peirce, the only rational way to increase knowledge was to form mental habits that would test ideas through observation, experimentation, or what he called inquiry. Many philosophers known as logical positivists, a group of philosophers who have been influenced by Peirce, believed that our evolving species was fated to get ever closer to Truth. Logical positivists emphasize the importance of scientific verification, rejecting the assertion of positivism that personal experience is the basis of true knowledge.
James moved pragmatism in directions that Peirce strongly disliked. He generalized Peirce’s doctrines to encompass all concepts, beliefs, and actions; he also applied pragmatist ideas to truth as well as to meaning. James was primarily interested in showing how systems of morality, religion, and faith could be defended in a scientific civilization. He argued that sentiment, as well as logic, is crucial to rationality and that the great issues of life - morality and religious belief, for example - are leaps of faith. As such, they depend upon what he called ‘the will to believe’ and not merely on scientific evidence, which can never tell us what to do or what is worthwhile. Critics charged James with relativism (the belief that values depend on specific situations) and with crass expediency for proposing that if an idea or action works the way one intends, it must be right. But James can more accurately be described as a pluralist - someone who believes the world to be far too complex for any one philosophy to explain everything.
Dewey’s philosophy can be described as a version of philosophical naturalism, which regards human experience, intelligence, and communities as ever-evolving mechanisms. Using their experience and intelligence, Dewey believed, human beings can solve problems, including social problems, through inquiry. For Dewey, naturalism led to the idea of a democratic society that allows all members to acquire social intelligence and progress both as individuals and as communities. Dewey held that traditional ideas about knowledge, truth, and values, in which absolutes are assumed, are incompatible with a broadly Darwinian world-view in which individuals and society are progressing. In consequence, he felt that these traditional ideas must be discarded or revised. Indeed, for pragmatists, everything people know and do depends on a historical context and is thus tentative rather than absolute.
Many followers and critics of Dewey believe he advocated elitism and social engineering in his philosophical stance. Others think of him as a kind of romantic humanist. Both tendencies are evident in Dewey’s writings, although he aspired to synthesize the two realms.
The pragmatist tradition was revitalized in the 1980s by American philosopher Richard Rorty, who has faced similar charges of elitism for his belief in the relativism of values and his emphasis on the role of the individual in attaining knowledge. Interest has renewed in the classic pragmatists - Pierce, James, and Dewey - as an alternative to Rorty’s interpretation of the tradition.
In an ever changing world, pragmatism has many benefits. It defends social experimentation as a means of improving society, accepts pluralism, and rejects dead dogmas. But a philosophy that offers no final answers or absolutes and that appears vague as a result of trying to harmonize opposites may also be unsatisfactory to some.
One of the five branches into which semiotics is usually divided the study of meaning of words, and their relation of designed to the object studied, a semantic is provided for a formal language when an interpretation or model is specified. Nonetheless, the Semantics, the Greek semanticist, ‘significant,’ the study of the meaning of linguistic signs - that is, words, expressions, and sentences. Scholars of semantics try to one answer such questions as ‘What is the meaning of (the word) X?’ They do this by studying what signs are, as well as how signs possess significance - that is, how they are intended by speakers, how they designate (make reference to things and ideas), and how they are interpreted by hearers. The goal of semantics is to match the meanings of signs - what they stand for - with the process of assigning those meanings.
Semantics is studied from philosophical (pure) and linguistic (descriptive and theoretical) approaches, plus an approach known as general semantics. Philosophers look at the behavior that goes with the process of meaning. Linguists study the elements or features of meaning as they are related in a linguistic system. General semanticists concentrate on meaning as influencing what people think and do.
These semantic approaches also have broader application. Anthropologists, through descriptive semantics, study what people categorize as culturally important. Psychologists draw on theoretical semantic studies that attempt to describe the mental process of understanding and to identify how people acquire meaning (as well as sound and structure) in language. Animal behaviorists research how and what other species communicate. Exponents of general semantics examine the different values (or connotations) of signs that supposedly mean the same thing (such as ‘the victor at Jena’ and ‘the loser at Waterloo,’ both referring to Napoleon). Also in a general-semantics vein, literary critics have been influenced by studies differentiating literary language from ordinary language and describing how literary metaphors evoke feelings and attitudes.
In the late 19th century Michel Jules Alfred Breal, a French philologist, proposed a ‘science of significations’ that would investigate how sense is attached to expressions and other signs. In 1910 the British philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell published Principia Mathematica, which strongly influenced the Vienna Circle, a group of philosophers who developed the rigorous philosophical approach known as logical positivism.
One of the leading figures of the Vienna Circle, the German philosopher Rudolf Carnap, made a major contribution to philosophical semantics by developing symbolic logic, a system for analyzing signs and what they designate. In logical positivism, meaning is a relationship between words and things, and its study is empirically based: Because language, ideally, is a direct reflection of reality, signs match things and facts. In symbolic logic, however, mathematical notation is used to state what signs designate and to do so more clearly and precisely than is possible in ordinary language. Symbolic logic is thus itself a language, specifically, a metalanguage (formal technical language) used to talk about an object language (the language that is the object of a given semantic study).
An object language has a speaker (for example, a French woman) using expressions (such as la plume rouge) to designate a meaning (in this case, to indicate a definite pen - plume - of the color red - rouge). The full description of an object language in symbols is called the semiotic of that language. A language's semiotic has the following aspects: (1) a semantic aspect, in which signs (words, expressions, sentences) are given specific designations; (2) a pragmatic aspect, in which the contextual relations between speakers and signs are indicated; and (3) a syntactic aspect, in which formal relations among the elements within signs (for example, among the sounds in a sentence) are indicated.
An interpreted language in symbolic logic is an object language together with rules of meaning that link signs and designations. Each interpreted sign has a truth condition - a condition that must be met in order for the sign to be true. A sign's meaning is what the sign designates when its truth condition is satisfied. For example, the expression or sign ‘the moon is a sphere’ is understood by someone who knows English; however, although it is understood, it may or may not be true. The expression is true if the thing it is extended to - the moon - is in fact spherical. To determine the sign's truth value, one must look at the moon for oneself.
The symbolic logic of logical positivist philosophy thus represents an attempt to get at meaning by way of the empirical verifiability of signs - by whether the truth of the sign can be confirmed by observing something in the real world. This attempt at understanding meaning has been only moderately successful. The Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein rejected it in favor of his ‘ordinary language’ philosophy, in which he asserted that thought is based on everyday language. Not all signs designate things in the world, he pointed out, nor can all signs be associated with truth values. In his approach to philosophical semantics, the rules of meaning are disclosed in how speech is used.
From ordinary-language philosophy has evolved the current theory of speech-act semantics. The British philosopher J. L. Austin claimed that, by speaking, a person performs an act, or does something (such as state, predict, or warn), and that meaning is found in what an expression does, in the act it performs. The American philosopher John R. Searle extended Austin's ideas, emphasizing the need to relate the functions of signs or expressions to their social context. Searle asserted that speech encompasses at least three kinds of acts: (1) locutionary acts, in which things are said with a certain sense or reference (as in ‘the moon is a sphere’); (2) illocutionary acts, in which such acts as promising or commanding are performed by means of speaking; and (3) perlocutionary acts, in which the speaker, by speaking, does something to someone else (for example, angers, consoles, or persuades someone). The speaker's intentions are conveyed by the illocutionary force that is given to the signs - that is, by the actions implicit in what is said. To be successfully meant, however, the signs must also be appropriate, sincere, consistent with the speaker's general beliefs and conduct, and recognizable as meaningful by the hearer.
What has developed in philosophical semantics, then, is a distinction between truth-based semantics and speech-act semantics. Some critics of speech-act theory believe that it deals primarily with meaning in communication (as opposed to meaning in language) and thus is part of the pragmatic aspect of a language's semiotic - that it relates to signs and to the knowledge of the world shared by speakers and hearers, rather than relating to signs and their designations (semantic aspect) or to formal relations among signs (syntactic aspect). These scholars hold that semantics should be restricted to assigning interpretations to signs alone - independent of a speaker and hearer.
Researchers in descriptive semantics examine what signs mean in particular languages. They aim, for instance, to identify what constitutes nouns or noun phrases and verbs or verb phrases. For some languages, such as English, this is done with subject-predicate analysis. For languages without clear-cut distinctions between nouns, verbs, and prepositions, it is possible to say what the signs mean by analyzing the structure of what are called propositions. In such an analysis, a sign is seen as an operator that combines with one or more arguments (also signs), often nominal arguments (noun phrases) or, relates nominal arguments to other elements in the expression (such as prepositional phrases or adverbial phrases). For example, in the expression ‘Bill gives Mary the book,’‘gives’ is an operator that relates the arguments ‘Bill,’‘Mary,’ and ‘the book.’
Whether using subject-predicate analysis or propositional analysis, descriptive semanticists establish expression classes (classes of items that can substitute for one another within a sign) and classes of items within the conventional parts of speech (such as nouns and verbs). The resulting classes are thus defined in terms of syntax, and they also have semantic roles; that is, the items in these classes perform specific grammatical functions, and in so doing they establish meaning by predicating, referring, making distinctions among entities, relations, or actions. For example, ‘kiss’ belongs to an expression class with other items such as ‘hit’ and ‘see,’ as well as to the conventional part of speech ‘verb,’ in which it is part of a subclass of operators requiring two arguments (an actor and a receiver). In ‘Mary kissed John,’ the syntactic role of ‘kiss’ is to relate two nominal arguments (‘Mary’ and ‘John’), whereas its semantic role is to identify a type of action. Unfortunately for descriptive semantics, however, it is not always possible to find a one-to-one correlation of syntactic classes with semantic roles. For instance, ‘John’ has the same semantic role - to identify a person - in the following two sentences: ‘John is easy to please’ and ‘John is eager to please.’ The syntactic role of ‘John’ in the two sentences, however, is different: In the first, ‘John’ is the receiver of an action; in the second, ‘John’ is the actor.
Linguistic semantics is also used by anthropologists called ethnoscientists to conduct formal semantic analysis (componential analysis) to determine how expressed signs - usually single words as vocabulary items called lexemes - in a language are related to the perceptions and thoughts of the people who speak the language. Componential analysis tests the idea that linguistic categories influence or determine how people view the world; this idea is called the Whorf hypothesis after the American anthropological linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf, who proposed it. In componential analysis, lexemes that have a common range of meaning constitute a semantic domain. Such a domain is characterized by the distinctive semantic features (components) that differentiate individual lexemes in the domain from one another, and also by features shared by all the lexemes in the domain. Such componential analysis points out, for example, that in the domain ‘seat’ in English, the lexemes ‘chair,’‘sofa,’‘loveseat,’ and ‘bench’ can be distinguished from one another according to how many people are accommodated and whether a back support is included. At the same time all these lexemes share the common component, or feature, of meaning ‘something on which to sit.’
Linguists pursuing such componential analysis hope to identify a universal set of such semantic features, from which are drawn the different sets of features that characterize different languages. This idea of universal semantic features has been applied to the analysis of systems of myth and kinship in various cultures by the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. He showed that people organize their societies and interpret their place in these societies in ways that, despite apparent differences, have remarkable underlying similarities.
Linguists concerned with theoretical semantics are looking for a general theory of meaning in language. To such linguists, known as transformational-generative grammarians, meaning is part of the linguistic knowledge or competence that all humans possess. A generative grammar as a model of linguistic competence has a phonological (sound-system), a syntactic, and a semantic component. The semantic component, as part of a generative theory of meaning, is envisioned as a system of rules that govern how interpretable signs are interpreted and determine that other signs (such as ‘Colorless green ideas sleep furiously’), although grammatical expressions, are meaningless - semantically blocked. The rules must also account for how a sentence such as ‘They passed the port at midnight’ can have at least two interpretations.
Generative semantics grew out of proposals to explain a speaker's ability to produce and understand new expressions where grammar or syntax fails. Its goal is to explain why and how, for example, a person understands at first hearing that the sentence ‘Colorless green ideas sleep furiously’ has no meaning, even though it follows the rules of English grammar; or how, in hearing a sentence with two possible interpretations (such as ‘They passed the port at midnight’), one decides which meaning applies.
In generative semantics, the idea developed that all information needed to semantically interpret a sign (usually a sentence) is contained in the sentence's underlying grammatical or syntactic deep structure. The deep structure of a sentence involves lexemes (understood as words or vocabulary items composed of bundles of semantic features selected from the proposed universal set of semantic features). On the sentence's surface (that is, when it is spoken) these lexemes will appear as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech - that is, as vocabulary items. When the sentence is formulated by the speaker, semantic roles (such as subject, object, predicate) are assigned to the lexemes; the listener hears the spoken sentence and interprets the semantic features that are meant.
Whether deep structure and semantic interpretation are distinct from one another is a matter of controversy. Most generative linguists agree, however, that a grammar should generate the set of semantically well-formed expressions that are possible in a given language, and that the grammar should associate a semantic interpretation with each expression.
Another subject of debate is whether semantic interpretation should be understood as syntactically based (that is, coming from a sentence's deep structure); Or, whether it should be seen as semantically based. According to Noam Chomsky, an American scholar who is particularly influential in this field, it is possible - in a syntactically based theory - for surface structure and deep structure jointly to determine the semantic interpretation of an expression.
The focus of general semantics is how people evaluate words and how that evaluation influences their behavior. Begun by the Polish American linguist Alfred Korzybski and long associated with the American semanticist and politician, S. I. Hayakawa, general semantics has been used in efforts to make people aware of dangers inherent in treating words as more than symbols. It has been extremely popular with writers who use language to influence people's ideas. In their work, these writers use general-semantics guidelines for avoiding loose generalizations, rigid attitudes, inappropriate finality, and imprecision. Some philosophers and linguists, however, have criticized general semantics as lacking scientific rigor, and the approach has declined in popularity.
Positivism, system of philosophy based on experience and empirical knowledge of natural phenomena, in which metaphysics and theology are regarded as inadequate and imperfect systems of knowledge. The doctrine was first called positivism by the 19th-century French mathematician and philosopher Auguste Comte (1798-1857), but some of the positivist concepts may be traced to the British philosopher David Hume, the French philosopher Duc de Saint-Simon, and the German philosopher Immanuel Kant.
Comte chose the word positivism on the ground that it indicated the ‘reality’ and ‘constructive tendency’ that he claimed for the theoretical aspect of the doctrine. He was, in the main, interested in a reorganization of social life for the good of humanity through scientific knowledge, and thus control of natural forces. The two primary components of positivism, the philosophy and the polity (or program of individual and social conduct), were later welded by Comte into a whole under the conception of a religion, in which humanity was the object of worship. A number of Comte's disciples refused, however, to accept this religious development of his philosophy, because it seemed to contradict the original positivist philosophy. Many of Comte's doctrines were later adapted and developed by the British social philosophers John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer and by the Austrian philosopher and physicist Ernst Mach.
By comparison, the moral philosopher and epistemologist Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848) argues, though, that there is something else, an infinity that doe not have this whatever you need it to be elasticity. In fact a truly infinite quantity (for example, the length of a straight ligne unbounded in either direction, meaning: The magnitude of the spatial entity containing all the points determined solely by their abstractly conceivable relation to two fixed points) does not by any means need to be variable, and in adduced example it is in fact not variable. Conversely, it is quite possible for a quantity merely capable of being taken greater than we have already taken it, and of becoming larger than any pre-assigned (finite) quantity, nevertheless it is to mean, in that of all times is merely finite, which holds in particular of every numerical quantity 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
In other words, for Bolzano there could be a true infinity that was not a variable something that was only bigger than anything you might specify. Such a true infinity was the result of joining two pints together and extending that ligne in both directions without stopping. And what is more, he could separate off the demands of calculus, using a finite quality without ever bothering with the slippery potential infinity. Here was both a deeper understanding of the nature of infinity and the basis on which are built in his safe infinity free calculus.
This use of the inexhaustible follows on directly from most Bolzanos criticism of the way that we use as a variable, something that would be bigger than anything you could specify, but never quite reached the true, absolute infinity. In Paradoxes of the Infinity Bolzano points out that is possible for a quantity merely capable of becoming larger than any one pre-assigned (finite) quantity, nevertheless to remain at all times merely finite.
Bolzano intended this as a criticism of the way infinity was treated, but Professor Jacquette sees it instead of a way of masking use of practical applications like calculus without the need for weasel words about infinity.
By replacing with ¤ we do away with one of the most common requirements for infinity, but is there anything left that map out to the real world? Can we confine infinity to that pure mathematical other world, where anything, however unreal, can be constructed, and forget about it elsewhere? Surprisingly, this seems to have been the view, at least at one point in time, even of the German mathematician and founder of set-theory Georg Cantor (1845-1918), himself, whose comments in 1883, that only the finite numbers are real.
Keeping within the lines of reason, both the Cambridge mathematician and philosopher Frank Plumpton Ramsey (1903-30) and the Italian mathematician G. Peano (1858-1932) have been to distinguish logical paradoxes and that depend upon the notion of reference or truth (semantic notions), such are the postulates justifying mathematical induction. It ensures that a numerical series is closed, in the sense that nothing but zero and its successors can be numbers. In that any series satisfying a set of axioms can be conceived as the sequence of natural numbers. Candidates from set theory include the Zermelo numbers, where the empty set is zero, and the successor of each number is its unit set, and the von Neuman numbers, where each number is the set of all smaller numbers. A similar and equally fundamental complementarity exists in the relation between zero and infinity. Although the fullness of infinity is logically antithetical to the emptiness of zero, infinity can be obtained from zero with a simple mathematical operation. The division of many numbers by zero is infinity, while the multiplication of any number by zero is zero.
With the set theory developed by the German mathematician and logician Georg Cantor. From 1878 to 1807, Cantor created a theory of abstract sets of entities that eventually became a mathematical discipline. A set, as he defined it, is a collection of definite and distinguished objects in thought or perception conceived as a whole.
Cantor attempted to prove that the process of counting and the definition of integers could be placed on a solid mathematical foundation. His method was to repeatedly place the elements in one set into one-to-one correspondence with those in another. In the case of integers, Cantor showed that each integer (1, 2, 3, . . . n) could be paired with an even integers (2, 4, 6, . . . n), and, therefore, that the set of all integers was equal to the set of all even numbers.
Amazingly, Cantor discovered that some infinite sets were large than others and that infinite sets formed a hierarchy of greater infinities. After this failed attempt to save the classical view of logical foundations and internal consistency of mathematical systems, it soon became obvious that a major crack had appeared in the seemingly sold foundations of number and mathematics. Meanwhile, an impressive number of mathematicians began to see that everything from functional analysis to the theory of real numbers depended on the problematic character of number itself.
While, in the theory of probability Ramsey was the first to show how a personalised theory could be developed, based on precise behavioural notions of preference and expectation. In the philosophy of language, Ramsey was one of the first thinkers to accept a redundancy theory of truth, which hr combined with radical views of the function of man y kinds of propositions. Neither generalizations nor causal propositions, nor those treating probability or ethics, describe facts, but each has a different specific function in our intellectual economy.
Ramsey advocates that of a sentence generated by taking all the sentence affirmed in a scientific theory that use some term, e.g., quark. Replacing the term by a variable, and existentially quantifying into the result. Instead of saying quarks have such-and-such properties, Ramsey postdated that the sentence as saying that there is something that has those properties. If the process is repeated, the sentence gives the topic-neutral structure of the theory, but removes any implications that we know what the term so treated denote. It leaves open the possibility of identifying the theoretical item with whatever it is that best fits the description provided. Nonetheless, it was pointed out by the Cambridge mathematician Newman that if the process is carried out for all except the logical bones of the theory, then by the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem, the result will be interpretable in any domain of sufficient cardinality, and the content of the theory may reasonably be felt to have been lost.
It seems, that the most taken of paradoxes in the foundations of set theory as discovered by Russell in 1901. Some classes have themselves as members: The class of all abstract objects, for example, is an abstract object, whereby, others do not: The class of donkeys is not itself a donkey. Now consider the class of all classes that are not members of themselves, is this class a member of itself, that, if it is, then it is not, and if it is not, then it is.
The paradox is structurally similar to easier examples, such as the paradox of the barber. Such one like a village having a barber in it, who shaves all and only the people who do not have in themselves. Who shaves the barber? If he shaves himself, then he does not, but if he does not shave himself, then he does not. The paradox is actually just a proof that there is no such barber or in other words, that the condition is inconsistent. All the same, it is no to easy to say why there is no such class as the one Russell defines. It seems that there must be some restriction on the kind of definition that are allowed to define classes and the difficulty that of finding a well-motivated principle behind any such restriction.
The French mathematician and philosopher Henri Jules Poincaré (1854-1912) believed that paradoxes like those of Russell and the barber were due to such as the impredicative definitions, and therefore proposed banning them. But, it tuns out that classical mathematics required such definitions at too many points for the ban to be easily absolved. Having, in turn, as forwarded by Poincaré and Russell, was that in order to solve the logical and semantic paradoxes it would have to ban any collection (set) containing members that can only be defined by means of the collection taken as a whole. It is, effectively by all occurring principles into which have an adopting vicious regress, as to mark the definition for which involves no such failure. There is frequently room for dispute about whether regresses are benign or vicious, since the issue will hinge on whether it is necessary to reapply the procedure. The cosmological argument is an attempt to find a stopping point for what is otherwise seen as being an infinite regress, and, to ban of the predicative definitions.
The investigation of questions that arise from reflection upon sciences and scientific inquiry, are such as called of a philosophy of science. Such questions include, what distinctions in the methods of science? s there a clear demarcation between scenes and other disciplines, and how do we place such enquires as history, economics or sociology? And scientific theories probable or more in the nature of provisional conjecture? Can the be verified or falsified? What distinguished good from bad explanations? Might there be one unified since, embracing all the special science? For much of the 20th century there questions were pursued in a highly abstract and logical framework it being supposed that as general logic of scientific discovery that a general logic of scientific discovery a justification might be found. However, many now take interests in a more historical, contextual and sometimes sociological approach, in which the methods and successes of a science at a particular time are regarded less in terms of universal logical principles and procedure, and more in terms of their availability to methods and paradigms as well as the social context.
In addition, to general questions of methodology, there are specific problems within particular sciences, giving subjects as biology, mathematics and physics.
The intuitive certainty that sparks aflame the dialectic awareness for its immediate concerns are either of the truth or by some other in an object of apprehensions, such as a concept. Awareness as such, has to its amounting quality value the place where philosophical understanding of the source of our knowledge are, however, in covering the sensible apprehension of things and pure intuition it is that which stricture sensation into the experience of things accent of its direction that orchestrates the celestial overture into measures in space and time.
The notion that determines how something is seen or evaluated of the status of law and morality especially associated with St Thomas Aquinas and the subsequent scholastic tradition. More widely, any attempt to cement the moral and legal order together with the nature of the cosmos or how the nature of human beings, for which sense it is also found in some Protestant writers, and arguably derivative from a Platonic view of ethics, and is implicit in ancient Stoicism. Law stands above and apart from the activities of human lawmaker, it constitutes an objective set of principles that can be seen true by natural light or reason, and (in religion versions of the theory) that express Gods will for creation. Non-religious versions of the theory substitute objective conditions for human flourishing as the source of constraints upon permissible actions and social arrangements. Within the natural law tradition, different views have been held about the relationship between the rule of law about God s will, for instance the Dutch philosopher Hugo Grothius (1583-1645), similarly takes upon the view that the content of natural law is independent of any will, including that of God, while the German theorist and historian Samuel von Pufendorf (1632-94) takes the opposite view, thereby facing the problem of one horn of the Euthyphro dilemma, that simply states, that its dilemma arises from whatever the source of authority is supposed to be, for in which do we care about the general good because it is good, or do we just call good things that we care about. Wherefore, by facing the problem that may be to assume of a strong form, in which it is claimed that various facts entail values, or a weaker form, from which it confines itself to holding that reason by itself is capable of discerning moral requirements that are supped of binding to all human bings regardless of their desires
Although the morality of people send the ethical amount from which the same thing, is that there is a usage that restricts morality to systems such as that of the German philosopher and founder of ethical philosophy Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), based on notions such as duty, obligation, and principles of conduct, reserving ethics for more than the Aristotelian approach to practical reasoning based on the notion of a virtue, and generally avoiding the separation of moral considerations from other practical considerations. The scholarly issues are complex, with some writers seeing Kant as more Aristotelian and Aristotle as, ore involved in a separate sphere of responsibility and duty, than the simple contrast suggests. Some theorists see the subject in terms of a number of laws (as in the Ten Commandments). The status of these laws may be test they are the edicts of a divine lawmaker, or that they are truths of reason, knowable deductively. Other approaches to ethics (e.g., eudaimonism, situation ethics, virtue ethics) eschew general principles as much as possible, frequently disguising the great complexity of practical reasoning. For Kantian notion of the moral law is a binding requirement of the categorical imperative, and to understand whether they are equivalent at some deep level. Kants own applications of the notion are not always convincing, as for one cause of confusion in relating Kants ethics to theories such additional expressivism is that it is easy, but mistaken, to suppose that the categorical nature of the imperative means that it cannot be the expression of sentiment, but must derive from something unconditional or necessary such as the voice of reason.
For which ever reason, the mortal being makes of its presence to the future of weighing of that which one must do, or that which can be required of one. The term carries implications of that which is owed (due) to other people, or perhaps in onself. Universal duties would be owed to persons (or sentient beings) as such, whereas special duty in virtue of specific relations, such as being the child of someone, or having made someone a promise. Duty or obligation is the primary concept of deontological approaches to ethics, but is constructed in other systems out of other notions. In the system of Kant, a perfect duty is one that must be performed whatever the circumstances: Imperfect duties may have to give way to the more stringent ones. In another way, perfect duties are those that are correlative with the right to others, imperfect duties are not. Problems with the concept include the ways in which due needs to be specified (a frequent criticism of Kant is that his notion of duty is too abstract). The concept may also suggest of a regimented view of ethical life in which we are all forced conscripts in a kind of moral army, and may encourage an individualistic and antagonistic view of social relations.
The most generally accepted account of externalism and/or internalism, that this distinction is that a theory of justification is internalist if only if it requiem that all of the factors needed for a belief to be epistemologically justified for a given person be cognitively accessible to that person, internal to cognitive perceptivity, and externalist, if it allows that at least some of the justifying factors need not be thus accessible, so that thy can be external to the believes cognitive perceptive, beyond any such given relations. However, epistemologists often use the distinction between internalist and externalist theories of epistemic justification without offering any very explicit explication.
The externalist/internalist distinction has been mainly applied to theories of epistemic justification: It has also been applied in a closely related way to accounts of knowledge and in a rather different way to accounts of belief and thought contents.
The internalist requirement of cognitive accessibility can be interpreted in at least two ways: A strong version of internalism would require that the believe actually be aware of the justifying factor in order to be justified: While a weaker version would require only that he be capable of becoming aware of them by focussing his attentions appropriately, but without the need for any change of position, new information, etc. Though the phrase cognitively accessible suggests the weak interpretation, the main intuitive motivation for internalism, viz the idea that epistemic justification requires that the believe actually have in his cognitive possession a reason for thinking that the belief is true, and would require the strong interpretation.
Perhaps, the clearest example of an internalist position would be a Foundationalist view according to which foundational beliefs pertain to immediately experienced states of mind and other beliefs are justified by standing in cognitively accessible logical or inferential relations to such foundational beliefs. Such a view could count as either a strong or a weak version of internalism, depending on whether actual awareness of the justifying elements or only the capacity to become aware of them is required. Similarly, a coherent view could also be internalist, if both the beliefs or other states with which a justification belief is required to cohere and the coherence relations themselves are reflectively accessible.
It should be carefully noticed that when internalism is construed in this way, it is neither necessary nor sufficient by itself for internalism that the justifying factors literally be internal mental states of the person in question. Not necessary, necessary, because on at least some views, e.g., a direct realist view of perception, something other than a mental state of the believe can be cognitively accessible: Not sufficient, because there are views according to which at least some mental states need not be actual (strong version) or even possible (weak version) objects of cognitive awareness. Also, on this way of drawing the distinction, a hybrid view, according to which some of the factors required for justification must be cognitively accessible while others need not and in general will not be, would count as an externalist view. Obviously too, a view that was externalist in relation to a strong version of internalism (by not requiring that the believe actually be aware of all justifiable factors) could still be internalist in relation to a weak version (by requiring that he at least be capable of becoming aware of them).
The most prominent recent externalist views have been versions of reliabilism, whose requirements for justification is roughly that the belief be produced in a way or via a process that makes of objectively likely that the belief is true. What makes such a view externalist is the absence of any requirement that the person for whom the belief is justified have any sort of cognitive access to the relations of reliability in question. Lacking such access, such a person will in general have no reason for thinking that the belief is true or likely to be true , but will, on such an account, nonetheless be epistemically justified in according it. Thus such a view arguably marks a major break from the modern epistemological tradition, stemming from Descartes, which identifies epistemic justification with having a reason, perhaps even a conclusive reason for thinking that the belief is true. An epistemologist working within this tradition is likely to feel that the externalist, than offering a competing account of the same concept of epistemic justification with which the traditional epistemologist is concerned, has simply changed the subject.
The main objection to externalism rests on the intuitive certainty that the basic requirement for epistemic justification is that the acceptance of the belief in question be rational or responsible in relation to the cognitive goal of truth, which seems to require in turn that the believe actually be dialectally aware of a reason for thinking that the belief is true (or, at the very least, that such a reason be available to him). Since the satisfaction of an externalist condition is neither necessary nor sufficient for the existence of such a cognitively accessible reason, it is argued, externalism is mistaken as an account of epistemic justification. This general point has been elaborated by appeal to two sorts of putative intuitive counter-examples to externalism. The first of these challenges the necessity of belief which seem intuitively to be justified, but for which the externalist conditions are not satisfied. The standard examples in this sort are cases where beliefs are produced in some very nonstandard way, e.g., by a Cartesian demon, but nonetheless, in such a way that the subjective experience of the believe is indistinguishable from that of someone whose beliefs are produced more normally. The intuitive claim is that the believe in such a case is nonetheless epistemically justified, as much so as one whose belief is produced in a more normal way, and hence that externalist account of justification must be mistaken.
Perhaps the most striking reply to this sort of counter-example, on behalf of a cognitive process is to be assessed in normal possible worlds, i.e., in possible worlds that are actually the way our world is common-seismically believed to be, than in the world which contains the belief being judged. Since the cognitive processes employed in the Cartesian demon cases are, for which we may assume, reliable when assessed in this way, the reliability can agree that such beliefs are justified. The obvious, to a considerable degree of bringing out the issue of whether it is or not an adequate rationale for this construal of Reliabilism, so that the reply is not merely a notional presupposition guised as having representation.
The correlative way of elaborating on the general objection to justificatory externalism challenges the sufficiency of the various externalist conditions by citing cases where those conditions are satisfied, but where the believes in question seem intuitively not to be justified. In this context, the most widely discussed examples have to do with possible occult cognitive capacities, like clairvoyance. Considering the point in application once, again, to Reliabilism, the claim is that to think that he has such a cognitive power, and, perhaps, even good reasons to the contrary, is not rational or responsible and therefore not epistemically justified in accepting the belief that result from his clairvoyance, despite the fact that the Reliabilist condition is satisfied.
One sort of response to this latter sorts of objection is to bite the bullet and insist that such believes are in fact justified, dismissing the seeming intuitions to the contrary as latent internalist prejudice. A more widely adopted response attempts to impose additional conditions, usually of a roughly internalized sort, which will rule out the offending example, while stopping far of a full internalism. But, while there is little doubt that such modified versions of externalism can handle particular cases, as well enough to avoid clear intuitive implausibility, the usually problematic cases that they cannot handle, and also whether there is and clear motivation for the additional requirements other than the general internalist view of justification that externalist are committed to reject.
A view in this same general vein, one that might be described as a hybrid of internalism and externalism holds that epistemic justification requires that there is a justificatory factor that is cognitively accessible to the believe in question (though it need not be actually grasped), thus ruling out, e.g., a pure Reliabilism. At the same time, however, though it must be objectively true that beliefs for which such a factor is available are likely to be true, in addition, the fact need not be in any way grasped or cognitively accessible to the believe. In effect, of the premises needed to argue that a particular belief is likely to be true, one must be accessible in a way that would satisfy at least weakly internalised. The internalist will respond that this hybrid view is of no help at all in meeting the objection and has no belief nor is it held in the rational, responsible way that justification intuitively seems to require, for the believe in question, lacking one crucial premise, still has no reason at all for thinking that his belief is likely to be true.
An alternative to giving an externalist account of epistemic justification, one which may be more defensible while still accommodating many of the same motivating concerns, is to give an externalist account of knowledge directly, without relying on an intermediate account of justification. Such a view will obviously have to reject the justified true belief account of knowledge, holding instead that knowledge is true belief which satisfies the chosen externalist condition, e.g., a result of a reliable process (and perhaps, further conditions as well). This makes it possible for such a view to retain internalist account of epistemic justification, though the centrality of that concept to epistemology would obviously be seriously diminished.
Such an externalist account of knowledge can accommodate the commonsense conviction that animals, young children, and unsophisticated adults posses knowledge, though not the weaker conviction (if such a conviction does exists) that such individuals are epistemically justified in their beliefs. It is also at least less vulnerable to internalist counter-examples of the sort discussed, since the intuitions involved there pertain more clearly to justification than to knowledge. What is uncertain is what ultimate philosophical significance the resulting conception of knowledge is supposed to have. In particular, does it have any serious bearing on traditional epistemological problems and on the deepest and most troubling versions of scepticism, which seems in fact to be primarily concerned with justification, the an knowledge?`
A rather different use of the terms internalism and externalism has to do with the issue of how the content of beliefs and thoughts is determined: According to an internalist view of content, the content of such intention states depends only on the non-relational, internal properties of the individuals mind or grain, and not at all on his physical and social environment: While according to an externalist view, content is significantly affected by such external factors and suggests a view that appears of both internal and external elements are standardly classified as an external view.
As with justification and knowledge, the traditional view of content has been strongly internalized in character. The main argument for externalism derives from the philosophy of language, more specifically from the various phenomena pertaining to natural kind terms, indexical, etc. that motivate the views that have come to be known as direct reference theories. Such phenomena seem at least to show that the belief or thought content that can be properly attributed to a person is dependant on facts about his environment, e.g., whether he is on Earth or Twin Earth, what is fact pointing at, the classificatory criteria employed by expects in his social group, etc. - not just on what is going on internally in his mind or brain.
An objection to externalist account of content is that they seem unable to do justice to our ability to know the content of our beliefs or thought from the inside, simply by reflection. If content is depend on external factors pertaining to the environment, then knowledge of content should depend on knowledge of these factors - which will not in general be available to the person whose belief or thought is in question.
The adoption of an externalized account of mental content would seem to support an externalist account of justification, by way that if part or all of the content of a belief inaccessible to the believe, then both the justifying status of other beliefs in relation to that content and the status of that content justifying the beliefs will be similarly inaccessible, thus contravening the internalist requirement for justification. An internalist must insist that there are no justifiable relations of these sorts, that our internally associable content can either be justified or justly anything else: But such a response appears lame unless it is coupled with an attempt to show that the externalist account of content is mistaken.
A great deal of philosophical effort has been lavished on the attempt to naturalize content, i.e. to explain in non-semantic,. Non-intentional terms what it is for something to be representable (have content) and what it is for something to have some particular content rather than some other. There appear to be only four types of theory that have been proposed: Theories that ground representation in (1) similarity, (2) conversance, (3) functional role, (4) teleology.
Similarly, theories hold that 'r' represents 'x' in virtue of being similar to 'x'. This has seemed hopeless to most as a theory of mental representation because it appears to require that things in the brain must share properties with the things they represent: To represent a cat as furry appears to require something furry in the brain. Perhaps, a notion of similarity that is naturalistic and does not involve property sharing can be worked out, but it is not obvious how.
Covariance theories hold that 'r's' represent 'x' is grounded in the fact that 'r's' occurrence canaries with that of 'x'. This is most compelling he n one thinks about detection systems, the firing a neural structures in the visual system is said to represent vertical orientations, if its firing varies with the occurrence of vertical lines in the visual field of perceptivity.
Functional role theories hold that 'r's' represent 'x' is grounded in the functional role 'r' has in the representing system, i.e., on the relations imposed by specific cognitive processes imposed by specific cognitive processes between 'r' and other representations in the system's repertoire. Functional role theories take their cue from such common-sense ideas as that people cannot believe that cats are furry if they did not know that cats are animals or that fur is like hair.
Teleological theories hold that 'r' represent 'x' if it is 'r's' function to indicate, i.e., covary with 'x'. Teleological theories differ depending on the theory of functions they import. Perhaps the most important distinction is that between historical theories of functions. Historical theories individuated functional states (hence contents) in a way that is sensitive to the historical development of the state, i.e., to factors such as the way the state was 'learned', or the way it evolved. An historical theory might hold that the function of 'r' is to indicate 'x' only if the capacity to token 'r' was developed (selected, learned) because it indicates 'x'. Thus, a state physically indistinguishable from 'r's' historical origins would not represent 'x' according to historical theories.
Theories of representational content may be classified according to whether they are atomistic or holistic and according to whether they are externalistic or internalistic, whereby, emphasizing the priority of a whole over its parts. Furthermore, in the philosophy of language, this becomes the claim that the meaning of an individual word or sentence can only be understood in terms of its relation to an indefinitely larger body of language, such as a whole theory, or even a whole language or form of life. In the philosophy of mind a mental state similarly may be identified only in terms of its relations with others. Moderate holism may allow the other things besides these relationships also count; extreme holism would hold that a network of relationships is all that we have. A holistic view of science holds that experience only confirms or disconfirms large bodies of doctrine, impinging at the edges, and leaving some leeway over the adjustment that it requires.
Once, again, in the philosophy of mind and language, the view that what is thought, or said, or experienced, is essentially dependent on aspects of the world external to the mind of the subject. The view goes beyond holding that such mental states are typically caused by external factors, to insist that they could not have existed as they now do without the subject being embedded in an external world of a certain kind. It is these external relations that make up the essence or identify of the mental state. Externalism is thus opposed to the Cartesian separation of the mental from the physical, since that holds that the mental could in principle exist as it does even if there were no external world at all. Various external factors have been advanced as ones on which mental content depends, including the usage of experts, the linguistic, norms of the community. And the general causal relationships of the subject. In the theory of knowledge, externalism is the view that a person might know something by being suitably situated with respect to it, without that relationship being in any sense within his purview. The person might, for example, be very reliable in some respect without believing that he is. The view allows that you can know without being justified in believing that you know.
However, atomistic theories take a representation's content to be something that can be specified independent entity of that representation' s relations to other representations. What the American philosopher of mind, Jerry Alan Fodor (1935-) calls the crude causal theory, for example, takes a representation to be a |cow| - a menial representation with the same content as the word 'cow' - if its tokens are caused by instantiations of the property of being-a-cow, and this is a condition that places no explicit constraints on how |cow|'s must or might relate to other representations. Holistic theories contrasted with atomistic theories in taking the relations a representation bears to others to be essential to its content. According to functional role theories, a representation is a |cow| if it behaves like a |cow| should behave in inference.
Internalist theories take the content of a representation to be a matter determined by factors internal to the system that uses it. Thus, what Block (1986) calls 'short-armed' functional role theories are internalist. Externalist theories take the content of a representation to be determined, in part at least, by factors external to the system that uses it. Covariance theories, as well as telelogical theories that invoke an historical theory of functions, take content to be determined by 'external' factors. Crossing the atomist-holistic distinction with the internalist-externalist distinction.
Externalist theories (sometimes called non-individualistic theories) have the consequence that molecule for molecule identical cognitive systems might yet harbour representations with different contents. This has given rise to a controversy concerning 'narrow' content. If we assume some form of externalist theory is correct, then content is, in the first instance 'wide' content, i.e., determined in part by factors external to the representing system. On the other hand, it seems clear that, on plausible assumptions about how to individuate psychological capacities, internally equivalent systems must have the same psychological capacities. Hence, it would appear that wide content cannot be relevant to characterizing psychological equivalence. Since cognitive science generally assumes that content is relevant to characterizing psychological equivalence, philosophers attracted to externalist theories of content have sometimes attempted to introduce 'narrow' content, i.e., an aspect or kind of content that is equivalent internally equivalent systems. The simplest such theory is Fodor's idea (1987) that narrow content is a function from contents (i.e., from whatever the external factors are) to wide contents.
All the same, what a person expresses by a sentence is often a function of the environment in which he or she is placed. For example, the disease I refer to by the term like 'arthritis', or the kind of tree I refer to as a 'Maple' will be defined by criteria of which I know next to nothing. This raises the possibility of imagining two persons in rather different environments, but in which everything appears the same to each of them. The wide content of their thoughts and sayings will be different if the situation surrounding them is appropriately different: 'situation' may include the actual objects they perceive or the chemical or physical kinds of object in the world they inhabit, or the history of their words, or the decisions of authorities on what counts as an example, of one of the terms they use. The narrow content is that part of their thought which remains identical, through their identity of the way things appear, regardless of these differences of surroundings. Partisans of wide content may doubt whether any content in this sense narrow, partisans of narrow content believe that it is the fundamental notion, with wide content being explicable in terms of narrow content plus context.
One might also ground the fact value distinction in the attributional (or even motivational) component apparently implied by the making of valuational or deontic judgements: Thus, 'it is a good book, but that is no reason for a positive attribute towards it' and 'you ought to do it, but there is no reason to' seem inadmissible, whereas, substituting, 'an expensive book' and 'you will do it' yields permissible judgements. One might also argue that factual judgements are the kind which are in principle appraisable scientifically, and thereby anchor the distinction on the factual side. This ligne is plausible, but there is controversy over whether scientific procedures are 'value-free' in the required way.
Philosophers differ regarding the sense, if any, in which epistemology is normative (roughly, valuational). But what precisely is at stake in this controversy is no clearly than the problematic fact/value distinction itself. Must epistemologists as such make judgements of value or epistemic responsibility? If epistemology is naturalizable, then even epistemic principles simply articulate under what conditions - say, appropriate perceptual stimulations - a belief is justified, or constitutes knowledge. Its standards of justification, then would be like standards of, e.g., resilience for bridges. It is not obvious, however, that there appropriate standards can be established without independent judgements that, say, a certain kind of evidence is good enough for justified belief (or knowledge). The most plausible view may be that justification is like intrinsic goodness, though it supervenes on natural properties, it cannot be analysed wholly in factual statements.
Thus far, belief has been depicted as being all-or-nothing, however, as a resulting causality for which we have grounds for thinking it true, and, all the same, its acceptance is governed by epistemic norms, and, least of mention, it is partially subject to voluntary control and has functional affinities to belief. Still, the notion of acceptance, like that of degrees of belief, merely extends the standard picture, and does not replace it.
Traditionally, belief has been of epistemological interest in its propositional guise: 'S' believes that 'p', where 'p' is a reposition towards which an agent, 'S' exhibits an attitude of acceptance. Not all belief is of this sort. If I trust you to say, I believe you. And someone may believe in Mr. Radek, or in a free-market economy, or in God. It is sometimes supposed that all belief is 'reducible' to propositional belief, belief-that. Thus, my believing you might be thought a matter of my believing, is, perhaps, that what you say is true, and your belief in free markets or God, is a matter of your believing that free-market economies are desirable or that God exists.
Some philosophers have followed St, Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), in supposing that to believe in God is simply to believe that certain truths hold while others argue that belief-in is a distinctive attitude, on that includes essentially an element of trust. More commonly, belief-in has been taken to involve a combination of propositional belief together with some further attitude.
The moral philosopher Richard Price (1723-91) defends the claim that there are different sorts of belief-in, some, but not all reducible to beliefs-that. If you believe in God, you believe that God exists, that God is good, you believe that God is good, etc. But according to Price, your belief involves, in addition, a certain complex pro-attitude toward its object. Even so, belief-in outruns the evidence for the corresponding belief-that. Does this diminish its rationality? If belief-in presupposes believes-that, it might be thought that the evidential standards for the former must be, at least, as high as standards for the latter. And any additional pro-attitude might be thought to require a further layer of justification not required for cases of belief-that.
Belief-in may be, in general, less susceptible to alternations in the face of unfavourable evidence than belief-that. A believe who encounters evidence against God's existence may remain unshaken in his belief, in part because the evidence does not bear on his pro-attitude. So long as this is united with his belief that God exists, the reasonably so in a way that an ordinary propositional belief that would not.
Some philosophers think that the category of knowing for which true. Justified believing (accepting) is a requirement constituting only a species of Propositional knowledge, construed as an even broader category. They have proposed various examples of 'PK' that do not satisfy the belief and/ort justification conditions of the tripartite analysis. Such cases are often recognized by analyses of Propositional knowledge in terms of powers, capacities, or abilities. For instance, Alan R. White (1982) treats 'PK' as merely the ability to provide a correct answer to a possible questions, however, White may be equating 'producing' knowledge in the sense of producing 'the correct answer to a possible question' with 'displaying' knowledge in the sense of manifesting knowledge. (White, 1982). The latter can be done even by very young children and some non-human animals independently of their being asked questions, understanding questions, or recognizing answers to questions. Indeed, an example that has been proposed as an instance of knowing that 'h' without believing or accepting that 'h' can be modified so as to illustrate this point. Two examples concerns an imaginary person who has no special training or information about horses or racing, but who in an experiment persistently and correctly picks the winners of upcoming horseraces. If the example is modified so that the hypothetical 'seer' never picks winners but only muses over whether those horses wight win, or only reports those horses winning, this behaviour should be as much of a candidate for the person's manifesting knowledge that the horse in question will win as would be the behaviour of picking it as a winner.
These considerations expose limitations in Edward Craig's analysis (1990) of the concept of knowing of a person's being a satisfactory informant in relation to an inquirer who wants to find out whether or not 'h'. Craig realizes that counterexamples to his analysis appear to be constituted by Knower who are too recalcitrant to inform the inquirer, or too incapacitate to inform, or too discredited to be worth considering (as with the boy who cried 'Wolf'). Craig admits that this might make preferable some alternative view of knowledge as a different state that helps to explain the presence of the state of being a suitable informant when the latter does obtain. Such the alternate, which offers a recursive definition that concerns one's having the power to proceed in a way representing the state of affairs, causally involved in one's proceeding in this way. When combined with a suitable analysis of representing, this theory of propositional knowledge can be unified with a structurally similar analysis of knowing how to do something.
Knowledge and belief, according to most epistemologists, knowledge entails belief, so that I cannot know that such and such is the case unless I believe that such and such is the case. Others think this entailment thesis can be rendered more accurately if we substitute for belief some closely related attitude. For instance, several philosophers would prefer to say that knowledge entail psychological certainties (Prichard, 1950 and Ayer, 1956) or conviction (Lehrer, 1974) or acceptance (Lehrer, 1989). None the less, there are arguments against all versions of the thesis that knowledge requires having a belief-like attitude toward the known. These arguments are given by philosophers who think that knowledge and belief (or a facsimile) are mutually incompatible (the incomparability thesis), or by ones who say that knowledge does not entail belief, or vice versa, so that each may exist without the other, but the two may also coexist (the separability thesis).
The incompatibility thesis is sometimes traced to Plato ©. 429-347 BC) in view of his claim that knowledge is infallible while belief or opinion is fallible ('Republic' 476-9). But this claim would not support the thesis. Belief might be a component of an infallible form of knowledge in spite of the fallibility of belief. Perhaps, knowledge involves some factor that compensates for the fallibility of belief.
A. Duncan-Jones (1939: Also Vendler, 1978) cite linguistic evidence to back up the incompatibility thesis. He notes that people often say 'I do not believe she is guilty. I know she is' and the like, which suggest that belief rule out knowledge. However, as Lehrer (1974) indicates, the above exclamation is only a more emphatic way of saying 'I do not just believe she is guilty, I know she is' where 'just' makes it especially clear that the speaker is signalling that she has something more salient than mere belief, not that she has something inconsistent with belief, namely knowledge. Compare: 'You do not hurt him, you killed him'.
H.A. Prichard (1966) offers a defence of the incompatibility thesis that hinges on the equation of knowledge with certainty (both infallibility and psychological certitude) and the assumption that when we believe in the truth of a claim we are not certain about its truth. Given that belief always involves uncertainty while knowledge never dies, believing something rules out the possibility of knowing it. Unfortunately, however, Prichard gives 'us' no goods reason to grant that states of belief are never ones involving confidence. Conscious beliefs clearly involve some level of confidence, to suggest that we cease to believe things about which we are completely confident is bizarre.
A.D. Woozley (1953) defends a version of the separability thesis. Woozley's version, which deals with psychological certainty rather than belief per se, is that knowledge can exist in the absence of confidence about the item known, although might also be accompanied by confidence as well. Woozley remarks that the test of whether I know something is 'what I can do, where what I can do may include answering questions'. On the basis of this remark he suggests that even when people are unsure of the truth of a claim, they might know that the claim is true. We unhesitatingly attribute knowledge to people who give correct responses on examinations even if those people show no confidence in their answers. Woozley acknowledges, however, that it would be odd for those who lack confidence to claim knowledge. It would be peculiar to say, 'I am unsure whether my answer is true: Still, I know it is correct'. But this tension Woozley explains using a distinction between conditions under which we are justified in making a claim (such as a claim to know something), and conditions under which the claim we make is true. While 'I know such and such' might be true even if I am unsure whether such and such holds, nonetheless it would be inappropriate for me to claim that I know that such and such unless I were sure of the truth of my claim.
Colin Radford (1966) extends Woozley's defence of the separability thesis. In Radford's view, not only is knowledge compatible with the lack of certainty, it is also compatible with a complete lack of belief. He argues by example. In one example, Jean has forgotten that he learned some English history year's priori and yet he is able to give several correct responses to questions such as 'When did the Battle of Hastings occur'? Since he forgot that he took history, he considers the correct response to be no more than guesses. Thus, when he says that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066 he would deny having the belief that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. A disposition he would deny being responsible (or having the right to be convincing) that 1066 was the correct date. Radford would none the less insist that Jean know when the Battle occurred, since clearly be remembering the correct date. Radford admits that it would be inappropriate for Jean to say that he knew when the Battle of Hastings occurred, but, like Woozley he attributes the impropriety to a fact about when it is and is not appropriate to claim knowledge. When we claim knowledge, we ought, at least to believe that we have the knowledge we claim, or else our behaviour is 'intentionally misleading'.
Those that agree with Radford's defence of the separability thesis will probably think of belief as an inner state that can be detected through introspection. That Jean lack's beliefs about English history is plausible on this Cartesian picture since Jean does not find himself with any beliefs about English history when ne seek them out. One might criticize Radford, however, by rejecting that Cartesian view of belief. One could argue that some beliefs are thoroughly unconscious, for example. Or one could adopt a behaviourist conception of belief, such as Alexander Bain's (1859), according to which having beliefs is a matter of the way people are disposed to behave (and has not Radford already adopted a behaviourist conception of knowledge?) Since Jean gives the correct response when queried, a form of verbal behaviour, a behaviourist would be tempted to credit him with the belief that the Battle of Hastings occurred in 1066.
D.M. Armstrong (1873) takes a different tack against Radford. Jean does know that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. Armstrong will grant Radford that point, in fact, Armstrong suggests that Jean believe that 1066 is not the date the Battle of Hastings occurred, for Armstrong equates the belief that such and such is just possible but no more than just possible with the belief that such and such is not the case. However, Armstrong insists, Jean also believes that the Battle did occur in 1066. After all, had Jean been mistaught that the Battle occurred in 1066, and subsequently 'guessed' that it took place in 1066, we would surely describe the situation as one in which Jean's false belief about the Battle became unconscious over time but persisted of a memory trace that was causally responsible for his guess. Out of consistency, we must describe Radford's original case as one that Jean's true belief became unconscious but persisted long enough to cause his guess. Thus, while Jean consciously believes that the Battle did not occur in 1066, unconsciously he does believe it occurred in 1066. So after all, Radford does not have a counterexample to the claim that knowledge entails belief.
Armstrong's response to Radford was to reject Radford's claim that the examinee lacked the relevant belief about English history. Another response is to argue that the examinee lacks the knowledge Radford attributes to him (cf. Sorenson, 1982). If Armstrong is correct in suggesting that Jean believes both that 1066 is and that it is not the date of the Battle of Hastings, one might deny Jean knowledge on the grounds that people who believe the denial of what they believe cannot be said t know the truth of their belief. Another strategy might be to compare the examine case with examples of ignorance given in recent attacks on externalist accounts of knowledge (needless to say. Externalists themselves would tend not to favour this strategy). Consider the following case developed by BonJour (1985): For no apparent reason, Samantha believes that she is clairvoyant. Again, for no apparent reason, she one day comes to believe that the President is in New York City, even though she has every reason to believe that the President is in Washington, D.C. In fact, Samantha is a completely reliable clairvoyant, and she has arrived at her belief about the whereabouts of the President thorough the power of her clairvoyance. Yet surely Samantha's belief is completely irrational. She is not justified in thinking what she does. If so, then she does not know where the President is. But Radford's examinee is unconventional. Even if Jean lacks the belief that Radford denies him, Radford does not have an example of knowledge that is unattended with belief. Suppose that Jean's memory had been sufficiently powerful to produce the relevant belief. As Radford says, in having every reason to suppose that his response is mere guesswork, and he has every reason to consider his belief false. His belief would be an irrational one, and hence one about whose truth Jean would be ignorant.
Least has been of mention to an approaching view from which 'perception' basis upon itself as a fundamental philosophical topic both for its central place in ant theory of knowledge, and its central place un any theory of consciousness. Philosophy in this area is constrained by a number of properties that we believe to hold of perception, (1) It gives 'us' knowledge of the world around 'us'. (2) We are conscious of that world by being aware of 'sensible qualities': Colour, sounds, tastes, smells, felt warmth, and the shapes and positions of objects in the environment. (3) Such consciousness is effected through highly complex information channels, such as the output of the three different types of colour-sensitive cells in the eye, or the channels in the ear for interpreting pulses of air pressure as frequencies of sound. (4) There ensues even more complex neurophysiological coding of that information, and eventually higher-order brain functions bring it about that we interpreted the information so received. (Much of this complexity has been revealed by the difficulties of writing programs enabling computers to recognize quite simple aspects of the visual scene.) The problem is to avoid thinking of here being a central, ghostly, conscious self, fed information in the same way that a screen if fed information by a remote television camera. Once such a model is in place, experience will seem like a veil getting between 'us' and the world, and the direct objects of perception will seem to be private items in an inner theatre or sensorium. The difficulty of avoiding this model is epically cute when we considered the secondary qualities of colour, sound, tactile feelings and taste, which can easily seem to have a purely private existence inside the perceiver, like sensation of pain. Calling such supposed items names like 'sense-data' or 'percepts' exacerbates the tendency, but once the model is in place, the first property, that perception gives 'us' knowledge of the world and its surrounding surfaces, is quickly threatened, for there will now seem little connection between these items in immediate experience and any independent reality. Reactions to this problem include 'scepticism' and 'idealism'.
A more hopeful approach is to claim that the complexities of (3) and (4) explain how we can have direct acquaintance of the world, than suggesting that the acquaintance we do have been at best indirect. It is pointed out that perceptions are not like sensation, precisely because they have a content, or outer-directed nature. To have a perception is to be aware of the world for being such-and-such a way, than to enjoy a mere modification of sensation. But such direct realism has to be sustained in the face of the evident personal (neurophysiological and other) factors determining haw we perceive. One approach is to ask why it is useful to be conscious of what we perceive, when other aspects of our functioning work with information determining responses without any conscious awareness or intervention. A solution to this problem would offer the hope of making consciousness part of the natural world, than a strange optional extra.
Furthering, perceptual knowledge is knowledge acquired by or through the senses and includes most of what we know. We cross intersections when we see the light turn green, head for the kitchen when we smell the roast burning, squeeze the fruit to determine its ripeness, and climb out of bed when we hear the alarm ring. In each case we come to know something-that the light has turned green, that the roast is burning, that the melon is overripe, and that it is time to get up-by some sensory means. Seeing that the light has turned green is learning something-that, the light has turned green-by use of the eyes. Feeling that the melon is overripe is coming to know a fact-that the melon is overripe-by one's sense to touch. In each case the resulting knowledge is somehow based on, derived from or grounded in the sort of experience that characterizes the sense modality in question.
Much of our perceptual knowledge is indirect, dependent or derived. By this I mean that the facts we describe ourselves as learning, as coming to know, by perceptual means are pieces of knowledge that depend on our coming to know something else, some other fact, in a more direct way. We see, by the gauge, that we need gas, see, by the newspapers, that our team has lost again, see, by her expression, that she is nervous. This derived or dependent sort of knowledge is particularly prevalent in the cases of vision, but it occurs, to a lesser degree, in every sense modality. We install bells and other noise-makers so that we calm for example, hear (by the bell) that someone is at the door and (by the alarm) that its time to get up. When we obtain knowledge in this way, it is clear that unless one sees-hence, comes to know something about the gauge (that it says) and (hence, know) that one is described as coming to know by perceptual means. If one cannot hear that the bell is ringing, one cannot-in at least in this way-hear that one's visitors have arrived. In such cases one sees (hears, smells, etc.) that 'a' is 'F', coming to know thereby that 'a' is 'F', by seeing (hearing, etc.) that some other condition, 'b's' being 'G', obtains when this occurs, the knowledge (that 'a' is 'F') is derived from, or dependent on, the more basic perceptual knowledge that 'b' is 'G'.
Perhaps as a better strategy is to tie an account save that part that evidence could justify explanation for it is its truth alone. Since, at least the time of Aristotle philosophers of explanatory knowledge have emphasizes of its importance that, in its simplest therms, we want to know not only what are the composite peculiarities and particulars points of issue but also why it is. This consideration suggests that we define an explanation as an answer to a why-question. Such a definition would, however, be too broad, because some why-questions are requests for consolation (Why did my son have to die?) Or moral justification (Why should women not be paid the same as men for the same work?) It would also be too narrow because some explanations are responses to how-questions (How does radar work?) Or how-possibility-questions (How is it possible for cats always to land their feet?)
In its overall sense, 'to explain' means to make clear, to make plain, or to provide understanding. Definition of this sort are philosophically unhelpful, for the terms used in the deficient are no less problematic than the term to be defined. Moreover, since a wide variety of things require explanation, and since many different types of explanation exist, as more complex explanation is required. To facilitate the requirement leaves, least of mention, for us to consider by introduction a bit of technical terminology. The term 'explanation' is used to refer to that which is to be explained: The term 'explanans' refers to that which does the explaining, the explanans and the explanation taken together constitute the explanation.
One common type of explanation occurs when deliberate human actions are explained in terms of conscious purposes. 'Why did you go to the pharmacy yesterday?' 'Because I had a headache and needed to get some aspirin.' It is tacitly assumed that aspirin is an appropriate medication for headaches and that going t the pharmacy would bean efficient way of getting some. Such explanations are, of course, teleological, referring, ss they do, to goals. The explanans is not the realisation of a future goal - if the pharmacy happened to be closed for stocktaking the aspirin would have ben obtained there, bu t that would not invalidate the explanation. Some philosophers would say that the antecedent desire to achieve the end is what doers the explaining: Others might say that the explaining is done by the nature of the goal and the fact that the action promoted the chances of realizing it. (Taylor, 1964). In that it should not be automatically be assumed that such explanations are causal. Philosophers differ considerably on whether these explanations are to be framed in terms of cause or reason, but the distinction cannot be used to show that the relation between reasons and the actions they justify is in no way causal, and there are many differing analyses of such concepts as intention and agency. Expanding the domain beyond consciousness, Freud maintained, in addition, that much human behaviour can be explained in terms of unconscious and conscious wishes. Those Freudian explanations should probably be construed as basically causal
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