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Soft Ontology
The term "soft ontology", coined by Eli Hirsch in 1993, refers to the embracing or reconciling of apparent ontological differences, by means of relevant distinctions and contextual analyses. Overview Hirsch used the term to broaden and expand on what William James discussed in his landmark 1907 work in epistemology, ''Pragmatism''. James gave a now famous example of dispute over a squirrel: The corpus of the dispute was a squirrel--a live squirrel supposed to be clinging to one side of a tree-trunk; while over against the tree's opposite side a human being was imagined to stand. This human witness tries to get sight of the squirrel by moving rapidly round the tree, but no matter how fast he goes, the squirrel moves as fast in the opposite direction, and always keeps the tree between himself and the man, so that never a glimpse of him is caught. The resultant metaphysical problem now is this: DOES THE MAN GO ROUND THE SQUIRREL OR NOT? James' solution was that by clarifying "pra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eli Hirsch
Eli Hirsch (born 1938) is an American philosopher and the Charles Goldman Professor of Philosophy at Brandeis University.Brandeis University faculty guide retrieved 2010-06-26. He is best known for his work in meta-ontology. He coined the phrase "soft ontology" and has authored over 70 books and papers. Many of his books deal with objections to ontology based upon common sense and that most disputes involving metaphysical objects revolve around linguistics and are merely verbal in nature. Hirsch received a Ph.D. and M.A. from NYU, and a B.A. from CUNY Brooklyn College. He is the brother of rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch, Moshe Hillel Hirsh. See also * Quantifier varianceReferences Ontologists 21st-century American philo ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ontological
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] |
William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, he is considered to be one of the leading thinkers of the late 19th century, one of the most influential philosophers and is often dubbed the "father of American psychology." Born into a wealthy family, James was the son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James Sr. and the brother of both the prominent novelist Henry James and the diarist Alice James. James trained as a physician and taught anatomy at Harvard, but never practiced medicine. Instead, he pursued his interests in psychology and then philosophy. He wrote widely on many topics, including epistemology, education, metaphysics, psychology, religion, and mysticism. Among his most influential books are '' The Principles of Psychology'', a groundbreaking text in the field of psychology; '' Essays in Radical Empiricism'', an important text in phil ... [...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] |
Dilemma
A dilemma () is a problem offering two possibilities, neither of which is unambiguously acceptable or preferable. The possibilities are termed the ''horns'' of the dilemma, a clichéd usage, but distinguishing the dilemma from other kinds of predicament as a matter of usage. Terminology The term ''dilemma'' is attributed by Gabriel Nuchelmans to Lorenzo Valla in the 15th century, in later versions of his logic text traditionally called ''Dialectica''. Valla claimed that it was the appropriate Latin equivalent of the Greek ''dilemmaton''. Nuchelmans argued that his probable source was a logic text of of George of Trebizond. He also concluded that Valla had reintroduced to the Latin West a type of argument that had fallen into disuse. Valla's neologism did not immediately take hold, preference being given to the established Latin term ''complexio'', used by Cicero, with ''conversio'' applied to the upsetting of dilemmatic reasoning. With the support of Juan Luis Vives, how ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paradigmatic Shift
A paradigm shift is a fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline. It is a concept in the philosophy of science that was introduced and brought into the common lexicon by the American physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn. Even though Kuhn restricted the use of the term to the natural sciences, the concept of a paradigm shift has also been used in numerous non-scientific contexts to describe a profound change in a fundamental model or perception of events. Kuhn presented his notion of a paradigm shift in his influential book ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' (1962). Kuhn contrasts paradigm shifts, which characterize a Scientific Revolution, to the activity of normal science, which he describes as scientific work done within a prevailing framework or paradigm. Paradigm shifts arise when the dominant paradigm under which normal science operates is rendered incompatible with new phenomena, facilitating the adoption of a n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ontological Relativity
Ontology is the philosophical study of existence, 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 Theory of categories, categories of particulars and Universal (metaphysics), 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 Abstract and concrete, 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 t ... [...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] |
Cognitive Relativism
Relativism is a family of philosophical views which deny claims to absolute objectivity within a particular domain and assert that valuations in that domain are relative to the perspective of an observer or the context in which they are assessed. There are many different forms of relativism, with a great deal of variation in scope and differing degrees of controversy among them. ''Moral relativism'' encompasses the differences in moral judgments among people and cultures. '' Epistemic relativism'' holds that there are no absolute principles regarding normative belief, justification, or rationality, and that there are only relative ones. '' Alethic relativism'' (also factual relativism) is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths, i.e., that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture (cultural relativism), while linguistic relativism asserts that a language's structures influence a speaker's perceptions. Some forms o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack Meiland
Jack W. Meiland (1934–1998) was an American philosopher and educator. As a philosopher, Meiland is best known for his analyses of relativism, particularly on cognitive relativism. Meiland is also known for a "salvage operation" from the "paradox of relativism", the claim that relativists are absolutists about relativism. From 1962 to 1997, Meiland taught at the Philosophy Department at the University of Michigan, where he was appointed Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in 1988. In the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LS&A), Meiland served as Director of the Honors Program and then as the Associate Dean for Curriculum and Long-Range Planning. Works *''Scepticism and Historical Knowledge'' (1965) *''Talking About Particulars'' (1970) *''Nature of Intention'' (1970) *''First Time in London'' (1979) *''College Thinking: How to Get the Best Out of College'' (1981) *''Relativism, Cognitive and Moral'' (1982), editor with Michael Krausz See also * American philosophy * List ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ontology (information Science)
In information science, an ontology encompasses a representation, formal naming, and definitions of the categories, properties, and relations between the concepts, data, or entities that pertain to one, many, or all domains of discourse. More simply, an ontology is a way of showing the properties of a subject area and how they are related, by defining a set of terms and relational expressions that represent the entities in that subject area. The field which studies ontologies so conceived is sometimes referred to as ''applied ontology''. Every academic discipline or field, in creating its terminology, thereby lays the groundwork for an ontology. Each uses ontological assumptions to frame explicit theories, research and applications. Improved ontologies may improve problem solving within that domain, interoperability of data systems, and discoverability of data. Translating research papers within every field is a problem made easier when experts from different countries mainta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Science
Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, applied disciplines (including the design and implementation of Computer architecture, hardware and Software engineering, software). Algorithms and data structures are central to computer science. The theory of computation concerns abstract models of computation and general classes of computational problem, problems that can be solved using them. The fields of cryptography and computer security involve studying the means for secure communication and preventing security vulnerabilities. Computer graphics (computer science), Computer graphics and computational geometry address the generation of images. Programming language theory considers different ways to describe computational processes, and database theory concerns the management of re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
