Both Wittgenstein and Quine have shown ways of responding to scepticism that don’t take the sceptics challenge at face value, as Wittgenstein undermines the possibility of universal doubt, showing that doubt presupposes some kind of belief, while Quine holds that the sceptics us e of scientific information to raise the sceptical challenge permit us the use of scientific information in response, least of mention, both approaches require significant changes in the practice of philosophy. Quines conception holds that there is no genuine philosophy independent of scientific knowledge. Where Wittgensteins approach has led to a conception of philosophy as a therapeutic religion. Scepticism and relativism differ, in that alternative accounts of knowledge are legitimate. Scepticism holds that the existence of alternatives block the possibility of knowledge, but what kinds of alternatives are being at present, as to answer these questions, we are for the main issues founded in contemporary epistemology. The history of science, least of mention, indicates that the postulates of rationality, generalizability, and systematizability have been rather consistently vindicated. While we do not dismiss the prospect that theory and observation can be conditioned by extra-scientific cultural factors, this does not finally compromise the objectivity of scientific knowledge. Extra-scientific cultural influences are important aspects of the study of the history and evolution of scientific thought, but the progress of science is not, in this view, ultimately directed or governed by such considerations.
The American philosopher C.I. Lewis (1883-1946) was influenced by both Kants division of knowledge into which is given and that which processes the given, and pragmatisms emphasis on the relation of thought to action. He conceived of philosophy as the investigation of the categories by which we think about reality that, nonetheless, couldn’t the world be presented in radically different ways depending on the set of categories used? Insofar as the categories interpret reality and there is no unmediated access to reality in itself, the only shackles placed on systems of categories would be pragmatic ones. Still, there are some common sources with Lewis, the German philosopher Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) articulated a doctrine of linguistic frameworks that was radically relativistic in its implications. However, as a logical empiricist he was heavily influenced by the development of modern science, thus regarding scientific knowledge as the paradigm of knowledge and motivated by a desire to be rid of pseudo-knowledge such as traditional metaphysics and theology.
All that is required to embrace the alternative view of the relationship between mind and world that are consistent with our most advanced scientific knowledge is a commitment to metaphysical and epistemological realism and a willingness to follows arguments to their logical conclusions. Metaphysical realism assumes that physical reality or has an actual existence independent of human observers or any act of observation, epistemological realism assumes that progress in science requires strict adherence to scientific mythology, or to the rules and procedures for doing science. If one can accept these assumptions, most of the conclusions drawn should appear fairly self-evident in logical and philosophical terms. And it is also not necessary to attribute any extra-scientific properties to the whole to understand and embrace the new relationship between part and whole and the alternative view of human consciousness that is consistent with this relationship. This is, in this that our distinguishing character between what can be proven in scientific terms and what can be reasonably inferred in philosophical terms based on the scientific evidence.
Moreover, advances in scientific knowledge rapidly became the basis for the creation of a host of new technologies. Yet, of those that are immediately responsible for evaluating the benefits and risks seem associated with the use of these technologies, much less is their potential impact on human needs and values, and normally have an expertise on only one side of a doubled-cultural divide. Perhaps, more important, many of the potential threats to the human future-such as, to, environmental pollution, arms development, overpopulation, and spread of infectious diseases, poverty, and starvation-can be effectively solved only by integrating scientific knowledge with knowledge from the social sciences and humanities. We have not done so for a simple reason-the implications of the amazing new fact of nature entitled as non-locality, and cannot be properly understood without some familiarity with the actual history of scientific thought. The intent is to suggest that what is most important about this background can be understood in its absence. Those who do not wish to struggle with the small and perhaps, the fewer of the amounts of background implications should feel free to ignore it. But this material will be no more challenging as such, that the hope is that from those of which will find a common ground for understanding and that will meet again on this common function in an effort to close the circle, resolves the equations of eternity and complete of the universe to obtainably gain by in its unification, under which it holds of all things binding within.
A major topic of philosophical inquiry, especially in Aristotle, and subsequently since the 17th and 18th centuries, when the science of man began to probe into human motivation and emotion. For such are these, which French moralistes, or Hutcheson, Hume, Smith and Kant, are the basis in the prime task as to delineate the variety of human reactions and motivations, nonetheless, such an inquiry would locate our varying propensities for moral thinking among other faculties, such as perception and reason, and other tendencies as empathy, sympathy or self-interest. The task continues especially in the light of a post-Darwinian understanding of us.
In some moral systems, notably that of Immanuel Kant, stipulates of the real moral worth that comes only with interactivity, justly because it is right. However, if you do what is purpsively becoming, equitable, but from some other equitable motive, such as the fear or prudence, no moral merit accrues to you. Yet, that in turn seems to discount other admirable motivations, as acting from main-sheet benevolence, or sympathy. The question is how to balance these opposing ideas and how to understand acting from a sense of obligation without duty or rightness, through which their beginning to seem a kind of fetish. It thus stands opposed to ethics and relying on highly general and abstractive principles, particularly, but those associated with the Kantian categorical imperatives. The view may go as far back as to say that taken in its own, no consideration point, for that which of any particular way of life, that, least of mention, the contributing steps so taken as forwarded by reason or be to an understanding estimate that can only proceed by identifying salient features of situations that weigh heavily on ones side or another.
As random moral dilemmas set out with intense concern, inasmuch as philosophical matters that exert a profound but influential defence of common sense. Situations, in which each possible course of action breeches some otherwise binding moral principle, are, nonetheless, serious dilemmas making the stuff of many tragedies. The conflict can be described in different was. One suggestion is that whichever action the subject undertakes, that he or she does something wrong. Another is that his is not so, for the dilemma means that in the circumstances for what she or he did was right as any alternate. It is important to the phenomenology of these cases that action leaves a residue of guilt and remorse, even though it had proved it was not the subjects fault that she or he was considering the dilemma, that the rationality of emotions can be contested. Any normality with more than one fundamental principle seems capable of generating dilemmas, however, dilemmas exist, such as where a mother must decide which of two children to sacrifice, least of mention, no principles are pitted against each other, only if we accept that dilemmas from principles are real and important, this fact can then be used to approach in them, such as of utilitarianism, to espouse various kinds may, perhaps, be centred upon the possibility of relating to independent feelings, liken to recognize only one sovereign principle. Alternatively, of regretting the existence of dilemmas and the unordered jumble of furthering principles, in that of creating several of them, a theorist may use their occurrences to encounter upon that which it is to argue for the desirability of locating and promoting a single sovereign principle.
Nevertheless, some theories into ethics see the subject in terms of a number of laws (as in the Ten Commandments). The status of these laws may be that they are the edicts of a divine lawmaker, or that they are truths of reason, given to its situational ethics, virtue ethics, regarding them as at best rules-of-thumb, and, frequently disguising the great complexity of practical representations that for reason has placed the Kantian notions of their moral law.
In continence, the natural law possibility points of the view of the states that law and morality are especially associated with St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), such that his synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian doctrine was eventually to provide the main philosophical underpinning of the Catholic church. Nevertheless, to a greater extent of any attempt to cement the moral and legal order and together within the nature of the cosmos or the nature of human beings, in which sense it found in some Protestant writings, under which had arguably derived functions. From a Platonic view of ethics and its agedly implicit advance of Stoicism, its law stands as afar and above, and least is as apart from the activities of human representation. It constitutes an objective set of principles that can be seen as in and for themselves by means of natural usages or by reason itself, additionally, (in religious verses of them), that express of Gods will for creation. Non-religious versions of the theory substitute objective conditions for humans flourishing as the source of constraints, upon permissible actions and social arrangements within the natural law tradition. Different views have been held about the relationship between the rule of the law and Gods will. Grothius, for instance, side with the view that the content of natural law is independent of any will, including that of God.
The Cartesian doubt is the method of investigating how much knowledge and its basis in reason or experience as used by Descartes in the first two Medications. It attempted to put knowledge upon secure foundation by first inviting us to suspend judgements on any proportion whose truths can be doubted, even as a bare possibility. The standards of acceptance are gradually raised as we are asked to doubt the deliverance of memory, the senses, and even reason, all of which are principally capable of letting us down. This is eventually found in the celebrated Cogito ergo sum: I think, therefore I am. By locating the point of certainty in my awareness of my own self, Descartes gives a first-person twist to the theory of knowledge that dominated the following centuries in spite of a various counter attack on behalf of social and public starting-points. The metaphysics associated with this priority are the Cartesian dualism, or separation of mind and matter into two differentiated, but interacting substances. Descartes rigorously and rightly to ascertain that it takes divine dispensation to certify any relationship between the two realms thus divided, and to prove the reliability of the senses invokes a clear and distinct perception of highly dubious proofs of the existence of a benevolent deity. This has not met general acceptance: As Hume proposes, that, to have recourse to the veracity of the supreme Being, in order to prove the veracity of our senses, is surely making a very unexpected circuit.
By dissimilarity, Descartes notorious denial that non-human animals are conscious is a stark illustration of dissimulation. In his conception of matter Descartes also gives preference to rational cogitation over anything from the senses. Since we can conceive of the matter of a ball of wax, surviving changes to its sensible qualities, matter is not an empirical concept, but eventually an entirely geometrical one, with extension and motion as its only physical nature.
Although the structure of Descartes epistemology, theory of mind and theory of matter have been rejected many times, their relentless exposure of the hardest issues, their exemplary clarity and even their initial plausibility, all contrives to make him the central point of reference for modern philosophy.
The term instinct (Lat., instinctus, impulse or urge) implies innately determined behaviour, flexible to change in circumstance outside the control of deliberation and reason. The view that animals accomplish even complex tasks not by reason was common to Aristotle and the Stoics, and the inflexibility of their outline was used in defence of this position as early as Avicennia. A continuity between animal and human reason was proposed by Hume, and followed by sensationalist such as the naturalist Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802). The theory of evolution prompted various views of the emergence of stereotypical behaviour, and the idea that innate determinants of behaviour are fostered by specific environments is a guiding principle of ethology. In this sense that being social may be instinctive in human beings, and for that matter too reasoned on what we now know about the evolution of human language abilities, however, the greater of our real or actualized self is clearly not imprisoned in our minds.
It is implicitly a part of the larger whole of biological life, human observers its existence from embedded relations to this whole, and constructs its reality as based on evolved mechanisms that exist in all human brains. This suggests that any sense of the otherness of self and world be is an illusion, in that disguises of its own actualization are to find all its relations between the part that are of their own characterization. Its self as related to the temporality of being whole is that of a biological reality. It can be viewed, of course, of that which is a proper definition of this whole and must not include the evolution of the larger indivisible whole. In spite of, the cosmos and the unbroken evolution of all life, be that of the first self-replicating molecule that remains continuously interested by rights adopted by the ancestral heritage of DNA molecular construction. It should include the complex interactions that have proven that among all the parts in biological reality that any resultant of emerging is self-regulating. This, of course, is responsible to properties owing to the whole of what might be to sustain the existence of the parts.
Founded on complications and complex coordinate systems in ordinary language may be conditioned as to establish some developments have been descriptively made by its physical reality and metaphysical concerns. That is, that it is in the history of mathematics and that the exchanges between the mega-narratives and frame tales of religion and science were critical factors in the minds of those who contributed. The first scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, allowed scientists to better them in the understudy of how the classical paradigm in physical reality has marked results in the stark Cartesian division between mind and world that became one of the most characteristic features of Western thought. This is not, however, another strident and ill-mannered diatribe against our misunderstandings, but drawn upon equivalent self realization and undivided wholeness or predicted characterlogic principles of physical reality and the epistemological foundations of physical theory.
The subjectivity of our mind affects our perceptions of the world held to be objective by natural science. Create both aspects of mind and matter as individualized forms that belong to the same underlying reality.
Our everyday experience confirms the apparent fact that there is a dual-valued world as subject and objects. We as having consciousness, as personality and as experiencing beings are the subjects, whereas for everything for which we can come up with a name or designation, seems to be the object, that which is opposed to us as a subject. Physical objects are only part of the object-world. In that respect are mental objects, objects of our emotions, abstract objects, religious objects etc. language objectifies our experience. Experiences per se are purely sensational experienced that do not make a distinction between object and subject. Only verbalized thought reifies the sensations by conceptualizing them and pigeonholing them into the given entities of language.
Some thinkers maintain, that subject and object are only different aspects of experience. I can experience myself as subject, and in the act of self-reflection. The fallacy of this argument is obvious: Being a subject implies having an object. We cannot experience something consciously without the mediation of understanding and mind. Our experience is already conceptualized at the time it comes into our consciousness. Our experience is negative insofar as it destroys the original pure experience. In a dialectical process of synthesis, the original pure experience becomes an object for us. The common state of our mind is only capable of apperceiving objects. Objects are reified negative experience. The same is true for the objective aspect of this theory: by objectifying myself I do not dispense with the subject, but the subject is causally and apodeictically linked to the object. When I make an object of anything, I have to realize, that it is the subject, which objectifies something. It is only the subject who can do that. Without the subject at that place are no objects, and without objects there is no subject. This interdependence, however, is not to be understood for a dualism, so that the object and the subject are really independent substances. Since the object is only created by the activity of the subject, and the subject is not a physical entity, but a mental one, we have to conclude then, that the subject-object dualism is purely mentalistic.
Both Analytic and Linguistic philosophy, are 20th-century philosophical movements, and dominates most of Britain and the United States since World War II, that aims to clarify language and analyze the concepts expressed in it. The movement has been given a variety of designations, including linguistic analysis, logical empiricism, logical positivism, Cambridge analysis, and Oxford philosophy. The last two labels are derived from the universities in England where this philosophical method has been particularly influential. Although no specific doctrines or tenets are accepted by the movement as a whole, analytic and linguistic philosophers agree that the proper activity of philosophy is clarifying language, or, as some prefer, clarifying concepts. The aim of this activity is to settle philosophical disputes and resolve philosophical problems, which, it is argued, originates in linguistic confusion.
A considerable diversity of views exists among analytic and linguistic philosophers regarding the nature of conceptual or linguistic analysis. Some have been primarily concerned with clarifying the meaning of specific words or phrases as an essential step in making philosophical assertions clear and unambiguous. Others have been more concerned with determining the general conditions that must be met for any linguistic utterance to be meaningful; their intent is to establish a criterion that will distinguish between meaningful and nonsensical sentences. Still other analysts have been interested in creating formal, symbolic languages that are mathematical in nature. Their claim is that philosophical problems can be more effectively dealt with once they are formulated in a rigorous logical language.
By contrast, many philosophers associated with the movement have focussed on the analysis of ordinary, or natural, language. Difficulties arise when concepts such as time and freedom, for example, are considered apart from the linguistic context in which they normally appear. Attention to language as it is ordinarily used for the key it is argued, to resolving many philosophical puzzles.
Many experts believe that philosophy as an intellectual discipline originated with the work of Plato, one of the most celebrated philosophers in history. The Greek thinker had an immeasurable influence on Western thought. However, Platos expression of ideas in the form of dialogues—the dialectical method, used most famously by his teacher Socrates-has led to difficulties in interpreting some of the finer points of his thoughts. The issue of what exactly Plato meant to say is addressed in the following excerpt by author R.M. Hare.
Linguistic analysis as a method of philosophy is as old as the Greeks. Several of the dialogues of Plato, for example, are specifically concerned with clarifying terms and concepts. Nevertheless, this style of philosophizing has received dramatically renewed emphasis in the 20th century. Influenced by the earlier British empirical tradition of John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, and John Stuart Mill and by the writings of the German mathematician and philosopher Gottlob Frigg, the 20th-century English philosophers G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell became the founders of this contemporary analytic and linguistic trend. As students together at the University of Cambridge, Moore and Russell rejected Hegelian idealism, particularly as it was reflected in the work of the English metaphysician F. H. Bradley, who held that nothing is completely real except the Absolute. In their opposition to idealism and in their commitment to the view that careful attention to language is crucial in philosophical inquiry. They set the mood and style of philosophizing for much of the 20th century English-speaking world.
For Moore, philosophy was first and foremost analysis. The philosophical task involves clarifying puzzling propositions or concepts by indicating less puzzling propositions or concepts to which the originals are held to be logically equivalent. Once this task has been completed, the truths or falsity of problematic philosophical assertions can be determined more adequately. Moore was noted for his careful analyses of such puzzling philosophical claims as time is unreal, analyses that which facilitates of its determining truths of such assertions.
Russell, strongly influenced by the precision of mathematics, was concerned with developing an ideal logical language that would accurately reflect the nature of the world. Complex propositions, Russell maintained, can be resolved into their simplest components, which he called atomic propositions. These propositions refer to atomic facts, the ultimate constituents of the universe. The metaphysical views based on this logical analysis of language and the insistence that meaningful propositions must correspond to facts constitute what Russell called logical atomism. His interest in the structure of language also led him to distinguish between the grammatical form of a proposition and its logical form. The statements John is good and John is tall, have the same grammatical form but different logical forms. Failure to recognize this would lead one to treat the property goodness as if it were a characteristic of John in the same way that the property tallness is a characteristic of John. Such failure results in philosophical confusion.
Austrian-born philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. With his fundamental work, Tractatus Logico-philosophicus, published in 1921, he became a central figure in the movement known as analytic and linguistic philosophy.
Russells work in mathematics and interested to Cambridge, and the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who became a central figure in the analytic and linguistic movement. In his first major work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921; translated 1922), in which he first presented his theory of language, Wittgenstein argued that all philosophy is a critique of language and that philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. The results of Wittgensteins analysis resembled Russells logical atomism. The world, he argued, is ultimately composed of simple facts, which it is the purpose of language to picture. To be meaningful, statements about the world must be reducible to linguistic utterances that have a structure similar to the simple facts pictured. In this early Wittgensteinian analysis, only propositions that picture facts-the propositions of science-are considered factually meaningful. Metaphysical, theological, and ethical sentences were judged to be factually meaningless.
Influenced by Russell, Wittgenstein, Ernst Mach, and others, a group of philosophers and mathematicians in Vienna in the 1920s initiated the movement known as logical positivism: Led by Moritz Schlick and Rudolf Carnap, the Vienna Circle initiated one of the most important chapters in the history of analytic and linguistic philosophy. According to the positivists, the task of philosophy is the clarification of meaning, not the discovery of new facts (the job of the scientists) or the construction of comprehensive accounts of reality (the misguided pursuit of traditional metaphysics).
The positivists divided all meaningful assertions into two classes: analytic propositions and empirically verifiable ones. Analytic propositions, which include the propositions of logic and mathematics, are statements the truths or falsity of which depend together on the meanings of the terms constituting the statement. An example would be the proposition two plus two equals four. The second class of meaningful propositions includes all statements about the world that can be verified, at least in principle, by sense experience. In fact, the meaning of such propositions is identified with the empirical method of their verification. This verifiability theory of meaning, the positivists concluded, would demonstrate that scientific statements are legitimate factual claims and that metaphysical, religious, and ethical sentences are factually empties. The ideas of logical positivism were made popular in England by the publication of A.J. Ayers Language, Truth and Logic in 1936.
The positivists verifiability theory of meaning came under intense criticism by philosophers such as the Austrian-born British philosopher Karl Popper. Eventually this narrow theory of meaning yielded to a broader understanding of the nature of language. Again, an influential figure was Wittgenstein. Repudiating many of his earlier conclusions in the Tractatus, he initiated a new ligne of thought culminating in his posthumously published Philosophical Investigations (1953; translated 1953). In this work, Wittgenstein argued that once attention is directed to the way language is actually used in ordinary discourse, the variety and flexibility of language become clear. Propositions do much more than simply picture facts.
This recognition led to Wittgensteins influential concept of language games. The scientist, the poet, and the theologian, for example, are involved in different language games. Moreover, the meaning of a proposition must be understood in its context, that is, in terms of the rules of the language game of which that proposition is a part. Philosophy, concluded Wittgenstein, is an attempt to resolve problems that arise as the result of linguistic confusion, and the key to the resolution of such problems is ordinary language analysis and the proper use of language.
Additional contributions within the analytic and linguistic movement include the work of the British philosophers Gilbert Ryle, John Austin, and P. F. Strawson and the American philosopher W. V. Quine. According to Ryle, the task of philosophy is to restate systematically misleading expressions in forms that are logically more accurate. He was particularly concerned with statements the grammatical form of which suggests the existence of nonexistent objects. For example, Ryle is best known for his analysis of mentalistic language, language that misleadingly suggests that the mind is an entity in the same way as the body.
Austin maintained that one of the most fruitful starting points for philosophical inquiry is attention to the extremely fine distinctions drawn in ordinary language. His analysis of language eventually led to a general theory of speech acts, that is, to a description of the variety of activities that an individual may be performing when something is uttered.
Strawson is known for his analysis of the relationship between formal logic and ordinary language. The complexity of the latter, he argued, is inadequately represented by formal logic. A variety of analytic tools, therefore, are needed in addition to logic in analyzing ordinary language.
Quine discussed the relationship between language and ontology. He argued that language systems tend to commit their users to the existence of certain things. For Quine, the justification for speaking one way rather than another is a thoroughly pragmatic one.
The commitment to language analysis as a way of pursuing philosophy has continued as a significant contemporary dimension in philosophy. A division also continues to exist between those who prefer to work with the precision and rigour of symbolic logical systems and those who prefer to analyze ordinary language. Although few contemporary philosophers maintain that all philosophical problems are linguistic, the view continues to be widely held that attention to the logical structure of language and to how language is used in everyday dialogue can oftentimes benefit in resolving philosophical problems.
A loose title for various philosophies that emphasize certain common themes, the individual, the experience of choice, and if the absence of rational understanding of the universe, with a consequent dread or sense of absurdity human life however, existentialism is a philosophical movement or tendency, emphasizing individual existence, freedom, and choice, that influenced many diverse writers in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Because of the diversity of positions associated with existentialism, the term is impossible to define precisely. Certain themes common to virtually all existentialist writers can, however, be identified. The term itself suggests one major theme: the stress on concrete individual existence and, consequently, on subjectivity, individual freedom, and choice.
Most philosophers since Plato have held that the highest ethical good are the same for everyone; insofar as one approaches moral perfection, one resembles other morally perfect individuals. The 19th-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, who was the first writer to call himself existential, reacted against this tradition by insisting that the highest good for the individual are to find his or her own unique vocation. As he wrote in his journal, I must find a truths that is true for me . . . the idea for which I can live or die. Other existentialist writers have echoed Kierkegaards belief that one must choose ones own way without the aid of universal, objective standards. Against the traditional view that moral choice involves an objective judgment of right and wrong, existentialists have argued that no objective, rational basis can be found for moral decisions. The 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche further contended that the individual must decide which situations are to count as moral situations.
All existentialists have followed Kierkegaard in stressing the importance of passionate individual action in deciding questions of both morality and truths. They have insisted, accordingly, that personal experience and acting on ones own convictions are essential in arriving at the truths. Thus, the understanding of a situation by someone involved in that situation is superior to that of a detached, objective observer. This emphasis on the perspective of the individual agent has also made existentialists suspicious of systematic reasoning. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and other existentialist writers have been deliberately unsystematic in the exposition of their philosophies, preferring to express themselves in aphorisms, dialogues, parables, and other literary forms. Despite their antirationalist position, however, most existentialists cannot be said to be irrationalists in the sense of denying all validity to rational thought. They have held that rational clarity is desirable wherever possible, but that the most important questions in life are not accessible to reason or science. Furthermore, they have argued that even science is not as rational as is commonly supposed. Nietzsche, for instance, asserted that the scientific assumption of an orderly universe is for the most part a useful fiction.
Perhaps the most prominent theme in existentialist writing is that of choice. Humanitys primary distinction, in the view of most existentialists, is the freedom to choose. Existentialists have held that human beings do not have a fixed nature, or essence, as other animals and plants do; each human being makes choices that create his or her own nature. In the formulation of the 20th-century French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, existence precedes essence. Choice is therefore central to human existence, and it is inescapable; even the refusal to choose is a choice. Freedom of choice entails commitment and responsibility. Because individuals are free to choose their own path, existentialists have argued, they must accept the risk and responsibility of following their commitment wherever it leads.
Kierkegaard held that it is spiritually crucial to recognize that one experiences not only a fear of specific objects but also a feeling of general apprehension, which he called dread. He interpreted it as Gods way of calling each individual to make a commitment to a personally valid way of life. The word anxiety (German Angst) has a similarly crucial role in the work of the 20th-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger; anxiety leads to the individuals confrontation with nothingness and with the impossibility of finding ultimate justification for the choices he or she must make. In the philosophy of Sartre, the word nausea is used for the individuals recognition of the pure contingency of the universe, and the word anguish is used for the recognition of the total freedom of choice that confronts the individual at every moment.
Existentialism as a distinct philosophical and literary movement belongs to the 19th and 20th centuries, but elements of existentialism can be found in the thought (and life) of Socrates, in the Bible, and in the work of many premodern philosophers and writers.
The first to anticipate the major concerns of modern existentialism was the 17th-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal. Pascal rejected the rigorous rationalism of his contemporary René Descartes, asserting, in his Pensées (1670), that a systematic philosophy that presumes to explain God and humanity is a form of pride. Like later existentialist writers, he saw human life in terms of paradoxes: The human self, which combines mind and body, is itself a paradox and contradiction.
Kierkegaard, generally regarded as the founder of modern existentialism, reacted against the systematic absolute idealism of the 19th-century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who claimed to have worked out a total rational understanding of humanity and history. Kierkegaard, on the contrary, stressed the ambiguity and absurdity of the human situation. The individuals response to this situation must be to live a totally committed life, and this commitment can only be understood by the individual who has made it. The individual therefore must always be prepared to defy the norms of society for the sake of the higher authority of a personally valid way of life. Kierkegaard ultimately advocated a leap of faith into a Christian way of life, which, although incomprehensible and full of risk, was the only commitment he believed could save the individual from despair.
Danish religious philosopher Søren Kierkegaard rejected the all-encompassing, analytical philosophical systems of such 19th-century thinkers as German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. Instead, Kierkegaard focussed on the choices the individual must make in all aspects of his or her life, especially the choice to maintain religious faith. In Fear and Trembling (1846; translated 1941), Kierkegaard explored the concept of faith through an examination of the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, in which God demanded that Abraham demonstrate his faith by sacrificing his son.
One of the most controversial works of 19th-century philosophy, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-1885) articulated German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsches theory of the Übermensch, a term translated as Superman or Overman. The Superman was an individual who overcame what Nietzsche termed the slave morality of traditional values, and lived according to his own morality. Nietzsche also advanced his idea that God is dead, or that traditional morality was no longer relevant in peoples lives. In this passage, the sage Zarathustra came down from the mountain where he had spent the last ten years alone to preach to the people.
Nietzsche, who was not acquainted with the work of Kierkegaard, influenced subsequent existentialist thought through his criticism of traditional metaphysical and moral assumptions and through his espousal of tragic pessimism and the life-affirming individual will that opposes itself to the moral conformity of the majority. In contrast to Kierkegaard, whose attack on conventional morality led him to advocate a radically individualistic Christianity, Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God and went on to reject the entire Judeo-Christian moral tradition in favor of a heroic pagan ideal.
The modern philosophy movements of phenomenology and existentialism have been greatly influenced by the thought of German philosopher Martin Heidegger. According to Heidegger, humankind has fallen into a crisis by taking a narrow, technological approach to the world and by ignoring the larger question of existence. People, if they wish to live authentically, must broaden their perspectives. Instead of taking their existence for granted, people should view themselves as part of Being (Heideggers term for that which underlies all existence).
Heidegger, like Pascal and Kierkegaard, reacted against any attemptive claim for putting philosophy upon the passageways toward their legitimate considerations in matters concerning conclusive rationalistic contentions-in this case the phenomenology of the 20th-century German philosopher Edmund Husserl. Heidegger argued that humanity finds itself in an incomprehensible, indifferent world. Human beings can never hope to understand why they are here; instead, each individual must choose a goal and follows it with passionate conviction, aware of the certainty of death and the ultimate meaninglessness of ones life. Heidegger contributed to existentialist thought an original emphasis on being and ontology (see Metaphysics) as well as on language.
Twentieth-century French intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre helped to develop existential philosophy through his writings, novels, and plays. A large portion of Sartres work focus on the dilemma of choice faced by free individuals and on the challenge of creating meaning by acting responsibly in an indifferent world. In stating that man is condemned to be free, Sartre reminds us of the responsibility that accompanies human decisions.
Sartre first gave the term existentialism general currency by using it for his own philosophy and by becoming the leading figure of a distinct movement in France that became internationally influential after World War II. Sartres philosophy is explicitly atheistic and pessimistic; he declared that human beings require a rational basis for their lives but are unable to achieve one, and thus human life is a futile passion. Sartre nevertheless insisted that his existentialism is a form of humanism, and he strongly emphasized human freedom, choice, and responsibility. He eventually tried to reconcile these existentialist concepts with a Marxist analysis of society and history.
Although existentialist thought encompasses the uncompromising atheism of Nietzsche and Sartre and the agnosticism of Heidegger, its origin in the intensely religious philosophies of Pascal and Kierkegaard foreshadowed its profound influence on a 20th-century theology. The 20th-century German philosopher Karl Jaspers, although he rejected explicit religious doctrines, influenced contemporary theologies through his preoccupation with transcendence and the limits of human experience. The German Protestant theologians Paul Tillich and Rudolf Bultmann, the French Roman Catholic theologian Gabriel Marcel, the Russian Orthodox philosopher Nikolay Berdyayev, and the German Jewish philosopher Martin Buber inherited many of Kierkegaards concerns, especially that a personal sense of authenticity and commitment is essential to religious faith.
Renowned as one of the most important writers in world history, 19th-century Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote psychologically intense novels which probed the motivations and moral justifications for his characters actions. Dostoyevsky commonly addressed themes such as the struggle between good and evil within the human soul and the idea of salvation through suffering. The Brothers Karamazov (1879-1880), generally considered Dostoyevskys best work, interlaces religious exploration with the story of a families violent quarrels over a woman and a disputed inheritance.
A number of existentialist philosophers used literary forms to convey their thought, and existentialism has been as vital and as extensive a movement in literature as in philosophy. The 19th-century Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky is probably the greatest existentialist literary figure. In Notes from the Underground (1864), the alienated antihero rages against the optimistic assumptions of rationalist humanism. The view of human nature that emerges in this and other novels of Dostoyevsky is that it is unpredictable and perversely self-destructive; only Christian love can save humanity from itself, but such love cannot be understood philosophically. As the character Alyosha says in The Brothers Karamazov (1879-80), We must love life more than the meaning of it.
The opening tracings of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevskys Notes from Underground (1864) I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man-are among the most famous in 19th-century literature. Published five years after his release from prison and involuntary, military service in Siberia, Notes from Underground is a sign of Dostoyevskys rejection of the radical social thinking he had embraced in his youth. The unnamed narrator is antagonistic in tone, questioning the readers sense of morality as well as the foundations of rational thinking. In this excerpt from the beginning of the novel, the narrator describes himself, derisively referring to himself as an overly conscious intellectual.
In the 20th century, the novels of the Austrian Jewish writer Franz Kafka, such as The Trial (1925; translated 1937) and The Castle (1926; translated 1930), present isolated men confronting vast, elusive, menacing bureaucracies; Kafkas themes of anxiety, guilt, and solitude reflect the influence of Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, and Nietzsche. The influence of Nietzsche is also discernible in the novels of the French writers André Malraux and in the plays of Sartre. The work of the French writer Albert Camus is usually associated with existentialism because of the prominence in it of such themes as the apparent absurdity and futility of life, the indifference of the universe, and the necessity of engagement in a just cause. Existentialist themes are also reflected in the theatre of the absurd, notably in the plays of Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco. In the United States, the influence of existentialism on literature has been more indirect and diffuse, but traces of Kierkegaards thought can be found in the novels of Walker Percy and John Updike, and various existentialist themes are apparent in the work of such diverse writers as Norman Mailer, John Barth, and Arthur
The problem of defining knowledge in terms of true belief plus some favoured relation between the believer and the facts began with Platos view in the Theaetetus, that knowledge is true belief plus a logos, an epistemology is to begin of holding the foundations of knowledge, a special branch of philosophy that addresses the philosophical problems surrounding the theory of knowledge. Epistemology is concerned with the definition of knowledge and related concepts, the sources and criteria of knowledge, the kinds of knowledge possible and the degree to which each is certain, and the exact relation among of who knows and the object known.
Thirteenth-century Italian philosopher and theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas attempted to synthesize Christian belief with a broad range of human knowledge, embracing diverse sources such as Greek philosopher Aristotle and Islamic and Jewish scholars. His thought exerted lasting influence on the development of Christian theology and Western philosophy. Author Anthony Kenny examines the complexities of Aquinass concepts of substance and accident.
In the 5th century Bc, the Greek Sophists questioned the possibility of reliable and objective knowledge. Thus, a leading Sophist, Gorgias, argued that nothing really exists, that if anything did exist it could not be known, and that if knowledge were possible, it could not be communicated. Another prominent Sophist, Protagoras, maintained that no persons opinions can be said to be more correct than anothers, because each is the sole judge of his or her own experience. Plato, following his illustrious teacher Socrates, tried to answer the Sophists by postulating the existence of a world of unchanging and invisible forms, or ideas, about which it is possible to have exact and certain knowledge. The things one sees and touches, they maintained, are imperfect copies of the pure forms studied in mathematics and philosophy. Accordingly, only the abstract reasoning of these disciplines yields genuine knowledge, whereas reliance on sense perception produces vague and inconsistent opinions. They concluded that philosophical contemplation of the unseen world of forms is the highest goal of human life.
Aristotle followed Plato in regarding abstract knowledge as superior to any other, but disagreed with him as to the proper method of achieving it. Aristotle maintained that almost all knowledge is derived from experience. Knowledge is gained either directly, by abstracting the defining traits of a species, or indirectly, by deducing new facts from those already known, in accordance with the rules of logic. Careful observation and strict adherence to the rules of logic, which were first set down in systematic form by Aristotle, would help guard against the pitfalls the Sophists had exposed. The Stoic and Epicurean schools agreed with Aristotle that knowledge originates in sense perception, but against both Aristotle and Plato they maintained that philosophy is to be valued as a practical guide to life, rather than as an end in itself.
After many centuries of declining interest in rational and scientific knowledge, the Scholastic philosopher Saint Thomas Aquinas and other philosophers of the Middle Ages helped to restore confidence in reason and experience, blending rational methods with faith into a unified system of beliefs. Aquinas followed Aristotle in regarding perception as the starting point and logic as the intellectual procedure for arriving at reliable knowledge of nature, but he considered faith in scriptural authority as the main source of religious belief.
From the 17th to the late 19th century, the main issue in epistemology was reasoning versus sense perception in acquiring knowledge. For the rationalists, of whom the French philosopher René Descartes, the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, and the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz were the leaders, the main source and final test of knowledge was deductive reasoning based on self-evident principles, or axioms. For the empiricists, beginning with the English philosophers Francis Bacon and John Locke, the main source and final test of knowledge was sense perception.
Bacon inaugurated the new era of modern science by criticizing the medieval reliance on tradition and authority and also by setting down new rules of scientific method, including the first set of rules of inductive logic ever formulated. Locke attacked the rationalist belief that the principles of knowledge are intuitively self-evident, arguing that all knowledge is derived from experience, either from experience of the external world, which stamps sensations on the mind, or from internal experience, in which the mind reflects on its own activities. Human knowledge of external physical objects, he claimed, is always subject to the errors of the senses, and he concluded that one cannot have absolutely certain knowledge of the physical world.
Irish-born philosopher and clergyman George Berkeley (1685-1753) argued that everything that human beings conceive of exists as an idea in a mind, a philosophical focus which is known as idealism. Berkeley reasoned that because one cannot control ones thoughts, they must come directly from a larger mind: that of God. In this excerpt from his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, written in 1710, Berkeley explained why he believed that it is impossible … that there should be any such thing as an outward object.
The Irish philosopher George Berkeley agreed with Locke that knowledge can be derived by and through ideas, but he denied Lockes belief that a distinction can be made between ideas and objects. The British philosopher David Hume continued the empiricist tradition, but he did not accept Berkeleys conclusion that knowledge was of ideas only. He divided all knowledge into two kinds: knowledge of relations of ideas-that is, the knowledge found in mathematics and logic, which is exact and certain but no information about the world; and knowledge of matters of fact-that is, the knowledge derived from sense perception. Hume argued that most knowledge of matters of fact depends upon cause and effect, and since no logical connexion exists between any given cause and its effect, one cannot hope to know any future matter of fact with certainty. Thus, the most reliable laws of science might not remain true-a conclusion that had a revolutionary impact on philosophy.
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant tried to solve the crisis precipitated by Locke and brought to a climax by Hume; his proposed solution combined elements of rationalism with elements of empiricism. He agreed with the rationalists that one can have exact and certain knowledge, but he followed the empiricists in holding that such knowledge is more informative about the structure of thought than about the world outside of thought. He distinguished three kinds of knowledge: analytical a priori, which is exact and certain but uninformative, because it makes clear only what is contained in definitions; synthetic a posteriori, which conveys information about the world learned from experience, but is subject to the errors of the senses; and synthetic a priori, which is discovered by pure intuition and is both exact and certain, for it expresses the necessary conditions that the mind imposes on all objects of experience. Mathematics and philosophy, according to Kant, provide this last. Since the time of Kant, one of the most frequently argued questions in philosophy has been whether or not such a thing as synthetic a priori knowledge really exists.
During the 19th century, the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel revived the rationalist claim that absolutely certain knowledge of reality can be obtained by equating the processes of thought, of nature, and of history. Hegel inspired an interest in history and a historical approach to knowledge that was further emphasized by Herbert Spencer in Britain and by the German school of historicism. Spencer and the French philosopher Auguste Comte brought attention to the importance of sociology as a branch of knowledge, and both extended the principles of empiricism to the study of society.
The American school of pragmatism, founded by the philosophers Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey at the turn of this century, carried empiricism further by maintaining that knowledge is an instrument of action and that all beliefs should be judged by their usefulness as rules for predicting experiences.
In the early 20th century, epistemological problems were discussed thoroughly, and subtle shades of difference grew into rival schools of thought. Special attention was given to the relation between the act of perceiving something, the object directly perceived, and the thing that can be said to be known as a result of the perception. The phenomenalists contended that the objects of knowledge are the same as the objects perceived. The neorealists argued that one has direct perceptions of physical objects or parts of physical objects, rather than of ones own mental states. The critical realists took a middle position, holding that although one perceives only sensory data such as colours and sounds, these stand for physical objects and provide knowledge thereof.
Speculation about language goes back thousands of years. Ancient Greek philosophers speculated on the origins of language and the relationship between objects and their names. They also discussed the rules that govern language, or grammar, and by the 3rd century Bc they had begun grouping words into parts of speech and devising names for different forms of verbs and nouns.
In India religion provided the motivation for the study of language nearly 2500 years ago. Hindu priests noted that the language they spoke had changed since the compilation of their ancient sacred texts, the Vedas, starting about 1000 Bc. They believed that for certain religious ceremonies based upon the Vedas to succeed, they needed to reproduce the language of the Vedas precisely. Panini, an Indian grammarian who lived about 400 Bc, produced the earliest work describing the rules of Sanskrit, the ancient language of India.
The Romans used Greek grammars as models for their own, adding commentary on Latin style and usage. Statesman and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote on rhetoric and style in the 1st century Bc. Later grammarians Aelius Donatus (4th centuries AD) and Priscian (6th centuries AD) produced detailed Latin grammars. Roman works served as textbooks and standards for the study of language for more than 1000 years.
It was not until the end of the 18th century that language was researched and studied in a scientific way. During the 17th and 18th centuries, modern languages, such as French and English, replaced Latin as the means of universal communication in the West. This occurrence, along with developments in printing, meant that many more texts became available. At about this time, the study of phonetics, or the sounds of a language, began. Such investigations led to comparisons of sounds in different languages; in the late 18th century the observation of correspondences among Sanskrit, began the Latin and Greek heritage by giving into the arena of Indo-European linguistics.
During the 19th century, European linguists focussed on philosophical or analytic comparisons of languages. They studied written texts and looked for changes over time or for relationships between one language and another.
American linguist, writer, teacher, and political activist Noam Chomsky is considered the founder of transformational-generative linguistic analysis, which revolutionized the field of linguistics. This system of linguistics treats grammar as a theory of language-that is, Chomsky believes that in addition to the rules of grammar specific to individual languages, there are universal rules common to all languages that indicate that the ability to form and understand language is innate to all human beings. Chomsky also is well known for his political activism-he opposed United States involvement in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s and has written various books and articles and delivered many lectures in an attempt to educate and empower people on various political and social issues.
In the early 20th century, linguistics expanded to include the study of unwritten languages. In the United States linguists and anthropologists began to study the rapidly disappearing spoken languages of Native North Americans. Because many of these languages were unwritten, researchers could not use historical analysis in their studies. In their pioneering research on these languages, anthropologists Franz Boas and Edward Sapir developed the techniques of descriptive linguistics and theorized on the ways in which language shapes our perceptions of the world.
An important outgrowth of descriptive linguistics is a theory known as structuralism, which assumes that language is a system with a highly organized structure. Structuralism began with publication of the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure in Cours de linguistique générale (1916; Course in General Linguistics, 1959). This work, compiled by Saussures students after his death, is considered the foundation of the modern field of linguistics. Saussure made a distinction between actual speech, and spoken language, and the knowledge underlying speech that speakers share about what is grammatical. Speech, he said, represents instances of grammar, and the linguists task is to find the underlying rules of a particular language from examples found in speech. To the structuralist, grammar is a set of relationships that account for speech, rather than a set of instances of speech, as it is to the descriptivist.
Once linguists began to study language as a set of abstract rules that somehow account for speech, other scholars began to take an interest in the field. They drew analogies between language and other forms of human behaviour, based on the belief that a shared structure underlies many aspects of a culture. Anthropologists, for example, became interested in a structuralist approach to the interpretation of kinship systems and analysis of myth and religion. American linguist Leonard Bloomfield promoted structuralism in the United States.
Saussures ideas also influenced European linguistics, most notably in France and Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic). In 1926 Czech linguist Vilem Mathesius founded the Linguistic Circle of Prague, a group that expanded the focus of the field to include the context of language use. The Prague circle developed the field of phonology, or the study of sounds, and demonstrated that universal features of sounds in the languages of the world interrelate in a systematic way. Linguistic analysis, they said, should focus on the distinctiveness of sounds rather than on the ways they combine. Where descriptivists tried to locate and describe individual phonemes, such as /b/ and /p/, the Prague linguists stressed the features of these phonemes and their interrelationships in different languages. In English, for example, the voice distinguishes between the similar sounds of /b/ and /p/, but these are not distinct phonemes in a number of other languages. An Arabic speaker might pronounce the cities Pompei and Bombay the same way.
As linguistics developed in the 20th century, the notion became prevalent that language is more than speech—specifically, that it is an abstract system of interrelationships shared by members of a speech community. Structural linguistics led linguists to look at the rules and the patterns of behaviour shared by such communities. Whereas structural linguists saw the basis of language in the social structure, other linguists looked at language as a mental process.
The 1957 publication of Syntactic Structures by American linguist Noam Chomsky initiated what many view as a scientific revolution in linguistics. Chomsky sought a theory that would account for both linguistic structure and the creativity of language-the fact that we can create entirely original sentences and understand sentences never before uttered. He proposed that all people have an innate ability to acquire language. The task of the linguist, he claimed, is to describe this universal human ability, known as language competence, with a grammar from which the grammars of all languages could be derived. The linguist would develop this grammar by looking at the rules children use in hearing and speaking their first language. He termed the resulting model, or grammar, a transformational-generative grammar, referring to the transformations (or rules) that incorporate of generating (or account for) language. Certain rules, Chomsky asserted, are shared by all languages and form part of a universal grammar, while others are language specific and associated with particular speech communities. Since the 1960s much of the development in the field of linguistics has been a reaction to or against Chomskys theories.
At the end of the 20th century, linguists used the term grammar primarily to refer to a subconscious linguistic system that enables people to produce and comprehend an unlimited number of utterances. Grammar thus accounts for our linguistic competence. Observations about the actual language we use, or language performance, are used to theorize about this invisible mechanism known as grammar.
The orientation toward the scientific study of language led by Chomsky has had an impact on nongenerative linguists as well. Comparative and historically oriented linguists are looking for the various ways linguistic universals show up in individual languages. Psycholinguists, interested in language acquisition, are investigating the notion that an ideal speaker-hearer is the origin of the acquisition process. Sociolinguists are examining the rules that underlie the choice of language variants, or codes, and allow for switching from one code to another. Some linguists are studying language performance-the way people use language-to see how it reveals a cognitive ability shared by all human beings. Others seek to understand animal communication within such a framework. What mental processes enable chimpanzees to make signs and communicate with one another and how do these processes differ from those of humans?
The acceptance or rejection of abstract linguistic forms, just as the acceptance or rejection of any other linguistic forms in any branch of science, will finally be decided by their efficiency as instruments, the ratio of the results achieved to the amount and complexity of the effort required . . . Those who use any form of expression which seems useful to them, the work in the field will sooner or later lead to the elimination of those forms which have no useful function.
A written bibliographic note in gratification to Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), an Austrian-British philosopher, who was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, particularly noted for his contribution to the movement known as analytic and linguistic philosophy.
Born in Vienna on April 26, 1889, Wittgenstein was raised in a wealthy and cultured family. After attending schools in Linz and Berlin, he went to England to study engineering at the University of Manchester. His interest in pure mathematics led him to Trinity College, University of Cambridge, to study with Bertrand Russell. There he turned his attention to philosophy. By 1918 Wittgenstein had completed his Tractatus Logico-philosophicus (1921; translated 1922), a work he then believed provided the final solution to philosophical problems, this is a requirement to exist of such a meta-level for existence of a core conception of rationality, this is an absolute conception, governing degrees of diversity beneath it. So, the upshot of this is that there are legitimate alternative logical calculi, useful for various purposes, but ultimately governed by a system adhering to the traditional laws of logic. Subsequently, turning from philosophy and for several years taught elementary school in an Austrian village. In 1929 he returned to Cambridge to resume his work in philosophy and was appointed to the faculty of Trinity College. Soon he began to reject certain conclusions of the Tractatus and to develop the position reflected in his Philosophical Investigations (pub. posthumously 1953; translated 1953). Wittgenstein retired in 1947; he died in Cambridge on April 29, 1951. A sensitive, intense man who often sought solitude and was frequently depressed, Wittgenstein abhorred pretense and was noted for his simple style of life and dress. The philosopher was forceful and confident in personality, however, and he exerted considerable influence on those with whom he came in contact.
Wittgensteins philosophical life may be divided into two distinct phases: an early period, represented by the Tractatus, and a later period, represented by the Philosophical Investigations. Throughout most of his life, however, Wittgenstein consistently viewed philosophy as linguistic or conceptual analysis. In the Tractatus he argued that philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. In the Philosophical Investigations, however, he maintained that philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.
Language, Wittgenstein argued in the Tractatus, is composed of complex propositions that can be analyzed into less complex propositions until one arrives at simple or elementary propositions. Correspondingly, the world is composed of complex facts that can be analyzed into less complex facts until one arrives at simple, or atomic, facts. The world is the totality of these facts. According to Wittgensteins picture theory of meaning, it is the nature of elementary propositions logically to picture atomic facts, or states of affairs. He claimed that the nature of language required elementary propositions, and his theory of meaning required that there be atomic facts pictured by the elementary propositions. On this analysis, only propositions that picture facts-the propositions of science—are considered cognitively meaningfully. Metaphysical and ethical statements are not meaningful assertions. The logical positivists associated with the Vienna Circle were greatly influenced by this conclusion.
Wittgenstein came to believe, however, that the narrow view of language reflected in the Tractatus was mistaken. In the Philosophical Investigations he argued that if one actually looks to see how language is used, the variety of linguistic usage becomes clear. Words are like tools, and just as tools serve different functions, so linguistic expressions serve many functions. Although some propositions are used to picture facts, others are used to command, question, play, thank, curse, and so on. This recognition of linguistic flexibility and variety led to Wittgensteins concept of a language game and to the conclusion that people play different language games. The scientist, for example, is involved in a different language game than the theologian. Moreover, the meaning of a proposition must be understood in terms of its context, that is, in terms of the rules of the game of which that proposition is a part. The key to the resolution of philosophical puzzles is the therapeutic process of examining and describing language in use.
Analytic and Linguistic Philosophy, is a product out of the 20th-century philosophical movement, and dominant in Britain and the United States since World War II, that aims to clarify language and analyze the concepts expressed in it. The movement has been given a variety of designations, including linguistic analysis, logical empiricism, logical positivism, Cambridge analysis, and Oxford philosophy. The last two labels are derived from the universities in England where this philosophical method has been particularly influential. Although no specific doctrines or tenets are accepted by the movement as a whole, analytic and linguistic philosophers agree that the proper activity of philosophy is clarifying language, or, as some prefer, clarifying concepts. The aim of this activity is to settle philosophical disputes and resolve philosophical problems, which, it is argued, originates in linguistic confusion.
A considerable diversity of views exists among analytic and linguistic philosophers regarding the nature of conceptual or linguistic analysis. Some have been primarily concerned with clarifying the meaning of specific words or phrases as an essential step in making philosophical assertions clear and unambiguous. Others have been more concerned with determining the general conditions that must be met for any linguistic utterance to be meaningful; their intent is to establish a criterion that will distinguish between meaningful and nonsensical sentences. Still other analysts have been interested in creating formal, symbolic languages that are mathematical in nature. Their claim is that philosophical problems can be more effectively dealt with once they are formulated in a rigorous logical language.
By contrast, many philosophers associated with the movement have focussed on the analysis of ordinary, or natural, language. Difficulties arise when concepts such as time and freedom, for example, are considered apart from the linguistic context in which they normally appear. Attention to language as it is ordinarily put-upon for the considered liking, it is argued, to resolving many philosophical puzzles.
Linguistic analysis as a method of philosophy is as old as the Greeks. Several of the dialogues of Plato, for example, are specifically concerned with clarifying terms and concepts. Nevertheless, this style of philosophizing has received dramatically renewed emphasis in the 20th century. Influenced by the earlier British empirical tradition of John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, and John Stuart Mill and by the writings of the German mathematician and philosopher Gottlob Frigg, the 20th-century English philosophers G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell became the founders of this contemporary analytic and linguistic trend. As students together at the University of Cambridge, Moore and Russell rejected Hegelian idealism, particularly as it was reflected in the work of the English metaphysician F. H. Bradley, who held that nothing is completely real except the Absolute. In their opposition to idealism and in their commitment to the view that careful attention to language is crucial in philosophical inquiry. They set the mood and style of philosophizing for much of the 20th century English-speaking world.
For Moore, philosophy was first and foremost analysis. The philosophical task involves clarifying puzzling propositions or concepts by indicating less puzzling propositions or concepts to which the originals are held to be logically equivalent. Once this task has been completed, the truths or falsity of problematic philosophical assertions can be determined more adequately. Moore was noted for his careful analyses of such puzzling philosophical claims as time is unreal, analyses that then aided in giving clear or effective expression whereby ones ideas or feelings were inclined to better more the an alternative for determining the truths from such assertions.
A distinctive feature of twentieth-century philosophy has been a series of sustained challenges to dualism that were taken for granted in earlier intermittent intervals. This split between mind and body that dominated most of the modern secessions but was attacked in a variety of different ways by twentieth-century thinkers. Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty. Wittgenstein and Ryle all rejected the Cartesian model, but did so in quite distinctly different ways. Other cherished dualism has also been attacked-for example, the analytic-synthetic distinction, the dichotomy between theory and practice and the fact-value distinction. However, unlike the rejection of Cartesian dualism, these debates are still alive, with substantial support for either side.
Logic is clearly fundamental to human reasoning. It governs the process of inferring between beliefs in a truth-preserving way, such that if one starts with true beliefs and then makes no mistakes in logic, one is guaranteed to have true beliefs as a conclusion. The central notion of logic, validity is usually characterized in this fashion. A valid argument is one such that, if the premises are true, the conclusion had to be true. Aristotle was the first to codify logical laws and principles, despite the fact that they had been used in practice well before him. This codification is the mark of logical formality of discipline. Formal logic systematizes, articulates and regiments the inferences we use in our every day, reasoning processing. Aristotles account of these forms that we so successfully benefit from or accept by that, two thousand years later, Kant believed that logic was a completed science. However, the nineteenth century saw this change. Developments in mathematics led to renewed attempts to codify logic. The most significant of these was Fréges formal development of concept-writing, which was more sophisticated than Aristotles in that it could deal with the theory of relations and generality, in such a manner that it could be argued that mathematical truths derive from logic truths. Whitehead and Russell further developed this approach (called logicism) in the monumental Principia Mathematica (1910-1913), first articulating a logical system and then showing the derivation of mathematical truths from it.
Various types of belief were proposed as candidates for sceptic-proof knowledge, for example, those beliefs that are immediately derived from perception-often called the given-were proposed by many as immune to doubt. The details of the nature of these beliefs varied, nevertheless, what they all had in common was that empirical knowledge began with the idea of the senses, that this was safe from sceptical challenge and that a further superstructure of knowledge was to be built on this firm basis. The issue, which led many too there data of sense and simultaneously keeping it immune from doubt. The reason sense-data was immune from doubt was because they were so primitive, they were unstructured and below the level of conceptualization. Once they were given structure and conceptualized, they were no longer safe from sceptical challenge. Yet, when pressed, the details of how to explain clarity and distinctness, how beliefs with such properties can be used to justify other beliefs lacking them, and why, clarity and distinctness should be taken at all as marks of certainty, did not prove compelling. These empirical and rationalist strategies are of asking how the first approach failed to achieve its objective.
Nonetheless, Russell, was strongly influenced by the precision of mathematics, was concerned with developing an ideal logical language that would accurately reflect the nature of the world. Complex propositions, Russell maintained, can be resolved into their simplest components, which he called atomic propositions. These propositions refer to atomic facts, the ultimate constituents of the universe. The metaphysical views were based on this logical analysis of language and the insistence that meaningful propositions must correspond to facts constitute what Russell called logical atomism. His interest in the structure of language also led him to distinguish between the grammatical form of a proposition and its logical form. The statements John is good and John is tall have the same grammatical form but different logical forms. Failure to recognize this would lead one to treat the property goodness as if it were a characteristic of John in the same way that the property tallness is a characteristic of John. Such failure results in philosophical confusion.
Russells works in mathematics were absorbed of interests in his attachments to Cambridge, and the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who became a central figure in the analytic and linguistic movement. In his first major work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921; translated 1922), in which he first presented his theory of language, Wittgenstein argued that all philosophy is a critique of language and that philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. The results of Wittgensteins analysis resembled Russells logical atomism. The world, he argued, is ultimately composed of simple facts, which it is the purpose of language to picture. To be meaningful, statements about the world must be reducible to linguistic utterances that have a structure similar to the simple facts pictured. In this early Wittgensteinian analysis, only propositions that picture facts-the propositions of science-are considered factually meaningful. Metaphysical, theological, and ethical sentences were judged to be factually meaningless.
Influenced by Russell, Wittgenstein, Ernst Mach, and others, a group of philosophers and mathematicians in Vienna in the 1920s initiated the movement known as logical positivism. Led by Moritz Schlick and Rudolf Carnap, the Vienna Circle initiated one of the most important chapters in the history of analytic and linguistic philosophy. According to the positivists, the task of philosophy is the clarification of meaning, not the discovery of new facts (the job of the scientists) or the construction of comprehensive accounts of reality (the misguided pursuit of traditional metaphysics).
The positivists divided all meaningful assertions into two classes: analytic propositions and empirically verifiable ones. Analytic propositions, which include the propositions of logic and mathematics, are statements the truths or falsity of which depend together on the meanings of the terms constituting the statement. An example would be the proposition two plus two equals four. The second class of meaningful propositions includes all statements about the world that can be verified, at least in principle, by sense experience. Indeed, the meaning of such propositions is identified with the empirical method of their verification. This verifiability theory of meaning, the positivists concluded, would demonstrate that scientific statements are legitimate factual claims and that metaphysical, religious, and ethical sentences are factually empty. The ideas of logical positivism were made popular in England by the publication of A.J. Ayers Language, Truths and Logic in 1936.
The positivists verifiability theory of meaning came under intense criticism by philosophers such as the Austrian-born British philosopher Karl Popper. Eventually this narrow theory of meaning yielded to a broader understanding of the nature of language. Again, an influential figure was Wittgenstein. Repudiating many of his earlier conclusions in the Tractatus, he initiated a new ligne of thought culminating in his posthumously published Philosophical Investigations (1953; translated 1953). In this work, Wittgenstein argued that once attention is directed to the way language is actually used in ordinary discourse, the variety and flexibility of language become clear. Propositions do much more than simply picture facts.
This recognition led to Wittgensteins influential concept of language games. The scientist, the poet, and the theologian, for example, are involved in different language games. Moreover, the meaning of a proposition must be understood in its context, that is, in terms of the rules of the language game of which that proposition is a part. Philosophy, concluded Wittgenstein, is an attempt to resolve problems that arise as the result of linguistic confusion, and the key to the resolution of such problems is ordinary language analysis and the proper use of language.
Additional contributions within the analytic and linguistic movement include the work of the British philosophers Gilbert Ryle, John Austin, and P. F. Strawson and the American philosopher W. V. Quine. According to Ryle, the task of philosophy is to restate systematically misleading expressions in forms that are logically more accurate. He was particularly concerned with statements the grammatical form of which suggests the existence of nonexistent objects. For example, Ryle is best known for his analysis of mentalistic language, language that misleadingly suggests that the mind is an entity in the same way as the body.
Austin maintained that one of the most fruitful starting points for philosophical inquiry is attention to the extremely fine distinctions drawn in ordinary language. His analysis of language eventually led to a general theory of speech acts, that is, to a description of the variety of activities that an individual may be performing when something is uttered.
Strawson is known for his analysis of the relationship between formal logic and ordinary language. The complexity of the latter, he argued, is inadequately represented by formal logic. A variety of analytic tools, therefore, are needed in addition to logic in analyzing ordinary language.
Quine discussed the relationship between language and ontology. He argued that language systems tend to commit their users to the existence of certain things. For Quine, the justification for speaking one way rather than another is a thoroughly pragmatic one.
The commitment to language analysis as a way of pursuing philosophy has continued as a significant contemporary dimension in philosophy. A division also continues to exist between those who prefer to work with the precision and rigour of symbolic logical systems and those who prefer to analyze ordinary language. Although few contemporary philosophers maintain that all philosophical problems are linguistic, the view continues to be widely held that attention to the logical structure of language and to how language is used in everyday discourse can be oftentimes resolved through ways that are negotiably attracted by philosophical problems.
Appeased by relations to some sorted identification to logical calculus and is in addition called a formal language, and a logical system? A system in which explicit rules are provided to determining (1) which are the expressions of the system (2) which sequence of expressions count as well formed (well-forced formulae) (3) which sequence would count as proofs. A system that may include axioms for which they leave them to terminate of their proof, however, it shows of the prepositional calculus and the predicated calculus.
Its most immediate of issues surrounding certainty are especially connected with those concerning scepticism. Although Greek scepticism entered on the value of enquiry and questioning, scepticism is now the denial that knowledge or even rational belief is possible, either about some specific subject-matter, e.g., ethics, or in any area whatsoever. Classical scepticism, springs from the observation that the best methods in some area seem to fall short of giving us contact with the truths, e.g., there is a gulf between appearances and reality, it frequently cites the conflicting judgements that our methods deliver, with the result that questions of truths commence to be undefinable. In classic thought the various examples of this conflict were systemized in the tropes of Aenesidemus. So that, the scepticism of Pyrrho and the new Academy was a system of argument and inasmuch as opposing dogmatism, and, particularly the philosophical system building of the Stoics.
As it has come down to us, particularly in the writings of Sextus Empiricus, its method was typically to cite reasons for finding our issue undesirable (sceptics devoted particular energy to undermining the Stoics conception of some truths as delivered by direct apprehension or some katalepsis). As a result the sceptics conclude eposhé, or the suspension of belief, and then go on to celebrate a way of life whose object was ataraxia, or the tranquillity resulting from suspension of belief.
Fixed by its will for and of itself, the mere mitigated scepticism which accepts every day or commonsense belief, is that, not the delivery of reason, but as due more to custom and habit. Nonetheless, it is self-satisfied at the proper time, however, the power of reason to give us much more. Mitigated scepticism is thus closer to the attitude fostered by the accentuations from Pyrrho through to Sextus Expiricus. Despite the fact that the phrase Cartesian scepticism is sometimes used. Descartes himself was not a sceptic, however, in the method of doubt uses a sceptical scenario in order to begin the process of finding a general distinction to mark its point of knowledge. Descartes trusts in categories of clear and distinct ideas, not far removed from the phantasiá kataleptikê of the Stoics.
For many sceptics had traditionally held that knowledge requires certainty, artistry. And, of course, they claim that certain knowledge is not possible. In part, nonetheless, of the principle that every effect its a consequence of an antecedent cause or causes. For causality to be true it is not necessary for an effect to be predictable as the antecedent causes may be numerous, too complicated, or too interrelated for analysis. Nevertheless, in order to avoid scepticism, this participating sceptic has generally held that knowledge does not require certainty. Except for alleged cases of things that are evident for one just by being true. It has often been thought, that any thing known must satisfy certain criteria as well for being true. It is often taught that anything is known must satisfy certain standards. In so saying, that by deduction or induction, there will be criteria specifying when it is. As these alleged cases of self-evident truths, the general principle specifying the sort of consideration that will make such standards in the apparent or justly conclude in accepting it warranted to some degree.
Besides, there is another view-the absolute globular view that we do not have any knowledge whatsoever. In whatever manner,
It is doubtful that any philosopher seriously entertains of an absolute scepticism. Even the Pyrrhonist sceptics, who held that we should refrain from accenting to any non-evident standards that no such hesitancy about asserting to the evident, the non-evident are any belief that requires evidences because it is warranted.
René Descartes (1596-1650), in his sceptical guise, never doubted the content of his own ideas. Its challenging logic, inasmuch as of whether they corresponded to anything beyond ideas.
All the same, Pyrrhonism and Cartesian form of a virtual globular scepticism, in having been held and defended, that of assuming that knowledge is some form of true, sufficiently warranted belief, it is the warranted condition that provides the truths or belief conditions, in that of providing the grist for the sceptics mill about. The Pyrrhonist will suggest that something that does not exist has the value qualities that correspond with non-distinct or to prove themselves for being non-evident, and empirically deferring the sufficiency of giving in but it is warranted. Whereas, a Cartesian sceptic will agree that no empirical standard about anything other than ones own mind and its contents is sufficiently warranted, because there are always legitimate grounds for doubting it. In which, the essential difference between the two views concerns the stringency of the requirements for a belief being sufficiently warranted to take account of as knowledge.
A Cartesian requires certainty. A Pyrrhonist merely requires that the standards in case are more warranted then its negation.
Cartesian scepticism was by an inordinately persuasions and of some influence with which Descartes agues for scepticism, than his reply holds, in that we do not have any knowledge of any empirical standards, in that of anything beyond the contents of our own minds. The reason is roughly in the position that there is a legitimate doubt about all such standards, only because there is no way to justifiably deny that our senses are being stimulated by some sense, for which it is radically different from the objects which we normally think, in whatever manner they affect our senses. Therefrom, if the Pyrrhonist is the agnostic, the Cartesian sceptic is the atheist.
Because the Pyrrhonist requires much less of a belief in order for it to be confirmed as knowledge than do the Cartesian, the argument for Pyrrhonism are much more difficult to construct. A Pyrrhonist must show that there is no better set of reasons for believing to any standards, of which are in case that any knowledge learnt of the mind is understood by some of its forms, that has to require certainty.
The underlying latencies that are given among the many derivative contributions as awaiting their presence to the future that of specifying to the theory of knowledge, is, but, nonetheless, the possibility to identify a set of shared doctrines, however, identity to discern two broad styles of instances to discern, in like manners, these two styles of pragmatism, clarify the innovation that a Cartesian approval is fundamentally flawed, nonetheless, of responding very differently but not fordone.
Repudiating the requirements of absolute certainty or knowledge, insisting on the connexion of knowledge with activity, as, too, of pragmatism of a reformist distributing knowledge upon the legitimacy of traditional questions about the truth-conduciveness of our cognitive practices, and sustain a conception of truths objectives, enough to give those questions that undergo of gathering into their own purposive latencies, yet we are given to the spoken word for which a dialectic awareness sparks the flame from the ambers of fire.
It seems clear that certainty is a property that can be assembled to either a person or a belief. We can say that a person, S is certain, or we can say that its descendable alinement is aligned as of p, is certain. The two uses can be connected by saying that S has the right to be certain just in case the value of p is sufficiently verified.
In defining certainty, it is crucial to note that the term has both an absolute and relative sense. More or less, we take a proposition to be certain when we have no doubt about its truths. We may do this in error or unreasonably, but objectively a proposition is certain when such absence of doubt is justifiable. The sceptical tradition in philosophy denies that objective certainty is often possible, or ever possible, either for any proposition at all, or for any proposition from some suspect family (ethics, theory, memory, empirical judgement etc.) A major sceptical weapon is the possibility of upsetting events that can cast doubt back onto what were hitherto taken to be certainties. Others include reminders of the divergence of human opinion, and the fallible source of our confidence. Fundamentalist approaches to knowledge look for a basis of certainty, upon which the structure of our system is built. Others reject the metaphor, looking for mutual support and coherence, without foundation.
However, in moral theory, the views that there are inviolable moral standards or absolute variable human desires or policies or prescriptions.
In spite of the notorious difficulty of reading Kantian ethics, a hypothetical imperative embeds a command which is in place only given some antecedent desire or project: If you want to look wise, stay quiet. The injunction to stay quiet is only given to those with the antecedent desire or inclination. If one has no desire to look wise, the injunction cannot be so avoided: It is a requirement that binds anybody, regardless of their inclination. It could be represented as, for example, tell the truths (regardless of whether you want to or not). The distinction is not always signalled by presence or absence of the conditional or hypothetical form: If you crave drink, don‘t become a bartender may be regarded as an absolute injunction applying to anyone, although only activated in cases with which of those that are stated desirously.
In Grundlegung zur Metaphsik der Sitten (1785), Kant discussed five forms of the categorical imperative: (1) the formula of universal law: act only on that maxim through which you can at the same times will that it should become universal law: (2) the contractual laws of nature are as of their acts in becoming as if the maxim of your action were to change, by means of your will as a universal law of nature: (3) the formula of the end-in-itself: act of practising ways that treat humanity in whatever manner as your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end: (4) the formula of autonomy, or considering the will of every rational being as a will which makes universal law: (5) the formula of the Kingdom of Ends, which provides a model for the systematic union of different rational beings under common laws.
Even so, a proposition that is not a conditional p. Moreover, the affirmative and negative, modern opinion is wary of this distinction, since what appears categorical may vary notation. Apparently, categorical propositions may also turn out to be disguised conditionals: X is intelligent (categorical?) = if X is given a range of tasks she performs them better than many people (conditional?) The problem. Nonetheless, is not merely one of classification, since deep metaphysical questions arise when facts that seem to be categorical and therefore solid, come to seem by contrast conditional, or purely hypothetical or potential.
A limited area of knowledge or endeavour to which pursuits, activities and interests are a central representation held to a concept of physical theory. In this way, a field is defined by the distribution of a physical quantity, such as temperature, mass density, or potential energy y, at different points in space. In the particularly important example of force fields, such as gravitational, electrical, and magnetic fields, the field value at a point is the force which a test particle would experience if it were located at that point. The philosophical problem is whether a force field is to be thought of as purely potential, so the presence of a field merely describes the propensity of masses to move relative to each other, or whether it should be thought of in terms of the physically real modifications of a medium, whose properties result in such powers that are, liken to force fields, having potentially pure characterized by their means of dispositional statements or conditionals, or are they categorical or actual? The former option seems to require within ungrounded dispositions, or regions of space that differ only in what happens if an object is placed there. The law-like shape of these dispositions, apparent for example in the curved lines of force of the magnetic field, may then seem quite inexplicable. To atomists, such as Newton it would represent a return to Aristotelian entelechies, or quasi-psychological affinities between things, which are responsible for their motions. The latter option requires understanding of how forces of attraction and repulsion can be grounded in the properties of the medium.
The basic idea of a field is arguably present in Leibniz, who was certainly hostile to Newtonian atomism. Despite the fact that his equally hostility to action at a distance muddies the water. It is usually credited to the Jesuit mathematician and scientist Joseph Boscovich (1711-87) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), both of whom was influenced by the scientist, Michael Faraday (1791-1867), with whose work the physical notion became established. In his paper On the Physical Character of the Lines of Magnetic Force (1852). Faraday was to suggest several criteria for assessing the physical reality of lines of force, such as whether they are affected by an intervening material medium, whether the motion depends on the nature of what is placed at the receiving end. As far as electromagnetic fields go, Faraday himself inclined to the view that the mathematical similarity between heat flow, currents, and electromagnetic lines of force was evidence for the physical reality of the intervening medium.
Once, again, our mentioned recognition for which its case value, may turn of its view, especially a view s associated with the American psychologist and philosopher William James (1842-1910), in that the truths of a statement can be defined in terms of a utility of accepting it. Communicated, so much as a dispiriting position for which its place of valuation may be viewed as an objection. Since there are things that are false, as it may be useful to accept, and conversely there are things that are true and that it may be damaging to accept. Nevertheless, there are deep connections between the idea that a representation system is accorded, and the likely success of the projects in progressive formality, by its possession. The evolution of a system of representation either perceptual or linguistic, seems bounded to connect successes with everything adapting or with utility in the modest sense. The Wittgenstein doctrine stipulates the meaning of use that upon the nature of belief and its relations with human attitude, emotion and the idea that belief in the truths on one hand, the action of the other. One way of binding with cement, wherefore the connexion is found in the idea that natural selection becomes much as much in adapting us to the cognitive creatures, because beliefs have effects, they work. Pragmatism can be found in Kants doctrine, and continued to play an influencing role in the theory of meaning and truths.
James, (1842-1910), although with characteristic generosity exaggerated in his debt to Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914), he charted that the method of doubt encouraged people to pretend to doubt what they did not doubt in their hearts, and criticize its individualists insistence, that the ultimate test of certainty is to be found in the individuals personalized consciousness.
From his earliest writings, James understood cognitive processes in teleological terms, as he thought that it holds some assistance in satisfactory interests. His will to Believe doctrine, the view that we are sometimes justified in believing beyond the evidential relics upon the notion that a beliefs benefits are relevant to its justification. His pragmatic method of analysing philosophical problems, for which requires that we find the meaning of terms by examining their application to objects in experimental situations, similarly reflects the teleological approach in its attention to consequences.
Such an approach, however, sets James theory of meaning apart from verification, dismissive of metaphysics. Unlike the verificationalist, who takes cognitive meaning to be a matter only of consequences in sensory experience. James took pragmatic meaning to include emotional and matter responses. Moreover, his, metaphysical standard of value, not a way of dismissing them as meaningless. It should also be noted that in a greater extent, circumspective moments James did not hold that even his broad set of consequences was exhaustive of a terms meaning. Theism, for example, he took to have antecedently, definitional meaning, in addition to its varying degree of importance and chance upon an important pragmatic meaning.
James theory of truths reflects upon his teleological conception of cognition, by considering a true belief to be one which is compatible with our existing system of beliefs, and leads us to satisfactory interaction with the world.
However, Peirces famous pragmatist principle is a rule of logic employed in clarifying our concepts and ideas. Consider the claim the liquid in a flask is an acid, if, we believe this, we except that it would turn red: We accept an action of ours to have certain experimental results. The pragmatic principle holds that listing the conditional expectations of this kind, in that we associate such immediacy with applications of a conceptual representation that provides a complete and orderly sets clarification of the concept. This abides to the relevance that is associated to the logic of abduction, finding its term as introduced by the American philosopher and polymath Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), wherefore, the process of using evidence to reach a wider conclusion, as in inference to the best explanation. Peirce described abduction as a creative process, but stressed that the results are subject to rational evaluation, however, he anticipated for the pessimism about the prospects of confirmation theory, denying that we can assess the results of abduction in terms of probability. Taken, that a Clarificationists using the pragmatic principle provides all the information about the content of a hypothesis that is relevantly to decide whether it is worth testing.
To a greater extent, and most important, is the famed apprehension of the pragmatic principle, in so that, Peirces account of reality, is taken to something to be real, so that by this single case we think it is fated to be agreed upon by all who investigate the matter to which it stands, in other words, if I believe that it is really the case that P, then I except that if anyone were to inquire depthfully into the finding measure into whether p, would appear at the belief that p is not, after all, part of the theory that the experimental consequences of our actions should be specified by a warranted empiricist vocabulary-Peirce insisted that perceptual theories are abounding in latency. Even so, nor is it his view that the collected conditionals do or not clarify a concept as all analytic. In addition, in later writings, he argues that the pragmatic principle could only be made plausible to someone who accepted its metaphysical realism: It requires that would-bees are objective and, of course, real.
If realism itself can be given a fairly quick clarification, it is more difficult to chart the various forms of supposition, for they seem legendary. Other opponents deny that the entitles posited by the relevant discourses that exist or at least exists: The standard example is idealism that reality is somehow mind-curative or mind-co-ordinated-that real object comprising the external world is dependently of eloping minds, but only exists as in some way correlative to the mental operations. The doctrine assembled of idealism enters on the conceptual note that reality as we understand this as meaningful and reflects the working of mindful purposes. And it construes this as meaning that the inquiring mind itself makes of a formative constellations and not of any mere understanding of the nature of the real bit even the resulting charger that we characterize with it.
Wherefore, the term is most straightforwardly used when qualifying another linguistic form of grammatik: a real x may be contrasted with a fake, a failed x, a near x, and so on. To treat something as real, without qualification, is to suppose it to be part of the actualized world. To reify something is to suppose that we have committed by some indoctrinated treatise, as that of a theory. The central error in thinking of reality and the totality of existence is to think of the unreal as a separate domain of things, perhaps, unfairly to that of the benefits of existence.
Such that non-existence of all things, as the product of logical confusion of treating the term nothing as itself a referring expression instead of a quantifier. (Stating informally as a quantifier is an expression that reports of a quantity of times that a predicate is satisfied in some class of things, i.e., in a domain.) This confusion leads the unsuspecting to think that a sentence such as Nothing is all around us talks of a special kind of thing that is all around us, when in fact it merely denies that the predicate is all around us have appreciations. The feelings that lad some philosophers and theologians, notably Heidegger, to talk of the experience of nothing, is not properly the experience of anything, but rather the failure of a hope or expectations that there would be something of some kind at some point. This may arise in quite everyday cases, as when one finds that the article of functions one expected to see as usual, in the corner has disappeared. The difference between existentialist and analytic philosophy, on the point of what, whereas the former is afraid of nothing, and the latter think that there is nothing to be afraid of.
A rather different set of concerns arises when actions are specified in terms of doing nothing, saying nothing may be an admission of guilt, and doing nothing in some circumstances may be tantamount to murder. Still, other substitutional problems arise over conceptualizing empty space and time.
Whereas, the standard opposition between those who affirm and those who deny, the real existence of some kind of thing or some kind of fact or state of affairs. Almost any area of discourse may be the focus of its dispute: The external world, the past and future, other minds, mathematical objects, possibilities, universals, moral or aesthetic properties are examples. There be to one influential suggestion, as associated with the British philosopher of logic and language, and the most determinative of philosophers centred round Anthony Dummett (1925), to which is borrowed from the intuitionistic critique of classical mathematics, and suggested that the unrestricted use of the principle of bivalence is the trademark of realism. However, this ha to overcome counter-examples both ways: Although Aquinas was a moral realist, he held that moral really was not sufficiently structured to make true or false every moral claim. Unlike Kant who believed that he could use the law of bivalence happily in mathematics, precisely because it was only our own construction. Realism can itself be subdivided: Kant, for example, combines empirical realism (within the phenomenal world the realist says the right things-surrounding objects really exist and independent of us and our mental states) with transcendental idealism (the phenomenal world as a whole reflects the structures imposed on it by the activity of our minds as they render it intelligible to us). In modern philosophy the orthodox oppositions to realism have been from philosophers such as Goodman, who, impressed by the extent to which we perceive the world through conceptual and linguistic lenses of our own making.
Assigned to the modern treatment of existence in the theory of quantification is sometimes put by saying that existence is not a predicate. The idea is that the existential quantify themselves as an operator on a predicate, indicating that the property it expresses has instances. Existence is therefore treated as a second-order property, or a property of properties. It is fitting to say, that in this it is like number, for when we say that these things of a kind, we do not describe the thing (ad we would if we said there are red things of the kind), but instead attribute a property to the kind itself. The parallelled numbers are exploited by the German mathematician and philosopher of mathematics Gottlob Frége in the dictum that affirmation of existence is merely denied of the number nought. A problem, nevertheless, proves accountable for its created by sentences like This exists, where some particular thing is undirected, such that a sentence seems to express a contingent truths (for this insight has not existed), yet no other predicate is involved. This exists is. Therefore, unlike Tamed tigers exist, where a property is said to have an instance, for the word this and does not locate a property, but only the likeness of an individual.
Possible worlds seem able to differ from each other purely in the presence or absence of individuals, and not merely in the distribution of exemplification of properties.
The philosophical ponderance over which to set upon the unreal, as belonging to the domain of Being. Nonetheless, there is little for us that can be said with the philosophers study. So it is not apparent that there can be such a subject for being by itself. Nevertheless, the concept had a central place in philosophy from Parmenides to Heidegger. The essential question of why is there something and not of nothing? Prompting over logical reflection on what it is for a universal to have an instance, and as long history of attempts to explain contingent existence, by which id to reference and a necessary ground.
In the transition, ever since Plato, this ground becomes a self-sufficient, perfect, unchanging, and external something, identified with Good or God, but whose relation with the everyday world continues to be cloudy. The celebrated argument for the existence of God was first announced by Anselm in his Proslogin. The argument by defining God as something than which nothing greater can be conceived. God then exists in the understanding since we understand this concept. However, if he only existed in the understanding something greater could be conceived, for a being that exists in reality is greater than one that exists in the understanding. Bu then, we can conceive of something greater than that than which nothing greater can be conceived, which is contradictory. Therefore, God cannot exist on the understanding, but exists in reality.
An influential argument (or family of arguments) for the existence of God, finding its premisses are that all natural things are dependent for their existence on something else. The totality of dependence brings about itself a non-dependent, or necessarily existence, for being that which is God. Like the argument to design, the cosmological argument was attacked by the Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume (1711-76) and Immanuel Kant.
Its main problem, nonetheless, is that it requires us to make sense of the notion of necessary existence. For if the answer to the question of why anything exists is that some other thing of a similar kind exists, the question simply arises again. How particularized is the problem for which the actualization that came beyond doubt, becoming undefinably undetermined or otherwise by way of some unidentified fragment or whole that God persuasively holds to be true? Extricating the combinations of plexuity and considerations made under the mystifications of a dilemma give cause to be something as given to expression, to emotion or as if made prominently by stress or an emphasis by putting an end among the questions that must exist inherently? : It must not be an entity of which the same kinds of questions can be raised. The other problem with the argument is attributing concern and care to the deity, not for connecting the necessarily existent being it derives with human values and aspirations.
The ontological argument has been treated by modern theologians such as Barth, following Hegel, not so much as a proof with which to confront the unconverted, but as an explanation of the deep meaning of religious belief. Collingwood, regards the argument s proving not that because our idea of God is that of it quo maius cogitare viequit, therefore God exists, but proving that because this is our idea of God, we stand committed to belief in its existence. Its existence is a metaphysical point or absolute pre-supposition of certain forms of thought.
In the 20th century, modal versions of the ontological argument have been propounded by the American philosophers Charles Hertshorne, Norman Malcolm, and Alvin Plantinge. One version is to define something as unsurpassably great, if it exists and is perfect in every possible world. Then, to allow that it is at least possible that an unsurpassable great being existing. This means that there is a possible world in which such a being exists. However, if it exists in one world, it exists in all (for the fact that such a being exists in a world that entails, in at least, it exists and is perfect in every world), so, it exists necessarily. The correct response to this argument is to disallow the apparently reasonable concession that it is possible that such a being exists. This concession is much more dangerous than it looks, since in the modal logic, involved from possibly necessarily p, we can device necessarily p. A symmetrical proof starting from the assumption that it is possibly that such is not exist would derive that it is impossible that it exists.
The doctrine that it makes an ethical difference of whether an agent actively intervenes to bring about a result, or omits to act in circumstance in which it is foreseen, that as a result of the omission brings the same formation. Thus, suppose that I wish you dead. If I act to bring about your death, I am a murderer, however, if I happily discover you in danger of death, and fail to act to save you, I am not acting, and therefore, according to the doctrine of acts and omissions not a murderer. Critics implore that omissions can be as deliberate and immoral as I am responsible for your food and fact to feed you. Only omission is surely a killing, Doing nothing can be a way of doing something, or in other worlds, absence of bodily movement can also constitute acting negligently, or deliberately, and defending on the context, may be a way of deceiving, betraying, or killing. Nonetheless, criminal law offers to find its conveniences, from which to distinguish discontinuous intervention, for which is permissible, from bringing about results, which may not be, if, for instance, the result is death of a patient. The question is whether the difference, if there is one, is, between acting and omitting to act be discernibly or defined in a way that bars a general moral might.
The double effect of a principle attempting to define when an action that had both good and bad results are morally permissible. I one formation such an action is permissible if (1) The action is not wrong in itself, (2) the bad consequences are not that which is intended (3) the good is not itself a result of the bad consequences, and (4) the two consequential effects are commensurate. Thus, for instance, I might justifiably bomb an enemy factory, foreseeing but intending that the death of nearby civilians, whereas bombing the death of nearby civilians intentionally would be disallowed. The principle has its roots in Thomist moral philosophy, accordingly. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), held that it is meaningless to ask whether a human being is two things (soul and body) or, only just as it is meaningless to ask whether the wax and the shape given to it by the stamp are one: On this analogy the sound is yet a form of the body. Life after death is possible only because a form itself does not perish (pricking is a loss of form).
And is, therefore, in some sense available to reactivate a new body, therefore, not I who survive body death, but I may be resurrected in the same personalized body that becomes reanimated by the same form, that which Aquinass account, as a person has no privilège self-understanding, we understand ourselves as we do everything else, by way of sense experience and abstraction, and knowing the principle of our own lives is an achievement, not as a given. Difficultly at this point, led the logical positivist to abandon the notion of an epistemological foundation altogether, and to flirt with the coherence theory of truth, it is widely accepted that trying to make the connexion between thought and experience through basic sentence s depends on an untenable myth of the given
The special way that we each have of knowing our own thoughts, intentions, and sensationalist have brought in the many philosophical behaviorist and functionalist tendencies, that have found it important to deny that there is such a special way, arguing the way that I know of my own mind inasmuch as the way that I know of yours, e.g., by seeing what I say when asked. Others, however, point out that the behaviour of reporting the result of introspection in a particular and legitimate kind of behavioural access that deserves notice in any account of historically human psychology. The historical philosophy of reflection upon the astute of history, or of historical, thinking, finds the term was used in the 18th century, e.g., by Volante was to mean critical historical thinking as opposed to the mere collection and repetition of stories about the past. In Hegelian, particularly by conflicting elements within his own system, however, it came to man universal or world history. The Enlightenment confidence was being replaced by science, reason, and understanding that gave history a progressive moral thread, and under the influence of the German philosopher, whom spreading Romanticism reached Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), and, Immanuel Kant, this idea took it further to hold, so that philosophy of history cannot be the detecting of a grand system, the unfolding of the evolution of human nature as witnessed in successive sages (the progress of rationality or of Spirit). This essential speculative philosophy of history is given an extra Kantian twist in the German idealist Johann Fichte, in whom the extra association of temporal succession with logical implication introduces the idea that concepts themselves are the dynamic engines of historical change. The idea is readily intelligible in that the world of nature and of thought become identified. The work of Herder, Kant, Flichte and Schelling is synthesized by Hegel: History has a plot, as too, this is the moral development of man, only to equate with the freedom within the state, this in turn is the development of thought, or a logical development in which various necessary moment in the life of the concept are successively achieved and improved upon. Hegels method is at its most successful, when the object is the history of ideas, and the evolution of thinking may march in steps with logical oppositions and their resolution encounters red by various systems of thought.
Within the revolutionary communism, Karl Marx (1818-83) and the German social philosopher Friedrich Engels (1820-95), there emerges a rather different kind of story, based upon Hefls progressive structure not laying the achievement of the goal of history to a future in which the political condition for freedom comes to exist, so that economic and political fears than reason is in the engine room. Although, it is such that speculations upon the history may it be continued to be written, notably: late examples, by the late 19th century large-scale speculation of this kind with the nature of historical understanding, and in particular with a comparison between the, methods of natural science and with the historians. For writers such as the German neo-Kantian Wilhelm Windelband and the German philosopher and literary critic and historian Wilhelm Dilthey, it is important to show that the human sciences such, as history is objective and legitimate, nonetheless they are in some way deferent from the enquiry of the scientist. Since the subjective-matter is the past thought and actions of human brings, what is needed and actions of human beings, past thought and actions of human beings, what is needed is an ability to re-live that past thought, knowing the deliberations of past agents, as if they were the historians own. The most influential British writer on this theme was the philosopher and historian George Collingwood (1889-1943) whose, The Idea of History (1946), contains an extensive defence of the verstehe approach, but it is nonetheless, the explanation from their actions, however, by re-living the situation as our understanding that understanding others is not gained by the tactic use of a theory, enabling us to infer what thoughts or intentionality experienced, again, the matter to which the subjective-matters of past thoughts and actions, as I have a human ability of knowing the deliberations of past agents as if they were the historians own. The immediate question of the form of historical explanation, and the fact that general laws have other than no place or any apprentices in the order of a minor place in the human sciences, it is also prominent in thoughts about distinctiveness as to regain their actions, but by re-living the situation in or thereby an understanding of what they experience and thought.
The view that everyday attributions of intention, belief and meaning to other persons proceeded via tacit use of a theory that enables ne to construct these interpretations as explanations of their doings. The view is commonly hold along with functionalism, according to which psychological states theoretical entities, identified by the network of their causes and effects. The theory-theory had different implications, depending on which feature of theories is being stressed. Theories may be though of as capable of formalization, as yielding predications and explanations, as achieved by a process of theorizing, as achieved by predictions and explanations, as achieved by a process of theorizing, as answering to empirically evince that is in principle describable without them, as liable to be overturned by newer and better theories, and o on. The main problem with seeing our understanding of others as the outcome of a piece of theorizing is the non-existence of a medium in which this theory can be couched, as the child learns simultaneously he minds of others and the meaning of terms in its native language.
Our understanding of others is not gained by the tacit use of a theory. Enabling us to infer what thoughts or intentions explain their actions, however, by re-living the situation in their moccasins, or from their point of view, and thereby understanding what they experienced and thought, and therefore expressed. Understanding others is achieved when we can ourselves deliberate as they did, and hear their words as if they are our own. The suggestion is a modern development of the verstehen tradition associated with Dilthey, Weber and Collngwood.
Much as much, it is therefore, in some sense available to reactivate a new body, however, not that I, who survives bodily death, but I may be resurrected in the same body that becomes reanimated by the same form, in that of Aquinass account, a person hasn’t the privilege of self-understanding. We understand ourselves, just as we do everything else, that through the sense experience, in that of an abstraction, may justly be of knowing the principle of our own lives, is to obtainably achieve, and not as a given. In the theory of knowledge that knowing Aquinas holds the Aristotelian doctrine that knowing entails some similarities between the knower and what there is to be known: A humans corporal nature, therefore, requires that knowledge start with sense perception. As yet, the same limitations that do not apply of bringing further the levelling stabilities that are contained within the hierarchical mosaic, such as the celestial heavens that open in bringing forth to angles.
In the domain of theology Aquinas deploys the distraction emphasized by Eringena, between the existence of God in understanding the significance of justifications: They are (1) Motion is only explicable if there exists an unmoved, a first mover (2) the chain of efficient causes demands a first cause (3) the contingent character of existing things in the wold demands a different order of existence, or in other words as something that has a necessary existence (4) the gradation of value in things in the world requires the existence of something that is most valuable, or perfect, and (5) the orderly character of events points to a final cause, or end t which all things are directed, and the existence of this end demands a being that ordained it. All the arguments are physico-theological arguments, in that between reason and faith, still, Aquinas lays out proofs for the existence of God.
He readily recognizes that there are doctrines such that are the Incarnation and the nature of the Trinity, know only through revelations, and whose acceptance is more a matter of moral will. Gods essence is identified with his existence, as pure activity. God is simple, containing no potential. No matter how, we cannot obtain knowledge of what God is (his quiddity), perhaps, doing the same work as the principle of charity, but suggesting that we regulate our procedures of interpretation by maximizing the extent to which we see the subject s humanly reasonable, than the extent to which we see the subject as right about things. Whereby remaining content with descriptions that apply to him partly by way of analogy, God reveals of him, who is not actualized by and for himself.
The immediate problem availed in ethics is supported by the English philosopher Phillippa Foot, in her The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect (1967). Where a runaway train or trolley comes to a section in the track that is under construction and impassable. One person is working on one part and five on the other, and the trolley will put an end to anyone working on the branch it enters. Clearly, to most minds, the driver should steer for the fewest populated branch. But now suppose that, left to itself, it will enter the branch with its five employs that are there, and you as a bystander can intervene, altering the points so that it veers through the other. Is it right or obligors, or even permissible for you to do this, thereby, apparently involving yourself in ways that responsibility ends in a death of one person? After all, who have you wronged if you leave it to go its own way? The situation is similarly standardized of others in which utilitarian reasoning seems to lead to one course of action, but a persons integrity or principles may oppose it.
Describing events that haphazardly happen does not of itself permits us to talk of rationality and intention, which are the categories we may apply if we conceive of them as action. We think of ourselves not only passively, as creatures that make things happen. Understanding this distinction gives forth of its many major problems concerning the nature of an agency for the causation of bodily events by mental events, and of understanding the will and free will. Other problems in the theory of action include drawing the distinction between an action and its consequence, and describing the structure involved when we do one thing by; doing another thing. Even the planning and dating where someone shoots someone on one day and in one place, whereby the victim then dies on another day and in another place. Where and when did the murderous act take place?
Causation, least of mention, is not clear that only events are created by and for itself. Kant cites the example o a cannonball at rest and stationed upon a cushion, but causing the cushion to be the shape that it is, and thus to suggest that the causal states of affairs or objects or facts may also be casually related. All of which, the central problem is to understand the elements of necessitation or determinacy of the future. Events, Hume thought, are in themselves loose and separate: How then are we to conceive of others? The relationship seems not too perceptible, for all that perception gives us (Hume argues) is knowledge of the patterns that events do, actually falling into than any acquaintance with the connections determining the pattern. It is, however, clear that our conception of everyday objects are largely determined by their casual powers, and all our action is based on the belief that these causal powers are stable and reliable. Although scientific investigation can give us wider and deeper dependable patterns, it seems incapable of bringing us any nearer to the must of causal necessitation. Particular examples o f puzzles with causalities are quite apart from general problems of forming any conception of what it is: How are we to understand the casual interaction between mind and body? How can the present, which exists, or its existence to a past that no longer exists? How is the stability of the casual order to be understood? Is backward causality possible? Is causation a concept needed in science, or dispensable?
The news concerning free-will, is nonetheless, a problem for which is to reconcile our everyday consciousness of ourselves as agent, with the best view of what science tells us that we are. Determinism is one part of the problem. It may be defined as the doctrine that every event has a cause. More precisely, for any event C, there will be one antecedent states of nature N, and a law of nature L, such that given L, N will be followed by C. But if this is true of every event, it is true of events such as my doing something or choosing to do something. So my choosing or doing something is fixed by some antecedent state N an d the laws. Since determinism is universal these in turn are fixed, and so backwards to events for which I am clearly not responsible (events before my birth, for example). So, no events can be voluntary or free, where that means that they come about purely because of my willing them I could have done otherwise. If determinism is true, then there will be antecedent states and laws already determining such events: How then can I truly be said to be their author, or be responsible for them?
Reactions to this problem are commonly classified as: (1) Hard determinism. This accepts the conflict and denies that you have real freedom or responsibility (2) Soft determinism or compatibility, whereby reactions in this family assert that everything you should be from a notion of freedom is quite compatible with determinism. In particular, if your actions are caused, it can often be true of you that you could have done otherwise if you had chosen, and this may be enough to render you liable to be held unacceptable (the fact that previous events will have caused you to choose as you did, and is deemed irrelevant on this option). (3) Libertarianism, as this is the view that while compatibilism is only an evasion, there is a more substantiative, real notions of freedom that can yet be preserved in the face of determinism (or, of indeterminism). In Kant, while the empirical or phenomenal self is determined and not free, whereas the noumenal or rational self is capable of being rational, free action. However, the noumeal self exists outside the categorical priorities of space and time, as this freedom seems to be of a doubtful value as other libertarian avenues do include of suggesting that the problem is badly framed, for instance, because the definition of determinism breaks down, or postulates by its suggesting that there are two independent but consistent ways of looking at an agent, the scientific and the humanistic, wherefore it is only through confusing them that the problem seems urgent. Nevertheless, these avenues have gained general popularity, as an error to confuse determinism and fatalism.
The dilemma for which determinism is for itself often supposes of an action that seems as the end of a causal chain, or, perhaps, by some hieratical set of suppositional actions that would stretch back in time to events for which an agent has no conceivable responsibility, then the agent is not responsible for the action.
Once, again, the dilemma adds that if an action is not the end of such a chain, then either two or one of its causes occurs at random, in that no antecedent events brought it about, and in that case nobody is responsible for its ever to occur. So, whether or not determinism is true, responsibility is shown to be illusory.
Still, there is to say, to have a will is to be able to desire an outcome and to purpose to bring it about. Strength of will, or firmness of purpose, is supposed to be good and weakness of will or akrasia badly.
A mental act of willing or trying whose presence is sometimes supposed to make the difference between intentional and voluntary action, as well of mere behaviour. The theory that there are such acts is problematic, and the idea that they make the required difference is a case of explaining a phenomenon by citing another that raises exactly the same problem, since the intentional or voluntary nature of the set of volition now needs explanation. For determinism to act in accordance with the law of autonomy or freedom, is that in ascendance with universal moral law and regardless of selfish advantage.
A categorical notion in the work as contrasted in Kantian ethics show of a hypothetical imperative that embeds of a commentary which is in place only given some antecedent desire or project. If you want to look wise, stay quiet. The injunction to stay quiet only applies to those with the antecedent desire or inclination: If one has no desire to look wise the injunction or advice lapses. A categorical imperative cannot be so avoided, it is a requirement that binds anybody, regardless of their inclination,. It could be repressed as, for example, Tell the truths (regardless of whether you want to or not). The distinction is not always mistakably presumed or absence of the conditional or hypothetical form: If you crave drink, don’t become a bartender may be regarded as an absolute injunction applying to anyone, although only activated in the case of those with the stated desire.
In Grundlegung zur Metaphsik der Sitten (1785), Kant discussed some of the given forms of categorical imperatives, such that of (1) The formula of universal law: act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become universal law, (2) the formula of the law of nature: Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature, (3) the formula of the end-in-itself, Act in such a way that you always treat humanity of whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as an end, but always at the same time as an end, (4) the formula of autonomy, or consideration; the will of every rational being a will which makes universal law, and (5) the formula of the Kingdom of Ends, which provides a model for systematic union of different rational beings under common laws.
A central object in the study of Kants ethics is to understand the expressions of the inescapable, binding requirements of their categorical importance, and to understand whether they are equivalent at some deep level. Kants own application of the notions are always convincing: One cause of confusion is relating Kants ethical values to theories such as ;expressionism in that it is easy but imperatively must that it cannot be the expression of a sentiment, yet, it must derive from something unconditional or necessary such as the voice of reason. The standard mood of sentences used to issue request and commands are their imperative needs to issue as basic the need to communicate information, and as such to animals signalling systems may as often be interpreted either way, and understanding the relationship between commands and other action-guiding uses of language, such as ethical discourse. The ethical theory of prescriptivism in fact equates the two functions. A further question is whether there is an imperative logic. Hump that bale seems to follows from Tote that barge and hump that bale, follows from Its windy and its raining:.But it is harder to say how to include other forms, does Shut the door or shut the window follows from Shut the window, for example? The usual way to develop an imperative logic is to work in terms of the possibility of satisfying the other one command without satisfying the other, thereby turning it into a variation of ordinary deductive logic.
Despite the fact that the morality of people and their ethics amount to the same thing, there is a usage that I restart morality to systems such as that of Kant, based on notions given as duty, obligation, and principles of conduct, reserving ethics for the more Aristotelian approach to practical reasoning as based on the valuing notions that are characterized by their particular virtue, and generally avoiding the separation of moral considerations from other practical considerations. The scholarly issues are complicated and complex, with some writers seeing Kant as more Aristotelian,. And Aristotle as more involved with a separate sphere of responsibility and duty, than the simple contrast suggests.
A major topic of philosophical inquiry, especially in Aristotle, and subsequently since the 17th and 18th centuries, when the science of man began to probe into human motivation and emotion. For such as these, the French moralist, or Hutcheson, Hume, Smith and Kant, a prime task as to delineate the variety of human reactions and motivations. Such an inquiry would locate our propensity for moral thinking among other faculties, such as perception and reason, and other tendencies as empathy, sympathy or self-interest. The task continues especially in the light of a post-Darwinian understanding of ourselves.
In some moral systems, notably that of Immanuel Kant, real moral worth comes only with interactivity, justly because it is right. However, if you do what is purposely becoming, equitable, but from some other equitable motive, such as the fear or prudence, no moral merit accrues to you. Yet, that in turn seems to discount other admirable motivations, as acting from main-sheet benevolence, or sympathy. The question is how to balance these opposing ideas and how to understand acting from a sense of obligation without duty or rightness , through which their beginning to seem a kind of fetish. It thus stands opposed to ethics and relying on highly general and abstractive principles, particularly. Those associated with the Kantian categorical imperatives. The view may go as far back as to say that taken in its own, no consideration point, for that which of any particular way of life, that, least of mention, the contributing steps so taken as forwarded by reason or be to an understanding estimate that can only proceed by identifying salient features of a situation that weigh on ones side or another.
As random moral dilemmas set out with intense concern, inasmuch as philosophical matters that exert a profound but influential defence of common sense. Situations in which each possible course of action breeches some otherwise binding moral principle, are, nonetheless, serious dilemmas making the stuff of many tragedies. The conflict can be described in different was. One suggestion is that whichever action the subject undertakes, that he or she does something wrong. Another is that his is not so, for the dilemma means that in the circumstances for what she or he did was right as any alternate. It is important to the phenomenology of these cases that action leaves a residue of guilt and remorse, even though it had proved it was not the subjects fault that she or he were considering the dilemma, that the rationality of emotions can be contested. Any normality with more than one fundamental principle seems capable of generating dilemmas, however, dilemmas exist, such as where a mother must decide which of two children to sacrifice, least of mention, no principles are pitted against each other, only if we accept that dilemmas from principles are real and important, this fact can then be used to approach in themselves, such as of utilitarianism, to espouse various kinds may, perhaps, be centred upon the possibility of relating to independent feelings, liken to recognize only one sovereign principle. Alternatively, of regretting the existence of dilemmas and the unordered jumble of furthering principles, in that of creating several of them, a theorist may use their occurrences to encounter upon that which it is to argue for the desirability of locating and promoting a single sovereign principle.
Nevertheless, some theories into ethics see the subject in terms of a number of laws (as in the Ten Commandments). The status of these laws may be that they are the edicts of a divine lawmaker, or that they are truths of reason, given to its situational ethics, virtue ethics, regarding them as at best rules-of-thumb, and, frequently disguising the great complexity of practical representations that for reason has placed the Kantian notions of their moral law.
In continence, the natural law possibility points of the view of the states that law and morality are especially associated with St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), such that his synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian doctrine was eventually to provide the main philosophical underpinning of the Catholic church. Nevertheless, to a greater extent of any attempt to cement the moral and legal order and together within the nature of the cosmos or the nature of human beings, in which sense it found in some Protestant writings, under which had arguably derived functions. From a Platonic view of ethics and its agedly implicit advance of Stoicism. Its law stands above and apart from the activities of human lawmakers: It constitutes an objective set of principles that can be seen as in and for themselves by means of natural usages or by reason itself, additionally, (in religious verses of them), that express of Gods will for creation. Non-religious versions of the theory substitute objective conditions for humans flourishing as the source of constraints, upon permissible actions and social arrangements within the natural law tradition. Different views have been held about the relationship between the rule of the law and Gods will. Grothius, for instance, sides with the view that the content of natural law is independent of any will, including that of God.
While the German natural theorist and historian Samuel von Pufendorf (1632-94) takes the opposite view. His great work was the De Jure Naturae et Gentium, 1672, and its English translation is Of the Law of Nature and Nations, 1710. Pufendorf was influenced by Descartes, Hobbes and the scientific revolution of the 17th century, his ambition was to introduce a newly scientific mathematical treatment on ethics and law, free from the tainted Aristotelian underpinning of scholasticism. Like that of his contemporary-Locke. His conception of natural laws include rational and religious principles, making it only a partial forerunner of more resolutely empiricist and political treatment in the Enlightenment.
Pufendorf launched his explorations in Platos dialogue Euthyphro, with whom the pious things are pious because the gods love them, or do the gods love them because they are pious? The dilemma poses the question of whether value can be conceived as the upshot o the choice of any mind, even a divine one. On the first option the choice of the gods creates goodness and value. Even if this is intelligible it seems to make it impossible to praise the gods, for it is then vacuously true that they choose the good. On the second option we have to understand a source of value lying behind or beyond the will even of the gods, and by which they can be evaluated. The elegant solution of Aquinas is and is therefore distinct form is willing, but not distinct from him.
The dilemma arises whatever the source of authority is supposed to be. Do we care about the good because it is good, or do we just call good those things that we care about? It also generalizes to affect our understanding of the authority of other things: Mathematics, or necessary truths, for example, are truths necessary because we deem them to be so, or do we deem them to be so because they are necessary?
The natural law tradition may either assume a stranger form, in which it is claimed that various facts entails of primary and secondary qualities, any of which is claimed that various facts entail values, reason by itself is capable of discerning moral requirements. As in the ethics of Kant, these requirements are supposed binding on all human beings, regardless of their desires.
The supposed natural or innate abilities of the mind to know the first principle of ethics and moral reasoning, wherein, those expressions are assigned and related to those that distinctions are which make in terms contribution to the function of the whole, as completed definitions of them, their phraseological impression is termed synderesis (or, syntetesis) although traced to Aristotle, the phrase came to the modern era through St. Jerome, whose scintilla conscientiae (gleam of conscience) awaits a popular concept in early scholasticism. Nonetheless, it is mainly associated in Aquinas as an infallible natural, simple and immediate grasp of first moral principles. Conscience, by contrast, is ,more concerned with particular instances of right and wrong, and can be in error, under which the assertion that is taken as fundamental, at least for the purposes of the branch of enquiry in hand.
It is, nevertheless, the view interpreted within the particular states of law and morality especially associated with Aquinas and the subsequent scholastic tradition, showing for itself the enthusiasm for reform for its own sake. Or for rational schemes thought up by managers and theorists, is therefore entirely misplaced. Major o exponent s of this theme include the British absolute idealist Herbert Francis Bradley (1846-1924) and Austrian economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek. The notably the idealism of Bradley, there is the same doctrine that change is contradictory and consequently unreal: The Absolute is changeless. A way of sympathizing a little with his idea is to reflect that any scientific explanation of change will proceed by finding an unchanging law operating, or an unchanging quantity conserved in the change, so that explanation of change always proceeds by finding that which is unchanged. The metaphysical problem of change is to shake off the idea that each moment is created afresh, and to obtain a conception of events or processes as having a genuinely historical reality, Really extended and unfolding in time, as opposed to being composites of discrete temporal atoms. A step toward this end may be to see time itself not as an infinite container within which discrete events are located, bu as a kind of logical construction from the flux of events. This relational view of time was advocated by Leibniz and a subject of the debate between him and Newtons Absolutist pupil, Clarke.
Generally, nature is an indefinitely mutable term, changing as our scientific conception of the world changes, and often best seen as signifying a contrast with something considered not part of nature. The term applies both to individual species (it is the nature of gold to be dense or of dogs to be friendly), and also to the natural world as a whole. The sense in which it applies to species quickly links up with ethical and aesthetic ideals: A thing ought to realize its nature, what is natural is what it is good for a thing to become, it is natural for humans to be healthy or two-legged, and departure from this is a misfortune or deformity,. The associations of what is natural with what it is good to become is visible in Plato, and is the central idea of Aristotles philosophy of nature. Unfortunately, the pinnacle of nature in this sense is the mature adult male citizen, with the rest of what we would call the natural world, including women, slaves, children and other species, not quite making it.
Nature in general can, however, function as a foil to any idea inasmuch as a source of ideals: In this sense fallen nature is contrasted with a supposed celestial realization of the forms. The theory of forms is probably the most characteristic, and most contested of the doctrines of Plato. In the background, i.e., the Pythagorean conception of form as the initial orientation to physical nature, bu also the sceptical doctrine associated with the Greek philosopher Cratylus, and is sometimes thought to have been a teacher of Plato before Socrates. He is famous for capping the doctrine of Ephesus of Heraclitus, whereby the guiding idea of his philosophy was that of the logos, is capable of being heard or heardedly by people, it unifies opposites, and it is somehow associated with fire, which is preeminent among the four elements that Heraclitus distinguishes: Fire, air (breath, the stuff of which souls composed), earth, and water. Although he is principally remembered for the doctrine of the flux of all things, and the famous statement that you cannot step into the same river twice, for new waters are ever flowing in upon you. The more extreme implication of the doctrine of flux, e.g., the impossibility of categorizing things truly, do not seem consistent with his general epistemology and views of meaning, and were to his follower Cratylus, although the proper conclusion of his views was that the flux cannot be captured in words. According to Aristotle, he eventually held that since regarding that which everywhere in every respect is changing nothing is just to stay silent and wagg ones finger. Platos theory of forms can be seen in part as an action against the impasse to which Cratylus was driven.
The Galilean world view might have been expected to drain nature of its ethical content, however, the term seldom loses its normative force, and the belief in universal natural laws provided its own set of ideals. In the 18th century for example, a painter or writer could be praised as natural, where the qualities expected would include normal (universal) topics treated with simplicity, economy , regularity and harmony. Later on, nature becomes an equally potent emblem of irregularity, wildness, and fertile diversity, but also associated with progress of human history, its incurring definition that has been taken to fit many things as well as transformation, including ordinary human self-consciousness. Nature, being in contrast within integrated phenomenons may include (1) that which is deformed or grotesque or fails to achieve its proper form or function or just the statistically uncommon or unfamiliar, (2) the supernatural, or the world of gods and invisible agencies, (3) the world of rationality and unintelligence, conceived of as distinct from the biological and physical order, or the product of human intervention, and (5) related to that, the world of convention and artifice.
Different conceptions of nature continue to have ethical overtones, for example, the conception of nature red in tooth and claw often provides a justification for aggressive personal and political relations, or the idea that it is womens nature to be one thing or another is taken to be a justification for differential social expectations. The term functions as a fig-leaf for a particular set of stereotypes, and is a proper target of much feminist writings. Feminist epistemology has asked whether different ways of knowing for instance with different criteria of justification, and different emphases on logic and imagination, characterize male and female attempts to understand the world. Such concerns include awareness of the masculine self-image, itself a social variable and potentially distorting characteristics of what thought and action should be. Again, there is a spectrum of concerns from the highly theoretical principles to the relatively practical. In this latter area particular attention is given to the institutional biases that stand in the way of equal opportunities in science and other academic pursuits, or the ideologies that stand in the way of women seeing themselves as leading contributors to various disciplines. However, to more radical feminists such concerns merely exhibit women wanting for themselves the same power and rights over others that men have claimed, and failing to confront the real problem, which is how to live without such symmetrical powers and rights.
In biological determinism, not only influences but constraints and makes inevitable our development as persons with a variety of traits. At its silliest the view postulates such entities as a gene predisposing people to poverty, and it is the particular enemy of thinkers stressing the parental, social, and political determinants of the way we are.
The philosophy of social science is more heavily intertwined with actual social science than in the case of other subjects such as physics or mathematics, since its question is centrally whether there can be such a thing as sociology. The idea of a science of man, devoted to uncovering scientific laws determining the basic dynamic s of human interactions was a cherished ideal of the Enlightenment and reached its heyday with the positivism of writers such as the French philosopher and social theorist Auguste Comte (1798-1957), and the historical materialism of Marx and his followers. Sceptics point out that what happens in society is determined by peoples own ideas of what should happen, and like fashions those ideas change in unpredictable ways as self-consciousness is susceptible to change by any number of external events: Unlike the solar system of celestial mechanics a society is not at all a closed system evolving in accordance with a purely internal dynamic, but constantly responsive to perturbations from the outside.
Internalist hold that in order to know, one has to know that one knows. The reasons by which a belief is justified must be accessible in principle to the subject holding that belief. Externalists deny this requirement, proposing that this makes knowing too difficult to achieve in most normal contexts. The internalist-externalist is sometimes viewed as a debate between those who think that knowledge can be naturalized (externalists) and those who don’t (internalists). Naturalists hold that the evaluative concepts-for example, that justification can be explained in terms of something like reliability. They deny a special normative realm of language that is theoretically different from the kinds of concepts used in factual scientific discourse. Naturalists deny this and hold to the essential difference between the normative and the factual, and the former can never be derived from or constituted by the latter. So, internalists tend to think of reason and rationality as non-explicable in natural, descriptive terms, whereas externalists think such an explanation is possible.
Such a vista is usually seen as a major problem for coherenists, since it lads to radical relativism. This is due to the lack of any principled way of distinguishing systems because coherence is an internal feature of belief systems. And, even so, coherence typically true for the existence of just one system, assembling all our beliefs into a unified body. Such a view has led to the justified science movement in logical positivism, and sometimes transcendental arguments have been used to achieve this uniqueness, arguing from the general nature of belief to the uniqueness of the system of beliefs. Other Coherentists at put to use in observation as a way of picking out the unique system. It is an arguable point to what extent this latter group are still Coherentists, or have moved to a position that is a compounded merger of elements of Foundationalism and coherentism.
In one maintains that there is just one system of beliefs, then one is clearly non-relativistic about epistemic justification. Yet, if one allows a myriad of possible systems, then one falls into extreme relativism. However, there may be a more moderate position where a limited number of alternative systems of knowledge were possible. On a directed version, there would be globally alternatives. There would be several complete and separate systems. On a slightly weak version they would be distinctly local, and is brought upon a coherentist model that ends up with multiple systems and no overall constrains on the proliferation of systems. Moderate relativism would come out as holding to regional substrates, within an international system. In that, relativism about justification is a possibility in both Foundationalist and coherentist theories. However, they’re accounts of internalism and externalism are properties belonging of the epistemological tradition from which has been internalist, with externalism emerging as a genuine option in the twentieth century.
Internalist accounts of justification seem more amendable to relativism than externalist accounts. This, nonetheless, that the most appropriate response, for example, given that Johns belief that he is Napoleon, it is quite rational for him to seek to marshal his armies and buy presents for Josephine. Yet the belief that he is Napoleon requires evaluation. This evaluation, as such beliefs, of ones need for a criteria of rationality. This is a stronger sense of rationality than the instrumental one relating to actions, keyed to the idea that there is quality control involved in holding beliefs. It is at this level that relativism about rationality arises acutely. Are there universal criteria that must be used by anyone wishing to evaluate their beliefs, or do they vary with cultural diversities, in what culture and/or historical epoch? The burden to hold that there is a minimal set of criteria.
On a substantive view, certain beliefs are rational, and others are not, due to the content of the belief. This is evident in the common practice of describing rejected belief-systems as irrational-answers this in the negative. On a substantive view, certain beliefs are rational, and others are not, due to the content of the belief. This is evident in the common practice of describing of the belief-systems as irrational, for example, the world-view of the Middle Ages is oftentimes caricatured in this way.
Such, as the Scottish philosopher, historian and essayist David Hume (1711-76),limits the scope of rationality severely, allowing it to characterise mathematical and logical reasoning, but of belief-formation, nor to play an important role in practical reasoning or ethical or aesthetic deliberation. Humes notorious statement in the Treatise that reason is the slave of the passions, and can aspire to no other office than to serve and obey them is a deliberate reversal of the Plotonic picture of reason (the charioteer) dominating the rather unruly passions (the horses). To accept something as rational is to accept it as making sense, as appropriate, or required, or in accordance with some acknowledged goal, such as aiming at truth or aiming at the good. Although it is frequently thought that it is the ability to reason that sets human bings apart from other animals, there is less consensus over the nature of this ability, whether it requires language. Some philosophers have found the exercise of reason to be a large part of the highest good for human beings. Others, find it to be the one way in which persons act freely, contrasting acting rationality with acting because of uncontrolled passions.
The sociological approach to human behaviour is based on the premise that all social behaviour has a biological basis, and seeks to understand that basis in terms of genetic encoding for features that are then selected for through evolutionary history. The philosophical problem is essentially one of methodology: Of finding criteria for identifying features that can usefully be explained in this way, and for finding criteria for assessing various genetic stories that might provide useful explanations.
There is, of course, a final move that the rationalist can make. He can fall back into dogmatism, saying of some selected inference or conclusion or procedure, this just is what it is to be rational, or, this just is valid inference. It is at this point that the rationalist can fight reason, but he is helpless against faith. Just as faith protects the Hole Trinity, or the Azannde oracle, or the ancestral spirits that can protect reason.
Among these features that are proposed for this kind o f explanation are such things as male dominance, male promiscuity versus female fidelity, propensities to sympathy and other emotions, and the limited altruism characteristic of human beings. The strategy has proved unnecessarily controversial, with proponents accused of ignoring the influence of environmental and social factors in moulding peoples characteristics, e.g., at the limit of silliness, by postulating a gene for poverty, however, there is no need for the approach to commit such errors, since the feature explained sociobiological may be indexed to environment: For instance, it ma y be a propensity to develop some feature in some other environments (for even a propensity to develop propensities . . .) The main problem is to separate genuine explanation from speculative, just so stories which may or may not identify as really selective mechanisms.
Subsequently, in the 19th century attempts were made to base ethical reasoning on the presumed facts about evolution. The movement is particularly associated with the English philosopher of evolution Herbert Spencer (1820-1903),. His first major work was the book Social Statics (1851), which advocated an extreme political libertarianism. The Principles of Psychology was published in 1855, and his very influential Education advocating natural development of intelligence, the creation of pleasurable interest, and the importance of science in the curriculum, appeared in 1861. His First Principles (1862) was followed over the succeeding years by volumes on the Principles of biology and psychology, sociology and ethics. Although he attracted a large public following and attained the stature of a sage, his speculative work has not lasted well, and in his own time there was dissident voices. T.H. Huxley said that Spencers definition of a tragedy was a deduction killed by a fact. Writer and social prophet Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) called him a perfect vacuum, and the American psychologist and philosopher William James (1842-1910) wondered why half of England wanted to bury him in Westminister Abbey, and talked of the hurdy-gurdy monotony of him, his whole system would, as it were, be knocked together out of cracked hemlock.
The premise is that later elements in an evolutionary path are better than earlier ones, the application of this principle then requires seeing western society, laissez-faire capitalism, or some other object of approval, as more evolved than more primitive social forms. Neither the principle nor the applications command much respect. The version of evolutionary ethics called social Darwinism emphasizes the struggle for natural selection, and drawn the conclusion that we should glorify such struggles, usually by enhancing competitive and aggressive relations between people in society or between societies themselves. More recently the relation between evolution and ethics has been re-thought in the light of biological discoveries concerning altruism and kin-selection.
In that, the study of the say in which a variety of higher mental function may be an adaption applicable of a psychology of evolution, a formed response to selective pressures on human populations through evolutionary time. Candidates for such theorizing include material and paternal motivations, capabilities for love and friendship, the development of language as a signalling system, cooperative and aggressive tendencies, our emotional repertoires, our moral reaction, including the disposition to direct and punish those who cheat on an agreement or who turn towards free-riders-those of which who take away the things of others, our cognitive structure and many others. Evolutionary psychology goes hand-in-hand with neurophysiological evidence about the underlying circuitry in the brain which subserves the psychological mechanisms it claims to identify.
For all that, an essential part of the British absolute idealist Herbert Bradley (1846-1924) was largely on the ground s that the self-sufficiency individualized through community and oneself is to contribute to social and other ideals. However, truths as formulated in language is always partial, and dependent upon categories that they are inadequate to the harmonious whole. Nevertheless, these self-contradictory elements somehow contribute to the harmonious whole, or Absolute, lying beyond categorization. Although absolute idealism maintains few adherents today, Bradleys general dissent from empiricism, his holism, and the brilliance and style of his writing continue to make him the most interesting of the late 19th century writers influenced by the German philosopher Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831).
Understandably, something less than the fragmented division that belonging of Bradleys case has a preference, voiced much earlier by the German philosopher, mathematician and polymath was Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), for categorical monadic properties over relations. He was particularly troubled by the relation between that which is known and the more that knows it. In philosophy, the Romantics took from the German philosopher and founder of critical philosophy Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) both the emphasis on free-will and the doctrine that reality is ultimately spiritual, with nature itself a mirror of the human soul. To fix upon one among alternatives as the one to be taken, Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854) foregathers nature of becoming a creative spirit whose aspiration is ever further and more to a completed self-realization, although a movement of more generalized natural imperatives. Romanticism drew on the same intellectual and emotional resources as German idealism was increasingly culminating in the philosophy of Hegel (1770-1831) and of absolute idealism.
Being such in comparison with nature may include (1) that which is deformed or grotesque, or fails to achieve its proper form or function, or just the statistically uncommon or unfamiliar, (2) the supernatural, or the world of gods and invisible agencies, (3) the world of rationality and intelligence, conceived of as distinct from the biological and physical order, (4) that which is manufactured and artefactual, or the product of human invention, and (5) related to it, the world of convention and artifice.
Different conceptions of nature continue to have ethical overtones, for example, the conception of nature red in tooth and claw often provide a justification for aggressive personal and political relations, or the idea that it is a womens nature to be one thing or another, as taken to be a justification for differential social expectations. The term functions as a fig-leaf for a particular set of stereotypes, and is a proper target of much feminist writing.
This brings to question, that most of all ethics are contributively distributed as an understanding for which a dynamic function in and among the problems that are affiliated with human desire and needs the achievements of happiness, or the distribution of goods. The central problem specific to thinking about the environment is the independent value to place on such-things as preservation of species, or protection of the wilderness. Such protection can be supported as a mans to ordinary human ends, for instance, when animals are regarded as future sources of medicines or other benefits. Nonetheless, many would want to claim a non-utilitarian, absolute value for the existence of wild things and wild places. It is in their value that thing consist. They put in our proper place, and failure to appreciate this value is not only an aesthetic failure but one of due humility and reverence, a moral disability. The problem is one of expressing this value, and mobilizing it against utilitarian agents for developing natural areas and exterminating species, more or less at will.
Many concerns and disputed clusters around the idea associated with the term substance. The substance of a thing may be considered in: (1) Its essence, or that which makes it what it is. This will ensure that the substance of a thing is that which remains through change in properties. Again, in Aristotle, this essence becomes more than just the matter, but a unity of matter and form. (2) That which can exist by itself, or does not need a subject for existence, in the way that properties need objects, hence (3) that which bears properties, as a substance is then the subject of predication, that about which things are said as opposed to the things said about it. Substance in the last two senses stands opposed to modifications such as quantity, quality, relations, etc. it is hard to keep this set of ideas distinct from the doubtful notion of a substratum, something distinct from any of its properties, and hence, as an incapable characterization. The notion of substances tend to disappear in empiricist thought in fewer of the sensible questions of things with the notion of that in which they infer of giving way to an empirical notion of their regular occurrence. However, this is in turn is problematic, since it only makes sense to talk of the occurrence of an instance of qualities, not of quantities themselves. So the problem of what it is for a value quality to be the instance that remains.
Metaphysics inspired by modern science tends to reject the concept of substance in favour of concepts such as that of a field or a process, each of which may seem to provide a better example of a fundamental physical category.
It must be spoken of a concept that is deeply embedded in 18th century aesthetics, but deriving from the 1st century rhetorical treatise. On the Sublime, by Longinus. The sublime is great, fearful, noble, calculated to arouse sentiments of pride and majesty, as well as awe and sometimes terror. According to Alexander Gerards writing in 1759, When a large object is presented, the mind expands itself to the extent of that objects, and is filled with one grand sensation, which totally possessing it, composes it into a solemn sedateness and strikes it with deep silent wonder, and administration: It finds such a difficulty in spreading itself to the dimensions of its object, as enliven and invigorates which this occasions, it sometimes images itself present in every part of the sense which it contemplates, and from the sense of this immensity, feels a noble pride, and entertains a lofty conception of its own capacity.
In Kants aesthetic theory the sublime raises the soul above the height of vulgar complacency. We experience the vast spectacles of nature as absolutely great and of irresistible might and power. This perception is fearful, but by conquering this fear, and by regarding as small those things of which we are wont to be solicitous we quicken our sense of moral freedom. So we turn the experience of frailty and impotence into one of our true, inward moral freedom as the mind triumphs over nature, and it is this triumph of reason that is truly sublime. Kant thus paradoxically places our sense of the sublime in an awareness of ourselves as transcending nature, than in an awareness of ourselves as a frail and insignificant part of it.
Nevertheless, the doctrine that all relations are internal was a cardinal thesis of absolute idealism, and a central point of attack by the British philosophers George Edward Moore (1873-1958) and Bertrand Russell (1872-1970). It is a kind of essentialism, stating that if two things stand in some relationship, then they could not be what they are, did they not do so, if, for instance, I am wearing a hat mow, then when we imagine a possible situation that we would be got to describe as my not wearing the hat now, we would strictly not be imaging as one and the hat, but only some different individual.
The countering partitions a doctrine that bears some resemblance to the metaphysically based view of the German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) that if a person had any other attributes that the ones he has, he would not have been the same person. Leibniz thought that when asked that would have happened if Peter had not denied Christ. That being that if I am asking what had happened if Peter had not been Peter, denying Christ is contained in the complete notion of Peter. But he allowed that by the name Peter might be understood as what is involved in those attributes [of Peter] from which the denial does not follows. In order that we are held accountable to allow of external relations, in that these being relations which individuals could have or not depending upon contingent circumstances. The relations of ideas is used by the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-76) in the First Enquiry of Theoretical Knowledge. All the objects of human reason or enquiring naturally, be divided into two kinds: To unite all those, relations of ideas and matter of fact (Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding) the terms reflect the belief that any thing that can be known dependently must be internal to the mind, and hence transparent to us.
In Hume, objects of knowledge are divided into matter of fact (roughly empirical things known by means of impressions) and the relation of ideas. The contrast, also called Humes Fork, is a version of the speculative deductivity distinction, but reflects the 17th and early 18th centauries behind that the deductivity is established by chains of infinite certainty as comparable to ideas. It is extremely important that in the period between Descartes and J.S. Mill that a demonstration is not, but only a chain of intuitive comparable ideas, whereby a principle or maxim can be established by reason alone. It is in this sense that the English philosopher John Locke (1632-704) who believed that theological and moral principles are capable of demonstration, and Hume denies that they are, and also denies that scientific enquiries proceed in demonstrating its results.
A mathematical proof is formally inferred as to an argument that is used to show the truths of a mathematical assertion. In modern mathematics, a proof begins with one or more statements called premises and demonstrates, using the rules of logic, that if the premises are true then a particular conclusion must also be true.
The accepted methods and strategies used to construct a convincing mathematical argument have evolved since ancient times and continue to change. Consider the Pythagorean theorem, named after the 5th century Bc Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras, which states that in a right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Many early civilizations considered this theorem true because it agreed with their observations in practical situations. But the early Greeks, among others, realized that observation and commonly held opinion do not guarantee mathematical truths. For example, before the 5th century Bc it was widely believed that all lengths could be expressed as the ratio of two whole numbers. But an unknown Greek mathematician proved that this was not true by showing that the length of the diagonal of a square with an area of 1 is the irrational number Ã.
The Greek mathematician Euclid laid down some of the conventions central to modern mathematical proofs. His book The Elements, written about 300 Bc, contains many proofs in the fields of geometry and algebra. This book illustrates the Greek practice of writing mathematical proofs by first clearly identifying the initial assumptions and then reasoning from them in a logical way in order to obtain a desired conclusion. As part of such an argument, Euclid used results that had already been shown to be true, called theorems, or statements that were explicitly acknowledged to be self-evident, called axioms; this practice continues today.
In the 20th century, proofs have been written that are so complex that no one person understands every argument used in them. In 1976, a computer was used to complete the proof of the four-colour theorem. This theorem states that four colours are sufficient to colour any map in such a way that regions with a common boundary ligne have different colours. The use of a computer in this proof inspired considerable debate in the mathematical community. At issue was whether a theorem can be considered proven if human beings have not actually checked every detail of the proof.
The study of the relations of deductibility among sentences in a logical calculus which benefits the prof theory. Deductibility is defined purely syntactically, that is, without reference to the intended interpretation of the calculus. The subject was founded by the mathematician David Hilbert (1862-1943) in the hope that strictly finitary methods would provide a way of proving the consistency of classical mathematics, but the ambition was torpedoed by Gödels second incompleteness theorem.
What is more, the use of a model to test for consistencies in an axiomatized system which is older than modern logic. Descartes algebraic interpretation of Euclidean geometry provides a way of showing that if the theory of real numbers is consistent, so is the geometry. Similar representation had been used by mathematicians in the 19th century, for example to show that if Euclidean geometry is consistent, so are various non-Euclidean geometries. Model theory is the general study of this kind of procedure: The proof theory studies relations of deductibility between formulae of a system, but once the notion of an interpretation is in place we can ask whether a formal system meets certain conditions. In particular, can it lead us from sentences that are true under some interpretation? And if a sentence is true under all interpretations, is it also a theorem of the system?
There are the questions of the soundness and completeness of a formal system. For the propositional calculus this turns into the question of whether the proof theory delivers as theorems all and only tautologies. There are many axiomatizations of the propositional calculus that are consistent and complete. The mathematical logician Kurt Gödel (1906-78) proved in 1929 that the first-order predicate under every interpretation is a theorem of the calculus. In that mathematical method for solving those physical problems that can be stated in the form that a certain value definite integral will have a stationary value for small changes of the functions in the integrands and of the limit of integration.
The Euclidean geometry is the greatest example of the pure axiomatic method, and as such had incalculable philosophical influence as a paradigm of rational certainty. It had no competition until the 19th century when it was realized that the fifth axiom of his system (parallel lines never meet) could be denied without inconsistency, leading to Riemannian spherical geometry. The significance of Riemannian geometry lies in its use and extension of both Euclidean geometry and the geometry of surfaces, leading to a number of generalized differential geometries. Its most important effect was that it made a geometrical application possible for some major abstractions of tensor analysis, leading to the pattern and concepts for general relativity later used by Albert Einstein in developing his theory of relativity. Riemannian geometry is also necessary for treating electricity and magnetism in the framework of general relativity. The fifth chapter of Euclids Elements, is attributed to the mathematician Eudoxus, and contains a precise development of the real number, work which remained unappreciated until rediscovered in the 19th century.
The Axiom, in logic and mathematics, is a basic principle that is assumed to be true without proof. The use of axioms in mathematics stems from the ancient Greeks, most probably during the 5th century Bc, and represents the beginnings of pure mathematics as it is known today. Examples of axioms are the following: No sentence can be true and false at the same time (the principle of contradiction); If equals are added to equals, the sums are equal. The whole is greater than any of its parts. Logic and pure mathematics begin with such unproved assumptions from which other propositions (theorems) are derived. This procedure is necessary to avoid circularity, or an infinite regression in reasoning. The axioms of any system must be consistent with one another, that is, they should not lead to contradictions. They should be independent in the sense that they cannot be derived from one another. They should also be few in number. Axioms have sometimes been interpreted as self-evident truths. The present tendency is to avoid this claim and simply to assert that an axiom is assumed to be true without proof in the system of which it is a part.
The terms axiom and postulate are often used synonymously. Sometimes the word axiom is used to refer to basic principles that are assumed by every deductive system, and the term postulate is used to refer to first principles peculiar to a particular system, such as Euclidean geometry. Infrequently, the word axiom is used to refer to first principles in logic, and the term postulate is used to refer to first principles in mathematics.
The applications of game theory are wide-ranging and account for steadily growing interest in the subject. Von Neumann and Morgenstern indicated the immediate utility of their work on mathematical game theory by linking it with economic behaviour. Models can be developed, in fact, for markets of various commodities with differing numbers of buyers and sellers, fluctuating values of supply and demand, and seasonal and cyclical variations, as well as significant structural differences in the economies concerned. Here game theory is especially relevant to the analysis of conflicts of interest in maximizing profits and promoting the widest distribution of goods and services. Equitable division of property and of inheritance is another area of legal and economic concern that can be studied with the techniques of game theory.
In the social sciences, n-person game theory has interesting uses in studying, for example, the distribution of power in legislative procedures. This problem can be interpreted as a three-person game at the congressional level involving vetoes of the president and votes of representatives and senators, analyzed in terms of successful or failed coalitions to pass a given bill. Problems of majority rule and individual decision making are also amenable to such study.
Sociologists have developed an entire branch of game theory devoted to the study of issues involving group decision making. Epidemiologists also make use of game theory, especially with respect to immunization procedures and methods of testing a vaccine or other medication. Military strategists turn to game theory to study conflicts of interest resolved through battles where the outcome or payoff of a given war game is either victory or defeat. Usually, such games are not examples of zero-sum games, for what one player loses in terms of lives and injuries is not won by the victor. Some uses of game theory in analyses of political and military events have been criticized as a dehumanizing and potentially dangerous oversimplification of necessarily complicating factors. Analysis of economic situations is also usually more complicated than zero-sum games because of the production of goods and services within the play of a given game.
All is the same in the classical theory of the syllogism, a term in a categorical proposition is distributed if the proposition entails any proposition obtained from it by substituting a term denoted by the original. For example, in all dogs bark the term dogs is distributed, since it entails all terriers bark, which is obtained from it by a substitution. In Not all dogs bark, the same term is not distributed, since it may be true while not all terriers bark is false.
When a representation of one system by another is usually more familiar, in and for itself, that those extended in representation that their workings are supposed analogous to that of the first. This one might model the behaviour of a sound wave upon that of waves in water, or the behaviour of a gas upon that to a volume containing moving billiard balls. While nobody doubts that models have a useful heuristic role in science, there has been intense debate over whether a good model, or whether an organized structure of laws from which it can be deduced and suffices for scientific explanation. As such, the debate of topic was inaugurated by the French physicist Pierre Marie Maurice Duhem (1861-1916), in The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (1954) by which Duhems conception of science is that it is simply a device for calculating as science provides deductive system that is systematic, economical, and predictive, but not that represents the deep underlying nature of reality. Steadfast and holding of its contributive thesis that in isolation, and since other auxiliary hypotheses will always be needed to draw empirical consequences from it. The Duhem thesis implies that refutation is a more complex matter than might appear. It is sometimes framed as the view that a single hypothesis may be retained in the face of any adverse empirical evidence, if we prepared to make modifications elsewhere in our system, although strictly speaking this is a stronger thesis, since it may be psychologically impossible to make consistent revisions in a belief system to accommodate, say, the hypothesis that there is a hippopotamus in the room when visibly there is not.
Primary and secondary qualities are the division associated with the 17th-century rise of modern science, wit h its recognition that the fundamental explanatory properties of things that are not the qualities that perception most immediately concerns. The latter are the secondary qualities, or immediate sensory qualities, including colour, taste, smell, felt warmth or texture, and sound. The primary properties are less tied to their deliverance of one particular sense, and include the size, shape, and motion of objects. In Robert Boyle (1627-92) and John Locke (1632-1704) the primary qualities are scientifically tractable, objective qualities essential to anything material, are of a minimal listing of size, shape, and mobility, i.e., the state of being at rest or moving. Locke sometimes adds number, solidity, texture (where this is thought of as the structure of a substance, or way in which it is made out of atoms). The secondary qualities are the powers to excite particular sensory modifications in observers. Once, again, that Locke himself thought in terms of identifying these powers with the texture of objects that, according to corpuscularian science of the time, were the basis of an objects causal capacities. The ideas of secondary qualities are sharply different from these powers, and afford us no accurate impression of them. For Renè Descartes (1596-1650), this is the basis for rejecting any attempt to think of knowledge of external objects as provided by the senses. But in Locke our ideas of primary qualities do afford us an accurate notion of what shape, size,. And mobility are. In English-speaking philosophy the first major discontent with the division was voiced by the Irish idealist George Berkeley (1685-1753), who probably took for a basis of his attack from Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), who in turn cites the French critic Simon Foucher (1644-96). Modern thought continues to wrestle with the difficulties of thinking of colour, taste, smell, warmth, and sound as real or objective properties to things independent of us.
Continuing as such, is the doctrine advocated by the American philosopher David Lewis (1941-2002), in that different possible worlds are to be thought of as existing exactly as this one does. Thinking in terms of possibilities is thinking of real worlds where things are different. The view has been charged with making it impossible to see why it is good to save the child from drowning, since there is still a possible world in which she (or her counterpart) drowned, and from the standpoint of the universe it should make no difference which world is actual. Critics also charge that the notion fails to fit either with a churent theory lf how we know about possible worlds, or with a churent theory of why we are interested in them, but Lewis denied that any other way of interpreting modal statements is tenable.
The proposal set forth that characterizes the modality of a proposition as the notion for which it is true or false. The most important division is between propositions true of necessity, and those true as things are: Necessary as opposed to contingent propositions. Other qualifiers sometimes called modal include the tense indicators, it will be the case that p, or it was the case that p, and there are affinities between the deontic indicators, it ought to be the case that p, or it is permissible that p, and the of necessity and possibility.
The aim of a logic is to make explicit the rules by which inferences may be drawn, than to study the actual reasoning processes that people use, which may or may not conform to those rules. In the case of deductive logic, if we ask why we need to obey the rules, the most general form of answer is that if we do not we contradict ourselves (or, strictly speaking, we stand ready to contradict ourselves. Someone failing to draw a conclusion that follows from a set of premises need not be contradicting him or herself, but only failing to notice something. However, he or she is not defended against adding the contradictory conclusion to his or fer set of beliefs.) There is no equally simple answer in the case of inductive logic, which is in general a less robust subject, but the aim will be to find reasoning such hat anyone failing to conform to it will have improbable beliefs. Traditional logic dominated the subject until the 19th century, and has become increasingly recognized in the 20th century, in that finer work that were done within that tradition, but syllogistic reasoning is now generally regarded as a limited special case of the form of reasoning that can be reprehend within the promotion and predated values, these form the heart of modern logic, as their central notions or qualifiers, variables, and functions were the creation of the German mathematician Gottlob Frége, who is recognized as the father of modern logic, although his treatment of a logical system as an abstract mathematical structure, or algebraic, has been heralded by the English mathematician and logician George Boole (1815-64), his pamphlet The Mathematical Analysis of Logic (1847) pioneered the algebra of classes. The work was made of in An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854). Boole also published many works in our mathematics, and on the theory of probability. His name is remembered in the title of Boolean algebra, and the algebraic operations he investigated are denoted by Boolean operations.
The syllogistic, or categorical syllogism is the inference of one proposition from two premises. For example is, all horses have tails, and things with tails are four legged, so all horses are four legged. Each premise has one term in common with the other premises. The term that do not occur in the conclusion is called the middle term. The major premise of the syllogism is the premise containing the predicate of the contraction (the major term). And the minor premise contains its subject (the minor term). So the first premise of the example in the minor premise the second the major term. So the first premise of the example is the minor premise, the second the major premise and having a tail is the middle term. This enable syllogisms that there of a classification, that according to the form of the premises and the conclusions. The other classification is by figure, or way in which the middle term is placed or way in within the middle term is placed in the premise.
Although the theory of the syllogism dominated logic until the 19th century, it remained a piecemeal affair, able to deal with only relations valid forms of valid forms of argument. There have subsequently been rearguing actions attempting, but in general it has been eclipsed by the modern theory of quantification, the predicate calculus is the heart of modern logic, having proved capable of formalizing the calculus rationing processes of modern mathematics and science. In a first-order predicate calculus the variables range over objects: In a higher-order calculus the may range over predicate and functions themselves. The first-order predicated calculus with identity includes, as primitive (unfined) expression: In a higher-order calculus I t may be defined by law that χ- y if (∀F)(Fχ↔Fy), which gives grater expressive power for less complexity.
Modal logic was of great importance historically, particularly in the light of the deity, but was not a central topic of modern logic in its gold period as the beginning of the 20th century. It was, however, revived by the American logician and philosopher Irving Lewis (1883-1964), although he wrote extensively on most central philosophical topic, he is remembered principally as a critic of the intentional nature of modern logic, and as the founding father of modal logic. His two independent proofs showing that from a contradiction anything follows a relevance logic, using a notion of entailment stronger than that of strict implication.
The imparting information has been conduced or carried out of the prescribed procedures, as impeding of something that takes place in the chancing encounter out to be to enter onenss mind may from time to time occasion of various doctrines concerning the necessary properties; east of mention, by adding to a prepositional or predicated calculus two operator, □and ◊(sometimes written N and M),meaning necessarily and possible, respectfully. These like p ➞◊p and □p ➞p will be wanted. Controversial these include □p ➞□□p and ◊p ➞□◊p. The classical modal theory for modal logic, due to the American logician and philosopher (1940-) and the Swedish logician Sig Kanger, involves valuing prepositions not true or false simpiciter, but as true or false at possible worlds with necessity then corresponding to truth in all worlds, and possibility to truth in some world. Various different systems of modal logic result from adjusting the accessibility relation between worlds.
In Saul Kripke, gives the classical modern treatment of the topic of reference, both clarifying the distinction between names and definite description, and opening te door to many subsequent attempts to understand the notion of reference in terms of a causal link between the use of a term and an original episode of attaching a name to the subject.
One of the three branches into which semiotic is usually divided, the study of semantical meaning of words, and the relation of signs to the degree to which the designs are applicable. In that, in formal studies, a semantics is provided for a formal language when an interpretation of model is specified. However, a natural language comes ready interpreted, and the semantic problem is not that of specification but of understanding the relationship between terms of various categories (names, descriptions, predicate, adverbs . . .) and their meaning. An influential proposal by attempting to provide a truth definition for the language, which will involve giving a full structure of different kinds have on the truth conditions of sentences containing them.
Holding that the basic casse of reference is the relation between a name and the persons or object which it names. The philosophical problems include trying to elucidate that relation, to understand whether other semantic relations, such s that between a predicate and the property it expresses, or that between a description an what it describes, or that between myself and the word I, are examples of the same relation or of very different ones. A great deal of modern work on this was stimulated by the American logician Saul Kripkes, Naming and Necessity (1970). It would also be desirable to know whether we can refer to such things as objects and how to conduct the debate about each and issue. A popular approach, following Gottlob Frége, is to argue that the fundamental unit of analysis should be the whole sentence. The reference of a term becomes a derivative notion it is whatever it is that defines the terms contribution to the trued condition of the whole sentence. There need be nothing further to say about it, given that we have a way of understanding the attribution of meaning or truth-condition to sentences. Other approach, searching for a more substantive possibly that causality or psychological or social constituents are pronounced between words and things.
However, following Ramsey and the Italian mathematician G. Peano (1858-1932), it has been customary to distinguish logical paradoxes that depend upon a notion of reference or truth (semantic notions) such as those of the Liar family, Berry, Richard, etc. form the purely logical paradoxes in which no such notions are involved, such as Russells paradox, or those of Canto and Burali-Forti. Paradoxes of the first type seem to depend upon an element of self-reference, in which a sentence is about itself, or in which a phrase refers to something about itself, or in which a phrase refers to something defined by a set of phrases of which it is itself one. It is to feel that this element is responsible for the contradictions, although self-reference itself is often benign (for instance, the sentence All English sentences should have a verb, includes itself happily in the domain of sentences it is talking about), so the difficulty lies in forming a condition that existence only pathological self-reference. Paradoxes of the second kind then need a different treatment. Whilst the distinction is convenient, it allows for set theory to proceed by circumventing the latter paradoxes by technical mans, even when there is no solution to the semantic paradoxes, it may be a way of ignoring the similarities between the two families. There is still the possibility that while there is no agreed solution to the semantic paradoxes, our understand of Russells paradox may be imperfect as well.
Truth and falsity are two classical truth-values that a statement, proposition or sentence can take, as it is supposed in classical (two-valued) logic, that each statement has one of these values, and non has both. A statement is then false if and only if it is not true. The basis of this scheme is that to each statement there corresponds a determinate truth condition, or way the world must be for it to be true: If this condition obtains the statement is true, and otherwise false. Statements may indeed be felicitous or infelicitous in other dimensions (polite, misleading, apposite, witty, etc.) but truth is the central normative notion governing assertion. Considerations o vagueness may introduce greys into this black-and-white scheme. For the issue to be true, any suppressed premise or background framework of thought necessary make an agreement valid, or a position tenable, a proposition whose truth is necessary for either the truth or the falsity of another statement. Thus if p presupposes q, q must be true for p to be either true or false. In the theory of knowledge, the English philosopher and historian George Collingwood (1889-1943), announces hat any proposition capable of truth or falsity stand on bed of absolute presuppositions which are not properly capable of truth or falsity, since a system of thought will contain no way of approaching such a question (a similar idea later voiced by Wittgenstein in his work On Certainty). The introduction of presupposition therefore mans that either another of a truth value is fond, intermediate between truth and falsity, or the classical logic is preserved, but it is impossible to tell whether a particular sentence empresses a preposition that is a candidate for truth and falsity, without knowing more than the formation rules of the language. Each suggestion carries across through which there is some consensus that at least who were definite descriptions are involved, examples equally given by regarding the overall sentence as false as the existence claim fails, and explaining the data that the English philosopher Frederick Strawson (1919-) relied upon as the effects of implicature.
Views about the meaning of terms will often depend on classifying the implicature of sayings involving the terms as implicatures or as genuine logical implications of what is said. Implicatures may be divided into two kinds: Conversational implicatures of the two kinds and the more subtle category of conventional implicatures. A term may as a matter of convention carry an implicature, thus one of the relations between he is poor and honest and he is poor but honest is that they have the same content (are true in just the same conditional) but the second has implicatures (that the combination is surprising or significant) that the first lacks.
It is, nonetheless, that we find in classical logic a proposition that may be true or false,. In that, if the former, it is said to take the truth-value true, and if the latter the truth-value false. The idea behind the terminological phrases is the analogues between assigning a propositional variable one or other of these values, as is done in providing an interpretation for a formula of the propositional calculus, and assigning an object as the value of any other variable. Logics with intermediate value are called many-valued logics.
Nevertheless, an existing definition of the predicate . . . is true for a language that satisfies convention T, the material adequately condition laid down by Alfred Tarski, born Alfred Teitelbaum (1901-83), whereby his methods of recursive definition, enabling us to say for each sentence what it is that its truth consists in, but giving no verbal definition of truth itself. The recursive definition or the truth predicate of a language is always provided in a metalanguage, Tarski is thus committed to a hierarchy of languages, each with its associated, but different truth-predicate. Whist this enables the approach to avoid the contradictions of paradoxical contemplations, it conflicts with the idea that a language should be able to say everything that there is to say, and other approaches have become increasingly important.
So, that the truth condition of a statement is the condition for which the world must meet if the statement is to be true. To know this condition is equivalent to knowing the meaning of the statement. Although this sounds as if it gives a solid anchorage for meaning, some of the securities disappear when it turns out that the truth condition can only be defined by repeating the very same statement: The truth condition of now is white is that snow is white, the truth condition of Britain would have capitulated had Hitler invaded, is that Britain would have capitulated had Hitler invaded. It is disputed whether this element of running-on-the-spot disqualifies truth conditions from playing the central role in a substantives theory of meaning. Truth-conditional theories of meaning are sometimes opposed by the view that to know the meaning of a statement is to be able to use it in a network of inferences.
Taken to be the view, inferential semantics take on the role of sentence in inference give a more important key to their meaning than this external relations to things in the world. The meaning of a sentence becomes its place in a network of inferences that it legitimates. Also known as functional role semantics, procedural semantics, or conception to the coherence theory of truth, and suffers from the same suspicion that it divorces meaning from any clarity association with things in the world.
Moreover, a theory of semantic truth be that of the view if language is provided with a truth definition, there is a sufficient characterization of its concept of truth, as there is no further philosophical chapter to write about truth: There is no further philosophical chapter to write about truth itself or truth as shared across different languages. The view is similar to the disquotational theory.
The redundancy theory, or also known as the deflationary view of truth fathered by Gottlob Frége and the Cambridge mathematician and philosopher Frank Ramsey (1903-30), who showed how the distinction between the semantic paradoses, such as that of the Liar, and Russells paradox, made unnecessary the ramified type theory of Principia Mathematica, and the resulting axiom of reducibility. By taking all the sentences affirmed in a scientific theory that use some terms e.g., quark, and to a considerable degree of replacing the term by a variable instead of saying that quarks have such-and-such properties, the Ramsey sentence says that there is something that has those properties. If the process is repeated for all of a group of the theoretical terms, the sentence gives topic-neutral structure of the theory, but removes any implication that we know what the terms so treated denote. It leaves open the possibility of identifying the theoretical item with whatever. It is that, the best fits the description provided. However, it was pointed out by the Cambridge mathematician Newman, that if the process is carried out for all except the logical of excavated fossils of a theory, then by the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem, the result will be interpretable, and the content of the theory may reasonably be felt to have been lost.
All the while, both Frége and Ramsey are agreeing that the essential claim is that the predicate . . . is true does not have a sense, i.e., expresses no substantive or profound or explanatory concept that ought to be the topic of philosophical enquiry. The approach admits of different versions, but centres on the points (1) that it is true that p says no more nor less than p (hence, redundancy): (2) that in less direct contexts, such as everything he said was true, or all logical consequences of true propositions are true, the predicate functions as a device enabling us to generalize than as an adjective or predicate describing the things he said, or the kinds of propositions that follow from true preposition. For example, the second may translate as: (∀p,q)(p & p ➞q ➞q) where there is no use of a notion of truth.
There are technical problems in interpreting all uses of the notion of truth in such ways, nevertheless, they are not generally felt to be insurmountable. The approach needs to explain away apparently substantive uses of the notion, such as science aims at the truth, or truth is a norm governing discourse. Postmodern writing frequently advocates that we must abandon such norms. Along with a discredited objective conception of truth. Perhaps, we can have the norms even when objectivity is problematic, since they can be framed without mention of truth: Science wants it to be so that whatever science holds that ‘p’, then ‘p’. Discourse is to be regulated by the principle that it is wrong to assert ‘p’, when ‘not-p’.
Something that tends of something in addition of content, or coming by way to justify such a position can very well be more that in addition to several reasons, as to bring in or joining of something might that there be more so as to a larger combination for us to consider the simplest formulation , is that the claim that expression of the form S is true mean the same as expression of the form S. Some philosophers dislike the ideas of sameness of meaning, and if this I disallowed, then the claim is that the two forms are equivalent in any sense of equivalence that matters. This is, it makes no difference whether people say Dogs bark is true, or whether they say, dogs bark. In the former representation of what they say of the sentence Dogs bark is mentioned, but in the later it appears to be used, of the claim that the two are equivalent and needs careful formulation and defence. On the face of it someone might know that Dogs bark is true without knowing what it means (for instance, if he kids in a list of acknowledged truths, although he does not understand English), and it is different from knowing that dogs bark. Disquotational theories are usually presented as versions of the redundancy theory of truth.
The relationship between a set of premises and a conclusion when the conclusion follows from the premise,. Many philosophers identify this with it being logically impossible that the premises should all be true, yet the conclusion false. Others are sufficiently impressed by the paradoxes of strict implication to look for a stranger relation, which would distinguish between valid and invalid arguments within the sphere of necessary propositions. The search for a strange notion is the field of relevance logic.
From a systematic theoretical point of view, we may imagine the process of evolution of an empirical science to be a continuous process of induction. Theories are evolved and are expressed in short encompassing as statements of as large number of individual observations in the form of empirical laws, from which the general laws can be ascertained by comparison. Regarded in this way, the development of a science bears some resemblance to the compilation of a classified catalogue. It is , a it were, a purely empirical enterprise.
But this point of view by no means embraces the whole of the actual process, for it slurs over the important part played by intuition and deductive thought in the development of an exact science. As soon as a science has emerged from its initial stages, theoretical advances are no longer achieved merely by a process of arrangement. Guided by empirical data, the investigators rather develops a system of thought which, in general, it is built up logically from a small number of fundamental assumptions, the so-called axioms. We call such a system of thought a theory. The theory finds the justification for its existence in the fact that it correlates a large number of single observations, and is just here that the truth of the theory lies.
Corresponding to the same complex of empirical data, there may be several theories, which differ from one another to a considerable extent. But as regards the deductions from the theories which are capable of being tested, the agreement between the theories may be so complete, that it becomes difficult to find any deductions in which the theories differ from each other. As an example, a case of general interest is available in the province of biology, in the Darwinian theory of the development of species by selection in the struggle for existence, and in the theory of development which is based on the hypophysis of the hereditary transmission of acquired characters. The Origin of Species was principally successful in marshalling the evidence for evolution, than providing a convincing mechanisms for genetic change. And Darwin himself remained open to the search for additional mechanisms, while also remaining convinced that natural selection was at the hart of it. It was only with the later discovery of the gene as the unit of inheritance that the synthesis known as neo-Darwinism became the orthodox theory of evolution in the life sciences.
In the 19th century the attempt to base ethical reasoning o the presumed facts about evolution, the movement is particularly associated with the English philosopher of evolution Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). The premise is that later elements in an evolutionary path are better than earlier ones: The application of this principle then requires seeing western society, laissez-faire capitalism, or some other object of approval, as more evolved than more primitive social forms. Neither the principle nor the applications command much respect. The version of evolutionary ethics called social Darwinism emphasises the struggle for natural selection, and draws the conclusion that we should glorify and assist such struggle, usually by enhancing competition and aggressive relations between people in society or between evolution and ethics has been re-thought in the light of biological discoveries concerning altruism and kin-selection.
Once again, the psychology proving attempts are founded to evolutionary principles, in which a variety of higher mental functions may be adaptations, forced in response to selection pressures on the human populations through evolutionary time. Candidates for such theorizing include material and paternal motivations, capacities for love and friendship, the development of language as a signalling system cooperative and aggressive , our emotional repertoire, our moral and reactions, including the disposition to detect and punish those who cheat on agreements or who free-ride on =the work of others, our cognitive structures, and many others. Evolutionary psychology goes hand-in-hand with neurophysiological evidence about the underlying circuitry in the brain which subserves the psychological mechanisms it claims to identify. The approach was foreshadowed by Darwin himself, and William James, as well as the sociology of E.O. Wilson. The term of use are applied, more or less aggressively, especially to explanations offered in sociobiology and evolutionary psychology.
Another assumption that is frequently used to legitimate the real existence of forces associated with the invisible hand in neoclassical economics derives from Darwins view of natural selection as a war-like competing between atomized organisms in the struggle for survival. In natural selection as we now understand it, cooperation appears to exist in complementary relation to competition. It is complementary relationships between such results that are emergent self-regulating properties that are greater than the sum of parts and that serve to perpetuate the existence of the whole.
According to E.O Wilson, the human mind evolved to believe in the gods and people need a sacred narrative to have a sense of higher purpose. Yet it id also clear that the gods in his view are merely human constructs and, therefore, there is no basis for dialogue between the world-view of science and religion. Science for its part, said Wilson, will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition and in time uncover the bedrock of the moral an religious sentiments. The eventual result of the competition between the other, will be the secularization of the human epic and of religion itself.
Man has come to the threshold of a state of consciousness, regarding his nature and his relationship to te Cosmos, in terms that reflect reality. By using the processes of nature as metaphor, to describe the forces by which it operates upon and within Man, we come as close to describing reality as we can within the limits of our comprehension. Men will be very uneven in their capacity for such understanding, which, naturally, differs for different ages and cultures, and develops and changes over the course of time. For these reasons it will always be necessary to use metaphor and myth to provide comprehensible guides to living. In thus way. Mans imagination and intellect play vital roles on his survival and evolution.
Since so much of life both inside and outside the study is concerned with finding explanations of things, it would be desirable to have a concept of what counts as a good explanation from bad. Under the influence of logical positivist approaches to the structure of science, it was felt that the criterion ought to be found in a definite logical relationship between the exlanans (that which does the explaining) and the explanandum (that which is to be explained). The approach culminated in the covering law model of explanation, or the view that an event is explained when it is subsumed under a law of nature, that is, its occurrence is deducible from the law plus a set of initial conditions. A law would itself be explained by being deduced from a higher-order or covering law, in the way that Johannes Kepler(or, Keppler, 1571-1630), was by way of planetary motion that the laws were deducible from Newtons laws of motion. The covering law model may be adapted to include explanation by showing that something is probable, given a statistical law. Questions for the covering law model include querying for the covering law are necessary to explanation (we explain whether everyday events without overtly citing laws): Querying whether they are sufficient (it ma y not explain an event just to say that it is an example of the kind of thing that always happens). And querying whether a purely logical relationship is adapted to capturing the requirements we make of explanations. These may include, for instance, that we have a feel for what is happening, or that the explanation proceeds in terms of things that are familiar to us or unsurprising, or that we can give a model of what is going on, and none of these notions is captured in a purely logical approach. Recent work, therefore, has tended to stress the contextual and pragmatic elements in requirements for explanation, so that what counts as good explanation given one set of concerns may not do so given another.
The argument to the best explanation is the view that once we can select the best of any in something in explanations of an event, then we are justified in accepting it, or even believing it. The principle needs qualification, since something it is unwise to ignore the antecedent improbability of a hypothesis which would explain the data better than others, e.g., the best explanation of a coin falling heads 530 times in 1,000 tosses might be that it is biassed to give a probability of heads of 0.53 but it might be more sensible to suppose that it is fair, or to suspend judgement.
In a philosophy of language is considered as the general attempt to understand the components of a working language, the relationship with the understanding speaker has to its elements, and the relationship they bear to the world. The subject therefore embraces the traditional division of semiotic into syntax, semantics, an d pragmatics. The philosophy of language thus mingles with the philosophy of mind, since it needs an account of what it is in our understanding that enables us to use language. It so mingles with the metaphysics of truth and the relationship between sign and object. Much as much is that the philosophy in the 20th century, has been informed by the belief that philosophy of language is the fundamental basis of all philosophical problems, in that language is the distinctive exercise of mind, and the distinctive way in which we give shape to metaphysical beliefs. Particular topics will include the problems of logical form,. And the basis of the division between syntax and semantics, as well as problems of understanding the number and nature of specifically semantic relationships such as meaning, reference, predication, and quantification. Pragmatics include that of speech acts, while problems of rule following and the indeterminacy of translation infect philosophies of both pragmatics and semantics.
On this conception, to understand a sentence is to know its truth-conditions, and, yet, in a distinctive way the conception has remained central that those who offer opposing theories characteristically define their position by reference to it. The Conception of meanings truth-conditions need not and should not be advanced for being in itself as complete account of meaning. For instance, one who understands a language must have some idea of the range of speech acts contextually performed by the various types of sentence in the language, and must have some idea of the insufficiencies of various kinds of speech act. The claim of the theorist of truth-conditions should rather be targeted on the notion of content: If indicative sentence differ in what they strictly and literally say, then this difference is fully accounted for by the difference in the truth-conditions.
The meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meaning of its constituent. This is just as a sentence of what it is for an expression to be semantically complex. It is one of the initial attractions of the conception of meaning truth-conditions tat it permits a smooth and satisfying account of the way in which the meaning of s complex expression is a function of the meaning of its constituents. On the truth-conditional conception, to give the meaning of an expression is to state the contribution it makes to the truth-conditions of sentences in which it occurs. For singular terms-proper names, indexical, and certain pronouns-this is done by stating the reference of the terms in question. For predicates, it is done either by stating the conditions under which the predicate is true of arbitrary objects, or by stating that conditions under which arbitrary atomic sentences containing it are true. The meaning of a sentence-forming operator is given by stating its contribution to the truth-conditions of as complex sentence, as a function of the semantic values of the sentences on which it operates.
The theorist of truth conditions should insist that not every true statement about the reference of an expression is fit to be an axiom in a meaning-giving theory of truth for a language, such is the axiom: London refers to the city in which there was a huge fire in 1666, is a true statement about the reference of London. It is a consequent of a theory which substitutes this axiom for no different a term than of our simple truth theory that London is beautiful is true if and only if the city in which there was a huge fire in 1666 is beautiful. Since a subject can understand the name London without knowing that last-mentioned truth condition, this replacement axiom is not fit to be an axiom in a meaning-specifying truth theory. It is, of course, incumbent on a theorised meaning of truth conditions, to state in a way which does not presuppose any previous, non-truth conditional conception of meaning
Among the many challenges facing the theorist of truth conditions, two are particularly salient and fundamental. First, the theorist has to answer the charge of triviality or vacuity, second, the theorist must offer an account of what it is for a persons language to be truly describable by as semantic theory containing a given semantic axiom.
Since the content of a claim that the sentence Paris is beautiful is true amounts to no more than the claim that Paris is beautiful, we can trivially describers understanding a sentence, if we wish, as knowing its truth-conditions, but this gives us no substantive account of understanding whatsoever. Something other than grasp of truth conditions must provide the substantive account. The charge rests upon what has been called the redundancy theory of truth, the theory which, somewhat more discriminatingly. Horwich calls the minimal theory of truth. Its conceptual representation that the concept of truth is exhausted by the fact that it conforms to the equivalence principle, the principle that for any proposition p, it is true that p if and only if p. Many different philosophical theories of truth will, with suitable qualifications, except that equivalence principle. The distinguishing feature of the minimal theory is its claim that the equivalence principle exhausts the notion of truth. It is now widely accepted, both by opponents and supporters of truth conditional theories of meaning, that it is inconsistent to accept both minimal theory of truth and a truth conditional account of meaning. If the claim that the sentence Paris is beautiful is true is exhausted by its equivalence to the claim that Paris is beautiful, it is circular to try of its truth conditions. The minimal theory of truth has been endorsed by the Cambridge mathematician and philosopher Plumpton Ramsey (1903-30), and the English philosopher Jules Ayer, the later Wittgenstein, Quine, Strawson. Horwich and-confusing and inconsistently if this article is correct-Frége himself. But is the minimal theory correct?
The minimal theory treats instances of the equivalence principle as definitional of truth for a given sentence, but in fact, it seems that each instance of the equivalence principle can itself be explained. The truths from which such an instance as: London is beautiful is true if and only if London is beautiful. This would be a pseudo-explanation if the fact that London refers to London consists in part in the fact that London is beautiful has the truth-condition it does. But it is very implausible, it is, after all, possible to understand the name London without understanding the predicate is beautiful.
Sometimes, however, the counterfactual conditional is known as ‘subjunctive conditionals’, insofar as a counterfactual conditional is a conditional of the form if ‘p’ were to happen ‘q’ would, or if ‘p’ were to have happened ‘q’ would have happened, where the supposition of ‘p’ is contrary to the known fact that ‘not-p’. Such assertions are nevertheless, useful if you broke the bone, the X-ray would have looked different, or if the reactor were to fail, this mechanism wold click in are important truths, even when we know that the bone is not broken or are certain that the reactor will not fail. It is arguably distinctive of laws of nature that yield counterfactuals (if the metal were to be heated, it would expand), whereas accidentally true generalizations may not. It is clear that counterfactuals cannot be represented by the material implication of the propositional calculus, since that conditionals comes out true whenever p is false, so there would be no division between true and false counterfactuals.
Although the subjunctive form indicates a counterfactual, in many contexts it does not seem to matter whether we use a subjunctive form, or a simple conditional form: If you run out of water, you will be in trouble seems equivalent to if you were to run out of water, you would be in trouble, in other contexts there is a big difference: If Oswald did not kill Kennedy, someone else did is clearly true, whereas if Oswald had not killed Kennedy, someone would have is most probably false.
The best-known modern treatment of counterfactuals is that of David Lewis, which evaluates them as true or false according to whether q is true in the most similar possible worlds to ours in which p is true. The similarity-ranking this approach needs has proved controversial, particularly since it may need to presuppose some notion of the same laws of nature, whereas art of the interest in counterfactuals is that they promise to illuminate that notion. There is a growing awareness tat the classification of conditionals is an extremely tricky business, and categorizing them as counterfactuals or not be of limited use.
The pronouncing of any conditional; preposition of the form if ‘p’ then ‘q’. The condition hypothesizes, ‘p’. Its called the antecedent of the conditional, and ‘q’ the consequent. Various kinds of conditional have been distinguished. The weaken in that of material implication, merely telling us that with ‘not-p’. or ‘q’. stronger conditionals include elements of modality, corresponding to the thought that if ‘p’ is true then ‘q’ must be true. Ordinary language is very flexible in its use of the conditional form, and there is controversy whether, yielding different kinds of conditionals with different meanings, or pragmatically, in which case there should be one basic meaning which case there should be one basic meaning, with surface differences arising from other implicatures.
We now turn to a philosophy of meaning and truth, under which it is especially associated with the American philosopher of science and of language (1839-1914), and the American psychologist philosopher William James (1842-1910), wherefore the study in Pragmatism is given to various formulations by both writers, but the core is the belief that the meaning of a doctrine is the same as the practical effects of adapting it. Peirce interpreted of theocratical sentence is only that of a corresponding practical maxim (telling us what to do in some circumstance). In James the position issues in a theory of truth, notoriously allowing that belief, including for example, belief in God, are the widest sense of the works satisfactorially in the widest sense of the word. On James’ view almost any belief might be respectable, and even rue, provided it works (but working is no simple matter for James). The apparently subjectivist consequences of this were wildly assailed by Russell (1872-1970), Moore (1873-1958), and others in the early years of the 20 century. This led to a division within pragmatism between those such as the American educator John Dewey (1859-1952), whose humanistic conception of practice remains inspired by science, and the more idealistic route that especially by the English writer F.C.S. Schiller (1864-1937), embracing the doctrine that our cognitive efforts and human needs actually transform the reality that we seek to describe. James often writes as if he sympathizes with this development. For instance, in The Meaning of Truth (1909), he considers the hypothesis that other people have no minds (dramatized in the sexist idea of an automatic sweetheart or female zombie) and remarks hat the hypothesis would not work because it would not satisfy our egoistic craving for the recognition and admiration of others. The implication that this is what makes it true that the other persons have minds in the disturbing part.
Modern pragmatists such as the American philosopher and critic Richard Rorty (1931-) and some writings of the philosopher Hilary Putnam (1925-) who have usually tried to dispense with an account of truth and concentrate, as perhaps James should have done, upon the nature of belief and its relations with human attitude, emotion, and need. The driving motivation of pragmatism is the idea that belief in the truth on te one hand must have a close connexion with success in action on the other. One way of cementing the connexion is found in the idea that natural selection must have adapted us to be cognitive creatures because belief have effects, as they work. Pragmatism can be found in Kants doctrine of the primary of practical over pure reason, and continued to play an influential role in the theory of meaning and of truth.
In case of fact, the philosophy of mind is the modern successor to behaviourism, as do the functionalism that its early advocates were Putnam (1926-) and Sellars (1912-89), and its guiding principle is that we can define mental states by a triplet of relations they have on other mental states, what effects they have on behaviour. The definition need not take the form of a simple analysis, but if it were it could write down the totality of axioms, or postdate, or platitudes that govern our theories about what things of other mental states, and our theories about what things are apt to cause (for example), a belief state, what effects it would have on a variety of other mental states, and what affects it is likely to have on behaviour, then we would have done all that is needed to make the state a proper theoretical notion. It could be implicitly defied by this, for which of Functionalism is often compared with descriptions of a computer, since according to mental descriptions correspond to a description of a machine in terms of software, that remains silent about the underlaying hardware or realization of the program the machine is running. The principal advantage of functionalism include its fit with the way we know of mental states both of ourselves and others, which is via their effects on behaviour and other mental states. As with behaviourism, critics charge that structurally complex items that do not bear mental states might nevertheless, imitate the functions that are cited. According to this criticism functionalism is too generous and would count too many things as having minds. It is also queried whether functionalism is too paradoxical, able to see mental similarities only when there is causal similarity, when our actual practices of interpretations enable us to ascribe thoughts and desires to different from our own, it may then seem as though beliefs and desires can be variably realized causal architecture, just as much as they can be in different neurophysiological states.
The philosophical movement of Pragmatism had a major impact on American culture from the late 19th century to the present. Pragmatism calls for ideas and theories to be tested in practice, by assessing whether acting upon the idea or theory produces desirable or undesirable results. According to pragmatists, all claims about truth, knowledge, morality, and politics must be tested in this way. Pragmatism has been critical of traditional Western philosophy, especially the notion that there are absolute truths and absolute values. Although pragmatism was popular for a time in France, England, and Italy, most observers believe that it encapsulates an American faith in knowing how and the practicality is an equally American distrust of abstract theories and ideologies.
In mentioning the American psychologist and philosopher we find William James, who helped to popularize the philosophy of pragmatism with his book Pragmatism: A New Name for Old Ways of Thinking (1907). Influenced by a theory of meaning and verification developed for scientific hypotheses by American philosopher C. S. Peirce, James held that truth is what works, or has good experimental results. In a related theory, James argued the existence of God is partly verifiable because many people derive benefits from believing.
The Association for International Conciliation first published William Jamess pacifist statement, The Moral Equivalent of War, in 1910. James, a highly respected philosopher and psychologist, was one of the founders of pragmatism-a philosophical movement holding that ideas and theories must be tested in practice to assess their worth. James hoped to find a way to convince men with a long-standing history of pride and glory in war to evolve beyond the need for bloodshed and to develop other avenues for conflict resolution. Spelling and grammar represent standards of the time.
Pragmatists regard all theories and institutions as tentative hypotheses and solutions. For this reason they believed that efforts to improve society, through such means as education or politics, must be geared toward problem solving and must be ongoing. Through their emphasis on connecting theory to practice, pragmatist thinkers attempted to transform all areas of philosophy, from metaphysics to ethics and political philosophy.
Pragmatism sought a middle ground between traditional ideas about the nature of reality and radical theories of nihilism and irrationalism, which had become popular in Europe in the late 19th century. Traditional metaphysics assumed that the world has a fixed, intelligible structure and that human beings can know absolute or objective truths about the world and about what constitutes moral behaviour. Nihilism and irrationalism, on the other hand, denied those very assumptions and their certitude. Pragmatists today still try to steer a middle course between contemporary offshoots of these two extremes.
The ideas of the pragmatists were considered revolutionary when they first appeared. To some critics, pragmatisms refusal to affirm any absolutes carried negative implications for society. For example, pragmatists do not believe that a single absolute idea of goodness or justice exists, but rather that these concepts are changeable and depend on the context in which they are being discussed. The absence of these absolutes, critics feared, could result in a decline in moral standards. The pragmatists denial of absolutes, moreover, challenged the foundations of religion, government, and schools of thought. As a result, pragmatism influenced developments in psychology, sociology, education, semiotics (the study of signs and symbols), and scientific method, as well as philosophy, cultural criticism, and social reform movements. Various political groups have also drawn on the assumptions of pragmatism, from the progressive movements of the early 20th century to later experiments in social reform.
Pragmatism is best understood in its historical and cultural context. It arose during the late 19th century, a period of rapid scientific advancement typified by the theories of British biologist Charles Darwin, whose theories suggested too many thinkers that humanity and society are in a perpetuated state of progress. During this same period a decline in traditional religious beliefs and values accompanied the industrialization and material progress of the time. In consequence it became necessary to rethink fundamental ideas about values, religion, science, community, and individuality.
The three most important pragmatists are American philosophers Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Peirce was primarily interested in scientific method and mathematics; his objective was to infuse scientific thinking into philosophy and society, and he believed that human comprehension of reality was becoming ever greater and that human communities were becoming increasingly progressive. Peirce developed pragmatism as a theory of meaning-in particular, the meaning of concepts used in science. The meaning of the concept ‘brittle’, for example, is given by the observed consequences or properties that objects called brittle exhibit. For Peirce, the only rational way to increase knowledge was to form mental habits that would test ideas through observation, experimentation, or what he called inquiry. Many philosophers known as logical positivists, a group of philosophers who have been influenced by Peirce, believed that our evolving species was fated to get ever closer to Truth. Logical positivists emphasize the importance of scientific verification, rejecting the assertion of positivism that personal experience is the basis of true knowledge.
James moved pragmatism in directions that Peirce strongly disliked. He generalized Peirces doctrines to encompass all concepts, beliefs, and actions; he also applied pragmatist ideas to truth as well as to meaning. James was primarily interested in showing how systems of morality, religion, and faith could be defended in a scientific civilization. He argued that sentiment, as well as logic, is crucial to rationality and that the great issues of life-morality and religious belief, for example-are leaps of faith. As such, they depend upon what he called the will to believe and not merely on scientific evidence, which can never tell us what to do or what is worthwhile. Critics charged James with relativism (the belief that values depend on specific situations) and with crass expediency for proposing that if an idea or action works the way one intends, it must be right. But James can more accurately be described as a pluralist-someone who believes the world to be far too complex for any-one philosophy to explain everything.
Deweys philosophy can be described as a version of philosophical naturalism, which regards human experience, intelligence, and communities as ever-evolving mechanisms. Using their experience and intelligence, Dewey believed, human beings can solve problems, including social problems, through inquiry. For Dewey, naturalism led to the idea of a democratic society that allows all members to acquire social intelligence and progress both as individuals and as communities. Dewey held that traditional ideas about knowledge, truth, and values, in which absolutes are assumed, are incompatible with a broadly Darwinian world-view in which individuals and society are progressing. In consequence, he felt that these traditional ideas must be discarded or revised. Indeed, for pragmatists, everything people know and do depend on a historical context and is thus tentative rather than absolute.
Many followers and critics of Dewey believe he advocated elitism and social engineering in his philosophical stance. Others think of him as a kind of romantic humanist. Both tendencies are evident in Deweys writings, although he aspired to synthesize the two realms.
The pragmatists tradition was revitalized in the 1980s by American philosopher Richard Rorty, who has faced similar charges of elitism for his belief in the relativism of values and his emphasis on the role of the individual in attaining knowledge. Interest has renewed in the classic pragmatists-Pierce, James, and Dewey-have an alternative to Rortys interpretation of the tradition.
The Philosophy of Mind, is the branch of philosophy that considers mental phenomena such as sensation, perception, thought, belief, desire, intention, memory, emotion, imagination, and purposeful action. These phenomena, which can be broadly grouped as thoughts and experiences, are features of human beings; many of them are also found in other animals. Philosophers are interested in the nature of each of these phenomena as well as their relationships to one another and to physical phenomena, such as motion.
The most famous exponent of dualism was the French philosopher René Descartes, who maintained that body and mind are radically different entities and that they are the only fundamental substances in the universe. Dualism, however, does not show how these basic entities are connected.
In the work of the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the universe is held to consist of an infinite number of distinct substances, or monads. This view is pluralistic in the sense that it proposes the existence of many separate entities, and it is monistic in its assertion that each monad reflects within itself the entire universe.
Other philosophers have held that knowledge of reality is not derived from a priori principles, but is obtained only from experience. This type of metaphysics is called empiricism. Still another school of philosophy has maintained that, although an ultimate reality does exist, it is altogether inaccessible to human knowledge, which is necessarily subjective because it is confined to states of mind. Knowledge is therefore not a representation of external reality, but merely a reflection of human perceptions. This view is known as skepticism or agnosticism in respect to the soul and the reality of God.
The 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant published his influential work The Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. Three years later, he expanded on his study of the modes of thinking with an essay entitled What is Enlightenment? In this 1784 essay, Kant challenged readers to dare to know, arguing that it was not only a civic but also a moral duty to exercise the fundamental freedoms of thought and expression.
Several major viewpoints were combined in the work of Kant, who developed a distinctive critical philosophy called transcendentalism. His philosophy is agnostic in that it denies the possibility of a strict knowledge of ultimate reality; it is empirical in that it affirms that all knowledge arises from experience and is true of objects of actual and possible experience; and it is rationalistic in that it maintains the a priori character of the structural principles of this empirical knowledge.
These principles are held to be necessary and universal in their application to experience, for in Kants view the mind furnishes the archetypal forms and categories (space, time, causality, substance, and relation) to its sensations, and these categories are logically anterior to experience, although manifested only in experience. Their logical anteriority to experience makes these categories or structural principles transcendental; they transcend all experience, both actual and possible. Although these principles determine all experience, they do not in any way affect the nature of things in themselves. The knowledge of which these principles are the necessary conditions must not be considered, therefore, as constituting a revelation of things as they are in themselves. This knowledge concerns things only insofar as they appear to human perception or as they can be apprehended by the senses. The argument by which Kant sought to fix the limits of human knowledge within the framework of experience and to demonstrate the inability of the human mind to penetrate beyond experience strictly by knowledge to the realm of ultimate reality constitutes the critical feature of his philosophy, giving the key word to the titles of his three leading treatises, Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and Critique of Judgment. In the system propounded in these works, Kant sought also to reconcile science and religion in a world of two levels, comprising noumena, objects conceived by reason although not perceived by the senses, and phenomena, things as they appear to the senses and are accessible to material study. He maintained that, because God, freedom, and human immortality are noumenal realities, these concepts are understood through moral faith rather than through scientific knowledge. With the continuous development of science, the expansion of metaphysics to include scientific knowledge and methods became one of the major objectives of metaphysicians.
Some of Kants most distinguished followers, notably Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Schelling, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Friedrich Schleiermacher, negated Kants criticism in their elaborations of his transcendental metaphysics by denying the Kantian conception of the thing-in-itself. They thus developed an absolute idealism in opposition to Kants critical transcendentalism.
Since the formation of the hypothesis of absolute idealism, the development of metaphysics has resulted in as many types of metaphysical theory as existed in pre-Kantian philosophy, despite Kants contention that he had fixed definitely the limits of philosophical speculation. Notable among these later metaphysical theories are radical empiricism, or pragmatism, a native American form of metaphysics expounded by Charles Sanders Peirce, developed by William James, and adapted as instrumentalism by John Dewey; voluntarism, the foremost exponents of which are the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and the American philosopher Josiah Royce; phenomenalism, as it is exemplified in the writings of the French philosopher Auguste Comte and the British philosopher Herbert Spencer; emergent evolution, or creative evolution, originated by the French philosopher Henri Bergson; and the philosophy of the organism, elaborated by the British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. The salient doctrines of pragmatism are that the chief function of thought is to guide action, that the meaning of concepts is to be sought in their practical applications, and that truth should be tested by the practical effects of belief; according to instrumentalism, ideas are instruments of action, and their truth is determined by their role in human experience. In the theory of voluntarism the will are postulated as the supreme manifestation of reality. The exponents of phenomenalism, who are sometimes called positivists, contend that everything can be analyzed in terms of actual or possible occurrences, or phenomena, and that anything that cannot be analyzed in this manner cannot be understood. In emergent or creative evolution, the evolutionary process is characterized as spontaneous and unpredictable rather than mechanistically determined. The philosophy of the organism combines an evolutionary stress on constant process with a metaphysical theory of God, the external objects, and creativity.
In the 20th century the validity of metaphysical thinking has been disputed by the logical positivists and by the so-called dialectical materialism of the Marxists. The basic principle maintained by the logical positivists is the verifiability theory of meaning. According to this theory a sentence has factual meaning only if it meets the test of observation. Logical positivists argue that metaphysical expressions such as Nothing exists except material particles and Everything is part of one all-encompassing spirit cannot be tested empirically. Therefore, according to the verifiability theory of meaning, these expressions have no factual cognitive meaning, although they can have an emotive meaning relevant to human hopes and feelings.
The dialectical materialists assert that the mind is conditioned by and reflects material reality. Therefore, speculations that conceive of constructs of the mind as having any other than material reality are themselves unreal and can result only in delusion. To these assertions metaphysicians reply by denying the adequacy of the verifiability theory of meaning and of material perception as the standard of reality. Both logical positivism and dialectical materialism, they argue, conceal metaphysical assumptions, for example, that everything is observable or at least connected with something observable and that the mind has no distinctive life of its own. In the philosophical movement known as existentialism, thinkers have contended that the questions of the nature of being and of the individuals relationship to it are extremely important and meaningful in terms of human life. The investigation of these questions is therefore considered valid whether its results can be verified objectively.
Since the 1950s the problems of systematic analytical metaphysics have been studied in Britain by Stuart Newton Hampshire and Peter Frederick Strawson, the former concerned, in the manner of Spinoza, with the relationship between thought and action, and the latter, in the manner of Kant, with describing the major categories of experience as they are embedded in language. Metaphysics have been pursued much in the spirit of positivism by Wilfred Stalker Sellars and Willard Van Orman Quine. Sellars has sought to express metaphysical questions in linguistic terms, and Quine has attempted to determine whether the structure of language commits the philosopher to asserting the existence of any entities whatever and, if so, what kind. In these new formulations the issues of metaphysics and ontology remain vital.
n the 17th century, French philosopher René Descartes proposed that only two substances ultimately exist; mind and body. Yet, if the two are entirely distinct, as Descartes believed, how can one substance interact with the other? How, for example, is the intention of a human mind able to cause movement in the persons limbs? The issue of the interaction between mind and body is known in philosophy as the mind-body problem.
Many fields other than philosophy share an interest in the nature of mind. In religion, the nature of mind is connected with various conceptions of the soul and the possibility of life after death. In many abstract theories of mind there is considerable overlap between philosophy and the science of psychology. Once part of philosophy, psychology split off and formed a separate branch of knowledge in the 19th century. While psychology used scientific experiments to study mental states and events, philosophy uses reasoned arguments and thought experiments in seeking to understand the concepts that underlie mental phenomena. Also influenced by philosophy of mind is the field of artificial intelligence, which endeavours to develop computers that can mimic what the human mind can do. Cognitive science attempts to integrate the understanding of mind provided by philosophy, psychology, AI, and other disciplines. Finally, all of these fields benefit from the detailed understanding of the brain that has emerged through neuroscience in the late 20th century.
Philosophers use the characteristics of inward accessibility, subjectivity, intentionality, goal-directedness, creativity and freedom, and consciousness to distinguish mental phenomena from physical phenomena.
Perhaps the most important characteristic of mental phenomena is that they are inwardly accessible, or available to us through introspection. We each know our own minds-our sensations, thoughts, memories, desires, and fantasies-in a direct sense, by internal reflection. We also know our mental states and mental events in a way that no one else can. In other words, we have privileged access to our own mental states.
Certain mental phenomena, those we generally call experiences, have a subjective nature-that is, they have certain characteristics we become aware of when we reflect, for instance, there is something as definitely to feel pain, or have an itch, or see something red. These characteristics are subjective in that they are accessible to the subject of the experience, the person who has the experience, but not to others.
Other mental phenomena, which we broadly refer to as thoughts, have a characteristic philosophers call intentionality. Intentional thoughts are about other thoughts or objects, which are represented as having certain properties or for being related to one another in a certain way. The belief that London is west of Toronto, for example, is about London and Toronto and represents the former as west of the latter. Although we have privileged access to our intentional states, many of them do not seem to have a subjective nature, at least not in the way that experiences do.
The contrast between the subjective and the objective is made in both the epistemic and the ontological divisions of knowledge. In the objective field of study, it is oftentimes identified with the distension between the intrapersonal and the interpersonal, or with that between matters whose resolving power depends on the psychology of the person in question, and who in this way is dependent, or, sometimes, with the distinction between the biassed and the impartial. Therefore, an objective question might be one answerable by a method usable by any competent investigator, while a subjective question would be answerable only from the questioners point of view. In the ontological domain, the subjective-objective contrast is often between what is what is not mind-dependent: Secondary qualities, e.g., colours, have been variability with observation conditions. The truth of a proposition, for instance: Apart from certain propositions about oneself, would be objective if it is interdependent of the perspective, especially for beliefs of those judging it. Truth would be subjective if it lacks such independence, because it is a construct from justified beliefs, e.g., those well-confirmed by observation.
One notion of objectivity can be basic and the other as an end point of reasoning and observation, if only to infer of it as a conclusion. If the epistemic notion is essentially an underlying of something as related to or dealing with such that are to fundamental primitives, then the criteria for objectivity in the ontological sense derive from considerations of justification: An objective question is one answerable by a procedure that yields (adequate) justification is a matter of amenability to such a means or procedures used to attaining an end. , its method, if, on the other hand, the ontological notion is basic, the criteria for an interpersonal method and its objective use are a matter of its mind-independence and tendency to lead to objective truth, perhaps, its applying to external objects and yielding predictive success. Since, the use of these criteria requires employing the methods which, on the epistemic conception, define objectivists most notably scientific methods-but no similar dependence obtains in the other direction, the epistemic notion os often taken as basic.
A different theory of truth, or the epistemic theory, is motivated by the desire to avoid negative features of the correspondence theory, which celebrates the existence of God, whereby, its premises are that all natural things are dependent for their existence on something else, whereas the totality of dependent beings must then itself depend upon a non-dependent, or necessarily existent, being, which is God. So, the God that ends the question must exist necessarily, it must not be an entity of which the same kinds of questions can be raised. The problem with such is the argument that it unfortunately affords no reason for attributing concern and care to the deity, nor for connecting the necessarily existent being it derives with human values and aspirations.
This presents in truth as that which is licenced by our best theory of reality, truth is distributively contributed as a function of our thinking about the world and all surrounding surfaces. An obvious problem with this is the fact of revision; theories are constantly refined and corrected. To deal with this objection it is at the end of enquiry. We never in fact reach it, but it serves as a direct motivational disguised enticement, as an asymptotic end of enquiry. Nonetheless, the epistemic theory of truth is not antipathetic to ontological relativity, since it has no commitment to the ultimate furniture of the world and it also is open to the possibilities of some kinds of epistemological relativism.
Lest be said, however, that of epistemology, the subjective-objective contrast arises above all for the concept of justification and its relatives. Externalism, particularly reliabilism, and since, for reliabilism, truth-conduciveness (non-subjectivity conceived) is central for justified belief. Internalism may or may not construe justification subjectivistically, depending on whether the proposed epistemic standards are interpersonally grounded. There are also various kinds of subjectivity: Justification may, e.g., be grounded in ones considered standards of simply in what one believes to be sound. Yet, justified beliefs accorded with precise or explicitly considered standards whether or not deem it a purposive necessity to think them justifiably made so.
Any conception of objectivity may treat one domain as fundamental and the others derivatively. Thus, objectivity for methods (including sensory observation) might be thought basic. Let us look upon an objective method be that one is (1) interpersonally usable and tends to yield justification regarding the questions to which it applies (an epistemic conception), or (2) trends to yield truth when properly applied (an ontological conception) or (3) both. Then an objective person is one who appropriately uses objective methods by an objective method, as one appraisable by an objective method, an objective discipline is whose methods are objective, and so on. Typically, those who conceive objectivity epistemically tend to take methods as fundamental, and those who conceive it ontologically tend to take statements as basic.
A number of mental phenomena appear to be connected to one another as elements in an intelligent, goal-directed system. The system works as follows: First, our sense organs are stimulated by events in our environment; next, by virtue of these stimulations, we perceive things about the external world; finally, we use this information, as well as information we have remembered or inferred, to guide our actions in ways that further our goals. Goal-directedness seems to accompany only mental phenomena.
Another important characteristic of mind, especially of human minds, is the capacity for choice and imagination. Rather than automatically converting past influences into future actions, individual minds are capable of exhibiting creativity and freedom. For instance, we can imagine things we have not experienced and can act in ways that no one expects or could predict.
Mental phenomena are conscious, and consciousness may be the closest term we have for describing what is special about mental phenomena. Minds are sometimes referred to as consciousness, yet it is difficult to describe exactly what consciousness is. Although consciousness is closely related to inward accessibility and subjectivity, these very characteristics seem to hinder us in reaching an objective scientific understanding of it.
Although philosophers have written about mental phenomena since ancient times, the philosophy of mind did not garner much attention until the work of French philosopher René Descartes in the 17th century. Descartes work represented a turning point in thinking about mind by making a strong distinction between bodies and minds, or the physical and the mental. This duality between mind and body, known as Cartesian dualism, has posed significant problems for philosophy ever since.
Descartes believed there are two basic kinds of things in the world, a belief known as substance dualism. For Descartes, the principles of existence for these two groups of things-bodies and minds-are completely different from one another: Bodies exist by being extended in space, while minds exist by being conscious. According to Descartes, nothing can be done to give a body thought and consciousness. No matter how we shape a body or combine it with other bodies, we cannot turn the body into a mind, a thing that is conscious, because being conscious is not a way of being extended.
For Descartes, a person consists of a human body and a human mind causally interacting with one another. For example, the intentions of a human being, that may have conceivably, caused that persons limbs to move. In this way, the mind can affect the body. In addition, the sense organs of a human being as forced, in effect of a refractive ray of light, pressure, or sound, external sources which in turn affect the brain, affecting mental states. Thus the body may affect the mind. Exactly how mind can affect body, and vice versa, is a central issue in the philosophy of mind, and is known as the mind-body problem. According to Descartes, this interaction of mind and body is peculiarly intimate. Unlike the interaction between a pilot and his ship, the connexion between mind and body more closely resembles two substances that have been thoroughly mixed together.
In response to the mind-body problem arising from Descartes theory of substance dualism, a number of philosophers have advocated various forms of substance monism, the doctrine that there is ultimately just one kind of thing in reality. In the 18th century, Irish philosopher George Berkeley claimed there were no material objects in the world, only minds and their ideas. Berkeley thought that talk about physical objects was simply a way of organizing the flow of experience. Near the turn of the 20th century, American psychologist and philosopher William James proposed another form of substance monism. James claimed that experience is the basic stuff from which both bodies and minds are constructed.
Most philosophers of mind today are substance monists of a third type: They are materialists who believe that everything in the world is basically material, or a physical object. Among materialists, there is still considerable disagreement about the status of mental properties, which are conceived as properties of bodies or brains. Materialists who those properties undersized by duality, yet believe that mental properties are an additional kind of property or attribute, not reducible to physical properties. Property diarists have the problem of explaining how such properties can fit into the world envisaged by modern physical science, according to which there are physical explanations for all things.
Materialists who are property monists believe that there is ultimately only one type of property, although they disagree on whether or not mental properties exist in material form. Some property monists, known as reductive materialists, hold that mental properties exist simply as a subset of relatively complex and non-basic physical properties of the brain. Reductive materialists have the problem of explaining how the physical states of the brain can be inwardly accessible and have a subjective character, as mental states do. Other property monists, known as eliminative materialists, consider the whole category of mental properties to be a mistake. According to them, mental properties should be treated as discredited postulates of an out-moded theory. Eliminative materialism is difficult for most people to accept, since we seem to have direct knowledge of our own mental phenomena by introspection and because we use the general principles we understand about mental phenomena to predict and explain the behaviour of others.
Philosophy of mind concerns itself with a number of specialized problems. In addition to the mind-body problem, important issues include those of personal identity, immortality, and artificial intelligence.
During much of Western history, the mind has been identified with the soul as presented in Christian theology. According to Christianity, the soul is the source of a persons identity and is usually regarded as immaterial; thus it is capable of enduring after the death of the body. Descartes conception of the mind as a separate, nonmaterial substance fits well with this understanding of the soul. In Descartes view, we are aware of our bodies only as the cause of sensations and other mental phenomena. Consequently our personal essence is composed more fundamentally of mind and the preservation of the mind after death would constitute our continued existence.
The mind conceived by materialist forms of substance monism does not fit as neatly with this traditional concept of the soul. With materialism, once a physical body is destroyed, nothing enduring remains. Some philosophers think that a concept of personal identity can be constructed that permits the possibility of life after death without appealing to separate immaterial substances. Following in the tradition of 17th-century British philosopher John Locke, these philosophers propose that a person consists of a stream of mental events linked by memory. It is these links of memory, rather than a single underlying substance, that provides the unity of a single consciousness through time. Immortality is conceivable if we think of these memory links as connecting a later consciousness in heaven with an earlier one on earth.
The field of artificial intelligence also raises interesting questions for the philosophy of mind. People have designed machines that mimic or model many aspects of human intelligence, and there are robots currently in use whose behaviour is described in terms of goals, beliefs, and perceptions. Such machines are capable of behaviour that, were it exhibited by a human being, would surely be taken to be free and creative. As an example, in 1996 an IBM computer named Deep Blue won a chess game against Russian world champion Garry Kasparov under international match regulations. Moreover, it is possible to design robots that have some sort of privileged access to their internal states. Philosophers disagree over whether such robots truly think or simply appear to think and whether such robots should be considered to be conscious
Dualism, in philosophy, the theory that the universe is explicable only as a whole composed of two distinct and mutually irreducible elements. In Platonic philosophy the ultimate dualism is between being and nonbeing-that is, between ideas and matter. In the 17th century, dualism took the form of belief in two fundamental substances: mind and matter. French philosopher René Descartes, whose interpretation of the universe exemplifies this belief, was the first to emphasize the irreconcilable difference between thinking substance (mind) and extended substance (matter). The difficulty created by this view was to explain how mind and matter interact, as they apparently do in human experience. This perplexity caused some Cartesians to deny entirely any interaction between the two. They asserted that mind and matter are inherently incapable of affecting each other, and that any reciprocal action between the two is caused by God, who, on the occasion of a change in one, produces a corresponding change in the other. Other followers of Descartes abandoned dualism in favor of monism.
In the 20th century, reaction against the monistic aspects of the philosophy of idealism has to some degree revived dualism. One of the most interesting defences of dualism is that of Anglo-American psychologist William McDougall, who divided the universe into spirit and matter and maintained that good evidence, both psychological and biological, indicates the spiritual basis of physiological processes. French philosopher Henri Bergson in his great philosophic work Matter and Memory likewise took a dualistic position, defining matter as what we perceive with our senses and possessing in itself the qualities that we perceive in it, such as colour and resistance. Mind, on the other hand, reveals itself as memory, the faculty of storing up the past and utilizing it for modifying our present actions, which otherwise would be merely mechanical. In his later writings, however, Bergson abandoned dualism and came to regard matter as an arrested manifestation of the same vital impulse that composes life and mind.
Dualism, in philosophy, the theory that the universe is explicable only as a whole composed of two distinct and mutually irreducible elements. In Platonic philosophy the ultimate dualism is between being and nonbeing-that is, between ideas and matter. In the 17th century, dualism took the form of belief in two fundamental substances: mind and matter. French philosopher René Descartes, whose interpretation of the universe exemplifies this belief, was the first to emphasize the irreconcilable difference between thinking substance (mind) and extended substance (matter). The difficulty created by this view was to explain how mind and matter interact, as they apparently do in human experience. This perplexity caused some Cartesians to deny entirely any interaction between the two. They asserted that mind and matter are inherently incapable of affecting each other, and that any reciprocal action between the two is caused by God, who, on the occasion of a change in one, produces a corresponding change in the other. Other followers of Descartes abandoned dualism in favor of monism.
In the 20th century, reaction against the monistic aspects of the philosophy of idealism has to some degree revived dualism. One of the most interesting defences of dualism is that of Anglo-American psychologist William McDougall, who divided the universe into spirit and matter and maintained that good evidence, both psychological and biological, indicates the spiritual basis of physiological processes. French philosopher Henri Bergson in his great philosophic work Matter and Memory likewise took a dualistic position, defining matter as what we perceive with our senses and possessing in itself the qualities that we perceive in it, such as colour and resistance. Mind, on the other hand, reveals itself as memory, the faculty of storing up the past and utilizing it for modifying our present actions, which otherwise would be merely mechanical. In his later writings, however, Bergson abandoned dualism and came to regard matter as an arrested manifestation of the same vital impulse that composes life and mind.
For many people understanding the place of mind in nature is the greatest philosophical problem. Mind is often though to be the last domain that stubbornly resists scientific understanding and philosophers defer over whether they find that cause for celebration or scandal. The mind-body problem in the modern era was given its definitive shape by Descartes, although the dualism that he espoused is in some form whatever there is a religious or philosophical tradition there is a religious or philosophical tradition whereby the soul may have an existence apart from the body. While most modern philosophers of mind would reject the imaginings that lead us to think that this makes sense, there is no consensus over the best way to integrate our understanding of people as bearers of physical properties lives on the other.
Occasionalist find from it term as employed to designate the philosophical system devised by the followers of the 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes, who, in attempting to explain the interrelationship between mind and body, concluded that God is the only cause. The occasionalists began with the assumption that certain actions or modifications of the body are preceded, accompanied, or followed by changes in the mind. This assumed relationship presents no difficulty to the popular conception of mind and body, according to which each entity is supposed to act directly on the other; these philosophers, however, asserting that cause and effect must be similar, could not conceive the possibility of any direct mutual interaction between substances as dissimilar as mind and body.
According to the occasionalists, the action of the mind is not, and cannot be, the cause of the corresponding action of the body. Whenever any action of the mind takes place, God directly produces in connexion with that action, and by reason of it, a corresponding action of the body; the converse process is likewise true. This theory did not solve the problem, for if the mind cannot act on the body (matter), then God, conceived as mind, cannot act on matter. Conversely, if God is conceived as other than mind, then he cannot act on mind. A proposed solution to this problem was furnished by exponents of radical empiricism such as the American philosopher and psychologist William James. This theory disposed of the dualism of the occasionalists by denying the fundamental difference between mind and matter.
Generally, along with consciousness, that experience of an external world or similar scream or other possessions, takes upon itself the visual experience or deprive of some normal visual experience, that this, however, does not perceive the world accurately. In its frontal experiment. As researchers reared kittens in total darkness, except that for five hours a day the kittens were placed in an environment with only vertical lines. When the animals were later exposed to horizontal lines and forms, they had trouble perceiving these forms.
While, in the theory of probability the Cambridge mathematician and philosopher Frank Ramsey (1903-30), was the first to show how a personalised theory could be developed, based on precise behavioural notions of preference and expectation. In the philosophy of language, Ramsey was one of the first thinkers to accept a redundancy theory of truth, which he combined with radical views of the function of many kinds of propositions. Neither generalizations nor causal propositions, nor those treating probability or ethics, described facts, but each has a different specific function in our intellectual economy.
Ramsey advocates that of a sentence generated by taking all the sentence affirmed in a scientific theory that use some term, e.g., quark. Replacing the term by a variable, and existentially quantifying into the result. Instead of saying quarks have such-and-such properties, Ramsey postdated that the sentence as saying that there is something that has those properties. If the process is repeated, the sentence gives the topic-neutral structure of the theory, but removes any implications that we know what the term so treated denote. It leaves open the possibility of identifying the theoretical item with whatever, and it is that best fits the description provided. Nonetheless, it was pointed out by the Cambridge mathematician Newman that if the process is carried out for all except the logical bones of the theory, then by the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem, the result will be interpretable in any domain of sufficient cardinality, and the content of the theory may reasonably be felt to have been lost.
Nevertheless, probability is a non-negative, additive set function whose maximum value is unity. What is harder to understand is the application of the formal notion to the actual world. One point of application is statistical, when kinds of event or trials (such as the tossing of a coin) can be described, and the frequency of occurrence of particular outcomes (such as the coin falling heads) is measurable, then we can begin to think of the probability of that kind of outcome in that kind of trial. One account of probability is therefore the frequency theory, associated with Venn and Richard von Mises (1883-1953), that identifies the probability of an event with such a frequency of occurrence. A second point of application is the description of an hypothesis as probable when the evidence bears a favoured relation is conceived of as purely logical in nature, as in the works of Keynes and Carnap, probability statement are not empirical measures of frequency, but represent something like partial entailments or measures of possibilities left open by the evidence and by the hypothesis.
Formal confirmation theories and range theories of probability are developments of this idea. The third point of application is in the use probability judgements have in regulating the confidence with which we hold various expectations. The approach sometimes called subjectivism or personalism, but more commonly known as Bayesianism, associated with de Finetti and Ramsey, whom of both, see probability judgements as expressions of a subjects degree of confidence in an event or kind of event, and attempts to describe constraints on the way we should have degrees of confidence in different judgements that explain those judgements having the mathematical form of judgements of probability. For Bayesianism, probability or chance is probability or chance is not an objective or real factor in the world, but rather a reflection of our own states of mind. However, these states of mind need to be governed by empirical frequencies, so this is not an invitation to licentious thinking.
This concept of sampling and accompanying application of the laws of probability find extensive use in polls, public opinion polls. Polls to determine what radio or television program is being watched and listened to, polls to determine house-wives reaction to a new product, political polls, and the like. In most cases the sampling is carefully planned and often a margin of error is stated. Polls cannot, however, altogether eliminate the fact that certain people dislike being questioned and may deliberately conceal or give false information. In spite of this and other objections, the method of sampling often makes results available in situations where the cost of complete enumeration would be prohibitive both from the standpoint of time and of money.
Thus we can see that probability and statistics are used in insurance, physics, genetics, biology, business, as well as in games of chance, and we are inclined to agree with P.S. LaPlace who said: We see . . . that the theory of probabilities is at bottom only common sense reduced to calculation, it makes us appreciate with exactitude what reasonable minds feel by a sort of instinct, often being able to account for it . . . it is remarkable that [this] science, which originated in the consideration of games of chance, should have become the most important object of human knowledge.
It seems, that the most taken of are the paradoxes in the foundations of set theory as discovered by Russell in 1901. Some classes have themselves as members: The class of all abstract objects, for example, is an abstract object, whereby, others do not: The class of donkeys is not itself a donkey. Now consider the class of all classes that are not members of themselves, is this class a member of itself, that, if it is, then it is not, and if it is not, then it is.
The paradox is structurally similar to easier examples, such as the paradox of the barber. Such one like a village having a barber in it, who shaves all and only the people who do not have in themselves. Who shaves the barber? If he shaves himself, then he does not, but if he does not shave himself, then he does not. The paradox is actually just a proof that there is no such barber or in other words, that the condition is inconsistent. All the same, it is no too easy to say why there is no such class as the one Russell defines. It seems that there must be some restriction on the kind of definition that are allowed to define classes and the difficulty that of finding a well-motivated principle behind any such restriction.
The French mathematician and philosopher Henri Jules Poincaré (1854-1912) believed that paradoses like those of Russell and the barber were due to such as the impredicative definitions, and therefore proposed banning them. But, it turns out that classical mathematics required such definitions at too many points for the ban to be easily absolved. Having, in turn, as forwarded by Poincaré and Russell, was that in order to solve the logical and semantic paradoxes it would have to ban any collection (set) containing members that can only be defined by means of the collection taken as a whole. It is, effectively by all occurring principles into which have an adopting vicious regress, as to mark the definition for which involves no such failure. There is frequently room for dispute about whether regresses are benign or vicious, since the issue will hinge on whether it is necessary to reapply the procedure. The cosmological argument is an attempt to find a stopping point for what is otherwise seen for being an infinite regress, and, to ban of the predicative definitions.
The investigation of questions that arise from reflection upon sciences and scientific inquiry, are such as called of a philosophy of science. Such questions include, what distinctions in the methods of science? s there a clear demarcation between scenes and other disciplines, and how do we place such enquires as history, economics or sociology? And scientific theories probable or more in the nature of provisional conjecture? Can the be verified or falsified? What distinguished good from bad explanations? Might there be one unified since, embracing all special sciences? For much of the 20th century their questions were pursued in a highly abstract and logical framework it being supposed that as general logic of scientific discovery that a general logic of scientific discovery a justification might be found. However, many now take interests in a more historical, contextual and sometimes sociological approach, in which the methods and successes of a science at a particular time are regarded less in terms of universal logical principles and procedure, and more in terms of their availability to methods and paradigms as well as the social context.
In addition, to general questions of methodology, there are specific problems within particular sciences, giving subjects as biology, mathematics and physics.
The intuitive certainty that sparks aflame the dialectic awarenesses for its immediate concerns are either of the truth or by some other in an object of apprehensions, such as a concept. Awareness as such, has to its amounting quality value the place where philosophical understanding of the source of our knowledge are, however, in covering the sensible apprehension of things and pure intuition it is that which structural sensation into the experience of things accent of its direction that orchestrates the celestial overture into measures in space and time.
The notion that determines how something is seen or evaluated of the status of law and morality especially associated with St. Thomas Aquinas and the subsequent scholastic tradition. More widely, any attempt to cement the moral and legal order together with the nature of the cosmos or how the nature of human beings, for which sense it is also found in some Protestant writers, and arguably derivative from a Platonic view of ethics, and is implicit in ancient Stoicism. Law stands above and apart from the activities of human lawmaker, it constitutes an objective set of principles that can be seen true by natural light or reason, and (in religion versions of the theory) that express Gods will for creation. Non-religious versions of the theory substitute objective conditions for human flourishing as the source of constraints upon permissible actions and social arrangements. Within the natural law tradition, different views have been held about the relationship between the rule of law about God s will, for instance the Dutch philosopher Hugo Grothius (1583-1645), similarly takes upon the view that the content of natural law is independent of any will, including that of God, while the German theorist and historian Samuel von Pufendorf (1632-94) takes the opposite view, thereby facing the problem of one horn of the Euthyphro dilemma, that simply states, that its dilemma arises from whatever the source of authority is supposed to be, for in which do we care about the general good because it is good, or do we just call good things that we care about. Wherefore, by facing the problem that may be to assume of a strong form, in which it is claimed that various facts entail values, or a weaker form, from which it confines itself to holding that reason by itself is capable of discerning moral requirements that are supposedly of binding to all human bings regardless of their desires
Although the morality of people send the ethical amount from which the same thing, is that there is a usage that restricts morality to systems such as that of the German philosopher and founder of ethical philosophy Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), based on notions such as duty, obligation, and principles of conduct, reserving ethics for more than the Aristotelian approach to practical reasoning based on the notion of a virtue, and generally avoiding the separation of moral considerations from other practical considerations. The scholarly issues are complex, with some writers seeing Kant as more Aristotelian and Aristotle as, ore involved in a separate sphere of responsibility and duty, than the simple contrast suggests. Some theorists see the subject in terms of a number of laws (as in the Ten Commandments). The status of these laws may be test, and they are the edicts of a divine lawmaker, or that they are truths of reason, knowable deductively. Other approaches to ethics (e.g., eudaimonism, situation ethics, virtue ethics) eschew general principles as much as possible, frequently disguising the great complexity of practical reasoning. For Kantian notion of the moral law is a binding requirement of the categorical imperative, and to understand whether they are equivalent at some deep level. Kants own applications of the notion are not always convincing, as for one cause of confusion in relating Kants ethics to theories such additional expressivism, is that it is easy, but mistaken, to suppose that the categorical nature of the imperative means that it cannot be the expression of sentiment, but must derive from something unconditional or necessary such as the voice of reason.
For which ever reason, the mortal being makes of its presence to the future of weighing of that which one must do, or that which can be required of one. The term carries implications of that which is owed (due) to other people, or perhaps in oneself. Universal duties would be owed to persons (or sentient beings) as such, whereas special duty in virtue of specific relations, such for being the child of someone, or having made someone a promise. Duty or obligation is the primary concept of deontological approaches to ethics, but is constructed in other systems out of other notions. In the system of Kant, a perfect duty is one that must be performed whatever the circumstances: Imperfect duties may have to give way to the more stringent ones. In another way, perfect duties are those that are correlative with the right to others, imperfect duties are not. Problems with the concept include the ways in which due needs to be specified (a frequent criticism of Kant is that his notion of duty is too abstract). The concept may also suggest of a regimented view of ethical life in which we are all forced conscripts in a kind of moral army, and may encourage an individualistic and antagonistic view of social relations.
The most generally accepted account of externalism and/or internalism, that this distinction is that a theory of justification is internalist if only if it requiem that all of the factors needed for a belief to be epistemologically justified for a given person be cognitively accessible to that person, internal to his cognitive perception, and externalist, if it allows that at least some of the justifying factors need not be thus accessible, so that they can be external to the believers cognitive perceptive, beyond any such given relations. However, epistemologists often use the distinction between internalist and externalist theories of epistemic justification without offering any very explicit explication.
The externalist/internalist distinction has been mainly applied to theories of epistemic justification: It has also been applied in a closely related way to accounts of knowledge and in a rather different way to accounts of belief and thought contents.
The internalist requirement of cognitive accessibility can be interpreted in at least two ways: A strong version of internalism would require that the believer actually be aware of the justifying factor in order to be justified: While a weaker version would require only that he be capable of becoming aware of them by focussing his attentions appropriately, but without the need for any change of position, new information, etc. Though the phrase cognitively accessible suggests the weak interpretation, the main intuitive motivation for internalism, viz. the idea that epistemic justification requires that the believer actually have in his cognitive possession a reason for thinking that the belief is true, and would require the strong interpretation.
Perhaps, the clearest example of an internalist position would be a Foundationalist view according to which foundational beliefs pertain to immediately experienced states of mind and other beliefs are justified by standing in cognitively accessible logical or inferential relations to such foundational beliefs. Such a view could count as either a strong or a weak version of internalism, depending on whether actual awareness of the justifying elements or only the capacity to become aware of them is required. Similarly, a churent view could also be internalist, if both the beliefs or other states with which a justification belief is required to cohere and the coherence relations themselves are reflectively accessible.
It should be carefully noticed that when internalism is construed in this way, it is neither necessary nor sufficient by itself for internalism that the justifying factors literally be internal mental states of the person in question. Not necessary, necessary, because on at least some views, e.g., a direct realist view of perception, something other than a mental state of the believer can be cognitively accessible: Not sufficient, because there are views according to which at least some mental states need not be actual (strong version) or even possible (weak version) objects of cognitive awareness. Also, on this way of drawing the distinction, a hybrid view, according to which some of the factors required for justification must be cognitively accessible while others need not and in general will not be, would count as an externalist view. Obviously too, a view that was externalist in relation to a strong version of internalism (by not requiring that the believer actually be aware of all justifying factors) could still be internalist in relation to a weak version (by requiring that he at least be capable of becoming aware of them).
The most prominent recent externalist views have been versions of Reliabilism, whose requirements for justification is roughly that the belief be produced in a way or via a process that makes of objectively likely that the belief is true. What makes such a view externalist is the absence of any requirement that the person for whom the belief is justified have any sort of cognitive access to the relations of reliability in question. Lacking such access, such a person will in general have no reason for thinking that the belief is true or likely to be true , but will, on such an account, nonetheless be epistemically justified in according it. Thus such a view arguably marks a major break from the modern epistemological tradition, stemming from Descartes, which identifies epistemic justification with having a reason, perhaps even a conclusive reason for thinking that the belief is true. An epistemologist working within this tradition is likely to feel that the externalist, than offering a competing account of the same concept of epistemic justification with which the traditional epistemologist is concerned, has simply changed the subject.
The main objection to externalism rests on the intuitive certainty that the basic requirement for epistemic justification is that the acceptance of the belief in question be rational or responsible in relation to the cognitive goal of truth, which seems to require in turn that the believer actually be dialectally aware of a reason for thinking that the belief is true (or, at the very least, that such a reason be available to him). Since the satisfaction of an externalist condition is neither necessary nor sufficient for the existence of such a cognitively accessible reason, it is argued, externalism is mistaken as an account of epistemic justification. This general point has been elaborated by appeal to two sorts of putative intuitive counter-examples to externalism. The first of these challenges the necessity of belief which seem intuitively to be justified, but for which the externalist conditions are not satisfied. The standard examples in this sort are cases where beliefs are produced in some very nonstandard way, e.g., by a Cartesian demon, but nonetheless, in such a way that the subjective experience of the believer is indistinguishable from that of someone whose beliefs are produced more normally. The intuitive claim is that the believer in such a case is nonetheless epistemically justified, as much so as one whose belief is produced in a more normal way, and hence that externalist account of justification must be mistaken.
Perhaps the most striking reply to this sort of counter-example, on behalf of a cognitive process is to be assessed in normal possible worlds, i.e., in possible worlds that are actually the way our world is common-seismically believed to be, than in the world which contains the belief being judged. Since the cognitive processes employed in the Cartesian demon cases are, for which we may assume, reliable when assessed in this way, the reliabilist can agree that such beliefs are justified. The obvious, to a considerable degree of bringing out the issue of whether it is or not an adequate rationale for this construal of Reliabilism, so that the reply is not merely a notional presupposition guised as having representation.
The correlative way of elaborating on the general objection to justificatory externalism challenges the sufficiency of the various externalist conditions by citing cases where those conditions are satisfied, but where the believers in question seem intuitively not to be justified. In this context, the most widely discussed examples have to do with possible occult cognitive capacities, like clairvoyance. Considering the point in application once, again, to Reliabilism, the claim is that to think that he has such a cognitive power, and, perhaps, even good reasons to the contrary, is not rational or responsible and therefore not epistemically justified in accepting the belief that result from his clairvoyance, despite the fact that the reliabilist condition is satisfied.
One sort of response to this latter sorts of objection is to bite the bullet and insist that such believers are in fact justified, dismissing the seeming intuitions to the contrary as latent internalist prejudice. A more widely adopted response attempts to impose additional conditions, usually of a roughly internalist sort, which will rule out the offending example, while stopping far of a full internalism. But, while there is little doubt that such modified versions of externalism can handle particular cases, as well enough to avoid clear intuitive implausibility, the usually problematic cases that they cannot handle, and also whether there is and clear motivation for the additional requirements other than the general internalist view of justification that externalist are committed to reject.
A view in this same general vein, one that might be described as a hybrid of internalism and externalism holds that epistemic justification requires that there is a justificatory factor that is cognitively accessible to the believer in question (though it need not be actually grasped), thus ruling out, e.g., a pure Reliabilism. At the same time, however, though it must be objectively true that beliefs for which such a factor is available are likely to be true, in addition, the fact need not be in any way grasped or cognitively accessible to the believer. In effect, of the premises needed to argue that a particular belief is likely to be true, one must be accessible in a way that would satisfy at least weak internalism, the internalist will respond that this hybrid view is of no help at all in meeting the objection and has no belief nor is it held in the rational, responsible way that justification intuitively seems to require, for the believer in question, lacking one crucial premise, still has no reason at all for thinking that his belief is likely to be true.
An alternative to giving an externalist account of epistemic justification, one which may be more defensible while still accommodating many of the same motivating concerns, is to give an externalist account of knowledge directly, without relying on an intermediate account of justification. Such a view will obviously have to reject the justified true belief account of knowledge, holding instead that knowledge is true belief which satisfies the chosen externalist condition, e.g., a result of a reliable process (and perhaps, further conditions as well). This makes it possible for such a view to retain internalist account of epistemic justification, though the centrality of that concept to epistemology would obviously be seriously diminished.
Such an externalist account of knowledge can accommodate the commonsense conviction that animals, young children, and unsophisticated adults posses knowledge, though not the weaker conviction (if such a conviction does exist) that such individuals are epistemically justified in their beliefs. It is also at least less vulnerable to internalist counter-examples of the sort discussed, since the intuitions involved there pertain more clearly to justification than to knowledge. What is uncertain is what ultimate philosophical significance the resulting conception of knowledge is supposed to have. In particular, does it have any serious bearing on traditional epistemological problems and on the deepest and most troubling versions of scepticism, which seems in fact to be primarily concerned with justification, that of knowledge?`
A rather different use of the terms internalism and externalism has to do with the issue of how the content of beliefs and thoughts is determined: According to an internalist view of content, the content of such intention states depends only on the non-relational, internal properties of the individuals mind or grain, and not at all on his physical and social environment: While according to an externalist view, content is significantly affected by such external factors and suggests a view that appears of both internal and external elements is standardly classified as an external view.
As with justification and knowledge, the traditional view of content has been strongly internalist in character. The main argument for externalism derives from the philosophy y of language, more specifically from the various phenomena pertaining to natural kind terms, indexicals, etc. that motivate the views that have come to be known as direct reference theories. Such phenomena seem at least to show that the belief or thought content that can be properly attributed to a person is dependent on facts about his environment-e.g., whether he is on Earth or Twin Earth, what is fact pointing at, the classificatory criteria employed by expects in his social group, etc.-not just on what is going on internally in his mind or brain.
An objection to externalist account of content is that they seem unable to do justice to our ability to know the content of our beliefs or thought from the inside, simply by reflection. If content is depending on external factors pertaining to the environment, then knowledge of content should depend on knowledge of these factors-which will not in general be available to the person whose belief or thought is in question.
The adoption of an externalist account of mental content would seem to support an externalist account of justification, by way that if part or all of the content of a belief inaccessible to the believer, then both the justifying status of other beliefs in relation to that content and the status of that content as justifying further beliefs will be similarly inaccessible, thus contravening the internalist requirement for justification. An internalist must insist that there are no justification relations of these sorts, that our internally associable content can be either justified or justly for anything else: But such a response appears lame unless it is coupled with an attempt to show that the externalist account of content is mistaken.
In addition, to what to the Foundationalist, but the view in epistemology that knowledge must be regarded as a structure raised upon secure, certain foundations. These are found in some combination of experience and reason, with different schools (empirical, rationalism) emphasizing the role of one over that of the other. Foundationalism was associated with the ancient Stoics, and in the modern era with Descartes, who discovered his foundations in the clear and distinct ideas of reason. Its main opponent is Coherentism or the view that a body of propositions my be known without as foundation is certain, but by their interlocking strength. Rather as a crossword puzzle may be known to have been solved correctly even if each answer, taken individually, admits of uncertainty.
Truth, alone with coherence is the study of concept, in such a study in philosophy is that it treats both the meaning of the word true and the criteria by which we judge the truth or falsity in spoken and written statements. Philosophers have attempted to answer the question What is truth? for thousands of years. The four main theories they have proposed to answer this question are the correspondence, pragmatic, coherence, and deflationary theories of truth.
There are various ways of distinguishing types of Foundationalist epistemology by the use of the variations that have been enumerating. Planntinga has put forward an influence conception of classical Foundationalism, specified in terms of limitations on the foundations. He construes this as a disjunction of ancient and medieval Foundationalism;, which takes foundations to comprise that with self-evident and evident to the senses, and modern Foundationalism that replace evident Foundationalism that replaces evident to the senses with the replaces of evident to the senses with incorrigibly, which in practice was taken to apply only to beliefs bout ones present state of consciousness? Plantinga himself developed this notion in the context of arguing that items outside this territory, in particular certain beliefs about God, could also be immediately justified. A popular recent distinction is between what is variously strong or extremely Foundationalism and moderate, modest or minimal and moderately modest or minimal Foundationalism with the distinction depending on whether epistemic immunities are reassured of foundations. While depending on whether it require of a foundation only that it be required of as foundation, that only it be immediately justified, or whether it be immediately justified. In that it make just the comforted preferability, only to suggest that the plausibility of the string requiring stems from both a level confusion between beliefs on different levels.
Emerging sceptic tendencies come forth in the 14th-century writings of Nicholas of Autrecourt. His criticisms of any certainty beyond the immediate deliverance of the senses and basic logic, and in particular of any knowledge of either intellectual or material substances, anticipate the later scepticism of Balye and Hume. The; latter distinguishes between Pyrrhonistic and excessive scepticism, which he regarded as unlivable, and the more mitigated scepticism that accepts every day or commonsense beliefs (not as the delivery of reason, but as due more to custom and habit), but is duly wary of the power of reason to give us much more. Mitigated scepticism is thus closer to the attitude fostered by ancient scepticism from Pyrrho through to Sexus Empiricus. Although the phrase Cartesian scepticism is sometimes used, Descartes himself was not a sceptic, but in the method of doubt, uses a sceptical scenario in order to begin the process of finding a secure mark of knowledge. Descartes himself trusts a category of clear and distinct ideas, not far removed from the phantasia kataleptiké of the Stoics.
Scepticism should not be confused with relativism, which is a doctrine about the nature of truth, and may be motivated by trying to avoid scepticism. Nor is it identical with eliminativism, which counsels abandoning an area of thought together, not because we cannot know the truth, but because there are no truths capable of being framed in the terms we use.
Descartes theory of knowledge starts with the quest for certainty, for an indubitable starting-point or foundation on the basis alone of which progress is possible. This is eventually found in the celebrated Cogito ergo sum: I think therefore I am. By locating the point of certainty in my own awareness of my own self, Descartes gives a first-person twist to the theory of knowledge that dominated them following centuries in spite of various counter-attacks on behalf of social and public starting-points. The metaphysics associated with this priority is the famous Cartesian dualism, or separation of mind and matter into two different but interacting substances, Descartes rigorously and rightly sees that it takes divine dispensation to certify any relationship between the two realms thus divided, and to prove the reliability of the senses invokes a clear and distinct perception of highly dubious proofs of the existence of a benevolent deity. This has not met general acceptance: as Hume drily puts it, to have recourse to the veracity of the supreme Being, in order to prove the veracity of our senses, is surely making a very unexpected circuit.
In his own time Descartes conception of the entirely separate substance of the mind was recognized to give rise to insoluble problems of the nature of the causal connexion between the two. It also gives rise to the problem, insoluble in its own terms, of other minds. Descartes notorious denial that non-human animals are conscious is a stark illustration of the problem. In his conception of matter Descartes also gives preference to rational cogitation over anything derived from the senses. Since we can conceive of the matter of a ball of wax surviving changes to its sensible qualities, matter is not an empirical concept, but eventually an entirely geometrical one, with extension and motion as its only physical nature. Descartes thought, as reflected in Leibniz, that the qualities of sense experience have no resemblance to qualities of things, so that knowledge of the external world is essentially knowledge of structure rather than of filling. On this basis Descartes erects a remarkable physics. Since matter is in effect the same as extension there can be no empty space or void, since there is no empty space motion is not a question of occupying previously empty space, but is to be thought of in terms of vortices (like the motion of a liquid).
Although the structure of Descartes epistemology, theory of mind, and theory of matter have ben rejected many times, their relentless exposure of the hardest issues, their exemplary clarity, and even their initial plausibility, all contrive to make him the central point of reference for modern philosophy.
The self conceived as Descartes presents it in the first two Meditations: aware only of its own thoughts, and capable of disembodied existence, neither situated in a space nor surrounded by others. This is the pure self of I-ness that we are tempted to imagine as a simple unique thing that make up our essential identity. Descartes view that he could keep hold of this nugget while doubting everything else is criticized by Lichtenberg and Kant, and most subsequent philosophers of mind.
Descartes holds that we do not have any knowledge of any empirical proposition about anything beyond the contents of our own minds. The reason, roughly put, is that there is a legitimate doubt about all such propositions because there is no way to deny justifiably that our senses are being stimulated by some cause (an evil spirit, for example) which is radically different from the objects that we normally think affect our senses.
He also points out, that the senses (sight, hearing, touch, etc., are often unreliable, and it is prudent never to trust entirely those who have deceived us even once, he cited such instances as the straight stick that looks ben t in water, and the square tower that looks round from a distance. This argument of illusion, has not, on the whole, impressed commentators, and some of Descartes contemporaries pointing out that since such errors become known as a result of further sensory information, it cannot be right to cast wholesale doubt on the evidence of the senses. But Descartes regarded the argument from illusion as only the first stage in a softening up process which would lead the mind away from the senses. He admits that there are some cases of sense-base belief about which doubt would be insane, e.g., the belief that I am sitting here by the fire, wearing a winter dressing gown.
Descartes was to realize that there was nothing in this view of nature that could explain or provide a foundation for the mental, or from direct experience as distinctly human. In a mechanistic universe, he said, there is no privileged place or function for mind, and the separation between mind and matter is absolute. Descartes was also convinced, that the immaterial essences that gave form and structure to this universe were coded in geometrical and mathematical ideas, and this insight led him to invent algebraic geometry.
A scientific understanding of these ideas could be derived, said Descartes, with the aid of precise deduction, and also claimed that the contours of physical reality could be laid out in three-dimensional coordinates. Following the publication of Newtons Principia Mathematica in 1687, reductionism and mathematical modelling became the most powerful tools of modern science. And the dream that the entire physical world could be known and mastered through the extension and refinement of mathematical theory became the central feature and guiding principle of scientific knowledge.
Having to its recourse of knowledge, its central questions include the origin of knowledge, the place of experience in generating knowledge, and the place of reason in doing so, the relationship between knowledge and certainty, and between knowledge and the impossibility of error, the possibility of universal scepticism, and the changing forms of knowledge that arise from new conceptualizations of the world. All of these issues link with other central concerns of philosophy, such as the nature of truth and the natures of experience and meaning.
Foundationalism was associated with the ancient Stoics, and in the modern era with Descartes (1596-1650). Who discovered his foundations in the clear and distinct ideas of reason? Its main opponent is Coherentism, or the view that a body of propositions mas be known without a foundation in certainty, but by their interlocking strength, than as a crossword puzzle may be known to have been solved correctly even if each answer, taken individually, admits of uncertainty. Difficulties at this point led the logical passivists to abandon the notion of an epistemological foundation altogether, and to flirt with the coherence theory of truth. It is widely accepted that trying to make the connexion between thought and experience through basic sentences depends on an untenable myth of the given.
Still in spite of these concerns, the problem was, of course, in defining knowledge in terms of true beliefs plus some favoured relations between the believer and the facts that began with Platos view in the Theaetetus, that knowledge is true belief, and some logos. Due of its nonsynthetic epistemology, the enterprising of studying the actual formation of knowledge by human beings, without aspiring to certify those processes as rational, or its proof against scepticism or even apt to yield the truth. Natural epistemology would therefore blend into the psychology of learning and the study of episodes in the history of science. The scope for external or philosophical reflection of the kind that might result in scepticism or its refutation is markedly diminished. Despite the fact that the terms of modernity are so distinguished as exponents of the approach include Aristotle, Hume, and J. S. Mills.
The task of the philosopher of a discipline would then be to reveal the correct method and to unmask counterfeits. Although this belief lay behind much positivist philosophy of science, few philosophers now subscribe to it. It places too well a confidence in the possibility of a purely previous first philosophy, or viewpoint beyond that of the work ones way of practitioners, from which their best efforts can be measured as good or bad. These standpoints now seem that too many philosophers may be too fanciful, that the more modest of tasks are actually adopted at various historical stages of investigation into different areas and with the aim not so much of criticizing, but more of systematization. In the presuppositions of a particular field at a particular classification, there is still a role for local methodological disputes within the community investigators of some phenomenon, with one approach charging that another is unsound or unscientific, but logic and philosophy will not, on the modern view, provide any independent arsenal of weapons for such battles, which often come to seem more like factional recommendations in the ascendancy of a discipline.
This is an approach to the theory of knowledge that sees an important connexion between the growth of knowledge and biological evolution. An evolutionary epistemologist claims that the development of human knowledge processed through some natural selection process, the best example of which is Darwins theory of biological natural selection. There is a widespread misconception that evolution proceeds according to some plan or direct, but it has neither, and the role of chance ensures that its future course will be unpredictable. Random variations in individual organisms create tiny differences in their Darwinian fitness. Some individuals have more offsprings than others, and the characteristics that increased their fitness thereby become more prevalent in future generations. Once upon a time, at least a mutation occurred in a human population in tropical Africa that changed the haemoglobin molecule in a way that provided resistance to malaria. This enormous advantage caused the new gene to spread, with the unfortunate consequence that sickle-cell anaemia came to exist.
Given that chance, it can influence the outcome at each stage: First, in the creation of genetic mutation, second, in whether the bearer lives long enough to show its effects, thirdly, in chance events that influence the individuals actual reproductive success, and fourth, in whether a gene even if favoured in one generation, is, happenstance, eliminated in the next, and finally in the many unpredictable environmental changes that will undoubtedly occur in the history of any group of organisms. As Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould has so vividly expressed that process over again, the outcome would surely be different. Not only might there not be humans, there might not even be anything like mammals.
We will often emphasis the elegance of traits shaped by natural selection, but the common idea that nature creates perfection needs to be analysed carefully. The extent to which evolution achieves perfection depends on exactly what you mean. If you mean Does natural selections always take the best path for the long-term welfare of a species? The answer is no. That would require adaption by group selection, and this is, unlikely. If you mean Does natural selection creates every adaption that would be valuable? The answer again, is no. For instance, some kinds of South American monkeys can grasp branches with their tails. The trick would surely also be useful to some African species, but, simply because of bad luck, none have it. Some combination of circumstances started some ancestral South American monkeys using their tails in ways that ultimately led to an ability to grab onto branches, while no such development took place in Africa. Mere usefulness of a trait does not necessitate a means in that what will understandably endure phylogenesis or evolution.
This is an approach to the theory of knowledge that sees an important connexion between the growth of knowledge and biological evolution. An evolutionary epistemologist claims that the development of human knowledge proceeds through some natural selection process, the best example of which is Darwins theory of biological natural selection. The three major components of the model of natural selection are variation selection and retention. According to Darwins theory of natural selection, variations are not pre-designed to do certain functions. Rather, these variations that do useful functions are selected. While those that do not employ of some coordinates in that are regainfully purposed are also, not to any of a selection, as duly influenced of such a selection, that may have responsibilities for the visual aspects of variational intentionally occurs. In the modern theory of evolution, genetic mutations provide the blind variations: Blind in the sense that variations are not influenced by the effects they would have-the likelihood of a mutation is not correlated with the benefits or liabilities that mutation would confer on the organism, the environment provides the filter of selection, and reproduction provides the retention. Fatnesses are achieved because those organisms with features that make them less adapted for survival do not survive in connexion with other organisms in the environment that have features that are better adapted. Evolutionary epistemology applies this blind variation and selective retention model to the growth of scientific knowledge and to human thought processes overall.
The parallel between biological evolution and conceptual or epistemic evolution can be seen as either literal or analogical. The literal version of evolutionary epistemology deeds biological evolution as the main cause of the growth of knowledge. On this view, called the evolution of cognitive mechanic programs, by Bradie (1986) and the Darwinian approach to epistemology by Ruse (1986), that growth of knowledge occurs through blind variation and selective retention because biological natural selection itself is the cause of epistemic variation and selection. The most plausible version of the literal view does not hold that all human beliefs are innate but rather than the mental mechanisms that guide the acquisitions of non-innate beliefs are themselves innately and the result of biological natural selection. Ruse, (1986) demands of a version of literal evolutionary epistemology that he links to sociolology (Rescher, 1990).
On the analogical version of evolutionary epistemology, called the evolution of theorys program, by Bradie (1986). The Spenserians approach (after the nineteenth century philosopher Herbert Spencer) by Ruse (1986), the development of human knowledge is governed by a process analogous to biological natural selection, rather than by an instance of the mechanism itself. This version of evolutionary epistemology, introduced and elaborated by Donald Campbell (1974) as well as Karl Popper, sees the [partial] fit between theories and the world as explained by a mental process of trial and error known as epistemic natural selection.
Both versions of evolutionary epistemology are usually taken to be types of naturalized epistemology, because both take some empirical facts as a starting point for their epistemological project. The literal version of evolutionary epistemology begins by accepting evolutionary theory and a materialist approach to the mind and, from these, constructs an account of knowledge and its developments. In contrast, the metaphorical version does not require the truth of biological evolution: It simply draws on biological evolution as a source for the model of natural selection. For this version of evolutionary epistemology to be true, the model of natural selection need only apply to the growth of knowledge, not to the origin and development of species. Crudely put, evolutionary epistemology of the analogical sort could still be true even if Creationism is the correct theory of the origin of species.
Although they do not begin by assuming evolutionary theory, most analogical evolutionary epistemologists are naturalized epistemologists as well, their empirical assumptions, least of mention, implicitly come from psychology and cognitive science, not evolutionary theory. Sometimes, however, evolutionary epistemology is characterized in a seemingly non-naturalistic fashion. Campbell (1974) says that if one is expanding knowledge beyond what one knows, one has no choice but to explore without the benefit of wisdom, i.e., blindly. This, Campbell admits, makes evolutionary epistemology close to being a tautology (and so not naturalistic). Evolutionary epistemology does assert the analytic claim that when expanding ones knowledge beyond what one knows, one must precessed to something that is already known, but, more interestingly, it also makes the synthetic claim that when expanding ones knowledge beyond what one knows, one must proceed by blind variation and selective retention. This claim is synthetic because it can be empirically falsified. The central claim of evolutionary epistemology is synthetic, not analytic. If the central contradictory, which they are not. Campbell is right that evolutionary epistemology does have the analytic feature he mentions, but he is wrong to think that this is a distinguishing feature, since any plausible epistemology has the same analytic feature (Skagestad, 1978).
Two extraordinary issues lie to awaken the literature that involves questions about realism, i.e., What metaphysical commitment does an evolutionary epistemologist have to make? Progress, i.e., according to evolutionary epistemology, does knowledge develop toward a goal? With respect to realism, many evolutionary epistemologists endorse that is called hypothetical realism, a view that combines a version of epistemological scepticism and tentative acceptance of metaphysical realism. With respect to progress, the problem is that biological evolution is not goal-directed, but the growth of human knowledge seems to be. Campbell (1974) worries about the potential dis-analogy here but is willing to bite the stone of conscience and admit that epistemic evolution progress toward a goal (truth) while biologic evolution does not. Many another has argued that evolutionary epistemologists must give up the truth-topic sense of progress because a natural selection model is in essence, is non-teleological, as an alternative, following Kuhn (1970), and embraced in the accompaniment with evolutionary epistemology.
Among the most frequent and serious criticisms levelled against evolutionary epistemology is that the analogical version of the view is false because epistemic variation is not blind (Skagestad, 1978), and (Ruse, 1986) including, (Stein and Lipton, 1990) all have argued, nonetheless, that this objection fails because, while epistemic variation is not random, its constraints come from heuristics that, for the most part, are selective retention. Further, Stein and Lipton come to the conclusion that heuristics are analogous to biological pre-adaptions, evolutionary pre-biological pre-adaptions, evolutionary cursors, such as a half-wing, a precursor to a wing, which have some function other than the function of their descendable structures: The function of descendable structures, the function of their descendable character embodied to its structural foundations, is that of the guidelines of epistemic variation is, on this view, not the source of disanaloguousness, but the source of a more articulated account of the analogy.
Many evolutionary epistemologists try to combine the literal and the analogical versions (Bradie, 1986, and Stein and Lipton, 1990), saying that those beliefs and cognitive mechanisms, which are innate results from natural selection of the biological sort and those that are innate results from natural selection of the epistemic sort. This is reasonable as long as the two parts of this hybrid view are kept distinct. An analogical version of evolutionary epistemology with biological variation as its only source of blondeness would be a null theory: This would be the case if all our beliefs are innate or if our non-innate beliefs are not the result of blind variation. An appeal to the legitimate way to produce a hybrid version of evolutionary epistemology since doing so trivializes the theory. For similar reasons, such an appeal will not save an analogical version of evolutionary epistemology from arguments to the effect that epistemic variation is blind (Stein and Lipton, 1990).
Although it is a new approach to theory of knowledge, evolutionary epistemology has attracted much attention, primarily because it represents a serious attempt to flesh out a naturalized epistemology by drawing on several disciplines. In science is relevant to understanding the nature and development of knowledge, then evolutionary theory is among the disciplines worth a look. Insofar as evolutionary epistemology looks there, it is an interesting and potentially fruitful epistemological programme.
What makes a belief justified and what makes a true belief knowledge? Thinking that whether a belief deserves one of these appraisals is natural depends on what caused the depicted branch of knowledge to have the belief. In recent decades a number of epistemologists have pursued this plausible idea with a variety of specific proposals. Some causal theories of knowledge have it that a true belief that p is knowledge just in case it has the right causal connexion to the fact that p. Such a criterion can be applied only to cases where the fact that p is a sort that can reach causal relations, as this seems to exclude mathematically and their necessary facts and perhaps any fact expressed by a universal generalization, and proponents of this sort of criterion have usually supposed that it is limited to perceptual representations where knowledge of particular facts about subjects environments.
For example, Armstrong (1973), predetermined that a position held by a belief in the form This perceived object is ‘F’ is [non-inferential] knowledge if and only if the belief is a completely reliable sign that the perceived object is ‘F’, that is, the fact that the object is ‘F’ contributed to causing the belief and its doing so depended on properties of the believer such that the laws of nature dictated that, for any subject ‘χ’ and perceived object y, if ‘χ’ has those properties and believed that y is ‘F’, then ‘y’ is ‘F’. (Dretske (1981) offers a rather similar account, in terms of the beliefs being caused by a signal received by the perceiver that carries the information that the object is ‘F’).
Goldman (1986) has proposed an importantly different causal criterion, namely, that a true belief is knowledge if it is produced by a type of process that is globally and locally reliable. Causing true beliefs is sufficiently high is globally reliable if its propensity. Local reliability has to do with whether the process would have produced a similar but false belief in certain counterfactual situations alternative to the actual situation. This way of marking off true beliefs that are knowledge does not require the fact believed to be causally related to the belief, and so it could in principle apply to knowledge of any kind of truth.
Goldman requires the global reliability of the belief-producing process for the justification of a belief, he requires it also for knowledge because justification is required for knowledge. What he requires for knowledge, but does not require for justification is local reliability. His idea is that a justified true belief is knowledge if the type of process that produced it would not have produced it in any relevant counterfactual situation in which it is false. Its purported theory of relevant alternatives can be viewed as an attempt to provide a more satisfactory response to this tension in our thinking about knowledge. It attempts to characterize knowledge in a way that preserves both our belief that knowledge is an absolute concept and our belief that we have knowledge.
According to the theory, we need to qualify rather than deny the absolute character of knowledge. We should view knowledge as absolute, reactive to certain standards (Dretske, 1981 and Cohen, 1988). That is to say, in order to know a proposition, our evidence need not eliminate all the alternatives to that preposition, rather for us, that we can know our evidence eliminates al the relevant alternatives, where the set of relevant alternatives (a proper subset of the set of all alternatives) is determined by some standard. Moreover, according to the relevant alternatives view, and the standards determining that of the alternatives is raised by the sceptic are not relevant. If this is correct, then the fact that our evidence cannot eliminate the sceptics alternative does not lead to a sceptical result. For knowledge requires only the elimination of the relevant alternatives, so the relevant alternative view preserves in both strands in our thinking about knowledge. Knowledge is an absolute concept, but because the absoluteness is relative to a standard, we can know many things.
The interesting thesis that counts as a causal theory of justification (in the meaning of causal theory intended here) are that: A belief is justified in case it was produced by a type of process that is globally reliable, that is, its propensity to produce true beliefs-that can be defined (to a good approximation) As the proportion of the beliefs it produces (or would produce) that is true is sufficiently great.
This proposal will be adequately specified only when we are told (i) how much of the causal history of a belief counts as part of the process that produced it, (ii) which of the many types to which the process belongs is the type for purposes of assessing its reliability, and (iii) relative to why the world or worlds are the reliability of the process type to be assessed the actual world, the closet worlds containing the case being considered, or something else? Let us look at the answers suggested by Goldman, the leading proponent of a reliabilist account of justification.
(1) Goldman (1979, 1986) takes the relevant belief producing process to include only the proximate causes internal to the believer. So, for instance, when recently I believed that the telephone was ringing the process that produced the belief, for purposes of assessing reliability, includes just the causal chain of neural events from the stimulus in my ears inward ands other concurrent brain states on which the production of the belief depended: It does not include any events in the telephone, or the sound waves travelling between it and my ears, or any earlier decisions I made that were responsible for my being within hearing distance of the telephone at that time. It does seem intuitively plausible of a belief depends should be restricted to internal oneness proximate to the belief. Why? Goldman does not tell us. One answer that some philosophers might give is that it is because a beliefs being justified at a given time can depend only on facts directly accessible to the believers awareness at that time (for, if a believer ought to holds only beliefs that are justified, she can tell at any given time what beliefs would then be justified for her). However, this cannot be Goldmans answer because he wishes to include in the relevantly process neural events that are not directly accessible to consciousness.
(2) Once the reliabilist has told us how to delimit the process producing a belief, he needs to tell us which of the many types to which it belongs is the relevant type. Coincide, for example, the process that produces your current belief that you see a book before you. One very broad type to which that process belongs would be specified by coming to a belief as to something one perceives as a result of activation of the nerve endings in some of ones sense-organs. A constricted type, in which that unvarying processes belong would be specified by coming to a belief as to what one sees as a result of activation of the nerve endings in ones retinas. A still narrower type would be given by inserting in the last specification a description of a particular pattern of activation of the retinas particular cells. Which of these or other types to which the token process belongs is the relevant type for determining whether the type of process that produced your belief is reliable?
If we select a type that is too broad, as having the same degree of justification various beliefs that intuitively seem to have different degrees of justification. Thus the broadest type we specified for your belief that you see a book before you apply also to perceptual beliefs where the object seen is far away and seen only briefly is less justified. On the other hand, is we are allowed to select a type that is as narrow as we please, then we make it out that an obviously unjustified but true belief is produced by a reliable type of process. For example, suppose I see a blurred shape through the fog far in a field and unjustifiedly, but correctly, believe that it is a sheep: If we include enough details about my retinal image is specifying te type of the visual process that produced that belief, we can specify a type is likely to have only that one instanced and is therefore 100 percent reliable. Goldman conjectures (1986) that the relevant process type is the narrowest type that is casually operative. Presumably, a feature of the process producing beliefs were causally operatives in producing it just in case some alternative feature instead, but it would not have led to that belief. We need to say some here rather than any, because, for example, when I see an oak or maple tree, the particular like-minded material bodies of my retinal image is causally clear towards the worked in producing my belief that what is seen as a tree, even though there are alternative shapes, for example, oak or maples, ones that would have produced the same belief.
(3) Should the justification of a belief in a hypothetical, non-actual example turn on the reliability of the belief-producing process in the possible world of the example? That leads to the implausible result in that in a world run by a Cartesian demon-a powerful being who causes the other inhabitants of the world to have rich and churent sets of perceptual and memory impressions that are all illusory the perceptual and memory beliefs of the other inhabitants are all unjustified, for they are produced by processes that are, in that world, quite unreliable. If we say instead that it is the reliability of the processes in the actual world that matters, we get the equally undesired result that if the actual world is a demon world then our perceptual and memory beliefs are all unjustified.
Goldmans solution (1986) is that the reliability of the process types is to be gauged by their performance in normal worlds, that is, worlds consistent with our general beliefs about the world . . . about the sorts of objects, events and changes that occur in it. This gives the intuitively right results for the problem cases just considered, but indicate by inference an implausible proportion of making compensations for alternative tending toward justification. If there are people whose general beliefs about the world are very different from mine, then there may, on this account, be beliefs that I can correctly regard as justified (ones produced by processes that are reliable in what I take to be a normal world) but that they can correctly regard as not justified.
However, these questions about the specifics are dealt with, and there are reasons for questioning the basic idea that the criterion for a beliefs being justified is its being produced by a reliable process. Thus and so, doubt about the sufficiency of the reliabilist criterion is prompted by a sort of example that Goldman himself uses for another purpose. Suppose that being in brain-state (B) always causes one to believe that one is in brained-state (B). Here the reliability of the belief-producing process is perfect, but we can readily imagine circumstances in which a person goes into grain-state B and therefore has the belief in question, though this belief is by no means justified (Goldman, 1979). Doubt about the necessity of the condition arises from the possibility that one might know that one has strong justification for a certain belief and yet that knowledge is not what actually prompts one to believe. For example, I might be well aware that, having read the weather bureaus forecast that it will be much hotter tomorrow. I have ample reason to be confident that it will be hotter tomorrow, but I irrationally refuse to believe it until Wally tells me that he feels in his joints that it will be hotter tomorrow. Here what prompts me to believe dors not justify my belief, but my belief is nevertheless justified by my knowledge of the weather bureaus prediction and of its evidential force: I can advert to any disavowable inference that I ought not to be holding the belief. Indeed, given my justification and that there is nothing untoward about the weather bureaus prediction, my belief, if true, can be counted knowledge. This sorts of example raises doubt whether any causal conditions, are it a reliable process or something else, is necessary for either justification or knowledge.
Philosophers and scientists alike, have often held that the simplicity or parsimony of a theory is one reason, all else being equal, to view it as true. This goes beyond the unproblematic idea that simpler theories are easier to work with and gave greater aesthetic appeal.
One theory is more parsimonious than another when it postulates fewer entities, processes, changes or explanatory principles: The simplicity of a theory depends on essentially the same consecrations, though parsimony and simplicity obviously become the same. Demanding clarification of what makes one theory simpler or more parsimonious is plausible than another before the justification of these methodological maxims can be addressed.
If we set this description problem to one side, the major normative problem is as follows: What reason is there to think that simplicity is a sign of truth? Why should we accept a simpler theory instead of its more complex rivals? Newton and Leibniz thought that the answer was to be found in a substantive fact about nature. In Principia, Newton laid down as his first Rule of Reasoning in Philosophy that nature does nothing in vain . . . for Nature is pleased with simplicity and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes. Leibniz hypothesized that the actual world obeys simple laws because Gods taste for simplicity influenced his decision about which world to actualize.
The tragedy of the Western mind, described by Koyré, is a direct consequence of the stark Cartesian division between mind and world. We discovered the certain principles of physical reality, said Descartes, not by the prejudices of the senses, but by the light of reason, and which thus possess so great evidence that we cannot doubt of their truth. Since the real, or that which actually exists external to ourselves, was in his view only that which could be represented in the quantitative terms of mathematics, Descartes conclude that all quantitative aspects of reality could be traced to the deceitfulness of the senses.
The most fundamental aspect of the Western intellectual tradition is the assumption that there is a fundamental division between the material and the immaterial world or between the realm of matter and the realm of pure mind or spirit. The metaphysical frame-work based on this assumption is known as ontological dualism. As the word dual implies, the framework is predicated on an ontology, or a conception of the nature of God or Being, that assumes reality has two distinct and separable dimensions. The concept of Being as continuous, immutable, and having a prior or separate existence from the world of change dates from the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides. The same qualities were associated with the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and they were considerably amplified by the role played in theology by Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy.
Nicolas Copernicus, Galileo, Johannes Kepler, and Isaac Newton were all inheritors of a cultural tradition in which ontological dualism was a primary article of faith. Hence the idealization of the mathematical ideal as a source of communion with God, which dates from Pythagoras, provided a metaphysical foundation for the emerging natural sciences. This explains why, the creators of classical physics believed that doing physics was a form of communion with the geometrical and mathematical forms resident in the perfect mind of God. This view would survive in a modified form in what is now known as Einsteinian epistemology and accounts in no small part for the reluctance of many physicists to accept the epistemology associated with the Copenhagen Interpretation.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Pierre-Simon LaPlace, along with a number of other French mathematicians, advanced the view that the science of mechanics constituted a complete view of nature. Since this science, by observing its epistemology, had revealed itself to be the fundamental science, the hypothesis of God was, they concluded, entirely unnecessary.
LaPlace is recognized for eliminating not only the theological component of classical physics but the entire metaphysical component as well. The epistemology of science requires, he said, that we proceed by inductive generalizations from observed facts to hypotheses that are tested by observed conformity of the phenomena. What was unique about LaPlaces view of hypotheses was his insistence that we cannot attribute reality to them. Although concepts like force, mass, motion, cause, and laws are obviously present in classical physics, they exist in LaPlaces view only as quantities. Physics is concerned, he argued, with quantities that we associate as a matter of convenience with concepts, and the truths about nature are only the quantities.
As this view of hypotheses and the truths of nature as quantities was extended in the nineteenth century to a mathematical description of phenomena like heat, light, electricity, and magnetism. LaPlaces assumptions about the actual character of scientific truths seemed correct. This progress suggested that if we could remove all thoughts about the nature of or the source of phenomena, the pursuit of strictly quantitative concepts would bring us to a complete description of all aspects of physical reality. Subsequently, figures like Comte, Kirchhoff, Hertz, and Poincaré developed a program for the study of nature hat was quite different from that of the original creators of classical physics.
The seventeenth-century view of physics as a philosophy of nature or as natural philosophy was displaced by the view of physics as an autonomous science that was the science of nature. This view, which was premised on the doctrine of positivism, promised to subsume all of nature with a mathematical analysis of entities in motion and claimed that the true understanding of nature was revealed only in the mathematical description. Since the doctrine of positivism assumes that the knowledge we call physics resides only in the mathematical formalism of physical theory, it disallows the prospect that the vision of physical reality revealed in physical theory can have any other meaning. In the history of science, the irony is that positivism, which was intended to banish metaphysical concerns from the domain of science, served to perpetuate a seventeenth-century metaphysical assumption about the relationship between physical reality and physical theory.
Epistemology since Hume and Kant has drawn back from this theological underpinning. Indeed, the very idea that nature is simple (or uniform) has come in for a critique. The view has taken hold that a preference for simple and parsimonious hypotheses is purely methodological: It is constitutive of the attitude we call scientific and makes no substantive assumption about the way the world is.
A variety of otherwise diverse twentieth-century philosophers of science have attempted, in different ways, to flesh out this position. Two examples must suffice here: Hesse (1969) as, for summaries of other proposals. Popper (1959) holds that scientists should prefer highly falsifiable (improbable) theories: He tries to show that simpler theories are more falsifiable, also Quine (1966), in contrast, sees a virtue in theories that are highly probable, he argues for a general connexion between simplicity and high probability.
Both these proposals are global. They attempt to explain why simplicity should be part of the scientific method in a way that spans all scientific subject matters. No assumption about the details of any particular scientific problem serves as a premiss in Poppers or Quines arguments.
Newton and Leibniz thought that the justification of parsimony and simplicity flows from the hand of God: Popper and Quine try to justify these methodologically median of importance is without assuming anything substantive about the way the world is. In spite of these differences in approach, they have something in common. They assume that all users of parsimony and simplicity in the separate sciences can be encompassed in a single justifying argument. That recent developments in confirmation theory suggest that this assumption should be scrutinized. Good (1983) and Rosenkrantz (1977) has emphasized the role of auxiliary assumptions in mediating the connexion between hypotheses and observations. Whether a hypothesis is well supported by some observations, or whether one hypothesis is better supported than another by those observations, crucially depends on empirical background assumptions about the inference problem here. The same view applies to the idea of prior probability (or, prior plausibility). In of a single hypo-physical science if chosen as an alternative to another even though they are equally supported by current observations, this must be due to an empirical background assumption.
Principles of parsimony and simplicity mediate the epistemic connexion between hypotheses and observations. Perhaps these principles are able to do this because they are surrogates for an empirical background theory. It is not that there is one background theory presupposed by every appeal to parsimony; This has the quantifier order backwards. Rather, the suggestion is that each parsimony argument is justified only to each degree that it reflects an empirical background theory about the subjective matter. On this theory is brought out into the open, but the principle of parsimony is entirely dispensable (Sober, 1988).
This local approach to the principles of parsimony and simplicity resurrects the idea that they make sense only if the world is one way rather than another. It rejects the idea that these maxims are purely methodological. How defensible this point of view is, will depend on detailed case studies of scientific hypothesis evaluation and on further developments in the theory of scientific inference.
It is usually not found of one and the same that, an inference is a (perhaps very complex) act of thought by virtue of which act (1) I pass from a set of one or more propositions or statements to a proposition or statement and (2) it appears that the latter are true if the former is or are. This psychological characterization has occurred over a wider summation of literature under more lesser than inessential variations. Desiring a better characterization of inference is natural. Yet attempts to do so by constructing a fuller psychological explanation fail to comprehend the grounds on which inference will be objectively valid-A point elaborately made by Gottlob Frége. Attempts to understand the nature of inference through the device of the representation of inference by formal-logical calculations or derivations better (1) leave us puzzled about the relation of formal-logical derivations to the informal inferences they are supposedly to represent or reconstruct, and (2) leaves us worried about the sense of such formal derivations. Are these derivations inference? Are not informal inferences needed in order to apply the rules governing the constructions of formal derivations (inferring that this operation is an application of that formal rule)? These are concerns cultivated by, for example, Wittgenstein.
Coming up with an adequate characterized inferences, and even working out what would count as a very adequate characterization here is demandingly by no means nearly some resolved philosophical problem.
Traditionally, a proposition that is not a conditional, as with the affirmative and negative, modern opinion is wary of the distinction, since what appears categorical may vary with the choice of a primitive vocabulary and notation. Apparently categorical propositions may also turn out to be disguised conditionals: X is intelligent (categorical?) Equivalent, if X is given a range of tasks, she does them better than many people (conditional?). The problem is not merely one of classification, since deep metaphysical questions arise when facts that seem to be categorical and therefore solid, come to seem by contrast conditional, or purely hypothetical or potential.
Its condition of some classified necessity is so proven sufficient that if p is a necessary condition of q, then q cannot be true unless p; is true? If p is a sufficient condition, thus steering well is a necessary condition of driving in a satisfactory manner, but it is not sufficient, for one can steer well but drive badly for other reasons. Confusion may result if the distinction is not heeded. For example, the statement that A causes B may be interpreted to mean that A is itself a sufficient condition for B, or that it is only a necessary condition fort B, or perhaps a necessary parts of a total sufficient condition. Lists of conditions to be met for satisfying some administrative or legal requirement frequently attempt to give individually necessary and jointly sufficient sets of conditions.
What is more that if any proposition of the form if p then q. The condition hypothesized, p. Is called the antecedent of the conditionals, and q, the consequent? Various kinds of conditional have been distinguished. Its weakest is that of material implication, merely telling that either not-p, or q. Stronger conditionals include elements of modality, corresponding to the thought that if p is truer then q must be true. Ordinary language is very flexible in its use of the conditional form, and there is controversy whether conditionals are better treated semantically, yielding differently finds of conditionals with different meanings, or pragmatically, in which case there should be one basic meaning with surface differences arising from other implicatures.
It follows from the definition of strict implication that a necessary proposition is strictly implied by any proposition, and that an impossible proposition strictly implies any proposition. If strict implication corresponds to q follows from p, then this means that a necessary proposition follows from anything at all, and anything at all follows from an impossible proposition. This is a problem if we wish to distinguish between valid and invalid arguments with necessary conclusions or impossible premises.
The Humean problem of induction is that if we would suppose that there is some property A concerning and observational or an experimental situation, and that out of a large number of observed instances of A, some fraction m/n (possibly equal to 1) has also been instances of some logically independent property B. Suppose further that the background proportionate circumstances not specified in these descriptions have been varied to a substantial degree and that there is no collateral information available concerning the frequency of Bs among As or concerning causal or nomologically connections between instances of A and instances of B.
In this situation, an enumerative or instantial induction inference would move rights from the premise, that m/n of observed As are Bs to the conclusion that approximately m/n of all As are Bs. (The usual probability qualification will be assumed to apply to the inference, rather than being part of the conclusion.) Here the class of As should be taken to include not only unobserved As and future As, but also possible or hypothetical As (an alternative conclusion would concern the probability or likelihood of the adjacently observed A being a B).
The traditional or Humean problem of induction, often referred to simply as the problem of induction, is the problem of whether and why inferences that fit this schema should be considered rationally acceptable or justified from an epistemic or cognitive standpoint, i.e., whether and why reasoning in this way is likely to lead to true claims about the world. Is there any sort of argument or rationale that can be offered for thinking that conclusions reached in this way are likely to be true in the corresponding premisses is true ‒or even that their chances of truth are significantly enhanced?
Humes discussion of this issue deals explicitly only with cases where all observed As are Bs and his argument applies just as well to the more general case. His conclusion is entirely negative and sceptical: Inductive inferences are not rationally justified, but are instead the result of an essentially a-rational process, custom or habit. Hume (1711-76) challenges the proponent of induction to supply a cogent ligne of reasoning that leads from an inductive premise to the corresponding conclusion and offers an extremely influential argument in the form of a dilemma (a few times referred to as Humes fork), that either our actions are determined, in which case we are not responsible for them, or they are the result of random events, under which case we are also not responsible for them.
Such reasoning would, he argues, have to be either deductively demonstrative reasoning in the concerning relations of ideas or experimental, i.e., empirical, that reasoning concerning matters of fact or existence. It cannot be the former, because all demonstrative reasoning relies on the avoidance of contradiction, and it is not a contradiction to suppose that the course of nature may change, that an order that was observed in the past and not of its continuing against the future: But it cannot be, as the latter, since any empirical argument would appeal to the success of such reasoning about an experience, and the justifiability of generalizing from experience are precisely what is at issue-so that any such appeal would be question-begging. Hence, Hume concludes that there can be no such reasoning (1748).
An alternative version of the problem may be obtained by formulating it with reference to the so-called Principle of Induction, which says roughly that the future will resemble the past or, somewhat better, that unobserved cases will resemble observed cases. An inductive argument may be viewed as enthymematic, with this principle serving as a supposed premiss, in which case the issue is obviously how such a premiss can be justified. Humes argument is then that no such justification is possible: The principle cannot be justified a prior because having possession of been true in experiences without obviously begging the question is not contradictory to have possession of been true in experiences without obviously begging the question.
The predominant recent responses to the problem of induction, at least in the analytic tradition, in effect accept the main conclusion of Humes argument, namely, that inductive inferences cannot be justified in the sense of showing that the conclusion of such an inference is likely to be true if the premise is true, and thus attempt to find another sort of justification for induction. Such responses fall into two main categories: (I) Pragmatic justifications or vindications of induction, mainly developed by Hans Reichenbach (1891-1953), and (ii) ordinary language justifications of induction, whose most important proponent is Frederick, Peter Strawson (1919-). In contrast, some philosophers still attempt to reject Humes dilemma by arguing either (iii) That, contrary to appearances, induction can be inductively justified without vicious circularity, or (iv) that an anticipatory justification of induction is possible after all. In that:
(1) Reichenbachs view is that induction is best regarded, not as a form of inference, but rather as a method for arriving at posits regarding, i.e., the proportion of As remain additionally of Bs. Such a posit is not a claim asserted to be true, but is instead an intellectual wager analogous to a bet made by a gambler. Understood in this way, the inductive method says that one should posit that the observed proportion is, within some measure of an approximation, the true proportion and then continually correct that initial posit as new information comes in.
The gamblers bet is normally an appraised posit, i.e., he knows the chances or odds that the outcome on which he bets will actually occur. In contrast, the inductive bet is a blind posit: We do not know the chances that it will succeed or even that success is that it will succeed or even that success is possible. What we are gambling on when we make such a bet is the value of a certain proportion in the independent world, which Reichenbach construes as the limit of the observed proportion as the number of cases increases to infinity. Nevertheless, we have no way of knowing that there are even such a limit, and no way of knowing that the proportion of As are in addition of Bs converges in the end on some stable value than varying at random. If we cannot know that this limit exists, then we obviously cannot know that we have any definite chance of finding it.
What we can know, according to Reichenbach, is that if there is a truth of this sort to be found, the inductive method will eventually find it. That this is so is an analytic consequence of Reichenbachs account of what it is for such a limit to exist. The only way that the inductive method of making an initial posit and then refining it in light of new observations can fail eventually to arrive at the true proportion is if the series of observed proportions never converges on any stable value, which means that there is no truth to be found pertaining the proportion of As additionally constitute Bs. Thus, induction is justified, not by showing that it will succeed or indeed, that it has any definite likelihood of success, but only by showing that it will succeed if success is possible. Reichenbachs claim is that no more than this can be established for any method, and hence that induction gives us our best chance for success, our best gamble in a situation where there is no alternative to gambling.
This pragmatic response to the problem of induction faces several serious problems. First, there are indefinitely many other methods for arriving at posits for which the same sort of defence can be given-methods that yield the same result as the inductive method over time but differ arbitrarily before long. Despite the efforts of others, it is unclear that there is any satisfactory way to exclude such alternatives, in order to avoid the result that any arbitrarily chosen short-term posit is just as reasonable as the inductive posit. Second, even if there is a truth of the requisite sort to be found, the inductive method is only guaranteed to find it or even to come within any specifiable distance of it in the indefinite long run. All the same, any actual application of inductive results always takes place in the presence to the future eventful states in making the relevance of the pragmatic justification to actual practice uncertainly. Third, and most important, it needs to be emphasized that Reichenbachs response to the problem simply accepts the claim of the Humean sceptic that an inductive premise never provides the slightest reason for thinking that the corresponding inductive conclusion is true. Reichenbach himself is quite candid on this point, but this does not alleviate the intuitive implausibility of saying that we have no more reason for thinking that our scientific and commonsense conclusions that result in the induction of it . . . is true than, to use Reichenbachs own analogy (1949), a blind man wandering in the mountains who feels an apparent trail with his stick has for thinking that following it will lead him to safety.
An approach to induction resembling Reichenbachs claiming in that those particular inductive conclusions are posits or conjectures, than the conclusions of cogent inferences, is offered by Popper. However, Poppers view is even more overtly sceptical: It amounts to saying that all that can ever be said in favour of the truth of an inductive claim is that the claim has been tested and not yet been shown to be false.
(2) The ordinary language response to the problem of induction has been advocated by many philosophers, none the less, Strawson claims that the question whether induction is justified or reasonable makes sense only if it tacitly involves the demand that inductive reasoning meet the standards appropriate to deductive reasoning, i.e., that the inductive conclusions are shown to follow deductively from the inductive assumption. Such a demand cannot, of course, be met, but only because it is illegitimate: Inductive and deductive reasons are simply fundamentally different kinds of reasoning, each possessing its own autonomous standards, and there is no reason to demand or expect that one of these kinds meet the standards of the other. Whereas, if induction is assessed by inductive standards, the only ones that are appropriate, then it is obviously justified.
The problem here is to understand to what this allegedly obvious justification of an induction amount. In his main discussion of the point (1952), Strawson claims that it is an analytic true statement that believing it a conclusion for which there is strong evidence is reasonable and an analytic truth that inductive evidence of the sort captured by the schema presented earlier constitutes strong evidence for the corresponding inductive conclusion, thus, apparently yielding the analytic conclusion that believing it a conclusion for which there is inductive evidence is reasonable. Nevertheless, he also admits, indeed insists, that the claim that inductive conclusions will be true in the future is contingent, empirical, and may turn out to be false (1952). Thus, the notion of reasonable belief and the correlative notion of strong evidence must apparently be understood in ways that have nothing to do with likelihood of truth, presumably by appeal to the standard of reasonableness and strength of evidence that are accepted by the community and are embodied in ordinary usage.
Understood in this way, Strawsons response to the problem of inductive reasoning does not speak to the central issue raised by Humean scepticism: The issue of whether the conclusions of inductive arguments are likely to be true. It amounts to saying merely that if we reason in this way, we can correctly call ourselves reasonable and our evidence strong, according to our accepted community standards. Nevertheless, to the undersealing of issue of wether following these standards is a good way to find the truth, the ordinary language response appears to have nothing to say.
(3) The main attempts to show that induction can be justified inductively have concentrated on showing that such as a defence can avoid circularity. Skyrms (1975) formulate, perhaps the clearest version of this general strategy. The basic idea is to distinguish different levels of inductive argument: A first level in which induction is applied to things other than arguments: A second level in which it is applied to arguments at the first level, arguing that they have been observed to succeed so far and hence are likely to succeed in general: A third level in which it is applied in the same way to arguments at the second level, and so on. Circularity is allegedly avoided by treating each of these levels as autonomous and justifying the argument at each level by appeal to an argument at the next level.
One problem with this sort of move is that even if circularity is avoided, the movement to Higher and Higher levels will clearly eventually fail simply for lack of evidence: A level will reach at which there have been enough successful inductive arguments to provide a basis for inductive justification at the next Higher level, and if this is so, then the whole series of justifications collapses. A more fundamental difficulty is that the epistemological significance of the distinction between levels is obscure. If the issue is whether reasoning in accord with the original schema offered above ever provides a good reason for thinking that the conclusion is likely to be true, then it still seems question-begging, even if not flatly circular, to answer this question by appeal to anther argument of the same form.
(4) The idea that induction can be justified on a pure priori basis is in one way the most natural response of all: It alone treats an inductive argument as an independently cogent piece of reasoning whose conclusion can be seen rationally to follow, although perhaps only with probability from its premise. Such an approach has, however, only rarely been advocated (Russell, 19132 and BonJour, 1986), and is widely thought to be clearly and demonstrably hopeless.
Many on the reasons for this pessimistic view depend on general epistemological theses about the possible or nature of anticipatory cognition. Thus if, as Quine alleges, there is no a prior justification of any kind, then obviously a prior justification for induction is ruled out. Or if, as more moderate empiricists have in claiming some preexistent knowledge should be analytic, then again a prevenient justification for induction seems to be precluded, since the claim that if an inductive premise is truer, then the conclusion is likely to be true does not fit the standard conceptions of analyticity. A consideration of these matters is beyond the scope of the present spoken exchange.
There are, however, two more specific and quite influential reasons for thinking that an early approach is impossible that can be briefly considered, first, there is the assumption, originating in Hume, but since adopted by very many of others, that a move forward in the defence of induction would have to involve turning induction into deduction, i.e., showing, per impossible, that the inductive conclusion follows deductively from the premise, so that it is a formal contradiction to accept the latter and deny the former. However, it is unclear why a prior approach need be committed to anything this strong. It would be enough if it could be argued that it is deductively unlikely that such a premise is true and corresponding conclusion false.
Second, Reichenbach defends his view that pragmatic justification is the best that is possible by pointing out that a completely chaotic world in which there is simply not true conclusion to be found as to the proportion of As in addition that occur of, but Bs is neither impossible nor unlikely from a purely a prior standpoint, the suggestion being that therefore there can be no a prior reason for thinking that such a conclusion is true. Nevertheless, there is still a substring way in laying that a chaotic world is a prior neither impossible nor unlikely without any further evidence does not show that such a world os not a prior unlikely and a world containing such-and-such regularity might anticipatorially be somewhat likely in relation to an occurrence of a long running pattern of evidence in which a certain stable proportion of observed As are Bs ~. An occurrence, it might be claimed, that would be highly unlikely in a chaotic world (BonJour, 1986).
Goodmans new riddle of induction purports that we suppose that before some specific time t (perhaps the year 2000) we observe a larger number of emeralds (property A) and find them all to be green (property B). We proceed to reason inductively and conclude that all emeralds are green Goodman points out, however, that we could have drawn a quite different conclusion from the same evidence. If we define the term grue to mean green if examined before t and blue examined after t ʹ, then all of our observed emeralds will also be gruing. A parallel inductive argument will yield the conclusion that all emeralds are gruing, and hence that all those examined after the year 2000 will be blue. Presumably the first of these concisions is genuinely supported by our observations and the second is not. Nevertheless, the problem is to say why this is so and to impose some further restriction upon inductive reasoning that will permit the first argument and exclude the second.
The obvious alternative suggestion is that grue. Similar predicates do not correspond to genuine, purely qualitative properties in the way that green and blueness does, and that this is why inductive arguments involving them are unacceptable. Goodman, however, claims to be unable to make clear sense of this suggestion, pointing out that the relations of formal desirability are perfectly symmetrical: Grue may be defined in terms if, green and blue, but green an equally well be defined in terms of grue and green (blue if examined before t and green if examined after t).
The grued, paradoxes demonstrate the importance of categorization, in that sometimes it is itemized as gruing, if examined of a presence to the future, before future time t and green, or not so examined and blue. Even though all emeralds in our evidence class grue, we ought must infer that all emeralds are gruing. For grue is unprojectible, and cannot transmit credibility from known to unknown cases. Only projectable predicates are right for induction. Goodman considers entrenchment the key to projectibility having a long history of successful protection, grue is entrenched, lacking such a history, grue is not. A hypothesis is projectable, Goodman suggests, only if its predicates (or suitable related ones) are much better entrenched than its rivalrous past successes that do not assume future ones. Induction remains a risky business. The rationale for favouring entrenched predicates is pragmatic. Of the possible projections from our evidence class, the one that fits with past practices enables us to utilize our cognitive resources best. Its prospects of being true are worse than its competitors and its cognitive utility is greater.
So, to a better understanding of induction we should then literize its term for which is most widely used for any process of reasoning that takes us from empirical premises to empirical conclusions supported by the premises, but not deductively entailed by them. Inductive arguments are therefore kinds of applicative arguments, in which something beyond the content of the premise is inferred as probable or supported by them. Induction is, however, commonly distinguished from arguments to theoretical explanations, which share this applicative character, by being confined to inferences in which he conclusion involves the same properties or relations as the premises. The central example is induction by simple enumeration, where from premises telling that Fa, Fb, Fc . . . where a, b, cs, are all of some kind G, it is inferred that Gs from outside the sample, such as future Gs, will be F, or perhaps that all Gs are F. In this, which and the other persons deceive them, children may infer that everyone is a deceiver: Different, but similar inferences of a property by some object to the same objects future possession of the same property, or from the constancy of some law-like pattern in events and states of affairs ti its future constancy. All objects we know of attract each other with a force inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them, so perhaps they all do so, and will always do so.
The rational basis of any inference was challenged by Hume, who believed that induction presupposed belief in the uniformity of nature, but that this belief has no defence in reason, and merely reflected a habit or custom of the mind. Hume was not therefore sceptical about the role of reason in either explaining it or justifying it. Trying to answer Hume and to show that there is something rationally compelling about the inference referred to as the problem of induction. It is widely recognized that any rational defence of induction will have to partition well-behaved properties for which the inference is plausible (often called projectable properties) from badly behaved ones, for which it is not. It is also recognized that actual inductive habits are more complex than those of similar enumeration, and that both common sense and science pay attention to such giving factors as variations within the sample giving us the evidence, the application of ancillary beliefs about the order of nature, and so on.
Nevertheless, the fundamental problem remains that and experience condition by application show us only events occurring within a very restricted part of a vast spatial and temporal order about which we then come to believe things.
Uncompounded by its belonging of a confirmation theory finding of the measure to which evidence supports a theory fully formalized confirmation theory would dictate the degree of confidence that a rational investigator might have in a theory, given some-body of evidence. The grandfather of confirmation theory is Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1718), who believed that a logically transparent language of science would be able to resolve all disputes. In the 20th century a fully formal confirmation theory was a main goal of the logical positivist, since without it the central concept of verification by empirical evidence itself remains distressingly unscientific. The principal developments were due to Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970), culminating in his Logical Foundations of Probability (1950). Carnaps idea was that the measure necessitated would be the proportion of logically possible states of affairs in which the theory and the evidence both hold, compared ti the number in which the evidence itself holds that the probability of a preposition, relative to some evidence, is a proportion of the range of possibilities under which the proposition is true, compared to the total range of possibilities left by the evidence. The difficulty with the theory lies in identifying sets of possibilities so that they admit of measurement. It therefore demands that we can put a measure on the range of possibilities consistent with theory and evidence, compared with the range consistent with the evidence alone.
Among the obstacles the enterprise meets, is the fact that while evidence covers only a finite range of data, the hypotheses of science may cover an infinite range. In addition, confirmation proves to vary with the language in which the science is couched, and the Carnapian programme has difficulty in separating genuinely confirming variety of evidence from less compelling repetition of the same experiment. Confirmation also proved to be susceptible to acute paradoxes. Finally, scientific judgement seems to depend on such intangible factors as the problems facing rival theories, and most workers have come to stress instead the historically situated scene of what would appear as a plausible distinction of a scientific knowledge at a given time.
We collectively glorify our ability to think as the distinguishing characteristic of humanity; We personally and mistakenly glorify our thoughts as the distinguishing pattern of whom we are. From the inner voice of thought-as-words to the wordless images within our minds, thoughts create and limit our personal world. Through thinking we abstract and define reality, reason about it, react to it, recall past events and plan for the future. Yet thinking remains both woefully underdeveloped in most of us, as well as grossly overvalued. We can best gain some perspective on thinking in terms of energies.
Automatic thinking draws us away from the present, and wistfully allows our thoughts to meander where they would, carrying our passive attention along with them. Like water running down a mountain stream, thoughts running on auto-pilot careens through the spaces of perception, randomly triggering associative links within our vast storehouse of memory. By way of itself, such associative thought is harmless. However, our tendency to believe in, act upon, and drift away with such undirected thought keeps us operating in an automatic mode. Lulled into an inner passivity by our daydreams and thought streams, we lose contact with the world of actual perceptions, of real life. In the automatic mode of thinking, I am completely identified with my thoughts, believing my thoughts are I, and believing that I am the conceptualization forwarded by me to think of thoughts that are sometimes thought as unthinkable.
Another mode of automatic thinking consists of repetitious and habitual patterns of thought. These thought tapes and our running commentary on life, unexamined by the light of awareness, keep us enthralled, defining who we are and perpetuating all our limiting assumptions about what is possible for us. Driving and driven by our emotions, these ruts of thought create our false persona, the mask that keeps us disconnected from others and from our own authentic self. More than any other single factor, automatic thinking hinders our contact with presence, limits our being, and Forms our path. The autopilot of thought constantly calls us away from the most recent or the current of immediacy. Thus, keeping us fixed on the most superficial levels of our being.
Sometimes we even notice strange, unwanted thoughts that we consider horrible or shameful. We might be upset or shaken that we would think such thoughts, but those reactions only serves to sustain the problematic thoughts by feeding them energy. Furthermore, that self-disgust is based on the false assumption that we are our thoughts, that even unintentional thoughts, arising from our conditioned minds, are we. They are not we and we need not act upon or react to them. They are just thoughts with no inherent power and no real message about whom we are. We can just relax and let them go - or not. Troubling thoughts that recur over a long period and hinder our inner work may require us to examine and heal their roots in our conditioning, perhaps with the help of a psychotherapist.
Sensitive thinking puts us in touch with the meaning of our thoughts and enables us to think logically, solve problems, make plans, and carry on a substantive conversation. A good education develops our ability to think clearly and intentionally with the sensitive energy. With that energy level in our thinking brain, no longer totally submerged in the thought stream, we can move about in it, choosing among and directing our thoughts based on their meaning.
Conscious thinking means stepping out of the thought stream altogether, and surveying it from the shore. The thoughts themselves may even evaporate, leaving behind a temporary empty streambed. Consciousness reveals the banality and emptiness of ordinary thinking. Consciousness also permits us to think more powerfully, holding several ideas, their meanings and ramifications in our minds at once.
When the creative energy reaches thought, truly new ideas spring up. Creative thinking can happen after a struggle, after exhausting all known avenues of relevant ideas and giving up, shaping and emptying the stage so the creative spark may enter. The quiet, relaxed mind also leaves room for the creative thought, a clear channel for creativity. Creative and insightful thoughts come to all of us in regard to the situations we face in life. The trick is to be aware enough to catch them, to notice their significance, and if they withstand the light of sober and unbiased evaluation, to act on them.
In the spiritual path, we work to recognize the limitations of thought, to recognize its power over us, and especially to move beyond it. Along with Descartes, we subsist in the realm of “thoughts‘, but thoughts are just thoughts. They are not we. They are not who we are. No thought can enter the spiritual realms. Rather, the material world defines the boundaries of thought, despite its power to conceive lofty abstractions. We cannot think our way into the spiritual reality. On the contrary, identification with thinking prevents us from entering the depths. As long as we believe that refined thinking represents our highest capacity, we shackle ourselves exclusively to this world. All our thoughts, all our books, all our ideas wither before the immensity of the higher realms.
A richly developed body of spiritual practices engages of thought, from repetitive prayer and mantras, to contemplation of an idea, to visualizations of deities. In a most instructive and invaluable exercise, we learn to see beyond thought by embracing the gaps, the spaces between thoughts. After sitting quietly and relaxing for some time, we turn our attention toward the thought stream within us. We notice thoughts come and go of their own accord, without prodding or pushing from us. If we can abide in this relaxed watching of thought, without falling into the stream and flowing away with it, the thought stream begins to slow, the thoughts fragment. Less enthralled by our thoughts, we begin to see that we are not our thoughts. Less controlled by, and at the mercy of, our thoughts, we begin to be aware of the gaps between thought particles. These gaps open to consciousness, underlying all thought. Settling into these gaps, we enter and become the silent consciousness beneath thought. Instead of being in our thoughts, our thoughts are in us.
There is potentially a rich and productive interface between neuroscience/cognitive science. The two traditions, however, have evolved largely independent, based on differing sets of observations and objectives, and tend to use different conceptual frameworks and vocabulary representations. The distributive contributions to each their dynamic functions of finding a useful common reference to further exploration of the relations between neuroscience/cognitive science and psychoanalysis/psychotherapy.
Recent historical gaps between neuroscience/cognitive science and psychotherapy are being productively closed by, among other things, the suggestion that recent understandings of the nervous system as a modeler and predictor bear a close and useful similarity to the concepts of projection and transference. The gap could perhaps be valuably narrowed still further by a comparison in the two traditions of the concepts of the "unconscious" and the "conscious" and the relations between the two. It is suggested that these be understood as two independent "story generators" - each with different styles of function and both operating optimally as reciprocal contributors to each others' ongoing story evolution. A parallel and comparably optimal relation might be imagined for neuroscience/cognitive science and psychotherapy.
For the sake of argument, imagine that human behaviour and all that it entails (including the experience of being a human and interacting with a world that includes other humans) is a function of the nervous system. If this were so, then there would be lots of different people who are making observations of (perhaps different) aspects of the same thing, and telling (perhaps different) stories to make sense of their observations. The list would include neuroscientists and cognitive scientists and psychologists. It would include as well psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and social workers. If we were not too fussy about credentials, it should probably include as well educators, and parents and . . . babies? Arguably, all humans, from the time they are born, spend a considerable reckoning of time making observations of how people (others and themselves) behave and why, and telling stories to make sense of those observations.
The stories, of course, all differ from one another to greater or lesser degrees. In fact, the notion that "human behaviour and all that it entails . . . are a function of the nervous system" is itself a story used to make sense of observations by some people and not by any other? It is not my intent here to try to defend this particular story, or any other story for that matter. Very much to the contrary, what I want to do is to explore the implications and significance of the fact that there are different stories and that they might be about the same (some)thing.
In so doing, I want to try to create a new story that helps to facilitate an enhanced dialogue between neuroscience/cognitive science, on the one hand, and psychotherapy, on the other. That new stories of itself are stories of conflicting historical narratives . . . what is within being called the "nervous system" but others are free to call the "self," "mind," "soul," or whatever best fits their own stories. What is important is the idea that multiple things, evident by their conflicts, may not in fact be disconnected and adversarial entities but could rather be fundamentally, understandably, and valuably interconnected parts of the same thing.
"Non-conscious Prediction and a Role for Consciousness in Correcting Prediction Errors" by Regina Pally (Pally, 2004) is the take-off point for my enterprise. Pally is a practising psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and psychotherapist who have actively engaged with neuroscientists to help make sense of her own observations. I am a neuroscientist who recently spent two years as an Academic Fellow of the Psychoanalytic Centre of Philadelphia, an engagement intended to expand my own set of observations and forms of story-telling. The significance of this complementarity, and of our similarities and differences, is that something will emerge in this commentary.
Many psychoanalysts (and psychotherapists too, I suspect) feel that the observations/stories of neuroscience/cognitive science are for their own activities at best, find to some irrelevance, and at worst destructive or are they not the same probability that holds for many neuroscientists/cognitive scientists. Pally clearly feels otherwise, and it is worth exploring a bit why this is so in her case. A general key, I think, is in her line "In current paradigms, the brain has intrinsic activity, is highly integrated, is interactive with the environment, and is goal-oriented, with predictions operating at every level, from lower systems to . . . the highest functions of abstract thought.” Contemporary neuroscience/cognitive science has indeed uncovered an enormous complexity and richness in the nervous system, "making it not so different from how psychoanalysts (or most other people) would characterize the self, at least not in terms of complexity, potential, and vagary." Given this complexity and richness, there is substantially less reason than there once was to believe psychotherapists and neuroscientists/cognitive scientists are dealing with two fundamentally different things.
Pally suspect, more aware of this than many psychotherapists because she has been working closely with contemporary neuroscientists who are excited about the complexity to be found in the nervous system. And that has an important lesson, but there is an additional one at least as important in the immediate context. In 1950, two neuroscientists wrote that, "the sooner we recognize the certainty of the complexity that is highly functional, just as those who recognize the Gestalts under which they leave the reflex physiologist confounded, in fact they support the simplest functions in the sooner that we will see that the previous terminological peculiarities that seem insurmountably carried between the lower levels of neurophysiology and higher behavioural theory simply dissolve away."
And in 1951 another said: " I am coming more to the conviction that the rudiments of every behavioural mechanism will be found far down in the evolutionary scale and represented in primitive activities of the nervous system."
Neuroscience (and what came to be cognitive science) was engaged from very early on in an enterprise committed to the same kind of understanding sought by psychotherapists, but passed through a phase (roughly from the 1950 through to the 1980's) when its own observations and stories were less rich in those terms. It was a period that gave rise to the notion that the nervous system was "simple" and "mechanistic," which in turn made neuroscience/cognitive science seem less relevant to those with broader concerns, perhaps even threatening and apparently adversarial if one equated the nervous system with "mind," or "self," or "soul," since mechanics seemed degrading to those ideas. Arguably, though, the period was an essential part of the evolution of the contemporary neuroscience/cognitive science story, one that laid needed groundwork for rediscovery and productive exploration of the richness of the nervous system. Psychoanalysis/psychotherapy, and, of course, move through their own story of evolution over its presented time. That the two stories seemed remote from one another during this period was never adequate evidence that they were not about the same thing but only an expression of their needed independent evolutions.
An additional reason that Pally is comfortable with the likelihood that psychotherapists and neuroscientists/cognitive scientists are talking about the same thing is her recognition of isomorphisms (or congruities, Pulver 2003) between the two sets of stories, places where different vocabularies in fact seem to be representing the same (or quite similar) things. I am not sure I am comfortable calling these "shared assumptions" (as Pally does) since they are actually more interesting and probably more significant if they are instead instances of coming to the same ideas from different directions (as I think they are). In this case, the isomorphisms tend to imply that rephrasing Gertrude Stein, that "there proves to be the actualization in the exception of there.” Regardless, Pally has entirely appropriately and, I think, usefully called attention to an important similarity between the psychotherapeutic concept of "transference" and an emerging recognition within neuroscience/cognitive science that the nervous system does not so much collect information about the world as generate a model of it, act in relation to that model, and then check incoming information against the predictions of that model. Pally's suggestion that this model reflects in part early interpersonal experiences, can be largely "unconscious," and so may cause inappropriate and troubling behaviour in current time seems to be entirely reasonable. So too, are those that constitute her thought, in that of the interactions with which an analyst can help by bringing the model to "consciousness" through the intermediary of recognizing the transference onto the analyst.
The increasing recognition of substantial complexity in the nervous system together with the presence of identifiable isomorphisms that provide a solid foundation for suspecting that psychotherapists and neuroscientists/cognitive scientists are indeed talking about the same thing. But the significance of different stories for better understanding a single thing lies as much in the differences between the stories as it does in their similarities/isomorphisms, in the potential for differing and not obviously isomorphic stories to modify another productively, and yielding a new story in the process. With this thought in mind, I want to call attention to some places where the psychotherapeutic and the neuroscientific/cognitive scientific stories have edges that rub against one another than smoothly fitting together. And perhaps to ways each could be usefully further evolved in response to those non-isomorphisms.
Unconscious stories and "reality.” Though her primary concern is with interpersonal relations, Pally clearly recognizes that transference and related psychotherapeutic phenomena are one (actually relatively small) facet of a much more general phenomenon, the creation, largely unconsciously, of stories that are understood to be but are not that any necessary thoughtful pronunciations inclined for the "real world.” Ambiguous figures illustrate the same general phenomenon in a much simpler case, that of visual perception. Such figures may be seen in either of two ways; They represent two "stories" with the choice between them being, at any given time, largely unconscious. More generally, a serious consideration of a wide array of neurobiological/cognitive phenomena clearly implies that, as Pally says, we do not see "reality," but only have stories to describe it that result from processes of which we are not consciously aware.
All of this raises some quite serious philosophical questions about the meaning and usefulness of the concept of "reality." In the present context, what is important is that it is a set of questions that sometimes seem to provide an insurmountable barrier between the stories of neuroscientists/cognitive scientists, who largely think they are dealing with reality, and psychotherapists, who feel more comfortable in more idiosyncratic and fluid spaces. In fact, neuroscience and cognitive science can proceed perfectly well in the absence of a well-defined concept of "reality" and, without being fully conscious of it, committing to fact as they do so. And psychotherapists actually make more use of the idea of "reality" than is entirely appropriate. There is, for example, a tendency within the psychotherapeutic community to presume that unconscious stories reflect "traumas" and other historically verifiable events, while the neurobiological/cognitive science story says quite clearly that they may equally reflect predispositions whose origins reflect genetic information and hence bear little or no relation to "reality" in the sense usually meant. They may, in addition, reflect random "play," putting them even further out of reach of easy historical interpretation. In short, with regard to the relation between "story" and "reality," each set of stories could usefully be modified by greater attention to the other. Differing concepts of "reality" (perhaps the very concept itself) gets in the way of usefully sharing stories. The mental/cognitive scientists' preoccupation with "reality" as an essential touchstone could valuably be lessened, and the therapist's sense of the validation of stories in terms of personal and historical idiosyncracies could be helpfully adjusted to include a sense of actual material underpinnings.
The Unconscious and the Conscious. Pally appropriately makes a distinction between the unconscious and the conscious, one that has always been fundamental to psychotherapy. Neuroscience/cognitive science has been slower to make a comparable distinction but is now rapidly beginning to catch up. Clearly some neural processes generate behaviour in the absence of awareness and intent and others yield awareness and intent with or without accompanying behaviour. An interesting question however, raised at a recent open discussion of the relations between neuroscience and psychoanalysis, is whether the "neurobiological unconscious" is the same thing as the "psychotherapeutic unconscious," and whether the perceived relations between the "unconscious" and the"conscious" are the same in the two sets of stories. Is this a case of an isomorphism or, perhaps more usefully, a masked difference?
An oddity of Pally's article is that she herself acknowledges that the unconscious has mechanisms for monitoring prediction errors and yet implies, both in the title of the paper, and in much of its argument, that there is something special or distinctive about consciousness (or conscious processing) in its ability to correct prediction errors. And here, I think, there is evidence of a potentially useful "rubbing of edges" between the neuroscientific/cognitive scientific tradition and the psychotherapeutic one. The issue is whether one regards consciousness (or conscious processing) as somehow "superior" to the unconscious (or unconscious processing). There is a sense in Pally of an old psychotherapeutic perspective of the conscious as a mechanism for overcoming the deficiencies of the unconscious, of the conscious as the wise father/mother and the unconscious as the willful child. Actually, Pally does not quite go this far, as I will point out in the following, but there is enough of a trend to illustrate the point and, without more elaboration, I do not think of many neuroscientists/cognitive scientists will catch Pally's more insightful lesson. I think Pally is almost certainly correct that the interplay of the conscious and the unconscious can achieve results unachievable by the unconscious alone, but think also that neither psychotherapy nor neuroscience/cognitive science are yet in a position to say exactly why this is so. So let me take a crack here at a new, perhaps bi-dimensional story that could help with that common problem and perhaps both traditions as well.
A major and surprising lesson of comparative neuroscience, supported more recently by neuropsychology (Weiskrantz, 1986) and, more recently still, by artificial intelligence, is that an extraordinarily rich repertoire of adaptive behaviour can occur unconsciously, in the absence of awareness of intent (be supported by unconscious neural processes). It is not only modelling the world and prediction. Error correction that can occur this way but virtually (and perhaps literally) the entire spectrum of behaviour externally observed, including fleeing from a threat, and of approaching good things, generating novel outputs, learning from doing so, and so on.
This extraordinary terrain, discovered by neuroanatomists, electrophysiologists, neurologists, behavioural biologists, and recently extended by others using more modern techniques, is the unconscious of which the neuroscientist/cognitive scientist speaks. It is the area that is so surprisingly rich that it creates, for some people, the puzzle about whether there is anything else at all. Moreover, it seems, at first glance, to be a totally different terrain from that of the psychotherapist, whose clinical experience reveals a territory occupied by drives, unfulfilled needs, and the detritus with which the conscious would prefer not to deal.
As indicated earlier, it is one of the great strengths of Pally's article to suggest that the two areas may in fact, turns out to be the same as in many ways that if they are of the same, then its question only compliments in what way are the "unconscious" and the "conscious" of showing to any difference? Where now are the "two stories?” Pally touches briefly on this point, suggesting that the two systems differ not so much (or at all?) In what they do, but rather in how they do it. This notion of two systems with different styles seems to me worth emphasizing and expanding. Unconscious processing is faster and handles many more variables simultaneously. Conscious processing is slower and handles numerously fewer variables at one time. It is likely that their equalling a host of other differences in style as well, in the handling of number for example, and of time.
In the present context, however, perhaps the most important difference in style is one that Lacan called attention to from a clinical/philosophical perspective - the conscious (conscious processing) have in itself forwarded by some objective "coherence," that it attempts to create a story that makes sense simultaneously of all its parts. The unconscious, on the other hand, is much more comfortable with bits and pieces lying around with no global order. To a neurobiologist/cognitive scientist, this makes perfectly good sense. The circuitry embodies that of the unconscious (sub-cortical circuitry?) Is an assembly of different parts organized for a large number of different specific purposes, and only secondarily linked together to try to assure some coordination? The circuitry, has, once, again, to involve in conscious processing (neo-cortical circuitry?) On the other hand, seems to both be more uniform and integrated and to have an objective for which coherence is central.
That central coherence is well-illustrated by the phenomena of "positive illusions,” exemplified by patients who receive a hypnotic suggestion that there is an object in a room and subsequently walk in ways that avoid the object while providing a variety of unrelated explanations for their behaviour. Similar "rationalization" is, of course, seen in schizophrenic patients and in a variety of fewer dramatic forms in psychotherapeutic settings. The "coherent" objective is to make a globally organized story out of the disorganized jumble, a story of (and constituting) the "self."
What all this introduces that which is the mind or brain for which it is actually organized to be constantly generating at least two different stories in two different styles. One, written by conscious processes in simpler terms, is a story of/about the "self" and experienced as such, for developing insights into how such a story can be constructed using neural circuitry. The other is an unconscious "story" about interactions with the world, perhaps better thought of as a series of different "models" about how various actions relate to various consequences. In many ways, the latter are the grist for the former.
In this sense, we are safely back to the two stories that are ideologically central in their manifestations as pronounced in psychotherapy, but perhaps with some added sophistication deriving from neuroscience/cognitive science. In particular, there is no reason to believe that one story is "better" than the other in any definitive sense. They are different stories based on different styles of story telling, with one having advantages in certain sorts of situations (quick responses, large numbers of variables, more direct relation to immediate experiences of pain and pleasure) and the other in other sorts of situations (time for more deliberate responses, challenges amenable to handling using smaller numbers of variables, more coherent, more able to defer immediate gratification/judgment.
In the clinical/psychotherapeutic context, an important implication of the more neutral view of two story-tellers outlined above is that one ought not to over-value the conscious, nor to expect miracles of the process of making conscious what is unconscious. In the immediate context, the issue is if the unconscious is capable of "correcting prediction errors,” then why appeal to the conscious to achieve this function? More generally, what is the function of that persistent aspect of psychotherapy that aspires to make the unconscious conscious? And why is it therapeutically effective when it is? Here, it is worth calling special attention to an aspect of Pally's argument that might otherwise get a bit lost in the details of her article: . . . the therapist encourages the wife consciously to stop and consider her assumption that her husband does not properly care about her, and effortfully to consider an alternative view and inhibit her impulse to reject him back. This, in turn, creates a new type of experience, one in which he is indeed more loving, such that she can develop new predictions."
It is not, as Pally describes it, the simple act of making something conscious that is therapeutically effective. What is necessary is to decompose the story consciously (something that is made possible by its being a story with a small number of variables) and, even what is more important, to see if the story generates a new "type of experience" that in turn causes the development of "new predictions." The latter, is an effect of the conscious on the unconscious, an alteration of the unconscious brought about by hearing, entertaining, and hence acting on a new story developed by the conscious. It is not "making things conscious" that is therapeutically effective; it is the exchange of stories that encourages the creation of a new story in the unconscious.
For quite different reasons, Grey (1995) earlier made a suggestion not dissimilar to Pally's, proposing that consciousness was activated when an internal model detected a prediction failure, but acknowledged he could see no reason "why the brain should generate conscious experience of any kind at all." Seemingly, in spite of her title, there seems of nothing really to any detection of prediction errors, especially of what is important that Pally's story is the detection of mismatches between two stories. One unconscious and the other conscious, and the resulting opportunity for both to shape a less trouble-making new story. That, briefly may be why the brain "should generate conscious experience,” to reap the benefits of having a second story teller with a different style. Paraphrasing Descartes, one might say "I am, and I can think, therefore I can change who I am.” It is not only the neurobiological "conscious" that can undergo change; it is the neurobiological "unconscious" as well.
More generally, I want to suggest that the most effective psychotherapy requires the recognitions, rapidly emanating from the neuro- sciences and their cognitive counterpart for which are exposed of each within the paradigms of science, that the brain/mind has evolved with two (or more) independent story tellers and has done so precisely because there are advantages to having independent story tellers that generate and exchange different stories. The advantage is that each can learn from the other, and the mechanisms to convey the stories and forth and for each story teller to learn from the stories of the others occurring as a part of our evolutionary endowment as well. The problems that bring patients into a therapist's office are problems in the breakdown of story exchange, for any of a variety of reasons, and the challenge for the therapist is to reinstate the confidence of each story teller in the value of the stories created by the other. Neither the conscious nor the unconscious is primary; they function best as an interdependent loop with each developing its own story facilitated by the semi-independent story of the other. In such an organization, there are not only no "real,” and no primacy for consciousness, there is only the ongoing development and, ideally, effective sharing of different stories.
There are, in the story I am outlining, implications for neuroscience/cognitive science as well. The obvious key questions are what does one mean (in terms of neurons and neuronal assemblies) by "stories," and in what ways are their construction and representation different in unconscious and conscious neural processing. But even more important, if the story I have outlined makes sense, what are the neural mechanisms by which unconscious and conscious stories are exchanged and by which each kind of story impacts on the other? And why (again in neural terms) does the exchange sometimes break down and fail in a way that requires a psychotherapist - an additional story teller - to be repaired?
Just as the unconscious and the conscious are engaged in a process of evolving stories for separate reasons and using separate styles, so too have been and will continue to be neuroscience/cognitive science and psychotherapy. And it is valuable that both communities continue to do so. But there is every reason to believe that the different stories are indeed about the same thing, not only because of isomorphisms between the differing stories but equally because the stories of each can, if listened to, are demonstrably of value to the stories of the other. When breakdowns in story sharing occur, they require people in each community who are daring enough to listen and be affected by the stories of the other community. Pally has done us all a service as such a person. I hope to further the constructs that bridge her to lay, and that others will feel inclined to join in an act of collectivity such that has enormous intellectual potential and relates directly too more seriously psychological need in the mental health arena. Indeed, there are reasons to believe that an enhanced skill at hearing, respecting, and learning from differing stories about similar things would be useful in a wide array of contexts.
The physical basis of consciousness appears to be the major and most
singular challenge to the scientific, reductionist world view. In the closing years of the second millennium, advances in the ability to record the activity of individual neurons in the brains of monkeys or other animals while they carry out particular tasks, combined with the explosive development of functional brain imaging in normal humans, has lead to a renewed empirical program to discover the scientific explanation of consciousness. This article reviews some of the relevant experimental work and argues that the most advantageous strategy for now is to focus on discovering the neuronal correlates of consciousness.
Consciousness is a puzzling state-dependent property of certain types of complex, adaptive systems. The best example of one type of such systems is a healthy and attentive human brain. If the brain is anaesthetized, consciousness ceases. Small lesions in the midbrain and thalamus of patients can lead to a complete loss of consciousness, while destruction of circumscribed parts of the cerebral cortex of patients can eliminate very specific aspects of consciousness, such as the ability to be aware of motion or to recognize objects as faces, without a concomitant loss of vision usually. Given the similarity in brain structure and behaviour, biologists commonly assume that at least some animals, in particular non-human primates, share certain aspects of consciousness with humans. Brain scientists, in conjunction with cognitive neuroscientists, are exploiting a number of empirical approaches that shed light on the neural basis of consciousness. Since it is not known to what extent, artificial systems, such as computers and robots, can become conscious, this article will exclude these from consideration.
Largely, neuroscientists have made a number of working assumptions that, in the fullness of time, need to be justified more fully.
(1) There is something to be explained; that is, the subjective content associated with a conscious sensation - what philosophers point to the qualia - does exist and has its physical basis in the brain. To what extent qualia and all other subjective aspects of consciousness can or cannot be explained within some reductionist framework remains highly controversially.
(2) Consciousness is a vague term with many usages and will, in the fullness of time, be replaced by a vocabulary that more accurately reflect the contribution of different brain processes (for a similar evolution, consider the usage of memory, that has been replaced by an entire hierarchy of more specific concepts). Common to all forms of consciousness is that it feels like something (e.g., to “see blue," to “experience a head-ache,” or to "reflect upon a memory"). Self-consciousness is but one form of consciousness.
It is possible that all the different aspects of consciousness (smelling, pain, visual awareness, effect, self-consciousness, and so on) employ a basic common mechanism or perhaps a few such mechanisms. If one could understand the mechanism for one aspect, then one will have gone most of the way toward understanding them all.
(3) Consciousness is a property of the human brain, a highly evolved system. It therefore must have a useful function to perform. Crick and Koch (1998) assumes that the function of the neuronal correlate of consciousness is to produce the best current interpretation of the environment-in the light of past experiences-and to make it available, for a sufficient time, to the parts of the brain that contemplate, plan and execute voluntary motor outputs (including language). This needs to be contrasted with the on-line systems that bypass consciousness but that can generate stereotyped behaviours.
Note that in normally developed individuals motor output is not necessary for consciousness to occur. This is demonstrated by lock-in syndrome in which patients have lost (nearly) all ability to move yet are clearly conscious.
(4) At least some animal species posses some aspects of consciousness. In particular, this is assumed to be true for non-human primates, such as the macaque monkey. Consciousness associated with sensory events in humans is likely to be related to sensory consciousness in monkeys for several reasons. Firstly, trained monkeys show similar behaviour to that of humans for many low-level perceptual tasks (e.g., detection and discrimination of visual motion or depth. Secondly, the gross neuroanatomy of humans and non-human primates are rather similar once the difference in size has been accounted for. Finally, functional magnetic resonance imaging of human cerebral cortex is confirming the existence of a functional organization in sensory cortical areas similar to that discovered by the use of single cell electrophysiology in the monkey. As a corollary, it follows that language is not necessary for consciousness to occur (although it greatly enriches human consciousness).
It is important to distinguish the general, enabling factors in the brain that are needed for any form of consciousness to occur from modulating ones that can up-or-down regulate the level of arousal, attention and awareness and from the specific factors responsible for a particular content of consciousness.
An easy example of an enabling factor would be a proper blood supply. Inactivate the heart and consciousness ceases within a fraction of a minute. This does not imply that the neural correlate of consciousness is in the heart (as Aristotle thought). A neuronal enabling factor for consciousness is the intralaminar nuclei of the thalamus. Acute bilateral loss of function in these small structures that are widely and reciprocally connected to the basal ganglia and cerebral cortex leads to an immediate coma or profound disruption in arousal and consciousness.
Among the neuronal modulating factors are the various activities in nuclei in the brain stem and the midbrain, often collectively referred to as the reticular activating system, that control in a widespread and quite specific manner the level of noradrenaline, serotonin and acetylcholine in the thalamus and forebrain. Appropriate levels of these neurotransmitters are needed for sleep, arousal, attention, memory and other functions critical to behaviour and consciousness.
Yet any particular content of consciousness is unlikely to arise from these structures, since they probably lack the specificity necessary to mediate a sharp pain in the right molar, the percept of the deep, blue California sky, the bouquet associated with a rich Bordeaux, a haunting musical melody and so on. These must be caused by specific neural activity in cortex, thalamus, basal ganglia and associated neuronal structures. The question motivating much of the current research into the neuronal basis of consciousness is the notion of the minimal neural activity that is sufficient to cause a specific conscious percept or memory.
For instance, when a subject consciously perceives a face, the retinal ganglion cells whose axons make up the optic nerve that carries the visual information to the brain proper are firing in response to the visual stimulus. Yet it is unlikely that this retinal activity directly correlates with visual perception. While such activity is evidently necessary for seeing a physical stimulus in the world, retinal neurons by themselves do not give rise to consciousness.
Given the comparative ease with which the brains of animals can be probed and manipulated, it seems opportune at this point in time to concentrate on the neural basis of sensory consciousness. Because primates are highly visual animals and much is known about the neuroanatomy, psychology and computational principles underling visual perception, visions has proven to be the most popular model systems in the brain sciences.
Cognitive and clinical research demonstrates that much complex information processing can occur without involving consciousness. This includes visual, auditory and linguistic priming, implicit memory, the implicit recognition of complex sequences, automatic behaviours such as driving a car or riding a bicycle and so on (Velmans 1991). The dissociations found in patients with lesions in the cerebral cortex (e.g., such as residual visual functions in the professed absence of any visual awareness known as clinical blind-sight in patients with lesions in preliminary visual cortex.
It can be said, that if one is without idea, then one is without concept, and as well, if one is without concept one is without an idea. An idea (Gk., eidos, visible form) be it a notion stretching all the way from one pole, where it denotes a subjective, internal presence in the mind, somehow thought of as representing something about the world, to the other pole, where it represents an eternal, timeless unchanging form or concept: The concept o the number series or of justice, for example, thought of as independent objected of enquiry and perhaps of knowledge. These two poles are not distinct meanings of the therm, although they give rise to many problems of interpretation, but between tem they define a space of philosophical problems. On the other hand, ideas are that with which er think, or in Locke’s terms, whatever the mind may be employed about in thinking. Looked at that way they seem to be inherently transient, fleeting, and unstable private presences. On the other hand, ideas provide the way in which objective knowledge can be expressed. They are the essential components of understanding, and any intelligible proposition that is true must be capable of being understood. Plato’s theory of Forms is a celebration of objective and timeless existence of ideas as concepts, and in his hands ideas are reified to the point where they make up the only rea world, of separate and perfect models of which the empirical world is only a poor cousin. This doctrine, notable in the Timaeus, opened the way for the Neoplatonic notion of ideas as the thoughts of God. The concept gradually lost this other-worldly aspect until after Descartes ideas become assimilated to whatever it is that lies in the mind of any thinking being.
The philosophical doctrine that reality is somehow mind-correlatives or mind co-ordinated - that the real objects comprising the “external world” are mot independent of cognizing minds, but only exist as in some way correlative to the mental operations. The doctrine centres on the conception that reality as we understand it reflects the working of mind. And it construes this as meaning that the inquiring mind itself to make a formative contribution not merely to our understanding character we attribute to it.
The cognitive scientist Jackendoff (1987) argues at length against the notion that consciousness and thoughts are inseparable and that introspection can reveal the contents of the mind. What is conscious about thoughts, are sensory aspects, such as visual images, sounds or silent speech? Both the process of thought and its content are not directly accessible to consciousness. Indeed, one tradition in psychology and psychoanalysis - going back to Sigmund Freud-hypothesizes that higher-level decision making and creativity are not accessible at a conscious level, although they influence behaviour.
Within the visual modality, Milner and Goodale (1995) have made a masterful case for the existence of so-called on-line systems that by-pass consciousness. Their function is to mediate relative stereotype visuo-motor behaviours, such as eye and arm movements, reaching, grasping, and postural adjustment and so on. In a very rapid, reflex-like manner. On-line systems work in egocentric coordinate systems, and lack certain types of perceptual illusions (e.g., size illusion) as well as direct access to working memory. These contrasts are well within the function of consciousness as alluded to from above, namely to synthesize information from many different sources and use it to plan behavioural patterns over time. Milner and Goodale argue that on-line systems are associated with the dorsal stream of visual information in the cerebral cortex, originating in the primary visual cortex and terminating in the posterior parietal cortex. The problem of consciousness can be broken down into several separate questions. Most, if not all of these, can then be subjected to scientific inquiry.
The major question that neuroscience must ultimately answer can be bluntly stated as follows: It is probable that at any moment some active neuronal processes in our head correlates with consciousness, while others do not; what is the difference between them? The specific processes that correlate with the current content of consciousness are referred to as the neuronal correlate of consciousness, or as the NCC. Whenever some information is represented in the NCC, it is represented in consciousness. The NCC is the minimal (minimal, since it is known that the entire brain is sufficient to give rise to consciousness) set of neurons, most likely distributed throughout certain cortical and subcortical areas, whose firing directly correlates with the perception of the subject at the time. Conversely, stimulating these neurons in the right manner with some yet unheard of technology should give rise to the same perception as before.
Discovering the NCC and its properties will mark a major milestone in any scientific theory of consciousness.
What is the character of the NCC? Most popular has been the belief that consciousness arises as an emergent property of a very large collection of interacting neurons (for instance, Libet 1993). In this view, it would be foolish to locate consciousness at the level of individual neurons. An alternative hypothesis is that there are special sets of “consciousness" neurons distributed throughout cortex and associated systems. Such neurons represent the ultimate neuronal correlate of consciousness, in the sense that the relevant activity of an appropriate subset of them is both necessary and sufficient to give rise to an appropriate conscious experience or percept (Crick and Koch 1998). Generating the appropriate activity in these neurons, for instance by suitable electrical stimulation during open skull surgery, would give rise to the specific percept.
Any-one subtype of NCC neurons would, most likely, be characterized by a unique combination of molecular, biophysical, pharmacological and anatomical traits. It is possible, of course, that all cortical neurons may be capable of participating in the representation of one percept or another, though not necessarily doing so for all percepts. The secret of consciousness would then be the type of activity of a temporary subset of them, consisting of all those cortical neurons that represent that particular percept at that moment. How activity of neurons across a multitude of brain areas that encode all of the different aspects associated with an object (e.g., the colour of the face, its facial expression, its gender and identity, the sound issuing from its mouth) is combined into some single percept remains puzzling and is known as the binding problem.
What, if anything, can we infer about the location of neurons whose activity correlates with consciousness? In the case of visual consciousness, it was surmised that these neurons must have access to visual information and project to the planning stages of the brain; That is to premotor and frontal areas. Since no neurons in the primary visual cortex of the macaque monkey project to any area forward of the central sulcus, Crick and Koch (1998) propose that neurons in V1 do not give rise to consciousness (although it is necessary for most forms of vision, just as the retina is). Ongoing electro physiological, psycho physical and imaging research in monkeys and humans is evaluating this prediction.
While the set of neurons that can express anyone particular conscious percept might constitute a relative small fraction of all neurons in anyone area, many more neurons might be necessary to support the firing activity leading up to the NCC. This might resolve the apparent paradox between clinical lessoning data suggesting that small and discrete lesions in the cortex can lead to very specific deficits (such as the inability to see colours or to recognize faces in the absence of other visual losses) and the functional imaging data that anyone visual stimulus can activate large swaths of cortex.
Conceptually, several other questions need to be answered about the NCC. What type of activity corresponds to the NCC (it has been proposed as long ago as the early part of the twentieth century that spiking activity synchronized across a population of neurons is a necessary condition for consciousness to occur)? What causes the NCC to occur? And, finally, what effect does the NCC have on postsynaptic structures, including motor output.
A promising experimental approach to locate the NCC is the use of bistable percepts in which a constant retinal stimulus gives rise to two percepts alternating in time, as in a Necker cube (Logothetis 1998). One version of this is binocular rivalry in which small images, say of a horizontal grating, are presented to the left eye and another image, say the vertical grating is shown to the corresponding location in the right eye. In spite of the constant visual stimulus, observers “see" the horizontal grating alternately every few seconds with the vertical one (Blake 1989). The brain does not allow for the simultaneous perception of both images.
It is possible, though difficult, to train a macaque monkey to report whether it is currently seeing the left or the right image. The distribution of the switching times and the way in which changing the contrast in one eye affects these leaves little to doubt, in that monkeys and humans experience the same basic phenomenon. In a series of elegant experiments, Logothetis and colleagues (Logothetis 1998) recorded from a variety of visual cortical areas in the awake macaque monkey while the animal performed a binocular rivalry task. In undeveloped visual cortices, only a small fraction of cells modulates their response as a function of the percept of the monkey, while 20 to 30% of neurons in higher visual areas in the cortex do so. The majority of cells increased their firing rate in response to one or the other retinal stimulus with little regard to what the animal perceives at the time. In contrast, in a high-level cortical area such as the inferior temporal cortex, almost all neurons responded only to the perceptual dominant stimulus (in other words, a “face” cell only fired when the animal indicated by its performance that it saw the face and not the pattern presented to the other eye). This makes it likely that the NCC involves activity in neurons in the inferior temporal lobe. Lesions in the homologous area in the human brain are known to cause very specific deficits in the conscious face or object recognition. However, it is possible that specific interactions between IT cells and neurons in parts of the prefrontal cortex are necessary in order for the NCC to be generated
Functional brain imaging in humans undergoing binocular rivalry has revealed that areas in the right prefrontal cortex are in activating during the perceptual switch from one percept to the other.
A number of alternate experimental paradigms are being investigated using electro physiological recordings of individual neurons in behaving animals and human patients, combined with functional brain imaging. Common to these is the manipulation of the complex and changing relationship between physical stimulus and the conscious percept. For instance, when subjects are forced rapidly to respond to a low saliency target, both monkeys and human’s sometimes claim to perceive such a target in the absence of any physical target consciously (false alarm) or fail to respond to a target (miss). The NCC in the appropriate sensory area should mirror the perceptual report under these dissociated conditions. Visual illusions constitute another rich source of experiments that can provide information concerning the neurons underlying these illusory percepts. A classical example is the motion affected in which a subject stares at a constantly moving stimulus (such as a waterfall) for a fraction of a minute or longer. Immediately after this conditioning period, a stationary stimulus will appear to move in the opposite direction. Because of the conscious experience of motion, one would expect, the subject’s cortical motion areas to be activated in the absence of any moving stimulus.
Future techniques, most likely based on the molecular identification and manipulation of discrete and identifiable subpopulations of cortical cells in appropriate animals, will greatly help in this endeavour
Identifying the type of activity and the type of neurons that gives rise to specific conscious percept in animals and humans would only be the first, even if critical, step in understanding consciousness. One also needs to know where these cells project to, their postsynaptic action, how they develop in early childhood, what happens to them in mental diseases known to affect consciousness in patients, such as schizophrenia or autism, and so on. And, of course, a final theory of consciousness would have to explain the central mystery, why a physical system with particular architectures gives rise to feelings and qualia.
The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.
Phenomenology as a discipline is distinct from but related to other key disciplines in philosophy, such as ontology, epistemology, logic, and ethics. Phenomenology has been practised in various guises for centuries, however, its maturing qualities have begun in the early parts of the 20th century. The works that have dramatically empathized the growths of phenomenology are accredited through the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and others. Phenomenological issues of intentionality, consciousness, qualia, and first-person perspective have been prominent in recent philosophy of mind.
Phenomenology is commonly understood in either of two ways: as a disciplinary field in philosophy, or as a movement in the history of philosophy.
The discipline of phenomenology may be defined initially as the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. Literally, phenomenology is the study of "phenomena": Appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meaning’s things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view. This field of philosophy is then to be distinguished from, and related to, the other main fields of philosophy: Ontology (the study of being or what is), epistemology (the study of knowledge), logic (the study of valid reasoning), ethics (the study of right and wrong action), etc.
The historical movement of phenomenology is the philosophical tradition launched in the first half of the 20th century by Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre. In that movement, the discipline of phenomenology was prized as the proper foundation of all philosophy - as opposed, say, to ethics or metaphysics or epistemology. The methods and characterization of the discipline were widely debated by Husserl and his successors, and these debates continue to the present day. (The definitions of Phenomenological offered above will thus be debatable, for example, by Heideggerians, but it remains the starting point in characterizing the discipline.)
In recent philosophy of mind, the term "phenomenology" is often restricted to the characterization of sensory qualities of seeing, hearing, etc.: What it is like to have sensations of various kinds. However, our experience is normally much richer in content than mere sensation. Accordingly, in the Phenomenological tradition, phenomenology is given a much wider range, addressing the meaning things have in our experience, notably, the significance of objects, events, tools, the flow of time, the self, and others, as these things arise and are experienced in our "life-world.”
Phenomenology as a discipline has been central to the tradition of continental European philosophy throughout the 20th century, while philosophy of mind has evolved in the Austro-Anglo-American tradition of analytic philosophy that developed throughout the 20th century. Yet the fundamental character of our mental activity is pursued in overlapping ways within these two traditions. Accordingly, the perspective on phenomenology drawn in this article will accommodate both traditions. The main concern here will be to characterize the discipline of phenomenology, in contemporary views, while also highlighting the historical tradition that brought the discipline into its own.
Basically, phenomenology studies the structure of various types of experience ranging from perception, thought, memory, imagination, emotion, desire, and volition to bodily awareness, embodied action, and social activity, including linguistic activity. The structure of these forms of experience typically involves what Husserl called "intentionality,” that is, the directedness of experience toward things in the world, the property of consciousness that it is a consciousness of or about something. According to classical Husserlian phenomenology, our experiences abide toward the direction that represents or "intends" of things only through particular concepts, thoughts, ideas, images, etc. These make up the meaning or content of a given experience, and are distinct from the things they present or mean.
The basic intentional structure of consciousness, we come to find in reflection or analysis, in that of which involves further forms of experience. Thus, phenomenology develops a complex account of temporal awareness (within the stream of consciousness), spatial awareness (notably in perception), attention (distinguishing focal and marginal or "horizonal" awareness), awareness of one's own experience (self-consciousness, in one sense), self-awareness (awareness-of-oneself), the self in different roles (as thinking, acting, etc.), embodied action (including kinesthetic awareness of one's movement), determination or intention represents its desire for action (more or less explicit), awareness of other persons (in empathy, intersubjectivity, collectivity), linguistic activity (involving meaning, communication, understanding others), social interaction (including collective action), and everyday activity in our surrounding life-world (in a particular culture).
Furthermore, in a different dimension, we find various grounds or enabling conditions - conditions of the possibility - of intentionality, including embodiment, bodily skills, cultural context, language and other social practices, social background, and contextual aspects of intentional activities. Thus, phenomenology leads from conscious experience into conditions that help to give experience its intentionality. Traditional phenomenology has focussed on subjective, practical, and social conditions of experience. Recent philosophy of mind, however, has focussed especially on the neural substrate of experience, on how conscious experience and mental representation or intentionality is grounded in brain activity. It remains a difficult question how much of these grounds of experience fall within the province of phenomenology as a discipline. Cultural conditions thus seem closer to our experience and to our familiar self-understanding than do the electrochemical workings of our brain, much less our dependence on quantum-mechanical states of physical systems to which we may belong. The cautious thing to say is that phenomenology leads in some ways into at least some background conditions of our experience.
The discipline of phenomenology is defined by its domain of study, its methods, and its main results. Phenomenology studies structures of conscious experience as experienced from the first-person point of view, along with relevant conditions of experience. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, the way it is directed through its content or meaning toward a certain object in the world.
We all experience various types of experience including perception, imagination, thought, emotion, desire, volition, and action. Thus, the domain of phenomenology is the range of experiences including these types (among others). Experience includes not only relatively passive experience as in vision or hearing, but also active experience as in walking or hammering a nail or kicking a ball. (The range will be specific to each species of being that enjoys consciousness; Our focus is on our own human experience. Not all conscious beings will, or will be able to, practice phenomenology, as we do.)
Conscious experiences have a unique feature: we experience them, we live through them or perform them. Other things in the world we may observe and engage. But we do not experience them, in the sense of living through or performing them. This experiential or first-person feature - that of being experienced - is an essential part of the nature or structure of conscious experience: as we say, "I see/think/desire/do . . ." This feature is both a Phenomenological and an ontological feature of each experience: it is part of what it is for the experience to be experienced (Phenomenological) and part of what it is for the experience to be (ontological).
How shall we study conscious experience? We reflect on various types of experiences just as we experience them. That is to say, we proceed from the first-person point of view. However, we do not normally characterize an experience at the time we are performing it. In many cases we do not have that capability: a state of intense anger or fear, for example, consumes the entire focus at the time. Rather, we acquire a background of having lived through a given type of experience, and we look to our familiarity with that type of experience: hearing a song, seeing a sunset, thinking about love, intending to jump a hurdle. The practice of phenomenology assumes such familiarity with the type of experiences to be characterized. Importantly, also, it is types of experience that phenomenology pursues, rather than a particular fleeting experience - unless its type is what interests us.
Classical phenomenologists practised some three distinguishable methods. (1) We describe a type of experience just as we find it in our own (past) experience. Thus, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty spoke of pure description of lived experience. (2) We interpret a type of experience by relating it to relevant features of context. In this vein, Heidegger and his followers spoke of hermeneutics, the art of interpretation in context, especially social and linguistic context. (3) We analyse the form of a type of experience. In the end, all the classical phenomenologists practised analysis of experience, factoring out notable features for further elaboration.
These traditional methods have been ramified in recent decades, expanding the methods available to phenomenology. Thus: (4) In a logico-semantic model of phenomenology, we specify the truth conditions for a type of thinking (say, where I think that dogs chase cats) or the satisfaction conditions for a type of intention (say, where I intend or will to jump that hurdle). (5) In the experimental paradigm of cognitive neuroscience, we design empirical experiments that tend to confirm or refute aspects of experience (say, where a brain scan shows electrochemical activity in a specific region of the brain thought to subserve a type of vision or emotion or motor control). This style of "neurophenomenology" assumes that conscious experience is grounded in neural activity in embodied action in appropriate surroundings - mixing pure phenomenology with biological and physical science in a way that was not wholly congenial to traditional phenomenologists.
What makes an experience conscious is a certain awareness one has of the experience while living through or performing it. This form of inner awareness has been a topic of considerable debate, centuries after the issue arose with Locke's notion of self-consciousness on the heels of Descartes' sense of consciousness (conscience, co-knowledge). Does this awareness-of-experience consist in a kind of inner observation of the experience, as if one were doing two things at once? (Brentano argued no.) Is it a higher-order perception of one's mind's operation, or is it a higher-order thought about one's mental activity? (Recent theorists have proposed both.) Or is it a different form of inherent structure? (Sartre took this line, drawing on Brentano and Husserl.) These issues are beyond the scope of this article, but notice that these results of Phenomenological analysis, that shape the characterlogical domain of study and the methodology appropriate to the domain. For awareness-of-experience is a defining trait of conscious experience, the trait that gives experience a first-person, lived character. It is that lived character of experience that allows a first-person perspective on the object of study, namely, experiences, and that perspective is characteristic of the methodology of phenomenology.
Conscious experience is the starting point of phenomenology, but experience shades off into fewer overtly conscious phenomena. As Husserl and others stressed, we are only vaguely aware of things in the margin or periphery of attention, and we are only implicitly aware of the wider horizon of things in the world around us. Moreover, as Heidegger stressed, in practical activities like walking along, or hammering a nail, or speaking our native tongue, we are not explicitly conscious of our habitual patterns of action. Furthermore, as psychoanalysts have stressed, much of our intentional mental activity is not conscious at all, but may become conscious in the process of therapy or interrogation, as we come to realize how we feel or think about something. We should allow, then, that the domain of phenomenology - our own experience - spreads out from conscious experience into semi-conscious and even unconscious mental activity, along with relevant background conditions implicitly invoked in our experience. (These issues are subject to debate; the point here is to open the door to the question of where to draw the boundary of the domain of phenomenology.)
To begin an elementary exercise in phenomenology, consider some typical experiences one might have in everyday life, characterized in the first person: (1) I see that fishing boat off the coast as dusk descends over the Pacific. (2) I hear that helicopter whirring overhead as it approaches the hospital. (3) I am thinking that phenomenology differs from psychology. (4) I wish that warm rain from Mexico were falling like last week. (5) I imagine a fearsome creature like that in my nightmare. (6) I intend to finish my writing by noon. (7) I walk carefully around the broken glass on the sidewalk. (8) I stroke a backhand cross-court with that certain underspin. (9) I am searching for the words to make my point in conversation.
Here are rudimentary characterizations of some familiar types of experience. Each sentence is a simple form of Phenomenological description, articulating in everyday English the structure of the type of experience so described. The subject term "I" indicate the first-person structure of the experience: The intentionality proceeds from the subject. The verb indicates the type of intentional activity describing recognition, thought, imagination, etc. Of central importance is the way that objects of awareness are presented or intended in our experiences, especially, the way we see or conceive or think about objects. The direct-object expression ("that fishing boat off the coast") articulates the mode of presentation of the object in the experience: the content or meaning of the experience, the core of what Husserl called noema. In effect, the object-phrase expresses the noema of the act described, that is, to the extent that language has appropriate expressive power. The overall form of the given sentence articulates the basic form of intentionality in the experience: Subject-act-content-object.
Rich Phenomenological description or interpretation, as in Husserl, Merleau-Ponty et al., will far outrun such simple Phenomenological descriptions as above. But such simple descriptions bring out the basic form of intentionality. As we interpret the Phenomenological description further, we may assess the relevance of the context of experience. And we may turn to wider conditions of the possibility of that type of experience. In this way, in the practice of phenomenology, we classify, describe, interpret, and analyse structures of experiences in ways that answer to our own experience.
In such interpretive-descriptive analyses of experience, we immediately observe that we are analysing familiar forms of consciousness, conscious experience of or about this or that. Intentionality is thus the salient structure of our experience, and much of the phenomenology proceeds as the study of different aspects of intentionality. Thus, we explore structures of the stream of consciousness, the enduring self, the embodied self, and bodily action. Furthermore, as we reflect on how these phenomena work, we turn to the analysis of relevant conditions that enable our experiences to occur as they do, and to represent or intend as they do. Phenomenology then leads into analyses of conditions of the possibility of intentionality, conditions involving motor skills and habits, backgrounding social practices, and often language, with its special place in human affairs, presents the following definition: "Phoneme, . . .”
The Oxford English Dictionary indicated of its knowledge, where science as itself is a contained source of phenomena as distinct from being (ontology). That division of any science that describes and classifies its phenomena. From the Greek phainomenon, appearance. In philosophy, the term is used in the first sense, amid debates of theory and methodology. In physics and philosophy of science, the term is used in the second sense, but only occasionally.
So its root meaning, then, phenomenology is the study of phenomena: Literally, appearances as opposed to reality. This ancient distinction launched philosophy as we emerged from Plato's cave. Yet the discipline of phenomenology did not blossom until the 20th century and remains poorly understood in many circles of contemporary philosophy. What is that discipline? How did philosophy move from a root concept of phenomena to the discipline of phenomenology?
Originally, in the 18th century, "phenomenology" meant the theory of appearances fundamental to empirical knowledge, especially sensory appearances. The term seems to have been introduced by Johann Heinrich Lambert, a follower of Christian Wolff. Subsequently, Immanuel Kant used the term occasionally in various writings, as did Johann Gottlieb Fichte and G. W. F. Hegel. By 1889 Franz Brentano used the term to characterize what he called "descriptive psychology. From there Edmund Husserl took up the term for his new science of consciousness, and the rest is history.
Suppose we say phenomenology study’s phenomena: Of what appears to us - and its appearing. How shall we understand phenomena? The term has a rich history in recent centuries, in which we can see traces of the emerging discipline of phenomenology.
In a strict empiricist vein, what appears before the mind accedes of sensory data or qualia: either patterns of one's own sensations (seeing red here now, feeling this ticklish feeling, hearing that resonant bass tone) or sensible patterns of worldly things, say, the looks and smells of flowers (what John Locke called secondary qualities of things). In a strict rationalist vein, by contrast, what appears before the mind of ideas, rationally formed "clear and distinct ideas" (in René Descartes' ideal). In Immanuel Kant's theory of knowledge, fusing rationalist and empiricist aims, what appears to the mind are phenomena defined as things-as-they-appear or things-as-they-are-represented (in a synthesis of sensory and conceptual forms of objects-as-known). In Auguste Comte's theory of science, phenomena (phenomenes) are the facts (faits, what occurs) that a given science would explain.
In 18th and 19th century epistemology, then, phenomena are the starting points in building knowledge, especially science. Accordingly, in a familiar and still current sense, phenomena are whatever we observe (perceive) and seek to explain. Discipline of psychology emerged late in the 19th century, however, phenomena took on a somewhat different guise. In Franz Brentano's Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874), phenomena are of what is to occur in the mind: Mental phenomena are acts of consciousness (or their contents), and physical phenomena are objects of external perception starting with colours and shapes. For Brentano, physical phenomena exist "intentionally" in acts of consciousness. This view revives a Medieval notion Brentano called "intentional in-existence. Nevertheless, the ontology remains undeveloped (what is it to exist in the mind, and do physical objects exist only in the mind?). More generally, we might say that phenomena are whatever we are conscious of: objects and events around us, other people, ourselves, even (in reflection) our own conscious experiences, as we experience these. In a certain technical sense, phenomena are things as they are given to our consciousness, whether in perception or imagination or thought or volition. This conception of phenomena would soon inform the new discipline of phenomenology.
Brentano distinguished descriptive psychology from genetic psychology. Where genetic psychology seeks the causes of various types of mental phenomena, descriptive psychology defines and classifies the various types of mental phenomena, including perception, judgment, emotion, etc. According to Brentano, every mental phenomenon, or act of consciousness, is directed toward some object, and only mental phenomena are so directed. This thesis of intentional directedness was the hallmark of Brentano's descriptive psychology. In 1889 Brentano used the term "phenomenology" for descriptive psychology, and the way was paved for Husserl's new science of phenomenology.
Phenomenology as we know it was launched by Edmund Husserl in his Logical Investigations (1900-01). Two importantly different lines of theory came together in that monumental work: Psychological theory, on the heels of Franz Brentano (and William James, whose Principles of Psychology appeared in 1891 and greatly impressed Husserl); Its logically semantic theory, are the heels of Bernard Bolzano and Husserl's contemporaries who founded modern logic, including Gottlob Frege. (Interestingly, both lines of research trace back to Aristotle, and both reached importantly new results in Husserl's day.)
Husserl's Logical Investigations was inspired by Bolzano's ideal of logic, while taking up Brentano's conception of descriptive psychology. In his Theory of Science (1835) Bolzano distinguished between subjective and objective ideas or representations (Vorstellungen). In effect Bolzano criticized Kant and before him the classical empiricists and rationalists for failing to make this sort of distinction, thereby rendering phenomena merely subjective. Logic studies objective ideas, including propositions, which in turn make up objective theories as in the sciences. Psychology would, by contrast, study subjective ideas, the concrete contents (occurrences) of mental activities in particular minds at a given time. Husserl was after both, within a single discipline. So phenomena must be reconceived as objective intentional contents (sometimes called intentional objects) of subjective acts of consciousness. Phenomenology would then study this complex of consciousness and correlated phenomena. In Ideas I (Book One, 1913) Husserl introduced two Greek words to capture his version of the Bolzanoan distinction: noesis and noema (from the Greek verb noéaw, meaning to perceive, thinks, intend, from where the noun nous or mind). The intentional process of consciousness is called noesis, while its ideal content is called noema. The noema of an act of consciousness Husserl characterized both as an ideal meaning and as "the object as intended.” Thus the phenomenon, or object-as-it-appears, becomes the noema, or object-as-it-is-intended. The interpretations of Husserl's theory of noema have been several and amount to different developments of Husserl's basic theory of intentionality. (Is the noema an aspect of the object intended, or rather a medium of intention?)
For Husserl, then, phenomenology integrates a kind of psychology with a kind of logic. It develops a descriptive or analytic psychology in that it describes and Analysed types of subjective mental activity or experience, in short, act of consciousness. Yet it develops a kind of logic - a theory of meaning (today we say logical semantics) - in that it describes and Analysed objective contents of consciousness: Ideas, concepts, images, propositions, in short, ideal meanings of various types that serve as intentional contents, or noematic meanings, of various types of experience. These contents are shareable by different acts of consciousness, and in that sense they are objective, ideal meanings. Following Bolzano (and to some extent the platonistic logician Hermann Lotze), Husserl opposed any reduction of logic or mathematics or science to mere psychology, to how the public happens to think, and in the same spirit he distinguished phenomenology from mere psychology. For Husserl, phenomenology would study consciousness without reducing the objective and shareable meanings that inhabit experience to merely subjective happenstances. Ideal meaning would be the engine of intentionality in acts of consciousness.
A clear conception of phenomenology awaited Husserl's development of a clear model of intentionality. Indeed, phenomenology and the modern concept of intentionality emerged hand-in-hand in Husserl's Logical Investigations (1900-01). With theoretical foundations laid in the Investigations, Husserl would then promote the radical new science of phenomenology in Ideas I (1913). And alternative visions of phenomenology would soon follow.
Phenomenology matured and was nurtured through the works of Husserl, much as epistemology came about by means of its own nutrition but through Descartes study, and ontology or metaphysics came into its own with Aristotle on the heels of Plato. Yet phenomenology has been practised, with or without the name, for many centuries. When Hindu and Buddhist philosophers reflected on states of consciousness achieved in a variety of meditative states, they were practising phenomenology. When Descartes, Hume, and Kant characterized states of perception, thought, and imagination, they were practising phenomenology. When Brentano classified varieties of mental phenomena (defined by the directedness of consciousness), he was practising phenomenology. When William James appraised kinds of mental activity in the stream of consciousness (including their embodiment and their dependence on habit), he too was practising phenomenology. And when recent analytic philosophers of mind have addressed issues of consciousness and intentionality, they have often been practising phenomenology. Still, the discipline of phenomenology, its roots tracing back through the centuries, came full to flower in Husserl.
Husserl's work was followed by a flurry of Phenomenological writing in the first half of the 20th century. The diversity of traditional phenomenology is apparent in the Encyclopaedic of Phenomenology (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997, Dordrecht and Boston), which features separate articles on some seven types of phenomenology. (1) Transcendental constitutive phenomenology studies how objects are constituted in pure or transcendental consciousness, setting aside questions of any relation to the natural world around us. (2) Naturalistic constitutive phenomenology studies how consciousness constitutes or takes things in the world of nature, assuming with the natural attitude that consciousness is part of nature. (3) Existential phenomenology studies concrete human existence, including our experience of free choice or action in concrete situations. (4) Generative historicist phenomenology studies how meaning, as found in our experience, is generated in historical processes of collective experience over time. (5) Genetic phenomenology studies the genesis of meanings of things within one's own stream of experience. (6) Hermeneutical phenomenology studies interpretive structures of experience, how we understand and engage things around us in our human world, including ourselves and others. (7) Realistic phenomenology studies the structure of consciousness and intentionality, assuming it occurs in a real world that is largely external to consciousness and not somehow brought into being by consciousness.
The most famous of the classical phenomenologists were Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty. In these four thinkers we find different conceptions of phenomenology, different methods, and different results. A brief sketch of their differences will capture both a crucial period in the history of phenomenology and a sense of the diversity of the field of phenomenology.
In his Logical Investigations (1900-01) Husserl outlined a complex system of philosophy, moving from logic to philosophy of language, to ontology (theory of universals and parts of wholes), to a Phenomenological theory of intentionality, and finally to a Phenomenological theory of knowledge. Then in Ideas I (1913) he focussed squarely on phenomenology itself. Husserl defined phenomenology as "the science of the essence of consciousness,” entered on the defining trait of intentionality, approached explicitly "in the first person." In this spirit, we may say phenomenology is the study of consciousness - that is, conscious experience of various types - as experienced from the first-person point of view. In this discipline we study different forms of experience just as we experience them, from the perspective of the subject living through or performing them. Thus, we characterize experiences of seeing, hearing, imagining, thinking, feeling (i.e., emotion), wishing, desiring, willing, and acting, that is, embodied volitional activities of walking, talking, cooking, carpentering, etc. However, not just any characterization of an experience will do. Phenomenological analysis of a given type of experience will feature the ways in which we ourselves would experience that form of conscious activity. And the leading property of our familiar types of experience is their intentionality, their being a consciousness of or about something, something experienced or presented or engaged in a certain way. How I see or conceptualize or understand the object I am dealing with defines the meaning of that object in my current experience. Thus, phenomenology features a study of meaning, in a wide sense that includes more than what is expressed in language.
In Ideas I Husserl presented phenomenology with a transcendental turn. In part this means that Husserl took on the Kantian idiom of "transcendental idealism,” looking for conditions of the possibility of knowledge, or of consciousness generally, and arguably turning away from any reality beyond phenomena. But Husserl's transcendental, turn also involved his discovery of the method of epoché (from the Greek skeptics' notion of abstaining from belief). We are to practice phenomenology, Husserl proposed, by "bracketing" the question of the existence of the natural world around us. We thereby turn our attention, in reflection, to the structure of our own conscious experience. Our first key result is the observation that each act of consciousness is a consciousness of something, that is, intentional, or directed toward something. Consider my visual experience wherein I see a tree across the square. In Phenomenological reflection, we need not concern ourselves with whether the tree exists: my experience is of a tree whether or not such a tree exists. However, we do need to concern ourselves with how the object is meant or intended. I see a Eucalyptus tree, not a Yucca tree; I see that object as a referentially exposed Eucalyptus tree, with certain shape and with bark stripping off, etc. Thus, bracketing the tree itself, we turn our attention to my experience of the tree, and specifically to the content or meaning in my experience. This tree-as-perceived Husserl calls the noema or noematic sense of the experience.
Philosophers succeeding Husserl debated the proper characterization of phenomenology, arguing over its results and its methods. Adolf Reinach, an early student of Husserl's (who died in World War I), argued that phenomenology should remain merged with a total inference by some realistic ontologism, as in Husserl's Logical Investigations. Roman Ingarden, a Polish phenomenologist of the next generation, continued the resistance to Husserl's turn to transcendental idealism. For such philosophers, phenomenology should not bracket questions of being or ontology, as the method of epoché would suggest. And they were not alone. Martin Heidegger studied Husserl's early writings, worked as Assistant to Husserl in 1916, and in 1928, succeeded Husserl in the prestigious chair at the University of Freiburg. Heidegger had his own ideas about phenomenology.
In Being and Time (1927) Heidegger unfurled his rendition of phenomenology. For Heidegger, we and our activities are always "in the world,” our being is being-in-the-world, so we do not study our activities by bracketing the world, rather we interpret our activities and the meaning things have for us by looking to our contextual relations to things in the world. Indeed, for Heidegger, phenomenology resolves into what he called "fundamental ontology.” We must distinguish beings from their being, and we begin our investigation of the meaning of being in our own case, examining our own existence in the activity of "Dasein" (that being whose being is in each case my own). Heidegger resisted Husserl's neo-Cartesian emphasis on consciousness and subjectivity, including how perception presents things around us. By contrast, Heidegger held that our more basic ways of relating to things are in practical activities like hammering, where the phenomenology reveals our situation in a context of equipment and in being-with-others.
In Being and Time Heidegger approached phenomenology, in a quasi-poetic idiom, through the root meanings of "logos" and "phenomena,” so that phenomenology is defined as the art or practice of "letting things show themselves.” In Heidegger's inimitable linguistic play on the Greek roots, “phenomenology” means . . . - to let that which shows itself to be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself. Here Heidegger explicitly parodies Husserl's call, "To the things themselves,” or "To the phenomena themselves!" Heidegger went on to emphasize practical forms of comportment or better relating (Verhalten) as in hammering a nail, as opposed to representational forms of intentionality as in seeing or thinking about a hammer. Much, of Being and Time develops an existential interpretation of our modes of being including, famously, our being-toward-death.
In a very different style, in clear analytical prose, in the text of a lecture course called The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (1927), Heidegger traced the question of the meaning of being from Aristotle through many other thinkers into the issues of phenomenology. Our understanding of beings and their being comes ultimately through phenomenology. Here the connection with classical issues of ontology is more apparent, and consonant with Husserl's vision in the Logical Investigations (an early source of inspiration for Heidegger). One of Heidegger's most innovative ideas was his conception of the "ground" of being, looking to modes of being more fundamental than the things around us (from trees to hammers). Heidegger questioned the contemporary concern with technology, and his writing might suggest that our scientific theories are historical artifacts that we use in technological practice, rather than systems of ideal truth (as Husserl had held). Our deep understanding of being, in our own case, comes rather from phenomenology, Heidegger held.
In the 1930s phenomenology migrated from Austrian and then German philosophy into French philosophy. The way had been paved in Marcel Proust's in Search of Lost Time, in which the narrator recounts in close detail his vivid recollections of experiences, including his famous associations with the smell of freshly baked madeleines. This sensibility to experience traces to Descartes' work, and French phenomenology has been an effort to preserve the central thrust of Descartes' insights while rejecting mind-body dualism. The experience of one's own body, or one's lived or living body, has been an important motif in many French philosophers of the 20th century
In the novel Nausea (1936) Jean-Paul Sartre described a bizarre course of experience in which the protagonist, writing in the first person, describes how ordinary objects lose their meaning until he encounters pure being at the foot of a chestnut tree, and in that moment recovers his sense of his own freedom. In Being and Nothingness (1943, written partly while a prisoner of war), Sartre developed his conception of Phenomenological ontology. Consciousness is a consciousness of objects, as Husserl had stressed. In Sartre's model of intentionality, the central player in consciousness is a phenomenon, and the occurrence of a phenomenon is just a consciousness-of-an-object. The chestnut tree I see is, for Sartre, such a phenomenon in my consciousness. Indeed, all things in the world, as we normally experience them, are phenomena, beneath or behind which lies their "being-in-itself.” Consciousness, by contrast, has "being-for-itself,” inasmuch as consciousness is not only a consciousness-of-its-object but also a pre-reflective consciousness-of-itself (conscience de soi). Yet for Sartre, unlike Husserl, that "I" or self is nothing but a sequence of acts of consciousness, notably including radically free choices (like a Humean bundle of perceptions).
For Sartre, the practice of phenomenology proceeds by a deliberate reflection on the structure of consciousness. Sartre's method is in effect a literary style of interpretive description of different types of experience in relevant situations - a practice that does not really fit the methodological proposals of either Husserl or Heidegger, but makes use of Sartre's great literary skill. (Sartre wrote many plays and novels and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.)
Sartre's phenomenology in Being and Nothingness became the philosophical foundation for his popular philosophy of existentialism, sketched in his famous lecture "Existentialism is a Humanism" (1945). In Being and Nothingness Sartre emphasized the experience of freedom of choice, especially the project of choosing oneself, the defining pattern of one's past actions. Through vivid description of the "look" of the Other, Sartre laid groundwork for the contemporary political significance of the concept of the Other (as in other groups or ethnicities). Indeed, in The Second Sex (1949) Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre's life-long companion, launched contemporary feminism with her nuance account of the perceived role of women as Other.
In 1940s Paris, Maurice Merleau-Ponty joined with Sartre and Beauvoir in developing phenomenology. In Phenomenology of Perception (1945) Merleau-Ponty developed a rich variety of phenomenology emphasizing the role of the body in human experience. Unlike Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre, Merleau-Ponty looked to experimental psychology, analysing the reported experience of amputees who felt sensations in a phantom limb. Merleau-Ponty rejected both associationist psychology, focussed on correlations between sensation and stimulus, and intellectualist psychology, focussed on rational construction of the world in the mind. (Think of the behaviorist and computationalist models of mind in more recent decades of empirical psychology.) Instead, Merleau-Ponty focussed on the "body image,” our experience of our own body and its significance in our activities. Extending Husserl's account of the lived body (as opposed to the physical body), Merleau-Ponty resisted the traditional Cartesian separation of mind and body. For the body image is neither in the mental realm nor in the mechanical-physical realm. Rather, my body is, as it were, me in my engaged action with things I perceive including other people.
The scope of Phenomenology of Perception is characteristic of the breadth of classical phenomenology, not least because Merleau-Ponty drew (with generosity) on Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre while fashioning his own innovative vision of phenomenology. His phenomenology addressed the role of attention in the phenomenal field, the experience of the body, the spatiality of the body, the motility of the body, the body in sexual being and in speech, other selves, temporality, and the character of freedom so important in French existentialism. Near the end of a chapter on the cogito (Descartes' "I think, therefore I am"), Merleau-Ponty succinctly captures his embodied, existential form of phenomenology, writing: Insofar as, when I reflect on the essence of subjectivity, I find it bound up with that of the body and that of the world, this is because my existence as subjectivity [= consciousness] is merely one with my existence as a body and with the existence of the world, and because the subject that I am, for when taken seriously, is inseparable from this body and this world. In short, consciousness is embodied (in the world), and equally body is infused with consciousness (with cognition of the world).
In the years since Hussserl, Heidegger, et al. wrote that phenomenologists have dug into all these classical issues, including intentionality, temporal awareness, intersubjectivity, practical intentionality, and the social and linguistic contexts of human activity. Interpretation of historical texts by Husserl et al. has played a prominent role in this work, both because the texts are rich and difficult and because the historical dimension is itself part of the practice of continental European philosophy. Since the 1960s, philosophers trained in the methods of analytic philosophy have also dug into the foundations of phenomenology, with an eye to 20th century work in philosophy of logic, language, and mind.
Phenomenology was already linked with logical and semantic theory in Husserl's Logical Investigations. Analytic phenomenology picks up on that connection. In particular, Dagfinn F¿llesdal and J. N. Mohanty have explored historical and conceptual relations between Husserl's phenomenology and Frége's logical semantics (in Frége's "On Sense and Reference,” 1892). For Frege, an expression refers to an object by way of a sense: Thus, two expressions (say, "the morning star" and "the evening star") may refer to the same object (Venus) but express different senses with different manners of presentation. For Husserl, similarly, an experience (or an act of consciousness) intends or refers to an object by way of a noema or noematic sense: Thus, two experiences may refer to the same object but have different noematic senses involving different ways of presenting the object (for example, in seeing the same object from different sides). Indeed, for Husserl, the theory of intentionality is a generalization of the theory of linguistic reference: as linguistic reference is mediated by sense, so intentional reference is mediated by noematic sense.
More recently, analytic philosophers of mind have rediscovered phenomenologically issues of mental representation, intentionality, consciousness, sensory experience, intentional content, and context-of-thought. Some of these analytic philosophers of mind hark back to William James and Franz Brentano at the origins of modern psychology, and some look to empirical research in today's cognitive neuroscience. Some researchers have begun to combine Phenomenological issues with issues of neuroscience and behavioural studies and mathematical modelling. Such studies will extend the methods of traditional phenomenology as the Zeitgeist moves on. We address philosophy of mind below.
The discipline of phenomenology forms one basic field in philosophy among others. How is phenomenology distinguished from, and related to, other fields in philosophy?
Traditionally, philosophy includes at least four core fields or disciplines: Ontology, epistemology, ethics, logic. Suppose phenomenology joins that list. Consider then these elementary definitions of field: (1) Ontology is the study of beings or their being - what is. (2) Epistemology is the study of knowledge - how we know. (3) Logic is the study of valid reasoning - how to reason. (4) Ethics is the study of right and wrong - how we should act. (5) Phenomenology is the study of our experience - how we experience. The domains of study in these five fields are clearly different, and they seem to call for different methods of study.
Philosophers have sometimes argued that one of these fields is "first philosophy,” the most fundamental discipline, on which all philosophy or all knowledge or wisdom rests. Historically (it may be argued), Socrates and Plato put ethics first, then Aristotle put metaphysics or ontology first, then Descartes put epistemology first, then Russell put logic first, and then Husserl (in his later transcendental phase) put phenomenology first.
Consider epistemology. As we saw, phenomenology helps to define the phenomena on which knowledge claims rest, according to modern epistemology. On the other hand, phenomenology itself claims to achieve knowledge about the nature of consciousness, a distinctive description of the first-person knowledge. Through a form of intuition, consider logic, as a logical theory of meaning led Husserl into the theory of intentionality, the heart of phenomenology. On one account, phenomenology explicates the intentional or semantic force of ideal meanings, and propositional meanings are central to logical theory. But logical structure is expressed in language, either ordinary language or symbolic languages like those of predicate logic or mathematics or computer systems. It remains an important issue of debate where and whether language shapes specific forms of experience (thought, perception, emotion) and their content or meaning. So there is an important (if disputed) relation between phenomenology and logico-linguistic theory, especially philosophical logic and philosophy of language (as opposed to mathematical logic per se)
Consider ontology. Phenomenology studies (among other things) the nature of consciousness, which is a central issue in metaphysics or ontology, and one that leads into the traditional mind-body problem. Husserlian methodology would bracket the question of the existence of the surrounding world, thereby separating phenomenology from the ontology of the world. Yet Husserl's phenomenology presupposes theory about species and individuals (universals and particulars), relations of part and whole, and ideal meanings - all parts of ontology
Now consider ethics: Phenomenology might play a role in ethics by offering analyses of the structure of will, valuing, happiness, and care for others (in empathy and sympathy). Historically, though, ethics has been on the horizon of phenomenology. Husserl largely avoided ethics in his major works, though he featured the role of practical concerns in the structure of the life-world or of Geist (spirit, or culture, as in Zeitgeist). He once delivered a course of lectures giving ethics (like logic) a basic place in philosophy, indicating the importance of the phenomenology of sympathy in grounding ethics. In Being and Time Heidegger claimed not to pursue ethics while discussing phenomena ranging from care, conscience, and guilt to "fallenness" and "authenticity" (all phenomena with theological echoes). In Being and Nothingness Sartre Analysed with subtlety the logical problem of "bad faith,” yet he developed an ontology of value as produced by willing in good faith (which sounds like a revised Kantian foundation for morality). Beauvoir sketched an existentialist ethics, and Sartre left unpublished notebooks on ethics. However, an explicit Phenomenological approach to ethics emerged in the works of Emannuel Levinas, a Lithuanian phenomenologist who heard Husserl and Heidegger in Freiburg before moving to Paris. In Totality and Infinity (1961), modifying themes drawn from Husserl and Heidegger, Levinas focussed on the significance of the "face" of the other, explicitly developing grounds for ethics in this range of phenomenology, writing an impressionistic style of prose with allusions to religious experience.
Allied with ethics are political and social philosophies. Sartre and Merleau-Ponty were politically engaged, in 1940s Paris and their existential philosophies (phenomenologically based) suggest a political theory based in individual freedom. Sartre later sought an explicit blend of existentialism with Marxism. Still, political theory has remained on the borders of phenomenology. Social theory, however, has been closer to phenomenology as such. Husserl Analysed the Phenomenological structure of the life-world and Geist generally, including our role in social activity. Heidegger stressed social practice, which he found more primordial than individual consciousness. Alfred Schutz developed a phenomenology of the social world. Sartre continued the Phenomenological appraisal of the meaning of the other, the fundamental social formation. Moving outward from Phenomenological issues, Michel Foucault studied the genesis and meaning of social institutions, from prisons to insane asylums. And Jacques Derrida has long practised a kind of phenomenology of language, pursuing sociologic meaning in the "deconstruction" of wide-ranging texts. Aspects of French "poststructuralist" theory are sometimes interpreted as broadly Phenomenological, but such issues are beyond the present purview.
Classical phenomenology, then, ties into certain areas of epistemology, logic, and ontology, and leads into parts of ethical, social, and political theory.
It ought to be obvious that phenomenology has a lot to say in the area called philosophy of mind. Yet the traditions of phenomenology and analytic philosophy of mind have not been closely joined, despite overlapping areas of interest. So it is appropriate to close this survey of phenomenology by addressing philosophy of mind, one of the most vigorously debated areas in recent philosophy.
The tradition of analytic philosophy began, early in the 20th century, with analyses of language, notably in the works of Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Then in The Concept of Mind (1949) Gilbert Ryle developed a series of analyses of language about different mental states, including sensation, belief, and will. Though Ryle is commonly deemed a philosopher of ordinary language, Ryle himself said The Concept of Mind could be called phenomenology. In effect, Ryle Analysed our Phenomenological understanding of mental states as reflected in ordinary language about the mind. From this linguistic phenomenology Ryle argued that Cartesian mind-body dualism involves a category mistake (the logic or grammar of mental verbs - "believe,” "see,” etc. - does not mean that we ascribe belief, sensation, etc., to "the ghost in the machine"). With Ryle's rejection of mind-body dualism, the mind-body problem was re-awakened: What is the ontology of mind/body, and how are mind and body related?
René Descartes, in his epoch-making Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), had argued that minds and bodies are two distinct kinds of being or substance with two distinct kinds of attributes or modes: Bodies are characterized by spatiotemporal physical properties, while minds are characterized by properties of thinking (including seeing, feeling, etc.). Centuries later, phenomenology would find, with Brentano and Husserl, that mental acts are characterized by consciousness and intentionality, while natural science would find that physical systems are characterized by mass and force, ultimately by gravitational, electromagnetic, and quantum fields. Where do we find consciousness and intentionality in the quantum-electromagnetic-gravitational field that, by hypothesis, orders everything in the natural world in which we humans and our minds exist? That is the mind-body problem today. In short, phenomenology by any other name lies at the heart of the contemporary, mind-body problem.
After Ryle, philosophers sought a more explicit and generally naturalistic ontology of mind. In the 1950s materialism was argued anew, urging that mental states are identical with states of the central nervous system. The classical identity theory holds that each token mental state (in a particular person's mind at a particular time) is identical with a token brain state (in that a person's brain at that time). The weaker of materialisms, holds instead, that each type of mental state is identical with a type of brain state. But materialism does not fit comfortably with phenomenology. For it is not obvious how conscious mental states as we experience them - sensations, thoughts, emotions - can simply be the complex neural states that somehow subserve or implement them. If mental states and neural states are simply identical, in token or in type, where in our scientific theory of mind does the phenomenology occur - is it not simply replaced by neuroscience? And yet experience is part of what is to be explained by neuroscience.
In the late 1960s and 1970s the computer model of mind set it, and functionalism became the dominant model of mind. On this model, mind is not what the brain consists in (electrochemical transactions in neurons in vast complexes). Instead, mind is what brains do: They are function of mediating between information coming into the organism and behaviour proceeding from the organism. Thus, a mental state is a functional state of the brain or of the human (or an animal) organism. More specifically, on a favourite variation of functionalism, the mind is a computing system: Mind is to brain as software is to hardware; Thoughts are just programs running on the brain's "NetWare.” Since the 1970s the cognitive sciences - from experimental studies of cognition to neuroscience - have tended toward a mix of materialism and functionalism. Gradually, however, philosophers found that Phenomenological aspects of the mind pose problems for the functionalist paradigm too.
In the early 1970s Thomas Nagel argued in "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (1974) that consciousness itself - especially the subjective character of what it is like to have a certain type of experience - escapes physical theory. Many philosophers pressed the case that sensory qualia - what it is like to feel pain, to see red, etc. - are not addressed or explained by a physical account of either brain structure or brain function. Consciousness has properties of its own. And yet, we know, it is closely tied to the brain. And, at some level of description, neural activities implement computation.
In the 1980s John Searle argued in Intentionality (1983) (and further in The Rediscovery of the Mind (1991)) that intentionality and consciousness are essential properties of mental states. For Searle, our brains produce mental states with properties of consciousness and intentionality, and this is all part of our biology, yet consciousness and intentionality require to "first-person" ontology. Searle also argued that computers simulate but do not have mental states characterized by intentionality. As Searle argued, a computer system has a syntax (processing symbols of certain shapes) but has no semantics (the symbols lack meaning: we interpret the symbols). In this way Searle rejected both materialism and functionalism, while insisting that mind is a biological property of organisms like us: our brains "secrete" consciousness
The analysis of consciousness and intentionality is central to phenomenology as appraised above, and Searle's theory of intentionality reads like a modernized version of Husserl's. (Contemporary logical theory takes the form of stating truth conditions for propositions, and Searle characterizes a mental state's intentionality by specifying its "satisfaction conditions"). However, there is an important difference in background theory. For Searle explicitly assumes the basic worldview of natural science, holding that consciousness is part of nature. But Husserl explicitly brackets that assumption, and later phenomenologists - including Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty - seem to seek a certain sanctuary for phenomenology beyond the natural sciences. And yet phenomenology itself should be largely neutral about further theories of how experience arises, notably from brain activity.
The philosophy or theory of mind overall may be factored into the following disciplines or ranges of theory relevant to mind: Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced, analysing the structure - the types, intentional forms and meanings, dynamics, and (certain) enabling conditions - of perception, thought, imagination, emotion, and volition and action.
Neuroscience studies the neural activities that serve as biological substrate to the various types of mental activity, including conscious experience. Neuroscience will be framed by evolutionary biology (explaining how neural phenomena evolved) and ultimately by basic physics (explaining how biological phenomena are grounded in physical phenomena). Here lie the intricacies of the natural sciences. Part of what the sciences are accountable for is the structure of experience, Analysed by phenomenology.
Cultural analysis studies the social practices that help to shape or serve as cultural substrate of the various types of mental activity, including conscious experience. Here we study the import of language and other social practices.
Ontology of mind studies the ontological type of mental activity in general, ranging from perception (which involves causal input from environment to experience) to volitional action (which involves causal output from volition to bodily movement).
This division of labour in the theory of mind can be seen as an extension of Brentano's original distinction between descriptive and genetic psychology. Phenomenology offers descriptive analyses of mental phenomena, while neuroscience (and wider biology and ultimately physics) offers models of explanation of what causes or gives rise to mental phenomena. Cultural theory offers analyses of social activities and their impact on experience, including ways language shapes our thought, emotion, and motivation. And ontology frames all these results within a basic scheme of the structure of the world, including our own minds.
Meanwhile, from an epistemological standpoint, all these ranges of theory about mind begin with how we observe and reason about and seek to explain phenomena we encounter in the world. And that is where phenomenology begins. Moreover, how we understand each piece of theory, including theory about mind, is central to the theory of intentionality, as it was, the semantics of thought and experience in general. And that is the heart of phenomenology.
The discipline of phenomenology may be defined as the study of structures of experience or consciousness. Literally. , Phenomenology is the
Study of "phenomena": Appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meaning’s things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view. This field of philosophy is then to be distinguished from, and related to, the other main fields of philosophy: ontology (the study of being or what is), epistemology (the study of knowledge), logic (the study of valid reasoning), ethics (the study of right and wrong action), etc.
The historical movement of phenomenology is the philosophical tradition launched in the first half of the 20th century by Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre. In that movement, the discipline of phenomenology was prized as the proper foundation of all philosophy - as opposed, say, to ethics or metaphysics or epistemology. The methods and characterization of the discipline were widely debated by Husserl and his successors, and these debates continue to the present day. (The definition of phenomenology offered above will thus is debatable, for example, by Heideggerians, but it remains the starting point in characterizing the discipline.)
In recent philosophy of mind, the term "phenomenology" is often restricted to the characterization of sensory qualities of seeing, hearing, etc.: what it is like to have sensations of various kinds. However, our experience is normally much richer in content than mere sensation. Accordingly, in the Phenomenological tradition, phenomenology is given a much wider range, addressing the meaning things have in our experience, notably, the significance of objects, events, tools, the flow of time, the self, and others, as these things arise and are experienced in our "life-world.”
Phenomenology as a discipline has been central to the tradition of continental European philosophy throughout the 20th century, while philosophy of mind has evolved in the Austro-Anglo-American tradition of analytic philosophy that developed throughout the 20th century. Yet the fundamental character of our mental activity is pursued in overlapping ways within these two traditions. Accordingly, the perspective on phenomenology drawn in this article will accommodate both traditions. The main concern here will be to characterize the discipline of phenomenology, in contemporary views, while also highlighting the historical tradition that brought the discipline into its own.
Basically, phenomenology studies the structure of various types of experience ranging from perception, thought, memory, imagination, emotion, desire, and volition to bodily awareness, embodied action, and social activity, including linguistic activity. The structure of these forms of experience typically involves what Husserl called "intentionality,” that is, the directedness of experience toward things in the world, the property of consciousness that it is a consciousness of or about something. According to classical Husserlian phenomenology, our experience remains directed towardly and represented or "intends" - things only through particular concepts, thoughts, ideas, images, etc. These make up the meaning or content of a given experience, and are distinct from the things they present or mean.
The basic intentional structure of consciousness, we find in reflection or analysis, involves further forms of experience. Thus, phenomenology develops a complex account of temporal awareness (within the stream of consciousness), spatial awareness (notably in perception), attention (distinguishing focal and marginal or "horizonal" awareness), awareness of one's own experience (self-consciousness, in one sense), self-awareness (awareness-of-oneself), the self in different roles (as thinking, acting, etc.), embodied action (including kinesthetic awareness of one's movement), purposive intention for its desire for action (more or less explicit), awareness of other persons (in empathy, intersubjectivity, collectivity), linguistic activity (involving meaning, communication, understanding others), social interaction (including collective action), and everyday activity in our surrounding life-world (in a particular culture).
Furthermore, in a different dimension, we find various grounds or enabling conditions -conditions of the possibility - of intentionality, including embodiment, bodily skills, cultural context, language and other social practices, social background, and contextual aspects of intentional activities. Thus, phenomenology leads from conscious experience into conditions that help to give experience its intentionality. Traditional phenomenology has focussed on subjective, practical, and social conditions of experience. Recent philosophy of mind, however, has focussed especially on the neural substrate of experience, on how conscious experience and mental representation or intentionality is grounded in brain activity. It remains a difficult question how much of these grounds of experience fall within the province of phenomenology as a discipline. Cultural conditions thus seem closer to our experience and to our familiar self-understanding than do the electrochemical workings of our brain, much less our dependence on quantum-mechanical states of physical systems to which we may belong. The cautious thing to say is that phenomenology leads in some ways into at least some background conditions of our experience.
Phenomenology studies structures of conscious experience as experienced from the first-person point of view, along with relevant conditions of experience. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, the way it is directed through its content or meaning toward a certain object in the world.
We all experience various types of experience including perception, imagination, thought, emotion, desire, volition, and action. Thus, the domain of phenomenology is the range of experiences including these types (among others). Experience includes not only relatively passive experience as in vision or hearing, but also active experience as in walking or hammering a nail or kicking a ball. (The range will be specific to each species of being that enjoys consciousness; Our focus is on our own, human, experience. Not all conscious beings will, or will be able to, practice phenomenology, as we do.)
Conscious experiences have a unique feature: We experience them, we live through them or perform them. Other things in the world we may observe and engage. But we do not experience them, in the sense of living through or performing them. This experiential or first-person feature - that of being experienced -is an essential part of the nature or structure of conscious experience: as we say, "I see / think / desire / do . . ." This feature is both a Phenomenological and an ontological feature of each experience: it is part of what it is for the experience to be experienced (Phenomenological) and part of what it is for the experience to be (ontological).
How shall we study conscious experience? We reflect on various types of experiences just as we experience them. That is to say, we proceed from the first-person point of view. However, we do not normally characterize an experience at the time we are performing it. In many cases we do not have that capability: a state of intense anger or fear, for example, consumes the entire focus at the time. Rather, we acquire a background of having lived through a given type of experience, and we look to our familiarity with that type of experience: While hearing a song, seeing the sun set, thinking about love, intending to jump a hurdle. The practice of phenomenology assumes such familiarity with the type of experiences to be characterized. Importantly, it is atypical of experience that phenomenology pursues, rather than a particular fleeting experience - unless its type is what interests us.
Classical phenomenologists practised some three distinguishable methods. (1) We describe a type of experience just as we find it in our own (past) experience. Thus, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty spoke of pure description of lived experience. (2) We interpret a type of experience by relating it to relevant features of context. In this vein, Heidegger and his followers spoke of hermeneutics, the art of interpretation in context, especially social and linguistic context. (3) We analyse the form of a type of experience. In the end, all the classical phenomenologists practised analysis of experience, factoring out notable features for further elaboration.
These traditional methods have been ramified in recent decades, expanding the methods available to phenomenology. Thus: (4) In a logico-semantic model of phenomenology, we specify the truth conditions for a type of thinking (say, where I think that dogs chase cats) or the satisfaction conditions for a type of intention (say, where I intend or will to jump that hurdle). (5) In the experimental paradigm of cognitive neuroscience, we design empirical experiments that tend to confirm or refute aspects of experience (say, where a brain scan shows electrochemical activity in a specific region of the brain thought to subserve a type of vision or emotion or motor control). This style of "neurophenomenology" assumes that conscious experience is grounded in neural activity in embodied action in appropriate surroundings - mixing pure phenomenology with biological and physical science in a way that was not wholly congenial to traditional phenomenologists.
What makes an experience conscious is a certain awareness one has of the experience while living through or performing it. This form of inner awareness has been a topic of considerable debate, centuries after the issue arose with Locke's notion of self-consciousness on the heels of Descartes' sense of consciousness (conscience, co-knowledge). Does this awareness-of-experience consist in a kind of inner observation of the experience, as if one were doing two things at once? (Brentano argued no.) Is it a higher-order perception of one's mind's operation, or is it a higher-order thought about one's mental activity? (Recent theorists have proposed both.) Or is it a different form of inherent structure? (Sartre took this line, drawing on Brentano and Husserl.) These issues are beyond the scope of this article, but notice that these results of Phenomenological analysis shape the characterization of the domain of study and the methodology appropriate to the domain. For awareness-of-experience is a defining trait of conscious experience, the trait that gives experience a first-person, lived character. It is that a living characterization resembling its self, that life is to offer the experience through which allows a first-person perspective on the object of study, namely, experience, and that perspective is characteristic of the methodology of phenomenology.
Conscious experience is the starting point of phenomenology, but experience shades off into fewer overtly conscious phenomena. As Husserl and others stressed, we are only vaguely aware of things in the margin or periphery of attention, and we are only implicitly aware of the wider horizon of things in the world around us. Moreover, as Heidegger stressed, in practical activities like walking along, or hammering a nail, or speaking our native tongue, we are not explicitly conscious of our habitual patterns of action. Furthermore, as psychoanalysts have stressed, much of our intentional mental activity is not conscious at all, but may become conscious in the process of therapy or interrogation, as we come to realize how we feel or think about something. We should allow, then, that the domain of phenomenology - our own experience - spreads out from conscious experience into semiconscious and even unconscious mental activity, along with relevant background conditions implicitly invoked in our experience. (These issues are subject to debate; the point here is to open the door to the question of where to draw the boundary of the domain of phenomenology.)
To begin an elementary exercise in phenomenology, consider some typical experiences one might have in everyday life, characterized in the first person: (1) “I” witnesses that fishing boat off the coast as dusk descends over the Pacific. (2) I hear that helicopter whirring overhead as it approaches the hospital. (3) I am thinking that phenomenology differs from psychology. (4) I wish that warm rain from Mexico were falling like last week. (5) I imagine a fearsome creature like that in my nightmare. (6) I intend to finish my writing by noon. (7) I walk carefully around the broken glass on the sidewalk. (8) I stroke a backhand cross-court with that certain underspin. (9) I am searching for the words to make my point in conversation.
Here are rudimentary characterizations of some familiar types of experience. Each sentence is a simple form of Phenomenological description, articulating in everyday English the structure of the type of experience so described. The subject term of "I,” indicates the first-person structure of the experience: The intentionality proceeds from the subject. As the verb indicates, the type of intentional activity so described, as perception, thought, imagination, etc. Of central importance is the way that objects of awareness are presented or intended in our experiences, especially, the way we see or conceive or think about objects. The direct-object expression ("that fishing boat off the coast") articulates the mode of presentation of the object in the experience: The content or meaning of the experience, the core of what Husser called noema. In effect, the object-phrase expresses the noema of the act described, that is, to the extent that language has appropriate expressive power. The overall form of the given sentence articulates of a basic form of intentionality, in that of an experience has to its own subject-act-content-object.
Fruitful Phenomenological description or interpretation, as in Husserl or Merleau-Ponty, will far outrun such simple Phenomenological descriptions as above. But such simple descriptions bring out the basic form of intentionality. As we interpret the Phenomenological description further, we may assess the relevance of the context of experience. And we may turn to wider conditions of the possibility of that type of experience. In this way, in the practice of phenomenology, we classify, describe, interpret, and analyse structures of experiences in ways that answer to our own experience.
In such interpretive-descriptive analyses of experience, we immediately observe that we are analysing familiar forms of consciousness, conscious experience of or about this or that. Intentionality is thus the salient structure of our experience, and much of the phenomenology proceeds as the study of different aspects of intentionality. Thus, we explore structures of the stream of consciousness, the enduring self, the embodied self, and bodily action. Furthermore, as we reflect on how these phenomena work, we turn to the analysis of relevant conditions that enable our experiences to occur as they do, and to represent or intend as they do. Phenomenology then leads into analyses of conditions of the possibility of intentionality, conditions involving motor skills and habits, backgrounding to social practices, and often language, with its special place in human affairs. The Oxford English Dictionary presents the following definition: "Phenomenology. (i) The science of phenomena as distinct from being (ontology). (ii) That division of any science that describes and classifies its phenomena. From the Greek phainomenon, appearance." In philosophy, the term is used in the first sense, amid debates of theory and methodology. In physics and philosophy of science, the term is used in the second sense, even if only occasionally.
In its root meaning, then, phenomenology is the study of phenomena: Literally, appearances as opposed to reality. This ancient distinction launched philosophy as we emerged from Plato's cave. Yet the discipline of phenomenology did not blossom until the 20th century and remains poorly understood in many circles of contemporary philosophy. What is that discipline? How did philosophy move from a root concept of phenomena to the discipline of phenomenology?
Originally, in the 18th century, "phenomenology" meant the theory of appearances fundamental to empirical knowledge, especially sensory appearances. The term seems to have been introduced by Johann Heinrich Lambert, a follower of Christian Wolff. Subsequently, Immanuel Kant used the term occasionally in various writings, as did Johann Gottlieb Fichte and G. W. F. Hegel. By 1889 Franz Brentano used the term to characterize what he called "descriptive psychology.” From there Edmund Husserl took up the term for his new science of consciousness, and the rest is history.
Suppose we say phenomenology study’s phenomena: what appears to us - and its appearing? How shall we understand phenomena? The term has a rich history in recent centuries, in which we can see traces of the emerging discipline of phenomenology.
In a strict empiricist vein, what appears before the mind are sensory data or qualia: either patterns of one's own sensations (seeing red here now, feeling this ticklish feeling, hearing that resonant bass tone) or sensible patterns of worldly things, say, the looks and smells of flowers (what John Locke called secondary qualities of things). In a strict rationalist vein, by contrast, what appears before the mind are ideas, rationally formed "clear and distinct ideas" (in René Descartes' ideal). In Immanuel Kant's theory of knowledge, fusing rationalist and empiricist aims, what appears to the mind are phenomena defined as things-as-they-appear or things-as-they-are-represented (in a synthesis of sensory and conceptual forms of objects-as-known). In Auguste Comte's theory of science, phenomena (phenomenes) are the facts (faits, what occurs) that a given science would explain.
In 18th and 19th century epistemology, then, phenomena are the starting points in building knowledge, especially science. Accordingly, in a familiar and still current sense, phenomena are whatever we observe (perceive) and seek to explain.
As the discipline of psychology emerged late in the 19th century, however, phenomena took on a somewhat different guise. In Franz Brentano's Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874), phenomena are of what occurs in the mind: Mental phenomena are acts of consciousness (or their contents), and physical phenomena are objects of external perception starting with colours and shapes. For Brentano, physical phenomena exist "intentionally" in acts of consciousness. This view revives a Medieval notion Brentano called "intentional in-existence. However, the ontology remains undeveloped (what is it to exist in the mind, and do physical objects exist only in the mind?). Moreover, phenomenons are whatever we are conscious of, as a phenomenon might that its events lay succumbantly around us, other people, ourselves. Even (in reflection) our own conscious experiences, as we experience these. In a certain technical sense, phenomena are things as they are given to our consciousness, whether in perception or imagination or thought or volition. This conception of phenomena would soon inform the new discipline of phenomenology.
Brentano distinguished descriptive psychology from genetic psychology. Where genetic psychology seeks the causes of various types of mental phenomena, descriptive psychology defines and classifies the various types of mental phenomena, including perception, judgment, emotion, etc. According to Brentano, every mental phenomenon, or act of consciousness, is directed toward some object, and only mental phenomena are so directed. This thesis of intentional directedness was the hallmark of Brentano's descriptive psychology. In 1889 Brentano used the term "phenomenology" for descriptive psychology, and the way was paved for Husserl's new science of phenomenology.
Phenomenology as we know it was launched by Edmund Husserl in his Logical Investigations (1900-01). Two importantly different lines of theory came together in that monumental work: Psychological theory, on the heels of Franz Brentano (and William James, whose Principles of Psychology appeared in 1891 and greatly impressed Husserl); And logical or semantic theory, on the heels of Bernard Bolzano and Hussserl's contemporaries who founded modern logic, including Gottlob Frege. (Interestingly, both lines of research trace back to Aristotle, and both reached importantly new results in Hussserl's day.)
Hussserl's Logical Investigations was inspired by Bolzano's ideal of logic, while taking up Brentano's conception of descriptive psychology. In his Theory of Science (1835) Bolzano distinguished between subjective and objective ideas or representations (Vorstellungen). In effect Bolzano criticized Kant and before him the classical empiricists and rationalists for failing to make this sort of distinction, thereby rendering phenomena merely subjective. Logic studies objective ideas, including propositions, which in turn make up objective theories as in the sciences. Psychology would, by contrast, study subjective ideas, the concrete contents (occurrences) of mental activities in particular minds at a given time. Husserl was after both, within a single discipline. So phenomena must be reconceived as objective intentional contents (sometimes called intentional objects) of subjective acts of consciousness. Phenomenology would then study this complex of consciousness and correlated phenomena. In Ideas I (Book One, 1913) Husserl introduced two Greek words to capture his version of the Bolzanoan distinction: noesis and noema (from the Greek verb noéaw, meaning to perceive, think, intend, from what place the noun nous or mind). The intentional process of consciousness is called noesis, while its ideal content is called noema. The noema of an act of consciousness Husserl characterized both as an ideal meaning and as "the object as intended.” Thus the phenomenon, or object-as-it-appears, becomes the noema, or object-as-it-is-intended. The interpretations of Husserl's theory of noema have been several and amount to different developments of Husserl's basic theory of intentionality. (Is the noema an aspect of the object intended, or rather a medium of intention?)
For Husserl, then, phenomenology integrates a kind of psychology with a kind of logic. It develops a descriptive or analytic psychology in that it describes and analytical divisions of subjective mental activity or experience, in short, acts of consciousness. Yet it develops a kind of logic - a theory of meaning (today we say logical semantics) -by that, it describes and approves to analytical justification that an objective content of consciousness, brings forthwith the ideas, concepts, images, propositions, in short, ideal meanings of various types that serve as intentional contents, or noematic meanings, of various types of experience. These contents are shareable by different acts of consciousness, and in that sense they are objective, ideal meanings. Following Bolzano (and to some extent the platonistic logician Hermann Lotze), Husserl opposed any reduction of logic or mathematics or science to mere psychology, to how human beings happen to think, and in the same spirit he distinguished phenomenology from mere psychology. For Husserl, phenomenology would study consciousness without reducing the objective and shareable meanings that inhabit experience to merely subjective happenstances. Ideal meaning would be the engine of intentionality in acts of consciousness.
A clear conception of phenomenology awaited Husserl's development of a clear model of intentionality. Indeed, phenomenology and the modern concept of intentionality emerged hand-in-hand in Husserl's Logical Investigations (1900-01). With theoretical foundations laid in the Investigations, Husserl would then promote the radical new science of phenomenology in Ideas. And alternative visions of phenomenology would soon follow.
Phenomenology came into its own with Husserl, much as epistemology came into its own with Descartes, and ontology or metaphysics came into its own with Aristotle on the heels of Plato. Yet phenomenology has been practised, with or without the name, for many centuries. When Hindu and Buddhist philosophers reflected on states of consciousness achieved in a variety of meditative states, they were practising phenomenology. When Descartes, Hume, and Kant characterized states of perception, thought, and imagination, they were practising phenomenology. When Brentano classified varieties of mental phenomena (defined by the directedness of consciousness), he was practising phenomenology. When William James appraised kinds of mental activity in the stream of consciousness (including their embodiment and their dependence on habit), he too was practising phenomenology. And when recent analytic philosophers of mind have addressed issues of consciousness and intentionality, they have often been practising phenomenology. Still, the discipline of phenomenology, its roots tracing back through the centuries, came full to flower in Husserl.
Husserl's work was followed by a flurry of Phenomenological writing in the first half of the 20th century. The diversity of traditional phenomenology is apparent in the Encyclopaedia of Phenomenology (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997, Dordrecht and Boston), which features separate articles on some seven types of phenomenology. (1) Transcendental constitutive phenomenology studies how objects are constituted in pure or transcendental consciousness, setting aside questions of any relation to the natural world around us. (2) Naturalistic constitutive phenomenology studies how consciousness constitutes or takes things in the world of nature, assuming with the natural attitude that consciousness is part of nature. (3) Existential phenomenology studies concrete human existence, including our experience of free choice or action in concrete situations. (4) Generative historicist phenomenology studies how meaning, as found in our experience, is generated in historical processes of collective experience over time. (5) Genetic phenomenology studies the genesis of meanings of things within one's own stream of experience. (6) Hermeneutical phenomenology studies interpretive structures of experience, how we understand and engage things around us in our human world, including ourselves and others. (7) Realistic phenomenology studies the structure of consciousness and intentionality, assuming it occurs in a real world that is largely external to consciousness and not somehow brought into being by consciousness.
The most famous of the classical phenomenologists were Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty. In these four thinkers we find different conceptions of phenomenology, different methods, and different results. A brief sketch of their differences will capture both a crucial period in the history of phenomenology and a sense of the diversity of the field of phenomenology.
In his Logical Investigations (1900-01) Husserl outlined a complex system of philosophy, moving from logic to philosophy of language, to ontology (theory of universals and parts of wholes), to a Phenomenological theory of intentionality, and finally to a Phenomenological theory of knowledge. Then in Ideas I (1913) he focussed squarely on phenomenology itself. Husserl defined phenomenology as "the science of the essence of consciousness,” entered on the defining trait of intentionality, approached explicitly "in the first person." In this spirit, we may say phenomenology is the study of consciousness - that is, conscious experience of various types - as experienced from the first-person point of view. In this discipline we study different forms of experience just as we experience them, from the perspective of its topic for living through or performing them. Thus, we characterize experiences of seeing, hearing, imagining, thinking, feeling (i.e., emotion), wishing, desiring, willing, and acting, that is, embodied volitional activities of walking, talking, cooking, carpentering, etc. However, not just any characterization of an experience will do. Phenomenological analysis of a given type of experience will feature the ways in which we ourselves would experience that form of conscious activity. And the leading property of our familiar types of experience is their intentionality, their being a consciousness of or about something, something experienced or presented or engaged in a certain way. How I see or conceptualize or understand the object I am dealing with defines the meaning of that object in my current experience. Thus, phenomenology features a study of meaning, in a wide sense that includes more than what is expressed in language.
In Ideas, Husserl presented phenomenology with a transcendental turn. In part this means that Husserl took on the Kantian idiom of "transcendental idealism,” looking for conditions of the possibility of knowledge, or of consciousness generally, and arguably turning away from any reality beyond phenomena. But Hussserl's transcendental, and turns to involve his discovery of the method of epoché (from the Greek skeptics' notion of abstaining from belief). We are to practice phenomenology, Husserl proposed, by "bracketing" the question of the existence of the natural world around us. We thereby turn our attention, in reflection, to the structure of our own conscious experience. Our first key result is the observation that each act of consciousness is a consciousness of something, that is, intentional, or directed toward something. Consider my visual experience wherein I see a tree across the square. In Phenomenological reflection, we need not concern ourselves with whether the tree exists: my experience is of a tree whether or not such a tree exists. However, we do need to concern ourselves with how the object is meant or intended. I see a Eucalyptus tree, not a Yucca tree; I see the object as a Eucalyptus tree, with a certain shape, with bark stripping off, etc. Thus, bracketing the tree itself, we turn our attention to my experience of the tree, and specifically to the content or meaning in my experience. This tree-as-perceived Husserl calls the noema or noematic sense of the experience.
Philosophers succeeding Husserl debated the proper characterization of phenomenology, arguing over its results and its methods. Adolf Reinach, an early student of Husserl's (who died in World War I), argued that phenomenology should remain cooperatively affiliated within there be of the view that finds to some associative values among the finer qualities that have to them the realist’s ontology, as in Husserl's Logical Investigations. Roman Ingarden, a Polish phenomenologist of the next generation, continued the resistance to Hussserl's turn to transcendental idealism. For such philosophers, phenomenology should not bracket questions of being or ontology, as the method of epoché would suggest. And they were not alone. Martin Heidegger studied Hussserl's early writings, worked as Assistant to Husserl in 1916, and in 1928 Husserl was to succeed in the prestigious chair at the University of Freiburg. Heidegger had his own ideas about phenomenology.
In Being and Time (1927) Heidegger unfurled his rendition of phenomenology. For Heidegger, we and our activities are always "in the world,” our being is being-in-the-world, so we do not study our activities by bracketing the world, rather we interpret our activities and the meaning things have for us by looking to our contextual relations to things in the world. Indeed, for Heidegger, phenomenology resolves into what he called "fundamental ontology.” We must distinguish beings from their being, and we begin our investigation of the meaning of being in our own case, examining our own existence in the activity of "Dasein" (that being whose being is in each case my own). Heidegger resisted Husserl's neo-Cartesian emphasis on consciousness and subjectivity, including how perception presents things around us. By contrast, Heidegger held that our more basic ways of relating to things are in practical activities like hammering, where the phenomenology reveals our situation in a context of equipment and in being-with-others
In Being and Time Heidegger approached phenomenology, in a quasi-poetic idiom, through the root meanings of "logos" and "phenomena,” so that phenomenology is defined as the art or practice of "letting things show themselves.” In Heidegger's inimitable linguistic play on the Greek roots, “phenomenology” means, . . . to let that which shows itself be seen from themselves in the very way in which it shows itself from itself. Here Heidegger explicitly parodies Hussserl's call, "To the things themselves!", or "To the phenomena themselves!" Heidegger went on to emphasize practical forms of comportment or better relating (Verhalten) as in hammering a nail, as opposed to representational forms of intentionality as in seeing or thinking about a hammer. Being and Time developed an existential interpretation of our modes of being including, famously, our being-toward-death.
In a very different style, in clear analytical prose, in the text of a lecture course called The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (1927), Heidegger traced the question of the meaning of being from Aristotle through many other thinkers into the issues of phenomenology. Our understanding of beings and their being comes ultimately through phenomenology. Here the connection with classical issues of ontology is more apparent, and consonant with Hussserl's vision in the Logical Investigations (an early source of inspiration for Heidegger). One of Heidegger's most innovative ideas was his conception of the "ground" of being, looking to modes of being more fundamental than the things around us (from trees to hammers). Heidegger questioned the contemporary concern with technology, and his writing might suggest that our scientific theories are historical artifacts that we use in technological practice, rather than systems of ideal truth (as Husserl had held). Our deep understanding of being, in our own case, comes rather from phenomenology, Heidegger held.
In the 1930s phenomenology migrated from Austrian and then German philosophy into French philosophy. The way had been paved in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, in which the narrator recounts in close detail his vivid recollections of experiences, including his famous associations with the smell of freshly baked madeleines. This sensibility to experience traces to Descartes' work, and French phenomenology has been an effort to preserve the central thrust of Descartes' insights while rejecting mind-body dualism. The experience of one's own body, or one's lived or living body, has been an important motif in many French philosophers of the 20th century.
In the novel Nausea (1936) Jean-Paul Sartre described a bizarre course of experience in which the protagonist, writing in the first person, describes how ordinary objects lose their meaning until he encounters pure being at the foot of a chestnut tree, and in that moment recovers his sense of his own freedom. In Being and Nothingness (1943, written partly while a prisoner of war), Sartre developed his conception of Phenomenological ontology. Consciousness is a consciousness of objects, as Husserl had stressed. In Sartre's model of intentionality, the central player in consciousness is a phenomenon, and the occurrence of a phenomenon is just a consciousness-of-an-object. The chestnut tree I see is, for Sartre, such a phenomenon in my consciousness. Indeed, all things in the world, as we normally experience them, are phenomena, beneath or behind which lies their "being-in-itself.” Consciousness, by contrast, has "being-for-itself,” since everything conscious is not only a consciousness-of-its-object but also a pre-reflective consciousness-of-itself (conscience). Yet for Sartre, unlike Husserl, the formal "I" or self is nothing but a sequence of acts of consciousness, notably including radically free choices (like a Humean bundle of perceptions).
For Sartre, the practice of phenomenology proceeds by a deliberate reflection on the structure of consciousness. Sartre's method is in effect a literary style of interpretive description of different types of experience in relevant situations - a practice that does not really fit the methodological proposals of either Husserl or Heidegger, but makes benefit from Sartre's great literary skill. (Sartre wrote many plays and novels and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.)
Sartre's phenomenology in Being and Nothingness became the philosophical foundation for his popular philosophy of existentialism, sketched in his famous lecture "Existentialism is a Humanism" (1945). In Being and Nothingness Sartre emphasized the experience of freedom of choice, especially the project of choosing oneself, the defining pattern of one's past actions. Through vivid description of the "look" of the Other, Sartre laid groundwork for the contemporary political significance of the concept of the Other (as in other groups or ethnicities). Indeed, in The Second Sex (1949) Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre's life-long companion, launched contemporary feminism with her nuance account of the perceived role of women as Other.
In 1940s Paris, Maurice Merleau-Ponty joined with Sartre and Beauvoir in developing phenomenology. In Phenomenology of Perception (1945) Merleau-Ponty developed a rich variety of phenomenology emphasizing the role of the body in human experience. Unlike Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre, Merleau-Ponty looked to experimental psychology, analysing the reported experience of amputees who felt sensations in a phantom limb. Merleau-Ponty rejected both associationist psychology, focussed on correlations between sensation and stimulus, and intellectualist psychology, focussed on rational construction of the world in the mind. (Think of the behaviorist and computationalist models of mind in more recent decades of empirical psychology.) Instead, Merleau-Ponty focussed on the "body image,” our experience of our own body and its significance in our activities. Extending Hussserl's account of the lived body (as opposed to the physical body), Merleau-Ponty resisted the traditional Cartesian separation of mind and body. For the body image is neither in the mental realm nor in the mechanical-physical realm. Rather, my body is, as it were, me in my engaged action with things I perceive including other people.
The scope of Phenomenology of Perception is characteristic of the breadth of classical phenomenology, not least because Merleau-Ponty drew (with generosity) on Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre while fashioning his own innovative vision of phenomenology. His phenomenology addressed the role of attention in the phenomenal field, the experience of the body, the spatiality of the body, the motility of the body, the body in sexual being and in speech, other selves, temporality, and the character of freedom so important in French existentialism. Near the end of a chapter on the cogito (Descartes' "I think, therefore I am"), Merleau-Ponty succinctly captures his embodied, existential form of phenomenology, writing: Insofar as, when I reflect on the essence of subjectivity, I find it bound up with that of the body and that of the world, this is because my existence as subjectivity [= consciousness] is merely one with my existence as a body and with the existence of the world, and because the subject that I am, when appropriated concrete, it is inseparable from this body and this world.
In short, consciousness is embodied (in the world), and equally body is infused with consciousness (with cognition of the world).
In the years since Hussserl, Heidegger, et al, wrote that its topic or ways of conventional study are to phenomenologists of having in accord dug into all these classical disseminations that include, intentionality, temporal awareness, intersubjectivity, practical intentionality, and the social and linguistic contexts of human activity. Interpretation of historical texts by Husserl et al. has played a prominent role in this work, both because the texts are rich and difficult and because the historical dimension is itself part of the practice of continental European philosophy. Since the 1960s, philosophers trained in the methods of analytic philosophy have also dug into the foundations of phenomenology, with an eye to 20th century work in philosophy of logic, language, and mind.
Phenomenology was already linked with logical and semantic theory in Husserl's Logical Investigations. Analytic phenomenology picks up on that connection. In particular, Dagfinn F¿llesdal and J. N. Mohanty have explored historical and conceptual relations between Husserl's phenomenology and Frége's logical semantics (in Frége's "On Sense and Reference,” 1892). For Frége, an expression refers to an object by way of a sense: Thus, two expressions (say, "the morning star" and "the evening star") may refer to the same object (Venus) but express different senses with different manners of presentation. For Husserl, similarly, an experience (or act of consciousness) intends or refers to an object by way of a noema or noematic sense: Consequently, two experiences may refer to the same object but have different noematic senses involving different ways of presenting the object (for example, in seeing the same object from different sides). Indeed, for Husserl, the theory of intentionality is a generalization of the theory of linguistic reference: as linguistic reference is mediated by sense, so intentional reference is mediated by noematic sense.
More recently, analytic philosophers of mind have rediscovered Phenomenological issues of mental representation, intentionality, consciousness, sensory experience, intentional content, and context-of-thought. Some of these analytic philosophers of mind hark back to William James and Franz Brentano at the origins of modern psychology, and some look to empirical research in today's cognitive neuroscience. Some researchers have begun to combine Phenomenological issues with issues of neuroscience and behavioural studies and mathematical modelling. Such studies will extend the methods of traditional phenomenology as the Zeitgeist moves on.
The discipline of phenomenology forms one basic field in philosophy among others. How is phenomenology distinguished from, and related to, other fields in philosophy?
Traditionally, philosophy includes at least four core fields or disciplines: Ontology, epistemology, ethics, logic presupposes phenomenology as it joins that list. Consider then these elementary definitions of field: (1) Ontology is the study of beings or their being - what is. (2) Epistemology is the study of knowledge - how we know. (3) Logic is the study of valid reasoning - how to reason. (4) Ethics is the study of right and wrong - how we should act. (5) Phenomenology is the study of our experience - how we experience.
The domains of study in these five fields are clearly different, and they seem to call for different methods of study.
Philosophers have sometimes argued that one of these fields is "first philosophy,” the most fundamental discipline, on which all philosophy or all knowledge or wisdom rests. Historically (it may be argued), Socrates and Plato put ethics first, then Aristotle put metaphysics or ontology first, then Descartes put epistemology first, then Russell put logic first, and then Husserl (in his later transcendental phase) put phenomenology first.
Consider epistemology. As we saw, phenomenology helps to define the phenomena on which knowledge claims rest, according to modern epistemology. On the other hand, phenomenology itself claims to achieve knowledge about the nature of consciousness, a distinctive description of first-person knowledge, through a form of intuition.
Consider logic saw being a logical theory of meaning, in that this had persuaded Husserl into the theory of intentionality, the heart of phenomenology. On one account, phenomenology explicates the intentional or semantic force of ideal meanings, and propositional meanings are central to logical theory. But logical structure is expressed in language, either ordinary language or symbolic languages like those of predicate logic or mathematics or computer systems. It remains an important issue of debate where and whether language shapes specific forms of experience (thought, perception, emotion) and their content or meaning. So there is an important (if disputed) relation between phenomenology and logico-linguistic theory, especially philosophical logic and philosophy of language (as opposed to mathematical logic per se).
Consider ontology. Phenomenology studies (among other things) the nature of consciousness, which is a central issue in metaphysics or ontology, and one that lead into the traditional mind-body problem. Husserlian methodology would bracket the question of the existence of the surrounding world, thereby separating phenomenology from the ontology of the world. Yet Husserl's phenomenology presupposes theory about species and individuals (universals and particulars), relations of part and whole, and ideal meanings - all parts of ontology.
Now consider ethics. Phenomenology might play a role in ethics by offering analyses of the structure of will, valuing, happiness, and care for others (in empathy and sympathy). Historically, though, ethics has been on the horizon of phenomenology. Husserl largely avoided ethics in his major works, though he featured the role of practical concerns in the structure of the life-world or of Geist (spirit, or culture, as in Zeitgeist). He once delivered a course of lectures giving ethics (like logic) a basic place in philosophy, indicating the importance of the phenomenology of sympathy in grounding ethics. In Being and Time Heidegger claimed not to pursue ethics while discussing phenomena ranging from care, conscience, and guilt to "fallenness" and "authenticity" (all phenomena with theological echoes). In Being and Nothingness Sartre analysed with subtlety the logical problem of "bad faith,” yet he developed an ontology of value as produced by willing in good faith (which sounds like a revised Kantian foundation for morality). Beauvoir sketched an existentialist ethics, and Sartre left unpublished notebooks on ethics. However, an explicit Phenomenological approach to ethics emerged in the works of Emannuel Levinas, a Lithuanian phenomenologist who heard Husserl and Heidegger in Freiburg before moving to Paris. In Totality and Infinity (1961), modifying themes drawn from Husserl and Heidegger, Levinas focussed on the significance of the "face" of the other, explicitly developing grounds for ethics in this range of phenomenology, writing an impressionistic style of prose with allusions to religious experience.
Allied with ethics that on the same line, signify political and social philosophy. Sartre and Merleau-Ponty were politically captivated in 1940s Paris, and their existential philosophies (phenomenologically based) suggest a political theory based in individual freedom. Sartre later sought an explicit blend of existentialism with Marxism. Still, political theory has remained on the borders of phenomenology. Social theory, however, has been closer to phenomenology as such. Husserl analysed the Phenomenological structure of the life-world and Geist generally, including our role in social activity. Heidegger stressed social practice, which he found more primordial than individual consciousness. Alfred Schutz developed a phenomenology of the social world. Sartre continued the Phenomenological appraisal of the meaning of the other, the fundamental social formation. Moving outward from Phenomenological issues, Michel Foucault studied the genesis and meaning of social institutions, from prisons to insane asylums. And Jacques Derrida has long practised a kind of phenomenology of language, seeking socially meaning in the "deconstruction" of wide-ranging texts. Aspects of French "poststructuralist" theory are sometimes interpreted as broadly Phenomenological, but such issues are beyond the present purview.
Classical phenomenology, then, ties into certain areas of epistemology, logic, and ontology, and leads into parts of ethical, social, and political theory.
It ought to be obvious that phenomenology has a lot to say in the area called philosophy of mind. Yet the traditions of phenomenology and analytic philosophy of mind have not been closely joined, despite overlapping areas of interest. So it is appropriate to close this survey of phenomenology by addressing philosophy of mind, one of the most vigorously debated areas in recent philosophy.
The tradition of analytic philosophy began, early in the 20th century, with analyses of language, notably in the works of Gottlob Frége, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Then in The Concept of Mind (1949) Gilbert Ryle developed a series of analyses of language about different mental states, including sensation, belief, and will. Though Ryle is commonly deemed a philosopher of ordinary language, Ryle himself said The Concept of Mind could be called phenomenology. In effect, Ryle analysed our Phenomenological understanding of mental states as reflected in ordinary language about the mind. From this linguistic phenomenology Ryle argued that Cartesian mind-body dualism involves a category mistake (the logic or grammar of mental verbs - "believe,” "see,” etc. -does not mean that we ascribe belief, sensation, etc., to "the ghost in the machine"). With Ryle's rejection of mind-body dualism, the mind-body problem was re-awakened: What is the ontology of mind/body, and how are mind and body related?
René Descartes, in his epoch-making Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), had argued that minds and bodies are two distinct kinds of being or substance with two distinct kinds of attributes or modes: bodies are characterized by spatiotemporal physical properties, while minds are characterized by properties of thinking (including seeing, feeling, etc.). Centuries later, phenomenology would find, with Brentano and Husserl, that mental acts are characterized by consciousness and intentionality, while natural science would find that physical systems are characterized by mass and force, ultimately by gravitational, electromagnetic, and quantum fields. Where do we find consciousness and intentionality in the quantum-electromagnetic-gravitational field that, by hypothesis, orders everything in the natural world in which we humans and our minds exist? That is the mind-body problem today. In short, phenomenology by any other name lies at the heart of the contemporary, mind-body problem.
After Ryle, philosophers sought a more explicit and generally naturalistic ontology of mind. In the 1950s materialism was argued anew, urging that mental states are identical with states of the central nervous system. The classical identity theory holds that each token mental state (in a particular person's mind at a particular time) is identical with a token brain state (in that person's brain at that time). A weaker materialism holds, instead, that each type of mental state is identical with a type of brain state. But materialism does not fit comfortably with phenomenology. For it is not obvious how conscious mental states as we experience them - sensations, thoughts, emotions - can simply be the complex neural states that somehow subserve or implement them. If mental states and neural states are simply identical, in token or in type, where in our scientific theory of mind does the phenomenology occur - is it not simply replaced by neuroscience? And yet experience is part of what is to be explained by neuroscience.
In the late 1960s and 1970s the computer model of mind set it, and functionalism became the dominant model of mind. On this model, mind is not what the brain consists in (electrochemical transactions in neurons in vast complexes). Instead, mind is what brains do: They are function of mediating between information coming into the organism and behaviour proceeding from the organism. Thus, a mental state is a functional state of the brain or of the human or an animal organism. More specifically, on a favourite variation of functionalism, the mind is a computing system: Mind is to brain as software is to hardware; Thoughts are just programs running on the brain's "NetWare.” Since the 1970s the cognitive sciences - from experimental studies of cognition to neuroscience - have tended toward a mix of materialism and functionalism. Gradually, however, philosophers found that Phenomenological aspects of the mind pose problems for the functionalist paradigm too.
In the early 1970s Thomas Nagel argued in "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (1974) that consciousness itself - especially the subjective character of what it is like to have a certain type of experience - escapes physical theory. Many philosophers pressed the case that sensory qualia - what it is like to feel pain, to see red, etc. - are not addressed or explained by a physical account of either brain structure or brain function. Consciousness has properties of its own. And yet, we know, it is closely tied to the brain. And, at some level of description, neural activities implement computation.
In the 1980s John Searle argued in Intentionality (1983) (and further in The Rediscovery of the Mind (1991)) that intentionality and consciousness are essential properties of mental states. For Searle, our brains produce mental states with properties of consciousness and intentionality, and this is all part of our biology, yet consciousness and intentionality require the "first-person" ontology. Searle also argued that computers simulate but do not have mental states characterized by intentionality. As Searle argued, a computer system has of the syntax (processing symbols of certain shapes) but has no semantics (the symbols lack meaning: We interpret the symbols). In this way Searle rejected both materialism and functionalism, while insisting that mind is a biological property of organisms like us: Our brains "secrete" consciousness.
The analysis of consciousness and intentionality is central to phenomenology as appraised above, and Searle's theory of intentionality reads like a modernized version of Husserl's. (Contemporary logical theory takes the form of stating truth conditions for propositions, and Searle characterizes a mental state's intentionality by specifying its "satisfaction conditions"). However, there is an important difference in background theory. For Searle explicitly assumes the basic worldview of natural science, holding that consciousness is part of nature. But Husserl explicitly brackets that assumption, and later phenomenologists - including Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty - seem to seek a certain sanctuary for phenomenology beyond the natural sciences. And yet phenomenology itself should be largely neutral about further theories of how experience arises, notably from brain activity.
The philosophy or theory of mind overall may be factored into the following disciplines or ranges of theory relevant to mind: Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced, analysing the structure - the types, intentional forms and meanings, dynamics, and (certain) enabling conditions - of perception, thought, imagination, emotion, and volition and action.
Neuroscience studies the neural activities that serve as biological substrate to the various types of mental activity, including conscious experience. Neuroscience will be framed by evolutionary biology (explaining how neural phenomena evolved) and ultimately by basic physics (explaining how biological phenomena are grounded in physical phenomena). Here lie the intricacies of the natural sciences. Part of what the sciences are accountable for is the structure of experience, analysed by phenomenology.
Cultural analysis studies the social practices that help to shape or serve as cultural substrate of the various types of mental activity, including conscious experience. Here we study the import of language and other social practices. Ontology of mind studies the ontological type of mental activity in general, ranging from perception (which involves causal input from environment to experience) to volitional action (which involves causal output from volition to bodily movement).
This division of labour in the theory of mind can be seen as an extension of Brentano's original distinction between descriptive and genetic psychology. Phenomenology offers descriptive analyses of mental phenomena, while neuroscience (and wider biology and ultimately physics) offers models of explanation of what causes or gives rise to mental phenomena. Cultural theory offers analyses of social activities and their impact on experience, including ways language shapes our thought, emotion, and motivation. And ontology frames all these results within a basic scheme of the structure of the world, including our own minds.
Meanwhile, from an epistemological standpoint, all these ranges of theory about mind begin with how we observe and reason about and seek to explain phenomena we encounter in the world. And that is where phenomenology begins. Moreover, how we understand each piece of theory, including theory about mind, is central to the theory of intentionality, as it were, the semantics of thought and experience in general. And that is the heart of phenomenology.
There is potentially a rich and productive interface between neuroscience/cognitive science. The two traditions, however, have evolved largely independent, based on differing sets of observations and objectives, and tend to use different conceptual frameworks and vocabulary representations. The distributive contributions to each their dynamic functions of finding a useful common reference to further exploration of the relations between neuroscience/cognitive science and psychoanalysis/psychotherapy.
Forthwith, is the existence of a historical gap between neuroscience/cognitive science and psychotherapy is being productively closed by, among other things, the suggestion that recent understandings of the nervous system as a modeler and predictor bear a close and useful similarity to the concepts of projection and transference. The gap could perhaps be valuably narrowed still further by a comparison in the two traditions of the concepts of the "unconscious" and the "conscious" and the relations between the two. It is suggested that these be understood as two independent "story generators" - each with different styles of function and both operating optimally as reciprocal contributors to each others' ongoing story evolution. A parallel and comparably optimal relation might be imagined for neuroscience/cognitive science and psychotherapy.
For the sake of argument, imagine that human behaviour and all that it entails (including the experience of being a human and interacting with a world that includes other humans) is a function of the nervous system. If this were so, then there would be lots of different people who are making observations of (perhaps different) aspects of the same thing, and telling (perhaps different) stories to make sense of their observations. The list would include neuroscientists and cognitive scientists and psychologists. It would include as well psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and social workers. If we were not too fussy about credentials, it should probably include as well educators, and parents and . . . babies? Arguably, all humans, from the time they are born, spend significant measures of their time making observations of how people (others and themselves) behave and why, and telling stories to make sense of those observations.
The stories, of course, all differ from one another to greater or lesser degrees. In fact, the notion that "human behaviour and all that it entails . . . is a function of the nervous system" is itself a story used to make sense of observations by some people and not by others. It is not my intent here to try to defend this particular story, or any other story for that matter. Very much to the contrary, is to explore the implications and significance of the fact that there ARE different stories and that they might be about the same (some)thing
In so doing, I want to try to create a new story that helps to facilitate an enhanced dialogue between neuroscience/cognitive science, on the one hand, and psychotherapy, on the other. That new story is itself is a story of conflicting stories within . . . what is called the "nervous system" but others are free to call the "self," "mind," "soul," or whatever best fits their own stories. What is important is the idea that multiple things, evident by their conflicts, may not in fact be disconnected and adversarial entities but could rather be fundamentally, understandably, and valuably interconnected parts of the same thing.
Many practising psychoanalysts (and psychotherapists too, I suspect) feel that the observations/stories of neuroscience/cognitive science are for their own activities, least of mention, are at primes of irrelevance, and at worst destructive, and the same probable holds for many neuroscientists/cognitive scientists. Pally clearly feels otherwise, and it is worth exploring a bit why this is so in her case. A general key, I think, is in her line "In current paradigms, the brain has intrinsic activity, is highly integrated, is interactive with the environment, and is goal-oriented, with predictions operating at every level, from lower systems to . . . the highest functions of abstract thought." Contemporary neuroscience/cognitive science has indeed uncovered an enormous complexity and richness in the nervous system, "making it not so different from how psychoanalysts (or most other people) would characterize the self, at least not in terms of complexity, potential, and vagary." Given this complexity and richness, there is substantially less reason than there once was to believe psychotherapists and neuroscientists/cognitive scientists are dealing with two fundamentally different thing’s ally suspects, more aware of this than many psychotherapists because she has been working closely with contemporary neuroscientists who are excited about the complexity to be found in the nervous system. And that has an important lesson, but there is an additional one at least as important in the immediate context. In 1950, two neuroscientists wrote: "The sooner we realize that not to expect of expectation itself, which we would recognize the fact that the complex and higher functional Gestalts that leave the reflex physiologist dumfounded in fact send roots down to the simplest basal functions of the CNS, the sooner we will see that the previously terminologically insurmountable barrier between the lower levels of neurophysiology and higher behavioural theory simply dissolves away."
And in 1951 another said, "I am becoming subsequently forwarded by the conviction that the rudiments of every behavioural mechanism will be found far down in the evolutionary scale and represented in primitive activities of the nervous system."
Neuroscience (and what came to be cognitive science) was engaged from very early on in an enterprise committed to the same kind of understanding sought by psychotherapists, but passed through a phase (roughly from the 1950's to the 1980's) when its own observations and stories were less rich in those terms. It was a period that gave rise to the notion that the nervous system was "simple" and "mechanistic," which in turn made neuroscience/cognitive science seem less relevant to those with broader concerns, perhaps even threatening and apparently adversarial if one equated the nervous system with "mind," or "self," or "soul," since mechanics seemed degrading to those ideas. Arguably, though, the period was an essential part of the evolution of the contemporary neuroscience/cognitive science story, one that laid needed groundwork for rediscovery and productive exploration of the richness of the nervous system. Psychoanalysis/psychotherapy of course went through its own story evolution over this time. That the two stories seemed remote from one another during this period was never adequate evidence that they were not about the same thing but only an expression of their needed independent evolutions.
An additional reason that Pally is comfortable with the likelihood that psychotherapists and neuroscientists/cognitive scientists are talking about the same thing is her recognition of isomorphisms (or congruities, Pulver 2003) between the two sets of stories, places where different vocabularies in fact seem to be representing the same (or quite similar) things. I am not sure I am comfortable calling these "shared assumptions" (as Pally does) since they are actually more interesting and probably more significant if they are instead instances of coming to the same ideas from different directions (as I think they are). In this case, the isomorphisms tend to imply that, rephrasing Gertrude Stein, "that there exists an actual there.” Regardless, Pally has entirely appropriately and, I think, usefully called attention to an important similarity between the psychotherapeutic concept of "transference" and an emerging recognition within neuroscience/cognitive science that the nervous system does not so much collect information about the world as generate a model of it, act in relation to that model, and then check incoming information against the predictions of that model. Pally's suggestion that this model reflects in part early interpersonal experiences, can be largely "unconscious," and so may cause inappropriate and troubling behaviour in current time seems entirely reasonable. So too is she to think of thoughts that there is an interaction with the analyst, and this can be of some help by bringing the model to "consciousness" through the intermediary of recognizing the transference onto the analyst.
The increasing recognition of substantial complexity in the nervous system together with the presence of identifiable isomorphisms provides a solid foundation for suspecting that psychotherapists and neuroscientists/cognitive scientists are indeed talking about the same thing. But the significance of different stories for better understanding a single thing lies as much in the differences between the stories as it does in their similarities/isomorphisms, in the potential for differing and not obviously isomorphic stories productively to modify each other, yielding a new story in the process. With this thought in mind, I want to call attention to some places where the psychotherapeutic and the neuroscientific/cognitive scientific stories have edges that rub against one another rather than smoothly fitting together. And perhaps to ways each could be usefully further evolved in response to those non-isomorphisms.
Unconscious stories and "reality.” Though her primary concern is with interpersonal relations, Pally clearly recognizes that transference and related psychotherapeutic phenomena are one (actually relatively small) facet of a much more general phenomenon, the creation, largely unconsciously, of stories that are understood to be that of what are not necessarily reflective of the "real world.” Ambiguous figures illustrate the same general phenomenon in a much simpler case, that of visual perception. Such figures may be seen in either of two ways; They represent two "stories" with the choice between them being, at any given time, largely unconscious. More generally, a serious consideration of a wide array of neurobiological/cognitive phenomena clearly implies that, as Pally said, that if we could ever see "reality," but only have stories to describe it that result from processes of which we are not consciously aware.
All of this raises some quite serious philosophical questions about the meaning and usefulness of the concept of "reality." In the present context, what is important is that it is a set of questions that sometimes seem to provide an insurmountable barrier between the stories of neuroscientists/cognitive scientists, who by and large think they are dealing with reality, and psychotherapists, who feel more comfortable in more idiosyncratic and fluid spaces. In fact, neuroscience and cognitive science can proceed perfectly well in the absence of a well-defined concept of "reality" and, without being fully conscious of it, does in fact do so. And psychotherapists actually make more use of the idea of "reality" than is entirely appropriate. There is, for example, a tendency within the psychotherapeutic community to presume that unconscious stories reflect "traumas" and other historically verifiable events, while the neurobiological/cognitive science story says quite clearly that they may equally reflect predispositions whose origins reflect genetic information and hence bear little or no relation to "reality" in the sense usually meant. They may, in addition, reflect random "play" (Grobstein, 1994), putting them even further out of reach of easy historical interpretation. In short, with regard to the relation between "story" and "reality," each set of stories could usefully be modified by greater attention to the other. Differing concepts of "reality" (perhaps the very concept itself) gets in the way of usefully sharing stories. The neurobiologists and/or/cognitive scientists' preoccupation with "reality" as an essential touchstone could valuably be lessened, and the therapist's sense of the validation of story in terms of personal and historical idiosyncracies could be helpfully adjusted to include a sense of actual material underpinnings.
The Unconscious and the Conscious. Pally appropriately makes a distinction between the unconscious and the conscious, one that has always been fundamental to psychotherapy. Neuroscience/cognitive science has been slower to make a comparable distinction but is now rapidly beginning to catch up. Clearly some neural processes generate behaviour in the absence of awareness and intent and others yield awareness and intent with or without accompanying behaviour. An interesting question however, raised at a recent open discussion of the relations between neuroscience and psychoanalysis, is whether the "neurobiological unconscious" is the same thing as the "psychotherapeutic unconscious," and whether the perceived relations between the "unconscious" and the"conscious" are the same in the two sets of stories. Is this a case of an isomorphism or, perhaps more usefully, a masked difference?
An oddity of Pally's article is that she herself acknowledges that the unconscious has mechanisms for monitoring prediction errors and yet implies, both in the title of the paper, and in much of its argument, that there is something special or distinctive about consciousness (or conscious processing) in its ability to correct prediction errors. And here, I think, there is evidence of a potentially useful "rubbing of edges" between the neuroscientific/cognitive scientific tradition and the psychotherapeutic one. The issue is whether one regards consciousness (or conscious processing) as somehow "superior" to the unconscious (or unconscious processing). There is a sense in Pally of an old psychotherapeutic perspective of the conscious as a mechanism for overcoming the deficiencies of the unconscious, of the conscious as the wise father/mother and the unconscious as the willful child. Actually, Pally does not quite go this far, but there is enough of a trend to illustrate the point and, without more elaboration, I do not think many neuroscientists/cognitive scientists will catch Pally's more insightful lesson. I think Pally is almost certainly correct that the interplay of the conscious and the unconscious can achieve results unachievable by the unconscious alone, but think also that neither psychotherapy nor neuroscience/cognitive science are yet in a position to say exactly why this is so. So let me take a crack here at a new, perhaps bi-dimensional story that could help with that common problem and perhaps both traditions as well.
A major and surprising lesson of comparative neuroscience, supported more recently by neuropsychology (Weiskrantz, 1986) and, more recently still, by artificial intelligence is that an extraordinarily rich repertoire of adaptive behaviour can occur unconsciously, in the absence of awareness of intent (be supported by unconscious neural processes). It is not only modelling of the world and prediction and error correction that can occur this way but virtually (and perhaps literally) the entire spectrum of behaviour externally observed, including fleeing from threat, approaching good things, generating novel outputs, learning from doing so, and so on.
This extraordinary terrain, discovered by neuroanatomists, electrophysiologists, neurologists, behavioural biologists, and recently extended by others using more modern techniques, is the unconscious of which the neuroscientist/cognitive scientist speaks. It is a terrain so surprisingly rich that it creates, for some people, the inpuzzlement about whether there is anything else at all. Moreover, it seems, at first glance, to be a totally different terrain from that of the psychotherapist, whose clinical experience reveals a territory occupied by drives, unfulfilled needs, and the detritus with which the conscious would prefer not to deal.
As indicated earlier, it is one of the great strengths of Pally's article to suggest that the two terrains may in fact turns out to be the same in many ways, but if they are of the same line, it then becomes the question of whether or not it feels in what way nature resembles the "unconscious" and the "conscious" different? Where now are the "two stories?” Pally touches briefly on this point, suggesting that the two systems differ not so much (or at all?) in what they do, but rather in how they do it. This notion of two systems with different styles seems to me worth emphasizing and expanding. Unconscious processing is faster and handles many more variables simultaneously. Conscious processing is slower and handles several variables at one time. It is likely that there appear to a host of other differences in style as well, in the handling of number for example, and of time.
In the present context, however, perhaps the most important difference in style is one that Lacan called attention to from a clinical/philosophical perspective - the conscious (conscious processing) that has in resemblance to some objective "coherence," that is, it attempts to create a story that makes sense simultaneously of all its parts. The unconscious, on the other hand, is much more comfortable with bits and pieces lying around with no global order. To a neurobiologist/cognitive scientist, this makes perfectly good sense. The circuitry includes the unconscious (sub-cortical circuitry?) assembly of different parts organized for a large number of different specific purposes, and only secondarily linked together to try to assure some coordination? The circuitry preserves the conscious precessings (neo-cortical circuitry?), that, on the other hand, seems to both be more uniform and integrated and to have an objective for which coherence is central.
That central coherence is well-illustrated by the phenomena of "positive illusions,” exemplified by patients who receive a hypnotic suggestion that there is an object in a room and subsequently walk in ways that avoid the object while providing a variety of unrelated explanations for their behaviour. Similar "rationalization" is, of course, seen in schizophrenic patients and in a variety of fewer dramatic forms in psychotherapeutic settings. The "coherent" objective is to make a globally organized story out of the disorganized jumble, a story of (and constituting) the "self."
What this thoroughly suggests is that the mind/brain be actually organized to be constantly generating at least two different stories in two different styles. One, written by conscious processes in simpler terms, is a story of/about the "self" and experienced as such, for developing insights into how such a story can be constructed using neural circuitry. The other is an unconscious "story" about interactions with the world, perhaps better thought of as a series of different "models" about how various actions relate to various consequences. In many ways, the latter is the grist for the former.
In this sense, we are safely back to the two story ideas that has been central to psychotherapy, but perhaps with some added sophistication deriving from neuroscience/cognitive science. In particular, there is no reason to believe that one story is "better" than the other in any definitive sense. They are different stories based on different styles of story telling, with one having advantages in certain sorts of situations (quick responses, large numbers of variables, more direct relation to immediate experiences of pain and pleasure) and the other in other sorts of situations (time for more deliberate responses, challenges amenable to handling using smaller numbers of variables, more coherent, more able to defer immediate gratification/judgment.
In the clinical/psychotherapeutic context, an important implication of the more neutral view of two story-tellers outlined above is that one ought not to over-value the conscious, nor to expect miracles of the process of making conscious what is unconscious. In the immediate context, the issue is if the unconscious is capable of "correcting prediction errors,” then why appeal to the conscious to achieve this function? More generally, what is the function of that persistent aspect of psychotherapy that aspires to make the unconscious conscious? And why is it therapeutically effective when it is? Here, it is worth calling special attention to an aspect of Pally's argument that might otherwise get a bit lost in the details of her article: . . . the therapist encourages the wife to stop consciously and consider her assumption that her husband does not properly care about her, and to effort fully consider an alternative view and inhibit her impulse to reject him back. This, in turn, creates a new type of experience, one in which he is indeed more loving, such that she can develop new predictions."
It is not, as Pally describes it, the simple act of making something conscious that is therapeutically effective. What is necessary is too consciously recompose the story (something that is made possible by its being a story with a small number of variables) and, even more important, to see if the story generates a new "type of experience" that in turn causes the development of "new predictions." The latter, I suggest, is an effect of the conscious on the unconscious, an alteration of the unconscious brought about by hearing, entertaining, and hence acting on a new story developed by the conscious. It is not "making things conscious" that is therapeutically effective; it is the exchange of stories that encourages the creation of a new story in the unconscious.
For quite different reasons, Grey (1995) earlier made a suggestion not dissimilar to Pally's, proposing that consciousness was activated when an internal model detected a prediction failure, but acknowledged he could see no reason "why the brain should generate conscious experience of any kind at all." It seems to me that, despite her title, it is not the detection of prediction errors that is important in Pally's story. Instead, it is the detection of mismatches between two stories, one unconscious and the other conscious, and the resulting opportunity for both to shape a less trouble-making new story. That, in brief, is it to why the brain "should generate conscious experience,” and reap the benefits of having a second story teller with which a different style of paraphrasing Descartes, one might know of another in what one might say "I am, and I can think, therefore I can change who I am.” It is not only the neurobiological "conscious" that can undergo change; it is the neurobiological "unconscious" as well.
More generally, the most effective psychotherapy requires the recognitions that assume their responsibility is rapidly emerging from neuroscience/cognitive science, that the brain/mind has evolved with two (or more) independent story tellers and has done so precisely because there are advantages to having independent story tellers that generate and exchange different stories. The advantage is that each can learn from the other, and the mechanisms to convey the stories and forth and for each story teller to learn from the stories of the other are a part of our evolutionary endowment as well. The problems that bring patients into a therapist's office are problems in the breakdown of story exchange, for any of a variety of reasons, and the challenge for the therapist is to reinstate the confidence of each story teller in the value of the stories created by the other. Neither the conscious nor the unconscious is primary; they function best as an interdependent loop with each developing its own story facilitated by the semi-independent story of the other. In such an organization, there is not only no "real,” and no primacy for consciousness, there is only the ongoing development and, ideally, effective sharing of different stories.
There are, in the story I am outlining, implications for neuroscience/cognitive science as well. The obvious key questions are what does one mean (in terms of neurons and neuronal assemblies) by "stories," and in what ways are their construction and representation different in unconscious and conscious neural processing. But even more important, if the story I have outlined makes sense, what are the neural mechanisms by which unconscious and conscious stories are exchanged and by which each kind of story impacts on the other? And why (again in neural terms) does the exchange sometimes break down and fail in a way that requires a psychotherapist - an additional story teller - to be repaired?
Just as the unconscious and the conscious are engaged in a process of evolving stories for separate reasons and using separate styles, so too have been and will continue to be neuroscience/cognitive science and psychotherapy. And it is valuable that both communities continue to do so. But there is every reason to believe that the different stories are indeed about the same thing, not only because of isomorphisms between the differing stories but equally because the stories of each can, if listened to, be demonstrably of value to the stories of the other. When breakdowns in story sharing occur, they require people in each community who are daring enough to listen and be affected by the stories of the other community. Pally has done us all a service as such a person. I hope my reactions to her article will help further to construct the bridge she has helped to lay, and that others will feel inclined to join in an act of collective story telling that has enormous intellectual potential and relates as well very directly to a serious social need in the mental health arena. Indeed, there are reasons to believe that an enhanced skill at hearing, respecting, and learning from differing stories about similar things would be useful in a wide array of contexts.
There is now a more satisfactory range of ideas available [in the field of consciousness studies] . . . They involve mostly quantum objects called Bose-Einstein condensates that may be capable of forming ephemeral but extended structures in the brain (Pessa). Marshall's original idea (based on the work of Frölich) was that the condensates that comprise the physical basis of mind, form from activity of vibrating molecules (dipoles) in nerve cell membranes. One of us (Clarke) has found theoretical evidence that the distribution of energy levels for such arrays of molecules prevents this happening in the way that Marshall first thought. However, the occurrence of similar condensates centring around the microtubules that are an important part of the structure of every cell, including nerve cells, remains a theoretical possibility (del Giudice et al.). Hameroff has pointed out that single-cell organisms such as 'paramecium' can perform quite complicated actions normally thought to need a brain. He suggests that their 'brain' be in their microtubules. Shape changes in the constituent proteins (tubulin) could subserve computational functions and would involve quantum phenomena of the sort envisaged by del Giudice. This raises the intriguing possibility that the most basic cognitive unit is provided, not by the nerve cell synapse as is usually supposed, but by the microtubular structure within cells. The underlying intuition is that the structures formed by Bose-Einstein condensates are the building Forms of mental life; in relation to perception they are models of the world, transforming a pleasant view, say, into a mental structure that represents some of the inherent qualities of that view.
We thought that, if there is anything to ideas of this sort, the quantum nature of awareness should be detectable experimentally. Holism and non-locality are features of the quantum world with no precise classical equivalents. The former presupposes that the interacting systems have to be considered as wholes - you cannot deal with one part in isolation from the rest. Non-locality means, among other things, that spatial separation between its parts does not alter the requirement to deal with an interacting system holistically. If we could detect these in relation to awareness, we would show that consciousness cannot be understood solely in terms of classical concepts.
Generative thought and words are the attempts to discover the relation between thought and speech at the earliest stages of phylogenetic and ontogenetic development. We found no specific interdependence between the genetic roots of thought and of word. It became plain that the inner relationship we were looking for was not a prerequisite for, but rather a product of, the historical development of human consciousness.
In animals, even in anthropoids whose speech is phonetically like human speech and whose intellect is akin to man’s, speech and thinking are not interrelated. A prelinguistic epoché through which times interval in thought and a preintellectual period in speech undoubtedly exist also in the development of the child. Thought and word are not connected by a primary bond. A connection originates, changes, and grows in the course of the evolution of thinking and speech.
It would be wrong, however, to regard thought and speech as two unrelated processes either parallel or crossing at certain points and mechanically influencing each other. The absence of a primary bond does not mean that a connection between them can be formed only in a mechanical way. The futility of most of the earlier investigations was largely due to the assumption that thought and word were isolated, independent elements, and verbal thought the fruit of their external union.
The method of analysis based on this conception was bound to fail. It sought to explain the properties of verbal thought by breaking it up into its component elements, thought and word, neither of which, taken separately, possessed the properties of the whole. This method is not true analysis helpful in solving concrete problems. It leads, rather, to generalisation. We compared it with the analysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen - which can result only in findings applicable to all water existing in nature, from the Pacific Ocean to a raindrop. Similarly, the statement that verbal thought is composed of intellectual processes and speech is functionally proper applications to all verbal thought and all its manifestations and explains none of the specific problems facing the student of verbal thought.
We tried a new approach to the subject and replaced analysis into elements by analysis into units, each of which retains in simple form all the properties of the whole. We found this unit of verbal thought in word meaning.
The meaning of a word represents such a close amalgam of thought and language that it is hard to tell whether it is a phenomenon of speech or a phenomenon of thought. A word without meaning is an empty sound; meaning, therefore, is a criterion of “word,” its indispensable component. It would seem, then, that it may be regarded as a phenomenon of speech. But from the point of view of psychology, the meaning of every word is a generalisation or a concept. And since generalisations and concepts are undeniably acts of thought, but we may regard meaning as a phenomenon of thinking. It does not follow, however, that meaning formally belongs in two different spheres of psychic life. Word meaning is a phenomenon of thought only insofar as thought is embodied in speech, and of speech only insofar as speech is connected with thought and illumined by it. It is a phenomenon of verbal thought, or meaningful speech - a union of word and thought.
Our experimental investigations fully confirm this basic thesis. They not only proved that concrete study of the development of verbal thought is made possible by the use of word meaning as the analytical unit but they also led to a further thesis, which we consider the major result of our study and which issues directly from the further thesis that word meanings develop. This insight must replace the postulate of the immutability of word meanings.
From the point of view of the old schools of psychology, the bond between word and meaning is an associative bond, established through the repeated simultaneous perception of a certain sound and a certain object. A word calls to mind its content as the overcoat of a friend reminds us of that friend, or a house of its inhabitants. The association between word and meaning may grow stronger or weaker, be enriched by linkage with other objects of a similar kind, spread over a wider field, or become more limited, i.e., it may undergo quantitative and external changes, but it cannot change its psychological nature. To do that, it would have to cease being an association. From that point of view, any development in word meanings is inexplicable and impossible - an implication that impeded linguistics as well as psychology. Once having committed itself to the association theory, semantics persisted in treating word meaning as an association between a word’s sound and its content. All words, from the most concrete to the most abstract, appeared to be formed in the same manner in regard to meaning, and to contain nothing peculiar to speech as such; a word made us think of its meaning just as any object might remind us of another. It is hardly surprising that semantics did not even pose the larger question of the development of word meanings. Development was reduced to changes in the associative connections between single words and single objects: A word brawn to denote at first one object and then become associated with another, just as an overcoat, having changed owners, might remind us first of one person and later of another. Linguistics did not realize that in the historical evolution of language the very structure of meaning and its psychological nature also change. From primitive generalisations, verbal thought rises to the most abstract concepts. It is not merely the content of a word that changes, but the way in which reality is generalised and reflected in a word.
Equally inadequate is the association theory in explaining the development of word meanings in childhood. Here, too, it can account only for the pure external, quantitative changes in the bonds uniting word and meaning, for their enrichment and strengthening, but not for the fundamental structural and psychological changes that can and do occur in the development of language in children.
Oddly enough, the fact that associationism in general had been abandoned for some time did not seem to affect the interpretation of word and meaning. The Wuerzburg school, whose main object was to prove the impossibility of reducing thinking to a mere play of associations and to demonstrate the existence of specific laws governing the flow of thought, did not revise the association theory of word and meaning, or even recognise the need for such a revision. It freed thought from the fetters of sensation and imagery and from the laws of association, and turned it into a purely spiritual act. By so doing, it went back to the prescientific concepts of St. Augustine and Descartes and finally reached extreme subjective idealism. The psychology of thought was moving toward the ideas of Plato. Speech, at the same time, was left at the mercy of association. Even after the work of the Wuerzburg school, the connection between a word and its meaning was still considered a simple associative bond. The word was seen as the external concomitant of thought, its attire only, having no influence on its inner life. Thought and speech had never been as widely separated as during the Wuerzburg period. The overthrow of the association theory in the field of thought actually increased its sway in the field of speech.
The work of other psychologists further reinforced this trend. Selz continued to investigate thought without considering its relation to speech and came to the conclusion that man’s productive thinking and the mental operations of chimpanzees were identical in nature – so completely did he ignore the influence of words on thought.
Even Ach, who made a special studies in phraseology, by the meaning of who tried to overcome the correlation in his theory of concepts, did not go beyond assuming the presence of “determining tendencies” operative, along with associations, in the process of concept formation. Hence, the conclusions he reached did not change the old understanding of word meaning. By identifying concept with meaning, he did not allow for development and changes in concepts. Once established, the meaning of a word was set forever; Its development was completed. The same principles were taught by the very psychologists Ach attacked. To both sides, the starting point was also the end of the development of a concept; the disagreement concerned only the way in which the formation of word meanings began.
In Gestalt psychology, the situation was not very different. This school was more consistent than others in trying to surmount the general principle of a collective associationism. Not satisfied with a partial solution of the problem, it tried to liberate thinking and speech from the rule of association and to put both under the laws of structure formation. Surprisingly, even this most progressive of modern psychological schools made no progress in the theory of thought and speech.
For one thing, it retained the complete separation of these two functions. In the light of Gestalt psychology, the relationship between thought and word appears as a simple analogy, a reduction of both to a common structural denominator. The formation of the first meaningful words of a child is seen as similar to the intellectual operations of chimpanzees in Koehler’s experiments. Words that filter through the structure of things and acquire a certain functional meaning, in much the same way as the stick, to the chimpanzee, becomes part of the structure of obtaining the fruit and acquires the functional meaning of tool, that the connection between word and meaning is no longer regarded as a matter of simple association but as a matter of structure. That seems like a step forward. But if we look more closely at the new approach, it is easy to see that the step forward is an illusion and that we are still standing in the same place. The principle of structure is applied to all relations between things in the same sweeping, undifferentiated way as the principle of association was before it. It remains impossible to deal with the specific relations between word and meaning.
They are from the outset accepted as identical in principle with any and all other relations between things. All cats are as grey in the dusk of Gestalt psychology as in the earlier plexuities that assemble in universal associationism.
While Ach sought to overcome the associationism with “determining tendencies,” Gestalt psychology combatted it with the principle of structure - retaining, however, the two fundamental errors of the older theory: the assumption of the identical nature of all connections and the assumption that word meanings do not change. The old and the new psychology both assume that the development of a word’s meaning is finished as soon as it emerges. The new trends in psychology brought progress in all branches except in the study of thought and speech. Here the new principles resemble the old ones like twins.
If Gestalt psychology is at a standstill in the field of speech, it has made a big step backward in the field of thought. The Wuerzburg school at least recognised that thought had laws of its own. Gestalt psychology denies their existence. By reducing to a common structural denominator the perceptions of domestic fowl, the mental operations of chimpanzees, the first meaningful words of the child, and the conceptual thinking of the adult, it obliterates every distinction between the most elementary perception and the highest forms of thought.
This may be summed up as follows: All the psychological schools and trends overlook the cardinal point that every thought is a generalisation. They all study word and meaning without any reference to development. As long as these two conditions persist in the successive trends, there cannot be much difference in the treatment of the problem.
The discovery that word meanings evolve leads the study of thought and speech out of a blind alley. Word meanings are dynamic rather than static formations. They change as the child develops; they change also with the various ways in which thought functions.
If word meanings change in their inner nature, then the relation of thought to word also changes. To understand the dynamics of that relationship, we must supplement the genetic approach of our main study by functional analysis and examine the role of word meaning in the process of thought.
Let us consider the process of verbal thinking from the first dim stirring of a thought to its formulation. What we want to show now is not how meanings develop over long periods of time but the way they function in the live process of verbal thought. On the basis of such a functional analysis, we will be able to show also that each stage in the development of word meaning has its own particular relationship between thought and speech. Since functional problems are most readily solved by examining the highest form of a given activity, we will, for a while, put aside the problem of development and consider the relations between thought and word in the mature mind.
The leading idea in the following discussion can be reduced to this formula: The relation of thought to word is not a thing but a process, a continual movement back and forth from thought to word and from word to thought. In that process the relation of thought to word undergoes changes that they may be regarded as development in the functional sense. Thought is not merely expressed in words; it comes into existence through them. Every thought tends to connect something with something else, to establish a relationship between things. Every thought moves, grows and develops, fulfils a function, solves a problem. This flow of thought occurs as an inner movement through a series of planes. An analysis of the interaction of thought and word must begin with an investigation of the different phases and planes a thought traverses before it is embodied in words.
The first thing such a study reveals is the need to distinguish between two planes of speech. Both the inner, meaningful, semantic aspect of speech and the external, phonetic aspects, though forming a true unity, have their own laws of movement. The unity of speech is a complex, not a homogeneous, unity. A number of facts in the linguistic development of the child indicate independent movement in the phonetic and the semantic spheres. We will point out two of the most important of these facts.
In mastering external speech, the child starts from one word, then connects two or three words; a little later, he advances from simple sentences to more complicated ones, and finally to coherent speech made up of series of such sentences; in other words, he proceeds from a part to the whole. In regard to meaning on the other hand, the first word of the child is a whole sentence. Semantically, the child starts from the whole, from a meaningful complex, and only later begins to master the separate semantic units, the meanings of words, and to divide his formerly undifferentiated thought into those units. The external and the semantic aspects of speech develop in opposite directions – one from the particular to the whole, from word to sentence, and the other from the whole to the particular, from sentence to word.
This in itself suffices to show how important it is to distinguish between the vocal and the semantic aspects of speech. Since they move in reverse directions, their development does not coincide, but that does not mean that they are independent of each other. On the contrary, their difference is the first stage of a close union. In fact, our example reveals their inner relatedness as clearly as it does their distinction. A child’s thought, precisely because it is born as a dim, amorphous whole, must find expression in a single word. As his thought becomes more differentiated, the child is less apt to express it in single words but constructs a composite whole. Conversely, progress in speech to the differentiated whole of a sentence helps the child’s thoughts to progress from a homogeneous whole to well-defined parts. Thought and word are not cut from one pattern. In a sense, there are more differences than likenesses between them. The structure of speech does not simply mirror the structure of thought that is why words cannot be put on by thought like a ready-made garment. Thought undergoes many changes as it turns into speech. It does not merely find expression in speech; It finds its reality and form. The semantic and the phonetic developmental processes are essentially one, precisely because of their reverse directions.
The second, equally important fact emerges at a later period of development. Piaget demonstrated that the child uses subordinate clauses with because, although, etc., long before he grasps the structures of meaning corresponding to these syntactic forms. Grammar precedes logic. Here, too, as in our previous example, the discrepancy does not exclude union but is, in fact, necessary for union.
In adults the divergence between the semantic and the phonetic aspects of speech is even more striking. Modern, psychologically oriented linguistics is familiar with this phenomenon, especially in regard too grammatical and psychological subject and predicate. For example, in the sentence “The clock fell,” emphasis and meaning may change in different situations. Suppose I notice that the clock has stopped and ask how this happened. The answer is, “The clock fell.” Grammatical and psychological subject coincide: “The clock” is the first idea in my consciousness; “fell” is what is said about the clock. But if I hear a crash in the next room and inquire what happened, and get the same answer, subject and predicate are psychologically reversed. I knew something had fallen – that is what we are talking about. “The clock” completes the idea. The sentence could be changed to: “What has fallen is the clock”; Then the grammatical and the psychological subject would coincide. In the prologue to his play Duke Ernst von Schwaben, Uhland says: “Grim scenes will pass before you.” Psychologically, “will pass” is the subject. The spectator knows he will see events unfold the additional idea, the predicate, remains in “grim scenes.” Uhland meant, “What will pass before your eyes are a tragedy.” Any part of a sentence may become the psychological predicate, the carrier of topical emphasis: on the other hand, entirely different meanings may lie hidden behind one grammatical structure. Accord between syntactical and psychological organisation is not as prevalent as we tend to assume – rather, it is a requirement that is seldom met. Not only subject and predicate, but grammatical gender, number, case, tense, degree, etc. has their psychological doubles. A spontaneous utterance wrong from the point of view of grammar, may have charm and aesthetic value. Absolute correctness is achieved only beyond natural language, in mathematics. Our daily speech continually fluctuates between the ideals of mathematical and of imaginative harmony.
We will illustrate the interdependence of the semantic and the grammatical aspects of language by citing two examples that show that changes in formal structure can entail far-reaching changes in meaning.
In translating the fable “La Cigale et la Fourmi,” Krylov substituted a dragonfly for La Fontaine’s grasshopper. In French Grasshopper is feminine and therefore well suited to symbolise a light-hearted, carefree attitude. The nuance would be lost in a literal translation, since in Russian Grasshopper is masculine. When he settled for dragonflies, which is feminine in Russian, Krylov disregarded the literal meaning in favour of the grammatical form required to render La Fontaine’s thought.
Tjutchev did the same in his translation of Heine’s poem about a fir and a palm. In German fir is masculine and palm feminine, and the poem suggests the love of a man for a woman. In Russian, both trees are feminine. To retain the implication, Tjutchev replaced the fir by a masculine cedar. Lermontov, in his more literal translation of the same poem, deprived it of these poetic overtones and gave it an essentially different meaning, more abstract and generalised. One grammatical detail may, on occasion, change the whole of which is to purport of what is said.
Behind words, there is the independent grammar of thought, the syntax of word meanings. The simplest utterance, far from reflecting a constant, rigid correspondence between sound and meaning, is really a process. Verbal expressions cannot emerge fully formed but must develop gradually. This complex process of transition from meaning to sound must itself be developed and perfected. The child must learn to distinguish between semantics and phonetics and understand the nature of the difference. At first he uses verbal forms and meanings without being conscious of them as separate. The word, to the child, is an integral part of the object it denotes. Such a conception seems to be characteristic of primitive linguistic consciousness. We all know the old story about the rustic who said he wasn’t surprised that savants with all their instruments could figure out the size of stars and their course – what baffled him was how they found out their names. Simple experiments show that preschool children “explain” the names of objects by their attributes. According to them, an animal is called “cow” because it has horns, “calves” because its horns are still small, “dog” because it is small and has no horns; an object is called “car” because it is not an animal. When asked whether one could interchange the names of objects, for instance call a cow “ink,” and ink “cow,” children will answer no, “because ink is used for writing, and the cow gives milk.” An exchange of names would mean an exchange of characteristic features, so inseparable is the connection between them in the child’s mind. In one experiment, the children were told that in a game a dog would be called “cow.” Here is a typical sample of questions and answers: Does a cow have horns? “Yes.” “But do you not remember that the cow is really a dog? Come now, does a dog have horns? “Sure, if it is a cow, if it is called cow, it has horns. That kind of dog has to have little horns.
We can see how difficult it is for children to separate the name of an object from its attributes, which cling to the name when it is transferred like possessions following their owner.
The fusion of the two planes of speech, semantic and vocal begins to break down as the child grows older, and the distance between them gradually increases. Each stage in the development of word meanings has its own specific interrelation of the two planes. A child’s ability to communicate through language is directly related to the differentiation of word meanings in his speech and consciousness.
To understand this, we must remember a basic characteristic of the structure of word meanings. In the semantic structure of a word, we distinguish between referent and meaning correspondingly, we distinguish a word’s nominative from its significative function. When we compare these structural and functional relations at the earliest, middle, and advanced stages of development, we find the following genetic regularity: In the beginning, only the nominative functions exist, and semantically, only the unbiased objective becomes the reference, and independent of naming, and meaning independent of reference, appear later and develop along the paths we have attempted to trace and describe.
Only when this development is completed does the child become fully able to formulate his own thought and to understand the speech of others. Until then, his usage of words coincides with that of adults in its objective reference but not in its meaning.
We must probe still deeper and explore the plane of inner speech lying beyond the semantic plane. We will discuss here some of the data of the special investigation we have made of it. The relationship of thought and word cannot be understood in all its complexity without a clear understanding of the psychological nature of inner speech. Yet, of all the problems connected with thought and language, this is perhaps the most complicated, beset as it is with terminological and other misunderstandings.
The term inner speech, or endophasy, has been applied to various phenomena, and authors argue about different things that they call by the same name. Originally, inner speech seems to have been understood as verbal memory. An example would be the silent recital of a poem known by heart. In that case, inner speech differs from vocal speech only as the idea or image of an object differs from the real object. It was in this sense that inner speech was understood by the French authors who tried to find out how words were reproduced in memory – whether as auditory, visual, motor, or synthetic images. We will see that word memory is indeed one of the constituent elements of inner speech but not all of it.
In a second interpretation, inner speech is seen as truncated external speech - as “speech minus sound” (Mueller) or “sub-vocal speech” (Watson). Bekhterev defined it as a speech reflex inhibited in its motor part. Such an explanation is by no measure of sufficiency. Silent “pronouncing” of words is not equivalent to the total process of inner speech.
The third definition is, on the contrary, too broad. To Goldstein, the term covers everything that precedes the motor act of speaking, including Wundt’s “motives of speech” and the indefinable, non-sensory and non-motor specific speech experience -, i.e., the whole interior aspect of any speech activity. It is hard to accept the equation of inner speech with an inarticulate inner experience in which the separate identifiable structural planes are dissolved without trace. This central experience is common to all linguistic activity, and for this reason alone Goldstein’s interpretation does not fit that specific, unique function that alone deserves the name of inner speech. Logically developed, Goldstein’s view must lead to the thesis that inner speech is not speech at all but rather an intellectual and affective-volitional activity, since it includes the motives of speech and the thought that is expressed in words.
To get a true picture of inner speech, one must embark upon that which is a specific formation, with its own laws and complex relations to the other forms of speech activity. Before we can study its relation to thought, on the one hand, and to speech, on the other, we must determine its special characteristics and function.
Inner speech allows one to speak for one’s external oration, for which of the others would be surprising, if such a difference in function did not affect the structure of the two kinds of speech. Absence of vocalisation per se is only a consequence of the specific nature of inner speech, which is neither an antecedent of external speech nor its reproduction in memory but is, in a sense, the opposite of external speech. The latter is the turning of thought into words, its materialisation and objectification. With inner speech, the process is reversed: Speech turns into inward thought. Consequently, their structures must differ.
The area of inner speech is one of the most difficult to investigate. It remained almost inaccessible to experiments until ways were found to apply the genetic method of experimentation. Piaget was the first to pay attention to the child’s egocentric speech and to see its theoretical significance, but he remained blind to the most important trait of egocentric speech - its genetic connection with inner speech – and this warped his interpretation of its function and structure. We made that relationship the central problem of our study and thus were able to investigate the nature of inner speech with unusual completeness. A number of considerations and observations led us to conclude that egocentric speech is a stage of development preceding inner speech: Both fulfil intellectual functions; Their structures are similar; egocentric speech disappears at school age, when inner speech begins to develop. From all this we infer that one change into the other.
If this transformation does take place, then egocentric speech provides the key to the study of inner speech. One advantage of approaching inner speech through egocentric speech is its accessibility to experimentation and observation. It is still vocalised, audible speech, i.e., external in its mode of expression, but at the same time inner speech in function and structure. To study an internal process, in that it is necessary to externalise it experimentally, by connecting it with some outer activity; barely then is objective functional analysis possible. Egocentric speech is, in fact, a natural experiment of this type.
This method has another great advantage: Since egocentric speech can be studied at the time when some of its characteristics are waning and new ones forming, we are able to judge which traits are essential to inner speech and which are only temporary, and thus to determine the goal of this movement from egocentric to inner speech -, i.e., the nature of inner speech.
Before we go on to the results obtained by this method, we will briefly discuss the nature of egocentric speech, stressing the differences between our theory and Piaget’s. Piaget contends that the child’s egocentric speech is a direct expression of the egocentrism of his thought, which in turn is a compromise between the primary autism of his thinking and its gradual socialisation. As the child grows older, and as autism overturns the associative remembers affiliated to socialisation progresses, leading to the waning of egocentrism in his thinking and speech.
In Piaget’s conception, the child in his egocentric speech does not adapt himself to the thinking of adults. His thought remains entirely egocentric; This makes his talk incomprehensibly to others. Egocentric speech has no function in the child’s realistic thinking or activity, but it merely accompanies them. And since it is an expression of egocentric thought, it disappears together with the child’s egocentrism. From its climax at the beginning of the child’s development, egocentric speech drops to zero on the threshold of school age. Its history is one of involution rather than evolution. It has no future.
In our conception, egocentric speech is a phenomenon of the transition from interpsychic to intrapsychic functioning, i.e., from the social, collective activity of the child to his more individualised activity - a pattern of development common to all the higher psychological functions. Speech for oneself originates through differentiation from speech for others. Since the main course of the child’s development is one of gradual individualisation, this tendency is reflected in the function and structure of his speech.
The function of egocentric speech is similar to that of inner speech: It does not merely accompany the child’s activity; it serves mental orientation, conscious understanding; it helps in overcoming difficulties; it is speech for oneself, intimately and usefully connected with the child’s thinking. Its fate is very different from that described by Piaget. Egocentric speech develops along a rising not a declining, curve; it goes through an evolution, not an involution. In the end, it becomes inner speech.
Our hypothesis has several advantages over Piaget’s: It explains the function and development of egocentric speech and, in particular, its sudden increase when the child’s face’s difficulties that demand consciousness and reflection – a fact uncovered by our experiments and which Piaget’s theory cannot explain. But the greatest advantage of our theory is that it supplies a satisfying answer to a paradoxical situation described by Piaget himself. To Piaget, the quantitative drop in egocentric speech as the child grows older means the withering of that form of speech. If that were so, its structural peculiarities might also be expected to decline; it is hard to believe that the process would affect only its quantity, and not its inner structure. The child’s thought becomes infinitely less egocentric between the ages of three and seven. If the characteristics of egocentric speech that make it incomprehensible to others are indeed rooted in egocentrism, they should become less apparent as that form of speech becomes less frequent; Egocentric speech should approach social speech and become ever more intelligible. Yet what are the facts? Is the talk of a three-year-old harder to follow than that of a seven-year-old? Our investigation established that the traits of egocentric speech that makes for inscrutability are at their lowest point at three and at their peak at seven. They develop in a reverse direction to the frequency of egocentric speech. While the latter keeps declining and reaches the point of zero at school age, the structural characteristics become more pronounced.
This throws a new light on the quantitative decrease in egocentric speech, which is the cornerstone of Piaget’s thesis.
What does this decrease mean? The structural peculiarities of speech for oneself and its differentiation from external speech increase with age. What is it that diminishes? Only one of its aspects verbalizes. Does this mean that egocentric speech as a whole is dying out? We believe that it does not, for how then could we explain the growth of the functional and structural traits of egocentric speech? On the other hand, their growth is perfectly compatible with the decrease of vocalisation - indeed, clarifies its meaning. Its rapid dwindling and the equally rapid growth of the other characteristics are contradictory in appearance only.
To explain this, let us start from an undeniable, experimentally established fact. The structural and functional qualities of egocentric speech become more marked as the child develops. At three, the difference between egocentric and social speech matches that to zero; At seven, we have speech that in structure and function is totally unlike social speech. A differentiation of the two speech functions has taken place. This is a fact - and facts are notoriously hard to refute.
Once we accept this, everything else falls into place. If the developing structural and functional peculiarities of egocentric speech progressively isolate it from external speech, then its vocal aspect must fade away. This is exactly what happens between three and seven years. With the progressive isolation of speech for oneself, its vocalisation becomes unnecessary and meaningless and, because of its growing structural peculiarities, also impossible. Speech for oneself cannot find expression in external speech. The more independent and autonomous egocentric speech becomes, the poorer it grows in its external manifestations. In the end it separates itself entirely from speech for others, ceases to be vocalised, and thus appears to die out.
But this is only an illusion. To interpret the sinking coefficient of egocentric speech as a sign that this kind of speech is dying out is like saying that the child stops counting when he ceases to use his fingers and starts adding in his head. In reality, behind the symptoms of dissolution lies a progressive development, the birth of a new speech form.
The decreasing vocalisation of egocentric speech denotes a developing abstraction from sound, the child’s new faculty to “think words” instead of pronouncing them. This is the positive meaning of the sinking coefficient of egocentric speech. The downward curve indicates development toward inner speech.
We can see that all the known facts about the functional, structural, and genetic characteristics of self-indulgent or egocentric speech points to one thing: It develops in the direction of inner speech. Its developmental history can be understood only as a gradual unfolding of the traits of inner speech.
We believe that this corroborates our hypothesis about the origin and nature of egocentric speech. To turn our hypothesis into a certainty, we must devise an experiment capable of showing which of the two interpretations is correct. What are the data for this critical experiment?
Let us restate the theories between which we must decide as for Piaget believes, that egocentric speech stems from the insufficient socialisation of speech and that its only development is decrease and eventual death. Its culmination lies in the past. Inner speech is something new brought in from the outside along with socialisation. We demonstrated that in egocentric speech stems from the insufficient individualisation of primary social speech. Its culmination lies in the future. It develops into inner speech.
To obtain evidence for one or the other view, we must place the child alternately in experimental situations encouraging social speech and in situations discouraging it, and see how these changes affect egocentric speech. We consider this an experimentum crucis for the following reasons.
If the child’s egocentric talk results from the egocentrism of his thinking and its insufficient socialisation, then any weakening of the social elements in the experimental setup, any factor contributing to the child’s isolation from the group, must lead to a sudden increase in egocentric speech. But if the latter results from an insufficient differentiation of speech for oneself from speech for others, then the same changes must cause it to decrease.
We took as the starting point of our experiment three of Piaget’s own observations: (1) Egocentric speech occurs only in the presence of other children engaged in the same activity, and not when the child is alone; i.e., it is a collective monologue. (2) The child is under the illusion that his egocentric talk, directed to nobody, is understood by those who surround him. (3) Egocentric speech has the character of external speech: It is audible or whispered. These are certainly not chance peculiarities. From the child’s own point of view, egocentric speech is not yet separated from social speech. It occurs under the subjective and objective conditions of social speech and may be considered a correlate of the insufficient isolation of the child’s individual consciousness from the social whole.
In our first series of experiments, we tried to destroy the illusion of being understood. After measuring the child’s coefficient of egocentric speech in a situation similar to that of Piaget’s experiments, we put him into a new situation: Either with deaf-mute children or with children speaking a foreign language. In all other respects the setup remained the same. The coefficient of egocentric speech dropped to zero in the majority of cases, and in the rest to one-eighth of the previous figure, on the average. This proves that the illusion of being understood is not a mere epiphenomenon of egocentric speech but is functionally connected with it. Our results must seem paradoxical from the point of view of Piaget’s theory: The weaker the child’s contact is with the group – amounting to less of the social situation forces’ him to adjust his thoughts to others and to use social speech – that there is more as freely should be the egocentrism of his thinking and speech manifest itself. But from the point of view of our hypothesis, the meaning of these findings is clear: Egocentric speech, springing from the lack of differentiation of speech for oneself from speech for others, disappears when the feeling of being understood, essential for social speech, is absent.
In the second series of experiments, the variable factor was the possibility of some collective monologue. Having measured the child’s coefficient of egocentric speech in a situation permitting collective monologue, we put him into a situation excluding it - in a group of children who were strangers to him, or by his being of self, at which point, a separate table in a corner of the room, for which he worked entirely alone, even the experimenter leaving the room. The results of this series agreed with the first results. The exclusion of the group monologue caused a drop in the coefficient of egocentric speech, though not such a striking one as in the first case - seldom to zero and, on the average, to one-sixth of the original figure. The different methods of precluding a collective characterize monologues that were not equally effective in reducing the coefficient of egocentric speech. The trend, however, was obvious in all the variations of the experiment. The exclusion of the collective factor, instead of giving full freedom to egocentric speech, depressed it. Our hypothesis was once more confirmed.
In the third series of experiments, the variable factor was the vocal quality of egocentric speech. Just outside the laboratory where the experiment was in progress, an orchestra played so loudly, or so much noise was made, that it drowned out not only the voices of others but the child’s own; in a variant of the experiment, the child was expressly forbidden to talk loudly and allowed to talk only in whispers. Once again the coefficient of egocentric speech went down, the relation to the original unit being the different methods were not equally effective, but the basic trend was invariably present.
The purpose of all three series of experiments was to eliminate those characteristics of egocentric speech that bring it close to social speech. We found that this always led to the dwindling of egocentric speech. It is logical, then, to assume that egocentric speech is a form developing out of social speech and not yet separated from it in its manifestation, though already distinct in function and structure.
The disagreement between us and Piaget on this point will be made quite clear by the following example: I am sitting at my desk talking to a person who is behind me and whom I cannot see; he leaves the room without my noticing it, and I continue to talk, under the illusion that he listens and understands. Outwardly, I am talking with myself and for myself, but psychologically my speech is social. From the point of view of Piaget’s theory, the opposite happens in the case of the child: His egocentric talk is for and with himself; it only has the appearance of social speech, just as my speech gave the false impression of being egocentric. From our point of view, the whole situation is much more complicated than that: Subjectively, the child’s egocentric speech already has its own peculiar function - to that extent, it is independent from social speech; Yet its independence is not complete because it is not felt as inner speech and is not distinguished by the child from speech for others. Objectively, also, it is different from social speech but again not entirely, because it functions only within social situations. Both subjectively and objectively, egocentric speech represents a transition from speech for others to speech for oneself. It already has the function of inner speech but remains similar to social speech in its expression.
The investigation of egocentric speech has paved the way to the understanding of inner speech, while our experiments convinced us that inner speech must be regarded, not as speech minus sound, but as an entirely separate speech function. Its main distinguishing trait is its peculiar syntax. Compared with external speech, inner speech appears disconnected and incomplete.
This is not a new observation. All the students of inner speech, even those who approached it from the behaviouristic standpoint, noted this trait. The method of genetic analysis permits us to go beyond a mere description of it. We applied this method and found that as egocentric speech transforms by its showing tendencies toward an altogether specific form of abbreviation: Namely, omitting the subject of a sentence and all words connected with it, while preserving the predicate. This tendency toward predication appears in all our experiments with such regularity that we must assume it to be the basic syntactic form of inner speech.
It may help us to understand this tendency if we recall certain situations in which external speech shows a similar structure. Pure predication occurs in external speech in two cases: Either as an answer or when the subject of the sentence is known beforehand to all concerned. The answer to “Would you like a cup of tea?” is never “No, I do not want a cup of tea “ but a simple “No.?” Obviously, such a sentence is possible only because its subject is tacitly understood by both parties. To “Has your brother read this book?” No one ever replies, “Yes, my brother has read this book.” The answer is a short “Yes,” or “Yes, he has.” Now let us imagine that several people are waiting for a bus. No one will say, on seeing the bus approach, “The bus for which we are waiting is coming.” The sentence is likely to be an abbreviated “Coming,” or some such expression, because the subject is plain from the situation. Exceptionally hold to a frequent shortened sentence causing confusion. The listener may relate the sentence to a subject foremost in his own mind, not the one meant by the speaker. If the thoughts of two people coincide, perfect understanding can be achieved through the use of mere predicates, but if they are thinking about different things they are bound to misunderstand each other.
Having examined abbreviation in external speech, we can now return enriched to the same phenomenon in inner speech, where it is not an exception but the rule. It will be instructive to compare abbreviation in oral, inner, and written speech. Communication in writing relies on the formal meanings of words and requires a much greater number of words than oral speech to convey the same idea. It is addressed to an absent person who rarely has in mind the same subject as the writer. Therefore, it must be fully deployed; Syntactic differentiation is at a maximum, and expressions are used that would seem unnatural in conversation. Griboedov’s “He talks like writing” refers to the droll effect of elaborate constructions in daily speech.
The multifunctional nature of language, which has recently attracted the close attention of linguists, had already been pointed out by Humboldt in relation to poetry and prose – two forms very different in function and in the means they use. Poetry, according to Humboldt, is inseparable from music, while prose depends entirely on language and is dominated by thought. Consequently, each has its own diction, grammar, and syntax. This is a conception of primary importance, although neither Humboldt nor those who encourage in developing his thought fully realised its implications. They distinguished only between poetry and prose, and within the latter between the exchange of ideas and ordinary conversation, i.e., the mere exchange of news or conventional chatter. There are other important functional distinctions in speech. One of them is the distinction between dialogue and monologue, as if written through the avenue of inner speech representation whereby it seems profoundly definitely strung by the monologue; The totalities of expression are uttered of some oral fashion as their linguistic manner as to be inferred by the spoken exchange that might be correlated by speech, in that in most cases, are contained through dialogue.
Dialogue always presupposes that in accordance with the collaborator’s formality that holds within the forming of knowledge, which it is maintained by its subject and is likely to be approved by an abbreviated speech and, under certain conditions, purely predicative sentences. It also presupposes that each person can see his partners, their facial expressions and gestures, and hear the tone of their voices. We have already discussed abbreviation and will consider here only its auditory aspect, using a classical example from Dostoevski’s, The Diary of a Writer, to show how much intonation helps the subtly differentiated understanding of a word’s meaning.
Dostoevski relates a conversation of drunks that entirely consisted of one unprintable word: “One Sunday night I happened to walk for some fifteen paces next to a group of six drunken young labourers, and I suddenly realised that all thoughts, feelings and even a whole chain of reasoning could be expressed by that one noun, which is moreover extremely short. One young fellow said it harshly and forcefully, to express his utter contempt for whatever it was they had all been talking about. Another answered with the same noun but in a quite different tone and sense - doubting that the negative attitude of the first one was warranted. A third suddenly became incensed against the first and roughly intruded on the conversation, excitedly shouting the same noun, this time as a curse and obscenity. Here the second fellow interfered again, angry with the third, the aggressor, and restraining him, in the sense of “Presently, as to implicate the now in question why to do you have to butt in, we were discussing things quietly and here you come and start swearing. And he told this whole thought in one word, the same venerable word, except that he also raised his hand and put it on the third fellow’s shoulder. All at once a fourth, the youngest of the group, who had kept silent till then, probably having suddenly found a solution to the original difficulty that had started the argument, raised his hand in a transport of joy and shouted . . . Eureka, do you think? I have it? No, not eureka and not I have it; he repeated the unprintable noun, one word, merely one word, but with ecstasy, in a shriek of delight - which was apparently too strong, because the sixth and the oldest, a glum-looking fellow, did not like it and cut the infantile joy of the other one short, addressing him in a sullen, exhortative bass and repeating . . . yes, still the same noun, forbidden in the presence of ladies but which this time clearly meant “What are you yelling yourself hoarse for? So, without uttering a single other word, they repeated that one beloved word is six times in a row, and only one after another, and understood one another completely.” [The Diary of a Writer]
Inflection reveals the psychological context within which a word is to be understood. In Dostoevski’s story, it was contemptuous negation in one case, doubt in another, anger in the third. When the context is as clear as in this example, it really becomes possible to convey all thoughts, feelings, and even a whole chain of reasoning by one word.
In written speech, as tone of voice and knowledge of subject are excluded, we are obliged to use many more words, and to use them more exactly. Written speech is the most elaborate form of speech.
Some linguists consider dialogue the natural form of oral speech, the one in which language fully reveals its nature, and monologue to a greater degree for being artificial. Psychological investigation leaves no doubt that monologue is indeed the higher, more complicated form, and of later historical development. At present, however, we are interested in comparing them only in regard with the tendency toward abbreviation.
The speed of oral speech is unfavourable to a complicated process of formulation, but it does not leave time for deliberation and choice. Dialogue implies immediate unpremeditated utterance. It consists of replies, repartee; it is a chain of reactions. Monologue, by comparison, is a complex formation; the linguistic elaboration can be attended too leisurely and consciously.
In written speech, lacking situational and expressive supports, communication must be achieved only through words and their combinations; this requires the speech activity to take complicated forms - hence the use of first drafts. The evolution from the draft to the final copy reflects our mental process. Planning has an important part in written speech, even when we do not actually write out a draft. Usually we say to ourselves what we are going to write; This is also a draft, though in thought only. As we tried to show in the preceding chapter, this mental draft is inner speech. Since inner speech functions as a draft not only in written but also in oral speech, we will now compare both these forms with inner speech in respect to the tendency toward abbreviation and predication.
This tendency, never found in written speech and only some times in oral speech, arises in inner speech always. Predication is the natural form of inner speech, psychologically as it consists of predicates only. It is as much a law of inner speech to omit subjects as it is a law of written speech to contain both subjects and predicates.
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