|
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] |
Western Philosophy
Western philosophy refers to the Philosophy, philosophical thought, traditions and works of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratics. The word ''philosophy'' itself originated from the Ancient Greek (φιλοσοφία), literally, "the love of wisdom" , "to love" and σοφία ''Sophia (wisdom), sophía'', "wisdom". History Ancient The scope of ancient Western philosophy included the problems of philosophy as they are understood today; but it also included many other disciplines, such as pure mathematics and natural sciences such as physics, astronomy, and biology (Aristotle, for example, wrote on all of these topics). Pre-Socratics The pre-Socratic philosophers were interested in cosmology (the nature and origin of the universe), while rejecting unargued fables in place for argued theory, i.e., dogma superseded reason, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abstract Objects
In philosophy and the arts, a fundamental distinction exists between abstract and concrete entities. While there is no universally accepted definition, common examples illustrate the difference: numbers, sets, and ideas are typically classified as abstract objects, whereas plants, dogs, and planets are considered concrete objects. Philosophers have proposed several criteria to define this distinction: # ''Spatiotemporal existence'' – Abstract objects exist outside space-time, while concrete objects exist within space-time. # ''Causal influence'' – Concrete objects can cause and be affected by other entities (e.g., a rock breaking a window), whereas abstract objects (e.g., the number 2) lack causal powers and do not cause anything to happen in the physical world. # ''Metaphysical relation'' – In metaphysics, concrete objects are specific, individual things ( particulars), while abstract objects represent general concepts or categories ( universals). # ''Ontological domain ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Lewis (philosopher)
David Kellogg Lewis (September 28, 1941– October 14, 2001) was an American philosopher. Lewis taught briefly at UCLA and then at Princeton University from 1970 until his death. He is closely associated with Australia, whose philosophical community he visited almost annually for more than 30 years. Lewis made significant contributions in philosophy of mind, philosophy of probability, epistemology, philosophical logic, aesthetics, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of time and philosophy of science. In most of these fields he is considered among the most important figures of recent decades. Lewis is most famous for his work in metaphysics, philosophy of language and semantics, in which his books ''On the Plurality of Worlds'' (1986) and ''Counterfactuals'' (1973) are considered classics. His works on the logic and semantics of counterfactual conditionals are broadly used by philosophers and linguists along with a competing account from Robert Stalnaker; together the Stal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He created the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which has been applied in a wide variety of disciplines, including ecology, theology, education, physics, biology, economics, and psychology. In his early career Whitehead wrote primarily on mathematics, logic, and physics. He wrote the three-volume ''Principia Mathematica'' (1910–1913), with his former student Bertrand Russell. ''Principia Mathematica'' is considered one of the twentieth century's most important works in mathematical logic, and placed 23rd in a list of the top 100 English-language nonfiction books of the twentieth century by Modern Library."The Modern Library ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Kyoto Prize Winners
This is a list of Kyoto Prize winners, awarded annually by the Inamori Foundation. Basic sciences SourceKyoto Prize Advanced technology SourceKyoto Prize Arts and philosophy SourceKyoto Prize See also * The Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology * The Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences * The Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy * The Kyoto Prize Notes References {{reflist Japanese science and technology awards Lists of scientists by award, Kyoto Prize winners Lists of award winners, Kyoto Prize winners Kyoto Prize ru:Премия Киото ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rolf Schock Prizes
The Rolf Schock Prizes were established and endowed by bequest of philosopher and artist Rolf Schock (1933–1986). The prizes were first awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1993 and, since 2005, are awarded every three years. It is sometimes considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in Philosophy. Each recipient receives Swedish krona, SEK 600,000 (approximately US$55,000). The Prizes are awarded in four categories and decided by committees of three of the Swedish Royal Academies: *Logic and Philosophy (decided by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences) *Mathematics (decided by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences) *Visual art, Visual Arts (decided by the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts) *Music, Musical Arts (decided by the Royal Swedish Academy of Music) Laureates in Logic and Philosophy Laureates in Mathematics Laureates in Visual Arts Laureates in Musical Arts See also *Fields Medal *Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy *Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award *Nevanlinna Pri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Predicate Functor Logic
In mathematical logic, predicate functor logic (PFL) is one of several ways to express first-order logic (also known as predicate logic) by purely algebraic means, i.e., without quantified variables. PFL employs a small number of algebraic devices called predicate functors (or predicate modifiers) that operate on terms to yield terms. PFL is mostly the invention of the logician and philosopher Willard Quine. Motivation The source for this section, as well as for much of this entry, is Quine (1976). Quine proposed PFL as a way of algebraizing first-order logic in a manner analogous to how Boolean algebra algebraizes propositional logic. He designed PFL to have exactly the expressive power of first-order logic with identity. Hence the metamathematics of PFL are exactly those of first-order logic with no interpreted predicate letters: both logics are sound, complete, and undecidable. Most work Quine published on logic and mathematics in the last 30 years of his life touched on PFL ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plato's Beard
In metaphysics, Plato's beard is a paradoxical argument dubbed by Willard Van Orman Quine in his 1948 paper "On What There Is". The phrase came to be identified as the philosophy of understanding something based on what does not exist. Doctrine Quine defined Plato's beard – and his reason for naming it so – in the following words: This is the old Platonic riddle of nonbeing. Nonbeing must in some sense be, otherwise what is it that there is not? This tangled doctrine might be nicknamed Plato's beard; historically it has proved tough, frequently dulling the edge of Occam's razor. The argument has been favored by prominent philosophers including Bertrand Russell, A. J. Ayer and C. J. F. Williams. Declaring that not ''p'' (¬''p'') cannot exist, one may be forced to abandon truisms such as negation and ''modus tollens''. There are also variations to Quine's original, which included its application both to singular and general terms. Quine initially applied the doctrine to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Confirmation Holism
In philosophy of science, confirmation holism, also called epistemological holism, is the view that no individual statement can be confirmed or disconfirmed by an empirical test, but rather that only a set of statements (a whole theory) can be so. It is attributed to Willard Van Orman Quine who motivated his holism through extending Pierre Duhem's problem of underdetermination in physical theory to all knowledge claims.W. V. O. Quine. 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism.' ''The Philosophical Review'', 60 (1951), pp. 20–43online text/ref> Duhem's idea was, roughly, that no theory of any type can be tested in isolation but only when embedded in a background of other hypotheses, e.g. hypotheses about initial conditions. Quine thought that this background involved not only such hypotheses but also our whole web of belief, which, among other things, includes our mathematical and logical theories and our scientific theories. This last claim is sometimes known as the Duhem–Quine thesis. A relat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quine–Putnam Indispensability Argument
The Quine–Putnam indispensability argument is an argument in the philosophy of mathematics for the existence of Abstract and concrete, abstract mathematical objects such as numbers and sets, a position known as mathematical platonism. It was named after the philosophers Willard Van Orman Quine and Hilary Putnam, and is one of the most important arguments in the philosophy of mathematics. Although elements of the indispensability argument may have originated with thinkers such as Gottlob Frege and Kurt Gödel, Quine's development of the argument was unique for introducing to it a number of his philosophical positions such as Naturalism (philosophy), naturalism, confirmational holism, and the criterion of ontological commitment. Putnam gave Quine's argument its first detailed formulation in his 1971 book ''Philosophy of Logic''. He later came to disagree with various aspects of Quine's thinking, however, and formulated his own indispensability argument based on the no miracles ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duhem–Quine Thesis
In philosophy of science, the Duhem–Quine thesis, also called the Duhem–Quine problem, says that unambiguous falsifications of a scientific hypothesis are impossible, because an empirical test of the hypothesis requires one or more background assumptions. Rather than disproving the main hypothesis, the blame can be placed on one of the background beliefs or "auxiliary" hypotheses.: "The physicist can never subject an isolated hypothesis to experimental test, but only a whole group of hypotheses" (Duhem)... "Duhem denies that unambiguous falsification procedures do exist in science." It is named after French theoretical physicist Pierre Duhem and American logician Willard Van Orman Quine, who wrote about similar concepts. In recent decades, the set of associated assumptions supporting a thesis sometimes is called a bundle of hypotheses, i.e. a hypothesis and its background assumptions. Although a bundle of hypotheses as a whole can be tested against the empirical world a ... [...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] |
