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Naturalistic Fallacy
In metaethics, the naturalistic fallacy is the claim that it is possible to define good in terms of merely described entities, properties, or processes such as ''pleasant'', ''desirable'', or '' fitness''. The term was introduced by British philosopher G. E. Moore in his 1903 book ''Principia Ethica''. Moore's naturalistic fallacy is closely related to the is–ought problem, which comes from David Hume's '' Treatise of Human Nature'' (1738–40); however, unlike Hume's view of the is–ought problem, Moore (and other proponents of ethical non-naturalism) did not consider the naturalistic fallacy to be at odds with moral realism. Common uses The is–ought problem The term ''naturalistic fallacy'' is sometimes used to label the problematic inference of an ''ought'' from an ''is'' (the is–ought problem). Michael Ridge relevantly elaborates that " e intuitive idea is that evaluative conclusions require at least one evaluative premise—purely factual premises about the na ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metaethics
In metaphilosophy and ethics, metaethics is the study of the nature, scope, ground, and meaning of moral judgment, ethical belief, or values. It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers, the others being normative ethics (questions of how one ought to be and act) and applied ethics (practical questions of right behavior in given, usually contentious, situations). While normative ethics addresses such questions as "What should I do?", evaluating specific practices and principles of action, metaethics addresses questions about the nature of goodness, how one can discriminate good from evil, and what the proper account of moral knowledge is. Similar to accounts of knowledge generally, the threat of skepticism about the possibility of moral knowledge and cognitively meaningful moral propositions often motivates positive accounts in metaethics. Another distinction is often made between the nature of questions related to each: first-order (substantive) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semantic
Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction between sense and reference. Sense is given by the ideas and concepts associated with an expression while reference is the object to which an expression points. Semantics contrasts with syntax, which studies the rules that dictate how to create grammatically correct sentences, and pragmatics, which investigates how people use language in communication. Lexical semantics is the branch of semantics that studies word meaning. It examines whether words have one or several meanings and in what lexical relations they stand to one another. Phrasal semantics studies the meaning of sentences by exploring the phenomenon of compositionality or how new meanings can be created by arranging words. Formal semantics (natural language), Formal semantics relies o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernard Williams
Sir Bernard Arthur Owen Williams (21 September 1929 – 10 June 2003) was an English Ethics, moral philosopher. His publications include ''Problems of the Self'' (1973), ''Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy'' (1985), ''Shame and Necessity'' (1993), and ''Truth and Truthfulness'' (2002). He was knighted in 1999. As Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and Deutsch Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, Williams became known for his efforts to reorient the study of moral philosophy to psychology, history, and in particular to the Ancient Greek philosophy, Greeks.Mark P. Jenkins, ''Bernard Williams'', Abingdon: Routledge, 2014 [2006], 3.Colin Koopman, "Bernard Williams on Philosophy's Need for History," ''The Review of Metaphysics'', 64(1), September 2010, 3–30. Described by Colin McGinn as an "analytic philosophy, analytical philosopher with the soul of a general humanist," he was sceptical about attempts to crea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychology, cognitive psychologist, psycholinguistics, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He specializes in visual cognition and developmental linguistics, and his experimental topics include mental imagery, shape recognition, visual attention, regularity and irregularity in language, the neural basis of words and grammar, and childhood language development. Other experimental topics he works on are the psychology of cooperation and of communication, including emotional expression, euphemism, innuendo, and how people use "common knowledge", a term of art meaning the shared understanding in which two or more people know something, know that the other one knows, know the other one knows that they know, and so on. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Darwinism
Charles Darwin, after whom social Darwinism is named Social Darwinism is a body of pseudoscientific theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics. Social Darwinists believe that the strong should see their wealth and power increase, while the weak should see their wealth and power decrease. Social Darwinist definitions of ''the strong'' and ''the weak'' vary, and differ on the precise mechanisms that reward strength and punish weakness. Many such views stress competition between individuals in ''laissez-faire'' capitalism, while others, emphasizing struggle between national or racial groups, support eugenics, racism, imperialism and/or fascism.Leonard, Thomas C. (2009"Origins of the Myth of Social Darwinism: The Ambiguous Legacy of Richard Hofstadter's Social Darwinism in American Thought" ''Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization'' 71, pp. 37–51. Today, scien ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Veganism
Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal products and the consumption of animal source foods, and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals. A person who practices veganism is known as a vegan. The foundations of veganism include ethical, moral, environmental, health and humanitarian arguments. Strict veganism excludes all forms of #Animal use, animal use, whether in agriculture for labour or food (e.g., meat, fish and other animal seafood, eggs, dairy products such as milk or cheese, and honey), in clothing and industry (e.g., leather, wool, fur, and some cosmetics), in entertainment (e.g., zoos, exotic pets, and circuses), or in services (e.g., guide dogs, police dogs, hunting dogs, working animals, and animal testing, including medical experimentation and the use of pharmaceuticals derived from or tested on animals). A person who practices veganism may do so for personal health benefits or to reduce animal deaths, minimize ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology, and social movement about supporting life, habitats, and surroundings. While environmentalism focuses more on the environmental and nature-related aspects of green ideology and politics, ecologism combines the ideology of social ecology and environmentalism. ''Ecologism'' is more commonly used in continental European languages, while ''environmentalism'' is more commonly used in English but the words have slightly different connotations. Environmentalism advocates the preservation, restoration and improvement of the natural environment and critical earth system elements or processes such as the climate, and may be referred to as a movement to control pollution or protect plant and animal diversity. For this reason, concepts such as a land ethics, environmental ethics, biodiversity, ecology, and the biophilia hypothesis figure predominantly. The environmentalist movement encompasses various approaches to addressing envi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or Human sexual activity, sexual behavior between people of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" exclusively to people of the same sex or gender. It also denotes Sexual identity, identity based on attraction, related behavior, and community affiliation. Along with bisexuality and heterosexuality, homosexuality is one of the three main categories of sexual orientation within the heterosexual–homosexual continuum. Although no single theory on the cause of sexual orientation has yet gained widespread support, scientists favor Biology and sexual orientation, biological theories. There is considerably more evidence supporting nonsocial, biological causes of sexual orientation than social ones, especially for males. A major hypothesis implicates the Prenatal development, prenatal environment, specifically the organizationa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Medicine
Medicine is the science and Praxis (process), practice of caring for patients, managing the Medical diagnosis, diagnosis, prognosis, Preventive medicine, prevention, therapy, treatment, Palliative care, palliation of their injury or disease, and Health promotion, promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention (medical), prevention and treatment of illness. Contemporary medicine applies biomedical sciences, biomedical research, medical genetics, genetics, and medical technology to diagnosis (medical), diagnose, treat, and prevent injury and disease, typically through pharmaceuticals or surgery, but also through therapies as diverse as psychotherapy, splint (medicine), external splints and traction, medical devices, biologic medical product, biologics, and Radiation (medicine), ionizing radiation, amongst others. Medicine has been practiced since Prehistoric medicine, prehistoric times, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Appeal To Nature
In law, an appeal is the process in which cases are reviewed by a higher authority, where parties request a formal change to an official decision. Appeals function both as a process for error correction as well as a process of clarifying and interpreting law. Although appellate courts have existed for thousands of years, common law countries did not incorporate an affirmative right to appeal into their jurisprudence until the 19th century. Terminology American English and British English have diverged significantly on the topic of appellate terminology. American cases go up "on appeal" and one "appeals from" ( intransitive) or "appeals" ( transitive) an order, award, judgment, or conviction, while decisions of British courts are said to be "under appeal" and one "appeals against" a judgment. An American court disposes of an appeal with words like "judgment affirmed" (the appeal is without merit) or "judgment reversed" (the appeal has merit), while a British court dispose ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open Question Argument
The open-question argument is a philosophical argument put forward by British philosopher G. E. Moore i§13of ''Principia Ethica'' (1903), to refute the equating of the property of goodness with some non-moral property, X, whether natural (e.g. pleasure) or supernatural (e.g. God's command). That is, Moore's argument attempts to show that no moral property is identical to a natural property. The argument takes the form of a syllogism modus tollens: : Premise 1: If X is good by definition, then the question "Is it true that ''X'' is good?" is meaningless. : Premise 2: The question "Is it true that ''X'' is good?" is not meaningless (i.e. it is an open question). : Conclusion: X is not (analytically equivalent to) good. The type of question Moore refers to in this argument is an identity question, "Is it true that X is ''Y''?" Such a question is an ''open question'' if it can be asked by a person who knows what the words mean; otherwise it is ''closed.'' For example, "I know he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Qualia
In philosophy of mind, qualia (; singular: quale ) are defined as instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term ''qualia'' derives from the Latin neuter plural form (''qualia'') of the Latin adjective '' quālis'' () meaning "of what sort" or "of what kind" in relation to a specific instance, such as "what it is like to taste a specific this particular apple now". Examples of qualia include the perceived sensation of ''pain'' of a headache, the ''taste'' of wine, and the ''redness'' of an evening sky. As qualitative characteristics of sensations, qualia stand in contrast to propositional attitudes, where the focus is on beliefs about experience rather than what it is directly like to be experiencing. C.S. Peirce introduced the term ''quale'' in philosophy in 1866, and in 1929 C. I. Lewis was the first to use the term "qualia" in its generally agreed upon modern sense. Frank Jackson later defined qualia as "...certain features of the bodily sensations especially, b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
