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Ralph Barton Perry
Ralph Barton Perry (July 3, 1876 – January 22, 1957) was an American philosopher. He was a strident moral idealist who stated in 1909 that, to him, idealism meant "to interpret life consistently with ethical, scientific, and metaphysical truth." Perry's viewpoints on religion stressed the notion that religious thinking possessed legitimacy should it exist within a framework accepting of human reason and social progress. Biography Ralph Barton Perry was born in Poultney, Vermont on July 3, 1876. He was educated at Princeton ( B.A., 1896) and at Harvard ( M.A., 1897; Ph.D., 1899), where, after teaching philosophy for three years at Williams and Smith colleges, he was instructor (1902–05), assistant professor (1905–13), full professor (1913–30) and Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy (1930–46). He was president of the American Philosophical Association's eastern division in 1920–21. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1928 and the Ameri ...
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Poultney, Vermont
Poultney is a town in Rutland County in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Vermont. New York state is on its western border. Castleton, Vermont, is on its northern border. Poultney was home to Green Mountain College, a private liberal arts college that closed in 2019. The Village of Poultney is entirely within the town. The town population was 3,020 at the 2020 census. History One of the New Hampshire Grants, Poultney was charted on September 21, 1761, by Benning Wentworth, Royal Governor of New Hampshire, and named for William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath, a British politician and orator. Poultney was first settled by Thomas Ashley and Ebenezer Allen. Ashley married Zeruiah Richards, and Allen married Lydia Richards, both daughters of Zebulon Richards of Windham County, Connecticut. Ashley and Allen established themselves in a cabin near the Poultney River on February 15, 1771. Allen brought his family with him, and a son born to his wife Lydia in 1772 was the firs ...
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Professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a 'person who professes'. Professors are usually experts in their field and teachers of the highest rank. In most systems of List of academic ranks, academic ranks, "professor" as an unqualified title refers only to the most senior academic position, sometimes informally known as "full professor". In some countries and institutions, the word ''professor'' is also used in titles of lower ranks such as associate professor and assistant professor; this is particularly the case in the United States, where the unqualified word is also used colloquially to refer to associate and assistant professors as well, and often to instructors or lecturers. Professors often conduct original research and commonly teach undergraduate, Postgraduate educa ...
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Defensive Democracy
Defensive democracy is a term referring to the collection of laws, delegated legislation, and court rulings which limit certain rights and freedoms in a democratic society in order to protect the existence of the state, its democratic character and institutions, minority rights, or other aspects of the democratic system. The term is related to a conflict that may emerge in a democratic country between compliance with democratic values, particularly freedom of association and the right to be elected, and the goal of preventing anti-democratic groups and persons from abusing these principles. In certain democratic states there are additional special distinctions, supported by a notable section of the population, which justify the use of defensive democracy. However, there are disputes on the question of which situations justify the use of defensive democracy without this being considered excessive repression of civil rights. Methods The use of defensive democracy can be express ...
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Philosophical Pessimism
Philosophical pessimism is a philosophical tradition that argues that life is not worth living and that non-existence is preferable to existence. Thinkers in this tradition emphasize that suffering outweighs pleasure, happiness is fleeting or unattainable, and existence itself does not hold inherent value or an intrinsic purpose. Philosophers such as Arthur Schopenhauer suggest responses to life's suffering ranging from artistic contemplation to Asceticism, ascetic withdrawal, while Buddhism advocates for spiritual practices. Pessimism often addresses the ethics of both creating and continuing life. Antinatalism, Antinatalists assert that bringing new life into a world of suffering is morally wrong, and some pessimists view suicide as a rational response in extreme circumstances. The roots of pessimism trace back to ancient philosophies and religions. History of Buddhism in India, Buddhism in ancient India identified life as fundamentally marked by suffering (''duḥkha''). At t ...
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Ontology
Ontology is the philosophical study of existence, being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of reality and every entity within it. To articulate the basic structure of being, ontology examines the commonalities among all things and investigates their classification into basic types, such as the Theory of categories, categories of particulars and Universal (metaphysics), universals. Particulars are unique, non-repeatable entities, such as the person Socrates, whereas universals are general, repeatable entities, like the color ''green''. Another distinction exists between Abstract and concrete, concrete objects existing in space and time, such as a tree, and abstract objects existing outside space and time, like the number 7. Systems of categories aim to provide a comprehensive inventory of reality by employing categories such as Substance t ...
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Pulitzer Prize For Biography Or Autobiography
The Pulitzer Prize for Biography is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. The award honors "a distinguished and appropriately documented biography by an American author." Award winners receive US$15,000. From 1917 to 2022, this prize was known as the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and was awarded to a distinguished biography, autobiography or memoir by an American author or co-authors, published during the preceding calendar year. It is one of the original Pulitzers. The program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were awarded that year. Recipients In its first 97 years to 2013, the Biography Pulitzer was awarded 97 times. Two were given in 1938, and none in 1962. 1910s-1940s 1950s-1970s 1980s Entries from this point on include the finalists listed after the winner for each year. 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s Repeat winners Ten people have won the Pulitzer for Biography or Autobiog ...
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Perception
Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system, which in turn result from physical or chemical stimulation of the sensory system.Goldstein (2009) pp. 5–7 Vision involves light striking the retina of the eye; smell is mediated by odor molecules; and hearing involves pressure waves. Perception is not only the passive receipt of these signals, but it is also shaped by the recipient's learning, memory, expectation, and attention. Gregory, Richard. "Perception" in Gregory, Zangwill (1987) pp. 598–601. Sensory input is a process that transforms this low-level information to higher-level information (e.g., extracts shapes for object recognition). The following process connects a person's concepts and expectations (or knowledge) with restorative and selective mechanisms, ...
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Value Theory
Value theory, also called ''axiology'', studies the nature, sources, and types of Value (ethics and social sciences), values. It is a branch of philosophy and an interdisciplinary field closely associated with social sciences such as economics, sociology, anthropology, and psychology. Value is the worth of something, usually understood as covering both positive and negative degrees corresponding to the terms ''good'' and ''bad''. Values influence many human endeavors related to emotion, decision-making, and Action (philosophy), action. Value theorists distinguish various types of values, like the contrast between Instrumental and intrinsic value, intrinsic and instrumental value. An entity has Intrinsic value (ethics), intrinsic value if it is good in itself, independent of external factors. An entity has instrumental value if it is useful as a means leading to other good things. Other classifications focus on the type of benefit, including economic, moral, political, aesthetic, ...
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Naturalism (philosophy)
In philosophy, naturalism is the idea that only Scientific law, natural laws and forces (as opposed to supernatural ones) operate in the universe. In its primary sense, it is also known as ontological naturalism, metaphysical naturalism, pure naturalism, philosophical naturalism and antisupernaturalism. "Ontological" refers to ontology, the philosophical study of what exists. Philosophers often treat naturalism as equivalent to materialism, but there are important distinctions between the philosophies. For example, philosopher Paul Kurtz argued that nature is best accounted for by reference to Matter, material principles. These principles include mass, energy, and other Physical property, physical and Chemical property, chemical properties accepted by the scientific community. Further, this sense of naturalism holds that spirits, Deity, deities, and ghosts are not real and that there is no "Teleology, purpose" in nature. This stronger formulation of naturalism is commonly ref ...
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New Realism (philosophy)
{{No footnotes, date=June 2025 New realism was a philosophy expounded in the early 20th century by a group of six US based scholars, namely Edwin Bissell Holt (Harvard University), Walter Taylor Marvin (Rutgers College), William Pepperell Montague (Columbia University), Ralph Barton Perry (Harvard), Walter Boughton Pitkin (Columbia) and Edward Gleason Spaulding (Princeton University). Overview The central feature of the new realism was a rejection of the epistemological dualism of John Locke and of older forms of realism. The group maintained that, when one is conscious of, or knows, an object, it is an error to say that the object in itself and our knowledge of the object are two distinct facts. If we know a particular cow is black, is the blackness on that cow or in the observer's mind? Holt wrote: "That color out there is the thing in consciousness selected for such inclusion by the nervous system's specific response." Consciousness is not physically identical with the nervo ...
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Essays In Radical Empiricism
''Essays in Radical Empiricism'' (''ERE'') by William James is a collection edited and published posthumously by his colleague and biographer Ralph Barton Perry in 1912. It was assembled from ten out of a collection of twelve reprinted journal articles published from 1904–1905 which James had deposited in August, 1906, at the Harvard University Library and the Harvard Department of Philosophy for supplemental use by his students. Perry replaced two essays from the original list with two others, one of which didn't exist at the earlier time. Because ERE is a collection of essays written over a period of time, and ultimately not selected or collated by their author, it is not a systematic exposition of his thought even though Perry suggests otherwise in his preface. This circumstance, in addition to the evolution of James own philosophic stance, has contributed to a wide variance in understanding, misunderstanding, and critical opinion of radical empiricism. History Unpublishe ...
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William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, he is considered to be one of the leading thinkers of the late 19th century, one of the most influential philosophers and is often dubbed the "father of American psychology." Born into a wealthy family, James was the son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James Sr. and the brother of both the prominent novelist Henry James and the diarist Alice James. James trained as a physician and taught anatomy at Harvard, but never practiced medicine. Instead, he pursued his interests in psychology and then philosophy. He wrote widely on many topics, including epistemology, education, metaphysics, psychology, religion, and mysticism. Among his most influential books are '' The Principles of Psychology'', a groundbreaking text in the field of psychology; '' Essays in Radical Empiricism'', an important text in phil ...
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