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David Malet Armstrong
David Malet Armstrong (8 July 1926 – 13 May 2014), often D. M. Armstrong, was an Australian philosopher. He is well known for his work on metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, and for his defence of a factualist ontology, a functionalist theory of the mind, an externalist epistemology, and a necessitarian conception of the laws of nature. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008. Keith Campbell said that Armstrong's contributions to metaphysics and epistemology "helped to shape philosophy's agenda and terms of debate", and that Armstrong's work "always concerned to elaborate and defend a philosophy which is ontically economical, synoptic, and compatibly continuous with established results in the natural sciences". Life and career After studying at the University of Sydney, Armstrong undertook a B.Phil. at the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. at the University of Melbourne. He taught at Birkbeck College in ... [...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] |
Australian Philosophy
Australian philosophy refers to the philosophical tradition of the people of Australia and of its citizens abroad. Academic philosophy has been mostly pursued in universities (and sometimes seminaries). It has been broadly in the tradition of Anglo-American analytic philosophy, but has also had representatives of a diverse range of other schools, such as idealism, Catholic neo-scholasticism, Marxism, and continental, feminist and Asian philosophy. Indigenous perspectives Australian indigenous traditions attribute moral authority outside the individual to The Dreaming, which is bound up with the relation of human society to land. Idealism The earliest academic philosophers in Australia were appointed in the late nineteenth century. Then and in the early twentieth century, most were like their European contemporaries idealists. They included Sir Francis Anderson, professor of philosophy at Sydney University from 1890 to 1921, W.R. Boyce Gibson in Melbourne, and (to a degree) Sir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb north of Melbourne's central business district, with several other campuses located across Victoria. Incorporated in the 19th century by the colony of Victoria, the University of Melbourne is one of Australia's six sandstone universities and a member of the Group of Eight, Universitas 21, Washington University's McDonnell International Scholars Academy, and the Association of Pacific Rim Universities. Since 1872, many residential colleges have become affiliated with the university, providing accommodation for students and faculty, and academic, sporting and cultural programs. There are ten colleges located on the main campus and in nearby suburbs. The university comprises ten separate academic units and is associated with numerous institut ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor = The Lord Patten of Barnes , vice_chancellor = Louise Richardson , students = 24,515 (2019) , undergrad = 11,955 , postgrad = 12,010 , other = 541 (2017) , city = Oxford , country = England , coordinates = , campus_type = University town , athletics_affiliations = Blue (university sport) , logo_size = 250px , website = , logo = University of Oxford.svg , colours = Oxford Blue , faculty = 6,995 (2020) , academic_affiliations = , The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keith Campbell (philosopher)
Keith Campbell (born 1938) is an Australian philosopher working in metaphysics. Biography With D. M. Armstrong, Campbell is one of the founders of so-called ''Australian materialism'' and, within it, of a variety of trope theory. He also has a distinctive view of concrete and abstract objects: the former can exist by themselves, and the latter are incapable of independent existence. He refuses, following Frank P. Ramsey, the necessity of choice between realism and nominalism in the problem of universals, because they both share "a false presupposition being that any quality or relation must be a universal" (Campbell 1991, preface). The separation between the University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's si ...'s Departments of Traditional and Modern Philosophy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Academy Of Arts And Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other Founding Fathers of the United States. It is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Membership in the academy is achieved through a thorough petition, review, and election process. The academy's quarterly journal, ''Dædalus'', is published by MIT Press on behalf of the academy. The academy also conducts multidisciplinary public policy research. History The Academy was established by the Massachusetts legislature on May 4, 1780, charted in order "to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people." The sixty-two incorporating fellows represented varying interests and high standing in the political, professional, and commercial secto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Physical Law
Scientific laws or laws of science are statements, based on repeated experiments or observations, that describe or predict a range of natural phenomena. The term ''law'' has diverse usage in many cases (approximate, accurate, broad, or narrow) across all fields of natural science (physics, chemistry, astronomy, geoscience, biology). Laws are developed from data and can be further developed through mathematics; in all cases they are directly or indirectly based on empirical evidence. It is generally understood that they implicitly reflect, though they do not explicitly assert, causal relationships fundamental to reality, and are discovered rather than invented. Scientific laws summarize the results of experiments or observations, usually within a certain range of application. In general, the accuracy of a law does not change when a new theory of the relevant phenomenon is worked out, but rather the scope of the law's application, since the mathematics or statement representing the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Modal Logic
Modal logic is a collection of formal systems developed to represent statements about necessity and possibility. It plays a major role in philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics, and natural language semantics. Modal logics extend other systems by adding unary operators \Diamond and \Box, representing possibility and necessity respectively. For instance the modal formula \Diamond P can be read as "possibly P" while \Box P can be read as "necessarily P". Modal logics can be used to represent different phenomena depending on what kind of necessity and possibility is under consideration. When \Box is used to represent epistemic necessity, \Box P states that P is epistemically necessary, or in other words that it is known. When \Box is used to represent deontic necessity, \Box P states that P is a moral or legal obligation. In the standard relational semantics for modal logic, formulas are assigned truth values relative to a ''possible world''. A formula's truth value at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epistemology
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Epistemologists study the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge, epistemic justification, the rationality of belief, and various related issues. Debates in epistemology are generally clustered around four core areas: # The philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and the conditions required for a belief to constitute knowledge, such as truth and justification # Potential sources of knowledge and justified belief, such as perception, reason, memory, and testimony # The structure of a body of knowledge or justified belief, including whether all justified beliefs must be derived from justified foundational beliefs or whether justification requires only a coherent set of beliefs # Philosophical skepticism, which questions the possibili ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Internalism And Externalism
Internalism and externalism are two opposite ways of integration of explaining various subjects in several areas of philosophy. These include human motivation, knowledge, justification, meaning, and truth. The distinction arises in many areas of debate with similar but distinct meanings. Internal–external distinction is a distinction used in philosophy to divide an ontology into two parts: an internal part concerning observation Observation is the active acquisition of information from a primary source. In living beings, observation employs the senses. In science, observation can also involve the perception and recording of data via the use of scientific instruments. The ... related to philosophy, and an external part concerning question related to philosophy. Internalism is the thesis that no fact about the world can provide reasons for action independently of desires and beliefs.Giuseppina D'Oro"Collingwood, psychologism and internalism,"''European Journal of Philosophy'' 12( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mind
The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various mental phenomena, like perception, pain experience, belief, desire, intention, and emotion. Various overlapping classifications of mental phenomena have been proposed. Important distinctions group them according to whether they are ''sensory'', ''propositional'', ''intentional'', ''conscious'', or ''occurrent''. Minds were traditionally understood as substances but it is more common in the contemporary perspective to conceive them as properties or capacities possessed by humans and higher animals. Various competing definitions of the exact nature of the mind or mentality have been proposed. ''Epistemic definitions'' focus on the privileged epistemic access the subject has to these states. ''Consciousness-based approaches'' give primacy to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Functionalism (philosophy Of Mind)
In philosophy of mind, functionalism is the thesis that mental states (beliefs, desires, being in pain, etc.) are constituted solely by their functional role, which means, their causal relations with other mental states, sensory inputs and behavioral outputs.Block, Ned. (1996). "What is functionalism?" a revised version of the entry on functionalism in ''The Encyclopedia of Philosophy Supplement'', Macmillan. PDF online Functionalism developed largely as an alternative to the identity theory of mind and behaviorism. Functionalism is a theoretical level between the physical implementation and behavioral output.Marr, D. (1982). ''Vision: A Computational Approach''. San Francisco: Freeman & Co. Therefore, it is different from its predecessors of Cartesian dualism (advocating independent mental and physical substances) and Skinnerian behaviorism and physicalism (declaring only physical substances) because it is only concerned with the effective functions of the brain, through its organ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
