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Actualism
In analytic philosophy, actualism is the view that everything there ''is'' (i.e., everything that has ''being'', in the broadest sense) is actual. Another phrasing of the thesis is that the domain of unrestricted quantification ranges over all and only actual existents. The denial of actualism is possibilism, the thesis that there are some entities that are ''merely possible'': these entities have being but are not actual and, hence, enjoy a "less robust" sort of being than do actually existing things. An important, but significantly different notion of possibilism known as '' modal realism'' was developed by the philosopher David Lewis. On Lewis's account, the actual world is identified with the physical universe of which we are all a part. Other possible worlds exist in exactly the same sense as the actual world; they are simply spatio-temporally unrelated to our world, and to each other. Hence, for Lewis, "merely possible" entities—entities that exist in other possible wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intentionality
Intentionality is the mental ability to refer to or represent something. Sometimes regarded as the ''mark of the mental'', it is found in mental states like perceptions, beliefs or desires. For example, the perception of a tree has intentionality because it represents a tree to the perceiver. A central issue for theories of intentionality has been the problem of ''intentional inexistence'': to determine the ontological status of the entities which are the objects of intentional states. An early theory of intentionality is associated with Anselm of Canterbury's ontological argument for the existence of God, and with his tenets distinguishing between objects that exist in the understanding and objects that exist in reality. The idea fell out of discussion with the end of the medieval scholastic period, but in recent times was resurrected by empirical psychologist Franz Brentano and later adopted by contemporary phenomenological philosopher Edmund Husserl. Today, intentionalit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Modal Realism
Modal realism is the view propounded by the philosopher David Lewis that all possible worlds are real in the same way as is the actual world: they are "of a kind with this world of ours." It states that possible worlds exist, possible worlds are not different in kind from the actual world, possible worlds are irreducible entities, and the term ''actual'' in ''actual world'' is indexical, i.e. any subject can declare their world to be the actual one, much as they label the place they are "here" and the time they are "now". ''Extended modal realism'' is a form of modal realism that involves ontological commitments not just to ''possible worlds'' but also to ''impossible worlds''. Objects are conceived as being spread out in the modal dimension, i.e., as having not just spatial and temporal parts but also modal parts. This contrasts with Lewis' modal realism, according to which each object only inhabits one possible world. Common arguments for modal realism refer to their ''the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Merrihew Adams
Robert Merrihew Adams (September 8, 1937 – April 16, 2024) was an American analytic philosopher. He specialized in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, ethics, and the history of early modern philosophy. Life and career Adams was born on September 8, 1937, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He taught for many years at the University of California, Los Angeles, before moving to Yale University in the early 1990s as the Clark Professor of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics. As chairman, he helped revive the philosophy department after its near-collapse due to personal and scholarly conflicts between analytical and Continental philosophers. Adams retired from Yale in 2004 and taught part-time at the University of Oxford in England, where he was a senior research fellow of Mansfield College. In 2009 he became a Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Adams's late wife, Marilyn McCord Adams, was also a philosopher, working ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ontological Commitment
Ontology is the philosophical study of being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of reality and every entity within it. To articulate the basic structure of being, ontology examines the commonalities among all things and investigates their classification into basic types, such as the categories of particulars and universals. Particulars are unique, non-repeatable entities, such as the person Socrates, whereas universals are general, repeatable entities, like the color ''green''. Another distinction exists between concrete objects existing in space and time, such as a tree, and abstract objects existing outside space and time, like the number 7. Systems of categories aim to provide a comprehensive inventory of reality by employing categories such as substance, property, relation, state of affairs, and event. Ontologists disagree re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Definite Descriptions
In formal semantics and philosophy of language, a definite description is a denoting phrase in the form of "the X" where X is a noun-phrase or a singular common noun. The definite description is ''proper'' if X applies to a unique individual or object. For example: " the first person in space" and " the 42nd President of the United States of America" are proper. The definite descriptions "the person in space" and "the Senator from Ohio" are ''improper'' because the noun phrase X applies to more than one thing, and the definite descriptions "the first man on Mars" and "the Senator from Washington D.C." are ''improper'' because X applies to nothing. Improper descriptions raise some difficult questions about the law of excluded middle, denotation, modality, and mental content. Russell's analysis As France is currently a republic, it has no king. Bertrand Russell pointed out that this raises a puzzle about the truth value of the sentence "The present King of France is bald." The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vulcan (hypothetical Planet)
Vulcan () was a proposed planet that some pre-20th century astronomers thought existed in an orbit between Mercury (planet), Mercury and the Sun. Speculation about, and even purported observations of, intermercurial bodies or planets date back to the beginning of the 17th century. The case for their probable existence was bolstered by the support of the French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier, who had predicted the existence of Neptune using disturbances in the orbit of Uranus. By 1859, he had confirmed unexplained peculiarities in Mercury's orbit and predicted that they had to be the result of the gravitational influence of another unknown nearby planet or series of asteroids. A French amateur astronomer's report that he had observed an object passing in front of the Sun that same year led Le Verrier to announce that the long sought after planet, which he gave the name Vulcan, had been discovered at last. Many searches were conducted for Vulcan over the following decades but, de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ontological Commitment
Ontology is the philosophical study of being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of reality and every entity within it. To articulate the basic structure of being, ontology examines the commonalities among all things and investigates their classification into basic types, such as the categories of particulars and universals. Particulars are unique, non-repeatable entities, such as the person Socrates, whereas universals are general, repeatable entities, like the color ''green''. Another distinction exists between concrete objects existing in space and time, such as a tree, and abstract objects existing outside space and time, like the number 7. Systems of categories aim to provide a comprehensive inventory of reality by employing categories such as substance, property, relation, state of affairs, and event. Ontologists disagree re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paraphrase
A paraphrase () or rephrase is the rendering of the same text in different words without losing the meaning of the text itself. More often than not, a paraphrased text can convey its meaning better than the original words. In other words, it is a copy of the text in meaning, but which is different from the original. For example, when someone tells a story they heard, in their own words, they paraphrase, with the meaning being the same. The term itself is derived via Latin ', . The act of paraphrasing is also called ''paraphrasis''. History Although paraphrases likely abounded in oral traditions, paraphrasing as a specific educational exercise dates back to at least Roman times, when the author Quintilian recommended it for students to develop dexterity in language. In the Middle Ages, this tradition continued, with authors such as Geoffrey of Vinsauf developing schoolroom exercises that included both rhetorical manipulations and paraphrasing as a way of generating poems and spee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy
The ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''SEP'') is a freely available online philosophy resource published and maintained by Stanford University, encompassing both an online encyclopedia of philosophy and peer-reviewed original publication. Each entry is written and maintained by an expert in the field, including professors from many academic institutions worldwide. Authors contributing to the encyclopedia give Stanford University the permission to publish the articles, but retain the copyright to those articles. Approach and history As of August 5, 2022, the ''SEP'' has 1,774 published entries. Apart from its online status, the encyclopedia uses the traditional academic approach of most encyclopedias and academic journal An academic journal (or scholarly journal or scientific journal) is a periodical publication in which Scholarly method, scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. They serve as permanent and transparent forums for the ...s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
State Of Affairs (philosophy)
In philosophy, a state of affairs (), also known as a situation, is a way the actual world must be in order to make some given ''proposition'' about the actual world true; in other words, a state of affairs is a ''truth-maker'', whereas a proposition is a ''truth-bearer''. Whereas states of affairs either ''obtain'' or ''fail-to-obtain'', propositions are either ''true'' or ''false''. Some philosophers understand the term "states of affairs" in a more restricted sense as a synonym for "fact". In this sense, there are no states of affairs that do not obtain. The early Ludwig Wittgenstein and David Malet Armstrong are well known for their defence of a factualism, a position according to which the world is a world of facts and not a world of things. Overview States of affairs are complex entities: they are built up from or constituted by other entities. Atomic states of affairs are constituted by one particular and one property exemplified by this particular. For example, the state ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Malet Armstrong
David Malet Armstrong (8 July 1926 – 13 May 2014), often D. M. Armstrong, was an Australian philosopher. He is well known for his work on metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, and for his defence of a factualist ontology, a functionalist theory of the mind, an externalist epistemology, and a necessitarian conception of the laws of nature. Keith Campbell said that Armstrong's contributions to metaphysics and epistemology "helped to shape philosophy's agenda and terms of debate", and that Armstrong's work "always concerned to elaborate and defend a philosophy which is ontically economical, synoptic, and compatibly continuous with established results in the natural sciences". Life and career After studying at the University of Sydney, Armstrong undertook a B.Phil. at the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. at the University of Melbourne. He taught at Birkbeck College in 1954–55, then at the University of Melbourne from 1956 to 1963. In 1964, he became Challis Pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alvin Plantinga
Alvin Carl Plantinga (born November 15, 1932) is an American analytic philosophy, analytic philosopher who works primarily in the fields of philosophy of religion, epistemology (particularly on issues involving theory of justification, epistemic justification), and logic. From 1963 to 1982, Plantinga taught at Calvin University before accepting an appointment as the John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He later returned to Calvin University to become the inaugural holder of the Jellema Chair in Philosophy. A prominent Christian philosopher, Plantinga served as president of the Society of Christian Philosophers from 1983 to 1986. He has delivered the Gifford Lectures twice and was described by ''Time (magazine), Time'' magazine as "America's leading orthodox Protestant philosopher of God". In 2014, Plantinga was the 30th most-cited contemporary author in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Scienc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
