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David K. Lewis
David Kellogg Lewis (September 28, 1941 – October 14, 2001) was an American philosopher who is widely regarded as one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. Lewis taught briefly at UCLA and then at Princeton University from 1970 until his death. He is closely associated with Australia, whose philosophical community he visited almost annually for more than 30 years. Lewis made significant contributions in philosophy of mind, philosophy of probability, epistemology, philosophical logic, aesthetics, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of time and philosophy of science. In most of these fields he is considered among the most important figures of recent decades. But Lewis is most famous for his work in metaphysics, philosophy of language and semantics, in which his books ''On the Plurality of Worlds'' (1986) and ''Counterfactuals'' (1973) are considered classics. His works on the logic and semantics of counterfactual conditionals are broadly used by philoso ... [...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] |
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of consciousness and the relationship between mind and matter, between substance and attribute, and between potentiality and actuality. The word "metaphysics" comes from two Greek words that, together, literally mean "after or behind or among he study ofthe natural". It has been suggested that the term might have been coined by a first century CE editor who assembled various small selections of Aristotle's works into the treatise we now know by the name ''Metaphysics'' (μετὰ τὰ φυσικά, ''meta ta physika'', 'after the ''Physics'' ', another of Aristotle's works). Metaphysics studies questions related to what it is for something to exist and what types of existence there are. Metaphysics seeks to answer, in an abstract and fu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
De Se
is Latin for "of oneself" and, in philosophy, it is a phrase used to delineate what some consider a category of ascription distinct from " ''de dicto'' and ''de re''". Such ascriptions are found with propositional attitudes, mental states held by an agent toward a proposition. Such ''de se'' ascriptions occur when an agent holds a mental state towards a proposition about themselves, knowing that this proposition is about themselves. Overview A sentence such as: "Peter thinks that he is pale," where the pronoun "he" is meant to refer to Peter, is ambiguous in a way not captured by the / distinction. Such a sentence could report that Peter has the following thought: "I am pale". Or Peter could have the following thought: "he is pale", where it so happens that the pronoun "he" refers to Peter, but Peter is unaware of it. The first meaning expresses a belief , while the second does not. This notion is extensively discussed in the philosophical literature, as well as in the theoreti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Descriptive-causal Theory Of Reference
A causal theory of reference or historical chain theory of reference is a theory of how terms acquire specific referents based on evidence. Such theories have been used to describe many referring terms, particularly logical terms, proper names, and natural kind terms. In the case of names, for example, a causal theory of reference typically involves the following claims: * a name's referent is fixed by an original act of naming (also called a "dubbing" or, by Saul Kripke, an "initial baptism"), whereupon the name becomes a rigid designator of that object. * later uses of the name succeed in referring to the referent by being linked to that original act via a causal chain. Weaker versions of the position (perhaps not properly called "causal theories"), claim merely that, in many cases, events in the causal history of a speaker's use of the term, including when the term was first acquired, must be considered to correctly assign references to the speaker's words. Causal theories of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Perdurantism
Perdurantism or perdurance theory is a philosophical theory of persistence and identity.Temporal parts – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy The debate over persistence currently involves three competing theories—one three-dimensionalist theory called "endurantism" and two four-dimensionalist theories called "perdurantism" and "exdurantism". For a perdurantist, all objects are considered to be four-dimensional worms and they make up the different regions of spacetime. It is a fusion of all the perdurant's instantaneous time slices compiled and blended into a complete mereological whole. Perdurantism posits that temporal parts alone are what ultimately change. David Lewis in "On The Plurality of World" states that change is "the possession of different properties by different temporal parts of an object" (12). Take any perdura ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endurantism
Endurantism or endurance theory is a philosophical theory of persistence and identity. According to the endurantist view, material objects are persisting three-dimensional individuals wholly present at every moment of their existence, which goes with an A-theory of time. This conception of an individual as always present is opposed to perdurantism or four-dimensionalism, which maintains that an object is a series of temporal parts or stages, requiring a B-theory of time. The use of "endure" and "perdure" to distinguish two ways in which an object can be thought to persist can be traced to David Lewis. One serious problem of endurantism is the problem of temporary intrinsics raised by David Lewis. Lewis claims that intrinsic properties of objects would change over time. Thus, endurantism cannot harmonize identity with change and then cannot explain persistence clearly even if endurantists appeal to intrinsic properties. Endurantists may argue that intrinsic properties are relat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lewis Signaling Game
In game theory, the Lewis signaling game is a type of signaling game that features perfect common interest between players. It is named for the philosopher David Lewis who was the first to discuss this game in his Ph.D. dissertation, and later book, ''Convention''.Lewis, D.: 1969, ''Convention. A Philosophical Study'', Harvard University Press, Harvard, Mass. The game The underlying game has two players, the ''sender'' and the ''receiver''. The world can be in any of a number of states and the sender is aware of that state. The sender has at its disposal a fixed set of ''signals'' that it can send to the receiver. The receiver can observe the signal sent, but not the state of the world, and must take some action. For each state, there is a unique correct action and both the sender and receiver prefer that the receiver take the correct action in every state. Because both the sender and receiver prefer the same outcomes as one another, this game is a game of pure common inte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Humean Supervenience
Humeanism refers to the philosophy of David Hume and to the tradition of thought inspired by him. Hume was an influential Scottish philosopher well known for his empirical approach, which he applied to various fields in philosophy. In the philosophy of science, he is notable for developing the ''regularity theory of causation'', which in its strongest form states that causation is nothing but constant conjunction of certain types of events without any underlying forces responsible for this regularity of conjunction. This is closely connected to his metaphysical thesis that there are ''no necessary connections between distinct entities''. The Humean theory of action defines actions as ''bodily behavior caused by mental states and processes'' without the need to refer to an agent responsible for this. The slogan of Hume's theory of practical reason is that "reason is...the slave of the passions". It restricts the sphere of practical reason to ''instrumental rationality'' concerning wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Principal Principle
Principal may refer to: Title or rank * Principal (academia), the chief executive of a university ** Principal (education), the office holder/ or boss in any school * Principal (civil service) or principal officer, the senior management level in the UK Civil Service * Principal dancer, the top rank in ballet * Principal (music), the top rank in an orchestra Law * Principal (commercial law), the person who authorizes an agent ** Principal (architecture), licensed professional(s) with ownership of the firm * Principal (criminal law), the primary actor in a criminal offense * Principal (Catholic Church), an honorific used in the See of Lisbon Places * Principal, Cape Verde, a village * Principal, Ecuador, a parish Media * ''The Principal'' (TV series), a 2015 Australian drama series * ''The Principal'', a 1987 action film * Principal (music), the lead musician in a section of an orchestra * Principal photography, the first phase of movie production * "The Principal", a song o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Counterpart Theory
In philosophy, specifically in the area of metaphysics, counterpart theory is an alternative to standard ( Kripkean) possible-worlds semantics for interpreting quantified modal logic. Counterpart theory still presupposes possible worlds, but differs in certain important respects from the Kripkean view. The form of the theory most commonly cited was developed by David Lewis, first in a paper and later in his book ''On the Plurality of Worlds''. Differences from the Kripkean view Counterpart theory (hereafter "CT"), as formulated by Lewis, requires that individuals exist in only one world. The standard account of possible worlds assumes that a modal statement about an individual (e.g., "it is possible that x is y") means that there is a possible world, W, where the individual x has the property y; in this case there is only one individual, x, at issue. On the contrary, counterpart theory supposes that this statement is really saying that there is a possible world, W, wherein exists an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Counterfactuals
Counterfactual conditionals (also ''subjunctive'' or ''X-marked'') are conditional sentences which discuss what would have been true under different circumstances, e.g. "If Peter believed in ghosts, he would be afraid to be here." Counterfactuals are contrasted with indicatives, which are generally restricted to discussing open possibilities. Counterfactuals are characterized grammatically by their use of fake tense morphology, which some languages use in combination with other kinds of morphology including aspect and mood. Counterfactuals are one of the most studied phenomena in philosophical logic, formal semantics, and philosophy of language. They were first discussed as a problem for the material conditional analysis of conditionals, which treats them all as trivially true. Starting in the 1960s, philosophers and linguists developed the now-classic possible world approach, in which a counterfactual's truth hinges on its consequent holding at certain possible worlds where ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Modal Realism
Modal realism is the view propounded by philosopher David Lewis that all possible worlds are real in the same way as is the actual world: they are "of a kind with this world of ours." It is based on the following tenets: possible worlds exist; possible worlds are not different in kind from the actual world; possible worlds are irreducible entities; the term ''actual'' in ''actual world'' is indexical, i.e. any subject can declare their world to be the actual one, much as they label the place they are "here" and the time they are "now". ''Extended modal realism'' is a form of modal realism that involves ontological commitments not just to ''possible worlds'' but also to ''impossible worlds''. Objects are conceived as being spread out in the modal dimension, i.e. as having not just spatial and temporal parts but also modal parts. This contrasts with Lewis' modal realism according to which each object only inhabits one possible world. Common arguments for modal realism refer to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
