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1. Term A sign in the most general sense is something understood to stand for something else, for something other than the sign itself. To serve as a sign, it must be recognized as signifying what it stands for. People and computer programs recognize and employ signs. To determine whether other animals do too depends on what counts as a sign, and on the assessment of their cognitive and instinctual functions. There is no unanimity as to what counts as a sign or how to classify different sorts of signs. Some signs have a direct or natural c…

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1 Term and Concept Ontologia is a term coined in the 1600s, from Gk. ta onta (existing things) and logos (reason, doctrine). Its first use may have been in the …

1. Term and Concept Realism in philosophy affirms that the objects of our senses and concepts exist independently of our sensing and conceiving them, and that they possess the properties we experience them as having. Normally these are spatiotemporal properties of physical objects, but not everything called realism fits this profile. Varieties of antirealism include idealism, phenomenalism, and critical perspectives lacking metaphysical commitment to any particular view of the nature of reality. Other disciplines use the term “realism” in ways paralleling its philosophical meaning. Literary realism depicts characters and situations in a straightforward, unvarnished manner, including the harsher aspects of life. Realism in art presents likenesses of objects and scenes as they naturally appear to the senses. Realism in politics pursues specific practical or material goals rather than general ethical or ideological aims. Realism in Christian theology refers primarily to the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, namely, transformation of the actual eucharistic elements, though not their accidental, sensory features, into the body and blood of Christ. The Lutheran doctrine affirms a “real presence” of Christ “in, with, and under…

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1. Kant’s Philosophical Achievement The thought of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is central to modern philosophy in two respects. First, it is a definitive synthesis of rationalism and empiricism, the two main strands of early modern thought. Second, it became the basic position to which all subsequent philosophies were more or less explicitly related.…

1. Nature and Origins Positivism as an intellectual attitude emerged clearly in early 19th-century social theory. Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825), the founder of French socialism, was the first to use the term. Auguste Comte (1798–1857), “the founding father of modern sociology,” developed positivism into a comprehensive worldview that spread to other disciplines, in particular philosophy and natural science.…

1. Term and Issues The term “reason” derives from Lat. ratio. Earlier in history Gk. nous and logos expressed some of the same meanings. Reason is usually said to be an intellectual or mental ability or faculty, one distinguished from other psychological or bodily powers or activities of will, emotion, and sensation. Philosophers work with diverse concepts of reason and use the term in different ways. A number of issues arise in considering the nature, operations, and limitations of human reason. Is it a theoretical faculty, an ability to grasp the natures of things, to understand the world? Is it an ability to envisage possibilities, with links to imagination? Is reason intuitive, a mental “beholding of truth,” or does it calculate by means of specifiable rules as in a mathematical proof? Does …

1. Term The ancients wondered about the reasons for evil in the world, about its causes. In the Bible, Job wrestled with why he had undeserved miseries heaped upon him. In his dialogue The Nature of the Gods, Cicero asked why, if the gods care for human beings, the good fail to prosper or bad people not come to grief (3.79). There Cotta, Cicero’s spokesperson for Skepticism, who attacks the Stoic belief in providence, declares that “divine providence is either unaware of its own powers or is indif…

1. Term and Concept The term “metaphysics” derives from the Gk. expression ta meta ta physika (lit. “the things that come after physics”), which stands as the title of a work by Aristotle (384–322 b.c.; Aristotelianism). The name was long attributed to a bibliographic accident, to placement of the book after the Physics in…

1. Term and Concept In a secular context “nature” refers to “all that there is,” all the matter and energy in the universe, all the objects and forces that can be studied by the physical sciences. A narrow and popular sense, as in “nature study,” concerns mainly the plant and animal species, as well as the geology and meteorology, of earth’s environments. Philosophy of nature in the broad sense involves theoretical consideration not only of the kinds of natural entities that e…

1. Terms The subject-object distinction and relationship is an important topic in philosophy. In their relationship, the subject is the one engaged in knowing, believing, experiencing, and acting. As the first-person standpoint, as the I, the subject is consciously aware of something. The object is what the subject is aware of, by knowing, believing, feeling, experiencing, or acting upon it. The object is what the subject takes to be the case. So defined, subject and object are mutually related. “Subjectivism” and “objectivism,” however, are positions that focus on one sid…

1. Term “Rationalism” and its cognates in European languages derived in the 17th century from Lat. ratio, “reckoning,” also “reason,” “plan,” or “theory”; also “the faculty that calculates and plans.” In religion the term designates standpoints based on reason that are critical of beliefs and practices relying on authority and revelation. More broadly, rationalism is any philosophical position affirming the ability of thinking, apart from sensory experience, to discover fundamental truths about the world or re…

1. Origin and Nature of Nominalism The original use of the term “nominalism” was in the context of disputes in medieval Scholasticism about the metaphysical status of universals and about the epistemological status of universal terms and their correlative concepts. Issues raised there are perennial ones that also played a part in philosophical debates both before and after the scholastic era, though they are not always defined exactly as they were by the nominalists and their opponents. Aristotle (384–322 b.c.) in his Categories discu…

1. Terms In philosophy, a universal term refers with the same meaning to each member of a class of objects. Common nouns provide the clearest examples of universal terms. For instance, “dog” refers to each animal that belongs to one of several wild species of canines or the various domestic breeds that derived from them. The correlative universal concept is the thought or idea that we think when correctly understanding and using the universal term. Dictionary definitions give us the meanings of terms by stating the shared essential characteristics of t…

1. Term The term “voluntarism” derives from Lat. voluntas, “will.” The correlative term voluntarius refers to acting of one’s own accord. In everyday language, a voluntary decision or act is one free from coercion or external causation. More robust types of voluntarism assert that free acts are not determined even by a person’s innate desires or characteristics, although freedom of choice may be circumscribed by the range of alternatives apparent to or deemed feasible by the chooser. …

1. Term Utilitarian philosophy is primarily an ethical system of principles for determining what is morally right. Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) is one of its precursors. The principal founders of utilitarianism were the British philosophers Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806–73). Hutcheson was perhaps the first to state a version of the principle of utility, according to which the morally right alternative is the one that results in the greatest overall happiness. Bentham may have used the term “utilitarianism” infor…

1. Meanings of “Idealism” Idealism in the philosophical sense embraces a range of positions affirming that ultimate reality consists of mind(s), thought(s), or a domain of nonphysical, mental, or spiritual entities. Some idealists hold that minds and their thoughts are all there is, that physical or phenomenal objects are illusory if taken to be more than just thoughts. Others hold the less extreme view that physical or phenomenal objects actually exist as such, but their existence and natures are u…

1. Philosophical 1.1. Knowledge and Belief Epistemology (Gk. epistēmē, “knowledge”) concerns what counts as knowledge and how we acquire it. Formal systems (logic and mathematics) are known a priori, apart from experience. Philosophers disagree as to whether knowledge about the world is a posteriori (derived from experience) or is in some sense also a priori. Most discussion involves knowledge of propositions (expressed in language), although other kinds include tacit knowledge (without explicit awareness of it) and “knowing how,” or skill in doing something. Plato (427–347 b…

1. Term “Symbol” (Gk. symbolon, Lat. symbolum) is a broad te…

1. Introduction In the Republic of Plato (427–347 b.c.) the ideal ruler excels at philosophy, or love of wisdom (Gk. philosophia, from philein, “to love,” and sophia, “wisdom”). This love comprises knowledge of what is highest and best, as well as wisdom in living one’s life well. Its enduring symbol is the owl associated with the goddess Athena. In the popular mind authentic philosophy is wisdom in living, more so than a highest knowledge. Misconceptions and caricatures of philosophers and philosophy abound. Philosophers are held in awe yet said to be inept in everyday affairs, as in the story about Thales (6th cent. b.c.) falling into a well while strolling with his gaze on the heavens. Philosophy enjoys esteem as the noblest, most general knowledge, yet it supposedly has no practical use, as in the saying, “philosophy bakes no bread.” In popular parlance a “philosophy” can be a sophisticated intellectual system, or just any person’s half-baked opinions about things. Philosophies can be classified by type (empir…