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Thick Concept
In philosophy, a thick concept (sometimes: ''thick normative concept'', or ''thick evaluative concept'') is a kind of concept that both has a significant degree of descriptive content and is evaluatively loaded. Paradigmatic examples are various virtues and vices such as ''courage'', ''cruelty'', ''truthfulness'' and ''kindness''. Courage for example, may be given a rough characterization in descriptive terms as '...opposing danger to promote a valued end'. At the same time, characterizing someone as courageous typically involves expressing an attitude of esteem or a " pro-attitude", or a (prima facie) good-making quality – i.e. an evaluative statement. A middle position Thick concepts thus seem to occupy a 'middle position' between (thin) descriptive concepts and (thin) evaluative concepts. Descriptive concepts such as ''water'', ''gold'', ''length'' and ''mass'' are commonly believed to pick out features of the world rather than provide reasons for action, whereas evaluative ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophy
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its methods and assumptions. Historically, many of the individual sciences, such as physics and psychology, formed part of philosophy. However, they are considered separate academic disciplines in the modern sense of the term. Influential traditions in the history of philosophy include Western philosophy, Western, Islamic philosophy, Arabic–Persian, Indian philosophy, Indian, and Chinese philosophy. Western philosophy originated in Ancient Greece and covers a wide area of philosophical subfields. A central topic in Arabic–Persian philosophy is the relation between reason and revelation. Indian philosophy combines the Spirituality, spiritual problem of how to reach Enlightenment in Buddhism, enlighten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Expressivism
In meta-ethics, expressivism is a theory about the meaning of moral language. According to expressivism, sentences that employ moral terms – for example, "It is wrong to torture an innocent human being" – are not descriptive or fact-stating; moral terms such as "wrong", "good", or "just" do not refer to real, in-the-world properties. The primary function of moral sentences, according to expressivism, is not to assert any matter of fact but rather to express an evaluative attitude toward an object of evaluation. Because the function of moral language is non-descriptive, moral sentences do not have any truth conditions.Horgan & Timmons (2006b), p. 86 Hence, expressivists either do not allow that moral sentences to have truth value, or rely on a notion of truth that does not appeal to any descriptive truth conditions being met for moral sentences. Overview Expressivism is a form of moral anti-realism or nonfactualism: the view that there are no moral facts that moral sentences ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simon Blackburn
Simon Walter Blackburn (born 12 July 1944) is an English philosopher known for his work in metaethics, where he defends quasi-realism, and in the philosophy of language. More recently, he has gained a large general audience from his efforts to popularise philosophy. He has appeared in multiple episodes of the documentary series '' Closer to Truth''. During his long career, he has taught at Oxford University, Cambridge University, and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Life and career Blackburn was born on 12 July 1944 in Chipping Sodbury, England. He attended Clifton College and went on to receive his bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1965 from Trinity College, Cambridge. He obtained his doctorate in 1969 from Churchill College, Cambridge. He retired as the professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge in 2011, but remains a distinguished research professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, teaching every fall semeste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dual-character Concept
Dual character concepts have two independent dimensions for classification: descriptive and normative. For example, someone is descriptively an “artist” if they earn a living by painting. Normatively, someone is an “artist” only if they live up to ideals, e.g., a commitment to creating truly meaningful aesthetic work. Because these dimensions are independent, one can satisfy the descriptive criteria without fulfilling the normative ones, and vice versa. Such concepts were first explored by Joshua Knobe, Sandeep Prasada and George E Newman in 2013. To date, the largest body of research on dual character concepts has examined social‑role concepts like “artist”, “scientist”, “colleague”, and “philosopher”. Other studies, however, indicate that even some of philosophy’s most basic concepts may exhibit a dual character structure: “art”, “gender”, “happiness”, and “human‑being”. References Related concepts * Thick concept * Concept ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emotive Conjugation
In rhetoric, emotive or emotional conjugation (also known as Russell's conjugation) is a rhetorical technique used to create an intrinsic bias towards or against a piece of information. Bias is created by using the emotional connotation of a word to prime a response from the audience by creating a loaded statement. When used seriously, such loaded language can lend false support to an argument through emotional connotation and implication rather than through fact. History and research Emotional conjugation was originally defined by Bertrand Russell in 1948 on the BBC Radio program, '' The Brains Trust''. During an interview, he gave multiple examples of emotive conjugation, one of them being the following: I am firm, you are obstinate, he is a pig-headed fool. While firm, obstinate, and pig-headed are all synonymous with stubbornness, the emotive connotations of these words are different. ''Firm'' carries a positive connotation, ''obstinate'' carries a neutral (or slightly neg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meaning (semiotics)
In semiotics, the study of sign processes (semiosis), the meaning of a sign is its place in a sign relation, in other words, the set of roles that the sign occupies within a given sign relation. This statement holds whether ''sign'' is taken to mean a ''sign type'' or a ''sign token''. Defined in these global terms, the meaning of a sign is not in general analyzable with full exactness into completely localized terms, but aspects of its meaning can be given approximate analyses, and special cases of sign relations frequently admit of more local analyses. Distinctions Two aspects of meaning that may be given approximate analyses are the ''connotative relation'' and the ''denotative relation''. The connotative relation is the relation between signs and their interpretant signs. The denotative relation is the relation between signs and objects. An arbitrary association exists between the ''signified'' and the ''signifier.'' For example, a US salesperson doing business in Japan mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Relevance
Relevance is the connection between topics that makes one useful for dealing with the other. Relevance is studied in many different fields, including cognitive science, logic, and library and information science. Epistemology studies it in general, and different theories of knowledge have different implications for what is considered relevant. Definition "Something (''A'') is relevant to a task (''T'') if it increases the likelihood of accomplishing the goal (''G''), which is implied by ''T''." A thing might be relevant, a document or a piece of information may be relevant. Relevance does not depend on whether we speak of "things" or "information". Epistemology If you believe that schizophrenia is caused by bad communication between mother and child, then family interaction studies become relevant. If, on the other hand, you subscribe to a genetic theory of relevance then the study of genes becomes relevant. If you subscribe to the epistemology of empiricism, then only inte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moral Realism
Moral realism (also ethical realism) is the position that ethical sentences express propositions that refer to objective features of the world (that is, features independent of subjective opinion), some of which may be true to the extent that they report those features accurately. This makes moral realism a non- nihilist form of ethical cognitivism (which accepts that ethical sentences express propositions and can therefore be true or false) with an ontological orientation, standing in opposition to all forms of moral anti-realism and moral skepticism, including ethical subjectivism (which denies that moral propositions refer to objective facts), error theory (which denies that any moral propositions are true), and non-cognitivism (which denies that moral sentences express propositions at all). Moral realism's two main subdivisions are ethical naturalism and ethical non-naturalism. Most philosophers claim that moral realism dates at least to Plato as a philosophical doctrine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virtue
A virtue () is a trait of excellence, including traits that may be morality, moral, social, or intellectual. The cultivation and refinement of virtue is held to be the "good of humanity" and thus is Value (ethics), valued as an Telos, end purpose of life or a foundational principle of being. In human practical ethics, a virtue is a disposition to choose actions that succeed in showing high moral standards: doing what is said to be right and avoiding what is wrong in a given field of endeavour, even when doing so may be unnecessary from a utilitarianism, utilitarian perspective. When someone takes pleasure in doing what is right, even when it is difficult or initially unpleasant, they can establish virtue as a habit. Such a person is said to be virtuous through having cultivated such a disposition. The opposite of virtue is vice. Other examples of this notion include the concept of Merit (Buddhism), merit in Asian traditions as well as (Chinese language, Chinese ). Etymology The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mass
Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementary particle, elementary particles, theoretically with the same amount of matter, have nonetheless different masses. Mass in modern physics has multiple Mass in special relativity, definitions which are conceptually distinct, but physically equivalent. Mass can be experimentally defined as a measure (mathematics), measure of the body's inertia, meaning the resistance to acceleration (change of velocity) when a net force is applied. The object's mass also determines the Force, strength of its gravitational attraction to other bodies. The SI base unit of mass is the kilogram (kg). In physics, mass is Mass versus weight, not the same as weight, even though mass is often determined by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Length
Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with Dimension (physical quantity), dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a Base unit (measurement), base unit for length is chosen, from which all other units are derived. In the International System of Units (SI) system, the base unit for length is the metre. Length is commonly understood to mean the most extended size, dimension of a fixed object. However, this is not always the case and may depend on the position the object is in. Various terms for the length of a fixed object are used, and these include height, which is vertical length or vertical extent, width, breadth, and depth. ''Height'' is used when there is a base from which vertical measurements can be taken. ''Width'' and ''breadth'' usually refer to a shorter dimension than ''length''. ''Depth'' is used for the measure of a third dimension. Length is the measure of one spatial dimension, whereas area ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
