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Compossible
Compossibility is a philosophical concept from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. According to Leibniz, a complete individual thing (for example a person) is characterized by all its properties, and these determine its relations with other individuals. The existence of one individual may negate the possibility of the existence of another. A possible world is made up of individuals that are compossible—that is, individuals that can exist together. Compossibility and possible worlds Leibniz indicates that a world is a set of compossible things; ''i.e.,'' that a world is a kind of collection of things that God could bring into existence. For Leibniz, not even God could bring into existence a world in which there is some contradiction among its members or their properties. When Leibniz speaks of a possible world, he means a set of compossible, finite things that God could have brought into existence if he were not constrained by the goodness that is part of his nature. The actual world, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Best Of All Possible Worlds
The phrase "the best of all possible worlds" (; ) was coined by the German polymath and Enlightenment philosopher Gottfried Leibniz in his 1710 work '' Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal'' (''Essays of Theodicy on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil''), more commonly known simply as the ''Theodicy''. The claim that the actual world is the best of all possible worlds is the central argument in Leibniz's theodicy, or his attempt to solve the problem of evil. Leibniz In Leibniz's works, the argument about the best of all possible worlds appears in the context of his '' theodicy'', a word that he coined by combining the Greek words ''Theos'', 'God', and ''dikē'', 'justice'. Its object was to solve the problem of evil, that is, to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering in the world with the existence of a perfectly good, all-powerful and all-knowing God, who would seem required to prevent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Problem Of Future Contingents
Future contingent propositions (or simply, future contingents) are statements about states of affairs in the future that are '' contingent:'' neither necessarily true nor necessarily false. The problem of future contingents seems to have been first discussed by Aristotle in chapter 9 of his ''On Interpretation'' (''De Interpretatione''), using the famous sea-battle example. Roughly a generation later, Diodorus Cronus from the Megarian school of philosophy stated a version of the problem in his notorious '' master argument''. The problem was later discussed by Leibniz. The problem can be expressed as follows. Suppose that a sea-battle will not be fought tomorrow. Then it was also true yesterday (and the week before, and last year) that it will not be fought, since any true statement about what will be the case in the future was also true in the past. But all past truths are now necessary truths; therefore it is now necessarily true in the past, prior and up to the original stat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophical
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its methods and assumptions. Historically, many of the individual sciences, such as physics and psychology, formed part of philosophy. However, they are considered separate academic disciplines in the modern sense of the term. Influential traditions in the history of philosophy include Western philosophy, Western, Islamic philosophy, Arabic–Persian, Indian philosophy, Indian, and Chinese philosophy. Western philosophy originated in Ancient Greece and covers a wide area of philosophical subfields. A central topic in Arabic–Persian philosophy is the relation between reason and revelation. Indian philosophy combines the Spirituality, spiritual problem of how to reach Enlightenment in Buddhism, enlighten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (or Leibnitz; – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat who is credited, alongside Sir Isaac Newton, with the creation of calculus in addition to many other branches of mathematics, such as binary arithmetic and statistics. Leibniz has been called the "last universal genius" due to his vast expertise across fields, which became a rarity after his lifetime with the coming of the Industrial Revolution and the spread of specialized labor. He is a prominent figure in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics. He wrote works on philosophy, theology, ethics, politics, law, history, philology, games, music, and other studies. Leibniz also made major contributions to physics and technology, and anticipated notions that surfaced much later in probability theory, biology, medicine, geology, psychology, linguistics and computer science. Leibniz contributed to the field ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louis Bourguet
Louis Bourguet (23 April 1678, Nîmes – 31 December 1742, Neuchâtel) was a polymath and correspondent of Leibniz who wrote on archaeology, geology, philosophy, Biblical scholarship and mathematics. Bourguet entered the College of Zurich in 1688. He became Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics at Neuchâtel in 1731. He tried to integrate Leibnizian philosophy with issues in natural philosophy. Works * *''Traité des petrifications'', 1742 References External links''Lettres philosophiques sur la formation de sels et des crystaux''(1729, French) - digital facsimile from Linda Hall Library''Traité des petrifications''(1742, French) - digital facsimile from Linda Hall Library The Linda Hall Library is a privately endowed American library of science, engineering and technology located in Kansas City, Missouri, on the grounds of a urban arboretum. It claims to be the "largest independently funded public library of sc ... 1678 births 1742 deaths French archaeolo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou (; ; born 17 January 1937) is a French philosopher, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École normale supérieure (ENS) and founder of the faculty of Philosophy of the Université de Paris VIII with Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Jean-François Lyotard. Badiou's work is heavily informed by philosophical applications of mathematics, in particular set theory and category theory. Badiou's "Being and Event" project considers the concepts of being, truth, event and the subject defined by a rejection of linguistic relativism seen as typical of postwar French thought. Unlike his peers, Badiou believes in the idea of universalism and truth. His work is notable for his widespread applications of various conceptions of indifference. Badiou has been involved in a number of political organisations, and regularly comments on political events. Badiou argues for a return of communism as a political force. Biography Badiou is the son of the mathematician (1905–1996), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Definitions Of Philosophy
Definitions of philosophy aim at determining what all forms of philosophy have in common and how to distinguish philosophy from other disciplines. Many different definitions have been proposed but there is very little agreement on which is the right one. Some general characteristics of philosophy are widely accepted, for example, that it is a form of rational inquiry that is systematic, critical, and tends to reflect on its own methods. But such characteristics are usually too vague to give a proper definition of philosophy. Many of the more concrete definitions are very controversial, often because they are revisionary in that they deny the label philosophy to various subdisciplines for which it is normally used. Such definitions are usually only accepted by philosophers belonging to a specific philosophical movement. One reason for these difficulties is that the meaning of the term "philosophy" has changed throughout history: it used to include the sciences as its subdisciplines, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Truth
Truth or verity is the Property (philosophy), property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth, 2005 In everyday language, it is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as beliefs, propositions, and declarative sentences. True statements are usually held to be the opposite of false statement, false statements. The concept of truth is discussed and debated in various contexts, including philosophy, art, theology, law, and science. Most human activities depend upon the concept, where its nature as a concept is assumed rather than being a subject of discussion, including journalism and everyday life. Some philosophers view the concept of truth as basic, and unable to be explained in any terms that are more easily understood than the concept of truth itself. Most commonly, truth is viewed as the correspondence of language or thought to a mind-independent world. This is called the correspon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Louis René Deleuze (18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of ''Capitalism and Schizophrenia'': ''Anti-Oedipus'' (1972) and ''A Thousand Plateaus'' (1980), both co-written with psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. His Metaphysics, metaphysical treatise ''Difference and Repetition'' (1968) is considered to be his magnum opus, ''magnum opus''. An important part of Deleuze's oeuvre is devoted to the reading of other philosophers: the w:Stoicism, Stoics, Leibniz, David Hume, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Spinoza, and Henri Bergson, Bergson. A. W. Moore (philosopher), A. W. Moore, citing Bernard Williams's criteria for a great thinker, ranks Deleuze among the "greatest philosophers".A. W. Moore (philosopher), A. W. Moore ''The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things'' Cambridge University Press, 2012 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Lewis (philosopher)
David Kellogg Lewis (September 28, 1941– October 14, 2001) was an American philosopher. 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. 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 philosophers and linguists along with a competing account from Robert Stalnaker; together the Stal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
On The Plurality Of Worlds
''On the Plurality of Worlds'' (1986) is a book by the philosopher David Lewis that defends the thesis of modal realism. "The thesis states that the world we are part of is but one of a plurality of worlds," as he writes in the preface, "and that we who inhabit this world are only a few out of all the inhabitants of all the worlds." It is not to be confused with cosmic pluralism. Content The book is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1: A Philosopher's Paradise Chapter 1 begins with an exposition of modal realism. Lewis proposes that possible worlds, including ours, are real concrete things that are isolated from each other. "There are no spatiotemporal relations at all between things that belong to different worlds," and adds, "Nor does anything that happens at one world cause anything to happen at another." He recommends a plurality of worlds because hypothesizing it is "serviceable," the familiar analysis of necessity as truth at all possible worlds being "only the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Many-worlds Interpretation
The many-worlds interpretation (MWI) is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts that the universal wavefunction is Philosophical realism, objectively real, and that there is no wave function collapse. This implies that all Possible world, possible outcomes of quantum measurements are physically realized in different "worlds". The evolution of reality as a whole in MWI is rigidly Determinism, deterministic and principle of locality, local. Many-worlds is also called the relative state formulation or the Everett interpretation, after physicist Hugh Everett III, Hugh Everett, who first proposed it in 1957.Hugh Everett]Theory of the Universal Wavefunction Thesis, Princeton University, (1956, 1973), pp. 1–140. Bryce DeWitt popularized the formulation and named it ''many-worlds'' in the 1970s. See also Cécile DeWitt-Morette, Cecile M. DeWitt, John A. Wheeler (eds,) The Everett–Wheeler Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, ''Battelle Rencontres: 1967 Lectures in Mathema ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
