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Levels Of Adequacy
In his work ''Aspects of the Theory of Syntax'' (1965), Noam Chomsky introduces a hierarchy of levels of adequacy for evaluating grammars (theories of specific languages) and metagrammars (theories of grammars). These levels constitute a taxonomy of theories (a grammar of a natural language being an example of such a theory) according to validation. This taxonomy might be extended to scientific theories in general, and from there even stretched into the field of the aesthetics of art. This present article's use of the phrase as a '' terminus technicus'' should not be confused with its everyday language uses. Motivation The "potency" criterion alluded to in the preceding section is somewhat ill-defined, but may include "exhaustiveness", "effectiveness', and an affective component as well. (Arguably, the taxonomy is also motivated by considerations of "elegance". This should not be confused with the application of the taxonomy in the field of aesthetics). As a metatheory, or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aspects Of The Theory Of Syntax
''Aspects of the Theory of Syntax'' (known in linguistic circles simply as ''Aspects'') is a book on linguistics written by American linguist Noam Chomsky, first published in 1965. In ''Aspects'', Chomsky presented a deeper, more extensive reformulation of transformational generative grammar (TGG), a new kind of syntactic theory that he had introduced in the 1950s with the publication of his first book, '' Syntactic Structures''. ''Aspects'' is widely considered to be the foundational document and a proper book-length articulation of Chomskyan theoretical framework of linguistics.Gallego and Ott 2015 : 249 It presented Chomsky's epistemological assumptions with a view to establishing linguistic theory-making as a formal (i.e. based on the manipulation of symbols and rules) discipline comparable to physical sciences, i.e. a domain of inquiry well-defined in its nature and scope. From a philosophical perspective, it directed mainstream linguistic research away from behaviorism, con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
René Descartes
René Descartes ( , ; ; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and Modern science, science. Mathematics was paramount to his method of inquiry, and he connected the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra into analytic geometry. Descartes spent much of his working life in the Dutch Republic, initially serving the Dutch States Army, and later becoming a central intellectual of the Dutch Golden Age. Although he served a Dutch Reformed Church, Protestant state and was later counted as a Deism, deist by critics, Descartes was Roman Catholicism, Roman Catholic. Many elements of Descartes's philosophy have precedents in late Aristotelianism, the Neostoicism, revived Stoicism of the 16th century, or in earlier philosophers like Augustine of Hippo, Augustine. In his natural philosophy, he differed from the Scholasticism, schools on two major point ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epistemology
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowledge in the form of skills, and knowledge by acquaintance as a familiarity through experience. Epistemologists study the concepts of belief, truth, and justification to understand the nature of knowledge. To discover how knowledge arises, they investigate sources of justification, such as perception, introspection, memory, reason, and testimony. The school of skepticism questions the human ability to attain knowledge while fallibilism says that knowledge is never certain. Empiricists hold that all knowledge comes from sense experience, whereas rationalists believe that some knowledge does not depend on it. Coherentists argue that a belief is justified if it coheres with other beliefs. Foundationalists, by contrast, maintain th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meditations On First Philosophy
''Meditations on First Philosophy, in which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated'' (), often called simply the ''Meditations'', is a philosophical treatise by René Descartes first published in Latin in 1641. The French translation (by the Duke of Luynes with Descartes' supervision) was published in 1647 as ''Méditations Métaphysiques''. The title may contain a misreading by the printer, mistaking ''animae immortalitas'' for ''animae immaterialitas'', as suspected by A. Baillet. The book is made up of six meditations, in which Descartes first discards all belief in things that are not absolutely certain, and then tries to establish what can be known for sure. He wrote the meditations as if he had meditated for six days: each meditation refers to the last one as "yesterday". (In fact, Descartes began work on the ''Meditations'' in 1639.) One of the most influential philosophical texts ever written, it is widely read to this day. The book cons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ontological Argument
In the philosophy of religion, an ontological argument is a deductive philosophical argument, made from an ontological basis, that is advanced in support of the existence of God. Such arguments tend to refer to the state of being or existing. More specifically, ontological arguments are commonly conceived ''a priori'' in regard to the organization of the universe, whereby, if such organizational structure is true, God must exist. The first ontological argument in Western Christian traditionSzatkowski, Miroslaw, ed. 2012. ''Ontological Proofs Today''. Ontos Verlag. "There are three main periods in the history of ontological arguments. The first was in 11th century, when St. Anselm of Canterbury came up with the first ontological argument" (p. 22). was proposed by Saint Anselm of Canterbury in his 1078 work, '' Proslogion'' (), in which he defines God as "a being than which no greater can be conceived," and argues that such a being must exist in the mind, even in that of the pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Causal Adequacy Principle
The causal adequacy principle (CAP), or causal reality principle, is a philosophical claim made by René Descartes that the cause of an object must contain at least as much reality as the object itself, whether formally or eminently. Overview Descartes defends CAP by quoting Roman philosopher Lucretius: "Ex nihilo nihil fit", meaning "Creation ex materia, Nothing comes from nothing".—Lucretius In his meditations, Descartes uses the CAP to support his trademark argument for the existence of God. Descartes' assertions were disputed by Thomas Hobbes in his "Third Set of Objections" published in 1641. René Descartes was ''not'' the founder of this philosophical claim. It is used in the classical metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle, and features eminently in the works of Thomas Aquinas. Details *A "cause" is that which brings something into effect. *If an item has the quality X formally, it has it in the literal or strict sense. *If an item has the quality X eminently, it has it in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Priori And A Posteriori
('from the earlier') and ('from the later') are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on experience. knowledge is independent from any experience. Examples include mathematics,Some associationist philosophers have contended that mathematics comes from experience and is not a form of any ''a priori'' knowledge () tautologies and deduction from pure reason. Galen Strawson has stated that an argument is one in which "you can see that it is true just lying on your couch. You don't have to get up off your couch and go outside and examine the way things are in the physical world. You don't have to do any science." () knowledge depends on empirical evidence. Examples include most fields of science and aspects of personal knowledge. The terms originate from the analytic methods found in '' Organon'', a collection of works by Aristotle. Prior analytics () is about deductive logic, which comes from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Innate Idea
In the philosophy of mind, innatism is the view that the mind is born with already-formed ideas, knowledge, and beliefs. The opposing doctrine, that the mind is a ''tabula rasa'' (blank slate) at birth and all knowledge is gained from experience and the senses, is called empiricism. Difference from nativism ''Innatism'' and ''nativism'' are generally synonymous terms referring to the notion of preexisting ideas in the mind. However, more specifically, innatism refers to the philosophy of Descartes, who assumed that God or a similar being or process placed innate ideas and principles in the human mind.Tad M. Schmaltz, ''Radical Cartesianism: The French Reception of Descartes'', Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 257. The innatist principles in this regard may overlap with similar concepts such as natural order and state of nature, in philosophy. Nativism represents an adaptation of this, grounded in the fields of genetics, cognitive psychology, and psycholinguistics. Nativ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Empiricism
In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological view which holds that true knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience and empirical evidence. It is one of several competing views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empiricists argue that empiricism is a more reliable method of finding the truth than purely using logical reasoning, because humans have cognitive biases and limitations which lead to errors of judgement. Empiricism emphasizes the central role of empirical evidence in the formation of ideas, rather than innate ideas or traditions. Empiricists may argue that traditions (or customs) arise due to relations of previous sensory experiences. Historically, empiricism was associated with the " blank slate" concept (''tabula rasa''), according to which the human mind is "blank" at birth and develops its thoughts only through later experience. Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence, especi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rationalism
In philosophy, rationalism is the Epistemology, epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "the position that reason has precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge", often in contrast to other possible sources of knowledge such as religious faith, faith, tradition, or sensory experience. More formally, rationalism is defined as a methodology or a theory "in which the criterion of truth is not sensory but intellectual and Deductive reasoning, deductive".Bourke, Vernon J., "Rationalism", p. 263 in Runes (1962). In a major philosophical debate during the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment,John Locke (1690), An Essay Concerning Human Understanding rationalism (sometimes here equated with innatism) was opposed to empiricism. On the one hand, rationalists like René Descartes emphasized that knowledge is primarily innate and the intellect, the inner Faculty (other)#Biology, faculty of the human mind, can therefore direc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Willard Van Orman Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine ( ; known to his friends as "Van"; June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century". He was the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard University from 1956 to 1978. Quine was a teacher of logic and set theory. He was famous for his position that first-order logic is the only kind worthy of the name, and developed his own system of mathematics and set theory, known as New Foundations. In the philosophy of mathematics, he and his Harvard colleague Hilary Putnam developed the Quine–Putnam indispensability argument, an argument for the Philosophy of mathematics#Empiricism, reality of mathematical entities.Colyvan, Mark"Indispensability Arguments in the Philosophy of Mathematics" The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2004 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). He was the main proponent of the view that philosophy is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap (; ; 18 May 1891 – 14 September 1970) was a German-language philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism. Biography Carnap's father rose from being a poor ribbon-weaver to be the owner of a ribbon-making factory. His mother came from an academic family; her father was an educational reformer and her oldest brother was the archaeologist Wilhelm Dörpfeld. As a ten-year-old, Carnap accompanied Wilhelm Dörpfeld on an expedition to Greece. Carnap was raised in a profoundly religious Protestant family, but later became an atheist. He began his formal education at the Barmen Gymnasium (school), Gymnasium and the Gymnasium in Jena. From 1910 to 1914, he attended the University of Jena, intending to write a thesis in physics. He also intently studied Immanuel Kant's ''Critique of Pure Reason'' during a course taught by Bruno Bauch, and was one of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
