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Anthropological Semantics
Contextualism, also known as epistemic contextualism, is a family of views in philosophy which emphasize the ''context'' in which an action, utterance, or expression occurs. Proponents of contextualism argue that, in some important respect, the action, utterance, or expression can only be understood relative to that context.Price (2008). Contextualist views hold that philosophically controversial concepts, such as "meaning P", "knowing that P", "having a reason to A", and possibly even "being true" or "being right" only have meaning relative to a specified context. Other philosophers contend that context-dependence leads to complete relativism. In ethics, "contextualist" views are often closely associated with situational ethics, or with moral relativism. Contextual architecture, Contextualism in architecture is a theory of design where modern building types are harmonized with urban forms usual to a traditional city. In epistemology, contextualism is the treatment of the word ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some sources claim the term was coined by Pythagoras ( BCE), although this theory is disputed by some. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument, and systematic presentation. in . Historically, ''philosophy'' encompassed all bodies of knowledge and a practitioner was known as a ''philosopher''."The English word "philosophy" is first attested to , meaning "knowledge, body of knowledge." "natural philosophy," which began as a discipline in ancient India and Ancient Greece, encompasses astronomy, medicine, and physics. For example, Newton's 1687 ''Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy'' later became classified as a book of physics. In the 19th century, the growth of modern research universiti ... [...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] |
Exclusive Disjunction
Exclusive or or exclusive disjunction is a logical operation that is true if and only if its arguments differ (one is true, the other is false). It is symbolized by the prefix operator J and by the infix operators XOR ( or ), EOR, EXOR, , , , , , and . The negation of XOR is the logical biconditional, which yields true if and only if the two inputs are the same. It gains the name "exclusive or" because the meaning of "or" is ambiguous when both operands are true; the exclusive or operator ''excludes'' that case. This is sometimes thought of as "one or the other but not both". This could be written as "A or B, but not, A and B". Since it is associative, it may be considered to be an ''n''-ary operator which is true if and only if an odd number of arguments are true. That is, ''a'' XOR ''b'' XOR ... may be treated as XOR(''a'',''b'',...). Truth table The truth table of A XOR B shows that it outputs true whenever the inputs differ: Equivalences, elimination, and introduct ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Degrees Of Truth
In classical logic, propositions are typically unambiguously considered as being true or false. For instance, the proposition ''one is both equal and not equal to itself'' is regarded as simply false, being contrary to the Law of Noncontradiction; while the proposition ''one is equal to one'' is regarded as simply true, by the Law of Identity. However, some mathematicians, computer scientists, and philosophers have been attracted to the idea that a proposition might be ''more or less'' true, rather than wholly true or wholly false. Consider ''My coffee is hot''. In mathematics, this idea can be developed in terms of fuzzy logic. In computer science, it has found application in artificial intelligence. In philosophy, the idea has proved particularly appealing in the case of vagueness. Degrees of truth is an important concept in law. The term is an older concept than conditional probability. Instead of determining the objective probability, only a subjective assessment is defined. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anekantavada
( hi, अनेकान्तवाद, "many-sidedness") is the Jain doctrine about metaphysical truths that emerged in ancient India. It states that the ultimate truth and reality is complex and has multiple aspects. According to Jainism, no single, specific statement can describe the nature of existence and the absolute truth. This knowledge ('' Kevala Jnana''), it adds, is comprehended only by the Arihants. Other beings and their statements about absolute truth are incomplete, and at best a partial truth. All knowledge claims, according to the ''anekāntavāda'' doctrine must be qualified in many ways, including being affirmed and denied. Anekāntavāda is a fundamental doctrine of Jainism. The origins of ''anekāntavāda '' can be traced back to the teachings of Mahāvīra (599–527 BCE), the 24th Jain . The dialectical concepts of ''syādvāda'' "conditioned viewpoints" and ''nayavāda'' "partial viewpoints" arose from ''anekāntavāda'' in the medieval era, providin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Experimental Philosophy
Experimental philosophy is an emerging field of philosophical inquiry Edmonds, David and Warburton, NigelPhilosophy’s great experiment, ''Prospect'', March 1, 2009 that makes use of empirical data—often gathered through surveys which probe the intuitions of ordinary people—in order to inform research on philosophical questions. This use of empirical data is widely seen as opposed to a philosophical methodology that relies mainly on a priori justification, sometimes called "armchair" philosophy, by experimental philosophers. Knobe, JoshuaExperimental Philosophy and Philosophical Significance '' Philosophical Explorations'' (10) 2007. Experimental philosophy initially began by focusing on philosophical questions related to intentional action, the putative conflict between free will and determinism, and causal vs. descriptive theories of linguistic reference. However, experimental philosophy has continued to expand to new areas of research. Disagreement about what experimen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jonathan Schaffer
Jonathan Schaffer is an American philosopher specializing in metaphysics and also working in epistemology, mind, and language. He is best known for his work on grounding and his development of monism, and is also a notable proponent of contrastivism. Career Since earning his PhD from Rutgers University in 1999, Schaffer has published 73 papers. He wrote his PhD thesis ''Causation and the Probabilities of Processes'' under Brian McLaughlin. In 2000, he accepted a position as assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in Amherst, Massachusetts, earning tenure by 2004. In that period he was awarded the Philosophy of Science Recent PhD Essay Contest in 2001, and the Young Epistemologist Prize in 2002. In 2007, Schaffer accepted a permanent research position at the Australian National University, and was described as "one of philosophy's most creative and interesting younger figures". He subsequently won awards for two papers published that year, the American Ph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Contrastivism
Contrastivism, or the contrast theory of meaning, is an epistemological theory proposed by Jonathan Schaffer that suggests that knowledge attributions have a ternary structure of the form 'S knows that p rather than q'. This is in contrast to the traditional view whereby knowledge attributions have a binary structure of the form 'S knows that p'. Contrastivism was suggested as an alternative to contextualism. Both are semantic theories that try to explain skepticism using semantic methods. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong proposed in a paper titled "A Contrastivist Manifesto" a variant of contrastivism that, he argues, differs from contextualism, invariantism, and Schaffer's contrastivism. Ernest Gellner in '' Words and Things'' "terms derive their meaning from the fact that there are or could be things which fall under them and that there are others which do not." The contrast clause The '...rather than q' part of the knowledge attribution is known as the 'contrast clause'. This is wha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jason Stanley
Jason Stanley (born 1969) is an American philosopher who is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He is best known for his contributions to philosophy of language and epistemology, which often draw upon and influence other fields, including linguistics and cognitive science. He has written for a popular audience on the ''New York Times'' philosophy blog "The Stone". In his more recent work, Stanley has brought tools from philosophy of language and epistemology to bear on questions of political philosophy, especially in his 2015 book ''How Propaganda Works''. Early life and education Stanley was raised in upstate New York. He graduated from Corcoran High School in Syracuse, New York. During high school, he studied in Lünen, Germany, for one year as part of the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange. He enrolled in the State University of New York in Binghamton, New York, where he studied philosophy of language under Jack Kaminsky. In 1987 he transferred to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Hawthorne
John Patrick Hawthorne (born 1964) is an English philosopher, currently serving as Professor of Philosophy at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California. He is recognized as a leading contemporary contributor to metaphysics and epistemology. Early life and career Hawthorne was born on 25 May 1964 in Birmingham, England. He earned his PhD from Syracuse University, where he studied with William Alston and Jonathan Bennett. From 2006 to 2015, he was the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He has also taught at the University of New South Wales, Arizona State University, Syracuse University, Rutgers University, and Princeton University. Philosophical work Hawthorne's 2006 collection ''Metaphysical Essays'' offers original treatments of fundamental topics in philosophy, including identity, ontology, vagueness, and causation, which one reviewer called "essential read ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neurophilosophy
Neurophilosophy or philosophy of neuroscience is the interdisciplinary study of neuroscience and philosophy that explores the relevance of neuroscientific studies to the arguments traditionally categorized as philosophy of mind. The philosophy of neuroscience attempts to clarify neuroscientific methods and results using the conceptual rigor and methods of philosophy of science. Specific issues Below is a list of specific issues important to philosophy of neuroscience: * "The indirectness of studies of mind and brain" * "Computational or representational analysis of brain processing" * "Relations between psychological and neuroscientific inquiries" * Modularity of mind * What constitutes adequate explanation in neuroscience? * "Location of cognitive function" The indirectness of studies of mind and brain Many of the methods and techniques central to neuroscientific discovery rely on assumptions that can limit the interpretation of the data. Philosophers of neuroscience have discuss ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
