|
Metaphysical Possibility
Subjunctive possibility (also called alethic possibility) is a form of modality studied in modal logic. Subjunctive possibilities are the sorts of possibilities considered when conceiving counterfactual situations; subjunctive modalities are modalities that bear on whether a statement ''might have been'' or ''could be'' true—such as ''might'', ''could'', ''must'', ''possibly'', ''necessarily'', ''contingently'', ''essentially'', ''accidentally'', and so on. Subjunctive possibilities include logical possibility, metaphysical possibility, nomological possibility, and temporal possibility. Subjunctive possibility and other modalities Subjunctive possibility is contrasted with (among other things) epistemic possibility (which deals with how the world ''may'' be, ''for all we know'') and deontic possibility (which deals with how the world ''ought'' to be). Epistemic possibility The contrast with epistemic possibility is especially important to draw, since in ordinary language t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aletheia
''Aletheia'' or Alethia (; grc, ἀλήθεια) is truth or disclosure in philosophy. Originating in Ancient Greek philosophy, the term was later used in the works of 20th-century philosopher Martin Heidegger. Although often translated as "truth", Heidegger argued that it is distinct from common conceptions of truth. Antiquity is variously translated as "unconcealedness", "disclosure", "revealing", or "unclosedness". The literal meaning of the word is "the state of not being hidden; the state of being evident." It also means factuality or reality. It is the antonym of , which literally means "oblivion", "forgetfulness", or "concealment" according to Pindar's First Olympian Ode. In Greek mythology, was personified as a Greek goddess, Aletheia. In some accounts she was a daughter of Zeus, while Aesop's Fables state she was crafted by Prometheus. In she was equated with Veritas, the Roman goddess of truth. Heidegger and ''aletheia'' In the early to mid 20th-century, Ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saul Kripke
Saul Aaron Kripke (; November 13, 1940 – September 15, 2022) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition. He was a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and emeritus professor at Princeton University. Since the 1960s, Kripke has been a central figure in a number of fields related to mathematical logic, modal logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics, epistemology, and recursion theory. Much of his work remains unpublished or exists only as tape recordings and privately circulated manuscripts. Kripke made influential and original contributions to logic, especially modal logic. His principal contribution is a semantics for modal logic involving possible worlds, now called Kripke semantics. He received the 2001 Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy. Kripke was also partly responsible for the revival of metaphysics after the decline of logical positivism, claiming necessity i ... [...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] |
Ian Hacking
Ian MacDougall Hacking (born February 18, 1936) is a Canadian philosopher specializing in the philosophy of science. Throughout his career, he has won numerous awards, such as the Killam Prize for the Humanities and the Balzan Prize, and been a member of many prestigious groups, including the Order of Canada, the Royal Society of Canada and the British Academy. Life Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, he earned undergraduate degrees from the University of British Columbia (1956) and the University of Cambridge (1958), where he was a student at Trinity College. Hacking also earned his PhD at Cambridge (1962), under the direction of Casimir Lewy, a former student of Ludwig Wittgenstein. He started his teaching career as an instructor at Princeton University in 1960 but, after just one year, moved to the University of Virginia as an assistant professor. After working as a research fellow at Cambridge from 1962 to 1964, he taught at his alma mater, UBC, first as an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Lewis (philosopher)
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 philosop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sydney Shoemaker
Sydney Sharpless Shoemaker (September 29, 1931 – September 6, 2022) was an American philosopher. He was the Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University and is well known for his contributions to philosophy of mind and metaphysics. Education and career Shoemaker graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Reed College and earned his Doctor of Philosophy from Cornell University in 1958 under the supervision of Norman Malcolm. He taught philosophy at Ohio State University from 1957 to 1960 then, in 1961, returned to Cornell as a faculty member of the philosophy department. In 1978 he was appointed the Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy, a position he held until his retirement, as Professor Emeritus of Philosophy. Among his students at Cornell were Richard Moran, Susanna Siegel, and John Perry. In 1971, he delivered the John Locke Lectures at Oxford University. Shoemaker died on September 3, 2022, at the age of 90. He was buried in Greensprings Natural Ce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Speed Of Light
The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted , is a universal physical constant that is important in many areas of physics. The speed of light is exactly equal to ). According to the special theory of relativity, is the upper limit for the speed at which conventional matter or energy (and thus any signal carrying information) can travel through space. All forms of electromagnetic radiation, including visible light, travel at the speed of light. For many practical purposes, light and other electromagnetic waves will appear to propagate instantaneously, but for long distances and very sensitive measurements, their finite speed has noticeable effects. Starlight viewed on Earth left the stars many years ago, allowing humans to study the history of the universe by viewing distant objects. When communicating with distant space probes, it can take minutes to hours for signals to travel from Earth to the spacecraft and vice versa. In computing, the speed of light fixes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alpha Centauri
Alpha Centauri ( Latinized from α Centauri and often abbreviated Alpha Cen or α Cen) is a triple star system in the constellation of Centaurus. It consists of 3 stars: Alpha Centauri A (officially Rigil Kentaurus), Alpha Centauri B (officially Toliman) and Alpha Centauri C (officially Proxima Centauri). Proxima Centauri is also the closest star to the Sun at 4.2465 light-years (1.3020 pc). Alpha Centauri A and B are Sun-like stars ( Class G and K, respectively), and together they form the binary star system Alpha Centauri AB. To the naked eye, the two main components appear to be a single star with an apparent magnitude of −0.27. It is the brightest star in the constellation and the third-brightest in the night sky, outshone only by Sirius and Canopus. Alpha Centauri A has 1.1 times the mass and 1.5 times the luminosity of the Sun, while Alpha Centauri B is smaller and cooler, at 0.9 times the Sun's mass and less than 0.5 times its luminosity. The pair or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, librarian, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, scepticism, and naturalism. Beginning with '' A Treatise of Human Nature'' (1739–40), Hume strove to create a naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Hume argued against the existence of innate ideas, positing that all human knowledge derives solely from experience. This places him with Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and George Berkeley as an Empiricist. Hume argued that inductive reasoning and belief in causality cannot be justified rationally; instead, they result from custom and mental habit. We never actually perceive that one event caus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nomological
In philosophy, nomology refers to a "science of laws" based on the theory that it is possible to elaborate descriptions dedicated not to particular aspects of reality but inspired by a scientific vision of universal validity expressed by scientific laws. Etymology "Nomology" derives from the Greek , ''law'', and , ''reason''. The term nomology may come from Aristotle. The '-ology' suffix implies 'order', 'word' and 'reason', and is about being subjectively reasonable or 'logical' as in sociology and psychology. The 'nom-' part implies 'rule' and 'law', and is about being objectively lawful or 'nomic' as in economics. Nomology of mind The nomology of mind is the branch of science and philosophy concerned with the laws or principles governing the thought processes and operation of the mind, especially as defined by custom or culture. In the mid-19th century, it was described as one of two grand divisions of philosophy, the other being metaphysics, for example: Nomological ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logical Truth
Logical truth is one of the most fundamental concepts in logic. Broadly speaking, a logical truth is a statement which is true regardless of the truth or falsity of its constituent propositions. In other words, a logical truth is a statement which is not only true, but one which is true under all interpretations of its logical components (other than its logical constants). Thus, logical truths such as "if p, then p" can be considered tautologies. Logical truths are thought to be the simplest case of statements which are analytically true (or in other words, true by definition). All of philosophical logic can be thought of as providing accounts of the nature of logical truth, as well as logical consequence. Logical truths are generally considered to be ''necessarily true''. This is to say that they are such that no situation could arise in which they could fail to be true. The view that logical statements are necessarily true is sometimes treated as equivalent to saying that log ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises in a topic-neutral way. When used as a countable noun, the term "a logic" refers to a logical formal system that articulates a proof system. Formal logic contrasts with informal logic, which is associated with informal fallacies, critical thinking, and argumentation theory. While there is no general agreement on how formal and informal logic are to be distinguished, one prominent approach associates their difference with whether the studied arguments are expressed in formal or informal languages. Logic plays a central role in multiple fields, such as philosophy, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics. Logic studies arguments, which consist of a set of premises together with a conclusion. Premises and conclusions are usually un ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.jpg "Click for more on -> Alpha Centauri")
