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A. J. Ayer
Sir Alfred Jules "Freddie" Ayer ( ; 29 October 1910 – 27 June 1989), usually cited as A. J. Ayer, was an English philosopher known for his promotion of logical positivism, particularly in his books ''Language, Truth, and Logic'' (1936) and ''The Problem of Knowledge'' (1956). Ayer was educated at Eton College and the University of Oxford, after which he studied the philosophy of logical positivism at the University of Vienna. From 1933 to 1940 he lectured on philosophy at Christ Church, Oxford. During the Second World War Ayer was a Special Operations Executive and MI6 agent. Ayer was Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College London from 1946 until 1959, after which he returned to Oxford to become Wykeham Professor of Logic at New College. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1951 to 1952 and knighted in 1970. He was known for his advocacy of humanism, and was the second president of the British Humanist Association (now known as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Philosophy
Western philosophy encompasses the philosophical thought and work of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the pre-Socratics. The word ''philosophy'' itself originated from the Ancient Greek (φιλοσοφία), literally, "the love of wisdom" grc, φιλεῖν , "to love" and σοφία '' sophía'', "wisdom"). History Ancient The scope of ancient Western philosophy included the problems of philosophy as they are understood today; but it also included many other disciplines, such as pure mathematics and natural sciences such as physics, astronomy, and biology (Aristotle, for example, wrote on all of these topics). Pre-Socratics The pre-Socratic philosophers were interested in cosmology; the nature and origin of the universe, while rejecting mythical answers to such questions. They were specifically interested in the (the cause or first principle) of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vienna Circle
The Vienna Circle (german: Wiener Kreis) of Logical Empiricism was a group of elite philosophers and scientists drawn from the natural and social sciences, logic and mathematics who met regularly from 1924 to 1936 at the University of Vienna, chaired by Moritz Schlick. The Vienna Circle's influence on 20th-century philosophy, especially philosophy of science and analytic philosophy, is immense up to the present day. The philosophical position of the Vienna Circle was called logical empiricism (German: ''logischer Empirismus''), logical positivism or neopositivism. It was influenced by Ernst Mach, David Hilbert, French conventionalism ( Henri Poincaré and Pierre Duhem), Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Albert Einstein. The Vienna Circle was pluralistic and committed to the ideals of the Enlightenment. It was unified by the aim of making philosophy scientific with the help of modern logic. Main topics were foundational debates in the natural and social s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language, Truth, And Logic
''Language, Truth and Logic'' is a 1936 book about meaning by the philosopher Alfred Jules Ayer, in which the author defines, explains, and argues for the verification principle of logical positivism, sometimes referred to as the ''criterion of significance'' or ''criterion of meaning''. Ayer explains how the principle of verifiability may be applied to the problems of philosophy. ''Language, Truth and Logic'' brought some of the ideas of the Vienna Circle and the logical empiricists to the attention of the English-speaking world. Historical background According to Ayer's autobiographical book, ''Part of My Life'', it was work he started in the summer and autumn of 1933 that eventually led to ''Language, Truth and Logic'', specifically ''Demonstration of the Impossibility of Metaphysics''—later published in ''Mind'' under the editorship of G.E. Moore. The title of the book was taken ("To some extent plagiarized" according to Ayer) from Friedrich Waismann's ''Logik, Sprache, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary'' is a large American dictionary, first published in 1966 as ''The Random House Dictionary of the English Language: The Unabridged Edition''. Edited by Editor-in-chief Jess Stein, it contained 315,000 entries in 2256 pages, as well as 2400 illustrations. The CD-ROM version in 1994 also included 120,000 spoken pronunciations. History The Random House publishing company entered the reference book market after World War II. They acquired rights to the ''Century Dictionary'' and the ''Dictionary of American English'', both out of print. Their first dictionary was Clarence Barnhart's ''American College Dictionary'', published in 1947, and based primarily on ''The New Century Dictionary'', an abridgment of the ''Century''. In the late 1950s, it was decided to publish an expansion of the ''American College Dictionary'', which had been modestly updated with each reprinting since its publication. Under editors Jess Stein and Laurence Ur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gilbert Ryle
Gilbert Ryle (19 August 1900 – 6 October 1976) was a British philosopher, principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase "ghost in the machine." He was a representative of the generation of British ordinary language philosophers who shared Ludwig Wittgenstein's approach to philosophical problems. Some of Ryle's ideas in philosophy of mind have been called behaviourist. In his best-known book, ''The Concept of Mind'' (1949), he writes that the "general trend of this book will undoubtedly, and harmlessly, be stigmatised as 'behaviourist'." Having studied the philosophers Bernard Bolzano, Franz Brentano, Alexius Meinong, Edmund Husserl, and Martin Heidegger, Ryle suggested that the book instead "could be described as a sustained essay in phenomenology, if you are at home with that label." Biography Family tree Gilbert Ryle's father, Reginald John Ryle, was a Brighton doctor, a generalist who had interests in philosophy and astronomy, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Unger
Peter K. Unger (; born April 25, 1942) is a contemporary American philosopher and professor in the Department of Philosophy at New York University. His main interests lie in the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of mind. Biography Unger attended Swarthmore College at the same time as David Lewis, earning a B.A. in philosophy in 1962, and Oxford University, where he studied under A. J. Ayer and earned a doctorate in 1966. Unger has written a defense of profound philosophical skepticism. In ''Ignorance'' (1975), he argues that nobody knows anything and even that nobody is reasonable or justified in believing anything. In ''Philosophical Relativity'' (1984), he argues that many philosophical questions cannot be definitively answered. In the field of applied ethics, his best-known work is ''Living High and Letting Die'' (1996). In this text, Unger argues that the citizens of first-world countries have a moral duty to make large donations to life-s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mihailo Marković
Mihailo Marković, PhD ( sr-cyr, Михаило Марковић; 24 February 1923 – 7 February 2010) was a Serbian philosopher who gained prominence in the 1960s and 1970s as a proponent of the Praxis School, a Marxist humanist movement that originated in Yugoslavia. He was a member of the Socialist Party of Serbia, co-author of the SANU Memorandum and a prominent supporter of Slobodan Milošević's politics in the late 1980s and 1990s. Early life Marković was born in Belgrade, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. He became a member of the youth organization of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) in 1940, and in 1944 he became a member of the KPJ itself. As a partisan he actively participated in the struggle for liberation of Yugoslavia during World War II. Academic career Marković took a doctorate in philosophy first at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy in 1955, and then another in 1956 at University College London. There he studied logic under A. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ted Honderich
Ted Honderich (born 30 January 1933) is a Canadian-born British professor of philosophy, who was Grote Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic, University College London. Biography Honderich was born Edgar Dawn Ross Honderich on 30 January 1933 in Baden, Ontario, Canada. An undergraduate at the University of Toronto, qualifying as B.A. (Hons) in Philosophy and English Literature, he came to University College London to study under the logical positivist and Grote Professor A. J. Ayer, graduating with a PhD in 1968. He has since lived in England and become a British citizen. After being a lecturer at the University of Sussex he became lecturer, reader, professor and then Grote Professor at University College London. He was visiting professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Yale and the universities of Bath and Calgary. He is author of many books and articles on such subjects as consciousness, determinism, qualia, functionalism, tim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Strawson
Peter Frederick Strawson (; 23 November 1919 – 13 February 2006) was an English philosopher. He was the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford (Magdalen College) from 1968 to 1987. Before that, he was appointed as a college lecturer at University College, Oxford, in 1947, and became a tutorial fellow the following year, until 1968. On his retirement in 1987, he returned to the college and continued working there until shortly before his death. His portrait was painted by the artists Muli Tang and Daphne Todd. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says that Strawson "exerted a considerable influence on philosophy, both during his lifetime and, indeed, since his death". Early years Strawson was born in Ealing, west London, and brought up in Finchley, north London, by his parents, both of whom were teachers. He was educated at Christ's College, Finchley, followed by St John's College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity—especially Criticism of the Catholic Church, of the Roman Catholic Church—and of slavery. Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state. Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including stageplay, plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, and scientific Exposition (narrative), expositions. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets. Voltaire was one of the first authors to become renowned and commercially successful internationally. He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties and was at constant risk from the strict censorship laws of the Catholic French monarchy. His polemics ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him one of the most influential figures in modern Western philosophy. In his doctrine of transcendental idealism, Kant argued that space and time are mere "forms of intuition" which structure all experience, and therefore that, while " things-in-themselves" exist and contribute to experience, they are nonetheless distinct from the objects of experience. From this it follows that the objects of experience are mere "appearances", and that the nature of things as they are in themselves is unknowable to us. In an attempt to counter the skepticism he found in the writings of philosopher David Hume, he wrote the '' Critique of Pure Reason'' (1781/1787), one of his most well-known works. In it, he developed his theory of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as '' The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national " newspaper of record". For print it is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the U.S. The paper is owned by the New York Times Company, which is publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 1896, through a dual-class share structure after its shares became publicly traded. A. G. Sulzberger, the paper's publisher and the company's chairman, is the fifth generation of the family to head the pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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