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Contradiction, Logical

(281 words)

Author(s): Kober, Michael
[German Version] A necessarily false set of statements contains a logical contradiction (Antinomy). Logical calculuses and theories should generally be free of contradiction (consistent) since, according to traditional logic all kinds of arbitrary conclusions can proceed from a falsehood ( ex falso quodlibet). Aristotle ( Metaph. Γ 1005 b 17–34) formulated the “principle of contradiction (to be excluded)” (which can be interpreted logically, psychologically and ontologically in his thinking) as a fundamental principle of …

Speech Act

(540 words)

Author(s): Kober, Michael
[German Version] Philosophers of language traditionally reflect on the relationship between language and reality along with the truth or falsity of utterances and propositions. Despite some intimations in the work of earlier authors, especially G. Frege (“Der Gedanke,” 1918) and Adolf Reinach (“Die apriorischen Grund­lagen des bürgerlichen Rechts,” 1913), it remained for L. Wittgenstein ( Philosophische Untersuchungen, 1953; ET: Philosophical Investigations, 2001 [bilingual]) and John Langshaw Austin ( How To Do Things with Words, 1962) to formulate the insight that …

Signs

(2,878 words)

Author(s): Esterbauer, Reinhold | Alles, Gregory D. | Kober, Michael | Ochs, Peter | Linde, Gesche | Et al.
[German Version] I. Terminology The term sign usually means something perceptible to the senses that signifies something else, which gives it its specific meaning. In theological and philosophical usage, it differs from the term symbol (Symbols), although the latter is sometimes used synonymously with sign in semiotics and mathematics as well as in logic.…

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William

(386 words)

Author(s): Kober, Michael
[German Version] (May 18, 1872, Ravenscroft, Monmouthshire – Feb 2, 1970, Plas Penrhyn, Wales), philosopher and political activist, visiting professor in China, Australia, the United States, and Europe, married four times, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. Russell studied mathematics and philosophy at Cambridge; after 1900 he concentrated philosophically on the program of logicism – the attempt to reduce all of mathematics to axioms of logic, at the same time working out its implicat…

Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef Johann

(1,104 words)

Author(s): Kober, Michael
[German Version] (Apr 26, 1889, Vienna – Apr 29, 1951, Cambridge) I. Life Wittgenstein grew up in one of the wealthiest and most cultured families of Austria. After studying engineering in Berlin and Manchester, he studied philosophy with B. Russell and G.E. Moore at Cambridge. His first major work, the Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung, k…

Ryle, Gilbert

(167 words)

Author(s): Kober, Michael
[German Version] (Aug 19, 1900, Brighton – Oct 6, 1976, Oxford), philosopher. Ryle taught philosophy at Oxford; together with John L. Austin and L. Wittgenstein, in the mid-20th century he was the most influential exponent of ordinary language philosophy, which maintains that philosophical problems are an expression of linguistic confusions that can be resolved through precise analysis of how the words in question are used in ordinary language. In The Concept of Mind

Positivism

(1,549 words)

Author(s): Kober, Michael
[German Version] I. General Positivism is an umb…

Semiotics

(3,339 words)

Author(s): Grasmück, Oliver | Macho, Thomas | Alkier, Stefan | Kober, Michael | Vetter, Martin | Et al.
[German Version] I. Religious Studies Semiotics, a discipline inaugurated primarily by C.S. Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure (see II and IV below), is the systematic analysis of signs (Gk σημεῖον/ sēmeíon) and the way the human mind perceives and understands them. A sign in the sense of semiotics can be any present physical or mental entity that is in a position to stand for an entity not present. A sign is constituted by the conjunction of two elements, the signifier and the signified. In religious studies, semiotics examines both the concrete realization of religious signs (religious art, scriptures, cult) and their linkage to form a complex semantic network, a religious code (Eco; see II below). It is important to note that, from the perspective of those using religious signs, they stand for a “higher” reality, which cannot make its appearance directly but requires the mediation of signs; therefore it surpasses human perception and understanding (Hermeneutics; cf. Gay & Patte, Deuser). Even though semiotic thinking is found in some of the classic studies of religion (Tramsen), and the notion of religion as a semiotic system is accepted increasingly in recent research (e.g. Gladigow), a systematic formulation of a modern semiotics of religion is still a desiderat…

Vienna Circle

(227 words)

Author(s): Kober, Michael
[German Version] self-designation of a group of philosophers (Moritz Schlick, R. Carnap), mathemati-¶ cians with philosophical interests (Hans Hahn, Kurl Gödel), natural scientists (Philipp Frank), and social scientists (Otto Neurath, Edgar Zilsel) at the University of Vienna, who met regularly from 1924 to 1934 for interdisciplinary discussion and debate. Adopting the traditions of Empiricism and Positivism, they shared a distaste for speculative metaphysics and a methodological orientation toward the natural sciences, which they considered successful and intersubjectively verifiable. Modern lo…

Doubt,

(549 words)

Author(s): Kober, Michael
[German Version] a condition of objection, dismissal, caution or indecisiveness. In cases of practical (and moral) doubt, there is an objection to either a behavior or basic convictions relevant to action, and with religious doubt, to certain religiously motivated convictions as well. Existential doubt about the “meaning of existence” (Dasein) radically calls into question any action orientation (Nihilism, S. Kierkegaard, F. Nietzsche). People will reject or deny a proposition or judgment p if they have good grounds for thinking that p is false and that non- p is …