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Phronēsis
In ancient Greek philosophy, () refers to the type of wisdom or intelligence concerned with practical action. It implies good judgment and excellence of character and habits. In Aristotelian ethics, the concept is distinguished from other words for wisdom and intellectual virtues (such as and ) because of its practical character. Ancient Greek Philosophy Socrates In some of Socrates' dialogues, he proposes that is a necessary condition for all virtue, and that to be good is to be an intelligent or reasonable person with intelligent and reasonable thoughts. In Plato's ''Meno'', Socrates writes that is the most important attribute to learn, although it cannot be taught and is instead gained through the understanding of one's own self. Aristotle In Aristotle's work, is the intellectual virtue that helps turn one's moral instincts into practical action. He writes that moral virtues help any person to achieve the end, and that is what it takes to discover the means to gain that ...
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φρόνησις
In ancient Greek philosophy, () refers to the type of wisdom or intelligence concerned with practical action. It implies good judgment and excellence of character and habits. In Aristotelian ethics, the concept is distinguished from other words for wisdom and intellectual virtues (such as and ) because of its practical character. Ancient Greek Philosophy Socrates In some of Socrates' dialogues, he proposes that is a necessary condition for all virtue, and that to be good is to be an intelligent or reasonable person with intelligent and reasonable thoughts. In Plato's '' Meno'', Socrates writes that is the most important attribute to learn, although it cannot be taught and is instead gained through the understanding of one's own self. Aristotle In Aristotle's work, is the intellectual virtue that helps turn one's moral instincts into practical action. He writes that moral virtues help any person to achieve the end, and that is what it takes to discover the means to gain tha ...
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Nous
''Nous'' (, ), from , is a concept from classical philosophy, sometimes equated to intellect or intelligence, for the cognitive skill, faculty of the human mind necessary for understanding what is truth, true or reality, real. Alternative English terms used in philosophy include "understanding" and "mind"; or sometimes "thought" or "reason" (in the sense of that which reasons, not the activity of reasoning). It is also often described as something equivalent to perception except that it works within the mind ("the mind's eye"). It has been suggested that the basic meaning is something like "awareness". In colloquial British English, ''nous'' also denotes "good sense", which is close to one everyday meaning it had in Ancient Greece. The ''nous'' performed a role comparable to the modern concept of intuition (philosophy), intuition. In Aristotle's philosophy, which was influential on later conceptions of the category, ''nous'' was carefully distinguished from sense perception, ...
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Nicomachean Ethics
The ''Nicomachean Ethics'' (; , ) is Aristotle's best-known work on ethics: the science of the good for human life, that which is the goal or end at which all our actions aim. () It consists of ten sections, referred to as books, and is closely related to Aristotle's '' Eudemian Ethics''. The work is essential for the interpretation of Aristotelian ethics. The text centers upon the question of how to best live, a theme previously explored in the works of Plato, Aristotle's friend and teacher. In Aristotle's ''Metaphysics'', he describes how Socrates, the friend and teacher of Plato, turned philosophy to human questions, whereas pre-Socratic philosophy had only been theoretical, and concerned with natural science. Ethics, Aristotle claimed, is ''practical'' rather than '' theoretical'', in the Aristotelian senses of these terms. It is not merely an investigation about what good consists of, but it aims to be of practical help in achieving the good. It is connected to another o ...
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Aristotelian Ethics
Aristotle first used the term ''ethics'' to name a field of study developed by his predecessors Socrates and Plato which is devoted to the attempt to provide a rational response to the question of how humans should best live. Aristotle regarded ethics and politics as two related but separate fields of study, since ethics examines the good of the individual, while politics examines the good of the city-state, which he considered to be the best type of community. Aristotle's writings have been read more or less continuously since ancient times, and his ethical treatises in particular continue to influence philosophers working today. Aristotle emphasized the practical importance of developing excellence (virtue) of character (Greek ''ēthikē aretē''), as the way to achieve what is finally more important, excellent conduct (Greek '' praxis''). As Aristotle argues in Book II of the '' Nicomachean Ethics'', the man who possesses character excellence will tend to do the right thing, a ...
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Dianoia
In Platonism, ''dianoia'' (Greek: διάνοια) is the human cognitive faculty associated with the BC portion of the analogy of the divided line and related to '' discursive'' thinking about mathematical and technical subjects. It stands in contrast to the immediate, cognitive process of '' intuitive'' apprehension or '' noesis''. In Aristotle, ''dianoia'' is subdivided into theoretical knowledge ''( technē)'' and practical knowledge ''( phronēsis)''. See also *Epistemology *Theory of Forms The Theory of Forms or Theory of Ideas, also known as Platonic idealism or Platonic realism, is a philosophical theory credited to the Classical Greek philosopher Plato. A major concept in metaphysics, the theory suggests that the physical w ... References Works cited * * * Concepts in epistemology Platonism Thought {{epistemology-stub ...
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Counter-example
A counterexample is any exception to a generalization. In logic a counterexample disproves the generalization, and does so rigorously in the fields of mathematics and philosophy. For example, the fact that "student John Smith is not lazy" is a counterexample to the generalization "students are lazy", and both a counterexample to, and disproof of, the universal quantification "all students are lazy." In mathematics In mathematics, counterexamples are often used to prove the boundaries of possible theorems. By using counterexamples to show that certain conjectures are false, mathematical researchers can then avoid going down blind alleys and learn to modify conjectures to produce provable theorems. It is sometimes said that mathematical development consists primarily in finding (and proving) theorems and counterexamples. Rectangle example Suppose that a mathematician is studying geometry and shapes, and she wishes to prove certain theorems about them. She conjectures that "All rect ...
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Alasdair MacIntyre
Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (12 January 1929 – 21 May 2025) was a Scottish-American philosopher who contributed to moral and political philosophy as well as history of philosophy and theology. MacIntyre's '' After Virtue'' (1981) is one of the most important works of Anglophone moral and political philosophy in the 20th century. He was a senior research fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Aristotelian Studies in Ethics and Politics (CASEP) at London Metropolitan University, emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and permanent senior distinguished research fellow at the Notre Dame de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture.. During his lengthy academic career, he also taught at Brandeis University, Duke University, Vanderbilt University, and Boston University. Biography MacIntyre was born on 12 January 1929 in Glasgow, to Eneas and Greta (Chalmers) MacIntyre. He was educated at Queen Mary College, London, and had a Master of Arts degree from the Un ...
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After Virtue
''After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory'' is a book on moral philosophy by the Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. MacIntyre provides a bleak view of the state of modern moral discourse, regarding it as failing to be rational, and failing to admit to being irrational. He claims that older forms of moral discourse were in better shape, particularly singling out Aristotle's moral philosophy as an exemplar. ''After Virtue'' is among the most important texts in the recent revival of virtue ethics. The book was first published in 1981 and has since gone through two subsequent editions, which have added to, but not changed, the original text. The second edition, published in 1984, adds a postscript replying to critics of the first edition; the third edition, published in 2007, contains a new prologue entitled "''After Virtue'' After a Quarter of a Century". Summary MacIntyre holds that ''After Virtue'' makes seven central claims. It begins with an allegory suggestive of the pr ...
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Social Science
Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of society", established in the 18th century. It now encompasses a wide array of additional academic disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, linguistics, management, communication studies, psychology, culturology, and political science. The majority of positivist social scientists use methods resembling those used in the natural sciences as tools for understanding societies, and so define science in its stricter modern sense. Speculative social scientists, otherwise known as interpretivist scientists, by contrast, may use social critique or symbolic interpretation rather than constructing empirically falsifiable theories, and thus treat science in its ...
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Ancient Greek Philosophy
Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC. Philosophy was used to make sense of the world using reason. It dealt with a wide variety of subjects, including astronomy, epistemology, mathematics, political philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, logic, biology, rhetoric and aesthetics. Greek philosophy continued throughout the Hellenistic period and later evolved into Roman philosophy. Greek philosophy has influenced much of Western culture since its inception, and can be found in many aspects of public education. Alfred North Whitehead once claimed: "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato". Clear, unbroken lines of influence lead from ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophers to Roman philosophy, early Islamic philosophy, medieval scholasticism, the European Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment. Greek philosophy was influenced to some extent by the older wisdom litera ...
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Predictability
Predictability is the degree to which a correct prediction or forecast of a system's state can be made, either qualitatively or quantitatively. Predictability and causality Causal determinism has a strong relationship with predictability. Perfect predictability implies strict determinism, but lack of predictability does not necessarily imply lack of determinism. Limitations on predictability could be caused by factors such as a lack of information or excessive complexity. In experimental physics, there are always observational errors determining variables such as positions and velocities. So perfect prediction is ''practically'' impossible. Moreover, in modern quantum mechanics, Werner Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle puts limits on the accuracy with which such quantities can be known. So such perfect predictability is also ''theoretically'' impossible. Laplace's demon Laplace's demon is a supreme intelligence who could completely predict the one possible future given ...
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Mathematics
Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many areas of mathematics, which include number theory (the study of numbers), algebra (the study of formulas and related structures), geometry (the study of shapes and spaces that contain them), Mathematical analysis, analysis (the study of continuous changes), and set theory (presently used as a foundation for all mathematics). Mathematics involves the description and manipulation of mathematical object, abstract objects that consist of either abstraction (mathematics), abstractions from nature orin modern mathematicspurely abstract entities that are stipulated to have certain properties, called axioms. Mathematics uses pure reason to proof (mathematics), prove properties of objects, a ''proof'' consisting of a succession of applications of in ...
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