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Philosophy
Portal    
The Death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David (1787). The painting depicts the philosopher Socrates about to take poison hemlock.
Plato (left) and Aristotle (right): detail from The School of Athens by Raffaello Sanzio, 1509
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.[1][2] It is distinguished from other ways of addressing fundamental questions (such as mysticism, myth, or the arts) by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument.[3] The word "Philosophy" comes from the Greek φιλοσοφία [philosophia], which literally means "love of wisdom".[4][5][6]

Contents

Branches of philosophy

The following branches are the main areas of study:
  • Metaphysics is the study of the nature of being and the world. Traditional branches are cosmology and ontology.
  • Epistemology is concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge, and whether knowledge is possible. Among its central concerns has been the challenge posed by skepticism and the relationships between truth, belief, and justification.
  • Ethics, or 'moral philosophy', is concerned with questions of how persons ought to act or if such questions are answerable. The main branches of ethics are meta-ethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. Meta-ethics concerns the nature of ethical thought, comparison of various ethical systems, whether there are absolute ethical truths, and how such truths could be known. Ethics is also associated with the idea of morality. Plato's early dialogues include a search for definitions of virtue.
  • Political philosophy is the study of government and the relationship of individuals and communities to the state. It includes questions about justice, the good, law, property, and the rights and obligations of the citizen.
  • Aesthetics deals with beauty, art, enjoyment, sensory-emotional values, perception, and matters of taste and sentiment.
  • Logic is the study of valid argument forms. .Beginning in the late 19th century, mathematicians such as Frege focused on a mathematical treatment of logic, and today the subject of logic has two broad divisions: mathematical logic (formal symbolic logic) and what is now called philosophical logic.
  • Philosophy of mind deals with the nature of the mind and its relationship to the body, and is typified by disputes between dualism and materialism.^ Tutor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard, also taught most other subjects (1699-1760).
    • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

     ^ Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Princeton (1787-96).
    • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

     ^ Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Marietta College in Ohio (1839-55), Prof. Moral, Intellectual, and Political Philosophy at Marietta (1855-85).
    • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

     In recent years there has been increasing similarity between this branch of philosophy and cognitive science.
  • Philosophy of language is inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language.
  • Philosophy of religion is a branch of philosophy that asks questions about religion.
Most academic subjects have a philosophy, for example the philosophy of science, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of logic, the philosophy of law, and the philosophy of history. In addition, a range of academic subjects have emerged to deal with areas which would have historically been the subject of philosophy. These include psychology, anthropology and science.

Western philosophy

Main articles: Western philosophy and History of Western philosophy
The introduction of the terms "philosopher" and "philosophy" has been ascribed to the Greek thinker Pythagoras (see Diogenes Laertius: "De vita et moribus philosophorum", I, 12; Cicero: "Tusculanae disputationes", V, 8-9). The ascription is based on a passage in a lost work of Herakleides Pontikos, a disciple of Aristotle. It is considered to be part of the widespread legends of Pythagoras of this time. "Philosopher" replaced the word "sophist" (from sophoi), which was used to describe "wise men", teachers of rhetoric, who were important in Athenian democracy.
The history of philosophy is customarily divided into six periods: Ancient philosophy, Medieval philosophy, Renaissance philosophy, Early and Late Modern philosophy and Contemporary philosophy.

Ancient philosophy (c. 600 B.C. – c. A.D. 500)

Aristotle
Main article: Ancient philosophy
Plato
Ancient philosophy is the philosophy of the Graeco-Roman world from the 6th century [circa 585] BC to the 6th century AD. It is usually divided into three periods: the pre-Socratic period, the period of Plato and Aristotle, and the post-Aristotelian (or Hellenistic) period. A fourth period is sometimes added which includes the Neoplatonic and Christian philosophers of Late Antiquity. The most important of the ancient philosophers (in terms of subsequent influence) are Plato and Aristotle[7].
The main subjects of ancient philosophy are: understanding the fundamental causes and principles of the universe; explaining it in an economical and parsimonious way; the epistemological problem of reconciling the diversity and change of the natural universe, with the possibility of obtaining fixed and certain knowledge about it; questions about things which cannot be perceived by the senses, such as numbers, elements, universals, and gods; the analysis of patterns of reasoning and argument; the nature of the good life and the importance of understanding and knowledge in order to pursue it; the explication of the concept of justice, and its relation to various political systems[7].
In this period the crucial features of the philosophical method were established: a critical approach to received or established views, and the appeal to reason and argumentation.
St. Thomas Aquinas

Medieval philosophy (c. 400–c. 1500)

Main article: Medieval philosophy
Medieval philosophy is the philosophy of Western Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages, roughly extending from the Christianization of the Roman Empire until the Renaissance.[8] Medieval philosophy is defined partly by the rediscovery and further development of classical Greek and Hellenistic philosophy, and partly by the need to address theological problems and to integrate sacred doctrine (in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity) with secular learning.
Some problems discussed throughout this period are the relation of faith to reason, the existence and unity of God, the object of theology and metaphysics, the problems of knowledge, of universals, and of individuation.
Philosophers from the Middle Ages include the Muslim philosophers Alkindus, Alfarabi, Alhazen, Avicenna, Algazel, Avempace, Abubacer and Averroes; the Jewish philosophers Maimonides and Gersonides; and the Christian philosophers Augustine of Hippo, Boethius, Anselm, Gilbert of Poitiers, Peter Abelard, Roger Bacon, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham and Jean Buridan. The medieval tradition of scholasticism continued to flourish as late as the seventeenth century, in figures such as Francisco Suarez and John of St. Thomas.

Renaissance philosophy (c. 1350–c. 1600)

Main article: Renaissance philosophy
Giordano Bruno
The Renaissance ('rebirth') was a period of transition between the Middle Ages and modern thought,[9] in which the recovery of classical texts shifted philosophical interests away from technical studies in logic, metaphysics, and theology towards eclectic inquiries into morality, philology, and mysticism.[10][11] The study of classics, particularly the newly rediscovered works of Plato and the Neoplatonists, and of the humane arts more generally (such as history and literature) enjoyed a popularity hitherto unknown in Christendom. The concept of man displaced God as the central object of philosophical reflection.[12][13]
The Renaissance also renewed interest in nature considered as an organic whole comprehensible independently of theology, as in the work of Nicholas of Kues, Giordano Bruno, and Telesius. Such movements in natural philosophy dovetailed with a revival of interest in magic, hermeticism, and astrology, which were thought to yield hidden ways of knowing and mastering nature (e.g., in Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola). [14]
.These new movements in philosophy developed contemporaneously with larger political and religious transformations in Europe: the decline of feudalism and the Reformation.^ Moral and Intellectual Philosophy and Political Economy at Union College in upstate New York (1831-38), Vice President of Union College (1838-45).
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 The rise of the monarchic nation-state found voice in increasingly secular political philosophies, as in the work of Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas More, Jean Bodin, Tommaso Campanella, and Hugo Grotius. And while the Reformers showed little direct interest in philosophy, their destruction of the traditional foundations of theological and intellectual authority harmonized with the revival of fideism and skepticism in thinkers such as Erasmus, Montaigne and Francisco Sanches.[15][16]

Early modern philosophy (c. 1600 – c. 1800)

John Locke
Modern philosophy begins with the response to skepticism and the rise of modern physical science. .Philosophy in this period centers on the relation between experience and reality, the ultimate origin of knowledge, the nature of the mind and its relation to the body, the implications of the new natural sciences for free will and God, and the emergence of a secular basis for moral and political philosophy.^ Wrote "Sense and sound, as they reciprocally form any sign of mind" (1854) and "New Elements From Old Subjects: Presented as the Basis for a Science of Mind" (1874).
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 ^ Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity at Harvard (1839-53), President of Harvard (1853-60).
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 ^ President of Union College in New York (1804-1866), also taught Moral Philosophy.
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]
Canonical figures include Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley, Rousseau, Hume, and Kant.[17] Chronologically, this era spans the 17th and 18th centuries, and is generally considered to end with Kant's systematic attempt to reconcile Newtonian physics with traditional metaphysical topics.[18]

Late Modern Philosophy (c. 1800 – c. 1900)

Main article: Modern philosophy
Robert Reid, Philosophy (1896). Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C.
Later modern philosophy is usually considered to begin after the philosophy of Immanuel Kant at the beginning of the 19th-century.[19] German idealists, such as Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling, transformed the work of Kant by maintaining that the world is constituted by a rational or mind-like process, and as such is entirely knowable.[20] Schopenhauer's identification of this world-constituting process as an irrational will to live would influence later nineteenth and early twentieth century thinking, such as the work of Nietzsche and Freud.
Rejecting idealism, other philosophers, many working from outside the university, initiated lines of thought that would occupy academic philosophy in the early and mid-20th century:

Contemporary philosophy (c. 1900 – present)

Main article: Contemporary philosophy
Within the last century, philosophy has increasingly become an activity practiced within the university, and accordingly it has grown more specialized and more distinct from the natural sciences. Much of philosophy in this period concerns itself with explaining the relation between the theories of the natural sciences and the ideas of the humanities or common sense.
In the Anglophone world, analytic philosophy became the dominant school. In the first half of the century, it was a cohesive school, more or less identical to logical positivism, united by the notion that philosophical problems could and should be solved by attention to logic and language. In the latter half of the 20th century, analytic philosophy diffused into a wide variety of disparate philosophical views, only loosely united by historical lines of influence and a self-identified commitment to clarity and rigor. Recently, the experimental philosophy movement has reappraised philosophical problems through the techniques of social science research.
On continental Europe, no single school or temperament enjoyed dominance. The flight of the logical positivists from central Europe during the 1930s and 1940s, however, diminished philosophical interest in natural science, and an emphasis on the humanities, broadly construed, figures prominently in what is usually called "continental philosophy". 20th-century movements such as phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, critical theory, structuralism, and poststructuralism are included within this loose category.
Major philosophers of the 20th century include:

Eastern philosophy

Main article: Eastern philosophy
Many societies have considered philosophical questions and built philosophical traditions based upon each other's works. Eastern and Middle Eastern philosophical traditions have influenced Western philosophers. Russian (which, often arbitrarily, is referred to as both Eastern and Western)[citation needed], Jewish, Islamic, and the greatly varied African philosophical traditions have contributed to, or been influenced by, Western philosophy: yet each has retained a distinctive identity.[citation needed]
The differences between traditions are often well captured by consideration of their favored historical philosophers, and varying stress on ideas, procedural styles, or written language. The subject matter and dialogues of each can be studied using methods derived from the others, and there are significant commonalities and exchanges between them.[citation needed]
Eastern philosophy refers to the broad traditions that originated or were popular in India, Persia, China, Korea, Japan, and to an extent, the Middle East (which overlaps with Western philosophy due to the spread of the Abrahamic religions and the continuing intellectual traffic between these societies and Europe.)[citation needed]

Babylonian philosophy

Further information: Babylonian literature: Philosophy
The origins of Babylonian philosophy can be traced back to the wisdom of early Mesopotamia, which embodied certain philosophies of life, particularly ethics, in the forms of dialectic, dialogues, epic poetry, folklore, hymns, lyrics, prose, and proverbs. The reasoning and rationality of the Babylonians developed beyond empirical observation.[27] The Babylonian text Dialog of Pessimism contains similarities to the agonistic thought of the sophists, the Heraclitean doctrine of contrasts, and the dialogues of Plato, as well as a precursor to the maieutic Socratic method of Socrates and Plato.[28] The Milesian philosopher Thales is also known to have studied philosophy in Mesopotamia.

Chinese philosophy

Main article: Chinese philosophy
Confucius, illustrated in Myths & Legends of China, 1922, by E.T.C. Werner.
Philosophy has had a tremendous effect on Chinese civilization, and East Asia as a whole. Many of the great philosophical schools were formulated during the Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States Period, and came to be known as the Hundred Schools of Thought. The four most influential of these were Confucianism, Taoism, Mohism, and Legalism. Later on, during the Tang Dynasty, Buddhism from India also became a prominent philosophical and religious discipline. (It should be noted that philosophy and religion were clearly distinguished in the West, whilst these concepts were more continuous in East due to, for example, the philosophical concepts of Buddhism.) Similarly to Western philosophy, Chinese philosophy also covers a broad and complex range of thought, possessing a multitude of schools that address every branch and subject area of philosophy.
See also: Yin-Yang, Qi, Tao, Li, I Ching

Indian philosophy

Main article: Indian philosophy
Further information: Hindu philosophy, Buddhist philosophy, and Jain philosophy
The term Indian philosophy (Sanskrit: Darshanas), may refer to any of several traditions of philosophical thought that originated in the Indian subcontinent, including Hindu philosophy, Buddhist philosophy, and Jain philosophy. Having the same or rather intertwined origins, all of these philosophies have a common underlying theme of Dharma, and similarly attempt to explain the attainment of emancipation. They have been formalized and promulgated chiefly between 1,000 BC to a few centuries A.D, with residual commentaries and reformations continuing up to as late as the 20th century by Aurobindo and ISKCON among others, who provided stylized interpretations.
In the history of the Indian subcontinent, following the establishment of a Vedic culture, the development of philosophical and religious thought over a period of two millennia gave rise to what came to be called the six schools of astika, or orthodox, Indian or Hindu philosophy. These schools have come to be synonymous with the greater religion of Hinduism, which was a development of the early Vedic religion.
Hindu philosophy constitutes an integral part of the culture of South Asia, and is the first of the Dharmic philosophies which were influential throughout the Far East. The great diversity in thought and practice of Hinduism is nurtured by its liberal universalism.

Persian philosophy

Main article: Iranian philosophy
Persian philosophy can be traced back as far as Old Iranian philosophical traditions and thoughts, with their ancient Indo-Iranian roots. These were considerably influenced by Zarathustra's teachings. Throughout Iranian history and due to remarkable political and social influences such as the Macedonian, the Arab, and the Mongol invasions of Persia, a wide spectrum of schools of thought arose. These espoused a variety of views on philosophical questions, extending from Old Iranian and mainly Zoroastrianism-influenced traditions to schools appearing in the late pre-Islamic era, such as Manicheism and Mazdakism, as well as various post-Islamic schools. Iranian philosophy after Arab invasion of Persia is characterized by different interactions with the Old Iranian philosophy, the Greek philosophy and with the development of Islamic philosophy. The Illumination school and the Transcendent theosophy are regarded as two of the main philosophical traditions of that era in Persia. Zoroastrianism has been identified as one of the key early events in the development of philosophy[29]

Main theories

Realism and nominalism

Main articles: Philosophical realism and Nominalism
Realism sometimes means the position opposed to the 18th-century Idealism, namely that some things have real existence outside the mind. Its standard meaning is the doctrine that abstract entities corresponding to universal terms like 'man' or 'table' or 'red' actually exist (e.g. for Plato in a separate realm of Ideas). It is opposed to nominalism, the view that abstract or universal terms are words only, or denote mental states such as ideas, beliefs, or intentions. The latter position, developed by Peter Abelard and famously held by William of Ockham, is called conceptualism.

Rationalism and empiricism

Main articles: Rationalism and Empiricism
René Descartes
Rationalism is any view emphasizing the role or importance of human reason. Extreme rationalism tries to base all knowledge on reason alone. Rationalism typically starts from premises that cannot coherently be denied, then attempts by logical steps to deduce every possible object of knowledge.
The first rationalist, in this broad sense, is often held to be Parmenides (fl. 500 BC), who argued that it is impossible to doubt that thinking actually occurs. But thinking must have an object, therefore something beyond thinking really exists. Parmenides deduced that what really exists must have certain properties – for example, that it cannot come into existence or cease to exist, that it is a coherent whole, that it remains the same eternally (in fact, exists altogether outside time). This is known as the third man argument. Zeno of Elea (born c. 489 BC) was a disciple of Parmenides, and argued that motion is impossible, since the assertion that it exists implies a contradiction (see Zeno's arrow).
Plato (427–347 BC) was also influenced by Parmenides, but combined rationalism with a form of realism. The philosopher's work is to consider being, and the essence (ousia) of things. But the characteristic of essences is that they are universal. The nature of a man, a triangle, a tree, applies to all men, all triangles, all trees. Plato argued that these essences are mind-independent 'forms', that humans (but particularly philosophers) can come to know by reason, and by ignoring the distractions of sense-perception.
Modern rationalism begins with Descartes. Reflection on the nature of perceptual experience, as well as scientific discoveries in physiology and optics, led Descartes (and also Locke) to the view that we are directly aware of ideas, rather than objects. This view gave rise to three questions:
  1. Is an idea a true copy of the real thing that it represents? Sensation is not a direct interaction between bodily objects and our sense, but is a physiological process involving representation (for example, an image on the retina). Locke thought that a 'secondary quality' such as a sensation of green could in no way resemble the arrangement of particles in matter that go to produce this sensation, although he thought that 'primary qualities' such as shape, size, number, were really in objects.
  2. How can physical objects such as chairs and tables, or even physiological processes in the brain, give rise to mental items such as ideas? This is part of what became known as the mind-body problem.
  3. If all the contents of awareness are ideas, how can we know that anything exists apart from ideas?
Descartes tried to address the last problem by reason. He began, echoing Parmenides, with a principle that he thought could not coherently be denied: I think, therefore I am (often given in his original Latin: Cogito ergo sum). From this principle, Descartes went on to construct a complete system of knowledge (which involves proving the existence of God, using, among other means, a version of the ontological argument). His view that reason alone could yield substantial truths about reality strongly influenced those philosophers usually considered modern rationalists (such as Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, and Christian Wolff), while provoking criticism from other philosophers who have retrospectively come to be grouped together as empiricists.
Empiricism, in contrast to rationalism, downplays or dismisses the ability of reason alone to yield knowledge of the world, preferring to base any knowledge we have on our senses. This dates back to the concept of tabula rasa (unscribed tablet) implicit in Aristotle's On the Soul, described more explicitly in Avicenna's The Book of Healing,[30] and demonstrated in Ibn Tufail's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan as a thought experiment.[31] John Locke propounded the classic empiricist view in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1689, developing a form of naturalism and empiricism on roughly scientific (and Newtonian) principles.
During this era, religious ideas played a mixed role in the struggles that preoccupied secular philosophy. Bishop Berkeley's famous idealist refutation of key tenets of Isaac Newton is a case of an Enlightenment philosopher who drew substantially from religious ideas. Other influential religious thinkers of the time include Blaise Pascal, Joseph Butler, Thomas Reid, and Jonathan Edwards. Other major writers, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Edmund Burke, took a rather different path. The restricted interests of many of the philosophers of the time foreshadow the separation and specialization of different areas of philosophy that would occur in the 20th century.

Skepticism

Main article: Skepticism
Skepticism is a philosophical attitude which in its most extreme form questions the possibility of obtaining any sort of knowledge. It was first articulated by Pyrrho, who believed that everything could be doubted except appearances. Sextus Empiricus (2nd century AD), skepticism's most prominent advocate, describes it as an
"ability to place in antithesis, in any manner whatever, appearances and judgments, and thus ... to come first of all to a suspension of judgment and then to mental tranquility."[32] Skepticism so conceived is not merely the use of doubt, but is the use of doubt for a particular end: a calmness of the soul, or ataraxia. Skepticism poses itself as a challenge to dogmatism, whose adherents think they have found the truth.[33]
Sextus noted that the reliability of perception may always be questioned, because it is idiosyncratic to the perceiver. The appearance of individual things changes depending on whether they are in a group: for example, the shavings of a goat's horn are white when taken alone, yet the intact horn is black. A pencil, when viewed lengthwise, looks like a stick; but when examined at the tip, it looks merely like a circle.
Skepticism was revived in the early modern period by Michel de Montaigne and Blaise Pascal. Its most extreme exponent, however, was David Hume. Hume argued that there are only two kinds of reasoning: what he called probable and demonstrative (cf Hume's fork). Neither of these two forms of reasoning can lead us to a reasonable belief in the continued existence of an external world. Demonstrative reasoning cannot do this, because demonstration (that is, deductive reasoning from well-founded premises) alone cannot establish the uniformity of nature (as captured by scientific laws and principles, for example). Such reason alone cannot establish that the future will resemble the past. We have certain beliefs about the world (that the sun will rise tomorrow, for example), but these beliefs are the product of habit and custom, and do not depend on any sort of logical inferences from what is already given certain. But probable reasoning (inductive reasoning), which aims to take us from the observed to the unobserved, cannot do this either: it also depends on the uniformity of nature, and this supposed uniformity cannot be proved, without circularity, by any appeal to uniformity. The best that either sort of reasoning can accomplish is conditional truth: if certain assumptions are true, then certain conclusions follow. So nothing about the world can be established with certainty. Hume concludes that there is no solution to the skeptical argument – except, in effect, to ignore it.[34]
Even if these matters were resolved in every case, we would have in turn to justify our standard of justification, leading to an infinite regress (hence the term regress skepticism).[35][36]
Many philosophers have questioned the value of such skeptical arguments. The question of whether we can achieve knowledge of the external world is based on how high a standard we set for the justification of such knowledge. If our standard is absolute certainty, then we cannot progress beyond the existence of mental sensations. We cannot even deduce the existence of a coherent or continuing "I" that experiences these sensations, much less the existence of an external world. On the other hand, if our standard is too low, then we admit follies and illusions into our body of knowledge. This argument against absolute skepticism asserts that the practical philosopher must move beyond solipsism, and accept a standard for knowledge that is high but not absolute.

Idealism

Main article: Idealism
Immanuel Kant
Idealism is the epistemological doctrine that nothing can be directly known outside of the minds of thinking beings. Or in an alternative stronger form, it is the metaphysical doctrine that nothing exists apart from minds and the "contents" of minds. In modern Western philosophy, the epistemological doctrine begins as a core tenet of Descartes – that what is in the mind is known more reliably than what is known through the senses. The first prominent modern Western idealist in the metaphysical sense was George Berkeley. Berkeley argued[37] that there is no deep distinction between mental states, such as feeling pain, and the ideas about so-called "external" things, that appear to us through the senses. There is no real distinction, in this view, between certain sensations of heat and light that we experience, which lead us to believe in the external existence of a fire, and the fire itself. Those sensations are all there is to fire. Berkeley expressed this with the Latin formula esse est percipi: to be is to be perceived. In this view the opinion, "strangely prevailing upon men", that houses, mountains, and rivers have an existence independent of their perception by a thinking being is false.
Forms of idealism were prevalent in philosophy from the 18th century to the early 20th century. Transcendental idealism, advocated by Immanuel Kant, is the view that there are limits on what can be understood, since there is much that cannot be brought under the conditions of objective judgment. Kant wrote his Critique of Pure Reason (1781–1787) in an attempt to reconcile the conflicting approaches of rationalism and empiricism, and to establish a new groundwork for studying metaphysics. Kant's intention with this work was to look at what we know and then consider what must be true about it, as a logical consequence of the way we know it. One major theme was that there are fundamental features of reality that escape our direct knowledge because of the natural limits of the human faculties.[38] Although Kant held that objective knowledge of the world required the mind to impose a conceptual or categorical framework on the stream of pure sensory data – a framework including space and time themselves – he maintained that things-in-themselves existed independently of our perceptions and judgments; he was therefore not an idealist in any simple sense. Indeed, Kant's account of things-in-themselves is both controversial and highly complex. Continuing his work, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Schelling dispensed with belief in the independent existence of the world, and created a thoroughgoing idealist philosophy.
The most notable work of this German idealism was G.W.F. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, of 1807. Hegel admitted his ideas weren't new, but that all the previous philosophies had been incomplete. His goal was to correctly finish their job. Hegel asserts that the twin aims of philosophy are to account for the contradictions apparent in human experience (which arise, for instance, out of the supposed contradictions between "being" and "not being" ), and also simultaneously to resolve and preserve these contradictions by showing their compatibility at a higher level of examination ("being" and "not being" are resolved with "becoming") . This program of acceptance and reconciliation of contradictions is known as the "Hegelian dialectic". Philosophers in the Hegelian tradition include Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, who coined the term projection as pertaining to our inability to recognize anything in the external world without projecting qualities of ourselves upon those things; Karl Marx; Friedrich Engels; and the British idealists, notably T.H. Green, J.M.E. McTaggart, and F.H. Bradley.
Few 20th century philosophers have embraced idealism. However, quite a few have embraced Hegelian dialectic. Immanuel Kant's "Copernican Turn" also remains an important philosophical concept today.

Pragmatism

Main article: Pragmatism
Main article: Instrumentalism
William James
Pragmatism was founded in the spirit of finding a scientific concept of truth, which is not dependent on either personal insight (or revelation) or reference to some metaphysical realm. The truth of a statement should be judged by the effect it has on our actions and truth should be seen as that which the whole of scientific enquiry will ultimately agree on.[39] This should probably be seen as a guiding principle more than a definition of what it means for something to be true, though the details of how this principle should be interpreted have been subject to discussion since Peirce first conceived it. Like postmodern neo-pragmatist Richard Rorty, many are convinced that Pragmatism asserts that the truth of beliefs does not consist in their correspondence with reality, but in their usefulness and efficacy.[40]
The late 19th-century American philosophers Charles Sanders Peirce and William James were its co-founders, and it was later developed by John Dewey as instrumentalism. Since the usefulness of any belief at any time might be contingent on circumstance, Peirce and James conceptualised final truth as that which would be established only by the future, final settlement of all opinion.[41] Critics have accused pragmatism of falling victim to a simple fallacy: because something that is true proves useful, that usefulness is the basis for its truth.[42] Thinkers in the pragmatist tradition have included John Dewey, George Santayana, W.V.O. Quine and C.I. Lewis. Pragmatism has more recently been taken in new directions by Richard Rorty, John Lachs, Donald Davidson and Hilary Putnam.

Phenomenology

Main article: Phenomenology (philosophy)
Edmund Husserl's phenomenology was an ambitious attempt to lay the foundations for an account of the structure of conscious experience in general.[43] An important part of Husserl's phenomenological project was to show that all conscious acts are directed at or about objective content, a feature that Husserl called intentionality.[44]
In the first part of his two-volume work, the Logical Investigations (1901), he launched an extended attack on psychologism. In the second part, he began to develop the technique of descriptive phenomenology, with the aim of showing how objective judgments are indeed grounded in conscious experience – not, however, in the first-person experience of particular individuals, but in the properties essential to any experiences of the kind in question.[43]
He also attempted to identify the essential properties of any act of meaning. He developed the method further in Ideas (1913) as transcendental phenomenology, proposing to ground actual experience, and thus all fields of human knowledge, in the structure of consciousness of an ideal, or transcendental, ego. Later, he attempted to reconcile his transcendental standpoint with an acknowledgement of the intersubjective life-world in which real individual subjects interact. Husserl published only a few works in his lifetime, which treat phenomenology mainly in abstract methodological terms; but he left an enormous quantity of unpublished concrete analyses.
Husserl's work was immediately influential in Germany, with the foundation of phenomenological schools in Munich and Göttingen. Phenomenology later achieved international fame through the work of such philosophers as Martin Heidegger (formerly Husserl's research assistant), Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Indeed, through the work of Heidegger and Sartre, Husserl's focus on subjective experience influenced aspects of existentialism.

Existentialism

Main article: Existentialism
Søren Kierkegaard
Existentialism is a term which has been applied to the work of a number of late 19th and 20th century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences,[45][46] shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual.[47] In existentialism, the individual's starting point is characterized by what has been called "the existential attitude", or a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world.[48] Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic or academic philosophy, in both style and content, as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience.[49][50]
Although they didn't use the term, the 19th-century philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche are widely regarded as the fathers of existentialism. Their influence, however, has extended beyond existentialist thought.[51][52][53]
The main target of Kierkegaard's writings was the idealist philosophical system of Hegel which, he thought, ignored or excluded the inner subjective life of living human beings. Kierkegaard, conversely, held that "truth is subjectivity", arguing that what is most important to an actual human being are questions dealing with an individual's inner relationship to existence. In particular, Kierkegaard, a Christian, believed that the truth of religious faith was a subjective question, and one to be wrestled with passionately.[54][55]
Although Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were among his influences, the extent to which the German philosopher Martin Heidegger should be considered an existentialist is debatable. In Being and Time he presented a method of rooting philosophical explanations in human existence (Dasein) to be analysed in terms of existential categories (existentiale); and this has led many commentators to treat him as an important figure in the existentialist movement. However, in The Letter on Humanism, Heidegger explicitly rejected the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre.
Sartre became the best-known proponent of existentialism, exploring it not only in theoretical works such as Being and Nothingness , but also in plays and novels. Sartre, along with Simone de Beauvoir, represented an avowedly atheistic branch of existentialism, which is now more closely associated with their ideas of nausea, contingency, bad faith, and the absurd than with Kierkegaard's spiritual angst. Nevertheless, the focus on the individual human being, responsible before the universe for the authenticity of his or her existence, is common to all these thinkers.

Structuralism and post-structuralism

Main articles: Structuralism and Post-structuralism
Ferdinand de Saussure
Inaugurated by the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, structuralism sought to clarify systems of signs through analysing the discourses they both limit and make possible. Saussure conceived of the sign as being delimited by all the other signs in the system, and ideas as being incapable of existence prior to linguistic structure, which articulates thought. This led continental thought away from humanism, and toward what was termed the decentering of man: language is no longer spoken by man to express a true inner self, but language speaks man.
Structuralism sought the province of a hard science, but its positivism soon came under fire by poststructuralism, a wide field of thinkers, some of whom were once themselves structuralists, but later came to criticize it. Structuralists believed they could analyse systems from an external, objective standing, for example, but the poststructuralists argued that this is incorrect, that one cannot transcend structures and thus analysis is itself determined by what it examines, that systems are ultimately self-referential. Furthermore, while the distinction between the signifier and signified was treated as crystalline by structuralists, poststructuralists asserted that every attempt to grasp the signified would simply result in the proliferation of more signifiers, so meaning is always in a state of being deferred, making an ultimate interpretation impossible.
Structuralism came to dominate continental philosophy throughout the 1960s and early 70's, encompassing thinkers as diverse as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes and Jacques Lacan. Post-structuralism came to predominate over the 1970s onwards, including thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and even Roland Barthes (who came to critique Structrualism's limitations).

The analytic tradition

Main article: Analytic philosophy
Gottlob Frege
The term analytic philosophy roughly designates a group of philosophical methods that stress detailed argumentation, attention to semantics, use of classical logic and non-classical logics and clarity of meaning above all other criteria. Michael Dummett in his Origins of Analytical Philosophy makes the case for counting Gottlob Frege The Foundations of Arithmetic as the first analytic work, on the grounds that in that book Frege took the linguistic turn, analysing philosophical problems through language. Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore are also often counted as founders of analytic philosophy, beginning with their rejection of British idealism, their defense of realism and the emphasis they laid on the legitimacy of analysis. Russell's classic works The Principles of Mathematics,[56] On Denoting and Principia Mathematica, aside from greatly promoting the use of classical first order logic in philosophy, set the ground for much of the research program in the early stages of the analytic tradition, emphasising such problems as: the reference of proper names, whether existence is a property, the meaning of propositions, the analysis of definite descriptions, the discussions on the foundations of mathematics; as well as exploring issues of metaphysical commitment and even metaphysical problems regarding time, the nature of matter, mind, persistence and change, which Russell tackled often with the aid of mathematical logic. The philosophy developed as a critique of Hegel and his followers in particular, and of grand systems of speculative philosophy in general, though by no means all analytic philosophers reject the philosophy of Hegel (see Charles Taylor) nor speculative philosophy. Some schools in the group include logical atomism, logical positivism, and ordinary language. The motivation behind the work of analytic philosophers has been varied. Some have held that philosophical problems arise through misuse of language or because of misunderstandings of the logic of our language, while some maintain that there are genuine philosophical problems and that philosophy is continuous with science.
In 1921, Ludwig Wittgenstein published his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which gave a rigidly "logical" account of linguistic and philosophical issues. At the time, he understood most of the problems of philosophy as mere puzzles of language, which could be solved by investigating and then minding the logical structure of language. Years later he would reverse a number of the positions he had set out in the Tractatus, in for example his second major work, Philosophical Investigations (1953). Investigations was influential in the development of "ordinary language philosophy", which was promoted by Gilbert Ryle, J.L. Austin, and a few others. In the United States, meanwhile, the philosophy of W. V. O. Quine was having a major influence, with such classics as Two Dogmas of Empiricism. In that paper Quine criticizes the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, arguing that a clear conception of analyticity is unattainable. He argued for holism, the thesis that language, including scientific language, is a set of interconnected sentences, none of which can be verified on its own, rather, the sentences in the language depend on each other for their meaning and truth conditions. A consequence of Quine's approach is that language as a whole has only a very thin relation to experience, some sentences which refer directly to experience might be somewhat modified by sense impressions, but as the whole of language is theory-laden, for the whole language to be modified, more than this is required. However, most of the linguistic structure can in principle be revised, even logic, in order to better model the world. Notable students of Quine include Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett. The former devised a program for giving a semantics to natural language and thereby answer the philosophical conundrum 'what is meaning?'. A crucial part of the program was the use of Alfred Tarski's semantic theory of truth. Dummett, among others, argued that truth conditions should be dispensed with in the theory of meaning, and replaced by assertibility conditions. Some propositions, on this view, are neither true nor false, and thus such a theory of meaning entails a rejection of the law of the excluded middle. This, for Dummett, entails antirealism, as Russell himself pointed out in An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth.
By the 1970s there was a renewed interest in many traditional philosophical problems by the younger generations of analytic philosophers. David Lewis, Saul Kripke, Derek Parfit and others took an interest in traditional metaphysical problems, which they began exploring by the use of logic and philosophy of language. Among those problems some distinguished ones were: free will, essentialism, the nature of personal identity, identity over time, the nature of the mind, the nature of causal laws, space-time, the properties of material beings, modality, etc. In those universities where analytic philosophy has spread, these problems are still being discussed passionately. Analytic philosophers are also interested in the methodology of analytic philosophy itself, with Timothy Williamson, Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford, publishing recently a book entitled The Philosophy of Philosophy. Some notable figures in contemporary analytic philosophy are: Timothy Williamson, John Searle, Thomas Nagel, Hilary Putnam, Michael Dummett, and Saul Kripke. Analytic philosophy has sometimes been accused of not contributing to the political debate or to traditional questions in aesthetics, however, with the appearance of A Theory of Justice by John Rawls and Anarchy, State and Utopia by Robert Nozick, analytic political philosophy acquired respectability. Analytic philosophers have also shown depth in their investigations of aesthetics, with Roger Scruton, Richard Wollheim, Jerrold Levinson and others developing the subject to its current shape.

Moral and political philosophy

Human nature and political legitimacy

Thomas Hobbes
From ancient times, and well beyond them, the roots of justification for political authority were inescapably tied to outlooks on human nature. In The Republic, Plato declared that the ideal society would be run by a council of philosopher-kings, since those best at philosophy are best able to realize the good. Even Plato, however, required philosophers to make their way in the world for many years before beginning their rule at the age of fifty. For Aristotle, humans are political animals (i.e. social animals), and governments are set up in order to pursue good for the community. Aristotle reasoned that, since the state (polis) was the highest form of community, it has the purpose of pursuing the highest good. Aristotle viewed political power as the result of natural inequalities in skill and virtue. Because of these differences, he favored an aristocracy of the able and virtuous. For Aristotle, the person cannot be complete unless he or she lives in a community. His The Nicomachean Ethics and The Politics are meant to be read in that order. The first book addresses virtues (or "excellences") in the person as a citizen; the second addresses the proper form of government to ensure that citizens will be virtuous, and therefore complete. Both books deal with the essential role of justice in civic life.
Nicolas of Cusa rekindled Platonic thought in the early 15th century. He promoted democracy in Medieval Europe, both in his writings and in his organization of the Council of Florence. Unlike Aristotle and the Hobbesian tradition to follow, Cusa saw human beings as equal and divine (that is, made in God's image), so democracy would be the only just form of government. Cusa's views are credited by some as sparking the Italian Renaissance, which gave rise to the notion of "Nation-States".
Later, Niccolò Machiavelli rejected the views of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas as unrealistic. The ideal sovereign is not the embodiment of the moral virtues; rather the sovereign does whatever is successful and necessary, rather than what is morally praiseworthy. Thomas Hobbes also contested many elements of Aristotle's views. For Hobbes, human nature is essentially anti-social: people are essentially egoistic, and this egoism makes life difficult in the natural state of things. Moreover, Hobbes argued, though people may have natural inequalities, these are trivial, since no particular talents or virtues that people may have will make them safe from harm inflicted by others. For these reasons, Hobbes concluded that the state arises from a common agreement to raise the community out of the state of nature. This can only be done by the establishment of a sovereign, in which (or whom) is vested complete control over the community, and which is able to inspire awe and terror in its subjects.[57]
Karl Marx
Many in the Enlightenment were unsatisfied with existing doctrines in political philosophy, which seemed to marginalize or neglect the possibility of a democratic state. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was among those who attempted to overturn these doctrines: he responded to Hobbes by claiming that a human is by nature a kind of "noble savage", and that society and social contracts corrupt this nature. Another critic was John Locke. In Second Treatise on Government he agreed with Hobbes that the nation-state was an efficient tool for raising humanity out of a deplorable state, but he argued that the sovereign might become an abominable institution compared to the relatively benign unmodulated state of nature.[58]
Following the doctrine of the fact-value distinction, due in part to the influence of David Hume and his student Adam Smith, appeals to human nature for political justification were weakened. Nevertheless, many political philosophers, especially moral realists, still make use of some essential human nature as a basis for their arguments.
Marxism is derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Their idea that capitalism is based on exploitation of workers and causes alienation of people from their human nature, the historical materialism, their view of social classes, etc., have influenced many fields of study, such as sociology, economics, and politics. Marxism inspired the Marxist school of communism, which brought a huge impact on the history of the 20th century.

Consequentialism, deontology, and the aretaic turn

Main articles: Consequentialism, Deontological ethics, and Virtue ethics
Jeremy Bentham
One debate that has commanded the attention of ethicists in the modern era has been between consequentialism (actions are to be morally evaluated solely by their consequences) and deontology (actions are to be morally evaluated solely by consideration of agents' duties, the rights of those whom the action concerns, or both).
Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are famous for propagating utilitarianism, which is the idea that the fundamental moral rule is to strive toward the "greatest happiness for the greatest number". However, in promoting this idea they also necessarily promoted the broader doctrine of consequentialism.
Adopting a position opposed to consequentialism, Immanuel Kant argued that moral principles were simply products of reason. Kant believed that the incorporation of consequences into moral deliberation was a deep mistake, since it would deny the necessity of practical maxims in governing the working of the will. According to Kant, reason requires that we conform our actions to the categorical imperative, which is an absolute duty. An important 20th-century deontologist, W.D. Ross, has argued for weaker forms of duties called prima facie duties.
More recent works have emphasized the role of character in ethics, a movement known as the aretaic turn (that is, the turn towards virtues). One strain of this movement followed the work of Bernard Williams. Williams noted that rigid forms of both consequentialism and deontology demanded that people behave impartially. This, Williams argued, requires that people abandon their personal projects, and hence their personal integrity, in order to be considered moral.
G.E.M. Anscombe, in an influential paper, "Modern Moral Philosophy" (1958), revived virtue ethics as an alternative to what was seen as the entrenched positions of Kantianism and consequentialism. Aretaic perspectives have been inspired in part by research of ancient conceptions of virtue. For example, Aristotle's ethics demands that people follow the Aristotelian mean, or balance between two vices; and Confucian ethics argues that virtue consists largely in striving for harmony with other people. Virtue ethics in general has since gained many adherents, and has been defended by such philosophers as Philippa Foot, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Rosalind Hursthouse.

Applied philosophy

The thoughts a society thinks have profound repercussions on what it does. The applied study of philosophy yields applications such as those in ethics – applied ethics in particular – and political philosophy. The political and economic philosophies of Confucius, Sun Zi, Chanakya, Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Taimiyyah, Niccolò Machiavelli, Gottfried Leibniz, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and others – all of these have been used to shape and justify governments and their actions.
In the field of philosophy of education, progressive education as championed by John Dewey has had a profound impact on educational practices in the United States in the 20th century. Descendants of this movement include the current efforts in philosophy for children. Carl von Clausewitz's political philosophy of war has had a profound effect on statecraft, international politics, and military strategy in the 20th century, especially in the years around World War II. Logic has become crucially important in mathematics, linguistics, psychology, computer science, and computer engineering.
Other important applications can be found in epistemology, which aid in understanding the requisites for knowledge, sound evidence, and justified belief (important in law, economics, decision theory, and a number of other disciplines). The philosophy of science discusses the underpinnings of the scientific method and has affected the nature of scientific investigation and argumentation. This has profound impacts. For example, the strictly empirical approach of Skinner's behaviourism affected for decades the approach of the American psychological establishment. Deep ecology and animal rights examine the moral situation of humans as occupants of a world that has non-human occupants to consider also. Aesthetics can help to interpret discussions of music, literature, the plastic arts, and the whole artistic dimension of life. In general, the various philosophies strive to provide practical activities with a deeper understanding of the theoretical or conceptual underpinnings of their fields.
Often philosophy is seen as an investigation into an area not sufficiently well understood to be its own branch of knowledge. What were once philosophical pursuits have evolved into the modern day fields such as psychology, sociology, linguistics, and economics, for example. But as such areas of intellectual endeavour proliferate and expand, so will the broader philosophical questions that they generate.
The New York Times reported an increase in philosophy majors at United States universities in 2008.[59]

See also

Main article: Outline of philosophy

References

  1. ^ Jenny Teichmann and Katherine C. Evans, Philosophy: A Beginner's Guide (Blackwell Publishing, 1999), p. 1: "Philosophy is a study of problems which are ultimate, abstract and very general. These problems are concerned with the nature of existence, knowledge, morality, reason and human purpose."
  2. ^ A.C. Grayling, Philosophy 1: A Guide through the Subject (Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 1: "The aim of philosophical inquiry is to gain insight into questions about knowledge, truth, reason, reality, meaning, mind, and value."
  3. ^ Anthony Quinton, in T. Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 666: "Philosophy is rationally critical thinking, of a more or less systematic kind about the general nature of the world (metaphysics or theory of existence), the justification of belief (epistemology or theory of knowledge), and the conduct of life (ethics or theory of value). Each of the three elements in this list has a non-philosophical counterpart, from which it is distinguished by its explicitly rational and critical way of proceeding and by its systematic nature. Everyone has some general conception of the nature of the world in which they live and of their place in it. Metaphysics replaces the unargued assumptions embodied in such a conception with a rational and organized body of beliefs about the world as a whole. Everyone has occasion to doubt and question beliefs, their own or those of others, with more or less success and without any theory of what they are doing. Epistemology seeks by argument to make explicit the rules of correct belief formation. Everyone governs their conduct by directing it to desired or valued ends. Ethics, or moral philosophy, in its most inclusive sense, seeks to articulate, in rationally systematic form, the rules or principles involved."
  4. ^ Philosophia, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, at Perseus
  5. ^ Online Etymology Dictionary
  6. ^ The definition of philosophy is: "1.orig., love of, or the search for, wisdom or knowledge 2.theory or logical analysis of the principles underlying conduct, thought, knowledge, and the nature of the universe". Webster's New World Dictionary (Second College ed.). 
  7. ^ a b Oxford Companion to Philosophy
  8. ^ Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Volume II: From Augustine to Scotus (Burns & Oates, 1950), p. 1, dates medieval philosophy proper from the Carolingian Renaissance in the eighth century to the end of the fourteenth century, though he includes Augustine and the Patristic fathers as precursors. Desmond Henry, in Paul Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Macmillan, 1967), vol. 5, pp. 252-257, starts with Augustine and ends with Nicholas of Oresme in the late fourteenth century. David Luscombe, Medieval Thought (Oxford University Press, 1997), dates medieval philosophy from the conversion of Constantine in 312 to the Protestant Reformation in the 1520s. Christopher Hughes, in A.C. Grayling (ed.), Philosophy 2: Further through the Subject (Oxford University Press, 1998), covers philosophers from Augustine to Ockham. Jorge J.E. Gracia, in Nicholas Bunnin and E.P. Tsui-James (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Blackwell, 2003), p. 620, identifies medieval philosophy as running from Augustine to John of St. Thomas in the seventeenth century. Anthony Kenny, A New History of Western Philosophy, Volume II: Medieval Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2005), begins with Augustine and ends with the Lateran Council of 1512.
  9. ^ Charles Schmitt and Quentin Skinner (eds.), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 5, loosely define the period as extending "from the age of Ockham to the revisionary work of Bacon, Descartes and their contemporaries."
  10. ^ Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Volume III: From Ockham to Suarez (The Newman Press, 1953) p. 18: "When one looks at Renaissance philosophy ... one is faced at first sight with a rather bewildering assortment of philosophies."
  11. ^ Brian Copenhaver and Charles Schmitt, Renaissance Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 4: "one may identify the hallmark of Renaissance philosophy as an accelerated and enlarged interest, stimulated by newly available texts, in primary sources of Greek and Roman thought that were previously unknown or partially known or little read."
  12. ^ Jorge J.E. Gracia in Nicholas Bunnin and E.P. Tsui-James (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Blackwell, 2002), p. 621: "the humanists ... restored man to the centre of attention and channeled their efforts to the recovery and transmission of classical learning, particularly in the philosophy of Plato."
  13. ^ Copleston, ibid.: "The bulk of Renaissance thinkers, scholars and scientists were, of course, Christians ... but none the less the classical revival ... helped to bring to the fore a conception of autonomous man or an idea of the development of the human personality which, though generally Christian, was more 'naturalistic' and less ascetic than the mediaeval conception."
  14. ^ Pico Della Mirandola, Conclusiones philosophicae, cabalisticae et theologicae; Giordano Bruno, De Magia
  15. ^ Richard Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Savonarola to Bayle (Oxford University Press, 2003).
  16. ^ Copleston, pp. 228-229.
  17. ^ D. Rutherford (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy (Cambridge UP, 2006)
  18. ^ S. Nadler (ed.), A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, (Blackwell, 2002)
  19. ^ Shand, John (ed.) Central Works of Philosophy, Vol.3 The Nineteenth Century (McGill-Queens, 2005)
  20. ^ Beiser, Frederick C. The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, (Cambridge, 1993).
  21. ^ Avrum Stroll, Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy (Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 252: "More than any other analytic philosopher, [Wittgenstein] has changed the thinking of a whole generation."
  22. ^ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Bertrand Russell", 1 May 2003
  23. ^ Raymond Geuss, in Thomas Baldwin (ed.), The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 497: "Heidegger is by a wide margin the single most influential philosopher of the twentieth century."
  24. ^ See Stephen Thornton, "Karl Popper", in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).
  25. ^ Thomas Baldwin, Contemporary Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 90: "[Quine] has been, without question, the most influential American philosopher of the second half of the twentieth century."
  26. ^ Scott Soames, Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, vol. 2 (Princeton University Press, 2003), p. 336: "[Kripke's Naming and Necessity] fundamentally changed the way in which much philosophy is done."
  27. ^ Giorgio Buccellati (1981), "Wisdom and Not: The Case of Mesopotamia", Journal of the American Oriental Society 101 (1), p. 35-47.
  28. ^ Giorgio Buccellati (1981), "Wisdom and Not: The Case of Mesopotamia", Journal of the American Oriental Society 101 (1), p. 35-47 [43].
  29. ^ Blackburn, Simon (1994). The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
  30. ^ Sajjad H. Rizvi (2006), Avicenna/Ibn Sina (CA. 980-1037), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  31. ^ G. A. Russell (1994), The 'Arabick' Interest of the Natural Philosophers in Seventeenth-Century England, pp. 224-62, Brill Publishers, ISBN 90-04-09459-8
  32. ^ Sextus Empiricus, PH (= Outlines of Pyrrhonism) I.8
  33. ^ Sextus Empiricus, PH (= Outlines of Pyrrhonism) I.19–20
  34. ^ "And though a Pyrrhonian [i.e. a skeptic] may throw himself or others into a momentary amazement and confusion by his profound reasonings; the first and most trivial event in life will put to flight all his doubts and scruples, and leave him the same, in every point of action and speculation, with the philosophers of every other sect, or with those who never concerned themselves in any philosophical researches. When he awakes from his dream, he will be the first to join in the laugh against himself, and to confess, that all his objections are mere amusement." (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1777, XII, Part 2, p. 128)
  35. ^ Lewis Carroll (1895). What the Tortoise Said to Achilles. 
  36. ^ Stephen Cade Hetherington (1996). Knowledge Puzzles. 
  37. ^ First Dialogue
  38. ^ Kant, Immanuel (1990). Critique of Pure Reason. Prometheus Books. ISBN 0-87975-596-2. 
  39. ^ Murphy, John P. (1990). Pragmatism – from Peirce to Davidson. Boulder: Westview Press. 
  40. ^ Rorty, Richard (1982). The Consequences of Pragmatism. Minnesota: Minnesota University Press. p. xvi. 
  41. ^ Putnam, Hilary (1995). Pragmatism: An Open Question. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 8–12. 
  42. ^ Pratt, J.B. (1909). What is Pragmatism?. New York: Macmillan. p. 89. 
  43. ^ a b Woodruff Smith, David (2007). Husserl. Routledge. 
  44. ^ Dreyfus, Hubert (2006). A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism. Blackwell. 
  45. ^ John Macquarrie, Existentialism, New York (1972), pages 18-21.
  46. ^ Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich, New York (1995), page 259.
  47. ^ John Macquarrie, Existentialism, New York (1972), pages 14-15.
  48. ^ Robert C. Solomon, Existentialism (McGraw-Hill, 1974, pages 1-2)
  49. ^ Ernst Breisach, Introduction to Modern Existentialism, New York (1962), page 5
  50. ^ Walter Kaufmann, Existentialism: From Dostoevesky to Sartre, New York (1956) page 12
  51. ^ Matustik, Martin J. (1995). Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-20967-6. 
  52. ^ Solomon, Robert (2001). What Nietzsche Really Said. ISBN 0-8052-1094-6. 
  53. ^ Religious thinkers were among those influenced by Kierkegaard. Christian existentialists include Gabriel Marcel, Nicholas Berdyaev, Miguel de Unamuno, and Karl Jaspers (although he preferred to speak of his "philosophical faith"). The Jewish philosophers Martin Buber and Lev Shestov have also been associated with existentialism.
  54. ^ Kierkegaard, Søren (1986). Fear and Trembling. Penguin Classics. ISBN 0-14-044449-1. 
  55. ^ Kierkegaard, Søren (1992). Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-02081-7. 
  56. ^ The Principles of Mathematics (1903)
  57. ^ Hobbes, Thomas (1985). Leviathan. Penguin Classics. 
  58. ^ Sigmund, Paul E. (2005). The Selected Political Writings of John Locke. Norton. ISBN 0-393-96451-5. 
  59. ^ "In a New Generation of College Students, Many Opt for the Life Examined." The New York Times.

Further reading

Introductions

  • Appiah, Kwame Anthony. Thinking it Through  – An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy, 2003, ISBN 0-19-513458-3
  • Blumenau, Ralph. Philosophy and Living. ISBN 0-907845-33-9
  • Craig, Edward. Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. ISBN 0-19-285421-6
  • Curley, Edwin, A Spinoza Reader, Princeton, 1994, ISBN 0-691-00067-0
  • Durant, Will, Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers, Pocket, 1991, ISBN 0-671-73916-6, ISBN 978-0-671-73916-4
  • Harrison-Barbet, Anthony, Mastering Philosophy. ISBN 0-333-69343-4
  • Higgins, Kathleen M. and Solomon, Robert C. A Short History of Philosophy. ISBN 0-19-510196-0
  • Philosophy Now magazine
  • Russell, Bertrand. The Problems of Philosophy. ISBN 0-19-511552-X
  • Sinclair, Alistair J. What is Philosophy? An Introduction, 2008, ISBN 978-1-903765-94-4
  • Sober, E. (2001). Core Questions in Philosophy: A Text with Readings. Upper Saddle River, Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-189869-8
  • Solomon, Robert C. Big Questions: A Short Introduction to Philosophy. ISBN 0-534-16708-X
  • Warburton, Nigel. Philosophy: The Basics. ISBN 0-415-14694-1
  • Think: philosophy for everyone Lively and accessible articles written by philosophers pre-eminent in their fields, for a broad audience. Free articles are available online.

Topical introductions

  • Copleston, Frederick. Philosophy in Russia: From Herzen to Lenin and Berdyaev. ISBN 0-268-01569-4
  • Critchley, Simon. Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. ISBN 0-19-285359-7
  • Hamilton, Sue. Indian Philosophy: a Very Short Introduction. ISBN 0-19-285374-0
  • Harwood, Sterling, ed., Business as Ethical and Business as Usual (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 2000); www.sterlingharwood.com
  • Imbo, Samuel Oluoch. '3'An Introduction to African Philosophy. ISBN 0-8476-8841-0
  • Knight, Kelvin. Aristotelian Philosophy: Ethics and Politics from Aristotle to MacIntyre. ISBN 0-7456-1977-0
  • Kupperman, Joel J. Classic Asian Philosophy: A Guide to the Essential Texts. ISBN 0-19-513335-8
  • Leaman, Oliver. A Brief Introduction to Islamic Philosophy. ISBN 0-7456-1960-6
  • Lee, Joe and Powell, Jim. Eastern Philosophy For Beginners. ISBN 0-86316-282-7
  • Nagel, Thomas. What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy. ISBN 0-19-505292-7
  • Scruton, Roger. A Short History of Modern Philosophy. ISBN 0-415-26763-3
  • Smart, Ninian. World Philosophies. ISBN 0-415-22852-2
  • Tarnas, Richard. The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View. ISBN 0-345-36809-6

Anthologies

  • Classics of Philosophy (Vols. 1 & 2, 2nd edition) by Louis P. Pojman
  • Classics of Philosophy: The 20th Century (Vol. 3) by Louis P. Pojman
  • The English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill by Edwin Arthur
  • European Philosophers from Descartes to Nietzsche by Monroe Beardsley
  • Contemporary Analytic Philosophy: Core Readings by James Baillie
  • Existentialism: Basic Writings (Second Edition) by Charles Guignon, Derk Pereboom
  • The Phenomenology Reader by Dermot Moran, Timothy Mooney
  • Medieval Islamic Philosophical Writings edited by Muhammad Ali Khalidi
  • A Source Book in Indian Philosophy by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Charles A. Moore
  • A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy by Wing-tsit Chan
  • Kim, J. and Ernest Sosa, Ed. (1999). Metaphysics: An Anthology. Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies. Oxford, Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
  • The Oxford Handbook of Free Will (2004) edited by Robert Kane
  • Husserl, Edmund and Welton, Donn, The Essential Husserl: Basic Writings in Transcendental Phenomenology, Indiana University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-253-21273-1

Reference works

  • The Oxford Companion to Philosophy edited by Ted Honderich
  • The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy by Robert Audi
  • The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (10 vols.) edited by Edward Craig, Luciano Floridi (available online by subscription); or
  • The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy edited by Edward Craig (an abridgement)
  • Encyclopedia of Philosophy (8 vols.) edited by Paul Edwards; in 1996, a ninth supplemental volume appeared which updated the classic 1967 encyclopedia.
  • International Directory of Philosophy and Philosophers. Charlottesville, Philosophy Documentation Center.
  • Directory of American Philosophers. Charlottesville, Philosophy Documentation Center.
  • Routledge History of Philosophy (10 vols.) edited by John Marenbon
  • History of Philosophy (9 vols.) by Frederick Copleston
  • A History of Western Philosophy (5 vols.) by W. T. Jones
  • Encyclopaedia of Indian Philosophies (8 vols.), edited by Karl H. Potter et al. (first 6 volumes out of print)
  • Indian Philosophy (2 vols.) by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
  • A History of Indian Philosophy (5 vols.) by Surendranath Dasgupta
  • History of Chinese Philosophy (2 vols.) by Fung Yu-lan, Derk Bodde
  • Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy edited by Antonio S. Cua
  • Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion by Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber, Franz-Karl Ehrhard, Kurt Friedrichs
  • Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy by Brian Carr, Indira Mahalingam
  • A Concise Dictionary of Indian Philosophy: Sanskrit Terms Defined in English by John A. Grimes
  • History of Islamic Philosophy edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Oliver Leaman
  • History of Jewish Philosophy edited by Daniel H. Frank, Oliver Leaman
  • A History of Russian Philosophy: From the Tenth to the Twentieth Centuries by Valerii Aleksandrovich Kuvakin
  • Ayer, A. J. et al., Ed. (1994) A Dictionary of Philosophical Quotations. Blackwell Reference Oxford. Oxford, Basil Blackwell Ltd.
  • Blackburn, S., Ed. (1996)The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
  • Mauter, T., Ed. The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy. London, Penguin Books.
  • Runes, D., Ed. (1942). The Dictionary of Philosophy. New York, The Philosophical Library, Inc.
  • Angeles, P. A., Ed. (1992). The Harper Collins Dictionary of Philosophy. New York, Harper Perennial.
  • Bunnin, N. et al., Ed. (1996) The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy. Blackwell Companions to Philosophy. Oxford, Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
  • Hoffman, Eric, Ed. (1997) Guidebook for Publishing Philosophy. Charlottesville, Philosophy Documentation Center.
  • Popkin, R. H. (1999). The Columbia History of Western Philosophy. New York, Columbia University Press.

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Quotes

Up to date as of January 14, 2010

From Wikiquote

Quotes regarding Philosophy and philosophers:

Sourced

  • The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.
  • Philosophy is not the owl of Minerva that takes flight after history has been realized in order to celebrate its happy ending; rather, philosophy is subjective proposition, desire, and praxis that are applied to the event.
  • What characterizes philosophy is this "step back" from actuality into possibility—the attitude best rendered by Adorno's and Horkheimer's motto quoted by Fredric Jameson: "Not Italy itself is given here, but the proof that it exists."
    • Slavoj Žižek, Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology, p. 2. ISBN 0822313952
  • "In order to live, man must act; in order to act, he must make choices; in order to make choices, he must define a code of values; in order to define a code of values, he must know what he is and where he is – i.e. he must know his own nature (including his means of knowledge) and the nature of the universe in which he acts – i.e. he needs metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, which means: philosophy. He cannot escape from this need; his only alternative is whether the philosophy guiding him is to be chosen by his mind or by chance." Ayn Rand, "Philosophy, who needs it?".
  • "'Philosophy' is a word which has been used in many ways, some wider, some narrower. I propose to use it in a very wide sense, which I will now try to explain."
  • Philosophy makes progress not by becoming more rigorous but by becoming more imaginative.
    • Richard Rorty, Introduction to Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3 (1998).
  • To philosophise is to learn to die – philosophising is a soaring up to the Godhead – the knowledge of Being as Being.
    • Karl Jaspers, Philosophy and Science, World Review Magazine, March 1950.
  • Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.
    • Anonymous; quoted in Dennett, Daniel C. (2006). Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (1st ed. ed.). Viking Penguin. pp. p. 17. ISBN 0-670-03472-X.  
  • "Too much philosophy makes men mad." ~ Alan Judd, The Noonday Devil (1987)
  • "'You only think you are you barnpots,' shouted angry farmers from the meadows. 'Shut that row up! You're frightening the chickens, you lot and your bloody philosophy. You can't eat philosophy can you? Where would you be if us farmers went round spouting statements like that, eh? Dead, that's where you'd be! Because there'd be naff all to eat!"
    • Mike Harding 'Rambling on'
  • Physics and philosophy are at most a few thousand years old, but probably have lives of thousands of millions of years stretching away in front of them. They are only just beginning to get under way.
    • Physics and Philosophy, by James Jeans (1942), p.217.
  • "Shouldn’t I join the ranks of philosophers and merely make unsubstantiated claims about the wonders of human consciousness? Shouldn’t I stop trying to do some science and keep my head down? Indeed not".
  • "I feel that we are all philosophers, and that those who describe themselves as a ‘philosopher’ simply do not have a day job to go to".
  • "Believe nothing, O monks, merely because you have been told it … or because it is traditional, or because you yourselves have imagined it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings—that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide. ~ Gautama Buddha (attributed, Original wording, source: Kalama Sutra, Pali Canon)

Unsourced

  • "Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest--whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories--comes afterward. These are games; one must first answer." ~ Albert Camus
  • People often say to me,
    I understand what you are talking about intellectually, but I don’t really feel it, I don’t realize it,
    and I am apt to reply,
    "I wonder whether you do understand it intellectually, because if you did, you would also feel it." ~ Alan Watts
  • "Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man's relationship to existence. In the realm of cognition, the special sciences are the trees, but philosophy is the soil which makes the forest possible." ~ Ayn Rand
  • "Science is what we know and philosophy is what we don't know." ~ Bertrand Russell
  • "What is your aim in philosophy? To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle." ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
  • "Philosophy is to the real world as masturbation is to sex." ~ Karl Marx
  • "In pornography philosophers are called virgin voyeurs. They like to watch and criticize as an expert, but have never even had sex themselves" ~ Kevin Warwick
  • "Philosophy is the peculiarly stubborn attempt to think clearly." ~ William James
  • "Philosophy, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing." ~ Ambrose Bierce
  • "Shallow thoughts can be deep, when emphasized properly." ~ Josh Duerrstein
  • "True philosophy is that which renders us to ourselves, and all others who surround us, better, and at the same time more content, more patient, more calm and more ready for all decent and pure enjoyment." ~ Lavater
  • "Philosophy abounds more than philosophers, and learning more than learned men." ~ W.B. Clulow
  • "The road to true philosophy is precisely the same with that which leads to true religion; and from both the one and the other, unless we would enter in as little children, we must expect to be totally excluded." ~ Bacon
  • "Philosophy is the art and law of life, and it teaches us what to do in all cases, and, like good marksmen, to hit the white at any distance." ~ Seneca
  • "A little philosophy inclineth men's minds to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds to religion." ~ Bacon
  • "Whence? whither? why? how?—these questions cover all philosophy." ~ Joseph Joubert
  • "I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law." ~ Aristotle
  • "Philosophy is just like art, it's not supposed to be dumb, stupid and senseless but people make it that way." ~ Anonymous
  • “Philosophy has become the stuff of airport lounges instead of the Sorbonne.” ~ Kate Muir, Times columnist.
  • “Being a philosopher, I have a problem for every solution.” ~ Robert Zend
  • “Ther philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher
  • “Philosophy: unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.” ~ Henry Adams
  • “Philosophy—the purple bullfinch in the lilac tree.” ~ T. S. Eliot
  • “I believe that in actual fact, philosophy ranks before and above the natural sciences.” ~ Thomas Mann
  • “Philosophy is useless, Theology is worse.” ~ Mark Knofler in the song Industrial Disease
  • "Philosophy is like a damp wash cloth. You wonder who used it before you.... and where." ~ Christine McWilliams

See also

Wikipedia
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Philosophers

Study guide

Up to date as of January 14, 2010
(Redirected to School:Philosophy article)

From Wikiversity

Welcome to the School of Philosophy, part of Humanities!
A school is a large organizational structure which can contain various departments and divisions. The departments and divisions should be listed in the departments and divisions section. The school should not contain any learning resources. The school can contain projects for developing learning resources.
The School of Athens ~ Raphael
“ According to Cicero (Tusculan Disputations V, III, 8), when Pythagoras was once asked who philosophers were, he replied that life seemed to him to resemble the games in the Olympic festival: some men sought glory, others to buy and sell at the games, and some men had come neither for gain nor applause, but for the sake of the spectacle and to understand what was done and how it was done. In the same way, in life, some are slaves of ambition or money, but others are interested in understanding life itself. These give themselves the name of philosophers (lovers of wisdom), and they value the contemplation and discovery of nature beyond all other pursuits. ”

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Divisions and Departments of the School exist on pages in "topic" namespace. Start the name of departments with the "Topic:" prefix; departments reside in the Topic: namespace. Departments and divisions link to learning materials and learning projects. Divisions can link subdivisions or to departments. For more information on schools, divisions and departments look at the Naming Conventions. Note: there are additional philosophy pages that need to be imported from Wikibooks.
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The best place to start is by asking yourself why you came here...
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Source material

Up to date as of January 22, 2010

From Wikisource

Philosophy
by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Information about this edition
In the 1913 collection of his work, The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar.

                      PHILOSOPHY

I been t'inkin' 'bout de preachah; whut he said de othah night,
  'Bout hit bein' people's dooty, fu' to keep dey faces bright;
How one ought to live so pleasant dat ouah tempah never riles,
  Meetin' evahbody roun' us wid ouah very nicest smiles.

Dat 's all right, I ain't a-sputin' not a t'ing dat soun's lak fac',
  But you don't ketch folks a-grinnin' wid a misery in de back;
An' you don't fin' dem a-smilin' w'en dey 's hongry ez kin be,
  Leastways, dat 's how human natur' allus seems to 'pear to me.
.
We is mos' all putty likely fu' to have our little cares,
  An' I think we 'se doin' fus' rate w'en we jes' go long and bears,
Widout breakin' up ouah faces in a sickly so't o' grin,
  W'en we knows dat in ouah innards we is p'intly mad ez sin.^ We must, like all other beings in nature who do their useful work as part of the larger systems of which they are part, be of service to our fellow humans beings and to other creatures.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Similarly, in the dialogue which bears his name, the temperate Charmides, of whom all testify that (as Aristophanes has it),' he " fills up the gracious mould of modesty," is hopelessly Charmides.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ The graceful little dialogue which bears the name of Lysis ends, like the two former, with a confession of failure.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

Oh dey 's times fu' bein' pleasant an' fu' goin' smilin' roun',
  'Cause I don't believe in people allus totin' roun' a frown,
But it's easy 'nough to titter w'en de stew is smokin' hot,
  But hit's mighty ha'd to giggle w'en dey's nuffin' in de pot.
PD-icon.svg This work published before January 1, 1923 is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

1911 encyclopedia

Up to date as of January 14, 2010

From LoveToKnow 1911

PHILOSOPHY (Gr. .4 LXos, fond of, and a001a, wisdom), a general term whose meaning and scope have varied very considerably according to the usage of different authors and different ages.^ The very definition of a category evolved over time, according to the author's chosen goals and metamathematical framework.
  • Category Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 15 September 2009 6:31 UTC plato.stanford.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ But when I use the term "religion", I really (always) mean "organized religion", as opposed to spirituality, which is a very personal and individual set of choices.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 .It can best be explained by a survey of the steps by which philosophy differentiated itself, in the history of Greek thought, from the idea of knowledge and culture in general.^ This article discusses how best to teach the history of philosophy, with particular reference to personal identity.
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Greek philosophy as we know it came after the rise and fall of the high culture on Crete, its end now thought to have been hastened by a giant tidal wave due to a major volcanic eruption.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ History of Intellectual Philosophy and Greek Literature at College of Charleston, S.C. (1850-54, 1866-71).
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 .These steps may be traced in the gradual specification of the term.^ These may include “liquidity crisis”, “meltdown in the housing sector”, “University of Chicago”, “risk to the country’s financial system” and other such terms or phrases.

 .The tradition which assigns the first employment of the Greek word 4aAoa041a to Pythagoras has hardly any claim to be regarded as authentic; and the somewhat self-conscious modesty to which Diogenes Laertius attributes the choice of the designation is, in all probability, a piece of etymology crystallized into narrative.^ This, of course, is probably the problem: what we have is a competition between philosophies focused on language design, and those focused on a broader outlook of what it takes to produce a piece of software in the "real world".
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Thales of Miletus, born about 640 B.C., is often called the first Greek philosopher (not counting Sparta's Lycurgus, who belongs to quite a different tradition).
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .It is true that, as a matter of fact, the earliest uses of the word (the verb /xXoa04Eiv occurs in Herodotus and Thucydides) imply the idea of the pursuit of knowledge; but the distinction between the aogios, or wise man, and the 4nXoaoa50s, or lover of wisdom, appears first in the Platonic writings, and lends itself naturally to the so-called Socratic irony.^ He accepts the distinction between Love and his works, but points out that, since desire implies want, and the desire of Love is toward beauty, Love, as wanting beauty, is not beautiful.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ And the word " sophist," which had somehow become the bête noire of the Platonic school, thus for the first time fixedly acquires the significance which has since clung to the name.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Shoemaker writes, "In the sense in which I can conceive of myself existing in disembodied form, this comes to the fact that it is compatible with what I know about my essential nature .

 The same thought is to be found in Xenophon, and is doubtless to be attributed to the historical Socrates. But the word soon lost this special implication. .What is of real interest to us is to trace the progress from the idea of the philosopher as occupied with any and every department of knowledge to that which assigns him a special kind of knowledge as his province.^ Phil 151 Philosophical Ideas: Knowledge & Reality .
  • SJSU Articulation 15 September 2009 6:31 UTC info.sjsu.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Sextus attacked every claim by dogmatic philosophers to knowledge about the "nonevident world" (any condition that is not now being, and cannot at some time be, observed).
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ What is commonly known as his doctrine of Ideas is only one phase in a continuous progress towards the realization of a system of philosophy in which the supreme factor is reason guiding will.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]
.A specific sense of the word first meets us in Plato, who defines the philosopher as one who apprehends the essence or reality of things in opposition to the man who dwells in appearances and the shows of sense.^ It seems to me that the same discovery which Copernicus made in astronomy was made in dogmatics when it discovered that God is not the one who changes, but that man changes his position in relationship to God-in other words: the sun does not go around the earth, but the earth goes around the sun.
  • GREAT PHILOSOPHERS: ATHEISTS OR BELIEVERS IN GOD? 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC atheismexposed.tripod.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ As a prelude to this magnificent celebration, Timaeus, the Pythagorean philosopher, who is present at the Panathenaea , is invited to discourse of the origin of all things, and to bring down the glorious theme to the creation of man.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ And Plato, who, when most ideal, ever strives to keep touch with experience, is fully convinced of the reality of this lower truth, of this unphilosophic virtue.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .The philosophers, he says, "are those who are able to grasp the eternal and immutable"; they are "those who set their affections on that which in each case really exists" (Rep.^ Those who have, from afar off, bowed their head to the mystic word, because they have heard a faint echo of it within themselves, will not remain indifferent to its message.
  • GREAT PHILOSOPHERS: ATHEISTS OR BELIEVERS IN GOD? 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC atheismexposed.tripod.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ The real difference is between those who base their teaching on philosophy and those who are content with rules of art.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Luckily few things are really necessary to sustain life and keep the body healthy, and in most cases they are fairly easy to obtain.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 480). .In Plato, however, this distinction is applied chiefly in an ethical and religious direction; and, while it defines philosophy, so far correctly, as the endeavour to express what things are in their ultimate constitution, it is not yet accompanied by a sufficient differentiation of the subsidiary inquiries by which this ultimate question may be approached.^ The data of direct experience may be accepted as such; what is not given in direct experience must always be questioned.....
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ These and cognate questions may well have haunted Plato when he planned the Republic, the greatest of his works.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ But he had a distinct nomenclature for either, and, although gravity is explained away (so that his molecules, unlike Clerk Maxwell's, may be called imponderable), yet extension, or the property of filling space, is sufficiently implied.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .Logic, ethics and physics, psychology, theory of knowledge and metaphysics are all fused together by Plato in a semi-religious synthesis.^ But the Greek metaphysician is none the less a pioneer of knowledge,' while the special sciences of ethics and psychology had been carried from infancy to adolescence in a single lifetime.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ This mystical account of ordinary morality is in keeping with the semi-mythical defence of the process of inquiry - that all knowledge is implicit in the mind from birth.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ A philosopher of those days might have been concerned with mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, metaphysics, biology, ethics, psychology, and more.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .It is not till we come to Aristotle - the encyclopaedist of the ancient world - that we find a demarcation of the different philosophic disciplines corresponding, in the main, to that still current.^ Plato            The Greek philosopher Plato was among the most important and creative thinkers of the ancient world.
  • "Natural Magick" - "Glossary/Index - P" 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC homepages.tscnet.com [Source type: Original source]

 .The earliest philosophers, or "physiologers," had occupied themselves chiefly with what we may call cosmology; the one question which covers everything for them is that of the underlying substance of the world around them, and they essay to answer this question, so to speak, by simple inspection.^ Yet, love and hate, which make the world go around are as much a mystery to us today as they ever were.

 ^ Before long it came to be called one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ The first is to introduce the 'knowledge game', a new, simple and yet powerful tool for analysing some intriguing philosophical questions.
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 .In Socrates and Plato, on the other hand, the start is made from a consideration of man's moral and intellectual activity; but knowledge and action are confused with one another, as in the Socratic doctrine that virtue is knowledge.^ One side or the other has made a mistake.

 ^ It seems to me that the same discovery which Copernicus made in astronomy was made in dogmatics when it discovered that God is not the one who changes, but that man changes his position in relationship to God-in other words: the sun does not go around the earth, but the earth goes around the sun.
  • GREAT PHILOSOPHERS: ATHEISTS OR BELIEVERS IN GOD? 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC atheismexposed.tripod.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ The Oracle at Delphi declared that no one was wiser than Socrates, because he claimed that he himself knew nothing, while others who knew far less walked about parading their knowledge, Socrates set out to see if he could disprove the oracle by finding a wiser man.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .To this correspond the Platonic confusion of logic and ethics and the attempt to substitute a theory of concepts for a metaphysic of reality.^ From the Preface : "And computing is more important than computers: programming languages, computational theories and concepts these are what computing is about, not transistors, logic gates or flashing lights.
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ The theory of ideas here assumes its most transcendental aspect, and it is from portions of this dialogue and of the Phaedrus and Timaeus that the popular conception of Platonism has been principally derived.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ The possibility in question is not epistemic but real, and is that species of real possibility called broadly logical or metaphysical.

 Aristotle's methodic intellect led him to separate the different aspects of reality here confounded. .He became the founder of logic, psychology, ethics and aesthetics as separate sciences; while he prefixed to all such (comparatively) special inquiries the investigation of the ultimate nature of existence as such, or of those first principles which are common to, and presupposed in, every narrower field of knowledge.^ Nonetheless, Artistotle enriched and systematized the knowledge of his time in almost all the sciences of nature.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ A philosopher of those days might have been concerned with mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, metaphysics, biology, ethics, psychology, and more.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Natural desire includes those that are necessary, such as for food and sleep, and those that are not, such as for sex.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 For this investigation Aristotle's most usual name is "first philosophy" or, as a modern might say, "first principles"; but there has since been appropriated to it, apparently by accident, the title "metaphysics." "Philosophy," as a term of general application, was not, indeed restricted by Aristotle or his successors to the disciplines just enumerated. Aristotle himself includes under the title, besides mathematics, all his physical inquiries. .It was only in the Alexandrian period, as Zeller points out, that the special sciences attained to independent cultivation.^ The effect of Hellenic thought on Christian theology and on the life of Christendom is a subject for a volume, and has been pointed out in part by E. Zeller and others (cf.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .Nevertheless, as the mass of knowledge accumulated, it naturally came about that the name "philosophy" ceased to be applied to inquiries concerned with the particulars as such.^ Philosophy needs AI to progress in its study of difficult questions about the nature of mind.
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ In this " pathway towards reality," from the consideration of particular virtues he passed to the contemplation of virtue in general, and thence to the nature of universals, and to the unity of knowledge and being.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ These postulates, when once apprehended, drew Plato on to speculate concerning the nature, the object and the method of knowledge.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .The details of physics, for example, were abandoned to the scientific specialist, and philosophy restricted itself in this department to the question of the relation of the physical universe to the ultimate ground or author of things.^ The University of Texas at San Antonio Department of Philosophy & Classics announces a workshop on the thought of Simon Critchley who will be the Brackenridge Distinguished Visiting Professor.
  • Alltop - Top Philosophy News 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC philosophy.alltop.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ CALL FOR PAPERS: Philosophical WritingsPhilosophical Writings is an international journal published in the Philosophy Department at the Durham University since 1996.
  • Alltop - Top Philosophy News 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC philosophy.alltop.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ For example, the questions that Turing posed about intelligent programs reflect back on our understanding of intelligence itself.
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 .This inquiry which was long called "rational cosmology," may be said to form part of the general subject of metaphysics, or at all events a pendant to it.^ European thought, in which all previous movements are absorbed, and from which all subsequent lines of reflection may be said to diverge.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ He is said to have distinguished among the "nutritive soul," common to all living beings, the "sensitive soul," common to animals and humans, and the "rational soul," found only in human beings.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Polish a Poniard , Sword or Knife, very well with Powder of Emril and oil, and then cleanse it with chalk, that no part may be dark, but that it may glister all over..."
  • "Natural Magick" - "Glossary/Index - P" 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC homepages.tscnet.com [Source type: Original source]

 .By the gradual sifting out of the special sciences philosophy thus came to embrace primarily the inquiries grouped as "metaphysics" or "first philosophy."^ Philosophy is primarily critical thinking and inquiry.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ First, philosophy, like all science, is not ethically good or bad per se.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Report on a Subject Centre funded project for the development of a module website for the 'Philosophy of Social Science' module for post-graduate students in the School of Nursing at the University of Nottingham.
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 .These would embrace, according to the Wolffian scheme long current in philosophical textbooks, ontology proper, or the science of being as such, with its three-branch sciences of (rational) psychology, cosmology and (rational or natural) theology, dealing with the three chief forms of being - the soul, the world and God.^ It introduces ideas about ontology, architectures, virtual machines and how these can help transform some old philosophical debates."
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ The philosopher has a life-long quarrel with bodily desires, and he should welcome the release of his soul.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ It would be a good beginning to embrace his ideas as they deal with the cause of our dilemma, false programming.

 .Subsidiary to metaphysics, as the central inquiry, stand the sciences of logic and ethics, to which may be added aesthetics, constituting three normative sciences - sciences, that is, which do not, primarily, describe facts, but rather prescribe ends or set forth ideals.^ As the first to investigate logic systematically, you will not take it amiss if I set forth your view in a syllogism: .

 ^ The problem may be set forth as an aporetic triad: .

 ^ This lifelong work of Socrates, in which the germs of ethics, psychology and logic were contained, was idealized, developed, dramatized - first embodied and then extended beyond its original scope - in the writings of Plato, which may be described as the literary outcome of the profound impression made by Socrates upon his greatest follower.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .It is evident, however, that if logic deals with conceptions which may be considered constitutive of knowledge as such, and if ethics deals with the harmonious realization of human life, which is the highest known form of existence, both sciences must have a great deal of weight in the settling of the general question of metaphysics.^ "Science deals with knowledge of the material world based on objective reality.
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ It held that only ethics is real philosophy, and we should study the wisdom of nature as a guide to life.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ However, it can be argued that there is such a thing as the concept of natural numbers.
  • Category Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 15 September 2009 6:31 UTC plato.stanford.edu [Source type: Academic]
.In sum, then, we may say that "philosophy" has come to be understood at least in modern times as a general term covering the various disciplines just enumerated.^ It wasn't; it was just another self-interested, short-term ruse from a bunch of politicians who are incapable of seeing further than the next general election.

 ^ The student of philosophy, whatever may be the modern system to which he is most inclined, sensational, intuitional, conceptional, transcendental, will find his account in returning xxi.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ His work set forth most of the important problems and concepts of Western philosophy, psychology, logic, and politics, and his influence has remained profound from ancient to modern times.
  • "Natural Magick" - "Glossary/Index - P" 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC homepages.tscnet.com [Source type: Original source]

 It has frequently tended, however, and still tends, to be used as specially convertible with the narrower term "metaphysics." .This is not unnatural, seeing that it is only so far as they bear on the one central question of the nature of existence that philosophy spreads its mantle over psychology, logic or ethics.^ It’s nice to see I am not the only one who contemplates the philosophy of technology.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ "As posed by Alan Turing, the question of machine intelligence has become a central theme of our time -- and here, as elsewhere, Dennett brings analytic rigor to bear.
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ In this form of question, however simple, the originality of Socrates is typified; and by means of it he laid the first stone, not only of the fabric of ethical philosophy , but of scientific method, at least in ethics , logic and psychology .
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .The particular organic conditions of perception and the associative laws to which the mind, as a part of nature, is subjected, are facts in themselves indifferent to the philosopher; and therefore the development of psychology into an independent science, which took place during the latter half of the 10th century and may now be said to be complete, represents an entirely natural evolution.^ But, on account of their cognate subject-matter, these six dialogues may be conveniently classed together in a group by themselves.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ This sort of discourse might be forgivable as part of a drunken outburst at a friend, but that someone took the time to type all of it and post it on a blog boggles my mind.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Report of a Subject Centre organised workshop which took place on May 31st 2001.
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 Similarly, logic, so far as it is an art of thought or a doctrine of fallacies, and ethics, so far as it is occupied with a natural history of impulses and moral sentiments, do neither of them belong, except by courtesy, to the philosophic province. .But, although this is so, it is perhaps hardly desirable to deprive ourselves of the use of two terms instead of one.^ None of the great scholastic writers, not even so late a one as Suarez, use the term in this sense - indeed they hardly use it at all.

 ^ The term “aggregate” is used by Eilenberg & Mac Lane themselves, presumably so as to remain neutral with respect to the background set theory one wants to adopt.
  • Category Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 15 September 2009 6:31 UTC plato.stanford.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Feser distinguishes two senses of 'fact,' one metaphysical (I prefer the term 'ontological') the other epistemological: .

 It will not be easy to infuse into so abstract and bloodless a term as "metaphysics" the fuller life (and especially the inclusion of ethical considerations) suggested by the more concrete term "philosophy." We shall first of all, then, attempt to differentiate philosophy from the special sciences, and afterwards proceed to take up one. by one what have been called the philosophical sciences, with the view of showing how far the usual subject-matter of each is really philosophical in its bearing, and how far it belongs rather to the domain of "science" strictly so called. .The order in which, for clearness of exposition, it will be most convenient to consider these disciplines will be psychology, epistemology or theory of knowledge, and metaphysics, then logic, aesthetics and ethics.^ But the Greek metaphysician is none the less a pioneer of knowledge,' while the special sciences of ethics and psychology had been carried from infancy to adolescence in a single lifetime.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ From the Preface : "And computing is more important than computers: programming languages, computational theories and concepts these are what computing is about, not transistors, logic gates or flashing lights.
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ A philosopher of those days might have been concerned with mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, metaphysics, biology, ethics, psychology, and more.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .Finally, the connexion of the last-mentioned with politics (or, to speak more modernly, with jurisprudence and sociology), with the philosophy of history and the philosophy of religion, will call for a few words on the relation of these sciences to general philosophy.^ Delving deeper into Lisp history, we find many political skeletons in the closet which few mention.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ In other words, UF ( X ) is the best possible solution to the problem of inserting elements of X into a group (what is called “insertion of generators” in the mathematical jargon).
  • Category Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 15 September 2009 6:31 UTC plato.stanford.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ "Don't believe the History of Western Philosophy is the last word on what philosophy is either" Sigh.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]
Table of contents
1 Philosophy and Natural Science
2 Psychology, Epistemology and Metaphysics
3 Logic, Aesthetics and Ethics
4 Philosophy of the State (Political Philosophy), Philosophy of History, Philosophy of Religion
5 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Philosophy and Natural Science

.In distinguishing philosophy from the sciences, it may not be amiss at the outset to guard against the possible misunderstanding that philosophy is concerned with a subject-matter different from, and in some obscure way transcending, the subject-matter of the sciences.^ Philosophy as a science: Its matter and its method.
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ For there may be many different ways to think of a universe of higher-dimensional categories as a foundations for mathematics.
  • Category Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 15 September 2009 6:31 UTC plato.stanford.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Of course you may prefer other authors but I think Russell would be an excellent choice for Mr. Yegge to get some firmer understanding of what philosophy is about.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 .Now that psychology, or the observational and experimental study of mind, may be said to have been definitively included among the positive sciences, there is not even the apparent ground which once existed for such an idea.^ He returns once more from abstract Laws discussions to study the application of ideas to life, and though, by the conditions of the problem, his course is " nearer earth and less in light," this long writing, which is said to have been posthumous , 3 has a peculiar interest.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ All knowledge is latent in the mind from birth and through kindred (or association of) ideas much may be recovered, if only a beginning is made.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ I mean, there are a lot of other problems for psychology and cognitive science, but the problems that most interest me are things are like, well, how exactly does it work in the brain?
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 .Philosophy, even under its most discredited name of metaphysics, has no other subjectmatter than the nature of the real world, as that world lies around us in everyday life, and lies open to observers on every side.^ The good life must be attained in this world, for there is no other....
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Greece has given us more philosophy than any other place in the Western World.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Metaphysics Research Lab , CSLI , Stanford University Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative.
  • Category Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 15 September 2009 6:31 UTC plato.stanford.edu [Source type: Academic]

 .But if this is so, it may be asked what function can remain for philosophy when every portion of the field is already lotted out and enclosed by specialists?^ Lucian defines philosophy as an attempt to, in the words of Durant, "get an elevation from which you may see in every direction.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .Philosophy claims to be the science of the whole; but, if we get the knowledge of the parts from the different sciences, what is there left for philosophy to tell us ?^ A part (and not the essential part) of his philosophy has been treated as the whole.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ I think it tells us there is little substantial difference between them.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ And your claim that there was no philosophy between antiquity and modernity is ludicrous.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 .To this it is sufficient to answer generally that the synthesis of the parts is something more than that detailed knowledge of the parts in separation which is gained by the man of science.^ I believe he knew himself more thoroughly than any man I’ve met.

 ^ He is more in earnest about principles than about details, and if questioned would probably be found more confident with regard to moral than to political truth.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ And it is this more than any other single feature which gives the Republic a prophetic significance as " an attempt towards anticipating the work of future generations."
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .It is with the ultimate synthesis that philosophy concerns itself; it has to show that the subject-matter which we are all dealing with in detail really is a whole, consisting of articulated members.^ Philosophy predominantly concerns itself with finding definitions for things and then holding those defintions up to rational scrutiny.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 .Evidently, therefore, the relation existing between philosophy and the sciences will be, to some extent, one of reciprocal influence.^ A paper discussing the challenges and difficulties faced by students taking philosophy courses coming from a sciences background, and some suggested techniques for helping them.
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 ^ I would hope that no living philosophers support this kind of positions, but to claim that they don't exist in philosophy (or elsewhere in science) is wishful thinking.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ One could reject (1) by maintaining that reference is a relation that presupposes the existence or the having existed of its relata.

 .The sciences may be said to furnish philosophy with its matter, but philosophical criticism reacts upon the matter thus furnished, and transforms it.^ Philosophy as a science: Its matter and its method.
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Paper present at the " Wolfgang Pauli's Philosophical Ideas and Contemporary Science " conference, Monte Verita, Ascona, Switzerland , May 20-27.
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Once again, what I am criticizing is the view that contrasts the idealized golden ages of classical and modern philosophy with the "dark", presumably non-philosophical middle ages.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 .Such transformation is inevitable, for the parts only exist and can only be fully, i.e. truly, known in their relation to the whole.^ Postmodernism holds that the scientific model of a single conception of reality which can be known and accepted by all is mistaken; that such models are inevitably colored by personal and cultural factors.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Therefore, I have a property P that my body does not, namely, being such that possibly, I exist when my body (or any part of it) doesn't.

 ^ I have but cleared the well-springs of the noxious weeds that have been fatal to so many, in order that they may have little to unlearn, and be exposed only to such dangers as are inevitable."
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .A pure specialist, if such a being were possible, would be merely an instrument whose results had to be co-ordinated and used by others.^ We must, like all other beings in nature who do their useful work as part of the larger systems of which they are part, be of service to our fellow humans beings and to other creatures.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Would they use programs in every day writing if they wanted to express the idea of a process to each other?
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ If software was separable from hardware, it would be another form of pure math, and could be treated as such.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 .Now, though a pure specialist may be an abstraction of the mind, the tendency of specialists in any department naturally is to lose sight of the whole in attention to the particular categories or modes of nature's working which happen to be exemplified, and fruitfully applied, in their own sphere of investigation; and in proportion as this is the case it becomes necessary for their theories to be co-ordinated with the results of other inquirers, and set, as it were, in the light of the whole.^ It has become second nature to most people to delegate repetitive work to the computer.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ We must, like all other beings in nature who do their useful work as part of the larger systems of which they are part, be of service to our fellow humans beings and to other creatures.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ The physician Eryximachus, admitting the distinction, yet holds that Love pervades all nature, and that art consists in following the higher Love in each particular sphere.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .This task of co-ordination, in the broadest sense, is undertaken by philosophy; for the philosopher is essentially what Plato, in a happy moment, styled him, ovvonrrucen, the man who takes a "synoptic" or comprehensive view of the universe as a whole.^ A part (and not the essential part) of his philosophy has been treated as the whole.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Co- ordinate with these theoretical tendencies there has appeared in Plato the determination not to break with experience.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ CALL FOR PAPERS: Philosophical WritingsPhilosophical Writings is an international journal published in the Philosophy Department at the Durham University since 1996.
  • Alltop - Top Philosophy News 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC philosophy.alltop.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 .The aim of philosophy (whether fully attainable or not) is to exhibit the universe as a rational system in the harmony of all its parts; and accordingly the philosopher refuses to consider the parts out of their relation to the whole whose parts they are.^ A part (and not the essential part) of his philosophy has been treated as the whole.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ We must, like all other beings in nature who do their useful work as part of the larger systems of which they are part, be of service to our fellow humans beings and to other creatures.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ As regards philosophers, I would consider Edsger Dijkstra on the of the few philosophers of Software (and they burnt him on the stake).
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 .Philosophy corrects in this way the abstractions which are inevitably made by the scientific specialist, and may claim, therefore, to be the only "concrete" science, that is to say, the only science which takes account of all the elements in the problem, and the only science whose results can claim to be true in more than a provisional sense.^ Wrote "Sense and sound, as they reciprocally form any sign of mind" (1854) and "New Elements From Old Subjects: Presented as the Basis for a Science of Mind" (1874).
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 ^ To secure the good of one person only is better than nothing; but to secure the good of a nation or a state is a nobler and more divine achievement."

 ^ It may be smaller, but it is more focused and less tolerant of dissent than has been the case for a long time.
For it is evident from what has been said that the way in which we commonly speak of "facts" is calculated to convey a false impression. .The world is not a collection of individual facts existing side by side and capable of being known separately.^ If I say that table salt is NaCl, what I say is a fact in the epistemological sense of being something known to be the case, but it is also a fact in two further senses.

 .A fact is nothing except in its relations to other facts; and as these relations are multiplied in the progress of knowledge the nature of the so-called fact is indefinitely modified.^ Socrates, mediating between these sophistical extremes, declares that language, like other institutions, is rational, and therefore (i) is based on nature, but (2) modified by convention.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ These differences make it dangerous to call what is happening a recession or a depression or any other label that might mask these differences.

 ^ These postulates, when once apprehended, drew Plato on to speculate concerning the nature, the object and the method of knowledge.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .Moreover, every statement of fact involves certain general notions and theories, so that the "facts" of the separate sciences cannot be stated except in terms of the conceptions or hypotheses which are assumed by the particular science.^ Abstract The notion of cognitive act is of importance for an epistemology that is apt for constructive type theory, and for epistemology in general.
  • Alltop - Top Philosophy News 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC philosophy.alltop.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ Certain concepts that were geometrical in origin are more clearly seen as logical (for example, the notion of coherent topos).
  • Category Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 15 September 2009 6:31 UTC plato.stanford.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ But the fact cannot be regarded as certain, still less the elaborate inferences which have been drawn from it.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 Thus mathematics assumes space as an existent infinite, without investigating in what sense the existence or the infinity of this Unding, as Kant called it, can be asserted. .In the same way, physics may be said to assume the notion of material atoms and forces.^ Plato also bequeathed to us the problematic notion that reason is somehow inherently "higher" or "better" than emotion or as he puts it, "material forces."
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .These and similar assumptions are ultimate presuppositions or working hypotheses for the sciences themselves.^ Similarly, many works of science fiction deal with philosophical and social issues, and these are listed separately, on the Science Fiction page.
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 .But it is the office of philosophy, as a theory of knowledge, to submit such conceptions to a critical analysis, with a view to discover how far they can be thought out, or how far, when this is done, they refute themselves, and call for a different form of statement, if they are to be taken as a statement of the ultimate nature of the real.'^ It held that only ethics is real philosophy, and we should study the wisdom of nature as a guide to life.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ However, it can be argued that there is such a thing as the concept of natural numbers.
  • Category Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 15 September 2009 6:31 UTC plato.stanford.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Connectionism and dynamic systems: Are they really different?
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 .The first statement may frequently turn out to have been merely provisionally or relatively true; it is then superseded by, or rather inevitably merges itself in, a less abstract account.^ It could therefore turn out that the belief that God exists is both demonstrably true and an illusion.

 .In this the same "facts" appear differently, because no longer separated from other aspects that belong to the full reality of the known world.^ This appears to be a misquotation by later philosophers, his actual statement apparently having been, "Over those who step into the same river, different and again different waters flow."
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Socratic thinking has failed because it encourages complacency and is geared to defending itself and to reify what is already known but is no longer appropriate.

 ^ If a computer program is to behave intelligently in the real world, it must be provided with some kind of framework into which to fit particular facts it is told or discovers.
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 .There is no such thing, we have said, as an individual fact; and the nature of any fact is not fully known unless we know it in all its relations to the system of the universe, or, in Spinoza's phrase, sub specie aeternitatis. In strictness, there is but one res completa or concrete fact, and it is the business of philosophy, as science of the whole, to expound the chief relations that constitute its complex nature.^ However, it can be argued that there is such a thing as the concept of natural numbers.
  • Category Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 15 September 2009 6:31 UTC plato.stanford.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ There was an individual, Caesar, but there is no individual, Pegasus.

 ^ There is duality in all things.
.The last abstraction which it becomes the duty of philosophy to remove is the abstraction from the knowing subject which is made by all the sciences, including, as we shall see, the science of psychology.^ But, let all know, in a fine pasta all one ever sees is 100% durum semolina.

 ^ People behave differently when they know that they are being watched and when this being watched lasts long it becomes a part of their ways of life.
  • Alltop - Top Philosophy News 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC philosophy.alltop.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ First, philosophy, like all science, is not ethically good or bad per se.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 .The sciences, one and all, deal with a world of objects, but the ultimate fact as we know it is the existence of an object for a subject.^ "Science deals with knowledge of the material world based on objective reality.
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ But, let all know, in a fine pasta all one ever sees is 100% durum semolina.

 ^ And all classical theists face the problem of evil, the problem of reconciling the fact of evil with the existence of a God who is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent.

 .Subject-object, knowledge, or, more widely, self-consciousness with its implicates - this unity in duality is the ultimate aspect which reality presents.^ As such, it adopts a more self-conscious theoretical (philosophical and educational) framework and engages critically with the relevant material.
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Protagoras was saying that each of the Athenian philosophers was presenting his subjective understanding rather than an "objective" truth about physical reality.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Russell's philosophical work covers subjects such as logic, mathematics, language, scientific knowledge and more.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 It has generally been considered, therefore, as constituting in a special sense the problem of philosophy. .Philosophy may be said to be the explication of what is involved in this relation, or, in Kantian phraseology, a theory of its possibility.^ This article looks at Kant's approach to teaching philosophy, and relates what he says to current theories of good practice in university education.
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 ^ "The essence of the Cynic philosophy," writes Durant, [is] to reduce the things of the flesh to bare necessities so that the soul may be as free as possible (506)."
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .Any would-be theory of the universe which makes its central fact impossible stands self-condemned.^ Were he ever to have displayed a sense of humour I would be tempted to make this thesis the central argument of this blog.
  • Alltop - Top Philosophy News 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC philosophy.alltop.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ Category theory reveals that many of these constructions are in fact certain objects in a category having a “universal property”.
  • Category Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 15 September 2009 6:31 UTC plato.stanford.edu [Source type: Academic]

 .On the other hand, a sufficient analysis here may be expected to yield us a statement of the reality of things in its last terms, and thus to shed a light backwards upon the true nature of our subordinate conceptions.^ Thus things will kindle lights for things....
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ We all do this kind of thing, and philosophers have suspected from the start that understanding this aspect of our weakness is a large part of getting to know us.
  • Alltop - Top Philosophy News 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC philosophy.alltop.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ Simple as The Fisher Paradigm©™ is, it is not our natural inclination to think in non-linear and irrational terms or to bridge the linear and rational towards a holistic perception.

Psychology, Epistemology and Metaphysics

This leads to the consideration of the main divisions of philosophy - PsYcxoLoGY (q.v.), epistemology .(theory of knowledge, Erkenntnisstheorie), and metaphysics (ontology; see Metaphysic).^ He offered an epistemology, or theory of knowledge; an ontology or theory of being; an esthetics or theory of beauty, and an ethics, or theory of conduct.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .A special relation has always existed between psychology and systematic philosophy, but the closeness of the connexion has been characteristic of modern and more particularly of English thought.^ But this distinction, like that sometimes made in modern philosophy between the good, the true and the beautiful, is one which, if not unduly pressed, may be usefully, borne in mind.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ There are other points, however, which must not be omitted, because they are more intimately related to the general development of Plato's thoughts.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ And your claim that there was no philosophy between antiquity and modernity is ludicrous.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 .The connexion is not difficult to explain, seeing that in psychology, or the science of mind, we study the fact of intelligence (and moral action), and have, so far, in our hands the fact to which all other facts are relative.^ "The mature person who can see these vices must reveal with frankness all our errors.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ We must, like all other beings in nature who do their useful work as part of the larger systems of which they are part, be of service to our fellow humans beings and to other creatures.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Philosophy needs AI to progress in its study of difficult questions about the nature of mind.
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 From this point of view we may even see a truth in Jacobi's dictum as quoted by Sir W. Hamilton: "Nature conceals God; man reveals God." Nature by itself, that is to say, is insufficient. .The ultimate explanation of things cannot be given by any theory which excludes from its survey the intelligence in which nature, as it were, gathers herself up.^ Even on the great question of the ultimate constitution of things, the conflicting theories of absolute immutability and eternal change appeared to be equally irrefragable and equally untenable.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .But knowledge, or the mind as knowing, willing, &c., may be looked at in two different ways.^ For there may be many different ways to think of a universe of higher-dimensional categories as a foundations for mathematics.
  • Category Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 15 September 2009 6:31 UTC plato.stanford.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Its questions are not so different than the ones posed by professionals: If the mind is (at least in some ways) a machine, who is the actor?
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ But the paradox is softened in two ways: (r) the absence of knowledge does not preclude inquiry, and (2) though virtue cannot be taught, yet there is a sense in which virtue exists.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .It may be regarded simply as a fact; in which case the evolutions of mind may be traced and reduced to laws in the same way as the phenomena treated by the other sciences.^ These passages may be regarded in the same light as the wise words of Protagoras or the sober truths which occur amidst the wild fancies of the Cratylus.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ And, if in the Laws the lines of thought have in one way hardened, there are other ways in which experience has softened them.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ It is a case of thinking with your whole body, not simply your mind.

 .This study gives us the science of empirical psychology, or, as it is now termed, psychology sans phrase. In order to give an adequate account of its subject-matter, psychology may require higher or more complex categories than are employed in the other sciences, just as biology, for example, cannot work with mechanical categories alone, but introduces the conception of development or growth.^ Catholic Priest, Prof. Philosophy, Science, Mathematics and other subjects at Collge Saint-Raphael (later Collge de Montral) in Quebec.
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 ^ At this point, category theory became more than a convenient language, by virtue of two developments.
  • Category Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 15 September 2009 6:31 UTC plato.stanford.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ For there may be many different ways to think of a universe of higher-dimensional categories as a foundations for mathematics.
  • Category Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 15 September 2009 6:31 UTC plato.stanford.edu [Source type: Academic]

 .But the affinities of such a study are manifestly with the sciences as such rather than with philosophy; and the definitive establishment of psychology as an independent science has already been alluded to.^ The reason is quite basic: today studies drive the insights rather than the insights driving the studies.

 ^ It is an established fact that category theory is employed to study logic and philosophy.
  • Category Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 15 September 2009 6:31 UTC plato.stanford.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Article discussing issues in teaching students with a background in sciences rather than humanities.
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 Since it has been taken up by specialists, psychology is being established on a broader basis of induction, and with the advantage, in some departments, of the employment of experimental methods of measurement. .But it is not of mind in this aspect 1 The revisional office which philosophy here assumes constitutes her the critic of the sciences.^ The theory of ideas here assumes its most transcendental aspect, and it is from portions of this dialogue and of the Phaedrus and Timaeus that the popular conception of Platonism has been principally derived.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 It is in this connexion that the meaning of the definition of philosophy as "the science of principles" can best be seen. .This is perhaps the most usual definition, and, though vague, one of the least misleading.^ This is the definition one finds in most textbooks of category theory.
  • Category Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 15 September 2009 6:31 UTC plato.stanford.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ But factors influencing our decisions are usually ones that we’re not aware of; perhaps if we were we would choose differently.
that such assertions can be made as those quoted above. Mind, as studied by the psychologist - mind as a mere fact or phenomenon - grounds no inference to anything beyond itself. .The distinction between mind viewed as a succession of "states of consciousness" and the further aspect of mind which philosophy considers was very clearly put by Croom Robertson, who also made a happy suggestion of two terms to designate the double point of view: "We may view knowledge as mere subjective function, but it has its full meaning only as it is taken to represent what we may call objective fact, or is such as is named (in different circumstances) real, valid, true.^ The philosophy of information: A methodological point of view.
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ The distinction Protagoras made between appearance and reality runs throughout Greek philosophy.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ But this distinction, like that sometimes made in modern philosophy between the good, the true and the beautiful, is one which, if not unduly pressed, may be usefully, borne in mind.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .As mere subjective function, which it is to the psychologist, it is best spoken of by an unambiguous name, and for this there seems none better than Intellection.^ (There seems more than a little similarity between these ideas and Thorndike's "satisfiers" and "annoyers."
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 We may then say that psychology is occupied with the natural function of Intellection, seeking to discover its laws and distinguishing its various modes (perception, representative imagination, conception, &c.) according to the various circumstances in which the laws are found at work. .Philosophy, on the other hand, is theory of Knowledge (as that which is known)."^ On the other hand, philosophers and philosophical logicians can employ category theory and categorical logic to explore philosophical and logical problems.
  • Category Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 15 September 2009 6:31 UTC plato.stanford.edu [Source type: Academic]

 - ."Psychology and Philosophy," Mind (1883), pp.^ Mind Design II: Philosophy, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence.
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 15, 16.
.The confusion of these two points of view has led, and still leads, to serious philosophical misconception.^ Most of these philosophers were orators who presented their views forcefully and well.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ As we will see below, the term "empirical" was not coined until two centuries later, but it describes a central part of Aristotle's point of view.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ It is not enough to know one or even two of these points; unless we know all three, we shall be unable to arouse anger in anyone.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 It is hardly an exaggeration to say that, in the English school since Hume, psychology superseded properly philosophical inquiry. .And we find even a thinker with a wider horizon like Sir W. Hamilton encouraging the confusion by speaking of "psychology or metaphysics," 1 while his lectures on metaphysics are mainly taken up with what belongs in the strictest sense to psychology proper, with an occasional excursus (as in the theory of perception) into epistemology.^ They inquired into linquistic theory, metaphysics, mathematics, and the nature and origin of the universe.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .The distinction between psychology and theory of knowledge was first clearly made by Kant, who repeatedly insisted that the Critique of Pure Reason was not to be taken as a psychological inquiry.^ As the balance of ethical truth was restored by admitting an unconscious (or inspired) conformity to reason, so now a fresh attempt is made on the intellectual side to bridge the gulf between sense and knowledge.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ And as the method of inquiry is developed, the leading principles both of logic and of psychology become progressively more distinct and clear.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ The distinction Protagoras made between appearance and reality runs throughout Greek philosophy.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .He defined his problem as the quid juris or the question of the validity of knowledge, not its quid facti or the laws of the empirical genesis and evolution of intellection (to use Croom Robertson's phraseology).^ And the third is to use a version of the knowledge game to provide an answer to Dretskes question 'how do you know you are not a zombie?'."
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 .Since Kant philosophy has chiefly taken the form of theory of knowledge or of a criticism of experience.^ This article looks at Kant's approach to teaching philosophy, and relates what he says to current theories of good practice in university education.
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 .Not, indeed, a preliminary criticism of our faculties or conceptions such as Kant himself proposed to institute, in order to determine the limits of their application; such a criticism ab extra of the nature of our experience is essentially a thing impossible.^ From this it does not follow that my essential nature is in fact such as to permit me to exist indisembodied form."

 ^ Knowledge may extend beyond experience, but...the interests and limitations of the thinker will determine the nature of the product (p.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Even in his Laws, a far more prosaic writing, Plato himself repeatedly protests against such criticism.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .The only criticism which can be applied in such a case is the immanent criticism which the conceptions or categories exercise upon one another.^ That would be a disgrace for one who (rightly or not) has been reputed wise, and to admit such an appeal in any case is a violation of the juror's oath.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ With this demand for scientific precision his conception of the ideas themselves is modified, and he strives anew to conceive of them in relation to one another, to the mind, and to the world.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ This project led Aristotle to develop a large number of mutually exclusive categories, and each specimen one or another of these.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .The organized criticism of these conceptions is really nothing more than the full explication of what they mean and of what experience in its full nature or notion is.^ A: Although people have tried to construct mechanical simulations of human and animal life for millennia (from Platos contemporary, Archytas of Tarentum, to Albertus Magnus, a 13th-century Dominican monk), I wanted to show that it was only really during the Enlightenment that these attempts became more than practical enterprises: they were philosophical experiments as well.
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ To secure the good of one person only is better than nothing; but to secure the good of a nation or a state is a nobler and more divine achievement."

 ^ It's not going to make Scheme any more successful than it is today, which to me feels practically criminal; it was their one big chance to break out of the rut they're in.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 .This constitutes the theory of knowledge in the only tenable sense of the term, and it lays down, in Kantian language, the conditions of the possibility of experience.^ Some skeptics claimed that no knowledge beyond immediate experience is possible, while others doubted that even immediate experience is a fully reliable guide to truth.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Repeated experiences preserved in memory give rise to "anticipations" which make language possible.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ The same can be said of the programmer who only has experience with functional languages.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 .These conditions are the conditions of knowledge as such, or, as it may be put, of objective consciousness - of a self-consciousness of a world of objects and through them conscious of itself.^ Freeing ourselves from such passions by striving for understanding and self-knowledge is not easy because we blind ourselves to our own shortcomings so that we see only others' faults.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ If there is a true beauty and a true good, which are immutable, and if these are accessible to knowledge, that world of truth can have nothing to do with flux and change.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Sextus attacked every claim by dogmatic philosophers to knowledge about the "nonevident world" (any condition that is not now being, and cannot at some time be, observed).
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .The inquiry is, therefore, logical or transcendental in its nature, and does not entangle us in any decision as to the conditions of the genesis of such consciousness in the individual.^ "Death, therefore, is nothing to us, nor does it concern us in the least, inasmuch as the mind is held to be mortal," wrote the later Epicurean Lucretius.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ From this it does not follow that my essential nature is in fact such as to permit me to exist indisembodied form."

 ^ After telling us that "the truth-value of religious doctrines does not lie within the scope of the present inquiry," he goes on to say that "It is enough for us that we have recognized them as being, in their psychological nature, illusions.

 .When we inquire into subjective conditions we are thinking of facts causing other facts.^ Thus a just legislator, a just judge, and a just executive requires other people as a condition of his virtuous behavior, a fact which brings in its train a lack of self-sufficiency.

 ^ This is an extension of the dualistic thinking in which we conceive of two categories, and mentally put everything into either one or the other.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .But the logical or transcendental conditions are not causes or even factors of knowledge; they are the statement of its idea.^ Socrates has observed that rhapsodists and even poets have no definite knowledge of the things which they so powerfully repre-.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ It would be a good beginning to embrace his ideas as they deal with the cause of our dilemma, false programming.

 .Hence the dispute between evolutionist and transcendentalist rests, in general, on an ignoratio elenchi; for the history of the genesis of an idea (the historical or genetic method) does not contain an answer to - though it may throw light on - the philosophical question of its truth or validity.^ Paper present at the " Wolfgang Pauli's Philosophical Ideas and Contemporary Science " conference, Monte Verita, Ascona, Switzerland , May 20-27.
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ It does so only in the interest of throwing some light on our problems.

 ^ Philosophers may talk about things that can never be answered, but your previous post can be answered: most of it was false.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 .Speaking of this transcendental consciousness, Kant goes so far as to say that it is not of the slightest consequence "whether the idea of it be clear or obscure (in empirical consciousness), no, not even whether it really exists or not.^ A colleague asked me what I would say about a choice between a really minor wrongdoing and an action that has really bad consequences.
  • Alltop - Top Philosophy News 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC philosophy.alltop.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ Applied mathematicians have to do things to pure math to make it work in the real world; approximations where no analytical solutions exist; simplifying assumptions.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ The fact that a spectacular and historic dessert may be aflame is no excuse, even if this is the diner’s first exposure to, say, Cherries Jubilee.

 But the possibility of the logical form of all knowledge rests on its relation to this apperception as a faculty or potentiality" (Werke, ed. Hartenstein, iii. 578 note). .Or, if 1 It is true that he afterwards modifies this misleading identification by introducing the distinction between empirical psychology or the phenomenology of mind and inferential psychology' or ontology, i.e. metaphysics proper.^ But this distinction, like that sometimes made in modern philosophy between the good, the true and the beautiful, is one which, if not unduly pressed, may be usefully, borne in mind.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ We need to think about the relation between conceivability and epistemic possibility if we are to get clear about the inferential link, if any, between conceivability and metaphysical possibility.

 .But he continues to use the terms "philosophy," "metaphysics," and "mental science" as synonymous.^ But once I had picked them(computer science/philosophy) I realized what I could use them for; I was to bring Philosophy to Computer Science.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Despite a disconnect between the philosophy and the physics, computer science, software and other worlds, there is opportunity and a real chance that that disconnect can be mended in the near term.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]
we return to the distinction between epistemology and psychology, by way of illustrating the nature of the former, we may take the following summing up by Professor James Ward in a valuable article on "Psychological Principles" in Mind (April 1883, pp. 166, 567): "Comparing psychology and epistemology, then, we may say that the former is essentially genetic in its method, and might, if we had the power to revise our existing terminology, be called biology; the latter, on the other hand, is essentially devoid of everything historical, and treats, sub specie aeternitatis, as Spinoza might have said, of human knowledge, conceived as the possession of mind in general." Kant's problem is not, in its wording, very different from that which Locke set before him when he resolved to "inquire into the original, certainty and extent of human knowledge together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion and assent." Locke's Essay is undoubtedly, in its intention, a contribution to the theory of knowledge. .But, because time had not yet made the matter clear, Locke suffered himself to digress in his second book into the psychological question of the origin of our ideas; and his theory of knowledge is ruined by the failure to distinguish between the epistemological sense of "idea" as significant content and the psychological sense in which it is applied to a fact or process in the individual mind.^ "As posed by Alan Turing, the question of machine intelligence has become a central theme of our time -- and here, as elsewhere, Dennett brings analytic rigor to bear.
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ Freeing ourselves from such passions by striving for understanding and self-knowledge is not easy because we blind ourselves to our own shortcomings so that we see only others' faults.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ As the balance of ethical truth was restored by admitting an unconscious (or inspired) conformity to reason, so now a fresh attempt is made on the intellectual side to bridge the gulf between sense and knowledge.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 The same confusion runs through Berkeley's arguments and vitiates his conclusions as well as those of Hume. .But appearing with these thinkers as the problem of perception, epistemology widens its scope and becomes, in Kant's hands, the question of the possibility of experience in general.^ Co- ordinate with these theoretical tendencies there has appeared in Plato the determination not to break with experience.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .With Hegel it passes into a completely articulated "logic," which apparently claims to be at the same time a metaphysic, or an ultimate expression of the nature of the real.^ This appears to be a misquotation by later philosophers, his actual statement apparently having been, "Over those who step into the same river, different and again different waters flow."
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ They inquired into linquistic theory, metaphysics, mathematics, and the nature and origin of the universe.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ In this " pathway towards reality," from the consideration of particular virtues he passed to the contemplation of virtue in general, and thence to the nature of universals, and to the unity of knowledge and being.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]
This introduces us to the second part of the question we are seeking to determine, namely the relation of epistemology to metaphysics. .It is evident that philosophy as theory of knowledge must have for its complement philosophy as metaphysics (ontology) or theory of being.^ He offered an epistemology, or theory of knowledge; an ontology or theory of being; an esthetics or theory of beauty, and an ethics, or theory of conduct.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .The question of the truth of our knowledge, and the question of the ultimate nature of what we know, are in reality two sides of the same inquiry; and therefore our epistemological results have to be ontologically expressed.^ Our clinic was flooded with calls and walk-in patients, all with the same question: "When will there be a vaccine?"It was all so new then, and we didn't have an answer.
  • Alltop - Top Philosophy News 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC philosophy.alltop.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ After an interval, of which our only measure is a change of style, the philosopher returns to the great central question of knowledge and being.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ And the third is to use a version of the knowledge game to provide an answer to Dretskes question 'how do you know you are not a zombie?'."
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 .But it is not every thinker that can see his way with Hegel to assert in set terms the identity of thought and being.^ Every case seemed capable of being argued in opposite ways.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ This article discusses the way academics talk about teaching, and sets out to articulate seven thoughts the author considers to be largely absent from current discourse.
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Rather than being a craft, in other words, the art of mechanics became, in that period, a way of thought.
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 Hence the theory of knowledge becomes with some a theory of human ignorance. This is the case with Herbert Spencer's doctrine of the Unknowable, which he advances as the result of epistemological considerations in the philosophical prolegomena to his system. Very similar positions were maintained by Kant and Comte; and, under the name of "agnosticism" (q.v.), the theory has popularized itself in the outer courts of philosophy, and on the shifting borderland of philosophy and literature. The truth is that the habit of thinking exclusively from the standpoint of the theory of knowledge tends to beget an undue subjectivity of temper. .And the fact that it has become usual for men to think from this standpoint is very plainly seen in the almost universal description of philosophy as an analysis of "experience," instead of its more old-fashioned de s ignation as an inquiry into "the nature of things."^ Towards an ecological neuroscience: Aspects of the nature of things according to process philosophy .
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ This article discusses the student learning experience of the Core philosophy courses at the University of Glasgos Crichton Campus.
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 ^ They inquired into linquistic theory, metaphysics, mathematics, and the nature and origin of the universe.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .As it is matter of universal agreement that the problem of being must be attacked indirectly through the problem of knowledge, this substitution may be regarded as an advance, more especially as it implies that the fact of experience, or of self-conscious existence, is the chief fact to be dealt with.^ But the emerging modern view says that matter and consciousness are not separate entities, as Descartes supposed, but complementary aspects of the universe.
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ He held that all knowledge is innate and can be attained through introspectively searching one's inner experience.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Sextus attacked every claim by dogmatic philosophers to knowledge about the "nonevident world" (any condition that is not now being, and cannot at some time be, observed).
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .But if so, then self-consciousness must be treated as itself real, and as organically related to the rest of existence.^ That would seem to suggest that the good of the polis is superior to the good of the individual, and that the happiness and self-realization of the individual must be subordinated to the welfare of the state.

 ^ It wishes to enjoy itself in relation to things; but it has not the respect, the disinterestedness, the patience and the self-forgetfulness that are necessary for contemplating things as they really are.

 .If self-consciousness be treated in this objective fashion, then we pass naturally from epistemology to metaphysics or ontology.^ Epistemology, fourth order consciousness, and the subject-object relationship or...How the self evolves with Robert Kegan.
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 .(For, although the term "ontology" has been as good as disused, it still remains true that the aim of philosophy must be to furnish us with an ontology or a coherent and adequate theory of the nature of reality.^ It held that only ethics is real philosophy, and we should study the wisdom of nature as a guide to life.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ A quest worthy of us must aim beyond the ephemeral, towards something whose finding would complete rather than debilitate us.

 ^ But this distinction, like that sometimes made in modern philosophy between the good, the true and the beautiful, is one which, if not unduly pressed, may be usefully, borne in mind.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ) .But if, on the other hand, knowledge and reality be ab initio opposed to one another - if consciousness be set on one side as over against reality, and merely holding up a mirror to it - then it follows with equal naturalness that the truly real must be something which lurks unrevealed behind the subject's representation of it.^ One side or the other has made a mistake.

 ^ We must, like all other beings in nature who do their useful work as part of the larger systems of which they are part, be of service to our fellow humans beings and to other creatures.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ The physician Eryximachus, admitting the distinction, yet holds that Love pervades all nature, and that art consists in following the higher Love in each particular sphere.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 Hence come the different varieties of a so-called phenomenalism. .The upholders of such a theory would, in general, deride the term `"metaphysics" or "ontology"; but it is evident, none the less, that their position itself implies a certain theory of the universe and of our own place in it, and the establishment of this theory constitutes their metaphysics.^ Freeing ourselves from such passions by striving for understanding and self-knowledge is not easy because we blind ourselves to our own shortcomings so that we see only others' faults.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ They inquired into linquistic theory, metaphysics, mathematics, and the nature and origin of the universe.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Rest and motion are mutually incommunicable, but difference is no less universal than being itself.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]
Without prejudice, then, to the claim of epistemology to constitute the central philosophic discipline, we may simply note its liability to be pressed too far. The exclusive preoccupation of men's minds with the question of knowledge during the neo-Kantian revival in the 'seventies of the last century drew from Lotze the caustic criticism that "the continual sharpening of the knife becomes tiresome, if, after all, we have nothing to cut with it." Stillingfleet's complaint against Locke was that he was "one of the gentlemen of this new way of reasoning that have almost discarded substance out of the reasonable part of the world." .The same may be said with greater truth of the devotees of the theory of knowledge; they seem to have no need of so old-fashioned a commodity as reality.^ Some skeptics claimed that no knowledge beyond immediate experience is possible, while others doubted that even immediate experience is a fully reliable guide to truth.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Socrates has observed that rhapsodists and even poets have no definite knowledge of the things which they so powerfully repre-.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ These passages may be regarded in the same light as the wise words of Protagoras or the sober truths which occur amidst the wild fancies of the Cratylus.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 Yet, after all, Fichte's dictum holds good that knowledge as knowledge - i.e. so long as it is looked at as knowledge - is, ipso facto, not reality. .The result of the foregoing, however, is to show that, as soon as epistemology draws its conclusion, it becomes metaphysics; the theory of knowledge passes into a theory of being.^ They inquired into linquistic theory, metaphysics, mathematics, and the nature and origin of the universe.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ However, as the latest literature of higher education theory demonstrates, there are increasingly attempts to change higher education into a more involved and creative learning environment.
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 ^ He offered an epistemology, or theory of knowledge; an ontology or theory of being; an esthetics or theory of beauty, and an ethics, or theory of conduct.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 The ontological conclusion, moreover, is not to be regarded as something added by an external process; it is an immediate implication. .The metaphysic is the epistemology from another point of view - regarded as completing itself, and explaining in the course of its exposition that relative or practical separation of the individual knower from the knowable world, which it is a sheer assumption to take as absolute.^ Since in Phyrro's view all theories are false, he found no rational grounds to prefer one course of action over another.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ You go on to point out that the theoretical life is legitimately regarded as an end in itself and is a life of true leisure.

 ^ This, of course, is probably the problem: what we have is a competition between philosophies focused on language design, and those focused on a broader outlook of what it takes to produce a piece of software in the "real world".
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 .This, not the so-called assumption of the implicit unity of being and thought, is the really unwarrantable postulate; for it is an assumption which we are obliged to retract bit by bit, while the other offers the whole doctrine of knowledge as its voucher.^ He offered an epistemology, or theory of knowledge; an ontology or theory of being; an esthetics or theory of beauty, and an ethics, or theory of conduct.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ When...offered a piece of real estate as a present, he turned it down with the remark that one doesn't need a whole oxhide to make a pair of sandals....
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

Logic, Aesthetics and Ethics

.If the theory of knowledge thus passes insensibly into metaphysics it becomes somewhat difficult to assign a distinct sphere to logic (q.v.^ How can Christians convince Jews and Muslims that their position is logically tenable and does not collapse into tritheism, and thus into polytheism to the detriment of the divine unity and transcendence?

 ^ They inquired into linquistic theory, metaphysics, mathematics, and the nature and origin of the universe.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Thus mind-brain identity theory threatens to collapse into eliminativism about the mind.

 ). .Ueberweg's definition of it as "the science of the regulative laws of thought" (or "the normative science of thought") comes near enough to the traditional sense to enable us to compare profitably the usual subject-matter of the science with the definition and end of philosophy.^ Philosophy as a science: Its matter and its method.
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ He credited much of his thought to Democritus and to Aristippus, whose philosophy of pleasure was actually more "Epicurean" in the Roman sense than Epicurus' ever was.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Report on a Subject Centre funded project for the development of a module website for the 'Philosophy of Social Science' module for post-graduate students in the School of Nursing at the University of Nottingham.
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 The introduction of the term "regulative" or "normative" is intended to differentiate the science from psychology as the science of mental processes or events. .In this reference logic does not tell us how our intellections connect themselves as mental phenomena, but how we ought to connect our thoughts if they are to realize truth (either as consistency with what we thought before or as agreement with observed facts).^ How can Christians convince Jews and Muslims that their position is logically tenable and does not collapse into tritheism, and thus into polytheism to the detriment of the divine unity and transcendence?

 ^ Naturally, his exposure of others' ignorance made him unpopular with those who were shown to be less wise then they thought themselves to be.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ They wanted a simple step process to reach my numbers, when all I could tell them was this: "Once I realized the problem was not the buyer but the seller, my sensors exploded and I found I could read buyers where they were that moment, not before or after, but right then.

 .Logic, therefore, agrees with epistemology (and differs from psychology) in treating thought not as mental fact but as knowledge, as idea, as having meaning in relation to an objective world.^ Plato agreed with Socrates that nothing was more important than the welfare of the soul, that thought and knowledge is more important than pleasure in living the Good Life.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ This conception is related to the ideal of a balance among the different sides of a person's being and life which played a major role in many strains of Hellenic and Hellenistic thought.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 To this extent it must inevitably form a part of the theory of knowledge. .But, if we desire to keep by older landmarks and maintain a distinction between the two disciplines, a ground for doing so may be found in the fact that all the main definitions of logic point to the investigation of the laws of thought in a subjective reference - with a view, that is, by an analysis of the operation, to ensure its more correct performance.^ He accepts the distinction between Love and his works, but points out that, since desire implies want, and the desire of Love is toward beauty, Love, as wanting beauty, is not beautiful.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Presently a distinction appears between primary and Laws viii.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Since in Phyrro's view all theories are false, he found no rational grounds to prefer one course of action over another.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 According to the old phrase, logic is the art of correct thinking. .Moreover we commonly find the logician assuming that the process of thought has advanced a certain length before his examination of it begins; he takes his material full-formed from perception, without, as a rule, inquiring into the nature of the conceptions which are involved in our perceptive experience.^ The four preceding dialogues have shown (1) the gradual transformation of the Platonic ideas (while still objective) into forms of thought, (2) the tendency to group them into series of categories, (3) a corresponding advance in psychological classification, (4) an increasing importance given to method, (5) the inclination to inquire into processes (yet40-as) as well as into the nature of being.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Simple as The Fisher Paradigm©™ is, it is not our natural inclination to think in non-linear and irrational terms or to bridge the linear and rational towards a holistic perception.

 ^ An exploration of core power of thought concepts in relation to theories involving quantum mechanics.
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 .Occupying a position, therefore, within the wider sphere of the general theory of knowledge, ordinary logic consists in an analysis of the nature of general statement, and of the conditions under which we pass validly from one general statement to another.^ The physician Eryximachus, admitting the distinction, yet holds that Love pervades all nature, and that art consists in following the higher Love in each particular sphere.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Since in Phyrro's view all theories are false, he found no rational grounds to prefer one course of action over another.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ This shows, I think, that for intellects like ours one cannot in general validly infer possibility from conceivability.

 But the logic of the schools is eked out by contributions from a variety of sources (e.g. from grammar on one side and from psychology on another), and cannot claim the unity of an independent science.
Aesthetics (q.v.) may be treated as a department of psychology or physiology, and in England this is the mode of treatment that has been most general. .To what peculiar excitation of our bodily or mental organism, it is asked, are the emotions due which make us declare an object beautiful or sublime?^ They championed rational thought as the desired goal, trumping our emotions that lead us astray.

 ^ He agreed with Alcmaeon that the brain is the source of our intellectual abilities, and added that it also causes many of our emotional problems, making us happy or unhappy, sorrowful or at peace with ourselves.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Reason, the highest faculty of our material and immortal soul, allows us to attain truth, recognize beauty, and live the Good Life.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .And, the question being put in this form, the attempt has been made in some cases to explain away any peculiarity in the emotions by analysing them into simpler elements, such as primitive organic pleasures and prolonged associations of usefulness or fitness.^ Those who read me know that I don’t back away from declarative statements, or from the composition of my peculiar emotional motor.

 ^ Not speaking any Italian, I got some books and set to memorizing a list I made of about a hundred or so of the most common questions I thought tourists might have (e.g.

 ^ And there is his law of "ease": That some events are remembered more easily than others, and some associations are formed more easily than others.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .But, just as psychology in general cannot do duty for a theory of knowledge, so it holds true of this particular application of psychology that a mere reference of these emotions to the mechanism and interactive play of our faculties cannot be regarded as an account of the nature of the beautiful.^ The physician Eryximachus, admitting the distinction, yet holds that Love pervades all nature, and that art consists in following the higher Love in each particular sphere.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ If there is a true beauty and a true good, which are immutable, and if these are accessible to knowledge, that world of truth can have nothing to do with flux and change.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ This shows, I think, that for intellects like ours one cannot in general validly infer possibility from conceivability.

 Perhaps by talking of "emotions" we tend to give an unduly subjective colour to the investigation; it would be better to speak of the perception of the beautiful. Pleasure in itself is unqualified, and affords no differentia. .In the case of a beautiful object the resultant pleasure borrows its specific quality from the presence of determinations essentially objective in their nature, though not reducible to the categories of science.^ Now the participation of objects in ideas is in some cases essential and inseparable.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .Unless, indeed, we conceive our faculties to be constructed on some arbitrary plan which puts them out of relation to the facts with which they have to deal, we have a prima facie right to treat beauty as an objective determination of things.^ Constructivism holds that each of us constructs our own reality out of the combination of who we inherently are, our personal experiences, are and the social and cultural ideas and arrangements which surround us.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Many modern approaches to ethics, points out Arons, "deal with specific problems as they come up....
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Reason, the highest faculty of our material and immortal soul, allows us to attain truth, recognize beauty, and live the Good Life.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .The question of aesthetics would then be formulated - What is it in things that makes them beautiful, and what is the relation of this aspect of the universe to its ultimate nature, as that is expounded in metaphysics?^ They inquired into linquistic theory, metaphysics, mathematics, and the nature and origin of the universe.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Towards an ecological neuroscience: Aspects of the nature of things according to process philosophy .
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ If the dead came from the living, and not the living from the dead, the universe would ultimately be consumed in death.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 The answer constitutes the substance of aesthetics, considered as a branch of philosophy. .But it is not given simply in abstract terms: the philosophical treatment of aesthetics includes also an exposition of the concrete phases of art, as these have appeared in the history of the world, relating themselves to different phases of human culture.^ With this demand for scientific precision his conception of the ideas themselves is modified, and he strives anew to conceive of them in relation to one another, to the mind, and to the world.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ It is an irony of history that Rome was a stoic civilization during its early years, and that its great Stoic philosophers appeared on the scene during its decadent later years.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]
Of ethics (q.v.) .it may also be said that many of the topics commonly embraced under that title are not strictly philosophical in their nature.^ This piece reflects on the problematic nature of discussing some topics in a philosophical way.
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 .They are subjects for a scientific psychology employing the historical method with the conceptions of heredity and development, and calling to its aid, as such a psychology will do, the investigations of all the sociological sciences.^ Wrote "Sense and sound, as they reciprocally form any sign of mind" (1854) and "New Elements From Old Subjects: Presented as the Basis for a Science of Mind" (1874).
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 ^ Russell's philosophical work covers subjects such as logic, mathematics, language, scientific knowledge and more.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Plato rises to the conception of a scientific one and many, to be contemplated through dialectic - no barren abstraction, but a method of classification according to nature.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .To such a psychology must be relegated all questions as to the origin and development of moral ideas.^ The data of direct experience may be accepted as such; what is not given in direct experience must always be questioned.....
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ This leads up to the main question: (a) are different notions incommunicable, or ( b ) are all ideas indiscriminately communicable, or (c) is there communion of some kinds and not of others?
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ But we do not have to conceal the fact that this discovery also strongly influences our attitude to the question which must appear to many to be the most important of all."

 .Similarly, the question debated at such length by English moralists as to the nature of the moral faculty (moral sense, conscience, &c.^ Naturally, this raises the obvious question: can philosophy be done in such tiny packages?
  • Alltop - Top Philosophy News 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC philosophy.alltop.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ) and the controversy concerning the freedom of the will belong entirely to psychology. .If we exclude such questions in the interest of systematic correctness, and seek to determine for ethics a definite subject-matter, the science may be said to fall into two departments.^ But, on account of their cognate subject-matter, these six dialogues may be conveniently classed together in a group by themselves.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ His writings fall into two distinct periods.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Socrates was said to have fallen into a trance standing for as long as day thinking over a problem/query/question he did not have an answer to.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 .The first of these deals with the notion of duty, and endeavours to define the good or the ultimate end of action; the second lays out the scheme of concrete duties which are deducible from, or which, at least, are covered by, this abstractly stated principle.^ Socrates points out the anthropomorphism of these notions.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ These general considerations should be weighed against the inequalities which have led some critics to suppose that the " first sketch of the state" in bks.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ These things have no absolute first principle, and can never be the objects of reason and true science."
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .The second of these departments is really the proper subject-matter of ethics considered as a separate science; but it is often conspicuous by its absence from ethical treatises.^ But, on account of their cognate subject-matter, these six dialogues may be conveniently classed together in a group by themselves.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Sailing with the wind of his argument," he often tacks and veers, changing his method with his subject-matter, much as a poet might adopt a change of rhythm .
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Namely, in the real world, you cannot separate the software from the hardware, no matter how much the theorists (philosophers?
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 .However moralists may differ on first principles, there seems to be remarkably little practical divergence when they come to lay down the particular laws of morality.^ I think it tells us there is little substantial difference between them.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Changes to: Internet resources] With respect to many, if not most issues, there exist significant differences of opinion among individuals who seem to be equally knowledgeable and sincere.
  • Alltop - Top Philosophy News 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC philosophy.alltop.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ (There seems more than a little similarity between these ideas and Thorndike's "satisfiers" and "annoyers."
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .It may be added that, where a systematic account of duties is actually given, the connexion of the particular duties with the universal formula is in general more formal than real.^ Reality has a funny way of making life more difficult than we would have liked.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ When a feast is set before us, he said, we accept what is given, rather than asking for something more.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ It may be smaller, but it is more focused and less tolerant of dissent than has been the case for a long time.

 .It is only under the head of casuistry that ethics has been much cultivated as a separate science.^ Aristotle's expansion and classification of the sciences had done much to separate science from philosophy.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .The first department of ethics, on the other hand, is the branch of the subject in virtue of which ethics forms part of philosophy.^ Catholic Priest, Prof. Philosophy, Science, Mathematics and other subjects at Collge Saint-Raphael (later Collge de Montral) in Quebec.
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 ^ Of the dialogues forming part of the " Platonic canon ," and not included in the preceding survey, the Lesser Hippias, First Alcibiades and Menexenus are the most Platonic, though probably not Plato's.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Tutor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard, also taught most other subjects (1699-1760).
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 As described above, it ought rather to be called, in Kant's phrase, the metaphysic of ethics. A theory of obligation is ultimately found to be inseparable from a metaphysic of personality. .The connexion of ethics with metaphysics will be patent as a matter of fact, if it be remembered how Plato's philosophy is summed up in the idea of the good, and how Aristotle also employs the essentially ethical notion of end as the ultimate category by which the universe may be explained or reduced to unity.^ Cynic philosophy dismissed Plato's theory of pure ideas as utter nonsense.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Now, in evolving his philosophy from the Socratic basis, Plato works along three main lines - the ethical and political, the metaphysical or scientific, and the mystical.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ When I explained this all to the officer who picked me up at 2 a.m., he said, “Partner, I think you just may have saved your life.” I don’t think so.

 But the necessity of the connexion is also apparent, unless we are to suppose that, as regards the course of universal nature, man is altogether an imperium in imperio, or rather (to adopt the forcible phrase of Marcus Aurelius) an abscess or excrescence on the nature of things. .If, on the contrary, we must hold that man is essentially related to what the same writer calls "a common nature," then it is a legitimate corollary that in man as intelligence we ought to find the key of the whole fabric.^ Some say that the lantern was meant to help Diogenes in his search for truth; others hold that it was to help him find an honest man.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .At all events, this method of approach must be truer than any which, by restricting itself to the external aspect of phenomena as presented in space, leaves no scope for inwardness and life and all that, in Lotze's language, gives "value" to the world.^ The good life must be attained in this world, for there is no other....
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ No stage more dramatically presents this conflict than in selling.

 ^ D) Plato speaks with a touch of contempt of the life-long investigation of nature, as being concerned only with this visible universe, and immersed in the study of phenomena, whether past, present or to come, which admit of no stability and therefore of no certainty.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .The argument ex analogia hominis has often been carried too far; but if a "chief end of man" be discoverable - av9p6miruvov ayaOov, as Aristotle wisely insisted that the ethical end must be determined - then it may be assumed that this end cannot be irrelevant to that ultimate "meaning" of the universe which, according to Lotze, is the quest of philosophy.^ Aristotle thought 1), it cannot be, as Grote supposed, a motion consentaneous with that of the outer sphere, but either some far slower motion, perhaps assumed in order to account for the shifting of the seasons, or an equal retrograde motion which is supposed to neutralize in her case the " motion of the same."
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Intriguingly enough, at the same time his chief source of ethical guidance was an inner voice, his "daemon," as he called it, which often told him what to do or not do.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ In the end, Plato and Aristotle had agreed on very little except the possibility of arriving at ultimate truth.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 If "the idea of humanity," as Kant called it, has ethical perfection at its core, then a universe which is really an organic whole must be ultimately representable as a moral order or a spiritual kingdom such as Leibnitz named, in words borrowed from St Augustine, a city of God.

Philosophy of the State (Political Philosophy), Philosophy of History, Philosophy of Religion

In Plato and Aristotle ethics and politics are indissolubly connected. .In other words, seeing that the highest human good is realizable only in a community, the theory of the state as the organ of morality, and itself in its structure and institutions the expression of ethical ideas or qualities, becomes an integral part of philosophy.^ Introduction to integral theory: Part 1.
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Introduction to integral theory: Part 2.
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ To secure the good of one person only is better than nothing; but to secure the good of a nation or a state is a nobler and more divine achievement."

 The difficulty already hinted at, which individualistic systems of ethics experience in connecting particular duties with the abstract principle of duty is a proof of the failure of their method. .For the content of morality we are necessarily referred, in great part, to the experience crystallized in laws and institutions and to the unwritten law of custom, honour and good breeding, which has become organic in the society of which we are members.^ "The ideas of causality, of opposition, of beauty and of goodness are not products of the scientist's thinking; they are part of the reality that is gradually becoming known to him....
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .Plato's Republic and Hegel's Philosophie des Rechts are the most typical examples of a fully developed philosophy of the state, but in the earlier modern period the prolonged discussion of natural rights and the social contract must be regarded as a contribution to such a theory.^ Cynic philosophy dismissed Plato's theory of pure ideas as utter nonsense.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ And Plato, who, when most ideal, ever strives to keep touch with experience, is fully convinced of the reality of this lower truth, of this unphilosophic virtue.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ The student of philosophy, whatever may be the modern system to which he is most inclined, sensational, intuitional, conceptional, transcendental, will find his account in returning xxi.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .Moreover, if philosophy is to complete its constructive work, it must bring the course of human history within its survey, and exhibit the sequence of events as an evolution in which the purposive action of reason is traceable.^ We must, like all other beings in nature who do their useful work as part of the larger systems of which they are part, be of service to our fellow humans beings and to other creatures.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Teaching philosophy within a history of art department.
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 ^ This was partly because except for Aristotle, the ancient thinkers systematically exalted reason and paid too little attention to the role of passion and action in human life.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .This is the task of the philosophy of history, a peculiarly modern study, due to the growth of a humanistic and historical point of view.^ The philosophy of information: A methodological point of view.
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Phil 21 History of Modern Philosophy .
  • SJSU Articulation 15 September 2009 6:31 UTC info.sjsu.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Phil 202F History of Philosophy: Modern .
  • SJSU Articulation 15 September 2009 6:31 UTC info.sjsu.edu [Source type: Academic]

 .Lessing's conception of history as an "education of the human race" is a typical example of this interpretation of the facts, and was indeed the precursor which stimulated many more elaborate German theories.^ The fact that the human race is now using drones instead of bows and arrows to fight its wars is no improvement on the status of man.

 .The philosophy of history differs, it will be observed, from the purely scientific or descriptive studies covered by the general title of sociology.^ This article discusses how to teach history and philosophy of science to students with very little scientific knowledge.
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 ^ How to teach philosophy of science and some history of science to students with hardly any scientific background .
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 ^ History and Philosophy of Science Case Study .
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 Sociology conceives itself as a natural science elucidating a factual sequence. .The philosophy of history is essentially teleological; that is to say, it seeks to interpret the process as the realization of an immanent end.^ So, when bankers say they can’t put a value on the credit default swaps, what they are really saying is that they have no history of the reliability of these financial instruments.

 It may be said, therefore, to involve a complete metaphysical theory. .Social institutions and customs and the different forms of state-organization are judged according to the degree in which they promote the realization of the human ideal.^ Connectionism and dynamic systems: Are they really different?
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Stated differently, there are no algorithmic verifications, yet it is an authentic organizational development (OD) diagnostic tool.

 .History is thus represented by Hegel, for example, as the realization of the idea of freedom, or rather as the reconciliation of individual freedom and the play of cultured interests with the stable objectivity of law and an abiding consciousness of the greater whole in which we move.^ Constructivism holds that each of us constructs our own reality out of the combination of who we inherently are, our personal experiences, are and the social and cultural ideas and arrangements which surround us.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Protagoras was saying that each of the Athenian philosophers was presenting his subjective understanding rather than an "objective" truth about physical reality.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .So far as the course of universal history can be truly represented as an approximation to this reconciliation by a widening and deepening of both the elements, we may claim to possess a philosophy of history.^ This article discusses the student learning experience of the Core philosophy courses at the University of Glasgos Crichton Campus.
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 ^ This article looks at the contribution of the philosophy-based core courses of Glasgow University's Crichton Campus to the eduational aim of personal development.
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Of course you may prefer other authors but I think Russell would be an excellent choice for Mr. Yegge to get some firmer understanding of what philosophy is about.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 .But although the possibility of such a philosophy seems implied in the postulated nationality of the universe, many would hold that it remains as yet an unachieved ideal.^ It seems like many of your critics would only have been appeased if you had started every sentence with things like "Most of the time", "In many cases", "For the most part" etc etc.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Steve is also partly right about Medieval philosophy, as many would classify large portions of this work as theology, not philosophy.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Most of the commenters seemed to have held the details of your essay up to that level- I would argue holding an informal yet interesting rant to that level doesn't benefit anyone, IMHO...
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]
.There only remains to be briefly noticed the relation of philosophy to theology and the nature of what is called Philosophy of Religion.^ It held that only ethics is real philosophy, and we should study the wisdom of nature as a guide to life.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity at Harvard (1839-53), President of Harvard (1853-60).
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 ^ As someone with a Philosophy B.S. and a background in programming language theory (mostly informal, plus coursework), I can tell you that there exists what I would call interest in "philosophy of software languages."
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 .By theology is commonly understood the systematic presentation of the teaching of some positive or historical religion as to the existence and attributes of a Supreme Being, including his relation to the world and especially to man.^ Especially given that it's a world in which "natural religion" has, by and large, been marginalized through the work of philosophers.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Sextus attacked every claim by dogmatic philosophers to knowledge about the "nonevident world" (any condition that is not now being, and cannot at some time be, observed).
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ A paper, originally presented at the 13th University Conference at Vienna in 1965, introducing some of the issues and difficulties in the teaching of philosophy.
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 But these topics have also been treated by philosophers and religious thinkers, without dependence on any historical data or special divine revelation, under the title of Natural Theology. Natural Theology is specially associated with the Stoic theories of providence in ancient times and with elaborations of the argument from design in the 18th century. .But there is no warrant for restricting the term to any special mode of approaching the problems indicated; and as these form the central subject of metaphysical inquiry, no valid distinction can be drawn between natural theology and general metaphysics.^ And your claim that there was no philosophy between antiquity and modernity is ludicrous.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Inquiry-Based Learning in Theology and Religious Studies: an Investigation and Analysis: 3.1 Generic student focus group .
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 ^ While continuing his method of dicho- Politicus tomies, he is careful to look on both sides of each ( States- alternative, and he no longer insists on dividing between this and not-this when another mode of classification is more natural.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .The philosophy of religion, on the other hand, investigates the nature of the religious consciousness and the value of its pronouncements on human life and man's relation to the ground of things.^ All things and beings exist somewhere between polar opposites, and each polarity partakes of the nature of the other.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ We must, like all other beings in nature who do their useful work as part of the larger systems of which they are part, be of service to our fellow humans beings and to other creatures.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Such changes are, amongst other things, a ground for caution in comparing the two steeds of the Phaedrus with the spirit ( 6uµ6s ) and desire ( irekula ) of the Republic and Timaeus.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 Unity, reconciliation, peace, joy, "the victory that overcometh the world" - such, in slightly varying phrases, is the content of religious faith. .Does this consciousness represent an authentic insight into ultimate fact, or is it a pitiful illusion of the nerves, born of man's hopes and fears and of his fundamental ignorance?^ He also argued that the fact "that a man should not be a mere weathercock to his fears, likings, and hankerings does not entail that ideally he should be screened from them.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 The philosophy of religion assumes the first alternative. .The function of philosophy in general is the reflective analysis of experience, and the religious experience of mankind is prima facie entitled to the same consideration as any other form of conscious activity.^ Philosophy, while still engaged in generalization, could not assign to the imagination its proper function.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Inquiry-Based Learning in Theology and Religious Studies: an Investigation and Analysis: 3.1 Generic student focus group .
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 ^ The same can be said of the programmer who only has experience with functional languages.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 The certainties of religious faith are matter of feeling or immediate assurance, and are expressed in the pictorial language of imagination. .It becomes the function of philosophy, dealing with these utterances, to relate them to the results of other spheres of experience, and to determine their real meaning in the more exact terms of thought.^ These difficulties are real, and yet to deny ideas is to destroy philosophy.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ He credited much of his thought to Democritus and to Aristippus, whose philosophy of pleasure was actually more "Epicurean" in the Roman sense than Epicurus' ever was.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ And, if in the Laws the lines of thought have in one way hardened, there are other ways in which experience has softened them.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .The philosophy of religion also traces in the different historical forms of religious belief and practice the gradual evolution of what it takes to be the truth of the matter.^ This paper describes the background to, and success of, the Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies Pilot Programme for supporting post-graduate research students in Theology, Religious Studies and Philosophy.
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 .Such an account may be distinguished from what is usually called the science of religion by the teleological or 'metaphysical presuppositions it involves.^ Systems metaphysics: A bridge from science to religion.
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 .The science of religion gives a purely historical and comparative account of the various manifestations of the religious instinct without pronouncing on their relative truth or value and without, therefore, professing to apply the idea of evolution in the philosophical sense.^ Paper present at the " Wolfgang Pauli's Philosophical Ideas and Contemporary Science " conference, Monte Verita, Ascona, Switzerland , May 20-27.
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Responding to all this, one group of philosophers concluded that truth was relative and that there were many truths about a matter, rather than just one.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ And, according to the comparative clearness or dimness of that first vision, her earthly lot is varied from that of a philosopher or artist down through nine grades (including woman) to that of a tyrant .
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .That idea is fundamental in the philosophy of religion, which therefore can be written only from the standpoint of a constructive metaphysical theory.^ Cynic philosophy dismissed Plato's theory of pure ideas as utter nonsense.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ It's the only thing that will protect us from magical thinking (something humans are fundamentally inclined to) and the excesses of religion.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ What is commonly known as his doctrine of Ideas is only one phase in a continuous progress towards the realization of a system of philosophy in which the supreme factor is reason guiding will.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]
.It is, indeed, only from the standpoint of such a theory that the definitions and divisions of the different philosophical disciplines adopted in this article can be said to hold good.^ I have said that I knew nothing of such theories.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ He said that the hard reality is that you can only sell what you manufacture if your goods are cheaper than the competition, or of a higher quality than the competition, or if the competition doesn’t exist.

 .But those who, like the positivists, agnostics and sceptics, deny the possibility of metaphysics as a theory of the ultimate nature of things, are still obliged to retain philosophy as a theory of knowledge, in order to justify the asserted limitation or impotence of human reason.^ The school was called the Lyceum, and his group and its philosophy were named Peripatetic ("those who walk around") after the peripatoi, or covered walks where Aristotle and his students strolled as they talked.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ For, if knowledge is all in all, what are we to make of wisdom and goodness in those who do not know?
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Unfortunately, many of those who saw what was coming simply sold the debt they owned at prices that were higher than reasonable.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

.The best general histories of philosophy are by J. E. Erdmann, Friedrich Ueberweg and W. Windelband, Windelband's being probably the freshest in its treatment and point of view.^ The philosophy of information: A methodological point of view.
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ And thus the dialogues present, as in a series of dissolving views, a sort of model or compendium of the history of philosophy.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ I do synpathize with your general point - that philosophy is important (well that appears to be your point from the first paragraphs, but I'm sure I missed the Lisp part that is bound to follow) - but does it have to be so naive?
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 Ed. .Zeller's History of Greek Philosophy still holds the field as the best continuous exposition of the subject, but more recent work in the early period is represented by H. Diels and J. Burnet, while Zeller's view of Plato may be said to have been superseded by the later researches of Lewis Campbell, H. Jackson and others.^ Philos 12 History of Greek Philosophy .
  • SJSU Articulation 15 September 2009 6:31 UTC info.sjsu.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ These and cognate questions may well have haunted Plato when he planned the Republic, the greatest of his works.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ This article discusses how best to teach the history of philosophy, with particular reference to personal identity.
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 .T. Gomperz's Greek Thinkers is an able, if somewhat diffuse, survey of the philosophical development in connexion with the general movement of Greek life and culture.^ Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, vols.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ The Ancients (as he calls the old Greek thinkers), by contrast, start the inquiry by looking at the Picture of one's life as a whole.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ In Creative Evolution, French philosopher Henri Bergson was later to speak of the evolution of life forms as developing successively higher degrees of consciousness.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .It does not go beyond Plato.^ It does not go beyond intellectual assignats.

 .B. Haureau, A. Stockl and Karl Werner give the fullest and most trustworthy histories of the medieval period, but the subject is very carefully treated by Erdmann and Ueberweg, and a useful compendium, written from a Roman Catholic standpoint, is De Wulf's History of Medieval Philosophy (1900; Eng.^ That he has also written a brilliant history of philosophy doesn't hurt either.
  • Stevey's Blog Rants: Software Needs Philosophers 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC steve-yegge.blogspot.com [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Phil 160 History of Philosophy: Ancient & Medieval .
  • SJSU Articulation 15 September 2009 6:31 UTC info.sjsu.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ This article discusses how to teach history and philosophy of science to students with very little scientific knowledge.
  • The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC prs.heacademy.ac.uk [Source type: Academic]

 trans., 1907). .For modern times, in addition to the general histories already named, the works of Kuno Fischer, R. Falckenberg and H. Hoffding, and R. Adamson's Lectures on the Development of Modern Philosophy, may be specially mentioned.^ The school which which ultimately may have contributed most to the development of modern science was that of the Skeptics.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ The student of philosophy, whatever may be the modern system to which he is most inclined, sensational, intuitional, conceptional, transcendental, will find his account in returning xxi.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ But this distinction, like that sometimes made in modern philosophy between the good, the true and the beautiful, is one which, if not unduly pressed, may be usefully, borne in mind.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .Writers on the history of philosophy generally prefix to their work a discussion of the scope of philosophy, its divisions and its relations to other departments of knowledge, and the account given by Windelband and Ueberweg will be found specially good.^ Greece has given us more philosophy than any other place in the Western World.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ And it is this more than any other single feature which gives the Republic a prophetic significance as " an attempt towards anticipating the work of future generations."
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ There are other points, however, which must not be omitted, because they are more intimately related to the general development of Plato's thoughts.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 The Introductions to Philosophy published by F. Paulsen, O. Ktilpe, W. Wundt and G. T. Ladd, deal largely with this subject, which is also treated by Henry Sidgwick in his Philoso p hy, its Scope and Relations (1902), by Ernest Naville, La Definition de la philosophie (1894) and by Wundt in the introduction to his System der Philosophic (1889). .A useful work of general reference is J. M. Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology (3 vols., 1902-1905).^ Retrieved July 2005, from http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/skinner.htm Tabor, W., Juliano, C., & Tanenhause, M. (1997).
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Retrieved July2005, from http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/piaget.htm Prigogine, I, with Snell, M. (2004, Fall).
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Retrieved July 2005, from http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/chomsky.htm Ganger, J., & Brent, M. (2004).
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 (A. S. P. - P.)


Wiktionary

Up to date as of January 14, 2010
(Redirected to philosophy article)

Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary

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Contents

English

Etymology

From Ancient Greek φιλοσοφία from φίλος (philos), “‘beloved’”) & σοφία (sophia), “‘wisdom’”).

Pronunciation

Noun

Singular
philosophy
Plural
countable and uncountable; plural philosophies
philosophy (countable and uncountable; plural philosophies)
  1. (uncountable) (originally) The pursuit of wisdom
  2. (uncountable) An academic discipline that seeks truth through reasoning rather than empiricism
    Philosophy is often divided into five major branches: logic, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and aesthetics.
    .
  3. (countable) A comprehensive system of belief.
  4. (countable) A view or outlook regarding fundamental principles underlying some domain.^ It may well be true that there are some deterministic dynamical systems that, when viewed properly , display behavior indistinguishable from that of a genuinely stochastic process.
    • Causal Determinism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC plato.stanford.edu [Source type: Original source]
    a philosophy of government
    a philosophy of education
  5. (countable) A general principle (usually moral).
  6. (archaic) A broader branch of (non-applied) science

Meronyms

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

the pursuit of wisdom
academic discipline
comprehensive system of belief
view regarding fundamental principles
general principle
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Help:How to check translations.
Translations to be checked
  • Japanese: 哲学 (てつがく, tetsugaku)
  • Lithuanian: filosofija f.
  • Maltese: filosofija f.
  • Portuguese: filosofia f.
  • Romanian: filosofie/filozofie f.
  • Serbian:
    Cyrillic: филозофија f.
    Roman: filozofija f.
  • Spanish: filosofía f.
  • Telugu: తత్వం (tatvaM), తాత్వికత h(taatvikata)
  • Ukrainian: філософія (filosofija) f.

See also


Wikibooks

Up to date as of January 23, 2010
(Redirected to Subject:Philosophy article)

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

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Wikipedia has related information at
Philosophy
.Books in this subject area deal with philosophy, the study of problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, justification, truth, justice, right and wrong, beauty, validity, mind, and language.^ Teaching areas: philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, feminist philosophy.

 ^ Philosophy is about the big questions concerning meaning, knowledge, truth, beauty, morality, justice, human freedom, and the nature of the mind.
  • Philosophy Program, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.bsu.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Philosophy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, law, justice, validity, mind, and language.
  • Philosophy - MSN Encarta 15 September 2009 1:59 UTC encarta.msn.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 .Many other disciplines study such things.^ The study of philosophy blends well with many other academic disciplines.
  • Philosophy Curriculum | Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC web.stlawu.edu [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ It engages in the analysis of the logic of valid argument applicable to all rational thought and in the study of the methodology and basic concepts of all other disciplines.

 ^ Philosophy is, among other things, an inquiry into the existence of fundamental truths, a quest for clarity, and a study of principles of conduct.
  • CLA: Philosophy - Willamette University 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.willamette.edu [Source type: Academic]

 .However, philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these issues by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned argument rather than, for example, experiments.^ Some approaches to philosophy are helpful and others are not.
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ Some approaches to philosophy are helpful and others are not."
  • AITopics / Philosophy 28 January 2010 0:39 UTC www.aaai.org [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ However, as I have noted, each of these ways of thinking of the "us" generates difficulties.
  • Charlotte Witt, Feminism and the Philosophical Canon 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.uh.edu [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]
Philosophy Books Related Subjects
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Bible wiki

Up to date as of January 23, 2010

From BibleWiki

Contents

DEFINITION OF PHILOSOPHY

Etymology

According to its etymology, the word "philosophy" (philosophia, from philein, to love, and sophia, wisdom) means "the love of wisdom". This sense appears again in sapientia, the word used in the Middle Ages to designate philosophy.
.In the early stages of Greek, as of every other, civilization, the boundary line between philosophy and other departments of human knowledge was not sharply defined, and philosophy was understood to mean "every striving towards knowledge". This sense of the word survives in Herodotus (I, xxx) and Thucydides (II, xl).^ The sympathy with common life , the acceptance of Greek religion , the deepening humanity, are no less essentially Socratic than the love of truth which breathes in every page.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ By an elaborate criticism of both theories knowledge is at last separated from the relativity of sense; but the subsequent attempt to distinguish on abstract grounds between true and false opinion, and to define knowledge as true opinion with a reason (cf.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .In the ninth century of our era, Alcuin, employing it in the same sense, says that philosophy is "naturarum inquisitio, rerum humanarum divinarumque cognitio quantum homini possibile est aestimare" -- investigation of nature, and such knowledge of things human and Divine as is possible for man (P.L., CI, 952).^ Towards an ecological neuroscience: Aspects of the nature of things according to process philosophy .
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Natural philosophers are warned against experimenting on the mixture of colours, which is a divine process and forbidden to man ( Tim.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]
.In its proper acceptation, philosophy does not mean the aggregate of the human sciences, but "the general science of things in the universe by their ultimate determinations and reasons"; or again, "the intimate knowledge of the causes and reasons of things", the profound knowledge of the universal order.^ Philosophy, while still engaged in generalization, could not assign to the imagination its proper function.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ In this " pathway towards reality," from the consideration of particular virtues he passed to the contemplation of virtue in general, and thence to the nature of universals, and to the unity of knowledge and being.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ These things have no absolute first principle, and can never be the objects of reason and true science."
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]
.Without here enumerating all the historic definitions of philosophy, some of the most significant may be given.^ But a short abstract of the argument may be given here.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ In conclusion, a friendly hint is given to Isocrates that he may do better than Lysias if he will but turn his attention to philosophy.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ The student of philosophy, whatever may be the modern system to which he is most inclined, sensational, intuitional, conceptional, transcendental, will find his account in returning xxi.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 Plato calls it "the acquisition of knowledge", ktêsis epistêmês (Euthydemus, 288 d). .Aristotle, mightier than his master at compressing ideas, writes: tên onomazomenên sophian peri ta procirc;ta aitia kai tas archas hupolambanousi pantes -- "All men consider philosophy as concerned with first causes and principles" (Metaph., I, i).^ This is nothing else than the crude absoluteness of affirmation and negation which was ridiculed in the Euthydemus, and has been elsewhere mentioned as the first principle of the art.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ But he found Anaxagoras forsaking his own first principle and jumbling causes with conditions.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Parmenides exemplifies his suggestion by examining his own first principle in conversation with a youth who, while a contemporary of Socrates, is a namesake of Plato's pupil Aristotle.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .These notions were perpetuated in the post-Aristotelean schools (Stoicism, Epicureanism, neo-Platonism), with this difference, that the Stoics and Epicureans accentuated the moral bearing of philosophy ("Philosophia studium summae virtutis", says Seneca in "Epist.", lxxxix, 7), and the neo-Platonists its mystical bearing (see Middle Ages seem not to have had a very clear idea of philosophy for reasons which we will develop later on (Aristotelean idea, writes: "Sapientia est scientia quae considerat causas primas et universales causas; sapientia causas primas omnium causarum considerat" -- Wisdom [i.e.^ These difficulties are real, and yet to deny ideas is to destroy philosophy.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ (There seems more than a little similarity between these ideas and Thorndike's "satisfiers" and "annoyers."
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ What is commonly known as his doctrine of Ideas is only one phase in a continuous progress towards the realization of a system of philosophy in which the supreme factor is reason guiding will.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 philosophy] is the science which considers first and universal causes; wisdom considers the first causes of all causes" (In Metaph., I, lect. ii).
In general, modern philosophers may be said to have adopted this way of looking at it. Descartes regards philosophy as wisdom: "Philosophiae voce sapientiae studium denotamus" -- "By the term philosophy we denote the pursuit of wisdom" (Princ. philos., preface); and he understands by it "cognitio veritatis per primas suas causas" -- " knowledge of truth by its first causes" (ibid.). .For Locke, philosophy is the true knowledge of things; for Berkeley, "the study of wisdom and truth" (Princ.).^ If there is a true beauty and a true good, which are immutable, and if these are accessible to knowledge, that world of truth can have nothing to do with flux and change.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .The many conceptions of philosophy given by Kant reduce it to that of a science of the general principles of knowledge and of the ultimate objects attainable by knowledge -- "Wissenschaft von den letzten Zwecken der menschlichen Vernunft". For the numerous German philosophers who derive their inspiration from his criticism -- Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, Schleiermacher, Schopenhauer, and the rest -- it is the general teaching of science (Wissenschaftslehre).^ In those days, "philosophy" included many areas of knowledge that are separated into different disciplines now.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ He studied at the Academy in Athens, and borrowed from many philosophers who had preceded him.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Selmer Bringsjord Selmer Bringsjord, Artificial Intelligence, AI, Mind, Consciousness, Robots, Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Mind, Turing Test, Story Generation .

 .Many contemporary authors regard it as the synthetic theory of the particular sciences: "Philosophy", says Herbert Spencer, "is completely unified knowledge" (First Principles, #37).^ Parmenides exemplifies his suggestion by examining his own first principle in conversation with a youth who, while a contemporary of Socrates, is a namesake of Plato's pupil Aristotle.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Georgia, President and Prof. Mental/Moral Science, Belles-lettres, Political Philosophy at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia (1834-37), President of Wesleyan Univ.
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 ^ These things have no absolute first principle, and can never be the objects of reason and true science."
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 Ostwald has the same idea. .For Wundt, the object of philosophy is "the acquisition of such a general conception of the world and of life as will satisfy the exigencies of the reason and the needs of the heart" -- "Gewinnung einer allgemeinen Welt -- und Lebensanschauung, welche die Forderungen unserer Vernunft und die Bedurfnisse unseres Gemüths befriedigen soll" (Einleit.^ He sought to render worthless the conventional labels and "social currencies" of the world such as "king, general, and honor."
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ We have three kinds of needs that will not be denied, he held: Equanimity or peace of mind; bodily health and comfort; and the exigencies of life itself.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ This may be with the state of our knowledge about our world and the universe, or about how to live a satisfying life.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 in d. Philos., 1901, p. 5). .This idea of philosophy as the ultimate science of values (Wert lehre) is emphasized by Windelband, Déring, and others.^ I have read both again and again, and found more in them of value to me personally than in any other work of Greek philosophy.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]
The list of conceptions and definitions might be indefinitely prolonged. All of them affirm the eminently synthetic character of philosophy. In the opinion of the present writer, the most exact and comprehensive definition is that of Aristotle. Face to face with nature and with himself, man reflects and endeavours to discover what the world is, and what he is himself. .Having made the real the object of studies in detail, each of which constitutes science (see Aristotle, we know other things, but other things do not suffice to make us know these principles (dia gar tauta kai ek toutôn t'alla gnôrizetai, all' ou tauta dia tôn hupokeimenôn -- Metaph., I).^ For, if knowledge is all in all, what are we to make of wisdom and goodness in those who do not know?
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ For to a Greek mind above all others life was nothing without the social environment, and justice, of all virtues, could least be realized apart from a community.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ His converse with Parmenides ended in his assertion of an element of difference pervading all things - in other words, of an indeterminate element underlying all determinations.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 The expression universal order should be understood in the widest sense. .Man is one part of it: hence the relations of man with the world of sense and with its Author belong to the domain of philosophy.^ One part abstract, permanent, and intellectually knowable, and the other empirical, changing, and known through the senses."
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ With this demand for scientific precision his conception of the ideas themselves is modified, and he strives anew to conceive of them in relation to one another, to the mind, and to the world.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .Now man, on the one hand, is the responsible author of these relations, because he is free, but he is obliged by nature itself to reach an aim, which is his moral end.^ Lastly, it is one of the strange irregularities in the composition of the Timaeus that the creation of woman and the relation of the sexes' to each other are subjects reserved to the end, because this is the place given to the lower animals, and woman (cf.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .On the other hand, he has the power of reflecting upon the knowledge which he acquires of all things, and this leads him to study the logical structure of science.^ Nonetheless, Artistotle enriched and systematized the knowledge of his time in almost all the sciences of nature.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ All things and beings exist somewhere between polar opposites, and each polarity partakes of the nature of the other.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ "The scientist," writes McCleod, "studies particular structures and processes to learn how they reflect a being's inner nature, and what general purposes they serve, and how they do that.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 Thus philosophical knowledge leads to philosophical acquaintance with morality and logic. .And hence we have this more comprehensive definition of philosophy: "The profound knowledge of the universal order, of the duties which that order imposes upon man, and of the knowledge which man acquires from reality" -- "La connaissance approfondie de l'ordre universel, des devoirs qui en résultent pour l'homme et de la science que l'homme acquiert de la rémite"' (Mercier, "Logique", 1904, p.^ In this " pathway towards reality," from the consideration of particular virtues he passed to the contemplation of virtue in general, and thence to the nature of universals, and to the unity of knowledge and being.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Phil 102A Introduction to Philosophy: Reality and Knowledge .
  • SJSU Articulation 15 September 2009 6:31 UTC info.sjsu.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Unlike other philosophies of the time, in the Stoic view each person "was called upon to participate actively in the affairs of the world and thereby fulfill his duty to this great community....
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 23). -- .The development of these same ideas under another aspect will be found in God (or its cause), and man himself (his nature, origin, operations, moral end, and scientific activities).^ Another city in the same region, Ephesus, which had been founded about 400 years before by colonists from Athens, also became a rich trading center.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ With this demand for scientific precision his conception of the ideas themselves is modified, and he strives anew to conceive of them in relation to one another, to the mind, and to the world.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ This project led Aristotle to develop a large number of mutually exclusive categories, and each specimen one or another of these.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY

.It would be out of the question to enumerate here all the methods of dividing philosophy that have been given: we confine ourselves to those which have played a part in history and possess the deepest significance.^ But if Plato were cross-questioned as to the intrinsic value of habits so induced as a preservative for his pupils against temptation, he would have replied, " I do not pretend to have removed all difficulties from their path.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ It is a singular fact, and worth the attention of those who look for system in Plato, that the definition of justice here so laboriously wrought out, viz.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ We likewise have a responsibility to play the part in civic life that we are suited by our nature to play, but must not attach our happiness to place, power, or possessions.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

In Greek Philosophy

Two historical divisions dominate Greek philosophy: the Platonic and the Aristotelean.
(1) Plato divides philosophy into dialectic, physics, and ethics. .This division is not found in Plato's own writings, and it would be impossible to fit his dialogues into the triple frame, but it corresponds to the spirit of the Platonic philosophy.^ (Perhaps emotional wounds from his own life have found their way into his philosophy.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Stoicism, the most broadly representative of the Hellenistic philosophies," writes Tarnas, possessed a loftiness of vision and moral temper that would long leave its mark on the Western spirit" (76).
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ We have now to consider a series of dialogues, probably intended for a narrower circle of readers, in which Plato grapples directly with the central difficulties of his own theory of knowing and.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .According to Zeller, Xenocrates (314 B.C.) his disciple, and the leading representative of the Old Academy, was the first to adopt this triadic division, which was destined to go down through the ages (Grundriss d.^ And, according to the comparative clearness or dimness of that first vision, her earthly lot is varied from that of a philosopher or artist down through nine grades (including woman) to that of a tyrant .
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 Geschichte d. griechischen Philosophie, 144), and Aristotle follows it in dividing his master's philosophy. .Dialectic is the science of objective reality, i.e., of the Idea (idea eidos), so that by Platonic dialectic we must understand metaphysics.^ Protagoras was saying that each of the Athenian philosophers was presenting his subjective understanding rather than an "objective" truth about physical reality.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 .Physics is concerned with the manifestations of the Idea, or with the Real, in the sensible universe, to which Plato attributes no real value independent of that of the Idea.^ D) Plato speaks with a touch of contempt of the life-long investigation of nature, as being concerned only with this visible universe, and immersed in the study of phenomena, whether past, present or to come, which admit of no stability and therefore of no certainty.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Whatever the value of his particular ideas, Plato bequeathed us a container for philosophical and psychological inquiry.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Plato borrowed from Socrates the idea "that reason was not only a capacity of man, but a force that could penetrate through appearances and reveal reality in its true form."
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 Ethics has for its object human acts. .Plato deals with logic, but has no system of logic; this was a product of Aristotle's genius.^ But Kantian interpreters might obviously have said the same of the Parmenides: and Grote as a consistent utilitarian looked upon the Protagoras as the most mature production of Plato's genius.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]
.Plato's classification was taken up by his school (the Academy), but it was not long in yielding to the influence of Aristotle's more complete division and according a place to logic.^ More than any other of the dialogues it recalls Aristotle's description of Plato's teaching.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Aristotle might well be called the father of biology, for he collected an immense number of specimens and drew up the basic lines of biological classifications.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Plato rises to the conception of a scientific one and many, to be contemplated through dialectic - no barren abstraction, but a method of classification according to nature.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .Following the inspirations of the old Academics, the Stoics divided philosophy into physics (the study of the real), logic (the study of the structure of science) and morals (the study of moral acts).^ It held that only ethics is real philosophy, and we should study the wisdom of nature as a guide to life.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Professor of moral philosophy and logic (1795-1799) .
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 ^ Intellectual and Moral Philosophy and Logic at Furman University in South Carolina (1852-91), also President there (1852-79).
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 This classification was perpetuated by the neo-Platonists, who transmitted it to the Fathers of the Church, and through them to the Middle Ages.
.(2) Aristotle, Plato's illustrious disciple, the most didactic, and at the same time the most synthetic, mind of the Greek worid, drew up a remarkable scheme of the divisions of philosophy.^ He therefore enters into conversation, as it were, with the great minds of former times, and in the spirit of Socrates compels each of them to yield up his secret, and to acknowledge a supplemental truth.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Aristotle might well be called the father of biology, for he collected an immense number of specimens and drew up the basic lines of biological classifications.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ But Kantian interpreters might obviously have said the same of the Parmenides: and Grote as a consistent utilitarian looked upon the Protagoras as the most mature production of Plato's genius.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .The philosophical sciences are divided into theoretic, practical, and poetic, according as their scope is pure speculative knowledge, or conduct (praxis), or external production (poiêsis).^ For that which lay deepest in him was not mere speculative interest or poetic fervour, but the practical enthusiasm of a reformer.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 Theoretic philosophy comprises: (a) physics, or the study of corporeal things which are subject to change (achôrista men all' ouk akinêta) (b) mathematics, or the study of extension, i.e., of a corporeal property not subject to change and considered, by abstraction, apart from matter (akinêta men ou chôrista d'isôs, all' hôs en hulê); (c) metaphysics, called theology, or first philosophy, i.e. the study of being in its unchangeable and (whether naturally or by abstraction) incorporeal determinations (chôrista kau akinêt). .Practical philosophy comprises ethics, economics, and politics, the second of these three often merging into the last.^ From the work of these three emerged the basic Stoic philosophy.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Moral and Intellectual Philosophy and Literature at Columbia (1857-81), Prof. Ethics of Jurisprudence (1860-68), Prof. History and Political Economy (1865-1876).
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 ^ There was little opportunity in these empires for most people to be politically active, influential, and responsible, hence little room for political philosophy.
  • PSYCHOLOGY IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY 18 September 2009 11:41 UTC www.sonoma.edu [Source type: Original source]

 Poetic philosophy is concerned in general with the external works conceived by human intelligence. .To these may conveniently be added logic, the vestibule of philosophy, which Aristotle studied at length, and of which he may be called the creator.^ But, on account of their cognate subject-matter, these six dialogues may be conveniently classed together in a group by themselves.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]
To metaphysics Aristotle rightly accords the place of honour in the grouping of philosophical studies. He calls it "first philosophy". His classification was taken up by the Peripatetic School and was famous throughout antiquity; it was eclipsed by the Platonic classification during the Alexandrine period, but it reappeared during the Middle Ages.

In the Middle Ages

Though the division of philosophy into its branches is not uniform in the first period of the Middle Ages in the West, i.e. down to the end of the twelfth century, the classifications of this period are mostly akin to the Platonic division into logic, ethics, and physics. .Aristotle's classification of the theoretic sciences, though made known by Boethius, exerted no influence for the reason that in the early Middle Ages the West knew nothing of Aristotle except his works on logic and some fragments of his speculative philosophy (see Aristotelean classification, and when their works -- particularly their translations of Aristotle's great original treatises -- penetrated into the West, the Aristotelean division definitively took its place there.^ Hermes Trismegistus and "Dionysius Areopagita " are names that mark the continuation of this influence into the middle ages .
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Latin: A Latin version of the Timaeus by Chalcidius existed in the middle ages and was known to Dante .
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ And reason shows that death is either a long untroubled sleep , or removal to a better world, where there are no unjust judges.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 Its coming is heralded by Gundissalinus (see Aristotle, and author of a treatise, "De divisione philosophiae", which was imitated by Michael Scott and Robert Kilwardby. St. Thomas did no more than adopt it and give it a precise scientific form. Later on we shall see that, conformably with the medieval notion of sapientia, to each part of philosophy corresponds the preliminary study of a group of special sciences. The general scheme of the division of philosophy in the thirteenth century, with St. Thomas's commentary on it, is as follows:
.
There are as many parts of philosophy as there are distinct domains in the order submitted to the philosopher's reflection.^ There is also a distinct approach towards a critical and historical method in philosophy, while the perfection of style continues unimpaired, and the person of Socrates is as vividly represented as in any dialogue.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ In the Apology there is a distinct echo of the voice of Socrates; the Phaedo gives many personal traits of him; but the dialogues which are now to follow are replete with original invention, based in part, no doubt, on personal recollections.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .Now there is an order which the intelligence does not form but only considers; such is the order realized in nature.^ I have but cleared the well-springs of the noxious weeds that have been fatal to so many, in order that they may have little to unlearn, and be exposed only to such dangers as are inevitable."
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .Another order, the practical, is formed either by the acts of our intelligence or by the acts of our will, or by the application of those acts to external things in the arts: e.g., the division of practical philosophy into logic, moral philosophy, and aesthetics, or the philosophy of the arts ("Ad philosophiam naturalem pertinet considerare ordinem rerum quem ratio humana considerat sed non facit; ita quod sub naturali philosophia comprehendamus et metaphysicam.^ The real difference is between those who base their teaching on philosophy and those who are content with rules of art.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ But in those which are presumably the latest in order of composition this imaginative form interferes but little with the direct expression of the philosopher's own thoughts.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ The true order is to advance from one to all fair forms, then to fair practices, fair thoughts, and lastly to the single thought of absolute beauty.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 Ordo autem quem ratio considerando facit in proprio actu, pertinet ad rationalem philosophiam, cujus est considerare ordinem partium orationis ad invicem et ordinem principiorum ad invicem et ad conclusiones. Ordo autem actionum voluntariarum pertinet ad considerationem moralis philosophiae. .Ordo autem quem ratio considerando facit in rebus exterioribus per rationem humanam pertinet ad artes mechanicas." To natural philosophy pertains the consideration of the order of things which human reason considers but does not create -- just as we include metaphysics also under natural philosophy.^ Towards an ecological neuroscience: Aspects of the nature of things according to process philosophy .
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ In passing on to consider the statesman, true and false, the Eleatic stranger does not forget the lesson which has just been learned.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Wrote "Essay on language, as connected with the faculties of the mind, and as applied to things in nature and art" (1825).
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 .But the order which reason creates of its own act by consideration pertains to rational philosophy, the office of which is to consider the order of the parts of speech with reference to one another and the order of the principles with reference to one another and to the conclusions.^ The original double human beings were growing impious, and Zeus split them in twain, ever since which act the bereaved halves wander in search of one another.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ In conclusion, Isocrates, or some one else, who prematurely mixes up philosophy with practical politics, is cautioned against spoiling two good things.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 The order of voluntary actions pertains to the consideration of moral philosophy, while the order which the reason creates in external things through the human reason pertains to the mechanical arts. -- In "X Ethic. ad Nic.", I, lect. i).
.The philosophy of nature, or speculative philosophy, is divided into metaphysics, mathematics, and physics, according to the three stages traversed by the intelligence in its effort to attain a synthetic comprehension of the universal order, by abstracting from movement (physics), intelligible quantity (mathematics), being (metaphysics) (In lib.^ Now, in evolving his philosophy from the Socratic basis, Plato works along three main lines - the ethical and political, the metaphysical or scientific, and the mystical.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Towards an ecological neuroscience: Aspects of the nature of things according to process philosophy .
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 Boeth. de Trinitate, Q. v., a. 1). In this classification it is to be noted that, man being one element of the world of sense, psychology ranks as a part of physics.

In Modern Philosophy

The Scholastic classification may be said, generally speaking, to have lasted, with some exceptions, until the seventeenth century. Beginning with Descartes, we find a multitude of classifications arising, differing in the principles which inspire them. Kant, for instance, distinguishes metaphysics, moral philosophy, religion, and anthropology. .The most widely accepted scheme, that which still governs the division of the branches of philosophy in teaching, is due to Wolff (1679-1755), a disciple of Leibniz, who has been called the educator of Germany in the eighteenth century.^ The real difference is between those who base their teaching on philosophy and those who are content with rules of art.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Marriage education and government policy: Helping couples who choose marriage achieve success .
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 This scheme is as follows:
  • Logic.
  • Speculative Philosophy.
  • Ontology, or General Metaphysics.
  • Special Metaphysics.
  • Theodicy (the study of God).
  • Cosmology (the study of the World).
  • Psychology (the study of Man).
  • Practical Philosophy.
  • Ethics
  • Politics
  • Economics
Wolff broke the ties binding the particular sciences to philosophy, and placed them by themselves; in his view philosophy must remain purely rational. It is easy to see that the members of Wolff's scheme are found in the Aristotelean classification, wherein theodicy is a chapter of metaphysics and psychology a chapter of physics. It may even be said that the Greek classification is better than Wolff's in regard to speculative philosophy, where the ancients were guided by the formal object of the study -- i.e. by the degree of abstraction to which the whole universe is subjected, while the moderns always look at the material object -- i.e., the three categories of being, which it is possible to study, God, the world of sense, and man.

In Contemporary Philosophy

.The impulse received by philosophy during the last half-century gave rise to new philosophical sciences, in the sense that various branches have been detached from the main stems.^ Wrote "Sense and sound, as they reciprocally form any sign of mind" (1854) and "New Elements From Old Subjects: Presented as the Basis for a Science of Mind" (1874).
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 .In psychology this phenomenon has been remarkable: criteriology, or epistemology (the study of the certitude of knowledge) has developed into a special study.^ But the Greek metaphysician is none the less a pioneer of knowledge,' while the special sciences of ethics and psychology had been carried from infancy to adolescence in a single lifetime.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .Other branches which have formed themselves into new psychological sciences are: physiological psychology or the study of the physiological concomitant of psychic activities; didactics, or the science of teaching; pedagogy, or the science of education; collective psychology and the psychology of people (Volkerpsychologie), studying the psychic phenomena observable in human groups as such, and in the different races.^ Evolutionary psychology: A new paradigm for psychological science.
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ On the integration of formative assessment in teaching and learning with implications for teacher education .
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ So the soul cast her feathers and fell down and passed into the human form.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 An important section of logic (called also noetic, or canonic) is tending to sever itself from the main body, viz., methodology, which studies the special logical formation of various sciences. .On moral philosophy, in the wide sense, have been grafted the philosophy of law, the philosophy of society, or social philosophy (which is much the same as sociology), and the philosophies of religion and of history.^ Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity at Harvard (1839-53), President of Harvard (1853-60).
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 ^ Evidences of Revealed Religion at University of the City of New York (now New York University) (1831-1832), President and Prof. Moral Philosophy at Kenyon College in Ohio (1832-40).
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 ^ Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics at Brown (1825-34), Prof. Rhetoric, Evidences of Christianity, and Constitutional Law at Brown (1834-42).
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

THE PRINCIPAL SYSTEMATIC SOLUTIONS

.From what has been said above it is evident that philosophy is beset by a great number of questions It would not be possible here to enumerate all those questions, much less to detail the divers solutions which have been given to them.^ He is more in earnest about principles than about details, and if questioned would probably be found more confident with regard to moral than to political truth.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ But if Plato were cross-questioned as to the intrinsic value of habits so induced as a preservative for his pupils against temptation, he would have replied, " I do not pretend to have removed all difficulties from their path.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ This great question of the order of the dialogues, which has been debated by numberless writers, is one which only admits of an approximate solution.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 The solution of a philosophic question is called a philosophic doctrine or theory. A philosophic system (from sunistêmi, put together) is a complete and organized group of solutions. It is not an incoherent assemblage or an encyclopedic amalgamation of such solutions; it is dominated by an organic unity. .Only those philosophic systems which are constructed conformably with the exigencies of organic unity are really powerful: such are the systems of the Upanishads, of Aristotle, of neo-Platonism, of Scholasticism, of Leibniz, Kant and Hume.^ What is commonly known as his doctrine of Ideas is only one phase in a continuous progress towards the realization of a system of philosophy in which the supreme factor is reason guiding will.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 So that one or several theories do not constitute a system; but some theories, i.e. answers to a philosophic question, are important enough to determine the solution of other important problems of a system. The scope of this section is to indicate some of these theories.

Monism, or Pantheism, and Pluralism, Individualism, or Theism

.Are there many beings distinct in their reality, with one Supreme Being, God at the summit of the hierarchy; or is there but one reality (monas, hence monism), one All-God (pan-theos) of whom each individual is but a member or fragment (Substantialistic Pantheism), or else a force, or energy (Dynamic Pantheism)?^ The one, the good, the true, is otherwise regarded by him as the moral ideal, and this is examined as realized both in the individual and in the state.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ What is commonly known as his doctrine of Ideas is only one phase in a continuous progress towards the realization of a system of philosophy in which the supreme factor is reason guiding will.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ But there is one kind of love - called " being in love "- which desires beauty for a peculiar end.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .Here we have an important question of metaphysics the solution of which reacts upon all other domains of philosophy.^ This leads up to the main question: (a) are different notions incommunicable, or ( b ) are all ideas indiscriminately communicable, or (c) is there communion of some kinds and not of others?
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 The system of Aristotle, of the Scholastics, and of Leibniz are Pluralistic and Theistic; the Indian, neo-Platonic, and Hegelian are Monistic. Monism is a fascinating explanation of the real, but it only postpones the difficulties which it imagines itself to be solving (e.g. the difficulty of the interaction of things), to say nothing of the objection, from the human point of view, that it runs counter to our most deep-rooted sentiments.

Objectivism and Subjectivism

.Does being, whether one or many, possess its own life, independent of our mind, so that to be known by us is only accident to being, as in the objective system of metaphysics (e.g.^ What is commonly known as his doctrine of Ideas is only one phase in a continuous progress towards the realization of a system of philosophy in which the supreme factor is reason guiding will.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ In that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, one shall bring forth realities and become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Whether the soul be one or many, complex or multiform, and if multiform what are its parts and kinds, are questions which the teacher must have already solved.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 Aristotle, the Scholastics, Spinoza)? .Or is being no other reality than the mental and subjective presence which it acquires in our representation of it as in the Subjective system (e.g.^ So the presence of a competent ruler is better than the sovereignty of law, which makes no allowance for nature or circumstance, but tyrannically forces its own way.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Rest and motion are mutually incommunicable, but difference is no less universal than being itself.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 Hume)? It is in this sense that the "Revue de métaphysique et de morale" (see bibliography) uses the term metaphysics in its title. Subjectivism cannot explain the passivity of our mental representations, which we do not draw out of ourselves, and which therefore oblige us to infer the reality of a non-ego.

Substantialism and Phenomenism

Is all reality a flux of phenomena (Heraclitus, Berkeley, Hume, Taine), or does the manifestation appear upon a basis, or substance, which manifests itself, and does the phenomenon demand a noumenon (the Scholastics)? Without an underlying substance, which we only know through the medium of the phenomenon, certain realities, as walking, talking, are inexplicable, and such facts as memory become absurd.

Mechanism and Dynamism (Pure and Modified)

Natural bodies are considered by some to be aggregations of homogeneous particles of matter (atoms) receiving a movement which is extrinsic to them, so that these bodies differ only in the number and arrangement of their atoms (the Atomism, or Mechanism, of Democritus, Descartes, and Hobbes). Others reduce them to specific, unextended, immaterial forces, of which extension is only the superficial manifestation (Leibniz). Between the two is Modified Dynamism (Aristotle), which distinguishes in bodies an immanent specific principle (form) and an indeterminate element (matter) which is the source of limitation and extension. This theory accounts for the specific characters of the entities in question as well as for the reality of their extension in space.

Materialism, Agnosticism, and Spiritualism

That everything real is material, that whatever might be immaterial would be unreal, such is the cardinal doctrine of Materialism (the Stoics, Hobbes, De Lamettrie). Contemporary Materialism is less outspoken: it is inspired by a Positivist ideology (see Aristotle, St. Augustine, the Scholastics, Descartes, Leibniz). Some have even asserted that only spirits exist: Berkeley, Fichte, and Hegel are exaggerated Spiritualists. .The truth is that there are bodies and spirits; among the latter we are acquainted (though less well than with bodies) with the nature of our soul, which is revealed by the nature of our immaterial acts, and with the nature of God, the infinite intelligence, whose existence is demontrated by the very existence of finite things.^ Therefore, if ideals be not vain, our souls must have existed before birth, and, according to the doctrine of opposites above stated, will have continued existence after death.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ For there is a season of puberty both in body and mind, when human nature longs to create, and it cannot, save in presence of beauty.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ The Meno referred to the immortality and pre-existence of the soul as a traditional doctrine, and it was there associated with the possibility of inquiry.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 Side by side with these solutions relating to the problems of the real, there is another group of solutions, not less influential in the orientation of a system, and relating to psychical problems or those of the human ego.

Sensualism and Rationalism, or Spiritualism

.These are the opposite poles of the ideogenetic question, the question of the origin of our knowledge.^ After an interval, of which our only measure is a change of style, the philosopher returns to the great central question of knowledge and being.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 For Sensualism the only source of human knowledge is sensation: everything reduces to transformed sensations. .This theory, long ago put forward in Greek philosophy (Stoicism, Epicureanism), was developed to the full by the English Sensualists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume) and the English Associationists (Brown, Hartley, Priestley); its modern form is Positivism (John Stuart Mill, Huxley, Spencer, Comte, Taine, Littré etc.^ John Stuart Mill .
  • Occupation: Philosopher 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.nndb.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ). .Were this theory true, it would follow that we can know only what falls under our senses, and therefore cannot pronounce upon the existence or non-existence, the reality or unreality, of the super-sensible.^ What follows is in the true sense mythological, and is admitted by Socrates to be uncertain: " Howbeit, since the soul is proved to bejimmortal, men ought to charm their spirits with such tales."
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Therefore, if ideals be not vain, our souls must have existed before birth, and, according to the doctrine of opposites above stated, will have continued existence after death.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ What should have followed this, but is only commenced in the fragment of the Critias, would have been the story, not of a fall, but of the triumph of reason in humanity.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 Positivism is more logical than Materialism. In the New World, the term Agnosticism has been very happily employed to indicate this attitude of reserve towards the super-sensible. Rationalism (from ratio, reason), or Spiritualism, establishes the existence in us of concepts higher than sensations, i.e. of abstract and general concepts (Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, the Scholastics, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Cousin etc.). Ideologic Spiritualism has won the adherence of humanity's greatest thinkers. .Upon the spirituality, or immateriality, of our higher mental operations is based the proof of the spirituality of the principle from which they proceed and, hence, of the immortality of the soul.^ In some higher place, under the true heaven , our souls may dwell hereafter,.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

Scepticism, Dogmatism, and Criticism

.So many answers have been given to the question whether man can attain truth, and what is the foundation of certitude, that we will not attempt to enumerate them all.^ Whether the soul be one or many, complex or multiform, and if multiform what are its parts and kinds, are questions which the teacher must have already solved.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 Scepticism declares reason incapable of arriving at the truth. and holds certitude to be a purely subjective affair (Sextus Empiricus, Ænesidemus). Dogmatism asserts that man can attain to truth, and that, in measure to be further determined, our cognitions are certain. .The motive of certitude is, for the Traditionalists, a Divine revelation, for the Scotch School (Reid) it is an inclination of nature to affirm the principles of common sense; it is an irrational, but social, necessity of admitting certain principles for practical dogmatism (Balfour in his "Foundations of Belief" speaks of "non-rational impulse", while Mallock holds that "certitude is found to be the child, not of reason but of custom" and Brunetière writes about "the bankruptcy of science and the need of belief"); it is an affective sentiment, a necessity of wishing that certain things may be verities (Voluntarism; Kant's Moral Dogmatism), or the fact of living certain verities (contemporary Pragmatism and Humanism William James, Schiller).^ The quest for a coherent school science curriculum: The need for an organizing principle .
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Using stories about heroes to teach values Bloomington, IN: ERIC Clearinghouse for Social Studies/Social Science Education, from ED424190] .
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Socratic impulse, his speculative genius absorbed and harmonized the various conceptions which were present in contemporary thought, bringing them out of their dogmatic isolation into living correlation with one another, and with the life and experience of mankind.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .But for others -- and this is the theory which we accept -- the motive of certitude is the very evidence of the connection which appears between the predicate and the subject of a proposition, an evidence which the mind perceives, but which it does not create (Moderate Dogmatism).^ Through no bodily sense does she perceive justice, beauty, goodness and other ideas.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ It is clear, though Plato does not say so, that she is meant to have been created together with the Heaven and together with Time, and so before the other " gods within the heaven," i.e.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .Lastly for Criticism, which is the Kantian solution of the problem of knowledge, evidence is created by the mind by means of the structural functions with which every human intellect is furnished (the categories of the understanding).^ For there is a season of puberty both in body and mind, when human nature longs to create, and it cannot, save in presence of beauty.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Creating the school climate and structures to support parent and family involvement (Critical Issue).
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 In conformity with these functions we connect the impressions of the senses and construct the world. .Knowledge, therefore, is valid only for the world as represented to the mind.^ All knowledge is latent in the mind from birth and through kindred (or association of) ideas much may be recovered, if only a beginning is made.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 Kantian Criticism ends in excessive Idealism, which is also called Subjectivism. or Phenomenalism, and according to which the mind draws all its representations out of itself, both the sensory impressions and the categories which connect them: the world becomes a mental poem, the object is created by the subject as representation (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel).

Nominalism, Realism, and Conceptualism

. Nominalism, Realism, and Conceptualism are various answers to the question of the real objectivity of our predications, or of the relation of fidelity existing between our general representations and the external world.^ Gradually the veil was lifted, and the relation between the senses and the intellect, phenomena and general laws, the active and the contemplative powers, came to be more clearly conceived.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ The contribution of Vygotsky's theory to the contribution of our understanding of the relation between the social world and cognitive development .
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

Determinism and Indeterminism

Has every phenomenon or fact its adequate cause in an antecedent phenomenon or fact (Cosmic Determinism)? And, in respect to acts of the will, are they likewise determined in all their constituent elements (Moral Determinism, Stoicism, Spinoza)? If so, then liberty disappears, and with it human responsibility, merit and demerit. Or, on the contrary, is there a category of volitions which are not necessitated, and which depend upon the discretionary power of the will to act or not to act and in acting to follow freely chosen direction? Does liberty exist? .Most Spiritualists of all schools have adopted a libertarian philosophy, holding that liberty alone gives the moral life an acceptable meaning; by various arguments they have confirmed the testimony of conscience and the data of common consent.^ Pastoral Theology and Pulpit Eloquence at Harvard Divinity School (1830-1842), also taught moral philosophy (1837-42).
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 ^ And he must likewise have classified all arguments and know them in their various applicability to divers souls.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 In physical nature causation and determinism rule; in the moral life, liberty. Others, by no means numerous, have even pretended to discover cases of indeterminism in physical nature (the so-called Contingentist theories, e.g. Boutroux).

Utilitarianism and the Morality of Obligation

What constitutes the foundation of morality in our actions? Pleasure or utility say some, personal or egoistic pleasure (Egoism -- Hobbes, Bentham, and "the arithmetic of pleasure"); or again, in the pleasure and utility of all (Altruism -- John Stuart Mill). Others hold that morality consists in the performance of duty for duty's sake, the observance of law because it is law, independently of personal profit (the Formalism of the Stoics and of Kant). .According to another doctrine, which in our opinion is more correct, utility, or personal advantage, is not incompatible with duty, but the source of the obligation to act is in the last analysis, as the very exigencies of our nature tell us, the ordinance of God.^ Therefore, if ideals be not vain, our souls must have existed before birth, and, according to the doctrine of opposites above stated, will have continued existence after death.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

PHILOSOPHICAL METHODS

Method (meth' hodos) means a path taken to reach some objective point. By philosophical method is understood the path leading to philosophy, which, again, may mean either the process employed in the construction of a philosophy (constructive method, method of invention), or the way of teaching philosophy (method of teaching, didactic method). We will deal here with the former of these two senses; the latter will be treated in section XI. Three methods can be, and have been, applied to the construction of philosophy.

Experimental (Empiric, or Analytic) Method

The method of all Empiric philosophers is to observe facts, accumulate them, and coordinate them. Pushed to its ultimate consequences, the empirical method refuses to rise beyond observed and observable fact; it abstains from investigating anything that is absolute. It is found among the Materialists, ancient and modern, and is most unreservedly applied in contemporary Positivism. Comte opposes the "positive mode of thinking", based solely upon observation, to the theological and metaphysical modes. .For Mill, Huxley, Bain, Spencer, there is not one philosophical proposition but is the product, pure and simple, of experience: what we take for a general idea is an aggregate of sensations; a judgment is the union of two sensations; a syllogism, the passage from particular to particular (Mill, "A System of Logic, Rational and Inductive", ed.^ And, if in the Laws the lines of thought have in one way hardened, there are other ways in which experience has softened them.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ See for example the passage (184-186) in which the independent function of the mind is asserted, and ideas are shown to be the truth of experience.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Much rather, the light of the ideas is one which fitfully breaks in upon experience as men struggle towards the universal.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .Lubbock, 1892; Bain, "Logic", New York, 1874).^ Psychology, Ethics, Logic, Rhetoric, History, and English Literature at New York University (1853-1883).
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 ^ Psychology, Ethics, Logic, Rhetoric, History, and English Literature at New York University (1853-1883) .
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 Mathematical propositions, fundamental axioms such as a = a, the principle of contradiction, the principle of causality are only "generalizations from facts of experience" (Mill, op. cit., vii, #5). According to this author, what we believe to be superior to experience in the enunciation of scientific laws is derived from our subjective incapacity to conceive its contradictory; according to Spencer, this inconceivability of the negation is developed by heredity.
Applied in an exaggerated and exclusive fashion, the experimental method mutilates facts, since it is powerless to ascend to the causes and the laws which govern facts. It suppresses the character of objective necessity which is inherent in scientific judgments, and reduces them to collective formulae of facts observed in the past. It forbids our asserting, e.g., that the men who will be born after us will be subject to death, seeing that all certitude rests on experience, and that by mere observation we cannot reach the unchangeable nature of things. The empirical method, left to its own resources, checks the upward movement of the mind towards the causes or object of the phenomena which confront it.

Deductive, or Synthetic a Priori, Method

At the opposite pole to the preceding, the deductive method starts from very general principles, from higher causes, to descend (Lat. deducere, to lead down) to more and more complex relations and to facts. .The dream of the Deductionist is to take as the point of departure an intuition of the Absolute, of the Supreme Reality -- for the Theists, God; for the Monists, the Universal Being -- and to draw from this intuition the synthetic knowledge of all that depends upon it in the universe, in conformity with the metaphysical scale of the real.^ In this " pathway towards reality," from the consideration of particular virtues he passed to the contemplation of virtue in general, and thence to the nature of universals, and to the unity of knowledge and being.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Thus, in compounding the soul-stuff of the universe, the father of all takes of the continuous and discrete and fuses them into an essence (the composite being of the Philebus).
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .Plato is the father of deductive philosophy: he starts from the world of Ideas, and from the Idea of the Sovereign Good, and he would know the reality of the world of sense only in the Ideas of which it is the reflection.^ These difficulties are real, and yet to deny ideas is to destroy philosophy.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ What is commonly known as his doctrine of Ideas is only one phase in a continuous progress towards the realization of a system of philosophy in which the supreme factor is reason guiding will.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Through no bodily sense does she perceive justice, beauty, goodness and other ideas.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 St. Augustine, too, finds his satisfaction in studying the universe, and the least of the beings which compose it, only in a synthetic contemplation of God, the exemplary, creative, and final cause of all things. So, too, the Middle Ages attached great importance to the deductive method. "I propose", writes Boethius, "to build science by means of concepts and maxims, as is done in mathematics." .Anselm of Canterbury draws from the idea of God, not only the proof of the real existence of an infinite being, but also a group of theorems on His attributes and His relations with the world.^ With this demand for scientific precision his conception of the ideas themselves is modified, and he strives anew to conceive of them in relation to one another, to the mind, and to the world.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ What is commonly known as his doctrine of Ideas is only one phase in a continuous progress towards the realization of a system of philosophy in which the supreme factor is reason guiding will.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ In that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, one shall bring forth realities and become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .Two centuries before Anselm, Scotus Eriugena, the father of anti-Scholasticism, is the completest type of the Deductionist: his metaphysics is one long description of the Divine Odyssey, inspired by the neo-Platonic, monistic conception of the descent of the One in its successive generations.^ And for more than two centuries, from Plotinus to Proclus , the great effort to base life anew on the Platonic wisdom was continued.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .And, on the very threshold of the thirteenth century, Alain de Lille would apply to philosophy a mathematical methodology.^ Catholic Priest, Prof. Philosophy, Science, Mathematics and other subjects at Collge Saint-Raphael (later Collge de Montral) in Quebec.
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 .In the thirteenth century Raymond Lully believed that he had found the secret of "the Great Art" (ars magna), a sort of syllogism-machine, built of general tabulations of ideas, the combination of which would give the solution of any question whatsoever.^ Nor does the dialogue appear to be a style of composition in which the requirement of unity is most stringent; nor should the idea of unity derived from one sort of art be hastily transferred to another..
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ This great question of the order of the dialogues, which has been debated by numberless writers, is one which only admits of an approximate solution.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ He is more in earnest about principles than about details, and if questioned would probably be found more confident with regard to moral than to political truth.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz are Deductionists: they would construct philosophy after the manner of geometry (more geometrico), linking the most special and complicated theorems to some very simple axioms.^ They may be inventions, but they have nothing " mythical " about them, any more than the charge of Socrates to his friends, that they would best fulfil his wishes by attending to their own lives.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ The conception of unity," says Jowett, 2 " really applies in very different degrees to different kinds of art - to a statue, for example, far more than to any kind of literary composition, and to some species of literature far more than to others.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .The same tendency appears among the Ontologists and the post-Kantian Pantheists in Germany (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel), who base their philosophy upon an intuition of the Absolute Being.^ The real difference is between those who base their teaching on philosophy and those who are content with rules of art.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]
The deductive philosophers generally profess to disdain the sciences of observation. Their great fault is the compromising of fact, bending it to a preconceived explanation or theory assumed a priori, whereas the observation of the fact ought to precede the assignment of its cause or of its adequate reason. This defect in the deductive method appears glaringly in a youthful work of Leibniz's, "Specimen demonstrationum politicarum pro rege Polonorum eligendo", published anonymously in 1669, where he demonstrates hy geometrical methods (more geometrico), in sixty propositions, that the Count Palatine of Neuburg ought to be elected to the Polish Throne.

Analytico-Synthetic Method

.This combination of analysis and synthesis, of observation and deduction, is the only method appropriate to philosophy.^ This endeavour involves, not only an expansion of the method of Socrates, but an examination of the earlier philosophies from which Socrates had turned away.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .Indeed, since it undertakes to furnish a general explanation of the universal order (see attributes of God and the fundamental conceptions of all being.^ Thus, in compounding the soul-stuff of the universe, the father of all takes of the continuous and discrete and fuses them into an essence (the composite being of the Philebus).
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ In this " pathway towards reality," from the consideration of particular virtues he passed to the contemplation of virtue in general, and thence to the nature of universals, and to the unity of knowledge and being.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 As a whole and in each of its divisions, philosophy applies the analytic-synthetic method. Its ideal would be to give an account of the universe and of man by a synthetic knowledge of God, upon whom all reality depends. This panoramic view -- the eagle's view of things -- has allured all the great geniuses. St. Thomas expresses himself admirably on this synthetic knowledge of the universe and its first cause. .The analytico-synthetic process is the method, not only of philosophy, but of every science, for it is the natural law of thought, the proper function of which is unified and orderly knowledge.^ Philosophy as a science: Its matter and its method.
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Towards an ecological neuroscience: Aspects of the nature of things according to process philosophy .
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 "Sapientis est ordinare." Aristotle, St. Thomas, Pascal, Newton, Pasteur, thus understood the method of the sciences. Men like Helmholtz and Wundt adopted synthetic views after doing analytical work. Even the Positivists are metaphysicians, though they do not know it or wish it. Does not Herbert Spencer call his philosophy synthetic? and does he not, by reasoning, pass beyond that domain of the "observable" within which he professes to confine himself?

THE GREAT HISTORICAL CURRENTS

Among the many peoples who have covered the globe philosophic culture appears in two groups: the Semitic and the Indo-European, to which may be added the Egyptians and the Chinese. In the Semitic group (Arabs, Babylonians, Assyrians, Aramaeans, Chaldeans) the Arabs are the most important; nevertheless, their part becomes insignificant when compared with the intellectual life of the Indo-Europeans. .Among the latter, philosophic life appears successively in various ethnic divisions, and the succession forms the great periods into which the history of philosophy is divided; first, among the people of India (since 1500 B.C.); then among the Greeks and the Romans (sixth century B.C. to sixth century of our era); again, much later, among the peoples of Central and Northern Europe.^ And for more than two centuries, from Plotinus to Proclus , the great effort to base life anew on the Platonic wisdom was continued.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ History of Intellectual Philosophy and Greek Literature at College of Charleston, S.C. (1850-54, 1866-71).
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 ^ Their views were mainly due to a reaction from the philosophy of Hobbes, and were at first suggested as much by Plotinus as by Plato.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

Indian Philosophy

The philosophy of India is recorded principally in the sacred books of the Veda, for it has always been closely united with religion. Its numerous poetic and religious productions carry within themselves a chronology which enables us to assign them to three periods.
(1) The Period of the Hymns of the Rig Veda (1500-1000 B.C.)
.This is the most ancient monument of Indo-Germanic civilization; in it may be seen the progressive appearance of the fundamental theory that a single Being exists under a thousand forms in the multiplied phenomena of the universe (Monism).^ The ideas were seen as categories, or forms of thought, under which the infinite variety of natural processes might be comprised.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]
(2) The Period of the Brahmans (1000-500 B.C.)
This is the age of Brahminical civilization. .The theory of the one Being remains, but little by little the concrete and anthropomorphic ideas of the one Being are replaced by the doctrine that the basis of all things is in oneself (âtman).^ As was observed by Jowett ( St Paul, 1855), " the germs of all ideas, even of most Christian ones, are to be found in Plato."
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ What is commonly known as his doctrine of Ideas is only one phase in a continuous progress towards the realization of a system of philosophy in which the supreme factor is reason guiding will.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 .Psychological Monism appears in its entirety in the Upanishads: the absolute and adequate identity of the Ego -- which is the constitutive basis of our individuality (âtman) -- and of all things, with Brahman, the eternal being exalted above time, space, number, and change, the generating principle of all things in which all things are finally reabsorbed -- such the fundamental theme to be found in the Upanishad under a thousand variations of form.^ Even on the great question of the ultimate constitution of things, the conflicting theories of absolute immutability and eternal change appeared to be equally irrefragable and equally untenable.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ The true order is to advance from one to all fair forms, then to fair practices, fair thoughts, and lastly to the single thought of absolute beauty.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Such changes are, amongst other things, a ground for caution in comparing the two steeds of the Phaedrus with the spirit ( 6uµ6s ) and desire ( irekula ) of the Republic and Timaeus.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 To arrive at the âtman, we must not stop at empirical reality which is multiple and cognizable; we must pierce this husk, penetrate to the unknowable and ineffable superessence, and identify ourselves with it in an unconscious unity.
(3) The Post-Vedic or Sanskrit, Period (since 500 B.C.)
From the germs of theories contained in the Upanishad a series of systems spring up, orthodox or heterodox. .Of the orthodox systems, Vedanta is the most interesting; in it we find the principles of the Upanishads developed in an integral philosophy which comprise metaphysics, cosmology, psychology, and ethics (transmigration, metempsychosis).^ The student of philosophy, whatever may be the modern system to which he is most inclined, sensational, intuitional, conceptional, transcendental, will find his account in returning xxi.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ And as the method of inquiry is developed, the leading principles both of logic and of psychology become progressively more distinct and clear.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 Among the systems not in harmony with the Vedic dogmas, the most celebrated is Buddhism, a kind of Pessimism which teaches liberation from pain in a state of unconscious repose, or an extinction of personality (Nirvâna). Buddhism spread in China, where it lives side by side with the doctrines of Lao Tse and that of Confucius. It is evident that even the systems which are not in harmony with the Veda are permeated with religious ideas.

Greek Philosophy

This philosophy, which occupied six centuries before, and six after, Christ, may be divided into four periods, corresponding with the succession of the principal lines of research (1) From Thales of Miletus to Socrates (seventh to fifth centuries B.C. -- preoccupied with cosmology) (2) Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle (fifth to fourth centuries B.C. -- psychology); (3) From the death of Aristotle to the rise of neo-Platonism (end of the fourth century B.C. to third century after Christ -- moral philosophy); (4) neo-Platonic School (from the third century after Christ, or, including the systems of the forerunners of neo-Platonism, from the first century after Christ, to the end of Greek philosophy in the seventh century-mysticism).
(1) The Pre-Socratic Period
The pre-Socratic philosophers either seek for the stable basis of things -- which is water, for Thales of Miletus; air, for Anaximenes of Miletus; air endowed with intelligence, for Diogenes of Apollonia; number, for Pythagoras (sixth century B.C.); abstract and immovable being, for the Eleatics -- or they study that which changes: while Parmenides and the Eleatics assert that everything is, and nothing changes or becomes. Heraclitus (about 535-475) holds that everything becomes, and nothing is unchangeable. Democritus (fifth century) reduces all beings to groups of atoms in motion, and this movement, according to Anaxagoras, has for its cause an intelligent being.
(2) The Period of Apogee: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.
.When the Sophists (Protagoras, Gorgias) had demonstrated the insufficiency of these cosmologies, Socrates (470-399) brought philosophical investigation to bear on man himself, studying man chiefly from the moral point of view.^ Socrates then renews his demonstration, proving that if the just man is wronged the evil lies with the wrongdoer, not with him, and that it is worst for the wrongdoer if he escape.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Socrates, mediating between these sophistical extremes, declares that language, like other institutions, is rational, and therefore (i) is based on nature, but (2) modified by convention.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ The previous dialogues have marked the distinction between unconscious and conscious morality, and have also brought out the Socratic tendency to identify virtue with the knowledge of good.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 From the presence in us of abstract ideas Plato (427-347) deduced the existence of a world of supersensible realities or ideas, of which the visible world is but a pale reflection. These ideas, which the soul in an earlier life contemplated, are now, because of its union with the body, but faintly perceived. Aristotle (384-322), on the contrary, shows that the real dwells in the objects of sense. .The theory of act and potentiality, of form and matter, is a new solution of the relations between the permanent and the changing.^ The contribution of Vygotsky's theory to the contribution of our understanding of the relation between the social world and cognitive development .
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 His psychology, founded upon the principle of the unity of man and the substantial union of soul and body, is a creation of genius. And as much may be said of his logic.
(3) The Moral Period
After Aristotle (end of the fourth Century B.C.) four schools are in evidence: Stoic, Epicurean, Platonic, and Aristotelean. The Stoics (Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes, Chrysippus), like the Epicureans, make speculation subordinate to the quest of happiness, and the two schools, in spite of their divergencies, both consider happiness to be ataraxia or absence of sorrow and preoccupation. The teachings of both on nature (Dynamistic Monism with the Stoics, and Pluralistic Mechanism with the Epicureans) are only a prologue to their moral philosophy. After the latter half of the second century B.C. we perceive reciprocal infiltrations between the various schools. This issues in Eclecticism. .Seneca (first century B.C.) and Cicero (106-43 B.C.) are attached to Eclecticism with a Stoic basis; two great commentators of Aristotle, Andronicus of Rhodes (first century B.C.) and Alexander of Aphrodisia about 200), affect a Peripatetic Eclecticism.^ And for more than two centuries, from Plotinus to Proclus , the great effort to base life anew on the Platonic wisdom was continued.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 Parallel with Eclecticism runs a current of Scepticism (AEnesidemus, end of first century B.C., and Sextus Empiricus, second century A.D.).
(4) The Mystical Period
In the first century B.C. Alexandria had become the capital of Greek intellectual life. .Mystical and theurgic tendencies, born of a longing for the ideal and the beyond, began to appear in a current of Greek philosophy which originated in a restoration of Pythagorism and its alliance with Platonism (Plutarch of Chieronea, first century B.C.; Apuleius of Madaura; Numenius, about 160 and others), and still more in the Graeco-Judaic philosophy of Philo the Jew (30 B.C. to A.D. 50).^ Philos 12 History of Greek Philosophy .
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 ^ Taking advantage of their help, he gains a more advanced (but still ideal) conception of the concrete harmony of things, and approaches the definition of that which in the Republic he but shadowed forth.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Socrates appears in his life-long search after the ideal knowledge of the best.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 But the dominance of these tendencies is more apparent in neo-Platonism. The most brilliant thinker of the neo-Platonic series is Plotinus (A.D. 20-70). In his "Enneads" he traces the paths which lead the soul to the One, and establishes, in keeping with his mysticism, an emanationist metaphysical system. Porphyry of Tyre (232-304), a disciple of Plotinus, popularizes his teaching, emphasizes its religious bearing, and makes Aristotle's "Organon" the introduction to neo-Platonic philosophy. .Later on, neo-Platonism, emphasizing its religious features, placed itself, with Jamblichus, at the service of the pagan pantheon which growing Christianity was ruining on all sides, or again, as with Themistius at Constantinople (fourth century), Proclus and Simplicius at Athens (fifth century), and Ammonius at Alexandria, it took an Encyclopedic turn.^ And for more than two centuries, from Plotinus to Proclus , the great effort to base life anew on the Platonic wisdom was continued.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 ^ Yet when Plotinus in the 3rd century (after hearing Ammonius), amidst the revival of religious paganism, founded a new spiritualistic philosophy upon the study of Plato and Aristotle combined, this return to the fountain head had all the effect of novelty.
  • Plato (Philosopher) - LoveToKnow 1911 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.1911encyclopedia.org [Source type: Original source]

 With Ammonius and John Philoponus (sixth century) the neo-Platonic School of Alexandria developed in the direction of Christianity.

Patristic Philosophy

.In the closing years of the second century and, still more, in the third century, the philosophy of the Fathers of the Church was developed.^ Still more firmly was he convinced that until then mankind would not attain their highest possible development.
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 .It was born in a civilization dominated by Greek ideas, chiefly neo-Platonic, and on this side its mode of thought is still the ancient.^ His dominant thought is still that of a deduction from the " reason of the best," as in the Phaedo, or " the idea of good," as in the Republic.
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 Still, if some, like St. Augustine, attach the greatest value to the neo-Platonic teachings, it must not be forgotten that the Monist or Pantheistic and Emanationist ideas, which have been accentuated by the successors of Plotinus, are carefully replaced by the theory of creation and the substantial distinction of beings; in this respect a new spirit animates Patristic philosophy. It was developed, too, as an auxiliary of the dogmatic system which the Fathers were to establish. In the third century the great representatives of the Christian School of Alexandria are Clement of Alexandria and Origen. After them Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Ambrose, and, above all, St. Augustine (354-430) appear. St. Augustine gathers up the intellectual treasures of the ancient world, and is one of the principal intermediaries for their transmission to the modern world. In its definitive form Augustinism is a fusion of intellectualism and mysticism, with a study of God as the centre of interest. In the fifth century, pseudo-Dionysius perpetuates many a neo-Platonic doctrine adapted to Christianity, and his writings exercise a powerful influence in the Middle Ages.

Medieval Philosophy

The philosophy of the Middle Ages developed simultaneously in the West, at Byzantium, and in divers Eastern centres; but the Western philosophy is the most important. It built itself up with great effort on the ruins of barbarism: until the twelfth century, nothing was known of Aristotle, except some treatises on logic, or of Plato, except a few dialogues. Gradually, problems arose, and, foremost, in importance, the question of universals in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries (see NOMINALISM). St. Anselm (1O33-1109) made a first attempt at systematizing Scholastic philosophy, and developed a theodicy. But as early as the ninth century an anti-Scholastic philosophy had arisen with Eriugena who revived the neo-Platonic Monism. In the twelfth century Scholasticism formulated new anti-Realist doctrines with Adelard of Bath, Gauthier de Mortagne, and, above all, Abelard and Gilbert de la Porrée, whilst extreme Realism took shape in the schools of Chartres. John of Salisbury and Alain de Lille, in the twelfth century, are the co-ordinating minds that indicate the maturity of Scholastic thought. The latter of these waged a campaign against the Pantheism of David of Dinant and the Epicureanism of the Albigenses -- the two most important forms of anti-Scholastic philosophy. .At Byzantium, Greek philosophy held its ground throughout the Middle Ages, and kept apart from the movement of Western ideas.^ PHI 20 History of Western Philosophy I: Greek, Roman and Medieval .
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 The same is true of the Syrians and Arabs. But at the end of the twelfth century the Arabic and Byzantine movement entered into relation with Western thought, and effected, to the profit of the latter, the brilliant philosophical revival of the thirteenth century. This was due, in the first place, to the creation of the University of Paris; next, to the foundation of the Dominican and Franciscan orders; lastly, to the introduction of Arabic and Latin translations of Aristotle and the ancient authors. At the same period the works of Avicenna and Averroes became known at Paris. A pleiad of brilliant names fills the thirteenth century -- Alexander of Hales, St. Bonaventure, Bl. Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas Aquinas, Godfrey of Fontaines, Henry of Ghent, Giles of Rome, and Duns Scotus -- bring Scholastic synthesis to perfection. They all wage war on Latin Averroism and anti-Scholasticism, defended in the schools of Paris by Siger of Brabant. Roger Bacon, Lully, and a group of neo-Platonists occupy a place apart in this century, which is completely filled by remarkable figures. In the fourteenth century Scholastic philosophy betrays the first symptoms of decadence. In place of individualities we have schools, the chief being the Thomist, the Scotist, and the Terminist School of William of Occam, which soon attracted numerous partisans. With John of Jandun, Averroism perpetuates its most audacious propositions; Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa formulate philosophies which are symptomatic of the approaching revolution. The Renaissance was a troublous period for philosophy. Ancient systems were revived: the Dialectic of the Humanistic philologists (Laurentius Valla, Vivés), Platonism, Aristoteleanism, Stoicism. Telesius, Campanella, and Giordano Bruno follow a naturalistic philosophy. Natural and social law are renewed with Thomas More and Grotius. All these philosophies were leagued together against Scholasticism, and very often against Catholicism. On the other hand, the Scholastic philosophers grew weaker and weaker, and, excepting for the brilliant Spanish Scholasticism of the sixteenth century (Bañez, Suarez, Vasquez, and so on), it may be said that ignorance of the fundamental doctrine became general. In the seventeenth century there was no one to support Scholasticism: it fell, not for lack of ideas, but for lack of defenders.

Modern Philosophy

.The philosophies of the Renaissance are mainly negative: modern philosophy is, first and foremost, constructive.^ Phil 110 Renaissance and Modern Philosophy .
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 ^ Phil 136 Renaissance and Modern Western Philosophy .
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 The latter is emancipated from all dogma; many of its syntheses are powerful; the definitive formation of the various nationalities and the diversity of languages favour the tendency to individualism. The two great initiators of modern philosophy are Descartes and Francis Bacon. The former inaugurates a spiritualistic philosophy based on the data of consciousness, and his influence may be traced in Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibniz. Bacon heads a line of Empiricists, who regarded sensation as the only source of knowledge. .In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a Sensualist philosophy grew up in England, based on Baconian Empiricism, and soon to develop in the direction of Subjectivism.^ Collective efficacy beliefs: Theoretical developments, empirical evidence, and future directions.
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 Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and David Hume mark the stages of this logical evolution. Simultaneously an Associationist psychology appeared also inspired by Sensualism, and, before long, it formed a special field of research. .Brown, David Hartley, and Priestley developed the theory of association of ideas in various directions.^ In H. B. Long & Associates, New ideas about self-directed learning .
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 At the outset Sensualism encountered vigorous opposition, even in England, from the Mystics and Platonists of the Cambridge School (Samuel Parker and, especially, Ralph Cudworth). The reaction was still more lively in the Scotch School, founded and chiefly represented by Thomas Reid, to which Adam Ferguson, Oswald, and Dugald Stewart belonged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and which had great influence over Eclectic Spiritualism, chiefly in America and France. .Hobbes's "selfish" system was developed into a morality by Bentham, a partisan of Egoistic Utilitarianism, and by Adam Smith, a defender of Altruism, but provoked a reaction among the advocates of the moral sentiment theory (Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Samuel Clarke).^ Systems theories: Their origins, foundations, and development.
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 In England, also, Theism or Deism was chiefly developed, instituting a criticism of all positive religion, which it sought to supplant with a philosophical religion. .English Sensualism spread in France during the eighteenth century: its influence is traceable in de Condillac, de la Mettrie, and the Encyclopedists; Voltaire popularized it in France and with Jean-Jacques Rousseau it made its way among the masses, undermining their Christianity and preparing the Revolution of 1759. In Germany, the philosophy of the eighteenth century is, directly or indirectly, connected with Leibniz -- the School of Wolff, the Aesthetic School (Baumgarten), the philosophy of sentiment.^ Jean-Jacques Rousseau .
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 But all the German philosophers of the eighteenth century were eclipsed by the great figure of Kant.
.With Kant (1724-1804) modern philosophy enters its second period and takes a critical orientation.^ Phil 25C Modern Philosophy through Kant .
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 ^ Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).
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 .Kant bases his theory of knowledge, his moral and aesthetic system, and his judgments of finality on the structure of the mind.^ Moral volition: The fifth and final domain leading to an integrated theory of conscience understanding.
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 ^ Parsing in a dynamical system: An attractor-based account of the interaction of lexical and structural constraints in sentence processing.
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 .In the first half of the eighteenth century, German philosophy is replete with great names connected with Kantianism -- after it had been put through a Monistic evolution, however -- Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel have been called the triumvirate of Pantheism; then again, Schopenhauer, while Herbart returned to individualism.^ Historian and diplomat, wrote first American study of German literature and philosophy in 1827-28.
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 French philosophy in the nineteenth century is at first dominated by an eclectic Spiritualistic movement with which the names of Maine de Biran and, especially, Victor Cousin are associated. Cousin had disciples in America (C. Henry), and in France he gained favour with those whom the excesses of the Revolution had alarmed. In the first half of the nineteenth century French Catholics approved the Traditionalism inaugurated by de Bonald and [[Lamennais, F�licit� Robert de (Catholic Encyclopedia)|de Lamennais]], while another group took refuge in Ontologism. In the same period Auguste Comte founded Positivism, to which Littré and Taine adhered, though it rose to its greatest height in the English-speaking countries. In fact, England may be said to have been the second fatherland of Positivism; John Stuart Mill, Huxley, Alexander Bain and Herbert Spencer expanded its doctrines, combined them with Associationism and emphasized it criteriological aspect, or attempted (Spencer) to construct a vast synthesis of human sciences. The Associationist philosophy at this time was confronted by the Scotch philosophy which, in Hamilton, combined the teachings of Reid and of Kant and found an American champion in Noah Porter. Mansel spread the doctrines of Hamilton. Associationism regained favour with Thomas Brown and James Mill, but was soon enveloped in the large conception of Positivism, the dominant philosophy in England. Lastly, in Italy, Hegel was for a long time the leader of nineteenth-century philosophical thought (Vera and d'Ercole), whilst Gioberti, the ontologist and Rosmini occupy a distinct position. More recently, Positivism has gained numerous adherents in Italy. In the middle of the century, a large Krausist School existed in Spain, represented chiefly by Sanz del Rio (d. 1869) and N. Salmeron. Balmes (181O-48), the author of "Fundamental Philosophy" is an original thinker whose doctrines have many points of contact with Scholasticism.

CONTEMPORARY ORIENTATIONS

Favourite Problems

.Leaving aside social questions, the study of which belongs to philosophy in only some of their aspects, it may be said that in the philosophic interest of the present day psychological questions hold the first place, and that chief among them is the problem of certitude.^ Paper present at the " Wolfgang Pauli's Philosophical Ideas and Contemporary Science " conference, Monte Verita, Ascona, Switzerland , May 20-27.
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 .Kant, indeed, is so important a factor in the destinies of contemporary philosophy not only because he is the initiator of critical formalism, but still more because he obliges his successors to deal with the preliminary and fundamental question of the limits of knowledge.^ Phil 4 Introduction to Philosophy: Knowledge & Its Limits .
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 On the other hand the experimental investigation of mental processed has become the object of a new study, psycho-physiology, in which men of science co-operate with philosophers, and which meets with increasing success. This study figures in the programme of most modern universities. Originating at Leipzig (the School of Wundt) and Würzburg, it has quickly become naturalized in Europe and America. In America, "The Psychological Review" has devoted many articles to this branch of philosophy. Psychological studies are the chosen field of the American (Ladd, William James, Hall).
The great success of psychology has emphasized the subjective character of aesthetics, in which hardly anyone now recognizes the objective and metaphysical element. The solutions in vogue are the Kantian, which represents the aesthetic judgment as formed in accordance with the subjective, structural function of the mind, or other psychologic solutions which reduce the beautiful to a psychic impression (the "sympathy", or Einfühlung, of Lipps; the "concrete intuition" of Benedetto Croce). These explanations are insufficient, as they neglect the objective aspect of the beautiful -- those elements which, on the part of the object, are the cause of the aesthetic impression and enjoyment. It may be said that the neo-Scholastic philosophy alone takes into account the objective aesthetic factor.
The absorbing influence of psychology also manifests itself to the detriment of other branches of philosophy; first of all, to the detriment of metaphysics, which our contemporaries have unjustly ostracized -- unjustly, since, if the existence or possibility of a thing-in-itself is considered of importance, it behooves us to inquire under what aspects of reality it reveals itself. This ostracism of metaphysics, moreover, is largely due to misconception and to a wrong understanding of the theories of substance, of faculties, of causes etc., which belong to the traditional metaphysics. .Then again, the invasion of psychology is manifest in logic: side by side with the ancient logic or dialectic, a mathematical or symbolic logic has developed (Peano, Russell, Peirce, Mitchell, and others) and, more recently, a genetic logic which would study, not the fixed laws of thought, but the changing process of mental life and its genesis (Baldwin).^ The changing concept of information in the study of life .
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We have seen above (Middle Ages; by Windelband, Kuno Fischer, Boutroux and Höffding, on the modern period; and the list might easily be considerably prolonged.

The Opposing Systems

The rival systems of philosophy of the present time may be reduced to various groups: Positivism, neo-Kantianism, Monism, neo-Scholasticism. Contemporary philosophy lives in an atmosphere of Phenomenism, since Positivism and neo-Kantianism are at one on this important doctrine: that science and certitude are possible only within the limits of the world of phenomena, which is the immediate object of experience. Positivism, insisting on the exclusive rights of sensory experience, and Kantian criticism, reasoning from the structure of our cognitive faculties, hold that knowledge extends only as far as appearances; that beyond this is the absolute, the dark depths, the existence of which there is less and less disposition to deny, but which no human mind can fathom. On the contrary, this element of the absolute forms an integral constituent in neo-Scholasticism which has revived, with sobriety and moderation, the fundamental notions of Aristotelean and Medieval metaphysics, and has succeeded in vindicating them against attack and objection.

Positivism

Positivism, under various forms, is defended in England by the followers of Spencer, by Huxley, Lewes, Tyndall, F. Harrison, Congreve, Beesby, J. Bridges, Grant Allen (James Martineau is a reactionary against Positivism); by Balfour, who at the same time propounds a characteristic theory of belief, and falls back on Fideism. From England Positivism passed over to America, where it soon dethroned the Scottish doctrines (Carus). De Roberty, in Russia, and Ribot, in France, are among its most distinguished disciples. In Italy it is found in the writings of Ferrari, Ardigo, and Morselli; in Germany, in those of Laas, Riehl, Guyau, and Durkheim. Less brutal than Materialism, the radical vice of Positivism is its identification of the knowable with the sensible. It seeks in vain to reduce general ideas to collective images, and to deny the abstract and universal character of the mind's concepts. It vainly denies the super-experiential value of the first logical principles in which the scientific life of the mind is rooted; nor will it ever succeed in showing that the certitude of such a judgment as 2 + 2 = 4 increases with our repeated addition of numbers of oxen or of coins. In morals, where it would reduce precepts and judgments to sociological data formed in the collective conscience and varying with the period and the environment, Positivism stumbles against the judgments of value, and the supersensible ideas of obligation, moral good, and law, recorded in every human conscience and unvarying in their essential data.

Kantianism

Kantianism had been forgotten in Germany for some thirty years (1830-60); Vogt, Büchner, and Molesehott had won for Materialism an ephemeral vogue; but Materialism was swept away by a strong Kantian reaction. This reversion towards Kant (Rückkehr zu Kant) begins to be traceable in 1860 (notably as a result of Lange's "History of Materialism"), and the influence of Kantian doctrines may be said to permeate the whole contemporary German philosophy (Otto Liebmann, von Hartmann, Paulsen, Rehmke, Dilthey, Natorp, Fueken, the Immanentists, and the Empirico-criticists). French neo-Criticism, represented by Renouvier, was connected chiefly with Kant's second "Critique" and introduced a specific Voluntarism. Vacherot, Secrétan, Lachelier, Boutroux, Fouillée, and Bergson are all more or less under tribute to Kantianism. Ravaisson proclaims himself a follower of Maine de Biran. Kantianism has taken its place in the state programme of education and Paul Janet, who, with F. Bouillier and Caro, was among the last legatees of Cousin's Spiritualism, appears, in his "Testament philosophique", affecting a Monism with a Kantian inspiration. All those who, with Kant and the Positivists, proclaim the "bankruptcy of science" look for the basis of our certitude in an imperative demand of the will. .This Voluntarism, also called Pragmatism (William James), and, quite recently, Humanism (Schiller at Oxford), is inadequate to the establishment of the theoretic moral and social sciences upon an unshakable base: sooner or later, reflection will ask what this need of living and of willing is worth, and then the intelligence will return to its position as the supreme arbiter of certitude.^ Five world hypotheses: A primer on Stephen C. Pepper’s epistemological system with illustrations from the arts, humanities, social, and natural sciences (Draft).
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From Germany and France Kantianism has spread everywhere. In England it has called into activity the Critical Idealism associated with T. H. Green and Bradley. Hodgson, on the contrary, returns to Realism. S. Laurie may be placed between Green and Martineau. Emerson, Harris, Everett, and Royce spread Idealistic Criticism in America; Shadworth Hodgson, on the other hand, and Adamson tend to return to Realism, whilst James Ward emphasizes the function of the will.

Monism

With a great many Kantians, a stratum of Monistic ideas is superimposed on Criticism, the thing in itself being considered numerically one. The same tendencies are observable among Positivist Evolutionists like Clifford and Romanes, or G.T. Ladd.

Neo-Scholasticism

Neo-Scholasticism, the revival of which dates from the last third of the nineteenth century (Liberatore, Taparelli, Cornoldi, and others), and which received a powerful impulse under Leo XIII, is tending more and more to become the philosophy of Catholics. It replaces Ontologism, Traditionalism, Gunther's Dualism, and Cartesian Spiritualism, which had manifestly become insufficient. Its syntheses, renewed and completed, can be set up in opposition to Positivism and Kantianism, and even its adversaries no longer dream of denying the worth of its doctrines. The bearings of neo-Scholasticism have been treated elsewhere (see NEO-SCHOLASTICISM).

IS PROGRESS IN PHILOSOPHY INDEFINITE, OR IS THERE A PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS?

.Considering the historic succession of systems and the evolution of doctrines from the remotest ages of India down to our own times, and standing face to face with the progress achieved by contemporary scientific philosophy, must we not infer the indefinite progress of philosophic thought?^ The systems view of the world: A holistic vision for our time .
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 Many have allowed themselves to be led away by this ideal dream. Historic Idealism (Karl Marx) regards philosophy as a product fatally engendered by pre-existing causes in our physical and social environment. Auguste Comte's "law of the three states", Herbert Spencer's evolutionism Hegel's "indefinite becoming of the soul", sweep philosophy along in an ascending current toward an ideal perfection, the realization of which no one can foresee. For all these thinkers, philosophy is variable and relative: therein lies their serious error. Indefinite progress, condemned by history in many fields, is untenable in the history of philosophy. Such a notion is evidently refuted by the appearance of thinkers like Aristotle and Plato three centuries before Christ, for these men, who for ages have dominated, and still dominate, human thought, would be anachronisms, since they would be inferior to the thinkers of our own time. And no one would venture to assert this. History shows, indeed, that there are adaptations of a synthesis to its environment, and that every age has its own aspirations and its special way of looking at problems and their solutions; but it also presents unmistakable evidence of incessant new beginnings, of rhythmic oscillations from one pole of thought to the other. If Kant found an original formula of Subjectivism and the reine Innerlichkeit, it would be a mistake to think that Kant had no intellectual ancestors: he had them in the earliest historic ages of philosophy: M. Deussen has found in the Vedic hymn of the Upanishads the distinction between noumenon and phenomenon, and writes, on the theory of Mâyâ, "Kants Grunddogma, so alt wie die Philosophie" ("Die Philos. des Upanishad's", Leipzig, 1899, p. 204).
It is false to say that all truth is relative to a given time and latitude, and that philosophy is the product of economic conditions in a ceaseless course of evolution, as historical Materialism holds. Side by side with these things, which are subject to change and belong to one particular condition of the life of mankind, there is a soul of truth circulating in every system, a mere fragment of that complete and unchangeable truth which haunts the human mind in its most disinterested investigations. Amid the oscillations of historic systems there is room for a philosophia perennis -- as it were a purest atmosphere of truth, enveloping the ages, its clearness somehow felt in spite of cloud and mist. "The truth Pythagoras sought after, and Plato, and Aristotle, is the same that Augustine and Aquinas pursued. So far as it is developed in history, truth is the daughter of time; so far as it bears within itself a content independent of time, and therefore of history, it is the daughter of eternity" [Willmann, "Gesch. d Idealismus", II (Brunswick, 1896), 55O; cf. Commer "Die immerwahrende Philosophie" (Vienna, 1899)]. This does not mean that essential and permanent verities do not adapt themselves to the intellectual life of each epoch. Absolute immobility in philosophy, no less than absolute relativity, is contrary to nature and to history. It leads to decadence and death. It is in this sense that we must interpret the adage: Vita in motu.

PHILOSOPHY AND THE SCIENCES

Aristotle of old laid the foundation of a philosophy supported by observation and experience. We need only glance through the list of his works to see that astronomy, mineralogy, physics and chemistry, biology, zoology, furnished him with examples and bases for his theories on the constitution, of the heavenly and terrestrial bodies, the nature of the vital principle, etc. Besides, the whole Aristotelean classification of the branches of philosophy (see Middle Ages, with a rudimentary scientific culture, regarded all its learning, built up on the Trivium (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic) and Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music), as preparation for philosophy. In the thirteenth century, when Scholasticism came under Aristotelean influences, it incorporated the sciences in the programme of philosophy itself. This may be seen in regulation issued by the Faculty of Arts of Paris 19 March, 1255, "De libris qui legendi essent" This order prescribes the study of commentaries or various scientific treatises of Aristotle, notably those on the first book of the "Meteorologica", on the treatises on Heaven and Earth, Generation, the Senses and Sensations, Sleeping and Waking, Memory, Plants, and Animals. Here are amply sufficient means for the magistri to familiarize the "artists" with astronomy, botany, physiology, and zoology to say nothing of Aristotle's "Physics", which was also prescribed as a classical text, and which afforded opportunities for numerous observations in chemistry and physics as then understood. .Grammar and rhetoric served as preliminary studies to logic, Bible history, social science, and politics were introductory to moral philosophy.^ Using stories about heroes to teach values Bloomington, IN: ERIC Clearinghouse for Social Studies/Social Science Education, from ED424190] .
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 ^ Latin, then Rhetoric and Political Economy at Williams College (1835-52), Prof. Mental and Moral Philosophy at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania (1852-57), President of Jefferson College in Pennsylvania (1857-62) .
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 ^ Georgia, President and Prof. Mental/Moral Science, Belles-lettres, Political Philosophy at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia (1834-37), President of Wesleyan Univ.
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 Such men as Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon expressed their views on the necessity of linking the sciences with philosophy and preached it by example. So that both antiquity and the Middle Ages knew and appreciated scientific philosophy.
In the seventeenth century the question of the relation between the two enters upon a new phase: from this period modern science takes shape and begins that triumphal march which it is destined to continue through the twentieth century, and of which the human mind is justly proud. Modern scientific knowledge differs from that of antiquity and the Middle Ages in three important respects: the multiplication of sciences; their independent value; the divergence between common knowledge and scientific knowledge. In the Middle Ages astronomy was closely akin to astrology, chemistry to alchemy, physics to divination; modern science has severely excluded all these fantastic connections. Considered now from one side and again from another, the physical world has revealed continually new aspects, and each specific point of view has become the focus of a new study. .On the other hand, by defining their respective limits, the sciences have acquired autonomy; useful in the Middle Ages only as a preparation for rational physics and for metaphysics, they are nowadays of value for themselves, and no longer play the part of handmaids to philosophy.^ Using stories about heroes to teach values Bloomington, IN: ERIC Clearinghouse for Social Studies/Social Science Education, from ED424190] .
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 Indeed, the progress achieved within itself by each particular science brings one more revolution in knowledge. So long as instruments of observation were imperfect, and inductive methods restricted, it was practically impossible to rise above an elementary knowledge. People knew, in the Middle Ages, that Wine, when left exposed to the air, became vinegar; but what do facts like this amount to in comparison with the complex formulae of modern chemistry? Hence it was that an Albertus Magnus or a Roger Bacon could flatter himself, in those days, with having acquired all the science of his time, a claim which would now only provoke a smile. In every department progress has drawn the line sharply between popular and scientific knowledge; the former is ordinarily the starting-point of the latter, but the conclusions and teachings involved in the sciences are unintelligible to those who lack the requisite preparation.
Do not, then, these profound modifications in the condition of the sciences entail modifications in the relations which, until the seventeenth century, had been accepted as existing between the sciences and philosophy? Must not the separation of philosophy and science widen out to a complete divorce? Many have thought so, both scientists and philosophers, and it was for this that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries so many savants and philosophers turned their backs on one another. For the former, philosophy has become useless; the particular sciences, they say, multiplying and becoming perfect, must exhaust the whole field of the knowable, and a time will come when philosophy shall be no more. For the philosophers, philosophy has no need of the immeasurable mass of scientific notions which have been acquired, many of which possess only a precarious and provisional value. .Wolff, who pronounced the divorce of science from philosophy, did most to accredit this view, and he has been followed by certain Catholic philosophers who held that scientific study may be excluded from philosophic culture.^ Paper present at the " Wolfgang Pauli's Philosophical Ideas and Contemporary Science " conference, Monte Verita, Ascona, Switzerland , May 20-27.
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 ^ Catholic Priest, Prof. Philosophy, Science, Mathematics and other subjects at Collge Saint-Raphael (later Collge de Montral) in Quebec.
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What shall we say on this question? That the reasons which formerly existed for keeping touch with science are a thousand times more imperative in our day. If the profound synthetic view of things which justifies the existence of philosophy presupposes analytical researches, the multiplication and perfection of those researches is certainly reason for neglecting them. The horizon of detailed knowledge widens incessantly; research of every kind is busy exploring the departments of the universe which it has mapped out. And philosophy, whose mission is to explain the order of the universe by general and ultimate reasons applicable, not only to a group of facts, but to the whole body of known phenomena, cannot be indifferent to the matter which it has to explain. Philosophy is like a tower whence we obtain the panorama of a great city -- its plan, its monuments, its great arteries, with the form and location of each -- things which a visitor cannot discern while he goes through the streets and lanes, or visits libraries, churches, palaces, and museums, one after another. If the city grows and develops, there is all the more reason, if we would know it as a whole, why we should hesitate to ascend the tower and study from that height the plan upon which its new quarters have been laid out.
It is, happily, evident that contemporary philosophy is inclined to be first and foremost a scientific philosophy; it has found its way back from its wanderings of yore. This is noticeable in philosophers of the most opposite tendencies. There would be no end to the list if we had to enumerate every case where this orientation of ideas has been adopted. "This union", says Boutroux, speaking of the sciences and philosophy, "is in truth the classic tradition of philosophy. But there had been established a psychology and a metaphysics which aspired to set themselves up beyond the sciences, by mere reflection of the mind upon itself. Nowadays all philosophers are agreed to make scientific data their starting-point" (Address at the International Congress of Philosophy in 1900; Revue de Métaph. et de Morale, 1900, p. 697). Boutroux and many others spoke similarly at the International Congress of Bologna (April, 1911). .Wundt introduces this union into the very definition of philosophy, which, he says, is "the general science whose function it is to unite ia a system free of all contradictions the knowledge acquired through the particular sciences, and to reduce to their principles the general methods of science and the conditions of knowledge supposed by them" ("Einleitung in die Philosophie", Leipzig, 1901, p.^ General systems theory--the skeleton of science.
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 ^ Philosophy as a science: Its matter and its method.
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 19). And R. Eucken says: "The farther back the limits of the observable world recede, the more conscious are we of the lack of an adequately comprehensive explanation" -- " Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Philos. u. Lebensanschanung" (Leipzig, 1903), p. 157]. .This same thought inspired Leo XIII when he placed the parallel and harmonious teaching of philosophy and of the sciences on the programme of the Institute of Philosophy created by him in the University of Louvain (see NEO-SCHOLASTICISM).^ London: Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, London University.
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On their side, the scientists have been coming to the same conclusions ever since they rose to a synthetic view of that matter which is the object of their study. So it was with Pasteur, so with Newton. .Ostwald, professor of chemistry at Leipzig, has undertaken to publish the "Annalen der Naturphilosophie", a review devoted to the cultivation of the territory which is common to philosophy and the sciences A great many men of science, too, are engaged in philosophy without knowing it: in their constant discussions of "Mechanism", "Evolutionism", "Transformism", they are using terms which imply a philosophical theory of matter.^ Philosophy as a science: Its matter and its method.
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 ^ Revolutionary, Physician, Prof. Chemistry at College of Philadelphia (1769-91), Professor of Medical Theory and Clinical Practice at Univ.
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If philosophy is the explanation as a whole of that world which the particular sciences investigate in detail, it follows that the latter find their culmination in the former, and that as the sciences are so will philosophy be. It is true that objections are put forward against this way of uniting philosophy and the sciences. Common observation, it is said, is enough support for philosophy. This is a mistake: philosophy cannot ignore whole departments of knowledge which are inaccessible to ordinary experience biology, for example, has shed a new light on the philosophic study of man. .Others again adduce the extent and the growth of the sciences to show that scientific philosophy must ever remain an unattainable ideal; the practical solution of this difficulty concerns the teaching of philosophy (see (see section XI).^ Catholic Priest, Prof. Philosophy, Science, Mathematics and other subjects at Collge Saint-Raphael (later Collge de Montral) in Quebec.
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PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

Religion presents to man, with authority, the solution of man's problems which also concern philosophy. .Such are the questions of the nature of God, of His relation with the visible world, of man's origin and destiny Now religion, which precedes philosophy in the social life, naturally obliges it to take into consideration the points of religious doctrine.^ Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity at Harvard (1839-53), President of Harvard (1853-60).
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 ^ The contribution of Vygotsky's theory to the contribution of our understanding of the relation between the social world and cognitive development .
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

 ^ Evidences of Revealed Religion at University of the City of New York (now New York University) (1831-1832), President and Prof. Moral Philosophy at Kenyon College in Ohio (1832-40).
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 Hence the close connection of philosophy with religion in the early stages of civilization, a fact strikingly apparent in Indian philosophy, which, not only at its beginning but throughout its development, was intimately bound up with the doctrine of the sacred books (see above). The Greeks, at least during the most important periods of their history, were much less subject to the influences of pagan religions; in fact, they combined with extreme scrupulosity in what concerned ceremonial usage a wide liberty in regard to dogma. Greek thought soon took its independent flight Socrates ridicules the gods in whom the common people believed; Plato does not banish religious ideas from his philosophy; but Aristotle keeps them entirely apart, his God is the Actus purus, with a meaning exclusively philosophic, the prime mover of the universal mechanism. The Stoics point out that all things obey an irresistible fatality and that the wise man fears no gods. And if Epicurus teaches cosmic determinism and denies all finality, it is only to conclude that man can lay aside all fear of divine intervention in mundane affairs. The question takes a new aspect when the influences of the Oriental and Jewish religions are brought to bear on Greek philosophy by neo-Pythagorism, the Jewish theology (end of the first century), and, above all, neo-Platonism (third century B.C.). A yearning for religion was stirring in the world, and philosophy became enamoured of every religious doctrine Plotinus (third century after Christ), who must always remain the most perfect type of the neo-Platonic mentality, makes philosophy identical with religion, assigning as its highest aim the union of the soul with God by mystical ways. This mystical need of the supernatural issues in the most bizarre lucubrations from Plotinus's successors, e.g. Jamblicus (d. about A.D. 330), who, on a foundation of neo-Platonism, erected an international pantheon for all the divinities whose names are known.
It has often been remarked that Christianity, with its monotheistic dogma and its serene, purifying morality, came in the fulness of time and appeased the inward unrest with which souls were afflicted at the end of the Roman world. Though Christ did not make Himself the head of a philosophical school, the religion which He founded supplies solutions for a group of problems which philosophy solves by other methods (e.g. the immortality of the soul). The first Christian philosophers, the Fathers of the Church, were imbued with Greek ideas and took over from the circumambient neo-Platonism the commingling of philosophy and religion. With them philosophy is incidental and secondary, employed only to meet polemic needs, and to support dogma; their philosophy is religious. In this Clement of Alexandria and Origen are one with St. Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The early Middle Ages continued the same traditions, and the first philosophers may be said to have received neo-Platonic influences through the channel of the Fathers. .John Scotus Eriugena (ninth century), the most remarkable mind of this first period, writes that "true religion is true philosophy and, conversely, true philosophy is true religion" (De div.^ Editor of the first and most successful woman's magazine in the 19th century, Godey's Lady's Book.
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 praed., I, I). But as the era advances a process of dissociation sets in, to end in the complete separation between the two sciences of Scholastic theology or the study of dogma, based fundamentally on Holy Scripture, and Scholastic philosophy, based on purely rational investigation. To understand the successive stages of this differentiation, which was not completed until the middle of the thirteenth century, we must draw attention to certain historical facts of capital importance.
(1) The origin of several philosophical problems, in the early Middle Ages, must be sought within the domain of theology, in the sense that the philosophical discussions arose in reference to theological questions. The discussion, e.g. of transubstantiation (Berengarius of Tours), raised the problem of substance and of change, or becoming. (2) Theology being regarded as a superior and sacred science, the whole pedagogic and didactic organization of the period tended to confirm this superiority (see Gottschalk's on predestination, Berengarius's on transubstantiation, and Roscelin's Tritheism. Berengarius's motto was: "Per omnia ad dialecticam confugere". There followed an excessive reaction on the part of timorous theologians, practical men before all things, who charged dialectics with the sins of the dialecticians. This antagonistic movement coincided with an attempt to reform religious life. At the head of the group was Peter Damian (1007-72), the adversary of the liberal arts; he was the author of the saying that philosophy is the handmaid of theology. From this saying it has been concluded that the Middle Ages in general put philosophy under tutelage, whereas the maxim was current only among a narrow circle of reactionary theologians. Side by side with Peter Damian in Italy, were Manegold of Lautenbach and Othloh of St. Emmeram, in Germany.
(4) At the same time a new tendency becomes discernible in the eleventh century, in Lanfranc, William of Hirschau, Rodulfus Ardens, and particularly St. Anselm of Canterbury; the theologian calls in the aid of philosophy to demonstrate certain dogmas or to show their rational side. St. Anselm, in an Augustinian spirit, attempted this justification of dogma, without perhaps invariably applying to the demonstrative value of his arguments the requisite limitations. In the thirteenth century these efforts resulted in a new theological method, the dialectic.
(5) While these disputes as to the relations of philosophy and theology went on, many philosophical questions were nevertheless treated on their own account, as we have seen above (universals, St. Anselm's theodicy, Abelard's philosophy, etc.).
(6) The dialectic method, developed fully in the twelfth century, just when Scholastic theology received a powerful impetus, is a theological, not a philosophical, method. The principal method in theology is the interpretation of Scripture and of authority; the dialectic method is secondary and consists in first establishing a dogma and then showing its reasonableness, confirming the argument from authority by the argument from reason. It is a process of apologetics. From the twelfth century onward, these two theological methods are fairly distinguished by the words auctoritates, rationes. Scholastic theology, condensed in the "summae" and "books of sentences", is henceforward regarded as distinct from philosophy. The attitude of theologians towards philosophy is threefold: one group, the least influential, still opposes its introduction into theology, and carries on the reactionary traditions of the preceding period (e.g. Gauthier de Saint-Victor); another accepts philosophy, but takes a utilitarian view of it, regarding it merely as a prop of dogma (Peter Lombard); a third group, the most influential, since it includes the three theological schools of St. Victor, Abelard, and Gilbert de la Porrée, grants to philosophy, in addition to this apologetic role, an independent value which entitles it to be cultivated and studied for its own sake. The members of this group are at once both theologians and philosophers.
(7) At the opening of the thirteenth century one section of Augustinian theologians continued to emphasize the utilitarian and apologetic office of philosophy. But St. Thomas Aquinas created new Scholastic traditions, and wrote a chapter on scientific methodology in which the distinctness and in dependence of the two sciences is thoroughly established. Duns Scotus, again, and the Terminists exaggerated this independence. Latin Averroism, which had a brilliant but ephemeral vogue in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, accepted whole and entire in philosophy Averroistic Peripateticism, and, to safeguard Catholic orthodoxy, took refuge behind the sophism that what is true in philosophy may be false in theology, and conversely -- wherein they were more reserved than Averroes and the Arab philosophers, who regarded religion as something inferior, good enough for the masses, and who did not trouble themselves about Moslem orthodoxy. Lully, going to extremes, maintained that all dogma is susceptible of demonstration, and that philosophy and theology coalesce. Taken as a whole, the Middle Ages, profoundly religious, constantly sought to reconcile its philosophy with the Catholic Faith. This bond the Renaissance philosophy severed. In the Reformation period a group of publicists, in view of the prevailing strife, formed projects of reconciliation among the numerous religious bodies. They convinced themselves that all religions possess a common fund of essential truths relating to God, and that their content is identical, in spite of divergent dogmas. Besides, Theism, being only a form of Naturism applied to religion, suited the independent ways of the Renaissance. As in building up natural law, human nature was taken into consideration, so reason was interrogated to discover religious ideas. And hence the wide acceptance of Theism, not among Protestants only, but generally among minds that had been carried away with the Renaissance movement (Erasmus, Coornheert).
For this tolerance or religious indifferentism modern philosophy in more than one instance substituted a disdain of positive religions. The English Theism or Deism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries criticizes all positive religion and, in the name of an innate religious sense, builds up a natural religion which is reducible to a collection of theses on the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. The initiator of this movement was Herbert of Cherbury (1581-1648); J. Toland (1670-1722), Tindal (1656-1733), and Lord Bolingbroke took part in it. This criticizing movement inaugurated in England was taken up in France, where it combined with an outright hatred of Catholicism. Pierre Bayle (1646-17O6) propounded the thesis that all religion is anti-rational and absurd, and that a state composed of Atheists is possible. Voltaire wished to substitute for Catholicism an incoherent mass of doctrines about God. The religious philosophy of the eighteenth century in France led to Atheism and paved the way for the Revolution. In justice to contemporary philosophy it must be credited with teaching the amplest tolerance towards the various religions; and in its programme of research it has included religious psychology, or the study of the religious sentiment.
.For Catholic philosophy the relations between philosophy and theology, between reason and faith, were fixed, in a chapter of scientific methodology, by the great Scholastic thinkers of the thirteenth century.^ Catholic Priest, Prof. Theology and Philosophy at the Collge des Jsuites in Quebec (1687-1710).
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 ^ Catholic Priest, Prof. Philosophy (1832-36) and Theology (1852-62) at Sminaire de Saint-Hyacinthe in Quebec, also Superior there (184753, 185983).
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 ^ Catholic Priest, Prof. Theology, Philosophy, and Rhetoric at the Collge des Jsuites in Quebec (1676-98), also Rector there (1698-1704).
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 Its principles, which still retain their vitality, are as follows:
(a) Distinctness of the two sciences.
The independence of philosophy in regard to theology, as in regard to any other science whatsoever, is only an interpretation of this undeniable principle of scientific progress, as applicable in the twentieth century as it was in the thirteenth, that a rightly constituted science derives its formal object, its principles, and its constructive method from its own resources, and that, this being so, it cannot borrow from any other science without compromising its own right to exist.
(b) Negative, not positive, material, not formal, subordination of philosophy in regard to theology.
.This means that, while the two sciences keep their formal independence (the independence of the principles by which their investigations are guided), there are certain matters where philosophy cannot contradict the solutions afforded by theology.^ Philosophy as a science: Its matter and its method.
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 ^ Catholic Priest, Prof. Philosophy (1832-36) and Theology (1852-62) at Sminaire de Saint-Hyacinthe in Quebec, also Superior there (184753, 185983).
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 ^ Catholic Priest, Prof. Theology, Philosophy, and Rhetoric at the Collge des Jsuites in Quebec (1676-98), also Rector there (1698-1704).
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 The Scholastics of the Middle Ages justified this subordination, being profoundly convinced that Catholic dogma contains the infallible word of God, the expression of truth. Once a proposition, e.g. that two and two make four, has been accepted as certain, logic forbids any other science to form any conclusion subversive of that proposition. The material mutual subordination of the sciences is one of those laws out of which logic makes the indispensable guarantee of the unity of knowledge. "The truth duly demonstrated by one science serves as a beacon in another science." The certainty of a theory in chemistry imposes its acceptance on physics, and the physicist who should go contrary to it would be out of his course. Similarly, the philosopher cannot contradict the certain data of theology, any more than he can contradict the certain conclusions of the individual sciences. To deny this would be to deny the conformity of truth with truth, to contest the principle of contradiction, to surrender to a relativism which is destructive of all certitude. "It being supposed that nothing but what is true is included in this science (sc. theology) . . . it being supposed that whatever is true by the decision and authority of this science can nowise be false by the decision of right reason: these things, I say, being supposed, as it is manifest from them that the authority of this science and reason alike rest upon truth, and one verity cannot be contrary to another, it must be said absolutely that reason can in no way be contrary to the authority of this Scripture, nay, all right reason is in accord with it" (Henry of Ghent, "Summa Theologica", X, iii, n.4).
But when is a theory certain? This is a question of fact, and error is easy. In proportion as the principle is simple and absolute, so are its applications complex and variable. It is not for philosophy to establish the certitude of theological data, any more than to fix the conclusions of chemistry or of physiology. The certainty of those data and those conclusions must proceed from another source. "The preconceived idea is entertained that a Catholic savant is a soldier in the service of his religious faith, and that, in his hands, science is but a weapon to defend his Credo. In the eyes of a great many people, the Catholic savant seems to be always under the menace of excommunication, or entangled in dogmas which hamper him, and compelled, for the sake of loyalty to his Faith, to renounce the disinterested love of science and its free cultivation" (Mercier, "Rapport sur les études supér. de philos.", 1891, p. 9). Nothing could be more untrue.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND PHILOSOPHY

The principles which govern the doctrinal relations of philosophy and theology have moved the Catholic Church to intervene on various occasions in the history of philosophy. As to the Church's right and duty to intervene for the purpose of maintaining the integrity of theological dogma and the deposit of faith, there is no need of discussion in this place. It is interesting, however, to note the attitude taken by the Church towards philosophy throughout the ages, and particularly in the Middle Ages, when a civilization saturated with Christianity had established extremely intimate relations between theology and philosophy.
A. The censures of the Church have never fallen upon philosophy as such, but upon theological applications, judged false, which were based upon philosophical reasonings. John Scotus Eriugena, Roscelin, Berengarius, Abelard, Gilbert de la Porrée were condemned because their teachings tended to subvert theological dogmas. Eriugena denied the substantial distinction between God and created things; Roscelin held that there are three Gods; Berengarius, that there is no real transubstantiation in the Eucharist; Abelard and Gilbert de la Porrée essentially modified the dogma of the Trinity. The Church, through her councils, condemned their theological errors; with their philosophy as such she does not concern herself. "Nominalism", says Hauréau, "is the old enemy. It is, in fact, the doctrine which, because it best accords with reason, is most remote from axioms of faith. Denounced before council after council, Nominalism was condemned in the person of Abelard as it had been in the person of Roscelin" (Hist. philos. scol., I, 292).
No assertion could be more inaccurate. What the Church has condemned is neither the so-called Nominalism, nor Realism, nor philosophy in general, nor the method of arguing in theology, but certain applications of that method which are judged dangerous, i.e. matters which are not philosophical. In the thirteenth century a host of teachers adopted the philosophical theories of Roscelin and Abelard, and no councils were convoked to condemn them. The same may be said of the condemnation of David of Dinant (thirteenth century), who denied the distinction between God and matter, and of various doctrines condemned in the fourteenth century as tending to the negation of morality. It has been the same in modern times. To mention only the condemnation of Gunther, of Rosmini, and of Ontologism in the nineteenth century, what alarmed the Church was the fact that the theses in question had a theologic: bearing.
B. The Church has never imposed any philosophical system, though she has anathematized many doctrines, or branded them as suspect. This corresponds with the prohibitive, but not imperative attitude of theology in regard to philosophy. To take one example, faith teaches that the world was created in time; and yet St. Thomas maintains that the concept of eternal creation (ab aeterno) involves no contradiction. He did not think himself obliged to demonstrate creation in time: his teaching would have been heterodox only if, with the Averroists his day, he had maintained the necessary eternity of the world. It may, perhaps, be objected that many Thomistic doctrines were condemned in 1277 by Etienne Tempier, Bishop of Paris. .But it is well to note, and recent works on the subject have abundantly proved this, that Tempier's condemnation, in so far as it applied to Thomas Aquinas, was the issue of intrigues and personal animosity, and that, in canon law, it had no force outside of the Diocese of Paris.^ Critical issue: Working toward student self-direction and personal efficacy as educational goals .
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 Moreover, it was annulled by one of Tempier's successors, Etienne de Borrète, in 1325.
C. The Church has encouraged philosophy. To say nothing of the fact that all those who applied themselves to science and philosophy in the Middle Ages were churchmen, and that the liberal arts found an asylum in capitular and monastic schools until the twelfth century, it is important to remark that the principal universities of the Middle Ages were pontifical foundations. This was the case with Paris. To be sure, in the first years of the university's aquaintance with the Aristotelean encyclopaedia (late twelfth century) there were prohibitions against reading the "Physics", the "Metaphysics", and the treatise "On the Soul". But these restrictions were of a temporary character and arose out of particular circumstanccs. In 1231, Gregory IX laid upon a commission of three consultors the charge to prepare an amended edition of Aristotle "ne utile per inutile vitietur" (lest what is useful suffer damage through what is useless). The work of expurgatio. was done, in point of fact, by the .Albertine-Thomist School, and, beginning from the year 1255, the Faculty of Arts, with the knowledge of the ecclesiastical authority, ordered the teaching of all the books previously prohibited (see Mandonnet, "Siger de Brabant et l'averroïsme latin au XIIIe s.", Louvain 1910).^ Core Knowledge Curriculum: Three-Year analysis of implementation and effects in five schools (Report No.
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 It might also be shown how in modern times and in our own day the popes have encouraged philosophic studies. Leo XIII, as is well known, considered the restoration of philosophic Thomism on of the chief tasks of his pontificate.

THE TEACHING OF PHILOSOPHY

The methods of teaching philosophy have varied in various ages. Socrates used to interview his auditors, and hold symposia in the market-place, on the porticoes and in the public gardens. His method was interrogation, he whetted the curiosity of the audience and practised what had become known as Socratic irony and the maieutic art (maieutikê techne), the art of delivering minds of their conceptions. His successor opened schools properly so called, and from the place occupied by these schools several systems took their names (the Stoic School, the Academy, the Lyceum). In the Middle Ages and down to the seventeenth century the learned language was Latin. The German discourses of Eckhart are mentioned as merely sporadic examples. From the ninth to the twelfth century teaching was confined to the monastic and cathedral schools. It was the golden age of schools. Masters and students went from one school to another: Lanfranc travelled over Europe; John of Salisbury (twelfth century) heard at Paris all the then famous professors of philosophy; Abelard gathered crowds about his rostrum. Moreover: as the same subjects were taught everywhere, and from the same text-books, scholastic wanderings were attended with few disadvantages. The books took the form of commentaries or monographs. From the time of Abelard a method came into use which met with great success, that of setting forth the pros and cons of a question, which was later perfected by the addition of a solutio. The application of this method was extended in the thirteenth century (e.g. in the "Summa theologica" of St. Thomas). Lastly, philosophy being an educational preparation for theology, the "Queen of the Sciences", philosophical and theological topics were combined in one and the same book, or even in the same lecture.
At the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth, the University of Paris was organized, and philosophical teaching was concentrated in the Faculty of Arts. Teaching was dominated by two principles: internationalism and freedom. The student was an apprentice-professor: after receiving the various degrees, he obtained from the chancellor of the university a licence to teach (licentia docendi). Many of the courses of this period have been preserved, the abbreviated script of the Middle Ages being virtually a stenographic system. The programme of courses drawn up in 1255 is well known: it comprises the exegesis of all the books of Aristotle. The commentary, or lectio (from legere, to read), is the ordinary form of instruction (whence the German Vorlesungen and the English lecture). There were also disputations, in which questions were treated by means of objections and answers; the exercise took a lively character, each one being invited to contribute his thoughts on the subject. The University of Paris was the model for all the others, notably those of Oxford and Cambridge. These forms of instruction in the universities lasted as long as Aristoteleanism, i.e. until the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century -- the siècle des lumières (Erklärung) -- philosophy took a popular and encyclopedic form, and was circulated in the literary productions of the period. In the nineteenth century it resumed its didactic attitude in the universities and in the seminaries, where, indeed its teaching had long continued. The advance of philological and historical studies had a great influence on the character of philosophical teaching: critical methods were welcomed, and little by little the professors adopted the practice of specializing in this or that branch of philosophy -- a practice which is still in vogue. Without attempting to touch on all the questions involved in modern methods of teaching philosophy, we shall here indicate some of the principal features.

The Language of Philosophy

The earliest of the moderns -- as Descartes or Leibniz -- used both Latin and the vernacular, but in the nineteenth century (except in ecclesiastical seminaries and in certain academical exercises mainly ceremonial in character) the living languages supplanted Latin; the result has been a gain in clearness of thought and interest and vitality of teaching. Teaching in Latin too often contents itself with formulae: the living language effects a better comprehension of things which must in any case be difficult. Personal experience, writes Fr. Hogan, formerly superior of the Boston Seminary, in his "Clerical Studies" (Philadelphia, 1895-1901), has shown that among students who have learned philosophy, particularly Scholastic, only in Latin, very few have acquired anything more than a mass of formulae, which they hardly understand; though this does not always prevent their adhering to their formulae through thick and thin. Those who continue to write in Latin -- as many Catholic philosophers, often of the highest worth, still do -- have the sad experience of seeing their books confined to a very narrow circle of readers.

Didactic Processes

Aristotle's advice, followed by the Scholastics, still retains its value and its force: before giving the solution of a problem, expound the reasons for and against. This explains, in particular, the great part played by the history of philosophy or the critical examination of the solutions proposed by the great thinkers. Commentary on a treatise still figures in some special higher courses; but contemporary philosophical teaching is principally divided according to the numerous branches of philosophy (see <A HREF="#II">section II). The introduction of laboratories and practical seminaries (séminaires practiques) in philosophical teaching has been of the greatest advantage. Side by side with libraries and shelves full of periodicals there is room for laboratories and museums, once the necessity of vivifying philosophy by contact with the sciences is admitted (see <A HREF="#VIII">section VIII). As for the practical seminary, in which a group of students, with the aid of a teacher, investigate to some special problem, it may be applied to any branch of philosophy with remarkable results. .The work in common, where each directs his individual efforts towards one general aim, makes each the beneficiary of the researches of all; it accustoms them to handling the instruments of research, facilitates the detection of facts, teaches the pupil how to discover for himself the reasons for what he observes, affords a real experience in the constructive methods of discovery proper to each subject, and very often decides the scientific vocation of those whose efforts have been crowned with a first success.^ Critical issue: Working toward student self-direction and personal efficacy as educational goals .
  • Brilliant Star: Philosophy Resources 16 September 2009 11:38 UTC chiron.valdosta.edu [Source type: Academic]

The Order of Philosophical Teaching

One of the most complex questions is: With what branch ought philosophical teaching to begin, and what order should it follow? In conformity with an immemorial tradition, the beginning is often made with logic. Now logic, the science of science, is difficult to understand and unattractive in the earliest stages of teaching. It is better to begin with the sciences which take the real for their object: psychology, cosmology, metaphysics, and theodicy. .Scientific logic will be better understood later on; moral philosophy presupposes psychology; systematic history of philosophy requires a preliminary acquaintance with all the branches of philosophy (see Mercier, "Manuel de philosophie", Introduction, third edition, Louvain, 1911).^ Catholic Priest, Prof. Philosophy, Science, Mathematics and other subjects at Collge Saint-Raphael (later Collge de Montral) in Quebec.
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 ^ Professor of moral philosophy and logic (1795-1799) .
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 ^ Intellectual and Moral Philosophy and Logic at Furman University in South Carolina (1852-91), also President there (1852-79).
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]
Connected with this question of the order of teaching is another: viz. What should be the scientific teaching preliminary to philosophy? Only a course in the sciences specially appropriate to philosophy can meet the manifold exigencies of the problem. .The general scientific courses of our modern universities include too much or too little: "too much in the sense that professional teaching must go into numerous technical facts and details with which philosophy has nothing to do; too little, because professional teaching often makes the observation of facts its ultimate aim, whilst, from our standpoint, facts are, and can be, only a means, a starting-point, towards acquiring a knowledge of the most general causes and laws" (Mercier, "Rapport sur les études supérieures de philosophie", Louvain, 1891, p.^ DEAP will include approximately 400 figures, including hundreds of professional educators responsible for teaching philosophy, along with many theologians, social scientists and reformers, political theorists, lawyers, physicians, and scientists.
  • Dictionary of Early American Philosophers 26 January 2010 12:56 UTC www.pragmatism.org [Source type: General]

 25). M. Boutroux, a professor at the Sorbonne, solves the problem of philosophical teaching at the university in the same sense, and, according to him, the flexible and very liberal organization of the faculty of philosophy should include "the whole assemblage of the sciences, whether theoretic, mathematico-physical, or philologico-historical" ("Revue internationale de l'enseignement", Paris, 1901, p. 51O). The programme of courses of the Institute of Philosophy of Louvain is drawn up in conformity with this spirit.
Portions of this entry are taken from The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1907.
Facts about PhilosophyRDF feed

Simple English

A philosophy is a way of thinking about the world, the universe, and about people. A philosophy is a group of ideas, worked out by a philosopher (someone who has studied ways of thinking about the world). The ideas in philosophy are abstract, which means that they are "things that cannot be touched." But this does not mean that philosophy is not about the real world. Ethics, for example, asks what we should do in our everyday lives, and metaphysics asks about how the world works and what it is made of.

Sometimes people talk about how they have a "personal philosophy", which means the way a person thinks about the world. This article is not about people's "personal philosophies." This article is about the ideas that have been thought about by philosophers (people who think and write about ways of thinking) for a long time.

For thousands of years philosophers have asked questions, such as:

These ideas and questions from philosophy, and many more, have formed a large body of questions and knowledge that are written down in books.

There are many different types of philosophy from different times and places. Some philosophers come from Ancient Greece, such as Plato and Aristotle. Others come from Asia, such as Confucius or Buddha. Some philosophers are from the Middle Ages in Europe, such as William of Ockham or Saint Thomas Aquinas.

Philosophers from the 1600s, 1700s, and 1800s included Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, John Locke, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. Philosophers from the 1900s included Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Contents

Where did the word come from?

The word "philosophy" comes from two Greek words which mean 'love of wisdom'.

Introduction

Philosophy is the study of humans and the world by thinking and asking questions. It is a science and an art. Philosophy tries to answer important questions by coming up with answers about real things and asking "why?"

Sometimes, philosophy tries to answer the same questions as religion and science. Philosophers do not all come up with the same answers to questions. Some people think there are no right answers in philosophy, only better answers and worse answers.

Philosophy is a way of thinking in the "middle-ground" that is between science and religion. Many types of philosophy criticize or even attack the beliefs of science and religion.

Categories in philosophy

Philosophy can be divided into different groups, based on the types of questions that it asks. Below is a list of questions split into groups. One possible list of answers to these questions can be called a 'philosophy'. There are many different 'philosophies', because all of these questions have many different answers according to different people. Not all philosophies ask the same questions. These are the questions that are usually asked by philosophers from Europe:

'In metaphysics:

Metaphysics is sometimes split up into ontology (the philosophy of real life and living things), the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of religion; but these sub-branches are very close together.

Ontology:

  • What is the world that we see around us? (What is reality?)
    • Is there more to the world than just what we see or hear?
    • If nobody sees something happening, does that mean that it did not happen?
    • What does it mean to say that something is possible? Do other worlds exist?
  • Is there anything very special about being a human being or being alive at all?
    • If not, why do some people think that there is?
  • What is space? What is time?

The philosophy of mind:

  • What is a mind?
  • What is a body?
  • What is consciousness?
  • Do people make choices, or can they only choose to do one thing? (Do people have free will?)
  • What makes words or ideas meaningful? (What is the relation between meaningful words or ideas and the things that they mean?)

The philosophy of religion:

  • Do people have souls?
  • Is there a God who created the Universe?

In epistemology:

In ethics:

  • What are right and wrong, good and bad?
  • Should people do some things and not others?
  • What is justice?

In aesthetics:

  • What is beauty? What if one person thinks a painting is beautiful, but another person thinks the painting is ugly? Can the painting be beautiful and ugly at the same time?
  • Are true things beautiful?
  • Are good things beautiful?
  • What is art? We commonly think that a sculpture in a museum is art. If a sculptor sculpts a sculpture of a rock from clay, and puts it in a museum, many people would call it art. But what if a person picks up a rock from the ground - is the rock a piece of art?

In logic:

  • What do the words we use mean?
  • How can we say things (especially ideas) in a way that only has one meaning?
  • Can all ideas be expressed using language?
  • What is truth?

In axiology:

  • What has Value?
  • Is time really money? or have we made it so?
  • Does love, beauty, or justice hold any value?

Is philosophy good or bad?

Does philosophy do any good? Very few people would dispute this. It is easy to argue that philosophy is a good thing, because it helps people to think more clearly. Philosophy helps people to understand the world and the way people act and think. Philosophers believe that asking philosophical questions is useful because it brings wisdom and helps people to learn about the world and each other. Some philosophers might even argue that the question "Is philosophy good or bad?" is a philosophical question itself.

However, some people think that philosophy is harmful, as philosophy encourages free-thinking and often questions the beliefs that others hold. For example, philosophies such as some existentialist views say that there is no meaning to life or human existence, except the meaning that we make up or invent. People from some religions do not agree with the beliefs of existentialism.

It should be noted that every major science, including physics, biology, and chemistry are all disciplines that originally were considered philosophy. As speculation and analysis about nature became more developed, these subjects branched away. This is a process that continues even today; psychology only split in the past century. In our own time, subjects such as consciousness studies, decision theory, and applied ethics have increasingly found independence from philosophy as a whole. Because of this, philosophy seems useful because it makes new kinds of science!

What philosophers do

Philosophers ask questions about ideas. They try to find answers to those questions. Some thinkers find it very hard to find those words that best describe the ideas they have. When they find answers to some of these questions philosophers often have the same problem, that is how to best tell the answers they found to other people. Depending on the meaning of the words they use, the answers change.

Some philosophers are full-time thinkers (called academics), who work for universities or colleges. These philosophers write books and articles about philosophy and teach classes about philosophy to university or college students.

Other philosophers are just "hobby" thinkers who think about philosophy during their free time. A small number of hobby thinkers have thought so much about philosophy that they are able to write articles for philosophy magazines. Other people approach philosophy from another job. For example monks, artists, and scientists may think about philosophical ideas and questions.

Most philosophers work by asking questions and looking for good definitions (meanings) of words to help them understand what a question means.

Some philosophers say the only thing needed to answer a question is to find out what it means, and that the only thing that makes philosophical questions such as those above difficult is that people do not really know what they mean (for example Ludwig Wittgenstein).

Philosophers will also often use both real and imaginary examples to make a point. For example, they may write about a real or fictional person in order to show what they think a good person or a bad person is like.

Some philosophers look for the simplest way to answer a question and say that is probably the right answer. This is a process called Occam's razor. Others believe that complicated answers to questions can also be right. For an example of a philosophical problem, see the God paradox.

Some philosophers

The Ancient Greek Philosophers

Later European/Western Philosophers

Modern European and American Philosophers

Asian/Eastern Philosophers

Other websites

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Citable sentences

Up to date as of December 08, 2010

Here are sentences from other pages on Philosophy, which are similar to those in the above article.








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