Seven Sages included Bias, Pittacus, Solon, and Thales, and possibly Anacharsis, Chilon, Cleobulus, Myson, Epimenides, Periander, or Pherecydes. They wrote about ethics, religious community, spiritual ecstasy, soul, ascetic life, and higher, ideal world.
Megale Hellas was Greek cities in south Italy. People were Italiotai or Graeci. Pythagorean and Eleatic philosophies originated there. First colonies were Pithecussae and Cumae.
He lived -569 to -475, founded Pythagorean School, and studied harmony in music. He developed Pythagorean theorem, quadratic equation, powers, and roots.
Pythagorean symbol is pentagon with star inscribed, with pentagon inscribed, and so on. Diagonals split in golden ratio.
Epistemology
Soul or mind harmonizes body and has inherently moving elements, as do other body parts, such as blood. Souls transmigrate from body to body.
Thought is deduction using logic and number. Knowledge is about mathematics and numbers. Truth known by mind is the same for all people, because they have the same mind elements, but opinion is individual, because bodies mix different elements.
Perception is imperfect, because it is about the physical world, which is only a copy of the true world. Sensory knowledge comes when moving object elements enter body and meet moving body elements. Like, or opposite, moving elements join, or recognize, each other. Only like or opposite can perceive object.
Metaphysics
Universe has order through numbers, which express all relationships. Universe has ten opposites.
Pythagoras founded school that included Philolaos, Archytas, Petrus, Ameinias, Diochaetus, Archippus, Hippasus, Lysis, and Aristoxenus. Hippasus first spoke about irrational numbers.
It included Democritus.
School included Empedocles.
School included Heraclitus of Ephesus, Hippocrates, and Cratylus.
He lived -480 to -420 and was Eleatic. Melissus led Samian fleet and defeated Athenians [-442]. The senses are illusions. Reality is about space and time.
He lived -480 to -405 and was Pythagorean. Cebes and Simmias were his students at Thebes.
Epistemology
People can know only finite things.
Metaphysics
Numbers are elements of being, because they are finite, eternal, and indestructible, and their fixed and orderly relations determine music, geometry, and heavenly motions. The series of numbers to infinity represents space. Material objects are space shaped into geometric Forms. All harmony and order depend on unity, the number 1. Opposites derive from odd and even numbers. Odd means limited, good, and perfect. Even means infinite, bad, and imperfect. Natural-world cycles are copies of number properties.
School included Anaxagoras.
Leucippus started school that included Protagoras and Democritus.
Euclides of Megara founded it. School had followers of Socrates and included Eubulides, Alexinus, Diodorus Cronus, Philo the Dialectician, and Stilpo. It studied rhetoric, etymology, word usage, speech parts, synonyms, grammar, syntax, simple logic, word ambiguities, catch-questions in which both yes and no answers seem foolish, contradiction, and logical chains. It rejected analogies, possibilities, and predicates.
Ethics
God and mind are good.
Mind
God and mind are the same.
Plato founded school that included Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemo, Crates, Philippus, Heracleides, and Crantor.
He lived -405 to -335, was Plato's nephew, and was second Old-Academy leader [-347 to -335]. Definition uses relations to other things.
He lived -396 to -314 and led Old Academy [-339 to -314]. He divided philosophy into logic, physics, and ethics.
Aristotle founded school that included Praxiphanes, Theophrastus, Eudemus in mathematics, Aristoxenus in music, Dicaearchus, Strato, Clearchus, and Critolaus. Consciousness unites rational and other two souls.
Zeno of Citium founded school {Stoic} {Stoicism} that developed from Cynic School and included Sphaerus, Dionysius, Crinus, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Philonides, Heraclides, Perseus, Cleomenes, Persion, Zeno of Tarsis, Antipater, Archedemus, Boethius of Sidon, Herillus, Diogenes of Babylon, and Apollodorus. They studied propositional logic and implication and invented a new syllogism theory.
Epistemology
Perceptions are neither true nor false, because they are not knowledge. Concepts are contents of ideas and result from perception persistence. People's perceptual contents are the same, so people have same concepts. Concepts mix object and body qualities, making impressions on soul or consciousness, which then forms will, using judgment on feelings and desires.
Imagination is a new quality mixture.
Language is material substance that assists quality mixing. Sentences are different expressions of propositions {lekta}: statements, commands, questions, or promises. Propositions are not sense qualities and are not objective reality.
Knowledge is concept and idea relations {judgment, Stoic}. People can believe or assent to judgments. When people understand a judgment, they have assent or belief, which becomes part of self. Making judgments, and abstaining from or giving in to emotions, depend only on internal factors. However, process is deterministic and causal. Because process is internal, it has certain freedom. If soul makes judgment without interference from passions, the judgment is true and real, because soul connects to universal reason.
All events are deterministic. Otherwise, people cannot know action consequences until after they happen, so no one can perform rational actions.
Ethics
People can take rationally correct actions, because everything is deterministic.
Virtue is good. Wealth, honor, and health are not necessarily good. People should seek good things, which contribute to virtue. The greatest good {summum bonum, Stoic} is to possess all virtues. Reason acts best if passions do not disturb it, so reason should eliminate emotions that arise from contact with outside world. Virtue and wisdom involve self-control.
Vice is control of reason by passion. Bad things contribute to vice and people must reject them. The senses are against true nature. Emotions are false judgments. Most people are fools and have vice.
Life should be natural. People should accept the way things are, because outside world cannot change. People then do not notice pain and suffering. People should not notice things that are neither good nor bad. Morality is harmony with nature, especially the will, because reason rules both.
The wise do not recognize good actions or things, because they are external.
One's life should be consistent, because life should express its essence, reason. It is duty to act and think virtuously using reason.
Will is part of pneuma, is basic to individual nature, is like God's will, and is free and powerful to same extent. Because everything is deterministic, the will has no free choice. However, people have responsibility, because their will participates in decision making along with environment. Responsibility does not depend on whether actions differ, any more than ethical judgment depends on possibility of alternatives. Both depend only on right and wrong.
Evil is absence of good.
Metaphysics
Universe is a deterministic, single, united, living, material, and connected whole. Gods work through air or spirit {pneuma, Stoic}, the moving vital principle of reason, which is in all things, continuously forms matter, and orders and gives purpose to everything. Pneuma affects material qualities and causes changes and interactions.
Events are necessities and have causes.
World has cycles, exactly alike.
Matter is air and moisture, which can change into water and earth. Body activities, objects, and actions are material.
Nature is for gods and people.
Universe as whole is perfect but requires some imperfection to realize this state. Bad or evil is an accidental consequence of the purposive world and is a means to something good. Eventually, all evil turns into good. For example, punishments are stimulants to moral behavior. Physical evils, such as diseases, are not evil to wise man indifferent to them and are just universe parts.
Mind
Consciousness, subjective self, and independent personality are immaterial and together make thoughts. Consciousness unifies perceptions, feelings, and will and relates to reason.
People's pneuma spirit of reason is part of, and depends on, God's universal reason. Pneuma relates to fire and warmth. Soul unifies body and holds ideas, judgments, and desires. At death, soul leaves body and rejoins universal pneuma.
Senses, speech, and reproduction are other body forces.
Politics
Society naturally results from man's nature, because reason is in each person equally. Reason unites and rules community. Duty, self-control, individual worth, obedience to law, brotherhood, love for all people, justice, and devotion to community are good.
Philosophy emphasized sciences and conduct of life. Philosophical centers moved from Athens to Rhodes, Pergamon (Pergamum), Alexandria, Tarsus, Rome, Antioch, and Byzantium.
He lived -335 to -268 and was Lyceum leader after Theophrastus [-287 to -270]. Falling objects accelerate. Objects have different weights because they have different-size voids {doctrine of the void} {void doctrine}. There are no gods or supernatural forces, and world is mechanistic.
School started in New Academy and Stoic Schools and included Diogenes of Apollonia, Hippo, Archelaus, and Cleidemus. It fused Plato, Aristotle, and Stoics. Roman philosophers continued it.
School had eclectic followers of Plato and included Philo of Larissa, Antiochus of Ascalon, Arius Didymus, and Thrasyllus. Romans destroyed it during fall of Athens.
School included Panaetius, Posidonius, and Melengar. It developed stoicism into newer philosophy {Syncretism, Stoicism} {Stoic Syncretism}.
He was Peripatetic and edited Aristotle's works into logic, physics, and ethics categories [-70].
School had followers of Aristotle and included Andronicus, Adrastus, Themistius, and Aristocles. Pure Form is not transcendent, separate, and independent of actual things but is immanent in things and so can form and move matter.
School included Cicero, Aelius Stilo, Varro, Quintus Tubero, Mucius Scaevola, Rutilius Rufus, Diogenes Laertius, Polybius, Seneca, the slave Epictetus, Epictetus' pupil Arrian, and Marcus Aurelius. Self-improvement has stages of reaching virtue. Virtue is an end in itself, which always brings happiness.
Apollonius of Tyana founded school that included Philo, Nicomachus, Moderatus, and Plutarch. People cannot describe God. Matter is sinful. Human spirit and divine spirit are from God. God is above spiritual world. God is infinite and has no qualities.
Quintus Sextus founded school that included his son Quintus Sextus and Sotion.
He was Peripatetic.
He was Peripatetic.
School included Alexander of Aphrodisias, Porphyry or Porphyrus Malchus, John Philoponus, and Simplicius. Mental and spiritual qualities are not material, so matter can conflict with reason, God, and mind.
He was Peripatetic Commentator on Aristotle.
He was Middle Platonist.
Plutarch of Chaeronen or Plutarch the Younger founded school that included Gaius, Apuleius, Syrianus, Hierocles, Severus, Attieus, Cronius, Harpocration, Hermius, Proclus, Isidorus, Numenius, Simplicius, Alcinous, Albinus, Apollonius of Tyana, Nemesius, Philostratus, Eunapius, and Marinus.
Ammonius Saccas founded school that included Herennius, Longinus, non-Christian Origen, Amelius, Porphyry, and Plotinus.
He lived 185 to 250 and was Neo-Platonist.
He lived 250 to 326 and was Syrian Neo-Platonist.
Iamblichus founded school that included Dexippus, Sallustius, and Themistius.
Aedesius was Iamblichus' student and founded a Neo-Platonic school that included Julian the Apostate.
He lived 332 to 363, was Eastern Roman Empire emperor [361 to 363], and was Neo-Platonist.
He lived 347 to 419, refounded Alexandrian School, and was Proclus' student.
Augustine founded school that included Ambrose.
Ammonius refounded school that included Simplicius, Olympiodorus, and Hypatia of Alexandria.
He lived 410 to 485, was non-Christian Neoplatonist, and led revived Academy.
Epistemology
The idea of God is the simplest concept, because God is the most general premise.
Metaphysics
Nature is divisions of the idea of God into lower classes. Particular things retain idea of class but also differentiate from class, by methods of abiding, procession, and return {triad, class methods}. Particular tries to return to class, and actual world tries to reunite with God.
School included Marcianus Capella, Cassiodorus, Isidorus of Seville, Beda or Venerable Bede, Johannes Philoponus, and Paschasius Radbertus.
Boethius founded school that included Hilary, Claudianus, Mamertus, and Vincent of Lerius.
He lived 490 to 560 and was Commentator on Aristotle.
John Damascenes founded school.
School included Gerhart of Aurillac.
School included Rabanus Maurus, Eric or Heiricus of Auxerre, and Remi or Remigus of Auxerre.
School included Lanfranc.
School included Adelmann and Alger. Liège is in French-speaking Belgium.
Gerbert of Aurillac or Pope Sylvester II [? to 1003], was Odo of Cluny's student, taught at Cathedral School of Rheims, and was Pope [999 to 1003].
School included Chalcidius, Macrobius, Aratus, and Lucan.
School included Bovo of Saxony.
School included Alcuin of York. Charlemagne founded it.
School included Noktar Labeo.
School included Fredigesus and Berengar.
Bede founded school.
School included Avicenna, Mutakallimoun [-700 to -800], Mutazilites (Wazil), Averroës (Ibn Rashd), al-Kindi, Askari, al-Farabi, al-Gazel, Avempace, al-Ash'ari, Abubacer, David of Dinant, Amalrich of Bena, Joachim of Fiore (Joachim Floris), Athir al-Din Abhari, and Dabiran Qazvini.
Epistemology
Material-world knowledge is individual.
Ethics
God knows everything but does not cause or force human behavior.
Metaphysics
God is the only substance. Things are in God. Individuals are part of the whole and can passively receive universals, truth, and reason from God. All matter thus unifies. Matter holds its Form inside itself. Matter has eternal motion, without outside force.
He lived 700 to 751 and founded Damascene School.
School included Photius, Michael Psellos, Michael of Ephesus, Johannes Italus, Eustratius, Michael Italicos, Nicophorus Blemmychios, George Pachymeras, George Acropolites, Joseph, Theodore Medtochites, and Nicophorus Gregoras.
He lived 810 to 877 and was neo-Platonist.
Epistemology
Reason and faith are both sources of truth.
Ethics
Sin is to think something is good or right if it is not.
Metaphysics
Universals are essential reality and produce and have within themselves all particular objects. Reality has four parts: uncreated and creating, created and creating, created and not creating, and uncreated and not creating. Material world is lowest reality, created but not creating. Higher concepts are higher forms of reality. The only universal concept is God, who has no particular qualities, eternally produces all things, and has them within itself. God is the purpose of all things. Logos unites all things to God. There is no predestination.
School included Fulbert.
He lived 994 to 1064 and began romanticism and troubadour style. He studied comparative religion, listing sects, heterodoxies, and denominations. He wrote first systematic critical Old-and-New-Testament studies.
He lived 1018 to 1096 and was Platonist.
He lived 1058 to 1111 and developed method of criticizing hypotheses and assumptions. Intellect cannot attain ultimate truth.
School included Hugo of St. Victor, Richard of St. Victor, and Walter of St. Victor.
He lived 1110 to 1185.
School emphasized science and included Alexander Neckam, Alfred of Sereschal, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, Witelo, and Dietrich of Vriburg.
School included William of Auvergne, Henry of Ghent, Richard of Middletown, William de la Mare, and Aegydius of Colonna. Moral law comes from God and is in each person. If people know moral law clearly, they follow it.
In medieval times, religion and philosophy began to separate. Physical facts and argument simplicity became important. Scholasticism results conflicted with Catholic Church doctrine. Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas used Augustinian metaphysics, Neo-Platonic ideas, and Aristotle's ideas to make systematic philosophy conforming to Roman Catholic faith {Thomism, Catholic}.
School included Nicoletto Vernias, Alexander Achillini, Augustine Nifo, Zimara, Peter of Abano, Siger of Brabant, Vico, Mercator, Boetias of Sweden, John of Jandun, and Bernier of Nevilles.
He lived 1175 to 1253, was Bishop of Lincoln [1240 to 1253], was Augustinian, and translated Aristotle.
School included Symeon, Gregory Palomas, Nicholas Cobasdas, Sophonias, John Pediosimas, Leo Magentius, Demetrius Kydonis, Georgios Pletho, and Theodorus Gaza.
He lived 1240 to 1281 and led Latin Averroism.
He lived 1200 to 1265 and was of Arabian philosophy.
He lived 1242 to 1307 and was Platonist.
He lived ? to 1276 and was of Shaf'i school of Arabian philosophy. He discussed logic, inheritance laws, and art of debate {munazara}.
He lived 1250 to 1293 and was Platonist, Augustinian, Avicennian, and Aristotelian.
School included Marsiglio of Padua, Michael Psellos, and Dante.
School had Franciscans and included Duns Scotus, Bonaventura, William of Ockham, Francis of Mayro or Meyronnes, Thomas Bradwardine, Matthew of Aquasparta, John of Mirecourt, John of Ripa, and Louis of Padua.
He lived 1280 to 1342 and was Terminist. He argued in favor of city-states, against factions and pope.
School included George Plethon, Basilius Bessarion, Marsilio Ficino, Francesco Patrizzi, Guillaume Postel, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Florentine Academy, Amaury Bouchard, Fevre de la Boderie, Baldassore Castiglione, Leon Hebreo, Pontus de Tyard, and Ronsard.
He lived 1355 to 1452 and was neo-Platonist. Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaeologus, Plethon, Plethon's student Johannes Bessarion, and George Scholarios attended Council of Ferrara [1438] to try to unify east and west churches. He taught about Plato in Florence [1438].
School included Georgius of Trebizond, Theodorus Gaza, Rudolf Agricola, and Jacques Lefevre.
He lived 1360 to 1444 and was follower of Maimonides.
He lived 1403 to 1472, was neo-Platonist, and was archbishop of Nicaea and patriarch of Constantinople.
School included Rudolf Agricola, Lorenzo Valla or Laurentius Valla, Ludovico Vives, Leon Hebreo, Marius Nizolius, Pierre de la Ramee, and Acontio.
Renaissance emphasized physical world more and inner life less. Neo-Platonism, Thomism, Averroism, Alexandrism, Aristotelian, magic, astrology, necromancy, dream interpretation, religious ecstasy, and alchemy flourished.
He lived 1433 to 1499, was neo-Platonist, and translated all of Plato. Love {Platonic love} can be spiritual and god-like.
He lived 1463 to 1494 and was neo-Platonist. All systems have shared truths.
Political and legal philosophers included Niccolo Machiavelli, Albericius Gentilis, Thomas More, Hugo Grotius (Huig van Groot), Hobbes, Suarez, Robert Bellarmin, Maariana, Cesare Beccaria, Antonio Genovesi, Faetano Filangeri, Samuel Puffendorf, Jean Bodin, Johannes Althus, Buchan, Herbert of Cherbury, Richard Cumberland, Languet, Philip Melanchthon, J. Oldendorf, Nicolaus Hemming, Ben Winkler, and Étienne de la Boetie.
He lived 1462 to 1525 and was Aristotelian. Philosophy does not support Christianity.
He lived 1484 to 1566 and was for Native American rights.
School included Jacopo Zabarella, Andreas Caesalpinus, Cesara Cremonini, and Galland.
School included Pierre Charron, Montaigne, Pierre Gassendi, Pietro Pomponazzi, Vanini, Bruno, and Campanella. It was skeptical and atheist or deist. Divine revelation is false. Religions are human creations. Neither heaven nor hell exists. Life and history do not exhibit progress. Souls are mortal.
School included Joest Lips (Justus Lipsius), Guillaume Du Vair, Caspar Schoppe, Sennert, Sebastain Basso, Johannes Magnenus, Claude de Berigard, Pierre Gassendi, Emanuel Maignanus, and Leonicus Thomaeus. Joest Lips was Stoic.
He lived 1509 to 1588 and was of Philosophy of Nature school.
In Baroque era, philosophy began to depend on mathematics, science, and scientific method in England, France, and Netherlands, not on superstition, animism, and teleology. Philosophy emphasized individual, objectivity, and commerce.
He lived 1618 to 1652 and was Cambridge Platonist.
Cornelius Jansen founded it. School had followers of Descartes and included Blaise Pascal, Anton Arnauld, and Pierre Nicole.
He lived 1614 to 1687 and was Cambridge Platonist.
He lived 1592 to 1655 and opposed Aristotelianism. He believed in atomism, non-determinism, and empiricism.
School included Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, John Smith, Theophilus Gale, and Thomas Gale. It opposed religious emotionalism and favored rational religion.
Ethics
Morality is rational understanding of God's ideas. It is not about will.
There are altruistic motives.
Metaphysics
World has purpose but has no predestination or original sin.
Mind
Mind is primary, to account for consciousness. Matter is secondary.
Politics
People have social motives.
He lived 1617 to 1680 and was Cambridge Platonist.
He lived 1670 to 1722, was Deist, and was free thinker. People can speak and write in forms {exoteric writing} for most people or in forms {esoteric writing} for scholars. Religion should have no mysteries. Deism emphasizes duty, modesty, charity, and tolerance. God is in all things.
He lived 1647 to 1706. Nobody can know absolute truth, so faith must have constraints, and people should have religious tolerance. Reason can know its duty. Conscience knows ethical truths intuitively and immediately, though they are not innate. Ethical truths are the same for all people.
He lived 1676 to 1729 and was deist and freethinker.
Christian Wolff founded school that included G. B. Bilfinger, M. Knutzen, J. C. Gottschad, and Alexander Baumgarten.
He lived 1668 to 1744. Things known to be true by people are the same as things created by people, an idea that influenced German Romanticism. People's thinking differs at different history stages. Development processes in individuals are similar to history processes. Both mature and then decay. Society developed from human nature. Individual creations create society, so society depends on all people at that time and place.
He lived 1712 to 1778.
Education
There should be education for all, to perfect people and let them use their talents. Teachers should not restrain or indoctrinate but arrange child's environment so child can learn. Children should be able to play, learn, and enjoy life. Children should not have to be under society's rules but be free and so good.
Epistemology
Mind's basic quality is feeling or sentiment, not ideas or their combinations.
Ethics
Natural people are without good or evil. Human nature and natural motives are good. Natural states of feeling and self should be the basis for civilization. Society corrupts by envy, competition, and status. Knowledge and culture have removed people from their true nature and living style, separated them from nature, and corrupted them, mainly through property institutions. Property makes self-interest the motive for life, but this is not natural. Emotion and anarchy contain good and allow freedom. Religion should be from the heart, relying on conscience.
Metaphysics
Nature is good and simple.
Mind
Mind is self-directed unified personality, not just mechanical activities.
Politics
State results from contract {social contract, Rousseau} that expresses collective will among people to provide government services for common interest. Contract applies equally to all citizens, who give all their rights to community. Liberty, fraternity, and equality should result. People make social contracts and can change them any time. Government rules by governed's consent {compact theory, Rousseau}, an idea from ancient Greece.
Authoritarian society is bad. Most laws are to maintain superior-subordinate relations between people. "Man is born free, but everywhere is in chains."
All people are equal. Government and education should offset economic and institution inequalities among people.
Majority should rule. Constitution should allow as much personal freedom as possible, so talents can develop. Small city-states with democracy are best. Larger states need elected legislatures. There should be no institutions except state, because their interests will conflict with state's interests. If there must be other institutions, there should be many, so they will neutralize each other.
He lived 1694 to 1778 and was skeptical, rationalist, freethinking, libertarian, and deist. He criticized institutions and upheld justice. He said, "If God did not exist, he would have to be invented."
Epistemology
Mental powers have limits.
Politics
Religious freedom is necessary {écrasez l'infame}.
School included Quesnay and Turgot.
He lived 1713 to 1784 and was philosophe.
School included Rousseau.
School included Moses Mendelssohn, F. Nicolai, J. A. Eberhard, J. B. Basedow, Thomas Abbot, J. J. Engel, J. J. H. Feder, C. Meiners, C. Garve, Frederick the Great, Lessing, Herder, Johann von Schiller, Frans Hemsterhuis, and Johann G. Hamann.
Romanticism emphasized heroism, emotion, power, duty, revolution, and self-sacrifice. Sympathy, sensibility, and sensitivity were the paramount feelings. Beauty and feeling were more important than utility. Romanticism was anti-commercial and anti-industrial. Romanticism emphasized concrete not abstract, various not uniform, infinite not finite, nature not civilization, organic not mechanical, freedom not duty or law, individual not average, genius not hard-working, culture not international, feeling not thought, emotion not reason, imagination not ordinary, and intuition not deduction.
Thomas Reid founded school that included James Oswald, James Beattie, Dugald Stewart, and Buffier. It emphasized common sense.
Aesthetics
Arts are useful for refining and perfecting people. Order, regularity, and unity relate to goodness and beauty. The beautiful inspires love and social feelings. The sublime is beautiful, has awe or terror, has no pain, and is great.
Epistemology
Basic and first mental contents are judgments, complex ideas, internal states, and general ideas.
Self-evident truths {commonsense truth} come from mind's nature and are actual and universal mental contents.
Ethics
Feeling is natural, original, and pure knowledge source. The good and the beautiful arouse same feelings and cause them in same way. Feelings are transition or halfway point between sense and desire satisfaction and moral and intellectual joys.
He lived 1721 to 1790 and was romantic.
He lived 1723 to 1789.
School included Paul-Henri Holbach, Grimm, and Helvetius. It was atheistic and materialistic. Nature has no purpose, order, or value, and so reality is indifferent to people. Government should promote social cooperation to maximize happiness.
He lived 1729 to 1786 and was follower of Leibniz and friend of Kant. He translated Pentateuch into German. Beauty is people's imitation of God's unity. People should act to progress.
School included Richard Price.
School included Friedrich H. Jacobi, F. Koppen, G. E. Schulze, J. G. Hamann, J. G. Herder, and Bardili.
He lived 1772 to 1801 and was of Schelling School.
He lived 1770 to 1823.
School included Chateaubriand, Joseph de Maistre, J. Frayasinons, V. G. A. de Bonald, P. S. Ballanche, and H. F. R. de Lamennais.
Branch included Daube, P. Laromiguiere, F. Thurot, F. J. V. Broussais, and J. J. Cardaillac. Another branch included M. J. Degerando, P. G. Maine de Biran, Ampere, P. Prevost, Ancillon, Royer-Collard, and Jouffroy.
School included Barthez, M. F. X. Bichat, Bertrand, Buisson, and Bordeu.
School included P. Pinel, F. J. V. Broussais, and F. J. Gall.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling founded school that included Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis or Friedrich von Hardenburg, K. W. F. Solger, L. Oken, H. Steffens, G. H. Schubert, F. Baader, and K. C. F. Krause.
J. F. Herbart founded school that included M. Drobisch, R. Zimmermann, L. Strumpell, and T. Ziller.
He lived 1767 to 1829 and was Ontologist.
He lived 1753 to 1821 and was Traditionalist.
School included Kuno Fischer, Wilhelm Windelband, and Ernst Troeltsch.
School included Thomas Carlyle, Fichte, and Byron.
School included Dugald Stewart, James Mackintosh, Abercrombie, Chalmers, H. Calderwood, S. Morell, H. Wedgwood, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Thomas Carlyle, J. Herschel, William Whewell, and William R. Hamilton.
School included J. Marah, L. P. Hickok, J. H. Selye, William T. Harris, Josiah Royce, G. T. Ladd, B. P. Bowne, James Mark Baldwin, G. S. Hall, J. Ward, Shadworth H. Hodgson, J. Sully, George F. Stout, George Romanes, Lloyd Morgan, and William E. Hocking.
He lived 1820 to 1903 and was determinist. He developed a system {Social Darwinism} of thought and reality based on evolution. He promoted and defended Darwin's theory. He believed in human progress, as necessary to natural, organic society development. He emphasized individualism, laissez-faire economics, energy, optimism, and confidence.
Epistemology
Thinking relates two things {synthetic philosophy}, and so it is only real for phenomena. Outside phenomena, both science and religion have unknowables.
Homogeneous things are unstable. Multiplying effects and segregating things lead to heterogeneity.
Incongruity between actual and expected explains humor {incongruity theory} [1860].
Ethics
Doing good makes life longer and better, integrates group more, and coordinates life better. Ethics depends on society type. Laissez-faire economics is good. In evolution, pleasure associates with good, and pain associates with bad. Evolution determines morality. Ethics involves adapting, without preventing others from adapting.
Metaphysics
Nature always seeks equilibrium and always becomes more diverse. Adaptation leads to acquiring new characteristics, which can evolve. Evolution is matter integration and motion dissipation, moving from homogeneity to coordinated heterogeneity. Dissolution is opposite of evolution. Life is continuous adjustment to external by internal. Survival of fittest and struggle for existence are life principles.
Politics
Societies move toward perfection by evolution, like organism. Religious-military-monarchy and industrial-peaceful-democracy are the two society types.
School included James Martineau, F. W. Newman, Gallory, G. T. Wald, A. C. Fraser, Thedo Ruyssen, Eduard le Ray, J. B. Baillie, John Mairland, H. H. Joachim, James H. Stirling, T. H. Green, J. B. S. Haldane, F. H. Bradley, Bernard Bosanquet, J. Caird, Leon Olle-Laprune, Maurice Blondel, Laberthinniere, E. Caird, S. Jevons, J. Mackenzie, W. Carr, John Grote, James Ward, and J. M. E. McTaggart.
He lived 1813 to 1866 and was Idealist.
School included E. Haeckel.
He lived 1833 to 1871 and was Optimist, materialist, positivist, atheist, and utopian.
He lived 1817 to 1878.
Nietzsche founded school.
School included Charles Bernard Renouvier, Pillon, L. Pont, Octave Hamelin, Victor Brochard, Lionel Dauriac, J. J. Gourd, Louis Laird, and F. Evellin.
School included Antoine Cournot, Keynes, Alfred Fouillee, Jean Guyau, Freud, Jung, Alfred Adler, Havelock Ellis, Tarde, LePlay, Durkheim, Espinas, Levy-Bruhl, Duguit, Belot, and Essertier.
He lived 1854 to 1924 and was of Marburg School of Immanent Philosophy.
School included Tanabe Hajime, Watsuji Tetsuro, and Nishitani Keiji.
He lived 1874 to 1928 and was New Realist.
Ethics
Values are objective. Values are about sensation, beauty, religion, and nobility, not about reason.
Perhaps, people are perfect beings that have fallen from God's grace, animals with reason, evolved animals, beings that can control their lives and environments, or beings that have lost purpose and motivation.
Human nature causes all cultural products.
Politics
Bourgeoisie have resentment toward their station.
He lived 1873 to 1966, was Idealist, and was Royce's student.
School included Ralph Barton Perry, William P. Montague, E. B. Holt, Russell, Edward Husserl, Max Scheler, R. Adamson, Ralph Barton Perry, G. E. Moore, Samuel Alexander, and Shadworth H. Hodgson.
He lived 1880 to 1973 and was Critical Realist.
School included Georg Lukacs and Karl Markheim.
He lived 1903 to 1969, was of Frankfurt School, and studied authoritarian personality. He used dialectical thinking to negate other's ideas.
Aesthetics
Art is not social or political. It is illusion and expresses freedom.
Ethics
People can have middle-class values, condemn value violators, apply values absolutely, emphasize power and authority, deny sexual motives, believe others have strong sexual motives, tend to exploit others, have feelings of being exploited, use stereotyped thinking, and use projection defense mechanism {authoritarian personality, Adorno}.
Metaphysics
Something mediates everything. Nothing is absolute. Reality has things that people cannot conceive.
He lived 1892 to 1940 and was of Frankfurt School. Art theory comes from art examples {immanent criticism, Benjamin}. People experience fading of aura {Verfall der Aura}. Mass media are good.
He lived 1884 to 1978 and studied medieval philosophy.
She lived 1909 to 1943 and was Existentialist, Platonist, and Catholic.
He lived 1902 to 2001. Universe is only one of many possible worlds, which can exist or not exist. God is the efficient cause that keeps universe in being and keeps it from nothingness. Government can restrict freedom of speech as to timing, location, and form and by laws against libel, slander, incitement, hate, and harming minors.
He lived 1917 to 1981.
Ethics
Moral truths pretend to objectivity, but there are no objective moral truths {error theory of value} {error theory of moral values}. Morals are subjective and should serve subjective purposes.
That evil exists, God is only good, and God is omnipotent are logically inconsistent.
Epistemology
Causes are effect conditions. Causes are always event combinations, and no single event can necessitate effect. Cause is a necessary but insufficient part of an unnecessary but sufficient condition {INUS condition}.
He lived 1921 to ?.
Epistemology
Intuitive judgments about cases build up principles, to compare to judgments, to converge on principles {reflective equilibrium}.
Ethics
If people do not know about life, culture, or themselves, they have equal concern for all.
Politics
Justice depends on fairness and equality in all social and economic areas. People should have equal liberty and maximum liberty. People should have equal opportunity. However, society should allow inequalities in jobs and power if poor become richer than when everyone is equal {difference principle}. Rights are more important than goods.
He lived 1938 to ?.
Epistemology
Beliefs are knowledge if true and if non-belief does not somehow require original belief. However, people cannot judge either truth or what required non-belief is. People often choose something now, rather than wait for something equal or better in future {time preference}, because they discount future benefits as less probable.
Ethics
Morality is about mental processes and current actions, not about action results, reasons, or purposes.
Politics
People have rights, free exercise of rights leads to the most-productive society, and governments should be minimal to preserve liberties {libertarianism, Nozick}. If society has ideal income pattern and if good basketball player plays to gain the most, exercise his rights and freedom, and reach his ideal, income pattern will alter away from ideal {Wilt Chamberlain argument}. Therefore, liberty and equality can conflict. All ideals are possibly in conflict.
He reviewed representational, identity, intentional, external, and informational theories.
He lived 1445 to 1514. Ratios relate to beauty.
He lived 1714 to 1762 and studied art and nature of beauty.
German idealism and literature started from ideas about aesthetics.
School included Baumgarten.
He lived 1772 to 1829 and compared classic poetry to romantic poetry using Romantic School of Criticism. Beauty is an Idea manifested in matter. Irony can oppose finite {appearance, Schlegel} to infinite {Idea, Schlegel} {infinite, Schlegel}, as in Romantic poetry.
He lived 1825 to 1889. People should express what they feel {emotive theory of art, Veron}.
She lived 1895 to 1985 and studied music aesthetics. Music causes structured feeling, with symbols that have no specific meaning. Structural differences between language and music make language unable to express musical feelings.
He lived 1866 to 1952 and was idealist.
Aesthetics
Art is individual and not categorizable but embodies universals in individuality. Art is to make beautiful objects embodying artist feelings. Art involves imagination, which conceives images to express subjects or objects. It needs no skill. Art enjoyment comes from pleasure that people feel inside as they form same perfect underlying image that they observe.
Epistemology
People use intuition to know particular things and other things that have no concepts.
Metaphysics
Spirit has four aspects: aesthetic, economic, ethical, and logical.
He lived 1848 to 1923 and was Idealist. Whole needs both beautiful and ugly. The beautiful and ugly can have social or moral value. Society defines self.
He lived 1888 to 1943 and wrote about aesthetics.
He lived 1906 to ? and studied part and whole relations {mereology, Goodman}.
Aesthetics
General theories of symbols can explain art. Art can be allographic or autographic, based on meaning.
Epistemology
Phenomena have basic sensory units, from which experiences are made. Classes with same elements are the same, no matter their names. Regularities in nature are not necessarily useful for prediction, because predictions can depend on changes that people know will happen at future times {new riddle of induction}. Regularities up until now confirm the predictions that there will be no change and that something will change at time in the future {grue}. Only unchanging predictions can use regularities. Conditional can have false antecedent (counterfactual). False antecedent is typically false because it is hypothetical.
He lived 1915 to 1985.
Aesthetics
People can interpret artworks using creator's intentions, but should not. Works can contain only some aspects of creator intentions and not contain others {intentional fallacy}. People should study texts using only the words {new criticism}, not author intentions, history, feelings, or beliefs.
Epistemology
Truth is only in the text, because author had no intentions, feelings, or historical knowledge or used only part of them.
He lived 1909 to 2001. Repetitions and symmetries are appealing, because they allow prediction, control, and survival.
He lived 1923 to 1996. No criteria or assumption should apply to aesthetics.
He lived 1924 to ?. Art uses different numerical identification than used in factual statements. Art has complex properties that are not expressible in scientific terms.
He lived 1923 to 2003. Painting and sculpture have different aesthetics than literature and music, because they have different compositional principles and structural forms.
He lived 1924 to 1976. Aesthetic behavior relates to exploratory behavior.
He lived 1895 to 1985. History and culture affect arts {institutional theory of art, Dickie}.
He lived 1924 to ?. Art is about physical and material individual objects. Material object expresses {embodiment} emergent properties about interpretations and intentions. Intentions can be numerous and conflict.
Before Socrates, Ionian Philosophers {Milesian Nature Philosophers}, and Sophists later, used rational inquiry based on observation and inference, rejected human or divine authority, and studied mind, soul, and psyche. Only matter exists. Things change. Objects have properties that change affects. Matter changes by change.
He lived -624 to -547, described Babylonian geometry for calculating heights and distances, was first known Western philosopher and scientist, and began Milesian School (Ionian School). He founded Greek geometry, astronomy, and philosophy. He formalized empirical measuring techniques by making axioms and proving theorems. He studied static electricity.
Epistemology
Experience and thought are different. Experience can be illusory or ambiguous, because objects are too small, sense organs are faulty, or people perceive something that is not there. Thought can be opinion or fact.
Metaphysics
Water is common principle of universe.
School included Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, and Melissus. Only deduction from accepted principles and ideas can reveal truth, not sensations. Only identities are true, because world is one unified thing, so no relations are possible. All other principles can reduce to contradictions {reductio ad absurdum, Eleatic}.
He lived -560 to -470. He believed in one god, which was not a person but was god-like and reasonable. People can only know their experience but can form opinions about other ideas.
He lived -444 to -371, founded Cynic school, and influenced Diogenes. Contradiction is impossible.
He lived -515 to -450, was Eleatic, and wrote first reasoning from premises to conclusions.
Epistemology
Thinking exists and uses objects that exist. Truths can only be about things that exist. Truths name states. False statements name nothing and have no meaning. People can use same word at all times. Therefore, object must always exist, so nothing changes. Thought content is unchanging substance, because all thoughts are about something, and people can think about all beings. Non-Being cannot be thought about or exist. Plurality and empty space are only appearance, not truth.
Metaphysics
Existence is eternal, unified, unchanging, perfect, real, material, homogeneous, and finite. Existence fills space. Space is not empty but is substance. Objects have substance, which persists or exists, and in which qualities and predicates inhere. Change is an illusion.
He lived -495 to -435, associated with Parmenides, and founded Eleatic School. He invented the dialectic and invented paradoxes about infinite numbers of steps and changes. The paradoxes arise because they divide continuous motion into infinite steps, but the infinite is not real.
To go finite length, one must go through half, then half of that, and so on, through infinite number of steps or points {Dichotomy} {Racecourse}.
If tortoise has head start, Achilles arrives at tortoise starting point only after tortoise has left, so Achilles can never catch up to tortoise {Achilles and the Tortoise}.
Because no movement can happen through instant, at any instant, arrow is at fixed position, so arrow is at rest. At next instant, arrow is also at fixed position and at rest {The Arrow}.
Assume one row stands still, second row moves left in one instant, and third row moves right in the same instant. Second and third rows move one distance unit and are two units apart. The second and third rows were one unit apart at "half-instant". Because instant is the smallest time, no relative motion can really happen {Stadium} {Moving Rows} {Row of Solids}.
Metaphysics
Real motion does not exist. The sum of an infinite number of infinitely small quantities can equal either zero or infinity, and so both a finite and infinite number. Finite and infinite numbers are unlike each other, so such sums are both like and unlike, which should be impossible. Things can divide or bind infinitely, and so size can be both zero and infinite. Zero and infinite are unlike, so objects are both like and unlike themselves, which should be impossible. The paradoxes show motion is impossible. No motion can happen, because motion must pass through an infinite number of points to get from one point to another. At any instant, motion is infinitely small. If space and time are divisible, motion is impossible and cannot start.
Motion amount is relative, because measurement differs in different reference frames. Only one real thing exists.
He lived -490 to -420, founded Sophist School, wrote book about argumentation, and was skeptic. Older Sophists were Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and Prodicus.
Epistemology
Perceptions differ from actual objects. People can know perception contents but cannot know objects. Perceptions depend on moving elements. Perception differences depend on moving-element speed and direction differences. People perceive objects in individual ways. Perceptions are true but only for that person at that time. It is impossible to prove errors and contradictions. Therefore, man is the measure of all things.
Perceptions include feelings and desires, so ideas of good and worth are also individual.
The only true knowledge is perception. People cannot know about gods.
Ethics
People have a sense of justice and a sense of respect for ethical behavior, which is like sense of reverence. These feelings cause people to form societies for self-preservation. Society helps people live in harsh world, and virtues help society. Ethics must be about action consequences and possible alternative actions.
Politics
Nature requires that things should develop, control, and express all possibilities and desires. People should follow only impulses and desires, to reach goals and express personality. However, strongest-group or strongest-party interests determine moral and political law. Ruling class invented gods. In democracy, laws protect the weak. In other government forms, laws protect ruling class. Moral and political laws are against law of nature for most people in society. Therefore, one should only obey law if it is advantageous.
Protagoras, Isocrates, Hecataeus, Herodotus, Thucydides, Thrasymachus, Gorgias, Gorgias' student Callicles, Hippias, Prodicus, Cratylus, and Antiphon studied human nature, behavior, thinking processes, grammar, and semantics and criticized society.
Epistemology
Skilled public speaking and rhetoric can prove almost anything, so people must maintain skepticism. People cannot prove opinion but can prove that one opinion is better than others.
Ethics
Individuals are valuable. Knowledgeable people are useful and successful, so education is important.
Politics
Nobility, slavery, bad treatment of women, and unequal education and property are bad. People must obey laws.
He lived -470 to -399 and emphasized moderation, friendship, and courage. He claimed he knew nothing. He criticized Sophists for word play, smugness, paradox, imitation, and failing to examine their ideas.
Epistemology
Knowledge need be only about practical life and relations with others. All other knowledge is unnecessary to live proper life.
Truth is absolute. No one can know final truth or have real knowledge, and obtaining this insight is the beginning of knowledge {Socratic irony, Socrates}.
Concept is the common part among perceptions or opinions about something. To reveal concept essence, clarify perceptions and opinions and make them consistent. Socrates did this using inductive argument. He questioned others, got them to agree on facts, drew out definitions, found contradictions and fallacies, found incomplete ideas and completed them, ended false beliefs, obtained understanding, and reached agreed conclusions {Socratic method, Socrates} {method of elenchus, Socrates} {method of refutation, Socrates}.
Socratic method modified Sophist debating contests.
Ethics
Absolute good exists. The good is what is useful, profitable, or suited to the purpose in subject or activity.
The good requires conformity to law even if law is unjust. People must suffer wrong rather than do wrong to overcome suffering.
Knowledge teaches what is good and then proper action {virtue, Socrates} always follows, because doing good is the most advantageous for one's interests and purposes. "Knowledge is virtue." If one has knowledge, one automatically does the good, so no one does wrong intentionally {Socratic paradox}. Error causes doing wrong.
Seeking knowledge, and especially self-knowledge, is an ethical duty, because it leads to virtue. Self-examination and questioning give self-knowledge. "Know thyself." People can make themselves be excellent and function well {arete}.
Friendship is helping each other to be better.
Fear of death is not wise, because death can be greater good, such as eternal dreamless sleep or new world for immortal soul. However, no soul or life exists after death.
Inner voice warns people when not to do something, especially about things too hard for knowledge.
He lived -483 to -376, was Sophist, and was Empedocles' pupil. Knowing and communicating object information is impossible, because thoughts and language are not the same as objects, and thoughts are not the same as language. Being is impossible, because the ideas of being and non-being contradict each other.
School had followers of Socrates and included Phaedo and Menedemus.
He lived -404 to -323 and was Cynic. He lived simply, with only cloak and sack, and lived in a tub before enslavement. He attacked vice, corruption, and folly. He kept looking for one virtuous man, while holding up his lantern. He told Alexander the Great to get out of his light.
He said, "You cannot step twice into the same river".
Pyrrho founded school that included Plutarch, Bryso, Nauriphanes, Philo of Athens, Mencelus, Aristo, and Bion. Different appearance from different perspective can challenge appearance. New appearance requires fact, which also has different appearances or itself requires fact, and so to infinity. Therefore, no belief is knowledge, so there should be no beliefs about non-obvious things. People should not worry about beliefs and live life tranquilly.
He lived -365 to -270 and was the first Skeptic. His student was Timon of Phlius [-320 to -230].
Epistemology
Knowledge cannot be certain, so people must suspend judgment and action {epoché}. Philosophy can find true nature of things and people's relations to objects, so people can know all action gains or losses. People cannot know true nature of things, only their feelings. People cannot know gain or loss and cannot choose correct action. People thus cannot really have passion or error. People should not worry {ataraxia, Pyrrho}, because beliefs are just as true as opposite beliefs, with no need to judge.
He lived -371 to -287, led Lyceum after Aristotle [-322 to -287], and studied cosmology and botany. The conclusion cannot be stronger than the weakest premise.
He opposed the Master Argument. Ability to state a predicate makes it possible. A statement implies another if first statement is false or second statement is true {material implication, Philo}.
He developed liar paradox and masked man paradox {Eubulides paradox, Eubulides}. "This statement is false."
School included Polynemus, Leontium, and Idomeneus. Only perceptions are knowledge, so knowledge comes by making observations. No causal theories are true.
He lived -315 to -284, was of Megarian school, and worked on logic. Nothing is possible that neither is nor will be true {Master Argument} [-294 to -284]. The possible either is true or will be true. Possibility is impossible, because only actual is certainly possible. A possible that does not become real proves itself impossible. Only actual or impossible can happen. Impossible cannot result from possible. All past truths are necessary.
School had followers of Plato and included the skeptics Arcesilaus of Pitane, Lacydes, Carneades, Diocles, Clitomachus, and Metrodorus. Sensations can be false, because true and false ones are the same to senses. Concepts or ideas have truth probability based on reasonableness and aptness. People can gain enough confidence to use it for action. Belief is greater if idea can relate to other ideas and experience, without contradiction. People should suspend judgment.
He lived 1866 to 1938 and was Brentano's student. Phenomenon has content and object. The object of thought is not in the thought, which has different content type. All thoughts are about objects, but objects do not have to exist. Actions differ from products.
He lived -315 to -240, was skeptic, and led Middle Academy [-268 to -240].
He lived -280 to -207, was third Stoic leader, and invented formal propositional logic.
School included Aenesidemus, Agrippa, and Lucian.
Epistemology
Effects have many possible causes, but people select only one, without sufficient reason. People ignore experience that disproves the cause. Perception is the only basis for finding causal sequence, so people should use only directly perceived cause, not general premise or law. Using material or immaterial force to explain cause is not good, because you must explain force. Using contact is not good, because you must define contact. The idea that causes are motion transfers has no clear definition. Time relations can be variable and relative. Nothing in itself is cause or effect. It only becomes cause in actual relation, so there cannot be an absolute cause, such as God.
He lived -214 to -129 and was skeptic. No premise is immediately certain, so people cannot know premise truth, so it is impossible to prove deductions. Knowledge is persuasive only, to show what is plausible {to pithanon}. What is origin of the bad? Why did God give people freedom to choose badly? Why does God allow bad choice to continue?
He lived -130 to -68, was at New Academy, was pupil of Philo of Larissa [-110], and began Middle Platonists. He tried to go back to Plato's original teachings, using Stoic and eclectic ideas against skepticism.
He founded Pyrrhonian Skepticism and was against Academy Platonists. He developed ten skepticism modes {trope, Aenesidemus}. Perception does not optimize. People differ in character and what they think is good. Objects present visual and other perceptions, and none is defining. Perceptions differ under different moods. Perceptions differ in different contexts. Nothing can separate from everything else, so properties are not definite. Properties differ depending on quantity, such as for medicine. Perception has viewpoint, so knowledge is relative. Value depends on frequency, so rare things and events are more valuable. Customs, education, and beliefs influence perception and judgment.
He lived -95 to -46, was Cato the Elder's great-grandson, was Stoic, and was famous for honesty.
School included Sextus Empiricus, Maximus of Tyre, and Aelius Aristides.
Epistemology
Knowing perceptions and concepts is impossible, because perceptions differ with different people, animal types, customs, ages, times, bodily conditions, space relations, object states, and air or water states. Concepts and opinions have just as many good reasons as their opposites. No truth criterion exists. Only custom and convention make opinions prevail. Even the idea of knowledge impossibility is only belief.
He lived ? to 92 and was Skeptic. Syllogisms are circular reasoning, because first particular fact justifies premise and then general premise proves particular fact. Assumptions, dissenting opinions, infinite regress and incompleteness, alternative relations, and circular reasoning {five tropes} make suspending judgment best. Reasoning requires multiple things to explain.
He lived 125 to 180 and was Skeptic.
He was Skeptic.
He was Christian apologist. People must have faith in revelation. People cannot know God, because knowledge comes only through senses.
He lived 864 to 930, classified chemicals, distilled alcohol, and synthesized sulfuric acid.
He lived 872 to 950, was neo-Platonist, and was Second Teacher. He wrote about prophecy and knowledge and analyzed language with new linguistics. He wrote about politics as metaphysics, which Shi'a politicians used in sixteenth century.
Metaphysics
In Islamic philosophy, God is the only ultimate reality and unity. Only such knowledge is necessary. God's omniscience of facts does not necessitate determinism, because facts are not necessary. Determinism is not about existence but about essence.
He lived 873 to 935, was of Arabian Philosophy, founded Ash'ari school of Sunni Islam, and was against rationalism.
School included Gerbert (Pope Sylvester II), Fulbert, Hildebert of Lavardin, Gauthier of St. Victor, John of Salisbury, Arnold of Brescia, William of St. Thierry, Adam du Petit-Pont, Nicolas of Medan, Alberic of Rheims, Gilbert the Universal, Ulger, Joscelin of Vierzy, Cluny Carthusian, and Bruno Cistercian. Bruno Cistercian later became a Roman Catholic saint.
He lived 981 to 1037, developed Islamic philosophy based on Aristotle, studied the intellectually intelligible, and studied statement time types. His students were Gorgani and Bahmanyar, in Muslim Peripatetic School.
Epistemology
Prophecy is knowledge about mystical experiences.
Metaphysics
Necessary being and possible {contingent} being both exist. One being, God, has identical essence and existence and so is necessary {existence, Avicenna} {Avicennan proof of existence}. All other existences come from Necessary Being by a hierarchy of existences, in which higher things determine lower-thing essences. Vacuum is impossible.
School included Anselm of Canterbury, William of Champeaux, Bernard of Chartres, William of Conches, Gantier of Martagno, Walter of Montagne, Adelard of Bath, and Bernhard of Tours. All were Platonists, except Bernhard of Tours.
He lived 1033 to 1109, was Benedictine, was archbishop, upheld church's power to appoint bishops [1093], and is Father of Scholasticism. He said, "I believe so I may understand" {credo ut intelligam}.
Epistemology
Understanding needs faith.
People can conceive of highest being.
Ethics
All things should be their best. People strive for their benefit and for justice.
Metaphysics
God exists, as shown by the following argument {ontological argument, Anselm}. Mind can conceive of existence that is greater than anything else conceivable, and this must actually be the greatest thing in reality, because existence is necessary to be good and highest.
Highest being that causes all other being through its essence must exist, because cause must be greater than effect. Highest being can only exist by its essence as necessity, because it is being itself. All good things must come from and through supreme, self-existing, necessary, perfect, universal, single, and whole being. Things are similar to the supreme but in different degrees. God created everything, which is in God. Amount of being is amount of Good.
School included Roscelin or Roscellinus.
School included Abelard, Gilbert de la Porree, and John of Salisbury. Categories and rules are mental concepts shared by people that respond to similar world with similar minds {Conceptualism}. Universals are real insofar as they express similarities or essential object characteristics to which people respond to make concepts or dispositions.
School included Lanfranc, Peter of Lombard, Robert Pulleyn, Peter of Poitiers, Peter Comester, Alanus Ryssel, Yves of Chartres, Rodulphus Arden, Anselm of Leon, William of Champeaux, Robert of Melun, Abelard, and Gregory of Rimini.
He lived 1070 to 1121, was Scholastic Realist, was Abelard's teacher, founded monastic school of St. Victor [1109], and was bishop of Châlons-en-Champagne [1113 to 1121].
He lived 1091 to 1153. Faith, authority, and tradition are more important than knowledge, reason, and science. His abbey was an important reformed Cistercian monastery.
He lived 1079 to 1142, was nominalist Scholastic, founded University of Paris, and loved Héloïse. He studied under Roscelin and William of Champeaux.
Epistemology
Antecedent and consequent can logically relate {relevance logic, Abelard} by sharing word or variable or by being dependent.
Ideal forms {universal, Abelard} have basis in particulars, as features shared by many things, but they exist only in thought and speech. Use in thought or judgment defines universal. Universal acquires meaning from perception and sense experience and is not just convention. Universals are real insofar as they express similarities or essential object characteristics to which people respond to make concepts or dispositions {conceptualism, Abelard}.
Body sense qualities are confused ideas, held in imagination or perception. Reason uses sense qualities to build intuitions {full perception} of objects and then concepts and judgments. Then reason can form opinions, have faith, have knowledge, and know universals.
Necessity about things {de re}, as used in sentences, differs from necessity about words {de dicto}, as used in predicates.
Revelation does not give truth or knowledge.
Ethics
Goodness and perfection are separate from reality and being.
Thoughts, feelings, and desires do not cause evil. Good and evil are not actions in themselves but decisions of will. Consent to do bad thing is evil, not act itself, because will is action cause. If will has decided to do evil, it is evil, even if no act happens. Conscience allows will to know God's will, so if will goes against conscience, it has done evil.
Moral natural law {God's will} is the same for all people, but sin obscures it. Some people know it better than others.
Law
Human convention makes some laws {positive law, Abelard} {jus positivum}.
Metaphysics
Higher than universals are God's ideas, which create world. Universals can exist before world as God's ideas, in world as quality similarities and after world as mental concepts, ideas derived from Avicenna.
He lived 1075 to 1160. Common qualities found in existing individual objects are universals but are not real, only conventions {indifferentism}.
He lived 1100 to 1160, was Sententiary or Summist, became professor [1145], and was bishop of Paris [1159].
He lived 1154 to 1191 and founded Islamic, non-Aristotelian Illuminationist School.
Epistemology
Essential light inside objects and subjects allows perception and knowledge {illumination philosophy} {philosophy of illumination}.
Universal statements true now can be invalid in the future.
People can know object essence by special faculty {knowledge by presence}.
Sensations and reasons connect in middle world, which allows prophecy and magic {mundus imaginalis}.
Politics
Enlightened politics has rule by people with knowledge, power, and sense of justice.
School {Scholasticism} included Alexander of Hales, Vincent of Beauvais, Bonaventura, Petrus Hispanus (Pope John XXI), Raymond Lully, John of La Rochelle, Pope Alexander III, Thomas à Becket, William of St. Amour, Johann of Rochelle, and Alfred the Englishman (Alfredde Sereschal). Bonaventura later became a Roman Catholic saint. It combined Augustine's and Aristotle's ideas. The biggest question {Scholastic controversy}, mainly at University of Paris, was whether object essences are real {realism, Scholasticism} or only concepts {nominalism, Scholasticism}.
Epistemology
Analyze text into propositions. Add questions and possible answers. Put all arguments into syllogism chains to prove or refute answers {Scholastic method, Scholasticism}.
Metaphysics
Concept hierarchy corresponds to natural values. Universal relations are world essences. Nature's beauty and perfection manifest God's will. World essence is feeling, will, and personality.
He lived 1178 to 1245, was Scholastic, and taught Bonaventura.
School had Dominicans and included Albertus Magnus or Albert of Bollstadt, Hugh of Strasbourg, Ulrich of Strasbourg, Humbert, Gerard of Bologna, Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, Giles of Lessines, and Godfrey of Fontaine.
He lived 1193 to 1280, was Dominican, and taught Aquinas. Church mysteries cannot be rational. Faith depends on revelation about topics for which philosophy has no answers. Faith and revelation are above reason but not contrary to reason. Theology and philosophy share same principles, which soul knows.
He lived 1215 to 1277 and became Pope John XXI. *Negation can apply to sentences with quantities. NOT every a is b, so Every a is NOT b {equipollence, Peter of Spain}. Different propositions have contexts that determine term references {supposition theory, Peter of Spain}.
He lived 1220 to 1292, opposed dogma, and was alchemist, natural scientist, and Franciscan. Science and faith are complementary. Visual perception depends on images {species, image} {image, species} that come from object through medium to eye.
He lived 1247 to 1316 and was Scholastic and Augustinian.
School {Terminism} included William Durandus (Durand of St. Pourcain), Petrus Aureolus (Peter Auriol), William of Ockham, John of Jandun, Jean Buridan, Marsilius of Inghen in Netherlands, Pierre d'Ailly (Petrus de Alliaco), Johannes Gersen (Charlier), Marsiglio (Marsilius of Padua), Nicolas d'Oreame, Nicholas of Autrecourt, Albert of Saxony in Germany, Gabriel Biel, Stauptz, Nathan, and Henry of Hainbuch. It developed from Nominalism and opposed Realism of Thomism and Scotism.
Epistemology
Concepts are subjective signs or symbols for objective individual things {first intention term} {term of first intention}. Object signs are natural and real, because they are about objects. Universals are not things but are the way people can understand objects. Abstract knowledge has no objects and can be object-idea signs or symbols and signs of signs {second intention term} {term of second intention}. Signs of signs are personal, relative, and arbitrary, because they derive from people's ideas.
Rational knowledge depends on object signs, not on objects themselves, and so depends on experience, not deduction. It is necessary to go beyond rational knowledge to know true reality and God.
Ideas derived from other ideas are either about relations between ideas {logical idea} or about object relations {rational idea}.
Human nature can know both types of signs and relations.
Politics
State is about temporal world, and church is about spiritual world. God does not ordain state. The state is an agreement among individuals for their interests. Human race does not exist as whole.
He lived 1285 to 1349, was Franciscan and nominalist, studied legal and property rights, and argued with Pope John XXII. He opposed William of Sherwood, Peter of Spain, and Walter Burleigh. He developed syllogisms with inferences, worked on modal logic, and studied logic of terms {supposition theory, Occam}.
Epistemology
Logic concepts are about meaning, not about mental states, and are natural objects or idea signs. Words are signs used by convention. Words have two uses: one is to represent object and the other is to have meaning. Rational soul knows immaterial world. Sensitive soul perceives material world. Sense knowledge is an object sign and is sensitive-soul state or action. Sensations do not involve copying objects. Cause's powers, not God's will, cause causation, so he opposed Henry of Ghent. People should use as few concepts as necessary to explain idea {Ockham's razor, Occam}.
Ethics
Divine will is obligatory for all actions.
Law
Right is freedom and ability to act. Command or contract can make law.
He lived 1300 to 1369, was Terminist, and commented on Sentences of Abelard. The church condemned him [1347]. Because cause and effect differ and do not relate, effect must transform cause.
He lived 1300 to 1358 and was Sententiary or Summist.
He lived 1295 to 1360, was Terminist, invented theory of consequences, and studied syllogisms, inertia, and impetus.
Epistemology
Hungry donkey is between two haystacks that appear identical but starves because it cannot decide rationally which one to eat first {Buridan's ass}. Different propositions can have different contexts for same terms, and this affects term references {supposition theory}. Sentence inferences depend on suppositions. Supposition {personal supposition} can be about number of term or object, such as just one {discrete supposition} or at least one {determinate supposition}. Determinate supposition can be All or Some. Suppositions {material supposition} can be about speech or writing. Suppositions {formal supposition} can be about universals or ideas.
He lived 1320 to 1384 and was realist about universals.
He lived 1468 to 1534 and was Thomist and Dominican. By analogy, terms can be true of both God and finite things, because they have terms in differing proportions. Analogies can be about inequality, attributes, or proportion. Proportion is the only true analogy, because it is about same named thing in different amounts. The other two analogies compare different things.
He lived 1515 to 1572. Rhetoric and grammar demonstrate that people can use reasoning at will. Answering question requires correct viewpoint {invention}. Selecting invention to apply to question requires judgment {judicium}. Good judgment selects correct viewpoint for question by relating subject and object using category, cause, effect, or relation. Person's judgments unite to build philosophical system. Judgments and system relate to God.
School included Montaigne, Francois Sanchez, Pierre Charron, Francois de la Motte le Vayer, Rabelais, Samuel Sorbiere, Simon Foucher, Pierre Bayle, Agrippa, Bonaventura des Periers, and Omar Talon.
He lived 1533 to 1592, was humanist, and emphasized instincts, faith, and irony of life. He developed Skepticism, based on Sextus Empiricus' and Pyrrho's ideas.
He lived 1550 to 1623 and developed doubt as method. He said Scholastic ideas and methods were too far from actual world.
He lived 1541 to 1603. Only faith can reveal true knowledge. Faith believes revealed knowledge.
He lived 1561 to 1626, became Attorney General [1607], and became Privy Council member. When Edward Coke, whom he was always against legally and personally, had to resign, he became Lord Chancellor, but he had to resign after it became public that he took bribes.
He introduced scientific method, used inductive proof, founded empiricism, and classified all knowledge. He analyzed scholastic, humanistic, and mystical philosophy and separated science from philosophy.
Epistemology
Truth is more important than dogma.
The basis of science should be an empirical technique of finding knowledge {induction, Bacon}. People should gather data, note associations and non-associations between characteristics and events, make hypothesis, and then test the hypothesis by trying to refute it or find exceptions to it. Experimental situation should be reproducible under same conditions. The induction process leads to more experiments and higher laws. People must observe and experiment, because only induction can lead to general knowledge. General knowledge then uses axioms for deduction. However, people should not over-generalize. It is not enough just to gather supporting data for hypothesis, but one must try to prove it false.
Perception and memory errors cause false images and ideas {idols, Bacon}. Thinking can be imprecise and misuse language {marketplace idols} {idols of the marketplace}. Thinking uses previous beliefs {theater idols} {idols of the theater}. Thinking depends on nature, and human thinking has limitations {tribe idols} {idols of the tribe}. Thinking has differences among individual perceptions and thoughts {cave idols} {idols of the cave}. Using people as standard or model also causes these faults. Habits, individual limitations, personal prejudices, and personal feelings also cause these faults. Language ambiguity, word play, and concentration on word rather than idea or meaning can cause these faults. Philosophical dogma, history, tradition, uncritically accepted theories, conventional ideas, reliance on authority, anthropomorphism, and belief in order and purpose can cause these faults.
Senses give no certain knowledge. People must eliminate errors added to perception by nature and self. Removing errors leaves knowledge and fact.
Knowledge knows object formal cause {essence, formal cause}. Object experiences have three groups: ones in which object is present, ones in which it is absent, and ones in which it exhibits different intensities. Essence is present when object is present, absent when object is absent, and more when object is more. Essence can abstract from events involving object. Essence should not abstract from previous concepts.
After finding essence, new situation should test it and related laws. Best situations allow choice between two hypotheses. Building up laws allows general explanation.
Power over nature, to better things, is reason to gain knowledge. Using organized invention and technology can make continual progress. Knowledge is power.
Politics
Law should be certain. Society should improve people's wealth through research and invention. Royal power is greater than law and Parliament.
School included Francis Bacon.
School included Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Boyle, Huygens, Walter von Tschirnhausen in medicine, Leibniz, and Pierre Huet.
He lived 1548 to 1615 and was scholastic.
School included Hobbes and Pierre Bayle.
He lived 1612 to 1694. He criticized Descartes' idea of pure mind, Malebranche's ideas about perception, and Leibniz's ideas about substances, in letters to Leibniz.
School included Gassendi.
School included Locke, Hume, and Adam Smith.
In Enlightenment, metaphysics declined in favor of studying practical questions, order, and structure. The Enlightenment depended on Cartesian and Terminist ideas. Hartley, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Scottish School were in England. Bayle, Voltaire, Encyclopedists, and Rousseau were in France. Berlin Academy, Leibniz, and Wolff were in Germany.
School included Leibniz, Goethe, Helvetius, Christian Thomasius, Arthur Collier, and John Norris. Feelings are separate from reason, will, and perception. Feelings connect with pleasure and pain. People practice moral principles to increase utility.
School included M. G. Hansch and G. Ploucquet.
In Germany, reconcilers included J. F. Budde, J. J. Brucker, D. Tiedman, J. Lossius, and A. Platner. In France, opponents included Pierre Crousaz, Andreas Rudiger, and C. A. Crusius.
School included Peter Brown, David Hartley, Abraham Tucker, Joseph Priestley, John Tooke, Erasmus Darwin, and Thomas Brown.
He lived 1705 to 1774 and was Associational Psychologist.
School included Boerhave, Julian Lamettrie, Charles Bonnet, Étienne de Condillac, Pierre Cabanis, and Antoine De Stutt de Tracy.
He lived 1715 to 1780 and was philosophe. He tried to make science of ideas {idéologie}.
Epistemology
All knowledge depends on senses {sensationalism, Condillac}. Data infer perceptions. For example, people do not see retinal images but external objects. All ideas are sense qualities or sense-quality transformations. Morals, abstraction, will, imagination, and judgment come from perceptions. Consciousness automatically senses sense-quality relations to themselves and self, because they are all in same consciousness. Knowledge is consciousness of idea relations. The chief relation is equality. Knowledge expresses unknown ideas in terms of known. Logic is general language grammar. Languages are how people analyze ideas and phenomena.
School included Maupertuis, d'Alembert, Buffon, Jean Robinet, Marmontel, Marquis de Vauvenargues, and Marquis de Mirabeau.
School included Diderot, d'Alembert, and Turgot. Mental activities result from tiny nerve motions or chemical changes.
School included Casimir von Creuz, J. G. Kruger, J. J. Hentsch, J. F. Weiss, F. von Irwing, Moritz, G. F. Meier, and J. G. Sulzer.
School included Denis Diderot, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau.
Kant founded school that included Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann von Schiller, Goethe, J. H. Lambert, N. Tetens, J. S. Beck, Solomon Maimon, E. Schmid, Jakob Fries, and Karl L. Reinhold, at University of Jena.
He lived 1730 to 1788 and was Pietist. Consciousness has unity. Senses are not separate from understanding. Language is the basic unifying activity of reason and consciousness.
He lived 1729 to 1781 and was Kantian.
He lived 1716 to 1803. Idea contents and idea forms and relations are two distinct things. Contents come from perception, but form is from mind.
He lived 1742 to 1799 and was skeptic and aphorist.
He lived 1747 to 1806, was part of Slovene Cultural Revival, and studied associative psychology.
He lived 1744 to 1803 and wrote about law.
Epistemology
Senses are not separate from understanding. Living people unify sensations and consciousness or understanding as feeling. Feeling unifies senses and turns sounds into thought and language by revealing or bringing to consciousness innate ideas.
All languages derive from one language. Language is the basic unifying activity of reason and consciousness. Language arose from people's nature. Language includes both emotion and reason, showing that these are not separate in mind or thought. Language can show culture's ideas.
History
History is progression toward perfection. Language, culture, and history cause national character. People have had many different ideas, which people today can try to understand through getting feelings {Einfühlung, Herder} for periods and cultures.
Law
Absolute law does not derive from reason alone. Law and institutions relate to living conditions. National, especially German, laws show that laws can be systematic, logical, and practical.
Politics
States began from the historical process of striving for perfection.
He lived 1743 to 1819, was pietist, was against the metaphysics of Spinoza and Kant, and quarreled with Moses Mendelssohn. Things-in-themselves must cause sense qualities to start their synthesis originally. God has determined all knowledge completely. Faith or feeling allows immediate knowledge. People have feelings for freedom, immortality, morality, reality of perceptions, and reality of God. Feelings give knowledge of what is real.
He lived 1705 to 1757. Nerves to brain cause vibrations, which cause sensations. Resonances cause idea association {associationism, Hartley}.
He lived 1710 to 1796, founded Scottish School of common sense and realism, and developed faculty psychology. Perception and sensation are separate. Sensations are mental and have no objects except themselves. Sensations cause belief directly, as signifiers. Perceptions are mental and represent physical objects. Perceptions depend on sensory beliefs. Ethical judgments are not feelings.
He lived 1753 to 1800 and was Kantian. The idea of things-in-themselves is impossible, because they must cause sensation but cannot be in experience. Sensations are the lowest grade of consciousness, which has an infinite number of grades. Sensations are unclear and not fully in consciousness. Being can have different consciousness forms.
He lived 1758 to 1823, was Kantian, and systematized Kant from the fundamental principle of Consciousness. Ideas in consciousness relate to both subject and object. Subject is unity of Form. Object is sensation or material thing. Consciousness contains only subject and object relations, not subjects or objects.
Fichte founded school.
School included Melchiorre Gioja, Gian Domenico Romagnosi, P. Galuppi, Antonio Rosmini-Serbati, V. Gioberti, T. Mamiani, L. Ferri, Labanca, and Bonatelli.
He lived 1761 to 1831. Aenesidemus was a sceptic and later Pyrrhonian, who discussed principle of suspended judgment {epoché, Schulze}.
Epistemology
Knowledge that is beyond, or does not depend on, experience is impossible. Senses and understanding are things-in-themselves and people cannot know them. Mental faculties are not real or metaphysical entities, just similar-activity descriptions.
He lived 1761 to 1840, was Kantian, and corresponded with Kant [1792 to 1796].
He lived 1743 to 1794, invented Condorcet paradox, and was philosophe.
Assume that there are more than two alternatives. Assume that voting members have transitive preferences among alternatives. Assume that voters always choose between two alternatives. Assume that alternative with majority vote wins contests among pairs. Then, person or law favored by most people does not necessarily win {paradox of voting} {voting paradox}. Voting order changes result. The voting paradox also requires that there be more than one choice criterion. If one criterion ranks alternatives {singlepeakedness}, voting order does not change result. Weighted voting eliminates voting paradox, but strategic voting can affect it.
School included J. von Kirchmann.
School included J. F. Fries, W. T. Krug, F. Bouterwek, and F. Beneke. People can know their personal experiences or perceptions. People can infer something about their experiences, cannot infer, or can infer mental experiences.
School included Thomas Brown, T. Belsham, J. Fearn, G. Combe, S. Bailey, H. Martineau, James Mill, J. S. Mill, Alexander Bain, J. de Gaultieu, Spaventa, Croce, Giovanni Gentile, S. Marck, R. Kroner, and Read.
School included A. Testa, C. Cantoni, F. Tacco, and S. Turbiglio.
School included G. Ferrari and A. Francki.
He lived 1778 to 1841 and was Platonist.
Hegel started school.
He lived 1773 to 1843. Inner experience causes consciousness, in obscure form, of a priori truths, which then transform by reflection into knowledge.
He lived 1754 to 1836 and was French Ideologist. He wanted to make a science of ideas {ideology of ideas}.
School included Giuseppe Mazzini, Augusto Vera, Bertrando Spaventa, Francesco De Sanctis, Vincenzo Gioberto, Antonio Rosmini-Serbati, and F. Fiorentino.
He lived 1766 to 1824 and developed spiritualism.
Epistemology
People have methods, such as will and belief, to know their inner states {inner sense} {inner light}. Methods also allow knowledge of outside world. Perception is thus activity.
Will is not one object but is mental acts. Will operations relate terms. One term is active self. The other term is action performed. Effort exerted senses relation, and mind immediately introspects willed efforts, especially muscular efforts. Will's physiological fact and psychological fact correspond symbolically. People cannot act deliberately without knowing what they are doing. Reason and will, and action and cognition, cannot separate.
He lived 1798 to 1854. Associational psychology is not true, because it makes mental faculties real and basic. Knowledge has limits.
He lived 1797 to 1853, was Hegelian, and founded Institute of Charity or Rosminians.
Schopenhauer founded school.
He lived 1798 to 1857 and founded sociology. He invented theories of social order and societal progress.
Epistemology
Phenomena have verifiable procedures {positivism, Comte}. Sciences have methods and principles. Scientific knowledge is finding principles in life's activities. Scientific laws are descriptions for predictions. Positivism depends on empiricism. Sciences move through stages until phenomena have verifiable procedures. Sciences form a hierarchy, with ethics at top.
Ethics
Altruism is the best ethic, is the religion of humanity, and depends on science.
Politics
Societies develop progressively through medieval theological stage, metaphysical or deist stage, and positivist stages. Society depends on social impulses, not self-interest {catechism of positivism}.
School included Karl Rozenkranz and F. T. Vischer.
School included Fichte, Karl Göschel, C. Weisse, H. Ulrici, R. Rothe, and A. Trendelenburg.
School included Bruno Bauer, A. Ruge, Max Stirner or Johann Schmidt, Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, and David F. Strauss.
School included Alexandr Herzen, Zeller, Prantl, Erdmann, Kuno Fischer, Wilhelm Windelband, and Heinrich Rickert.
He lived 1794 to 1866. People make hypotheses and then check them by observation. These are two different processes. Two inductions can lead to same cause, or two testimonies or experiments can state same fact {consilience, Whewell}.
He lived 1801 to 1852, was of Ontologism, and was premier of Sardinia-Piedmont [1848 to 1849].
He lived 1805 to 1879 and was Hegelian.
School included Rudolf H. Lotze.
School included Robert Mayer and Hermann von Helmholtz.
Auguste Comte founded school that included E. Littre, H. Taine, Haeckel, E. Renan, T. Ribot, Roberto Ardigo, Enrico Ferri, Cesare Lombroso, Pascuale Villari, C. Renouvier, George Henry Lewes, Felix le Dantee, E. Laas, T. Ziegler, and F. Sohal.
He lived 1809 to 1882 and was of Hegelian left wing.
He lived 1804 to 1872, was Hegelian, and founded Young Italy [1831].
He lived 1812 to 1870 and was Hegelian historian. Chance causes all things to be contingent.
He lived 1815 to 1903 and was Idealist. Belief is voluntary. Nature is indeterminate, finite, and relative.
School included Marx and Engels.
He lived 1801 to 1869 and was of Comtian School.
School included William R. Hamilton, H. L. Mansel, J. Veitch, R. Lowndes, Leechman, McCosh, Hinton, Balfour, Sorley, Pringle-Pattison, and G. Howison.
School included K. Moleschott, R. Wagner, C. Vogt, and L. Bucher. Inferences can extend to unperceived things, such as material world.
He lived 1808 to 1874 and was of Hegelian left wing.
School included Fechner and Wilhelm Wundt.
School included H. Czolbe and F. Ueberweg.
School included Bode, T. S. Baynes, William S. Jevons, J. Venn, and Schuppe.
He lived 1820 to 1871 and was intuitionist and idealist.
He lived 1812 to 1870 and founded neo-Kantian Heidelberg School or Baden School or Southwest German School. Mind uses logic and other a priori tools to make things valid.
He lived 1817 to 1882 and was Hegelian.
He lived 1784 to 1862 and was of Hegelian right wing.
School was theological philosophy and included Leonard Nelson, Georg Simmel, Aloys Riehl, Friedrich Paulsen, A. Ritschl, and Adolf Trendelenberg in Berlin.
School included Carlo Cattaneo, Roberto Ardigo, and Antonio Labriola.
Hermann Cohen founded Neo-Kantism, which included Ernst Cassirer, Friedrich Albert Lange, Otto Liebmann, Paul Natorp, and Heinrich Rickert. A priori categories can develop over history. All symbol systems share features. People can use similar symbols for science, mathematics, language, and religion representations.
He lived 1839 to 1914 and started pragmatism or pragmaticism, as development of Kant. In mathematics, he developed quantification theory [1878] and axiomatized pure mathematics using logic of relations.
Epistemology
Proposition is true if it corresponds to reality [1871]. However, people cannot experience reality. Direct, subjective, or personal methods such as introspection, faith, will, and authority cannot reliably provide true beliefs. People cannot idealize reality. Thinking only theoretically and logically cannot deduce reliable conclusions, because premises that allow reasoning depend on ideals, not reality. The only method that can approach truth with better and better probability is observing reality objectively, publicly, and scientifically {method of science} {science method}. Science uses reasoning {abduction, reasoning} that can explain available evidence by making new, possibly generic, hypotheses or inferences and testing them using public and objective techniques {inference to the best explanation, Peirce}.
Scientific concepts state that operations cause observable consequences. Scientific statements make predictions to test. A statement is true if its cause's predicted effect happens.
The same principle applied to belief makes belief clear. Belief practical effects can test belief {pragmaticism, Peirce}. If belief results in good consequences, it is good belief.
People can be wrong about beliefs {fallibilism}. Truth takes time, to reach public consensus.
Relations can have one, two, or three positions. One-place relations are people's experiences. Two-place relations are physical laws. Three-place relations are meaning, understanding, and consciousness.
Meaning is three-place relation among sign, observer, and interpretation {speculative grammar}. Meaning is interpretation sign causes in observers {semeiotics}. Meaning depends on knowing or believing consequences.
Signs are singular terms. Sign classes are words {symbol, Peirce} {conventional sign}, pointers {index, Peirce} {natural sign, philosophy}, or pictures {icon, Peirce}. Words can represent object category {type} or object example {token, Peirce}. Words always refer to same object or event. Pointers {indexical word} {demonstrative word} {token-reflexive} are pronouns and words about relative places or times and refer to something else. Indexicals can take different sentence roles and can refer to different things. Icons represent actual or ideal object.
Metaphysics
Reality is efficient causes, of sense qualities or other effects. Reality is continuous {syncheism}, not discrete. Reality is not deterministic {tychism}.
He lived 1817 to 1882 and was Hegelian.
School included Eduard von Hartmann, Mainlander, Duprel, Drews, Oswald Spengler, and Hermann Keyserling.
He lived 1813 to 1885 and was Hegelian.
He lived 1820 to 1893 and studied science.
He lived 1853 to 1920 and was Brentano's student. Reality can be objects {Objektives} of intentions or states of affairs. Word meanings are objects or objectives. Objectives or objects have analyzable properties {theory of objects} {object theory}. Objectives or objects have existence and obey law of contradiction, which applies only to existing things. Facts can refer to non-existent things, but law of contradiction does not apply.
He lived 1848 to 1925, axiomatized counting numbers using equivalence and symbolic logic, and axiomatized arithmetic. He founded axiomatic logic, using sets and propositions with quantifiers, to make the first propositional calculus.
Epistemology
All mathematics is formal {logicism, Frege}. Numbers and arithmetic form logical systems {analytic system}. They are not about intuition or empirical fact {synthetic system}.
Number is not an object property or subjective idea. Numbers are objective objects, and statements about numbers are objective.
Number {number, Frege} is set of elements whose quantity is the number. For example, two is set of all pairs. Zero is set of all sets having same number of elements as set of elements not identical to themselves. Classes have an element, number of elements, and number of elements {successor, Frege} not identical to element.
Higher object or set category {ancestor, Frege} includes lower category {ancestral relation}.
Second-order logic needs this concept.
Symbol systems {propositional calculus, Frege} can show truth or falsehood of logical statements containing IF ... THEN ..., AND, OR, and NOT, depending on clause truth. In particular, symbol system can express ideas of ALL, SOME, ANY, EVERY, and NONE {quantification theory}. First-order predicate calculus, second-order predicate calculus, and set theory can develop from propositional calculus.
Expressions {saturated expression} can be about objects and have completed senses. Expressions {unsaturated expression} can be functions and need objects to complete them.
Language objects, concepts, features, phrases, or sentences {reference, Frege} can denote {bedeutung}. Logical statement terms should have references.
Objects, concepts, or sentences can connote {sense, idea} {sinn}. Word sense is reference method used, so all words, even proper names, have sense. Word sense is constant objective fact, not subjective idea.
Logic laws are not laws of thought.
Sentence is function with arguments and should be either true or false. Declarative sentence represents situation. Word meanings and sentence structures supply conditions for understanding sentences {truth-condition, Frege}. Sentence meaning is conditions that make sentence true {truth-conditional semantics, Frege} {model-theoretic semantics, Frege} {Situation Semantics, Frege}. Only whole sentences have meaning.
Truth depends on objective-reality state that sentence depicts, not on mental judgments or ideas. Sentences with same meaning can be in different forms.
School studied sets and propositions with quantifiers {propositional calculus, Logic School} and logic of predicates {predicate calculus, Logic School}. They studied logic of possible, necessary, or sufficient {modal logic, epistemology}. They studied statements depending on past, present, or future {tense logic}.
School included Ernst Mach, Richard Avenarius, Wilhelm Ostwald, Theodor Zichen, Arthur de Gobineau, Pierre Proudhom, and Africano Spir.
He lived 1846 to 1929, was Positivist, and studied criminology.
School included Georg Simmel, Johannes Volkelt, and Harald Hoffding.
He lived 1843 to 1931 and was Relativist. Consciousness builds concept by synthesis. Concepts change over history as science advances.
School included Henri Bergson, Georges Sorel, Brunetiere, N. Losski, Hans Dreisch, and Andre Cresson.
School included James.
He lived 1848 to 1915, was Hegelian historian, and was of Heidelberg School, Baden School, or Southwest German School. Sciences can generalize {nomothetic science} or individualize {ideographic science}.
He lived 1843 to 1904, was of Comtian School, and was Spaventa's student.
He lived 1873 to 1958, was neo-realist, and developed criteria for meaning based on common sense.
Epistemology
Analysis of true common-sense propositions finds equivalent concepts and propositions. Experience and its object are two separate things, and object is not mental.
Ethics
Goodness is basic, simple, unanalyzable, non-natural quality. Good does not depend on human reason, emotions, God, or nature. The word "good" has no definition in terms of natural qualities, because natural qualities are good or bad {naturalistic fallacy}. Confusing the good with particular objects or traits is invalid. Wrong and right are indefinable, because they are fundamental.
School included Santayana.
He lived 1858 to 1918, was Relativist, and studied event social interactions.
School included Wittgenstein, Russell, Moore, Whitehead, Signart, Wilhelm Jerusalem, Benno Erdmann, Franz Brentano, and Kazimierz Twardowski, Alexius Meinong.
School included Poincaré, Pierre Duhem, Gaston Milhaud, J. Wilbois, Arthur Hannequin, A. Darbon, Hans Vaihinger, Eddington, Jean Laporte, Ruyen Duprecal, Lupasco, Abel Rey, Henri Berr, Rignanao, Émile Meyerson, and Lavelle. Human subjectivity affects phenomena interpretation. Science requires objectivity without emotion. Emotion helps people pursue goals.
He lived 1842 to 1918 and founded Marburg School of Immanent Philosophy. To approach truth, mind creates categories, such as science, ethics, and law, and does so in context of culture.
He lived 1866 to 1925 and was Idealist. Events can have sequence {A-series} past, present, and future or sequence {B-series} before and after. Reality has souls, which can love. Time is unreal, and universe has no change.
He lived 1859 to 1933. People search for physical laws.
School included Alexandr Bogdanov (Malinovsky).
School included A. J. Ayer, C. W. Morris, Arne Naess, and Ernest Nagel. Word meaning and grammar determine analytic statement truth. Analytic statements need no empirical knowledge. Synthetic statements are about empirical knowledge.
He lived 1848 to 1915 and was of Baden School of Neo-Kantism.
He lived 1882 to 1973, was neo-Thomist, and studied John of St. Thomas. Natural law, which ordinary people can know through reasoning or intuition, determines political values.
School included George Santayana, Roy Wood Sellars, and A. O. Lovejoy. Consciousness content differs from consciousness object. Mind differs from brain.
He lived 1863 to 1936, was Hegelian historian, and was of Marburg School of Immanent Philosophy.
He lived 1885 to 1971, was Marxist, and was against psychologism. He founded Sunday Circle. Culture is paramount.
He lived 1874 to 1945 and was of Marburg School of Immanent Philosophy.
Max Horkheimer founded school at Institute for Social Research that included Walter Benjamin and Herbert Marcuse. It advocated rethinking all doctrines.
He lived 1887 to 1971.
Epistemology
Philosophy should state question clearly, describe all answers, and select the most probable.
Materialist philosophy can say that consciousness is not real and only brain states or functions are real {radical materialism}, consciousness is real but is brain state or function {reductive materialism}, or consciousness is real and is a brain higher-order state or function but has properties not reducible to brain states or functions {emergent materialism} [1925].
Physical causes mental being or property, such as qualia, but mental does not cause physical {epiphenomenalism, Broad}. Subjective experience is epiphenomenal. Mental states and forces can arise from human-brain complex structures and functions {emergentist philosophy}.
Religion
People have had numerous experiences of religious revelation or experience, many with similar phenomena {argument from religious experience, Broad}, which God's existence and action can explain.
He lived 1878 to 1965. Relations can be subjective, rather than objective.
He lived 1903 to 1930 and invented a taxation theory [1927], with pricing rules {Boiteux-Ramsey pricing rule}. He also determined optimal savings [1928], with models {optimal growth} {Ramsey model} using calculus of variations.
Epistemology
Scientific statements {Ramsey sentence} cannot reference theory. Rules do not state truths but only predict experience. Logic theory {simple type theory} can use theory of types with some recursion. Propositions are about classes whose members have type one level lower than proposition or class type. Only set theory needs reducibility axiom. Asserting proposition and asserting that proposition is true are the same thing, so the predicate IS TRUE is always redundant {redundancy theory of truth, Ramsey}. However, assertion can be too general, infinite, indeterminate, ambiguous, or unknown.
He lived 1875 to 1944, started an idealism form {actualism}, and studied history.
He lived 1891 to 1970, was in Vienna Circle, and was logical positivist. In logic, under Frege, he studied inductive logic, quantum logic, and number definition and developed a stronger conditional {L-implication}.
Epistemology
People record observations {protocol sentence} to assess hypotheses. Starting from memories of personal-experience similarities, people can construct and so verify all knowledge, except some physics concepts. People use evidence inductively, to check hypothesis {confirmation} by comparison, classification, or quantification and find probability. Inductive logic involves probability.
Logical analysis requires language structures and semantics, such as logic and modal logic. Logical axioms are useful conventions.
Names do not denote unique objects but depend on context {method of extension and intention} {extension and intention method}.
Language has distinct semantic features {material mode} and formal or syntactical features {formal mode}. All philosophical problems are syntactical. Using syntax can clarify definitions and statements and put them in forms in which meaning is clear and people can determine truth. Using this approach, philosophical problems can be solvable or prove to be insoluble {explication, Carnap}.
He lived 1860 to 1944 and was Idealist. Experience refers to real object. Object's particular quality or property differs from other objects' properties {individual property}, though qualities can be similar.
He lived 1881 to 1969 and was analytical philosopher. His student was Roderick Chisholm. Causation relates to the only preceding change that can cause event, as judged and believed by observer. Secondary qualities are sensing methods, not actual properties.
Claude Lévi-Strauss founded school that included Saussure and Roman Jakobson.
He lived 1882 to 1936 and founded Vienna Circle of Logical Positivism.
He lived 1901 to 1985 and was Logical Positivist. Sciences reduce to physics by deduction {reductionism, Nagel}. Belief causes and belief justifications are separate. People often mix them {genetic fallacy}. People can also say that causes have no affect on truth {modal fallacy}. They go from "A is not necessarily B" to "A is necessarily not B." People rely on testimony and other reliable sources, as well as information-transfer methods.
He lived 1910 to 1989, was Logical Positivist or Logical Atomist, and developed verification principle.
Epistemology
The idea that people know object properties directly without representations or mental substitutes {naive realism, Ayer} is false. The idea that people can detect patterns in objects, thoughts or behavior, and memories {reductionism, Ayer} is false. The idea that people can go from evidence to conclusions {induction, Ayer} is false. What is left is just to describe how people use evidence to reach conclusions [Ayer, 1963].
Ethics
Moral judgments are meaningless problems. Ethics needs psychological, not ethical, theory.
Metaphysics
Metaphysics has meaningless statements and problems. All utterances about nature of God are nonsensical.
He lived 1912 to 2004, was Logical Positivist, and studied ecology. Word meanings are their uses in situations {empirical semantics, Naess}. Simple meaning has one property {precisation}. Other meaning has no properties.
He lived 1884 to 1962.
He lived 1908 to 1979 and studied prescriptive meaning, descriptive meaning, and fact-value distinction. Definitions can persuade people to change original definition. Morality is about approval and disapproval {emotive theory, Stevenson}.
He lived 1885 to 1962.
School included Andre Lalande and René La Senne.
He lived 1878 to 1956. Three-value logic allows true, false, and possible. It can account for future contingencies. Polish mathematical notation needs no brackets.
He lived 1916 to ?, followed Wittgenstein's ideas, and studied logic of statements using must and may {deontic logic, Wright}.
Epistemology
Obligation is like necessity. Permission is like possibility. Prohibition is like impossibility. For example, if something is not necessary, then opposite something is possible. If something is not an obligation, its opposite can happen. If something is not possible, then its opposite is necessary. If something is impermissible, its opposite is obligatory. Not-impossible things are possible, so if something has no prohibition, it can happen. If two things together are necessary, then each is necessary, so if two things together are obligatory, then each is obligatory. If something is necessary, then it is possible, so something obligatory has permission.
Ethics
Deontic logic can be ethics logic. Actions are prohibited, permitted, or obligatory. Negatives and combinations can be true or false.
He lived 1908 to 2000 and was empiricist. He associated with Nelson Goodman, J. L. Austin, and Peter F. Strawson and later with Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam.
Epistemology
Meaning is about belief systems, not about beliefs. Belief systems can adjust at many places.
All statements depend on empirical evidence. Analytic and synthetic truths do not differ, because mathematics depends on belief system and because experience is not about logic or statements.
Language translations have many alternatives {indeterminacy, translation}, because experience is always about part relations, and translation can use any part. Deciphering unknown languages cannot rely on only spoken or written evidence but needs to know belief systems. Language interpretation should ascribe only universally true and neutral beliefs or references to speakers and writers, to minimize errors and falsehoods {charity principle} {principle of charity}.
Because language has alternatives, new ideas have indeterminate objects and ideas {ontological relativity}.
Belief systems have words that refer to one object in all uses {referential opacity} {referentially opaque}. Belief systems cannot allow words that do not refer to anything or refer to something else than intended in different contexts.
Quantifiers can say that object exists {objectual} or that sentence form exists and is true.
Metaphysics
Reality is physical only {physicalism, Quine}. Existence requires that things have property quantities. "To be is to be the value of a variable." Existence requires something identifiable. "No entity without identity."
He lived 1915 to 1980, was neo-Kantian, and developed the idea of improvisation. Text is symbol relations, from which meaning comes without knowledge about author {death-of-the-author}.
He lived 1911 to 1960 and studied ordinary language {linguistic philosophy}.
Epistemology
Language analysis can clarify philosophical and metaphysical problems, which are typically confusing.
Language developed by evolution.
Speech {linguistic act} can state things {constative} or do something {performative}. Stating is actually performing. All speech is an action {speech-act theory}, such as to warn, remind, and communicate information. Actions can be actual sound making {locution, Austin}, acts resulting from or secondary to uttering {illocution}, and uttering effects {perlocution}.
Case or term can describe situation. Then prove that other cases or terms do not apply to situation. Show that other situations require different cases or terms. If these apply, original situation implies term is valid {paradigm case argument}. However, situation, case, or term typically has ambiguous meaning.
Context can distinguish appearance from reality.
He lived 1926 to 1984. History has interpretation changes.
He lived 1929 to ?. Qualifier type should be for objects. Another qualifier type should be for intentions. Using these two different ideas, set theory for beliefs can confirm laws and opinions.
He lived 1920 to ? and was Australian materialist and realist. Expressions {topic-neutral expression} can give no information about subject, object, or idea. Topic-neutral expressions can have no evidence they are either physical or mental.
He lived 1912 to 1988.
He lived 1936 to ?. Removing sections in which introduction rule precedes elimination rule can simplify natural deductions {normalization, logic}, because addition followed by subtraction leads to no net result.
He lived 1916 to 1999 and invented Chisholm paradox. Propositions can be rational beliefs {epistemic proposition}.
He lived 1929 to ?, favored mentalism, and tried to show that Gödel's proof shows that mind is not an algorithm.
He lived 1929 to ? and said computers can never have feeling or understanding.
He lived 1933 to ?. Inductivity is the link between two space positions at same time. Causality is the link between two times at same position.
He lived 1913 to 2005 and studied hermeneutics and interpretation methods.
He lived 1925 to ? and used Frege's philosophy to make a theory of meaning based on evidence.
Epistemology
Events can have poor evidence, such as the past, other people's minds, and mathematics, and so statements about them are neither true nor false {antirealism}. For those situations, people use intuitions {intuitionism, Dummett}. Studying language can analyze thought. To prove that something mathematical exists is to show how to make it {constructivism, Dummett}.
He lived 1924 to ? and developed postmodernism.
He lived 1924 to 1994 and was eliminative materialist. Philosophy of science and its claim to knowledge are impossible. All knowledge is relative.
He lived 1947 to ?, used Bayesian confirmation theory in science, and studied time direction.
He lived 1944 to ?.
He lived -435 to -356. His ideas were the basis of Hedonistic or Cyrenaic School.
He lived -480 to -411. Morality conflicts with self-interest.
He lived -470 to -391 and started Moism or Mohist School, which advocated simple ceremonies and equal treatment of all people.
Antisthenes founded it. School had followers of Socrates and included Diogenes of Sinope, Menippus, Crates, Hipparchia, Teles, Bion, Menedemus, and Onesicistus. It discussed living and morals, not logic or metaphysics. It led to Stoic School.
Epistemology
Only identities can be true, because only they can be directly perceived.
Ethics
Virtue, knowledge of good, and excellence are the only good. Virtue by itself makes one happy. People can be free from desires and content with life if they conduct life intelligently. Being free of wants and desires makes people depend least on outside influences and random events. People should satisfy only two desires, hunger and love. Individual morals and ways of life are best. Civilization and its products create more desires and control people arbitrarily through laws and morals, so civilization is not good. Education teaches the low value of civilization and its conveniences.
Aristippus founded it based on his grandfather Aristippus of Cyrene's ideas. School had followers of Socrates and included Theodorus, Anniceris, Hegesius, Euemerus, and Bion. It led to Epicurean School.
Epistemology
The only worthy knowledge is what leads to happiness. People can know only immediate sense qualities. Past and future only cause doubt or worry.
Ethics
Sensual pleasure is the highest good, because organisms all try to gain pleasure and stay away from pain, pleasure is will satisfaction, and pleasure is life's main purpose. Pleasure is "smooth motion of flesh". Greatest will satisfaction happens when will gratifies senses in the present.
Education helps people select pleasures that have minimum present and future pain, enjoy the highest refined pleasures, and control desires. People should act so they are not slaves to pleasure and should feel detachment while enjoying pleasure. Educated people need no laws or morals as guides but enjoy what is available without needing anything else.
The highest good is a cheerful frame of mind, leading to friendship, family, and society, which have little pain. Momentary and bodily pleasures have future pain. Religion interferes with pleasure and is ancestor and hero worship. Responsibility for others and community is not important.
She lived -340 to ?. Her husband was Crates the Cynic.
His wife was Hipparchia. Luxury, pride, and ill will are bad.
He lived -334 to -262 and founded Stoicism [-310]. People either have reason and virtue or do not {absolutism}. Politics and laws should be the same for all.
Epicurus founded school that developed from Cyrenaic School and included Hermarchus, Polystratus, Metrodorus, Zeno of Sidon, Phaedrus, Apollodorus, Siro, Philodemus, Amafinius, Lucretius, and Colotes. Epicureans lived in communities including slaves, women, and poor.
Epistemology
Concept contents come from perception persistence. Concepts are perception images. Language is material substance that participates in images. Imagination unites images.
Perception contents are the same, so people have same basic ideas. Memory, prediction, hypothesis, or perception clearness and vividness make a criterion for truth. If two clear perceptions exist, two causes exist.
Opinions depend on both concepts and consequences, so perceptions can only refute them.
Ethics
The highest good is pleasure, which comes only from senses. Freedom from all desires, and thus from their pains, is best, because then pleasure is permanent and restful. People should avoid pain, fear, and injury from others. Absence of anxiety and fear {ataraxia, Epicurus} and absence of pain are the highest pleasures. Both together make the objectively good life {eudaimonia, Epicurus}, not just subjectively good or happy.
Active pleasure is desire satisfaction. Passive pleasure is satiation or well-being state, which has no pain and no desire.
Wants can be natural and unavoidable, so people should find as much satisfaction as possible in them. Wants can be artificial, and society can cause wants, so people should avoid them. Most wants are in-between. People need knowledge and insight to judge pleasure and pain and to renounce them if they do not give satisfaction or have too much pain. People should satisfy such wants as much as possible to gain more pleasure.
Mental pleasures, such as beauty and friendship, are better, because people can control them and they are more restful.
Prudent pursuit of pleasure, beauty, and culture is the ideal. Actions should have nobility and morals.
Social duty and responsibility are not important. Individual morals are best.
Immortality does not exist. Religion is not good, because gods do not care about people. Religion and immortality cause fear.
Metaphysics
Atoms are independent and controlled only by themselves. All events are mechanical. Events have no law, necessity, or purpose. Uncaused actions can happen. Because time is infinite, all possible atom combinations have already happened and will repeat again. God and magic do not exist.
Mind
Soul has fire-atoms that scatter from body at death, precluding immortality.
Politics
Societies form only to gain advantage or utility. States are agreements among people not to injure each other.
People's advantage determines laws, not ideas about right and wrong.
He was second Epicurean-School leader [-270 to -250].
He lived ? to -240 and was third Epicurean-School leader [-250 to -240].
He lived -185 to -108 and was Stoic and Syncretist. Scipio the Younger was his pupil. People should become more active and virtuous, depending on personality.
School incorporated Neo-Platonism, Jewish philosophy, and religious ideas from Iran. It included Aristobolus and Philo of Alexandria.
He lived -110 to -35 and was Epicurean.
He lived -106 to -43 and defended Sextus Roscius against the state [-80]. He defended people of Sicily against the governor [-51]. He was praetor [-66] and consul [-63]. He first emphasized intention, as well as actual act. He first distinguished between damages and penalties.
Natural law is universal, because it depends on reason, which is inherent in all people equally. Actual laws depend on history and natural law.
Epistemology
Ideas can be innate in reason, which people need only remember.
Psychology
People have right to take part in conversations. Conversation with monarchs should be mainly information, flattery, or respectful silence. People should use witticisms only in conversations with equals.
He was Epicurean.
He lived -85 to -43 and was Epicurean.
Eastern religions fused with Greek philosophies. Neo-Pythagorean at Alexandria, Eclectic Platonism, Jewish philosophy, Patristic philosophy, Gnosticism, and Neo-Platonism developed. God gives divine knowledge to prophets, leaders, and saints. Divine knowledge explains history. Divine knowledge authorizes state and church.
School included Demonax.
School included Eudorus, Arius Didymus, Albinus, Thrasyllus, Plutarch the Elder, Maximus, Apuleius, Celsus, Galen, Hermes Trismegistus, Nichomachus, and Numenius of Apamea.
He lived -20 to 50, was Neo-Platonist, commented on Bible, and unified Jewish and Greek philosophy.
Epistemology
Religious-writing literal meaning is for senses. Philosophical meaning is for mind. To understand, people must be passive in reason, senses, and activity, so divine spirit can enter. People can achieve ecstasy {mysticism}, in which miracles and prophecies are possible. In this state, people know, not just desire to know. People can prepare for this state, and be worthy of it, through love, truth, faith, prayer, and suppression of will and senses. However, this state is gift from God. People must renounce self and merge with God to know logos and so God. Logos is immanent, and people can know it. God is transcendent, and people cannot know it.
Metaphysics
God is perfect. Matter is imperfect. Life principle, divine reason, or spirit of God {logos, spirit} is intelligent, immanent, transcendent, and divine. Logos is powers and attributes of God and is how God acts on nature. Logos makes and unifies all matter. Logos is Thought. Logos is immanent in all things, while God is transcendent.
Intelligence {logos spermatikos} generates everything. Intermediate connecting forces are angels and servants of God and link God and material world. Angels have personality and connect to God by logos. Angels are also material.
He lived -4 to 29. The philosophy of Jesus is in the four gospels of King James Bible.
Matthew 5:38-42
"Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away."
Luke 6:29-30
"And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also.
Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again."
Matthew 5:43-44
"Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, ..."
Luke 6:27-28
"But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,
Bless them that curse you, ..."
Luke 6:32-36
"For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? ...
And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? ...
And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? ...
But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, ...
Be ye therefore merciful, ..."
Matthew 6:14
"... forgive men their trespasses ..."
Matthew 18:21-22
"Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?
Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven."
John 8:7
"... He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone ..."
Matthew 6:19
"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon Earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal"
Matthew 19:21
"... If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor ..."
Mark 10:21
"... go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor ..."
Luke 18:22
"... sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, ..."
Matthew 7:1-2
"Judge not, that ye be not judged.
For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."
Luke 6:37-38
"Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:
Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again."
Matthew 7:3-5
"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."
Luke 6:41-42
"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye."
Matthew 7:12
"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them ..."
Luke 6:31
"And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise."
Matthew 7:17-20
"Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them."
Luke 6:43-44
"For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes."
Matthew 12:35
"A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things."
Luke 6:45
"A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh."
Matthew 19:18-19
"... Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness,
Honour thy father and thy mother: ..."
Mark 10:19
"... Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother."
Luke 18:20
"... Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother."
Matthew 19:19
"... Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."
Matthew 22:39
"... Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."
Mark 12:31
"... Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. ..."
Luke 10:29-37
"... And who is my neighbour?
And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.
And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.
But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,
And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.
Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?
And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise."
John 13:34
"A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; ..."
John 15:12-13
"This is my commandment, That ye love one another, ...
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
Matthew 20:26-27
"... whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister;
And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant"
Mark 10:43-44
"... whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister:
And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all."
John 1:1
"In the beginning was the Word ..."
John 8:32
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
School included Seneca, Cornutus or Phurnutus, Dio Chrysostom, Persius, Thrasea, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, Demonax, Arrian, Lucian, Favorinus, Aulus Gellius, and Marcus Aurelius.
He lived 55 to 135, was Stoic, and wrote about ethics. Philosophy should be about morals and mind. Body, status, and wealth are not important. People should control their emotions {apatheia}, so they can choose actions consistent with duty and citizenship. People should not let life affect them so that they cannot act.
School included John Chrysostom, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzen, and Gregory of Nyassa.
School included Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor, Justin Martyr, Clement I of Rome, Aristides, Athenogoras, Theophilus, Melito, Apollinaris, Minucius Felix, Epiphanius, Lactantius, Irenaeus in Lyon, Hippolytus in Rome, Tatian, Aeneas of Gaza, Tertullian in Carthage, Arnobius, Hilarius, Clement of Alexandria, Nemesius, Eusebius, Origen, Cappadocians, and Paul, the Roman Catholic saint. Hippolytus set himself up as pope.
Epistemology
God inspired every word of the Bible, as shown by prophecy fulfillment. The succession of Bible prophets is a divine plan for people's education. God reveals more as people's ability to receive knowledge increases. New revelations are purer. Jesus is the final revelation.
People can immediately apprehend truth. Powers above reason give truth. Truth comes directly from God and comes through contact with God. Church doctrine is the only knowledge needed and people should believe it without question, because it is perfect truth. Revelation is above reason, because it is divine. Speculation or further reasoning about the Bible is having no faith.
Metaphysics
Matter is not good or evil. Matter can be for good or evil by people's actions.
Spirit combines rational thought and personality. It is consciousness. Spirit can be separate from body, can go to another body, is eternal, and is unchanging. Life-force mediates between spirit and matter and animates body.
Good and evil forces exist in the world. Evil comes from demons and the evil soul in man.
God created world from nothing in one moment, without cause except for God's willing, which is infinite and unchanging. God gave people free will and action control, which can lead to evil.
Pantheism opposes Church doctrine.
Mind
Conscience is knowledge of duty and action worth, relative to self and behavior. Self-consciousness gives people knowledge of sin and their need to repent.
History
History is a succession of revelations. Adam revealed nature's perfection and God's gift of mind. Moses revealed Jewish law. Jesus was the perfect revelation for which the previous two revelations had prepared people. The Comforter {Paraclete, Apologist}, who can be Holy Spirit, will reveal fourth revelation at world end. On judgment day, good will separate from evil, or all good will overcome all evil.
Humans are universe meaning and purpose and control universe destiny. This purpose and Church unify people.
History records how human will works relative to God and other people. Jesus is center of history.
Because free people take actions, history cannot repeat.
Previous gods are evil demons in the world.
Theology
God is spiritual personality. People can have personal relation with God, as with father. Because God and people are spirits, relations can exist between people and God, and one such relation is love.
He was Stoic.
He lived 323 to 389 and was Apologist. Later Byzantine writers referenced him.
He lived 330 to 379 and was Apologist. Later Byzantine writers referenced him.
He lived 335 to 395 and was Apologist. Later Byzantine writers referenced him.
He lived 347 to 407, was Patriarch of Constantinople [398 to 403], was Doctor of the Church and Greek Father, and was Apologist. Later Byzantine writers referenced him.
He lived 480 to 526, served under King Theodoric, was Neo-Platonist, and stressed Stoic morality. He wrote textbooks on four subjects {quadrivium}: geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music. Events can be necessary or only conditionally necessary. God will punish vice. God is omnipotent and eternal. Eternity is simultaneous knowledge of all life.
He lived 571 to 632. The philosophy of Mohammed is in Koran, as translated into English by the Presidency of Islamic Researches, Ifta, Call and Guidance of Saudi Arabia.
2.83 ... treat with kindness your parents and kindred, and orphans and those in need; speak fair to the people; be steadfast in prayer; and give Zakat [regular charity] ...
2.84 ... Shed no blood amongst you, nor turn out your own people from your homes ...
2.148 ... then strive together (as in a race) towards all that is good. ...
2.168 ... Eat of what is on Earth, lawful and good ...
2.177 ... to spend of your substance, ... for your kin, for orphans, for the needy, for the wayfarer, for those who ask, and for the ransom of slaves; ... and give Zakat; to fulfill the contracts which ye have made; and to be firm and patient, in pain (or suffering) and adversity, and throughout all periods of panic. ...
2.178 ... the law of equality is prescribed to you in cases of murder: the free for the free, the slave for the slave, the woman for the woman. But if the brother of the slain makes any remission, then grant any reasonable demand, and compensate him with handsome gratitude, ...
2.180 ... when death approaches any of you, if he leave any goods that he make a bequest to parents and next of kin, according to reasonable usage; ...
2.181 If anyone changes the bequest after hearing it, the guilt shall be on those who make the change. ...
2.182 But if anyone fears partiality or wrong-doing on the part of the testator, and brings about a settlement amongst (the parties concerned), there is no wrong in him: ...
2.183 ... Fasting is prescribed to you as it was prescribed to those before you, that ye may (learn) self-restraint,
2.184 for a fixed number of days; but if any of you is ill, or on a journey, observe the prescribed number within days later. For those who can do it (with hardship), is a ransom, the feeding of one that is indigent. But he that will give more, of his own free will, it is better for him. And it is better for you that ye fast, if ye only knew.
2.187 Permitted to you, on the night of the fasts, is the approach to your wives. They are your garments and ye are their garments. ... so now associate with them, ... and eat and drink, until the white thread of dawn appear to you distinct from its black thread; then complete your fast till the night appears; but do not associate with your wives while ye are in retreat in the mosques. ...
2.188 And do not eat up your property among yourselves for vanities, nor use it as bait for the judges, with intent that ye may eat up wrongfully and knowingly a little of (other) people's property.
2.189 They ask thee concerning the New Moons. Say: They are but signs to mark fixed periods of time in (the affairs of) men, and for Pilgrimage. It is no virtue if ye enter your houses from the back: ... Enter houses through the proper doors: ...
2.190 Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; ...
2.191 And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out; for persecution and oppression are worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the Sacred Mosque, unless they (first) fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of those who suppress faith.
2.193 And fight them on until there is no more persecution or oppression, ... But if they cease. Let there be no hostility except to those who practice oppression.
2.194 The prohibited month for the prohibited month, and so for all things prohibited, there is the law of equality. If then any one transgresses the prohibition against you, transgress ye likewise against him. ...
2.195 ... make not your own hands contribute to (your) destruction; but do good; ...
2.215 ... Whatever wealth ye spend that is good, is for parents and kindred and orphans and those in want and for wayfarers. ...
2.216 Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. ...
2.219 They ask thee concerning wine and gambling. Say: "In them is great sin, and some profit, for men; but the sin is greater than the profit." They ask thee how much they are to spend; Say: "What is beyond your needs." ...
2.220 ... They ask thee concerning orphans. Say: "The best thing to do is what is for their good; if ye mix their affairs with yours, they are your brethren; ..."
2.222 They ask thee concerning women's courses. Say: They are a hurt and a pollution: So keep away from women in their courses, and do not approach them until they are clean. But when they have purified themselves, ye may approach them ...
2.223 Your wives are as a tilth unto you; so approach your tilth when or how ye will; but do some good act for your souls beforehand; ...
2.228 Divorced women shall wait concerning themselves for three monthly periods. Nor is it lawful for them to hide what Allah Hath created in their wombs, if they have faith in Allah and the Last Day. And their husbands have the better right to take them back in that period, if they wish for reconciliation. And women shall have rights similar to the rights against them, according to what is equitable; but men have a degree (of advantage) over them. ...
2.229 A divorce is only permissible twice: after that, the parties should either hold together on equitable terms, or separate with kindness. It is not lawful for you, (men), to take back any of your gifts (from your wives), except when both parties fear that they would be unable to keep the limits ordained by Allah. If ye (judges) do indeed fear that they would be unable to keep the limits ordained by Allah, there is no blame on either of them if she give something for her freedom. ...
2.230 So if a husband divorces his wife (irrevocably), he cannot, after that, remarry her until after she has married another husband and he has divorced her. In that case there is no blame on either of them if they reunite, provided they feel that they can keep the limits ordained by Allah. ...
2.231 When ye divorce women, and they (are about to) fulfill the term of their (iddah), either take them back on equitable terms or set them free on equitable terms; but do not take them back to injure them, (or) to take undue advantage; if any one does that; he wrongs his own soul. ...
2.232 When ye divorce women, and they fulfill the term of their (iddah), do not prevent them from marrying their (former) husbands, if they mutually agree on equitable terms. ...
2.233 The mothers shall give suck to their offspring for two whole years, for him (the father) who desires to complete the term. But he shall bear the cost of their food and clothing on equitable terms. No soul shall have a burden laid on it greater than it can bear. No mother shall be treated unfairly on account of her child. Nor father on account of his child, an heir shall be chargeable in the same way. If they both decide on weaning, by mutual consent, and after due consultation, there is no blame on them. If ye decide on a foster-mother for your offspring, there is no blame on you, provided ye pay (the foster mother) what ye offered, on equitable terms. ...
2.234 If any of you die and leave widows behind, they shall wait concerning themselves four months and ten days: When they have fulfilled their term, there is no blame on you if they dispose of themselves in a just and reasonable manner. ...
2.235 There is no blame on you if ye make an indirect offer of betrothal or hold it in your hearts. Allah knows that ye cherish them in your hearts: But do not make a secret contract with them except in terms honorable, nor resolve on the tie of marriage till the term prescribed is fulfilled. ...
2.236 There is no blame on you if ye divorce women before consummation or the fixation of their dower; but bestow on them (A suitable gift), the wealthy according to his means, and the poor according to his means; a gift of a reasonable amount is due from those who wish to do the right thing.
2.237 And if ye divorce them before consummation, but after the fixation of a dower for them, then the half of the dower (is due to them), unless they remit it or (the man's half) is remitted by him in whose hands is the marriage tie; and the remission (of the man's half) is the nearest to righteousness. And do not forget liberality between yourselves. ...
2.240 Those of you who die and leave widows should bequeath for their widows a year's maintenance and residence; but if they leave (the residence), there is no blame on you for what they do with themselves, provided it is reasonable. ...
2.241 For divorced women maintenance (should be provided) on a reasonable (scale). This is a duty on the righteous.
2.256 Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects Taghut (evil) and believes in Allah hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold, that never breaks. ...
2.263 Kind words and the covering of faults are better than charity followed by injury. ...
2.264 ... cancel not your charity by reminders of your generosity or by injury, like those who spend their wealth to be seen of men, ... They are in parable like a hard, barren rock, on which is a little soil: on it falls heavy rain, which leaves it (just) a bare stone. They will be able to do nothing with aught they have earned. ...
2.267 ... Give of the good things which ye have (honorably) earned, and of the fruits of the earth which We have produced for you, and do not even aim at getting anything which is bad, in order that out of it ye may give away something, when ye yourselves would not receive it except with closed eyes. ...
2.271 If ye disclose (acts of) charity, even so it is well, but if ye conceal them, and make them reach those (really) in need, that is best for you: It will remove from you some of your (stains of) evil. ...
2.274 Those who (in charity) spend of their goods by night and by day, in secret and in public, have their reward ... on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.
2.280 If the debtor is in a difficulty, grant him time till it is easy for him to repay. But if ye remit it by way of charity, that is best for you if ye only knew.
2.282 ... When ye deal with each other, in transactions involving future obligations in a fixed period of time, reduce them to writing. Let a scribe write down faithfully as between the parties: let not the scribe refuse to write: ... Let him who incurs the liability dictate, ... and not diminish aught of what he owes. If the party liable is mentally deficient, or weak, or unable himself to dictate, let his guardian dictate faithfully. And get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her. The witnesses should not refuse when called on (for evidence). Disdain not to reduce to writing (your contract) for a future period, whether it be small or big; ... but if it be a transaction which ye carry out on the spot among yourselves, there is no blame on you if ye reduce it not to writing. But take witness whenever ye make a commercial contract; and let neither scribe nor witness suffer harm. ...
2.283 If ye are on a journey, and cannot find a scribe, a pledge with possession (may serve the purpose). And if one of you deposits a thing on trust with another, Let the trustee (faithfully) discharge his trust, ... Conceal not evidence; for whoever conceals it, His heart is tainted with sin. ...
3.17 Those who show patience (firmness and self-control); who are true (in word and deed); who worship devoutly; ... and who pray for forgiveness in the early hours of the morning.
4.2 To orphans restore their property (when they reach their age), nor substitute (your) worthless things for (their) good ones; and devour not their substance (by mixing it up) with your own. ...
4.3 If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable ...
4.4 And give the women (on marriage) their dower as a free gift; but if they, of their own good pleasure, remit any part of it to you, take it and enjoy it with right good cheer.
4.5 To those weak of understanding give not your property ...but feed and clothe them therewith, and speak to them words of kindness and justice.
4.6 Make trial of orphans until they reach the age of marriage; if then ye find sound judgment in them, release their property to them; but consume it not wastefully, nor in haste against their growing up. If the guardian is well-off, let him claim no remuneration, but if he is poor, let him have for himself what is just and reasonable. When ye release their property to them, take witnesses in their presence: ...
4.7 From what is left by parents and those nearest related there is a share for men and a share for women, whether the property be small or large, a determinate share.
4.8 But if at the time of division other relatives, or orphans or poor, are present, give them out of the (property), and speak to them words of kindness and justice.
4.9 Let those (disposing of an estate) have the same fear in their minds as they would have for their own if they had left a helpless family behind: ... and speak words of appropriate (comfort).
4.11 ... as regards your children's (inheritance): to the male, a portion equal to that of two females: if only daughters, two or more, their share is two-thirds of the inheritance; if only one, her share is a half. For parents, a sixth share of the inheritance to each, if the deceased left children; if no children, and the parents are the (only) heirs, the mother has a third; if the deceased left brothers (or sisters) the mother has a sixth.
The distribution in all cases is after the payment of legacies and debts. Ye know not whether your parents or your children are nearest to you in benefit. ...
4.12 In what your wives leave, your share is a half, if they leave no child; but if they leave a child, ye get a fourth; after payment of legacies and debts. In what ye leave, their share is a fourth, if ye leave no child; but if ye leave a child, they get an eighth; after payment of legacies and debts. If the man or woman whose inheritance is in question, has left neither ascendants nor descendants, but has left a brother or a sister, each one of the two gets a sixth; but if more than two, they share in a third; after payment of legacies and debts; so that no loss is caused (to any one). ...
4.15 If any of your women are guilty of lewdness, take the evidence of four (reliable) witnesses from amongst you against them; and if they testify, confine them to houses until death do claim them, ...
4.16 If two men among you are guilty of lewdness, punish them both. If they repent and amend, leave them alone; ...
4.19 ... Ye are forbidden to inherit women against their will. Nor should ye treat them with harshness, that ye may take away part of the dower ye have given them, except where they have been guilty of open lewdness; on the contrary live with them on a footing of kindness and equity. If ye take a dislike to them it may be that ye dislike a thing, ...
4.20 But if ye decide to take one wife in place of another, even if ye had given the latter a whole treasure for dower, take not the least bit of it back: Would ye take it by slander and manifest wrong?
4.21 And how could ye take it when ye have gone in unto each other, and they have Taken from you a solemn covenant?
4.22 And marry not women whom your fathers married, except what is past: It was shameful and odious, an abominable custom indeed.
4.23 Prohibited to you (for marriage) are: your mothers, daughters, sisters; father's sisters, mother's sisters; brother's daughters, sister's daughters; foster-mothers who gave you suck, foster-sisters; your wives' mothers; your step-daughters under your guardianship, born of your wives to whom ye have gone in, no prohibition if ye have not gone in; (those who have been) wives of your sons proceeding from your loins; and two sisters in wedlock at one and the same time, except for what is past; ...
4.24 Also (prohibited are) women already married, except those whom your right hands possess: ... Except for these, all others are lawful, provided ye seek (them in marriage) with gifts from your property, desiring chastity, not fornication from them. Give them their dowers (at least) as prescribed; but if, after a dower is prescribed, agree Mutually (to vary it), there is no blame on you, ...
4.25 If any of you have not the means wherewith to wed free believing women, they may wed believing girls from among those whom your right hands possess: ... Ye are one from another: Wed them with the leave of their owners, and give them their dowers, according to what is reasonable: They should be chaste, not lustful, nor taking paramours: when they are taken in wedlock, if they fall into shame, their punishment is half that for free women. This (permission) is for those among you who fear sin; but it is better for you that ye practice self-restraint. ...
4.29 ... Eat not up your property among yourselves in vanities: But let there be amongst you traffic and trade by mutual good-will: Nor kill (or destroy) yourselves: ...
4.32 And in no wise covet those things in which Allah Hath bestowed His gifts more freely on some of you than on others: to men is allotted what they earn, and to women what they earn: ...
4.33 To (benefit) every one, We have appointed shares and heirs to property left by parents and relatives. To those, also, to whom your right hand was pledged, give their due portion. ...
4.34 Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in (the husband's) absence what Allah would have them guard. As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (next), refuse to share their beds, (and last) beat them (lightly); but if they return to obedience, seek not against them means (of annoyance): ...
4.35 If ye fear a breach between them twain, appoint (two) arbiters, one from his family, and the other from hers; ...
4.36 ... and do good, to parents, kinsfolk, orphans, those in need, neighbors who are of kin, neighbors who are strangers, the companion by your side, the wayfarer (ye meet), and what your right hands possess: ...
5.1 ... fulfill (all) obligations. Lawful unto you (for food) are all beasts of cattle, with the exceptions named: But animals of the chase are forbidden while ye are in the sacred precincts or in the state of pilgrimage: ...
5.3 Forbidden to you (for food) are: dead meat, blood, the flesh of swine, and that on which hath been invoked the name of other than Allah; that which hath been killed by strangling, or by a violent blow, or by a headlong fall, or by being gored to death; that which hath been (partly) eaten by a wild animal; unless ye are able to slaughter it (in due form); that which is sacrificed on stone (altars); (forbidden) also is the division (of meat) by raffling with arrows: that is impiety. ... But if any is forced by hunger, with no inclination to transgression ...
5.4 They ask thee what is lawful to them (as food). Say: Lawful unto you are (all) things good and pure: and what ye have taught your trained hunting animals (to catch) ...
5.5 This day are (all) things good and pure made lawful unto you. The food of the People of the Book is lawful unto you and yours is lawful unto them. (Lawful unto you in marriage) are (not only) chaste women who are believers, but chaste women among the People of the Book, revealed before your time, when ye give them their due dowers, and desire chastity, not lewdness, nor secret intrigues. ...
5.8 ... as witnesses to fair dealing, and let not the hatred of others to you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just: that is next to piety: ...
5.32 ... if any one slew a person, unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land, it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people. ...
5.38 As to the thief, male or female, cut off his or her hands: a retribution for their deeds, and exemplary punishment ...
5.45 ... "Life for life, eye for eye, nose or nose, ear for ear, tooth for tooth, and wounds equal for equal." But if any one remits the retaliation by way of charity, it is an act of atonement for himself. ...
7.31 ... eat and drink: But waste not by excess ...
8.41 And know that out of all the booty that ye may acquire (in war), a fifth share is assigned to Allah, and to the Messenger, and to near relatives, orphans, the needy, and the wayfarer ...
8.61 But if the enemy incline towards peace, do thou (also) incline towards peace, ...
8.69 But (now) enjoy what ye took in war, lawful and good: ...
9.4 (But the treaties are) not dissolved with those Pagans with whom ye have entered into alliance and who have not subsequently failed you in aught, nor aided any one against you. So fulfill your engagements with them to the end of their term: ...
9.7 ... As long as these stand true to you, stand ye true to them: ...
10.36 But most of them follow nothing but conjecture: truly conjecture can be of no avail against Truth. ...
11.11 Not so do those who show patience and constancy, and work righteousness; ...
16.71 And Allah has made for you mates (and companions) of your own nature, and made for you, out of them, sons and daughters and grandchildren, and provided for you sustenance of the best: ...
17.23 ... and that ye be kind to parents. Whether one or both of them attain old age in thy life, say not to them a word of contempt, nor repel them, but address them in terms of honor.
17.24 And, out of kindness, lower to them the wing of humility, and say: "My Lord! bestow on them Thy Mercy even as they cherished me in childhood."
17.26 And render to the kindred their due rights, as (also) to those in want, and to the wayfarer: But squander not (your wealth) in the manner of a spendthrift.
17.31 Kill not your children for fear of want: We shall provide sustenance for them as well as for you. Verily the killing of them is a great sin.
17.32 Nor come nigh to adultery: for it is an indecent (deed) and an evil way.
17.33 Nor take life ... except for just cause. And if anyone is slain wrongfully, we have given his heir authority (to demand Qisás or to forgive): but let him nor exceed bounds in the matter of taking life; for he is helped (by the Law).
17.34 Come not nigh to the orphan's property except to improve it, until he attains the age of full strength; and fulfill (every) engagement, ...
17.35 Give full measure when ye measure, and weigh with a balance that is straight: ...
17.36 And pursue not that of which thou hast no knowledge; ...
17.37 Nor walk on the earth with insolence: for thou canst not rend the earth asunder, nor reach the mountains in height.
18.23 Nor say of anything, "I shall be sure to do so and so tomorrow."
22.39 To those against whom war is made, permission is given (to fight), because they are wronged; ...
22.60 ... And if one has retaliated to no greater extent than the injury he received, and is again set upon inordinately, Allah will help him: ...
23.3 Who avoid vain talk;
23.4 Who are active in giving Zakat;
23.5 Who guard their modesty,
23.6 Except with those joined to them in the marriage bond, or (the captives) whom their right hands possess, for (in their case) they are free from blame,
23.7 But those whose desires exceed those limits are transgressors;
23.8 Those who faithfully observe their trusts and their covenants,
24.2 The woman and the man guilty of fornication, flog each of them with a hundred stripes. Let not compassion move you in their case, ...
24.3 The adulterer cannot have sexual relations with any but an adulteress, or idolatress. And the adulteress, none can have sexual relations with her but an adulterer or an idolater: ...
24.4 And those who launch a charge against chaste women, and produce not four witnesses (to support their allegations), flog them with eighty stripes; and reject their evidence ever after: for such men are wicked transgressors;
24.6 And for those who launch a charge against their wives, and have (in support) no evidence but their own, let one of them testify four times by Allah that he is of those who speak the truth;
24.7 And the fifth (oath) (should be) that he solemnly invoke the curse of Allah on himself if he tell a lie.
24.8 But it would avert the punishment from the wife, if she bears witness four times (with an oath) By Allah, that (her husband) is telling a lie;
24.9 And the fifth (oath) should be that she solemnly invokes the wrath of Allah on herself if (her accuser) is telling the truth.
24.22 Let not those among you who are endued with grace and amplitude of means resolve by oath against helping their kinsmen, those in want, and those who have left their homes in Allah's cause: let them forgive and overlook, ...
24.23 Those who slander chaste, indiscreet, and believing women, are cursed in this life ...
24.26 Women impure are for men impure, and men impure for women impure and women of purity are for men of purity, and men of purity are for women of purity: these are innocent of all what people say: for them there is forgiveness, and a provision honorable.
24.27 ... Enter not houses other than your own, until ye have asked permission and saluted those in them: ...
24.28 If ye find no one in the house, enter not until permission is given to you: if ye are asked to go back, go back: ...
24.29 It is no fault on your part to enter houses not lived in, which serve some (other) use for you: ...
24.30 Say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty: ...
24.31 And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what (ordinarily) appear thereof; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers, their husband's fathers, their sons, their husbands' sons, their brothers or their brothers' sons, or their sisters' sons, or their women, or the slaves whom their right hands possess, or male attendants free of sexual desires, or small children who have no carnal of women; and that they should not strike their feet to draw attention to their hidden ornaments. ...
24.32 Marry those among you who are single, or the virtuous ones among yourselves, male or female: ...
24.33 Let those who find not the wherewithal for marriage keep themselves chaste, ... And if any of your slaves ask for a deed in writing (for emancipation), give them such a deed if ye know any good in them: yea, give them something yourselves ... But force not your maids to prostitution when they desire chastity, in order that ye may make a gain in the goods of this life. ...
24.58 ... Let those whom your right hands possess, and the (children) among you who have not come of age ask your permission (before they come to your presence), on three occasions: before morning prayer; the while ye doff your clothes for the noonday heat; and after the late-night prayer: these are your three times of undress: outside those times it is not wrong for you or for them to move about attending to each other. ...
24.59 But when the children among you come of age, let them (also) ask for permission, as do those senior to them (in age). ...
25.67 Those who, when they spend, are not extravagant and not niggardly, but hold a just (balance) between those (extremes);
25.68 ... nor slay such life as Allah has made sacred except for just cause, nor commit fornication; ...
25.72 Those who witness no falsehood, and, if they pass by futility, they pass by it with honorable (avoidance);
28.55 And when they hear vain talk, they turn away therefrom and say: "To us our deeds, and to you yours; peace be to you: we seek not the ignorant."
28.56 It is true thou wilt not be able to guide every one whom thou lovest; ...
28.77 ... nor forget thy portion in this world: but do thou good, ... and seek not (occasions for) mischief in the land: ...
29.8 We have enjoined on man kindness to parents: ...
29.29 "Do ye indeed approach men, and cut off the highway? and practice wickedness (even) in your councils?" ...
30.38 So give what is due to kindred, the needy, and the wayfarer. ...
30.39 That which you give in usury for increase through the property of (other) people, will have no increase ... but that which you give for charity, ... (will increase) ...
31.14 ... (to be good) to his parents: in travail upon travail did his mother bear him, and in years twain was his weaning: ... "Show gratitude ... to thy parents: "...
31.17 ... establish regular prayer, enjoin what is just, and forbid what is wrong: and bear with patient constancy whatever betide thee; for this is firmness (of purpose) in (the conduct of) affairs.
31.18 "And swell not thy cheek (for pride) at men, nor walk in insolence through the earth; "...
31.19 "And be moderate in thy pace, and lower thy voice; for the harshest of sounds without doubt is the braying of the ass."
32.15 ... nor are they (ever) puffed up with pride.
32.16 ... and they spend (in charity) out of the sustenance which We have bestowed on them. ...
33.6 ... nevertheless do ye what is just to your closest friends: ...
33.32 ... be not too complacent of speech, lest one in whose heart is a disease should feel desire: but speak ye a speech (that is) just.
33.33 And stay quietly in your houses, and make not a dazzling display, like that of the former Times of Ignorance; ... and give Zakat; ...
33.49 ... When ye marry believing women, and then divorce them before ye have touched them, no period of iddah have ye to count in respect of them: so give them a present, and release them in a handsome manner.
33.50 ... We have made lawful to thee thy wives to whom thou hast paid their dowers; and those whom thy right hand possesses out of the captives of war whom Allah has assigned to thee; and daughters of thy paternal uncles and aunts, and daughters of thy maternal uncles and aunts, who migrated (from Makkah) with thee; and any believing woman who gives herself to the Prophet if the Prophet wishes to wed her; this only for thee, and not for the Believers (at large); We know what We have appointed for them as to their wives and the captives whom their right hands possess; in order that there should be no difficulty for thee. ...
33.51 Thou mayest defer (the turn of) any of them that thou pleasest, and thou mayest receive any thou pleasest: and there is no blame on thee if thou invite one whose (turn) thou hadst set aside. This were nigher to the cooling of their eyes, the prevention of their grief, and their satisfaction, that of all of them, with that which thou hast to give them: ...
33.52 It is not lawful for thee (to marry more) women after this, nor to change them for (other) wives, even though their beauty attract thee, except any thy right hand should possess (as handmaidens): ...
33.55 There is no blame (on these ladies if they appear) before their fathers or their sons, their brothers, or their brothers' sons, or their sisters' sons, or their women, or the (slaves) whom their right hands possess. ...
33.59 ... Tell thy wives and daughters, and the believing women, that they should cast their outer garments over their persons (when out of doors): that is most convenient, that they should be known (as such) and not molested. ...
38.26 ... so judge thou between men in truth (and justice): nor follow thou the lust (of thy heart), ...
41.34 Nor can Goodness and Evil be equal. Repel (Evil) with what is better: then will he between whom and thee was hatred become as it were thy friend and intimate!
41.35 And no one will be granted such goodness except those who exercise patience and self-restraint, none but persons of the greatest good fortune.
42.37 Those who avoid the greater sins and indecencies, and, when they are angry even then forgive;
42.38 ... who (conduct) their affairs by mutual Consultation; who spend out of what We bestow on them for Sustenance;
42.39 And those who, when an oppressive wrong is inflicted on them, (do not cower but) help and defend themselves.
42.40 The recompense for an injury is an injury equal thereto (in degree): but if a person forgives and makes reconciliation, his reward is due from Allah: ...
42.41 But indeed if any do help and defend himself after a wrong (done) to him, against such there is no cause of blame.
42.42 The blame is only against those who oppress men with wrong-doing and insolently transgress beyond bounds through the land, defying right and justice: ...
42.43 But indeed if any show patience and forgive, that would truly be an affair of great resolution.
47.4 Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks; at length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind (the captives) firmly: thereafter (is the time for) either generosity or ransom: until the war lays down its burdens. ...
48.17 No blame is there on the blind, nor is there blame on the lame, nor on one ill (if he joins not the war): ...
49.6 ... If a wicked person comes to you with any news, ascertain the truth, lest ye harm people unwittingly, and afterwards become full of repentance for what ye have done.
49.9 If two parties among the Believers fall into a fight, make ye peace between them: but if one of them transgresses beyond bounds against the other then fight ye (all) against the one that transgresses until it complies with the command of Allah; but if it complies then make peace between them with justice and be fair: ...
49.11 ... Let not some men among you laugh at others: it may be that the (latter) are better than the (former): nor let some women laugh at others: it may be that the (latter are better than the former): nor defame nor be sarcastic to each other, nor call each other by (offensive) nicknames: Ill-seeming is a name connoting wickedness, (used of one) after he has believed: and those who do not desist are (indeed) doing wrong.
49.12 ... Avoid suspicion as much (as possible): for suspicion in some cases is a sin: and spy not on each other, nor speak ill of each other behind their backs. ...
51.17 They were in the habit of sleeping but little by night,
51.19 And in their wealth there is a due share for the beggar and the deprived.
53.32 ... Therefore justify not yourselves: ...
57.18 For those who give in Charity, men and women, ... it shall increase manifold (to their credit), and they shall have (besides) a generous reward.
57.20 Know ye (all), that the life of this world is but play and pastime, adornment and mutual boasting and multiplying, (in rivalry) among yourselves, riches and children. Here is a similitude: how rain and the growth which it brings forth, delight (the hearts of) the tillers; soon it withers; thou wilt see it grow yellow; then it becomes dry and crumbles away. ... And what is the life of this world, but goods and chattels of deception?
57.23 In order that ye may not despair over matters that pass you by, nor exult over favors bestowed upon you. ...
58.2 If any men among you divorce their wives by Zihár (calling them mothers), they cannot be their mothers: None can be their mothers except those who gave them birth. ...
58.3 But those who pronounce the word Zihár to their wives, then wish to go back on the words they uttered, (it is ordained that such a one) should free a slave before they touch each other: thus are ye admonished to perform: ...
58.4 And if any has not (the means), he should fast for two months consecutively before they touch each other. But if any is unable to do so, he should feed sixty indigent ones, ...
60.8 Allah forbids you not, with regard to those who fight you not for (your) Faith nor drive you out of your homes, from dealing kindly and justly with them: ...
60.9 Allah only forbids you, with regard to those who fight you for (your) Faith, and drive you out of your homes, and support (others) in driving you out, from turning to them (for friendship and protection). It is such as turn to them (in these circumstances), that do wrong.
60.10 ... When there come to you believing women refugees, examine (and test) them: ... if ye ascertain that they are Believers, then send them not back to the Unbelievers. They are not lawful (wives) for the Unbelievers, nor are the (Unbelievers) lawful (husbands) for them. But pay the Unbelievers what they have spent (on their dower), and there will be no blame on you if ye marry them on payment of their dower to them. But hold not to the ties (marriage contract) of unbelieving women: ask for what ye have spent on their dowers, and let the (Unbelievers) ask for what they have spent (on the dowers of women who come over to you). ...
60.11 And if any of your wives deserts you to the Unbelievers, and ye have your turn (by the coming over of a woman from the other side), then pay to those whose wives have deserted the equivalent of what they had spent (on their dower). ...
60.12 ... When believing women come to thee to take the oath of fealty to thee, that they will not associate in worship any other thing whatever with Allah, that they will not steal, that they will not commit adultery (or fornication), that they will not kill their children, that they will not utter slander, intentionally forging falsehood, and that they will not disobey thee in any just matter, then do thou receive their fealty, ...
63.10 And spend something (in charity) out of the substance which We have bestowed on you, before Death should come to any of you ...
65.1 ... When ye do divorce women, divorce them at their prescribed periods, and count (accurately), their prescribed periods: ... and turn them not out of their houses, nor shall they (themselves) leave, except in case they are guilty of some open lewdness, ...
65.2 Thus when they fulfill their term appointed, either take them back on equitable terms or part with them on equitable terms; and take for witness two persons from among you, endued with justice, and establish the evidence ...
65.4 Such of your women as have passed the age of monthly courses, for them the prescribed period, if ye have any doubts, is three months, and for those who have no courses (it is the same): for those who are pregnant, their period is until they deliver their burdens: ...
65.6 Let the women live (in iddah) in the same style as ye live, according to your means: annoy them not, so as to restrict them. And if they are pregnant, then spend (your substance) on them until they deliver their burden: and if they suckle your (offspring), give them their recompense: and take mutual counsel together, according to what is just and reasonable. And if ye find yourselves in difficulties, let another woman suckle (the child) on the (father's) behalf.
65.7 Let the man of means spend according to his means: and the man whose resources are restricted, let him spend according to what Allah has given him. ...
66.5 It may be, if he divorced you (all), that Allah will give him in exchange consorts better than you, who submit (their wills), who believe, who are devout, ... who fast, previously married or virgins.
70.24 And those in whose wealth is a recognized right.
70.25 For the (needy) who asks and him who is deprived (for some reason from asking);
70.29 And those who guard their chastity,
70.30 Except with their wives and the (captives) whom their right hands possess, for (then) they are not to be blamed,
70.32 And those who respect their trusts and covenants;
70.33 And those who stand firm in their testimonies;
76.7 They perform (their) vows, ...
76.8 And they feed, ... the indigent, the orphan, and the captive,
81.8 When the female (infant), buried alive, is questioned,
81.9 For what crime she was killed;
83.1 Woe to those that deal in fraud,
83.2 Those who, when they have to receive by measure from men, exact full measure,
83.3 But when they have to give by measure or weight to men, give less than due.
89.17 Nay, nay! but ye honor not the orphans!
89.18 Nor do ye encourage one another to feed the poor!
89.19 And ye devour inheritance, all with greed,
89.20 And ye love wealth with inordinate love!
90.12 And what will explain to thee the path that is steep?
90.13 (It is) freeing the bondman;
90.14 Or the giving of food in a day of privation
90.15 To the orphan with claims of relationship,
90.16 Or to the indigent (down) in the dust.
90.17 Then will he be of those who believe, and enjoin patience, constancy, and self-restraint, and enjoin deeds of kindness and compassion.
92.18 Those who spend their wealth for increase in self-purification,
92.19 And have in their minds no favor from anyone for which a reward is expected in return,
93.9 Therefore, treat not the orphan with harshness,
93.10 Nor repulse him who asks;
104.1 Woe to every (kind of) scandal-monger and backbiter,
104.2 Who pileth up wealth and layeth it by,
107.2 Then such is the (one) who repulses the orphan,
107.3 And encourages not the feeding of the indigent.
He lived 673 to 735 and was historian and theologian.
Jewish and Arabian philosophy school included Saadia ben Joseph or Saddjah Fajjumi, Isaac Ismali, Avicebron or Ibn Gebirol, Levi ben Gerson, Moses Maimonides, and Ibn Pakuda. It developed natural, scientific, and universal religion, based on moral law and common ideas in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.
He lived ? to 995.
School was Platonist and humanist and included Alain of Lille, Constantine the African, Gaunilon, Adelard of Bath, Bernhard of Chartres, William of Conches, Bernardus Silvestris, Thierry of Chartres, and Gilbert of Poitiers.
He lived 1135 to 1204 and developed Jewish philosophy. People have free choice because the knowledge that God has is not understandable by humans, though God knows the future.
He lived 1182 to 1226, founded Franciscan monastic order, and advocated the simple life. Little Flowers of St. Francis tell his stories. It is said that he preached to birds and tamed wolf by his gentleness.
School included Dominic of Spain, Roland of Cremona, Hugh of St. Cher, and Robert Kilwardby. Intellect knows the good in general and in particular. Will follows intellect, because it strives for good. To choose the good or best requires knowing all alternatives. If people can select alternatives, people will do it automatically. Individuals cannot exist independently but depend on whole.
He lived 1221 to 1274 and was Scholastic and Franciscan. He became Roman Catholic saint.
School included Roger Bacon and John Peckham.
Epistemology
People can study feelings, personalities, and social relations empirically.
People can know the good only by revelation, not reason.
Ethics
People are independent selves and Forms, with free will. Acts can be good if God so wills them.
Ideas arise deterministically, so no choice exists.
People can only love God.
Metaphysics
God's will has no limit, even from itself. God wills the good and that makes it good.
Reality is all individual things. All individual things are independent and have Form. Classes have countable numbers of members {principle of individuation} {individuation, Franciscan}. However, negatives of classes cannot be individual or countable. Body is matter, not essence.
Mind
People are independent selves and Forms. Will controls, and is independent of, intellect.
School included Petrarch or Francesco Petrarcha, Boccaccio, Nicolaus Cusanus or Nicholas of Cusa, Raymund of Sabunde, Desiderius Erasmus, and Charles de Bouelles. It opposed Scholasticism, Latin language, and emotionless thinking.
He lived 1288 to 1344 and developed Jewish philosophy.
He lived 1290 to 1349 and was against Pelagians, who believed that people's will was morally correct.
School included John Wycliffe or John Wyclif, John Huss, Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, and John Calvin.
He lived 1340 to 1412 and developed Jewish philosophy. Belief in God's commandments implies belief in God. Empty space is not contradictory.
He lived 1407 to 1457 and was Eclectic humanist. He opposed metaphysics as twisted language and opposed logic as only rhetoric. Good is pleasure of soul in heaven.
School included Luis de Molina, Francisco Suarez, Johannes Capreolus or John Capreolus, Antoninus, Dionysius the Carthusian, Domingo Banez, Domingo de Soto, Bartholomew Medina, Thomas de Vio or Cajetan, and Francis Silvester.
He lived 1444 to 1485 and was Aristotelian and humanist.
School had Catholic followers of Aristotle and included Ermolao Barbaro, Pietro Pomponazzi, Gasparo Contarini, Simon Porta, Julius Caesar Scaliger, Jean Fernel, Paduano Pomponazzi, Girolamo Cardano, and Cremonini.
He lived 1460 to 1520 and developed Jewish philosophy.
School included Philip Melancthon as Aristotelian, Martin Luther as Augustinian, John Calvin as Augustinian, and Ulrich Zwingli as neo-Platonist.
He lived 1466 to 1536, was Catholic and humanist, complained about Catholic Church problems, and was against Protestant Reformation. He edited Greek and Latin writings of early Christian writers, including New Testament. He attacked foolish thinking and abuse of people.
Epistemology
Reason and common sense are good.
Ethics
Young people should behave properly in society.
He lived 1478 to 1535 and was Catholic humanist. Freedom requires religious tolerance. Society's problems, especially property inequality, cause most wrongdoing. State interests are material, not spiritual. Society should organize, so community holds all property {communism, More}, with no classes. Citizens should be equal before the law. Punishments should not be severe.
He lived 1469 to 1527.
Politics
Government must maintain public order, because human nature is not noble or honest. Government must maintain itself to maintain order. State actions are justifiable if they are in ruler's interest, because people act to achieve their own interests. Means justify ends, to maintain public order.
State's goals are national independence, security, and well-ordered constitution. States need religion for social cohesion. Power is necessary to achieve state's purposes. However, no legitimate power source exists in states. Opinion, propaganda, virtue, and semblance of virtue can secure power and authority.
Liberty requires virtue in people. Personal rights in states should be commensurate with power. Rulers are better if there is no censorship. People have right to rule. People in states need power, to stabilize state through system of checks and balances. Tyrannies are bad.
He lived 1492 to 1540 and was humanist and Neoplatonist.
He lived 1494 to 1560, was Francis Vittoria's student, was in School of Salamanca, and was Thomist.
He lived 1527 to 1581, was Francis Vittoria's student, was Thomist, and was founder of Probabilism [1577]. People are free to perform other acts, rather than always conforming to moral law {probabilism}.
He lived 1518 to 1581. People can change the social agreement if sovereign rules against their interests.
He lived 1550 to 1600 and was Principal Thomist.
He lived 1535 to 1600, was Francis Vittoria's student, and was Thomist and Dominican. God gives grace and motivates acceptance of grace {praemotio physica}.
He lived 1535 to 1600 and was Thomist. God knows all results under all circumstances, actual and possible, and so determines circumstances. However, God does not control free will. Circumstances and will merely coincide.
Fausto Sozzini founded school. People should follow the moral laws of Moses and Jesus, with no dogma or metaphysics.
He lived 1570 to 1635 and developed Jewish philosophy.
School included Cornelius Jansenius and Pierre Huet.
He lived 1583 to 1648 and became baron [1629]. There are four kinds of truth: things as they exist {veritas rei}, things as they appear {veritas apparentiae}, concepts, and generally accepted concepts {veritas intellectus}. Rational religion aids society cohesion.
He lived 1589 to 1644 and was Thomist.
He lived 1568 to 1639 and was of Philosophy of Nature school. Highly regulated states with bureaucracies based on merit can make socialist societies. Technology and philosophy can control and create world.
He lived 1585 to 1638, was Catholic theologian, desired return to teachings of Augustine, and advocated strict ethics. He started Jansenism [1642]. To do good requires God's grace. Salvation comes by God's grace. Universe has predestination.
He lived 1592 to 1670 and was humanist. He advocated education in human values.
Spener founded school that included A. H. Francke, G. Arnold, and C. Dippel.
He lived 1631 to 1718. Altruistic and social motives in people come from God.
He lived 1635 to 1705. In response to Church corruption, he developed ideal of personal morality and contemplation {pietism, Spener}.
School included Samuel Clarke, Ralph Cudworth, John Balguy, and Richard Price on side of natural law and reason, and Hume, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson on side of emotion {sympathy, Hume} and moral sense. Benevolence, not self-love, is the basis of morals.
He lived 1627 to 1704. Christianization relates nation histories and gives history purpose.
School included Shaftesbury, Samuel Clarke, William Wollaston, Francis Hutcheson, Henry Home, Edmund Burke, Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith, Joseph Butler, William Paley, Jeremy Bentham, and Bernhard de Mandeville.
School {Deism} included John Toland, Anthony Collins, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Chubb, Thomas Morgan, Lord Bolingbroke, Voltaire, Rousseau, Franklin, and Jefferson. Religion should have no revelation, no miracles, no sacraments, and no clergy, but have morals and God {natural religion, Deism}. God was creator but then let everything move on its own {deus ex machina, Deism}.
He lived 1650 to 1729, was archbishop of Dublin [1702 to 1729], and opposed Toland.
He lived 1665 to 1735, was bishop of Cork [1709], and opposed Toland.
He lived 1671 to 1713 and was deist. As third Earl of Shaftesbury, he introduced laws to prevent women and children from working in coal mines, to limit workdays to ten hours, and to create insane asylums.
Ethics
Feelings depend on reflection about self. They approve the good and beautiful and abhor the bad and ugly and so guide person's actions, making moral sense {moral sense} {sentimentalism}.
Goal of ethical life is individual-ability development, by unfolding essences. Individuals should use all forces and impulses in harmonious ways. Individuals should not conform to others' laws or humble self or will before other people. In cultivated and mature people, development combines selfish interests with altruistic motives.
Metaphysics
God is what orders physical world {deus ex machina, Shaftesbury}.
He lived 1679 to 1754, was follower of Leibniz, was Protestant, and founded Berlin Academy. He was international lawyer and favored natural law.
Epistemology
Rational and empirical knowledge are separate.
Ethics
Natural law and moral law are both strivings for perfection by monads. Increase in perfection brings happiness, and decrease brings pain. Helping other people and following moral duties lead to perfection and happiness. People improve by increasing idea clarity.
He lived 1675 to 1729 and was Moralist. Morals are part of natural law. Reason shows that people should follow the golden rule and be benevolent to others.
School included Montesquieu, Galiani, Charles St. Lambert, Comte de Volney, Condorcet, Dominique Garat, Morelly, and Mably.
He lived 1689 to 1755, wrote histories, and began political science.
Law
Laws must suit environment. The standard of law is justice.
Politics
Personal liberty is good. There are three government types. Kings of Europe illustrate monarchy. Rulers of Orient illustrate despotism. Republics can be either democratic or aristocratic. Democratic republics depend on virtue and public spirit. Aristocratic republics depend on moderation. Monarchy depends on honor. Despotism depends on fear. Virtue is the ideal of democracy. Moderation is the ideal of aristocracy. Honor is the ideal of monarchy. Fear is the ideal of despotism. States need constitutions. Separating executive, legislative, and judicial government branches is good.
He lived 1756 to 1836 and was Utilitarian. Society should have no rulers.
He lived 1670 to 1733. Civilization creates more unsatisfied wants and so reduces happiness and morals. People obey laws to get the most advantage. Laws should bring the greatest utility and happiness to the most people.
He lived 1694 to 1746 and affected Hume and Adam Smith. Feelings are innate and natural, not from reason or intuition. People have moral sense, an idea from Shaftesbury.
He lived 1692 to 1752. People have moral sense and can reason, and both cause conscience. Conscience balances self-love and benevolence and so controls passions towards other objects. However, conscience can be wrong.
School included Christophe de Beaumont.
School included Loens Schmidt, Salomon Semler, and Samuel Reimarus.
He lived 1715 to 1771. People have same potential, which differentiates with education and in society. Virtue should have reward. People obey laws to get the most advantage. Laws should bring the greatest utility and happiness to the most people.
He lived 1723 to 1790 and was Hutcheson's student. In economics, he studied free trade, economies of scale, infrastructure, agriculture as economic growth basis, and labor and capital interaction.
Economics should have no regulation {laissez-faire, economics}. Colonial exploitation {mercantilism, Smith} is bad. Labor division gives more value. Economic transactions among people make markets, which need no higher-level rules or conscious-agent actions {invisible hand, Smith}.
Ethics
People judge their actions by what others' judgment will be, so social life determines ethical feelings.
Politics
Workingmen should have good conditions and education. American colonies should have legislature representation.
He lived 1738 to 1794 and studied law.
He lived 1712 to 1769 and studied law.
He lived 1723 to 1816 and was English Moral Philosopher. Society can progress or not progress. People are social, fight, indulge, and can be virtuous.
He lived 1737 to 1809. Deism is preferable. Free-thinking and liberty are good. People have right to education, pensions, and other benefits.
He lived 1748 to 1832 and founded empiricist philosophy. His ideas led to fewer crimes carrying death penalty, new divorce and bankruptcy laws, new married-woman rights, and real-property law reform.
Epistemology
Sentences are meaning units. Sentences using certain words or about certain thoughts can translate into other sentences without those words or thoughts {paraphrasis} {contextual definition}, which people can perceive and so understand, for example, in terms of pain and pleasure.
Pronouns and demonstratives {egocentric particular} refer to different things in different contexts.
Ethics
The greatest good is pleasure. People pursue pleasure and avoid pain, for themselves or others. Both pleasure and pain are clear in meaning and are measurable. The greatest good for the greatest number is the goal of social ethics {utilitarianism, Bentham}. All actions are reasonable and good that promote "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" {greatest happiness principle} {utility principle} {principle of utility}.
Value systems can measure pleasure and pain in individual and social relations or actions. Action consequences can have values, and mind can choose the best action. Action effects on others' gains or losses determine act's morality. Ethical acts give utility, pleasure, and happiness to the most people.
Politics
Law is about rights and duties, which are complex ideas, not simple perceptions. Natural rights have no corresponding duties and so are contradictions. Legal rights have legal duties and so are rational. Experiments must continually test legal rights and duties. No rights are unchangeable or permanent. Description of, or wish for, right does not make it exist.
Laws should be socially useful and not merely reflect customs. Laws can produce the greatest happiness for the most people by punishing and rewarding to balance all people's desires. Law should make public and private interests coincide and ensure subsistence, abundance, security, and equality. Laws should make people pursue happiness, to attain general happiness. Perhaps, tradition and imperialism do not do this. Women's rights help.
Punishment is to deter people from causing pain or reducing pleasure, so punishment should be correct amount for this purpose.
Social contract, in which people agree to obey authority to obtain certain rights and benefits, is legal contract, not foundation for law.
Contract depends on maximizing utility.
Diminishing marginal utility causes equality to make more utility. Ability to subsist has greater utility than mere general abundance. Security has great utility.
Democracy allows the greatest number of people to seek to maximize pleasure and minimize pain.
He lived 1752 to 1788 and studied law.
He lived 1740 to 1814 and studied sexual motives, sadism, and masochism. People are sums of their inherited qualities and so do not have personal responsibility for behavior. People can have sexual pleasure {sadomasochism} by inflicting pain or cruelty on others {sadism, Sade} or on oneself {masochism, Sade}.
He lived 1743 to 1805 and formulated argument from design.
Ethics
Right is what agrees with will of God. Proper actions come from moral, but not necessarily noble, feelings.
Utility, not emotions or altruism, causes people's actions. God uses Heaven and Hell to try to make people avoid temporal gain. People's fear and hope can control their selfish desires, because people act only in their own interest. Morals require rewards and punishments, together with power or authority to enforce law.
Metaphysics
Anyone who sees watches must assume that watchmakers designed and formed them, so observing universe makes people assume that God designed and formed it {argument from design, Paley}.
He lived 1753 to 1828. Science can finds phenomena laws but cannot give understanding.
School included Fourier, Claude de St. Simon, Bazard, B. Enfantin, P. Leroux, and P. Buchez.
School included Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, T. Cogan, William Godwin, J. Austin, G. C. Lewis, Alexander Bain, Henry Sidgwick, Hastings Rashdall, T. Fowler, and John Stuart Mill.
School included Tapparelli and Liberatore.
He lived 1760 to 1825, influenced Comte and Marx, and was the first socialist in France. History has progress. Medieval society became the Enlightenment and then science and technology, as merchants and industrialists arose and conflicted with church and king.
School included F. Hermes, B. Bolzano, A. Gunther, and W. Rosenkrantz.
METAPHYSICS: All things must continually synthesize into something new. Souls cannot be immortal, because they continually change into something else.
He lived 1768 to 1834 and founded Schleiermacherian School of Plato and Protestantism.
Epistemology
He invented a theory of how to interpret texts {hermeneutics, Schleiermacher}. Analyze text language and author mind and development. Relate parts to whole text. Knowledge gained can find new knowledge, which expands knowledge {hermeneutic circle}.
The goal of knowledge is to show identity of being and thought, which appear separate in consciousness as perception and conception. This goal can never have complete attainment. As method, presuppose that they are the same as God and try to understand process involved in uniting them.
Ethics
Religion is communion with, and absolute dependence on, God, universal, infinity, or unified thought and being. Religion is not about knowing or doing right actions.
All ethical action is for uniting nature and reason. This is the moral and natural law.
People develop lives in particular ways based on natural law, nature, and harmony. Aristocrats live life fully, cultivate sensibilities, and ignore rules and laws as unnecessary.
Metaphysics
Absolute Good or Infinite has Ideas in Mind.
He lived 1804 to 1872 and was Theist. He studied people as thinking and acting subjects {philosophical anthropology}.
Ethics
God is what man conceives himself to be and wishes to be. People have alienation, because they do not understand, or are not successful in, actual world and so turn to fantasy and religion. Religion projects people's emotions and thoughts.
He lived 1818 to 1883, was Feuerbach's and Bauer's student, and was Young Hegelian. He wanted to merge Hegelianism with Enlightenment materialism. He began working with Engels [1844] and helped found Communist League with Engels [1848]. He helped found First International Workingmen's Association [1864].
Economics
One person or group cannot affect market, though people create markets.
Market and capitalists {bourgeoisie} exploit workers {proletariat}. Capitalism and markets always tends to form monopolies and create injustice. They take away freedom, prevent constructive social activity, cause competition, block cooperation, and take labor products away from laborer to anonymous place. Bourgeoisie create new production forces. Those forces control proletariat.
First basic production mode {feudalism, Marx} had landowners in control. Second mode {capitalism, Marx} had industrialists in control. Third and final mode {socialism, Marx} will have wage earners in control.
Capitalism and private property are about profit making, not about people. Employers increase their profits by adding capital, decreasing labor, and merging, to control the market and bankrupt other smaller businesses. More people become unemployed and wages fall, which can lead to revolution.
Production level greater than wage level {surplus value} causes profit.
However, if surplus value theory is true, labor-intensive industries should have higher profits, but they do not. Actually, different industry types have about equal profit.
To maximize profit, businesses try to keep wages low and employ few workers. Profit minimizes employment, and workers are poor.
Economic system must change to allow human meaning and freedom, by removing social classes and allowing people to produce under their will, under rule of proletariat {dictatorship of the proletariat}.
Only labor, not land or capital, has value {labor theory of value}. Capital and resources are indirect labor. Because capitalistic systems discount labor, they make too much capital {overproduction}, have overproduction, and have unsold goods, and economy has business cycles.
Epistemology
Social and economic relations {culture base} {base, culture}, particularly production ability, determine society's beliefs, arts, laws, politics, government, institutions, morals, and religions {superstructure}. The superstructure and social ideas {ideology, society} favor and are for society's ruling class.
Perception is interaction between subject and object, using the dialectic. The process can never be complete. To know sensations and perceptions, you must use or apply them.
Because people and knowledge change over time as situations change, values change.
Ethics
Inhuman social and economic conditions cause alienation. Culture, religiosity, and materialism suppress expression of spirit. Inhuman social and economic conditions also block people from getting basic needs. People cannot be free to exercise their will or realize their essence. Life has no meaning.
Religion is an opiate and an illusion.
History
History is dialectical materialism applied to matter and man's relation to matter, which results in good production-mode changes. Production modes determine philosophy, art, politics, and history.
History is deterministic.
The five history epochs are tribal communism, classical civilization, feudalism, capitalism, and communism. Epochs have spirits, which determine people's actions, ideas, and environment. At historical periods, one class, such as feudalism nobility or capitalism petty-bourgeoisie, dominates, because they optimize production.
Politics
Group creates state to allow one class to exploit another. Government is state's agent in this process. Dominant class achieves and then maintains power.
However, the dialectic always maintains struggle between classes. Capitalism injustices lead to revolt of the masses. Overcoming capitalist power requires revolution. After capitalist-system breakdown, proletariat will collectively establish goals and produce accordingly. Dictatorship of proletariat is transition to state control of land and production {communism, Marx}, which is the only alternative to capitalism.
He lived 1806 to 1884 and was Theist.
He lived 1820 to 1895 and was Young Hegelian. He met Marx [1842], founded Communism [1848], and organized revolutionary movements in Europe.
Epistemology
Practical results determine truth.
Metaphysics
Nature develops through dialectic {dialectical materialism}. Matter has opposites and contradictions, whose dialectic gives motion and development to matter. Dialectic causes quantitative and then qualitative change. Change results in loss or negation and thus leads to new things. Matter gives thought form, which is the dialectic. Matter came before consciousness.
Politics
Society develops through dialectical materialism. History is struggle between classes.
He lived 1802 to 1880 and was humanist and Theist.
He lived 1801 to 1866 and was Theist. Being is free-personality self-production.
School included H. Glogau, W. Dilthey, C. Sigwart, and Fichte's follower R. Eucken.
School included Gustav Theodore Fechner, Wilhelm Wundt, and Francis Herbert Bradley.
He lived 1821 to 1862 and developed evolutionary laws of history. History has three stages. Theological stage depends on supernatural and has rule by priests. Metaphysical stage depends on concepts and has rule by judges. Positive or scientific stage depends on experimental laws and has rule by businessmen.
School included Feuerbach and Eugen Dühring.
School included J. H. Newman, Pusey, W. C. Ward, F. D. Maurice, Matthew Arnold, Sieley, Pierre Leroux, Jean Reynaud, Charles Secretan, and Jules Lequier.
He lived 1814 to 1876. People should form voluntary cooperative groups with no private property {collectivism}. Revolutions {anarchism} should end repression by politicians, give freedom, and end political power by bourgeois or proletariat.
He lived 1838 to 1900 and was Utilitarian. Only conscious states have value, because people experience and appreciate them. Achievement, success, or satisfaction value transfers to conscious state.
He lived 1849 to 1901. Morals depend on society.
He lived 1805 to 1900 and was Unitarian. Motivations are the basis of morals {agent-relative morality, Martineau}.
He lived 1836 to 1882 and was Idealist.
He lived 1833 to 1911 and was historian of culture. By studying other cultures and life, people can gain higher understanding in world-view {weltanschaungen}, such as materialism, pantheism, vitalism, or idealism. People understand history, writers, and artists by imagining their lives, cultures, and work's spirit {Verstehen, Dilthey}. Life contains meaning and purpose, which continually change.
Charles Sanders Peirce founded school that included James, Dewey, F. C. S. Schiller, Papini, Paulman, Duvas, Pieron, Janet Baldwin, Delorian, Piaget, and Benet.
He lived 1890 to 1940, was Pragmatist, and wrote about ethics.
He lived 1859 to 1952, was pragmatist, and studied social and psychological processes of problem solving and inquiry. In logic, he developed the idea of statement truth based on context {warranted assertibility}.
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is about consummatory experience and secondary qualities.
Education
Children should learn by doing practical things and experiments and by having social experiences. In this way, they learn how to solve problems. They can have more equality, with less social division. People learn by doing {theory of inquiry}.
Epistemology
Inquiry involves having problem in a context, making hypothesis about solution, testing hypothesis in context, refining hypothesis, and retesting. Inquiry is a way of adjusting to environment and is how people unify and order contexts. Inquiry solves problem in context, so people can take proper action for that context. Inquiry can be useful for science, society, and individuals.
Testing ideas involves observing effects {instrumentalism, Dewey}. If idea works or is good, people believe it, but only in proper context. Theories give truths only about observable world. Truth is not final, eternal, or perfect but evolves with time and environment. All knowledge can be false {fallibilism, Dewey}.
Ethics
Human action is for solving psychological and social problems. Through inquiry, people can grow in ability and experience. Means and ends can unify.
Metaphysics
Human action shapes reality. Reality changes and grows.
Politics
Experienced empirically derived laws determine political values.
Democracy is an experiment to allow people and society to grow stably.
He lived 1863 to 1952 and was skeptical.
Aesthetics
Beauty is pleasure in thinking about object and is object quality.
Epistemology
People unite instinct and reason in a form of common sense. People know only their immediate perceptions. People have faith in them, animal faith. Mind perceives object essences {Critical Realism}.
Ethics
Religion is myth and untrue but is useful and has poetic beauty.
Metaphysics
Universe is mechanistic and materialist, but man must have faith in the unknowable, which is outside religion.
Politics
History realizes God's plan for man's salvation.
He lived 1842 to 1921 and was communist and anarchist. State, law, police, courts, armies, teachers, capitalists, and parents aid ruling class. Rulers rule for themselves, not the people. Anarchism is against such authoritarianism. People left alone will be peaceful, cooperate, and produce. Living in communes, with property sharing and no authoritarianism, is best.
He lived 1873 to 1928 and led "proletarian culture". He emphasized science {tektology} of organizations in general.
He lived 1847 to 1922. Changing society requires revolution. Worker control of capital {syndicalism, Sorel} is best.
He lived 1858 to 1924. The whole system of goods adds value to each good {ideal utilitarianism}.
He lived 1870 to 1945, started Kyoto School, and tried to unite Zen Buddhist and Western philosophy, especially that of James and Bergson.
He lived 1880 to 1936, wrote about history, and was pessimist. History has cycles. History begins with culture and becomes civilization.
He lived 1883 to 1969 and founded existentialism. Self acts of itself and for itself, communicates with other selves, and always faces death and suffering.
School included Sartre, Camus, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Simone Weil, Nikolai Hartmann, Johannes Rehanke, and Gabriel Marcel. Marcel first used the word existentialism.
He lived 1865 to 1936. People need philosophy that life is eternal and significant beyond material world, though people cannot know this. People should have faith only in faith itself. Jesus and Don Quixote lived on this basis.
School included the logical positivists Rudolph Carnap, Herbert Feigl, Hans Hahn, Kurt Gödel, Philip Frank, Otto Neurath, Moritz Schlick, and Friedrich Waisman. Preferences in ethics determine political values.
He lived 1883 to 1955. Reality is self and life interactions. Intellectual minority needs to rule to prevent anarchy.
He lived 1875 to 1965, in Alsace and Africa, and wrote about history. People should revere their own and others' lives {reverence for life}.
He lived 1882 to 1950 and was Existentialist.
School included Unamuno y Jugo.
He lived 1878 to 1950 and advocated organized state {ständestaat}.
He lived 1889 to 1960. People have relationships {ninjen} differently expressed in different cultures.
He lived 1885 to 1977.
He lived 1895 to 1973 and founded Frankfurt School, which was critical of totalitarianism and promoted rationalism.
He lived 1889 to 1968 and wrote about history.
School included Teilhard de Chardin, Erich Przywara, Jacques Maritain, and Gabriel Marcel.
School included Paul Tillich, Martin Buber, and Karl Barth.
He lived 1898 to 1979, was of Frankfurt School, and spoke of sexual freedom.
He lived 1899 to 1992. He studied free markets as methods to disseminate information. He also studied how synapses can change to be more or less excitable.
School included Lewis Mumford, E. G. Spaulding, C. Lloyd Morgan, James Jeans, R. G. Collingwood, Benedetto Croce, and Karl Popper.
He lived 1919 to 2002 and developed phrastic and neustic meanings [Hare, 1963]. Objective judgments about individuals should apply to all similar instances {universalizability}, but subjective judgments about individuals cannot so apply.
Ethics
Reasoning about morals can make consistent morals. Morals are commands to do or not do something {prescriptivism, Hare}. Morals are not truths {descriptivism, Hare} or emotions {emotivism, Hare}. Morals are not relative or based on situations but are universal. Morals associate with emotions. However, some moral situations involve little emotion or ambiguous emotions.
He lived 1909 to 1972, led independence [1957], and became prime minister and president [1957 to 1966]. He advocated socialism and Pan African Union.
She lived 1920 to ? and wrote against prescriptivism. Morals are about thoughts and acts that objectively cause good or harm.
He lived 1922 to 1984, advocated socialism, and was President of Guinea [1958 to 1984].
He lived 1929 to ?. Morality is about human fulfillment. People make choices based on social developments. Society is now losing its foundations, so people are changing choices.
He lived 1907 to 1992. Responsibility requires behavior control and understanding of actions and rules. People relate laws to morals and values. Laws are reasons for actions, without content. Society roles cause parents, police, and soldiers to have duties and responsibilities {role responsibility}.
He lived 1906 to 2001, advocated African-culture glorification {Negritude}, and was Senegal president [1960 to 1980].
He lived 1922 to 1999, was Tanzania president [1961 to 1979], and advocated collectivism {Familyhood} {Ujama socialism}. Collective community farms {ujama} failed.
He lived 1924 to 1997, was Zambia president [1964 to 1991], and advocated Zambian humanism.
He lived 1909 to ?, contributed to ordinary-language philosophy at Oxford, and wrote about counterfactual conditionals. History aids understanding, because phenomena always have personal and unique aspects {historicism, Berlin}. Hedgehogs have one reaction. Foxes have many possible reactions. Life's purposes have no unity. People can have positive liberty or negative liberty.
He lived 1928 to ? and was Catholic. Unjust world causes questions about morality and then about religion. Absolute should be divine.
He lived 1946 to ? and wrote about animal welfare.
He lived 1931 to ?. Law is about rights and principles, not policies or goals.
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He lived 1646 to 1716. He invented machines for calculating and for pumping water out of mines. In mathematics, he solved differential equations by isolating variables and used infinitesimals in calculus. He invented integration as summation, integration as differentiation inverse, closed-function integration, logarithmic-function and exponential-function differentials [1694], chain rule, and calculus notation. He studied curvature, curve envelopes, and osculating circles. In logic, he wanted to create perfect language {symbolic logic, Leibniz} {systematic philology}, whose grammar and words can state all logical propositions and proofs. He attempted to write deductive philosophy, using formulas in symbol language that he devised, but he did not complete it.
Epistemology
For all x and y, if x and y are identical, then x and y have same properties {Leibniz' law}.
Truths contain predicates in subjects {concept containment}. Necessary truths have a finite series of containments. Contingent truths have an infinite series of containments.
No proposition can be both true and false at once {principle of contradiction, Leibniz}. Nothing happens without adequate reasons or causes {principle of sufficient reason, Leibniz}, though people usually cannot know reason. Reasoning involves contradiction and sufficiency principles. All analytic statements are true. All true statements are analytic.
Identical things have same intrinsic, non-relational properties. If two objects share all intrinsic, non-relational properties, they are identical {identity, indiscernible} {indiscernible, identity} {Leibniz's law, Leibniz}. The identity relationship is symmetrical for thing and properties. However, no two things have same qualities, and things differing in qualities are two separate things.
Perception is clear if understood. Perception is distinct if people can analyze it into concepts.
Awareness that one's perceptions have become more clear and distinct is pleasure. Awareness that one's perceptions have become less clear and distinct is pain.
Clear and distinct statements have two classes. One class is personal experiences, which are clear and intuitively true, because people have immediate experience of their own existence, but are true for one time only. However, opposites of these facts are also possible, so people can know their truth only after they have happened {a posteriori, Leibniz}. Facts of experience are conditional or contingent truths of the finite world. All things are deterministic, so opposites only appear to be possible. People's senses know only space and time, not physical forces or causes.
The other class is eternal truths, self-evident to reason, whose opposites cannot be true or even possible. People can know their truth before events {a priori, Leibniz}. Eternal truths are unconditional, necessary, and about the infinite.
Ethics
God allows free will, because it is good, but this necessarily allows evil.
Physical evil is punishment for sin. Object finiteness and unclear ideas cause moral evil.
Law
Law must have philosophical bases to be consistent and just. Law has natural divisions. Law and reasoning principles can find document meanings.
Metaphysics
Objects must be finite, because something created them. Finite world had to have evil, but it has as much good as possible because God formed it. The created world has the most variety from simplest causes and laws. What exists is the largest possible set of compatible things. Because existence is good, this makes world have the most possible reality and be the best it can be. God chose the best deterministic mechanical laws. However, laws can be different and so are not absolute truths, only facts {contingent truth, Leibniz}. There are infinitely many possible worlds.
Only finite matter and spiritual force units {monad, Leibniz} exist. Existing things are monad collections.
Ideal things are continuous and so have no monads.
An infinite number of monads differ in intrinsic properties.
Monads form a hierarchy based on their forces, not motions. Highest monad is God, which is pure activity and has all forces. Next highest are souls and minds, possess good memory and perception, and are most active. Soul is will's purpose and is body's central monad. Lowest monads are matter. Monads reflect universe as whole, allowing them to seem to occupy space. Monads perceive other monads more distinctly or less distinctly {universal expression}.
Number of forces is infinite. Forces or energies are active and immaterial. Material properties, such as filling space or being impenetrable, are force consequences. Motions are force consequences. Time and space result from combined force actions. Forces are independent of other forces, but are forms of whole world's essence {world-force}. Forces try to clearly represent world-force, by infinitely small steps.
Monads have unconscious perceptions {minute perception}. Monads continually seek improvement, which perceives more clearly and distinctly. Unconsciously, monads continually perceive entire universe {apperception, monad} but are conscious of only small regions.
Monad wills directly cause actions. Monad beliefs direct will, but not deterministically.
Monads never affect each other, but they appear to do so, because their perceptual states correspond {preestablished harmony}. God synchronizes the pre-established harmony, which is deterministic. In determined worlds, subjects must contain all the infinite number of qualities, actions, and predicates that statements can assert and so must be immortal and unchangeable. Therefore, all statements about reality contain predicate in subject and are analytic. To God, all experience is analytic, but people cannot know all predicates or facts. For God, objects are necessary, and their properties are in object essence.
Only God is necessary. All else is contingent.
God exists, as proved by ontological argument, cosmological argument, argument from eternal truths, and argument from design.
Mind
All ideas are always unconsciously present in soul, which is the central body monad and represents whole universe. Mind can bring ideas to consciousness. Perceptions contain universal concepts and truths.
He lived 1875 to 1949 and invented stable airplane.
School included Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes.
Metaphysics
All things arise from one unified cosmic matter or element, air or water or unperceived material, which is imperishable, inexhaustible, indestructible, infinite, and eternal. Such matter always moves of itself, without cause, and so is alive. Objects can change into each other, because all things are element transformations. Matter temperature changes cause changes. A succession of universes has arisen and then collapsed, through temperature effects. Their unifying element can be divine but not like persons.
Alternatively, substances can be unmoving and finite, like solid crystal spheres. The four elements are earth, water, air, and fire, in order of rarefication. God is one substance and is reason and perfection. Justice or fate is a world law.
He lived -610 to -550 and was of Milesian School. Infinite, living intelligence {apeiron} transforms itself to make all things. Universe is always in motion.
He lived -570 to -500 and was of Milesian School. Universe is air at different densities.
He lived -540 to -480 and was Pre-Socratic.
Epistemology
People can look in themselves and into nature to find meaning and structure, because soul is like the moving element fire. Soul is ideal, eternal, and underlying intelligence in universe. He said that you never step into same river twice.
Metaphysics
Universe essence is change or becoming. Change is the element fire. All matter always changes. Justice or fate balancing conflicting movements or flows {flux, Heraclitus} causes apparent object permanence. All things come from opposites, being and not being. Nature and mind have structure or harmony, as opposites unite. Matter transformations have definite ways and orders, as law, reason, and destiny work in universe. World goes through orderly state successions, back to original state.
He lived -500 to -428 and was Socrates' teacher. Nature has uncountable numbers of unchangeable elements, which can divide into small particles that have same properties as elements. Objects have varying element proportions. Highest element is Mind or Reason, which can move itself and move other elements by collision. Mind is alive and includes reason, order, and purpose {teleology, Anaxagoras}, because all motions follow laws. Universal Mind exists and everything has purpose.
He was Anaximenes' student. Air is spirit or reason and can account mechanically for animal adaptations.
He lived -492 to -432 and introduced the four elements. Reality has earth, water, air, and fire {four elements}. Elements can divide into infinitely small parts. Ways elements combine, not elements themselves, cause physical qualities. Elements are unchanging, but their movements cause world changes. Love or attraction opposes conflict, hate, strife, or repulsion. Tension causes motion, which has cycles. Circular motion {vortex, Empedocles} is element fundamental motion, because element collisions result in rotations, which draw in more elements and increase size. Lighter elements go to edge, mechanically forming worlds and living things. There is no purpose. Animals change as living conditions change, and only the fittest survive.
He combined ideas of Parmenides and Empedocles. Infinite numbers of very small particles {atom, Leucippus}, differing in size, form, and other quantitative features, move in empty space. Atom types are eternal, indestructible, unchangeable, indivisible, homogeneous, and finite. Atom motion is eternal, deterministic, and without cause or purpose. Atom motions are change or becoming. Space exists but is not material. Objects are atom combinations. Quantitative atom differences cause qualitative differences.
He lived -99 to -55 and was Epicurean. Universe is atomistic and governed by natural laws. People are matter only. Plants and animals evolve.
School included Marcion, Apelles, Saturninus, Basilides, Carpocrates, Valentinus, and Bardesanes. Fallen angels create matter and physical world. Matter or Void is against God. Material world is battleground for good and evil spirits. Matter will evolve from incomplete and imperfect states to the perfect state of God {system of evolution, Gnostic}. Indefinite states can divide into opposites, for example material and spiritual, and then reorder themselves.
He lived 100 to 153, was Gnostic, and founded Valentinians.
Metaphysics
The indefinite state joined with silence or thought to make spirit or reason, which then joined with truth or Ideas. Then reason joined with life to make the ideal man, who joined with Church. The Wisdom longs for original indefinite state, and this sinful desire enters the Void to make material world.
In Gnosticism, Sophia or Wisdom disorders the divine world {pleroma}, and God banishes it. Jesus Christ has the knowledge {gnosis} to restore the divine world to include people. Now Holy Spirit rules the world. Jesus the Savior will return. The Demiurge, Yahweh of Old Testament, who created the physical world, rules the world outside the pleroma.
He lived ? to 215 and was Christian. God created the world so all wills can overcome sin, face punishment, and have redemption. God does not oppose his creation but is separate from it. Evil is an action by people, not substance, and so God did not create it. Evil is rebellion against God's will. Evil is love of God's creation, rather than God. Evil spirits are wills that do evil but are not human.
He lived 185 to 254, was founder of Christian philosophy, and was Latin Father. God's power, wisdom, and goodness created universe out of nothing, and universe's beauty and perfection reveals its origin. God constantly creates the logos, which supports the free spirits surrounding God with love, harmony, and knowledge. God sends spirits that fall out of these states to the actual world for punishment. World will vanish when all spirits are pure and in harmony with God.
He lived 232 to 304, was Commentator on Aristotle, and was Plotinus' student. A chain of being goes from lowest forms to highest {Porphyry Tree} {Tree of Porphyry}.
He lived 350 to 433, founded School of Athens [400 to 529], and was Neo-Platonist. Matter is principle equal to God.
School included Pseudo-Dionysius, Synesius, Maximus the Confessor, and John Scotus Erigena.
He was mystic.
He lived 490 to 570 and was Commentator on Aristotle. Motion requires force. World began finite time ago, because motion through infinite interval {traversal of the infinite} cannot finish.
He lived 803 to 867. There is predestination.
He lived 806 to 882 and was archbishop of Reims [845 to 882]. There is no predestination.
He lived 838 to 923.
People can imagine perfect island, but no such thing exists. Actual things are better than concepts, because concepts have no actuality. Concepts are lower reality. Therefore, people must reject Anselm's argument for God's existence.
School grew out of Neo-Platonism and included Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Damian, Manegold of Lantenbach, Joachim Floris, Dominicus Gundissalinus, Arnold of Brescia, and Amaury of Bene. They were orthodox or heretical mystics.
Epistemology
Body knows world, reason knows self, and soul knows God. Knowledge forms use imagination.
Ethics
Life is progression toward salvation.
Mind
Soul and body are completely separate. God's power unites people's souls and bodies. Souls have feelings, not intellect. Soul's highest stage is contemplation and love of God and final unity with God. Mental states and activities have classes that arise and develop to fit into mental life.
He lived 1106 to 1138, invented a separate-substances theory, and emphasized the solitary life.
Johannes Eckhart founded school that included Beghards, Friends of God in Basel, Dominican friar Johann Tauler, John Ruysbroeck, Heinrich Suso (Heinrich Seuse), Thomas à Kempis, and Gerson. It presaged Reformation by emphasizing laymen, teaching, preaching, New Testament, Christ, and German or Dutch language.
He lived 1300 to 1361 and was mystic.
He lived 1300 to 1366 and was mystic.
He lived 1379 to 1471 and was mystic.
School included Agrippa of Nettesheim, John Reuchlin, Francesco Zorsi, Paracelsus, Johann Baptist van Helmont, Franz van Helmont, Robert Fludd, and Jacob Böhme. Knowledge of God comes only through mystic revelation. People have several separable bodies and souls: astral, etheric, and physical.
School included Andreas Osiander, Caspar Schwenkfeld, Sebastian Franck, Valentine Weigel, Nicolaus Taurellus, Lelio Sozzini, Fausto Sozzini, John of the Cross, and Theresa. John of the Cross and Theresa later became Roman Catholic saints.
School included Mir Damad, Mulla Sadra or Molla Sadra or Sadr al-Din Shirazi, Mir Fendereski, and Shaykh Baha'i.
School included Charles Bouille, Girolamo Cardano, Francesco Patrizzi, Giordano Bruno, Bernardino Telesio, Pietro Pompanazzi, Tommaso Campanella, and Vanini. Material objects are atom complexes {corpuscle, atom}. Eternal atom motions under mathematical laws govern corpuscle movements. Atoms are monads.
He lived 1486 to 1545.
He lived 1525 to 1562, and founded Anti-trinitarian movement.
He lived 1539 to 1604, started Unitarianism {Socinianism}, which denied the Trinity, and founded Polish Brethern [1579].
He lived 1548 to 1600 and was Dominican. He influenced Spinoza and Leibniz.
Epistemology
Absolute truth does not exist. Knowledge has no limit.
Ethics
People should be optimistic and joyous about man, nature, and God.
Metaphysics
Space, time, and particles have no limit. Countless worlds exist, each growing and decaying in the living universe.
Reality units {monad, Bruno} are parts of eternal infinite being. Monads are infinite in number, living, imperishable, individual, material, spiritual, and existing. Monads follow own laws and general law.
Universe is alive and has soul {anima mundi} {world-soul}.
God is the formal, efficient, and final cause of all things and is immanent and transcendent. World is life of God and so is perfect and harmonious, if viewed as whole. God is like light: illuminating, animating, and forming world. Essence of God and world are same {pantheism, Bruno}. World opposites harmonize in God's infinity.
All things have matter, mind, and spirit. People can know these if they are in themselves. Things are individual and different but in essence are God.
Descartes founded school that included Joachim Jung, Erhard Weigel, Jansenists, Occasionalists, Mystics, Spinoza, and Leibniz. Matter {res extensa} behaves using quantitative rules about sizes, shapes, and motions. Matter keeps moving and does not tend to stop, as Aristotle had claimed. Matter is inert and has no forces. God set matter in motion and causes all actions. Mind is separate and opposite from matter, is unity, and is not in space or time. God correlates mind and body.
He lived 1575 to 1624 and was German Mystic. He united neo-Platonism and Paracelsus to try to unify religion and science.
Ethics
Good and evil in world result from absolute necessity of God revealing itself in world as being, because everything in world has to have opposite. Nature moves by will, which can choose good or evil. People's acts affect universe. People should progress from spiritual perception, to mystical devotion, to pure spirit.
Metaphysics
Nature is unified whole, created by God using laws and reason. Nature is beautiful. God is world essence and efficient cause. God is spirit with infinite senses and reason and is world inner activity, like the living sap of trees.
He lived 1600 to 1641 and was Shi'ite. Essence motions cause higher essences by transformation, so everything is eternal becoming.
School included Blaise Pascal and Pierre Poiret.
He lived 1624 to 1669 and was follower of Descartes and Occasionalist. Thing can only do what it knows how to do. Because no finite material thing has mind and can know anything, only God can cause things. God is not an efficient cause. God supplies fixed and general relations between physical and mental worlds by synchronizing them, so they can appear as causes or sequences.
School included Cagliostro.
He lived 1711 to 1787 and studied matter and space.
He lived 1765 to 1835 and was Ontologist. Electricity and magnetism have relation [1802].
He lived 1792 to 1867 and modified spiritualism.
School included Victor Cousin, J. Simon, P. Damiron, E. Vacherot, H. Martin, A. Chaignet, A. Franck, B. Haureau, d'Tocqueville, C. Bartholmess, E. Saisset, C. de Remusat, P. Janet, E. Caro, F. Ravisson, Bouillier, Jean Rouisson, J. Lachelier, E. Bactroux, and H. Bergson.
He lived 1820 to 1900. Source of existence is will.
Herbert Spencer founded school that included W. W. Rende, William K. Clifford, Chauncey Wright, L. Stephen, S. Alexander, Benjamin Kidd, C. M. Williams, John Fiske, Thomas Henry Huxley, George Romanes, and J. M. Guyau. In evolution philosophy, new inventions and machines provided more power and control to people. Ideas about power and control in society began. Evolutionary theories developed about human progress, race, social class, and survival of fittest. Social Darwinism was a variant.
He lived 1830 to 1875 and was evolutionist.
School was Neo-Hegelian and idealist and included Alfred Fouille, Paul Desjardins, and Leon Brunschvicg.
He lived 1876 to 1938, was Islamic, and combined Neoplatonism and Aristotle. The One is the first mover or cause of all existence.
He lived 1869 to 1944 and was spiritualist.
He lived 1881 to 1955 and was Catholic. Purposes determine universe {teleology, Chardin}. Life moves toward higher consciousness {omega point}.
He lived 1873 to 1962 and was Critical Realist.
He lived 1906 to 1995. The Other is absolute.
He lived 1900 to 1990. Inner self is creative void {ku} and nothingness {mu, nothingness}.
He lived -460 to -370, was materialist, and founded atomism, with Leucippus.
Epistemology
Objects have weight, texture, shape, and size {primary quality, Democritus}, which people can perceive. Objects have distance and identity {secondary quality, Democritus}, which people can understand. Atoms themselves are imperceptible. Qualitative features depend on atom quantitative properties. Perception happens when images, which are infinitely small object copies, travel to body and contact sense fire-atoms. Senses have special fire-atom motions and arrangements. People can only perceive images matching senses. People with different senses perceive different things. Perceptual states are violent, surprising, and unclear. Dreams are weak images. Belief in gods comes from images of gods.
Thoughts are images of sizes and spaces between atoms. Thought images are gentle in motion and hard to know. This gentle motion gives true happiness, because soul is calmest and in harmony with absolute images.
Ethics
Good is soul's pleasures. Happiness is inner peace.
Metaphysics
Atoms are unchanging and indivisible particles that constantly move in empty space under mechanical laws. Infinitely many atom types exist. Objects are groups of atoms in different proportions. Inertia, density, and hardness depend on atom sizes and spacings. All other physical properties depend on atom mixtures, arrangements, and motions. Atoms started with uncaused motions, but now atom motions and collisions determine everything that happens. Collisions are the only atom interactions and result only in motion changes.
Mind
Mind or soul has highest and most active atoms {fire-atom}.
He lived -427 to -347, founded the Academy [-387], wrote about Socrates, studied grammar, solved law problems, and helped draft laws.
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is about the beautiful and the good. The beautiful is good. Beautiful things approximate their Idea or true Form closely.
Art imitates nature {mimesis, Plato}.
Epistemology
Minds can be aware of the ideal forms {Idea, Plato} of objects or object groups. Whenever one term can apply to a group of particular things, the corresponding Idea exists in mind. True, clear, and stable knowledge is about Ideas. Mind does not create the Ideas. Ideas are innate. People can discover or remember the Ideas in themselves {anamnesis, Ideas}, using intellect, not senses.
Unlike Ideas, opinion and perception are confused, unclear, imitative, and changeable. An analogy {cave analogy} is prisoners in a cave, who see only shadows on the wall, perceptions instead of reality.
Material motions cause thoughts and perceptions.
Things can be unlearnable, because people need them to learn {Meno's puzzle}.
Hypotheses or making categories and distinctions can define things.
Education
Education is important for everyone because knowledge leads to excellence and virtue. Education builds character. Knowledge is about Ideas, and so curriculum is unchanging.
All children should receive practical knowledge. Social classes receive education suited to purposes. People learn virtue and should be happy, because they reach the greatest virtue they can have.
Education is also to make good state. Society selects some boys and girls to become soldiers. Future soldiers should learn arts and physical education and live together in school community in which they share everything. From future soldiers, society selects some to become rulers. Future rulers should learn philosophy.
Educators have special duty and should not try to be like or coddle pupils.
Ethics
Personal virtues are industry, achievement, knowledge, honor, autonomy, courage, temperance, and piety. Other-directed virtues are justice, benevolence, and fidelity. People can acquire virtues by becoming aware of the Ideas. However, people can refuse to acquire knowledge and virtue and so reject freedom, responsibility, and control.
The three parts of mind {psyche, Plato} should be in harmony. Reason should be for wisdom, spirit for courage and striving, and appetite for moderation and control. Psyche harmony makes life good, virtuous, happy, and prosperous.
The psyche's duty is to be just and upright.
Joy in the beautiful, pleasure in good artistic Idea-of-the-Good imitations, understanding of math, practical skill, general knowledge, and well-ordered life are proper Reason uses.
Highest life state is to contemplate the Ideas, indifferent to material world. Lover of Ideas goes to heaven. Others reincarnate.
"Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because they love it?" {Euthyphro problem, Plato}. Either piety has no reason or has reason, but authority does not apply in either case.
The true and the beautiful are good.
World is good, because God created it.
Linguistics
Nouns are proposition subjects. Only Ideas can be sentence subjects. Verb is about proposition action or quality. Verb and adjective are similar.
Metaphysics
Reality is Ideas. Ideas are both universal categories and object essences {third man argument, Plato}. Ideas are eternal, a priori, unchanging, absolute, and immaterial, with absolute and unqualified properties. Ideas include Good, Bad, Beautiful, Ugly, and such ideas as Tableness. Ideas, such as Infinite, have opposites, such as Measurable, so Ideas form a hierarchy. The highest or greatest Idea is Good, which is purpose of reality for both material and ideal worlds and comes from love of ideal beauty.
Objects in nature have Ideas {ideal form} as essence and are like Idea copies or imitations. Objects share in or have part of Idea. Things cannot have opposite properties simultaneously. Objects are empty space shaped by Ideal geometrical figures. Empty space has no substance and no definition. Material things are both non-being, such as space, and being, such as Idea. Objects are thus contradictions and not real.
World-soul causes all motions and changes, which have relations and are unity.
The world creator {demiurge} was pure good, which molded already existing matter to bring order out of chaos.
Mind
Psyche is in body, is same as personality, and is changeable but is also unitary, indivisible, and eternal, because it is both material and Idea. Psyche receives images of Ideas before birth. The presence of Ideas in psyche causes people to seek Ideas and love wisdom. Psyche has appetitive, emotional, and rational parts. Rational part is ability to know Ideas. Emotional part is spirit or will, which wants to find Ideas. Appetitive part is desires. Psyche thus perceives, wills, and knows. Psyche causes movement and life. Psyche can separate from body.
Politics
States are about principle of justice. Justice results when classes do work with virtue. All state principles and actions should be ethical.
States express the Idea of people as a whole and so are about people and their relations.
States have best order with three classes, corresponding to the three psyche parts: rulers with rational psyche, soldiers with emotional psyche, and merchants and laborers with appetitive psyche. Philosopher-kings from ruler class should lead states. Rulers or guardians should have training in goodness, truth, and beauty and so have wisdom. Military and public officials should have training for administration, war, and police work and so use spirit and do their duty. To exercise self-control, merchants should perform commerce, and common people should work, produce, and obey leaders.
People showing that they have souls dominated by one psyche part or another can change classes. Upper classes should give up all property, have communal family life, and serve state. All people should suppress private emotions and desires and live out Idea of the Good.
He lived -384 to -322, studied under Plato, and was Realist. He tutored Alexander the Great. He founded Peripatetic School at Lyceum [-335]. He was the Stagirite or Peripatetic Philosopher.
In logic, he studied grammar, developed logic of terms, and defined the syllogisms. He studied deduction methods and invented non-contradiction, excluded-middle, and bivalence laws. He considered modus ponens, modus tollens, tautology, permutation, and summation. He studied Sophist fallacies, existence, definition, statement, axiom, postulate, premise, conclusion, hypothesis, theorem, converse, inverse, contrapositive, corollary, lemma, necessary condition, and sufficient condition.
In mathematics, he used method of exhaustion, rather than infinitesimals, to find limits. He used parallelogram of forces.
In biology, he studied nature, performed animal dissections for research, and studied evolution from simple to complex life.
Aesthetics
Art imitates nature and portrays particular objects as universals, emphasizing object Forms. Thus, art is knowledge that gives pleasure.
Art is productive thought.
Art has classes depending on materials used or objects imitated.
Art's purpose is to excite passions, to remove them and so purify soul. Tragic drama imitates life and excites fear and sympathy, which it then relieves {catharsis, Aristotle}. Catharsis is good for virtue, because it results in lower emotions, allowing more reason.
Formal literary elements, involving one location, one time, and one theme {Unities, Aristotle}, make good play.
Artists impose Form on matter, causing material change with purpose, to cause art development.
Epistemology
Philosophy must consider opinions of the people or of wise people {doxa}.
True knowledge is about object Forms, not objects.
Sensation is passive thought. Reason is creative thought. Thoughts are both objects and essences. Contents and thought processes are separate and have categories.
Quantity can be universal or particular. Quality can be positive or negative.
Opposition or contradiction and conversion or entailment can happen.
Concepts used in judgments come from general concepts by adding distinguishing characteristic or difference {definition, Aristotle}.
Knowledge fields have most general concepts, found by moving from examples to general concept {abstraction from specific to general}, opposite to definition. For example, logic has contradiction principle.
The ten basic-concept categories are quantity, quality, relation, space, time, action, passion or passivity or affection, position, state or condition, and substance.
The four cause types are matter or physical or bodily cause {material cause, Aristotle}, form or essence or idea {formal cause, Aristotle}, immediately preceding cause or motion {essential cause}, and end or purpose {final cause, Aristotle}. Something extra {accident, cause or effect} can happen along with causes and effects.
Brain senses shapes, sizes, and motions {primary quality} directly. Brain perceives other sense qualities {secondary quality}, which are not fundamental to object {accident, sensation}, indirectly. Sense apparatus moves and changes as it receives object, causing body physical change {phantasm, sensation}. Physical motions caused by sensations are imagination-faculty objects, so imagination depends on sensation. Imaginations are thought-objects, so thought depends on imagination.
Mental faculty compares and associates shapes, sizes, and motions from all senses {common faculty, Aristotle}.
Human desires and beliefs, which are thoughts, cause all human actions.
If proposition is possible, the proposition is true at least once {principle of plenitude} {plenitude principle}.
The highest thought level is to behold the pure Forms and reach blessed feeling without will or action.
Ethics
Ethics is making proper choice when one is free to choose and knows consequences. External circumstances can hinder or help reason and self-realization. Bad reasoning, bad purposes, weak will, compulsions, passions, or wrong choices can cause people's actions to be irrational {akrasia}. To make proper choices, one needs to know which act or thought is lawful or right, act consequences, means, ends, desire effects, motive effects, and self. Without this knowledge, people do not know what they are doing and cannot control their actions.
Successful and virtuous activity based on reason leads to happy, good life and well-being. Happiness is life's goal or purpose, because it expresses people's true nature. Virtue is the way to attain happiness.
Freedom depends on knowledge and on absence of external forces or mental pressures.
People are responsible for their actions when they have alternatives from which to choose, they know situation, and they face no external constraints on choice. Then consciousness is action's sufficient cause and other factors, such as motivation, do not lessen responsibility. Punishment can only be for actions for which people are responsible {justice, Aristotle}.
Goods {good-in-itself} {intrinsic good} can be for their own sake, such as intelligence, senses, and health. Goods {extrinsic good} can be for consequences.
Action {praxis} is doing something, as opposed to making something. Action {animal soul, Aristotle} should improve habits and character. Exerting self-control against desires trains will to act using reason. Moderation {Golden Mean, Aristotle} {doctrine of the mean} balances appetite/emotion and reason. Using rational mind to follow the Golden Mean is good.
People want happiness based on virtue {eudaimonia, philosophy}, the objectively good life. Pleasure is necessary for, but not the same as, happiness.
Friendship is good, because it is common striving for the good and beautiful.
Law
Law flows from order of nature {natural law, Aristotle}. Law has Forms. People should judge human laws by how well they conform to natural law.
Usury is bad.
Landowning and private property are good.
Strong family is good.
Linguistics
Spoken or written words are mental-state signs. Verbs indicate time {tense}. Verbs and adjectives are similar. Nouns can be about named things {proper noun, Aristotle} or types {common noun, Aristotle}.
Logic
Formal logic is process to prove knowledge true and to understand reasoning.
Things or groups have names and distinguishing characteristics. Defined things can be sentence subjects. Subjects can have different quantities: "all", "some", "no", "one", or "only one".
Sentence subjects can have properties {predicate, Aristotle}. Predicates {essential predicate} can be true of all category objects. Predicates {predicable predicate} can be true of only some category objects and so be non-essential. Predicates {property predicate} can be non-essential but true of all category objects {proprium}.
Statements have subjects and predicates. Statements can be true or false {contradiction law}. Subjects and predicates cannot have truth-values.
Statements {proposition, Aristotle} can have form that makes them necessary or impossible {apodeitic}.
Reasoning from particulars to generalities {induction, Aristotle} is proof method. Reasoning from generalities to particulars {deduction, Aristotle} is proof method.
Deduction depends on having one or more general statements {premise, Aristotle} about basic concepts. People must accept such premises as true but cannot prove them. Induction and dialectic to analyze opinions and perception can find such premises. After analysis, such premises should be immediately apparent and certain to everyone. Other premises come from general premises. Premises can use different sentence types: categorical, conditional or hypothetical, alternative, and disjunctive.
All deductions are either syllogisms or inferences from single premises. The conclusion must be less general than the premises.
People can prove statement {conclusion, Aristotle} relating subject to predicate {judgment} if two premises relate third concept to subject and to predicate {syllogism, Aristotle}. If people know that premises are true or false, they can combine them by removing third concept to prove conclusion {excluded middle law}. The third concept can be in first-premise subject and second-premise predicate {first figure}, in both subjects {second figure}, or in both predicates {third figure}.
Syllogisms can use sentences with different subject quantities and premise types and can use three moods. Syllogism moods include categorical syllogism, conditional syllogism or hypothetical syllogism, alternative syllogism, and disjunctive syllogism. Syllogisms {categorical syllogism, Aristotle} can use all subject quantities. Main moods {Barbara mood} can use universal affirmative in all three statements. Main moods {Celarent mood} can have universal negative premise, universal positive premise, and universal negative conclusion. All other moods can transform into Barbara or Celarent mood {reduction of moods} {mood reduction}.
Reductio ad absurdum proves some moods. Negative individual instances {ekthesis} are counterexamples that prove the positive conclusion, and this method proves some moods.
Syllogisms {perfect syllogism} with complete sentences need nothing more to be valid arguments. Syllogisms {imperfect syllogism} with assumed premises or premise parts require more information to be valid.
Metaphysics
Only individual physical objects are real. Objects have essential invariable Forms {Form, Aristotle}, about purposes. Forms are common properties or predicates of different same-class objects. Object Form determines state and relations to other objects, makes unified whole, and places object in class. Forms are not universals and cannot exist by themselves. If Forms are universals, it is necessary to explain how Forms relate to individuals {third man argument} and how object relates to itself. Geometric forms, shapes, and sizes are physical-object aspects and do not have independent existence.
Ability to define objects does not prove existence. To show existence, something must construct object.
Matter has potential or possibility that becomes physical particular object when combined with Form {hylomorphism}. Forms follow laws. Forms are only potential until realized in matter. Object Form stays the same, but matter can change. Matter and objects are potentially infinite, but this differs from actually infinite. Motion results from union of form and matter.
Lower-thing forms make higher-thing matter, making a hierarchy of objects, classes, classes of classes, and so on. Forms have values. Forms can be Ends, causing other Forms. The class hierarchy leads to highest Form, which never combines with matter. Highest Form is prime mover and has no cause and indirectly causes all motion and change. It is unmoving, because only matter can move. It is perfect, eternal, unchangeable, indivisible, mental, spiritual, and independent. It is real, with no possibilities. It is the most general concept, thought about thought, and pure self-consciousness. It has no goal or purpose except itself and is sufficient in itself.
Organisms grow and develop {development, Aristotle} as Form realizes itself in matter through time, also causing purpose changes.
Objects have inessential features {accident, object} that arise by chance and do not relate to Form. Accidents have mechanical causes and have no laws. Accidents in matter can oppose expression of Form in object.
Stars and planets have circular motion and are ether.
The four elements are earth, fire, water, and air. The material world has the four elements. Elements have quality pairs: warm or cold and dry or moist.
Mind
Mind forms concepts automatically {passive intellect} and can reason using concepts {active intellect}. Active intellect can be non-physical, independent, and eternal.
Mind {psyche, Aristotle} animates body to cause motion and so causes sensation, imagination, and thought. Soul or mind is the Form for individual body.
Souls {vegetative soul} can be for body mechanical and chemical changes, like reproduction, growth, and repair. Plants have only this soul.
Souls {animal soul} {appetitive soul} can allow motion, feelings, and sensation. Spontaneous motion arises from desire, which is to gain pleasure and avoid pain. Desire and sensation both depend on object sensed, so seeking or avoiding automatically happens. Animal souls can unite all sense perceptions into collective perceptions about objects as wholes. This forms images and memories, allows body-state knowledge, and allows number, position, and motion perception.
From the matter of the first two souls, souls {reason} {rational soul} {nous} can arise and make desires into will and perception images into knowledge. Only such souls are eternal, divine, and impersonal and can know reality. Reason is pure contemplation. Reason is the same in all people, so reason unites people into a class.
Politics
Justice or equality is the basis of states. Justice can depend on need, effort, deservingness, history, achievement, or contribution.
Justice {corrective justice} {diorthotic justice} {remedial justice} {rectificatory justice} can compensate for contract breach or tort. Justice {distributive justice} {dianemetic justice} can take and disburse goods and services among parties.
Justice assigns punishments, which whole society administers for crimes, with no individual revenge.
The state should organize to allow natural laws to work.
A society goal is the good life for all citizens, including stability and community. Constitution's highest goal is community well-being.
A state purpose is to train citizens ethically, emphasizing morals. Citizens, as opposed to subjects of kings or tyrants, have civic duties, requiring sacrificing private life, and rights, allowing them roles in public and private life.
Kingdoms have one authority. Aristocracies have several authorities. Polities have many authorities. Tyrannies have one ruler. Oligarchies have several rulers. Democracies have many rulers.
Rule by one person can be good {monarchy, Aristotle} or bad {despotism, Aristotle}. Rule by few can be good if based on culture and character {aristocracy, Aristotle}. Rule by few can be bad if based on property or birth {oligarchy, Aristotle}. Rule by all can be good if based on laws and order {republic, Aristotle}. Rule by all can be bad {mob-rule} if based on demagoguery {democracy, Aristotle}. Because things held in common have no value, communism is bad.
Democracy is better than oligarchy, because more people contribute to decisions. Struggle of oligarchy with democracy causes revolution.
States arise from first family and then village.
States should be self-sufficient. Small states are better.
Lending money and trading are bad.
Excess, more than want or need, causes tyranny and crime.
He lived -341 to -270 and founded Epicurean School at the Garden [-306].
Ethics
Soul pleasures contemplate thoughts and expect bodily pleasures. They are more valuable than bodily pleasures alone. The ideal pleasure is freedom from distraction, which people can achieve by philosophy study and mind control, to achieve a happy life.
Fear of supernatural is distraction. Natural and physical mind and soul explanations remove fear of supernatural.
Prudence and self-control are good.
The private life is best.
Belief in determinism disallows criticism of people that do not believe in determinism, because both beliefs have predetermination {Epicurean objection}.
Metaphysics
Reality is only different atoms forming and disintegrating into different groups by motions in empty space. Atoms and universe are eternal.
Mind
Body and mind unify in special atoms. No afterlife exists.
Will
Chance, and will's free choice, show that nature has uncaused events. Will's free choice is the only explanation of good and evil, because God is surely able to remove evil from the world.
He lived ? to 98 and was Neo-Pythagorean and mystic.
He lived 204 to 270, was Platonist, studied under Ammonius Saccas, and emphasized monism and rationalism.
Metaphysics
God is the good, perfect, supreme, unified, and free being. God, the Good, has no consciousness, no form, and no activity. God is the basis of Reason, Mind, and Being but is beyond them. God has no human traits.
Mind or divine spirit of God {divine consciousness} is self-acting and self-created and sustains material world. All things are imperfect copies or imitations of the good and perfect {emanation system} {system of emanation}. God overflows into the world, which reflects him as rational Mind {Nous} in matter and as Soul {Psyche, soul} in living things. The light of God makes all Ideas: being, rest, motion or change, identity, and difference. Ideas are God, soul, or spirit thought contents, because both are immaterial. Mind makes actual world, affecting Soul to make it form matter based on Ideas. Matter is Void, not material or spiritual but negation and non-being, with only possibility. Matter is absolute desire and is evil. However, evil does not actually exist, because it is non-being. Material world mixes Void and light of God, and so mixes good and evil.
Things in the world are in spheres around God. Farthest sphere is matter. Nearest sphere is divine Mind or reason.
Mind
Individual souls are Ideas and eternal. Souls can concentrate on either desire or reason. Contemplating Beauty moves toward spirit. The final step unites soul with spirit. All matter and souls try to reunite with God.
Human souls form self-consciousness and body from Mind and Ideas. Self-consciousness results when mind actively thinks about itself or its states.
Mind actively synthesizes and unifies perceptions, feelings, and thoughts, and does not just passively receive images from outside. Mind acts by taking conscious notice and doing something with perceptions. Body sensation is separate from consciousness of object or feeling.
He lived 354 to 430, was Bishop of Hippo Regius (now Annaba, Algeria) [396 to 430], favored monasticism, and argued against pagans, Manichees, Pelagius, and Donatists. He was Neo-Platonist, from Plotinus' ideas, and Apologist. He united Patristic and Greek philosophy, using the psychological principle of internality.
Epistemology
People can infallibly know that they exist, because they can think rightly or wrongly. Sensations postulate perceivers. If people doubt perception content, it proves there is doubter. To be in error, people must exist.
People cannot doubt existence of perception about which they have doubt {method of doubt, Augustine}. Therefore, people know that they have consciousness. Knowing, willing, remembering, living, motivation, thinking, and judging are actions included in doubting and so must exist, too.
People can know their inner experiences: feelings, thoughts, and perceptions. Mental-state self-observation and analysis can lead to truth.
People can doubt that perception contents are real, because they use criteria that they have in themselves: logical laws, standards of good and beautiful, and other truths not derivable from sensation. These criteria are the same for all people and are universally valid. The criteria exist, though they are not material. They are the Ideas of God, in whom they unite. Reason perceives these Ideas, so man has reason. People cannot know how Ideas unite in God and cannot know all Ideas.
People cannot know if they are moving, are at certain place, or are single or multiple.
Senses and reason can know matter and spirit, which unite in self-consciousness.
Becoming conscious of sensation is an act of will, as is realizing an inner state. Will directs memory, imagination, and judgment or reasoning.
To judge or reason, mind receives illumination or revelation from God, because cause must be more active than effect. Truth is gift of God by grace.
Language reflects mind's workings.
Time is subjective, because past is in memory and future is in expectation, which both are in the present.
Ethics
Faith is more important than good deeds. Because there is original sin, man should seek the grace of God and union with God.
Will directs people to be good in general and worthy of grace. Will is free to choose, independently of understanding or knowledge. The only cause of will's choice is itself. Will determines its purposes. Will strives after happiness, and only beholding the truth of God satisfies it. People should lead strict lives to fight evil and help God. People should have faith that reward will be peace in eternity, when person's will suppresses into will of God.
People are responsible for acts done by will. God has foreknowledge of acts but does not cause them or force choice. It is like God remembers them.
Evil is spirit's wrong action, so even intending or desiring to sin is evil. Sin of Adam corrupted all human will, so people are guilty, because will turns toward evil. No one is capable of good on his or her own. This is people's punishment for original sin. Only by the grace of God can people be good or have redemption. No one is worthy and no one can complain. Good only comes from God. The will of God determines which people do good and which evil. Souls have predestination.
Metaphysics
God is highest Being, highest Truth, highest Beauty, and infinite personality. God is omniscient about Ideas. God is omnipotent, because God is all Being. God is completely good, because God is complete attainment of will. God is not in time. Categories used to describe finite nature cannot apply to God, who is indescribable.
Reality has objects, souls, and God. Objects are in space and time. Souls are only in time. God is outside time and space. Universe depends on Ideas, life, and God's will. God makes all things, including time and space. World is matter and spirit.
God makes only good things. Decay causes bad things.
Mind
God causes people to have understanding or enlightenment. Consciousness is unified personality or soul and has one basic activity, which is self-consciousness. Soul has three parts. People's ideas are memories of Ideas. Life is making judgments based on Ideas. Will is motive or force behind life and striving for happiness in God.
Faith, which is assent by will, must precede knowledge, because will prepares self for illumination.
He lived 803 to 873, was first Arabic philosopher at the Academy, was neo-Platonist, and used logic to prove religious truths. Universe is whole knowledge system {architectonic}. All humanity has one active intellect.
He lived 1115 to 1180.
Epistemology
Sensation and perception involve judgment.
Passions unite new sensations with remembered ones. Pleasure and pain result from these unions.
The fundamental mental state is imagination or perception. From perceptions come opinions. Knowledge comes from opinion comparisons. Will added to knowledge causes belief. When will has faith, people attain final state, of contemplation.
Mind
All soul's activities have unity.
He lived 1126 to 1198, commented on Aristotle's works, which had just become available in Europe, and developed non-theological Arabian philosophy {Averroism}, which influenced later European philosophers. People can use religious truth, and philosophers can use rational truth {double truth, Ibn Rushd}. Only intellect is immortal. Intellect is impersonal.
He lived 1224 to 1274, was Dominican and Aristotelian, and unified Catholic dogma with Aristotle's ideas and logic {Thomism}.
Epistemology
Faith and reason are not contradictory. Both can gain knowledge.
Forms present in someone's mind are concepts and differ from forms present in external things. People can link objects to mind concepts, to make rational judgments. Concepts that exist in mind are true. People can know essences and concepts are universals. Falsity applies only to poor correspondence between thing and mental representation.
Physical organs or organisms have no self-conscious awareness and cannot form or use concepts.
External objects produce sense impressions {phantasm, Aquinas}, in body, that refer to non-perceptual entity {common sense, Aquinas}, which stores and combines sense impressions {cogitative power} to make object-characteristic concepts {image, Aquinas}. Soul becomes conscious of image presence. Memory stores object mental concepts and uses them for sensory recognition. Mind does not know objects, only object mental concepts.
Understanding involves abstracting intelligible essence or form from sensory impression {agent intellect}. Human mind builds from constituent forms of objects that caused sensory impressions. There are no innate ideas. Mind's thoughts and wills are about things, which have intelligible forms or essences.
Animal instincts apprehend things and events as beneficial or harmful.
People can know God through reason, revelation, and intuition. Revealed theology explains doctrines of Trinity, Incarnation, and Last Judgment, which people must accept by faith. Natural theology explains existence of God and soul's immortality, which reason can prove.
Ethics
People can freely have intentions, deliberate, act, and make choices, though God knows past, present, and future. God knows all but is outside time, allowing people free will. Will is power to strive towards the rationally good or desirable and requires intellect to determine the good and desirable. All things are attractive in some respects and unattractive in others, so wills can choose freely among all things.
God created people, and their reason and purpose for being is to return to God. People have other purposes in accord with God's purposes and with natural law.
People must act to gain happiness, though they do not necessarily know what to do. Pursuit of wisdom is the best life course, because wisdom is knowledge of universe purposes, which are the good and the true.
People should contemplate God without will or desire. Happiness is contemplating God.
Secondary causes cause evil, which is unintentional. Evil-act initiating causes are always good. Evil is not an essence.
Prayer is good, but fate is inevitable.
Divine law is to love God and people.
Metaphysics
Because traversals require beginning points and endpoints, traversal of the infinite cannot happen, and universe began a finite time ago.
Universals are real and manifest themselves in individual objects, which are quantitative and exist in space and time. Individuals thus participate in higher reality but are separate from it. Same-species individuals have same essence.
Five ways can prove God's existence by arguing from effect back to cause: prime mover, first cause, supreme being, perfection or highest good, and highest purpose.
However, because people cannot know God's essence, except by analogy with people's essences and thoughts, one cannot argue from cause to effect.
God's knowledge is what creates things. All things that exist, in world or mind, are true. The reason that anything exists is that necessary being, which cannot not exist, exists.
Because God has no parts, God's essence and existence are the same. God has no qualities and is indefinable. God is eternal, unchanging, immaterial, pure activity, good, intellectual, and Truth itself.
God knows all things, but some ideas do not actually exist. God knows singular and particular things, not-yet-existing things, all time, all infinities, all wills, all minds, all evil, and all good. God knows singular and particular things because God is their cause. God knows not-yet-existing things because God is their creator. God knows all time as if it is present time. God knows all good because evil is opposite of good.
God has will that is pure-activity essence. God is object of God's will. God wills universe by reason but without causes or purposes except God, so God can perform miracles but cannot will contradictions. God's will depends only on itself and so is free. God wills Good because God is good and the only good. God acts rationally, so people can know the good through reason.
God cannot sin, change past, make another God, stop itself from existing, or fail. God cannot be body, tire, forget, repent, be sad, or be angry. God has no hate. God is happy. God is its own happiness.
Mind
Living things have souls, which are their essences {substantial form}, but only human beings have spiritual soul. Body has nutrition, growth, and reproduction from one essence {vegetative principle}. Body has sense activity and locomotion from another essence {sensitive principle}. Body has reason and will from a third essence {intellectual principle}.
Spiritual soul connects material and spiritual. Spiritual soul is lowest form with pure intelligence and highest form that can form matter and that realizes in matter. Spiritual soul permeates body and is immaterial, unchangeable, and immortal. Human intellect is in spiritual soul. Spiritual souls are individual, and God creates them at conception. Because soul is purely spiritual, it comes directly out of nothing.
Law
Laws come from God through natural law of morality and society. Natural law does not apply to property. Law must contribute to public good.
Politics
States contribute to God's plan, preparing for the community of believers after the redemption. States are subordinate to church, because states exist to help people reach virtue. Rulers have duties, with no natural right to rule.
He lived 1266 to 1308, was Scholastic and Franciscan, and developed Augustine's ideas in psychology {Scotism}.
Epistemology
Concepts develop from nature observation. Such concepts also apply to God. Evidence types are objects and event experiences, bodily actions, and principles, all of which people know directly. The first ideas and perceptions are confused and imperfect. Will makes some clear and perfect. Ideas that wills do not understand die out. In this way, wills control intellect.
Philosophy is for material world and is theoretical. Theology is for practical life and is spiritual. Only revelation gives truth.
Metaphysics
Individual objects and properties are distinct.
God is the efficient cause that keeps universe in being and keeps it from nothingness.
Mind
Will is independent of reason. The intelligent and immaterial soul links to material body by the life-force, which is the Form for body.
Theology
God impregnated Jesus's mother (Immaculate Conception).
He lived 1260 to 1337 and based his Mysticism on ideas of Realism.
Metaphysics
Being and Knowledge are the same. God is beyond being and knowledge. God has three parts: generating essence, creation itself, and part beyond all things and creating. God creates by expressing Ideas in itself, out of nothing. God does not create by will, because will is in time.
Mind
Soul is like the part of God beyond creating and essence and is timeless. Body is in time. Human mind approaches God by reducing plurality to unity. Soul then reaches purity, withdraws from world, and ceases to be self.
He lived 1401 to 1464 and influenced Council at Basle and later Council of Florence. He combined Thomist scholasticism, Eckhart's mysticism, and science to develop a religious metaphysics.
Epistemology
People cannot know God {docta ignorantia, Nicholas of Cusa} [Nicholas of Cusa, 1440].
Metaphysics
God is one and infinite, uniting all opposites, such as essence and existence. The infinite can realize all possibilities.
World is plural, finite, and filled with opposites.
Mind
Individual person and divine essence are the same.
He lived 1596 to 1650, was Catholic, and was "father of modern philosophy". In mathematics, he studied analytic geometry, slope, rectangular coordinates, Cartesian products, absolute value, sign rule, undetermined-coefficients principle, and logarithmic spirals.
Epistemology
God's purposes cannot explain anything, because people cannot know those purposes.
Senses and opinions cannot be true, because they can change and often deceive. People cannot know if they are asleep or awake and so they can be incorrect about image or thought {dreaming argument}. An evil demon {malin genie} or outside agent can perpetually deceive people. Because people can always perceive deceptive things, people cannot be certain about personal experiences or actions or about mathematical propositions and tautologies. Doubting everything is suspending judgment. One can doubt existence of all physical objects. However, the act of doubting implies consciousness, so people cannot doubt their existence as thinking faculties or consciousnesses with thoughts {method of doubt, Descartes} {cogito argument}. People cannot doubt doubting, so "cogito ergo sum" or "I think therefore I am".
However, ability to doubt that thing possesses some feature does not prove that thing can exist without feature.
Doubting, affirming, denying, understanding, willing, hating, imagining, and feeling are consciousness parts. Consciousness or soul essence is thinking, which happens even in deep sleep.
The method of doubting demonstrates a fact about truth: If a statement is as clear and distinct as the truth that the doubter exists, the statement must be true. Such statements must be as clear as tautologies and as distinct as exact meanings. Such truths {innate idea} are true by themselves and do not require deduction from other truths. Therefore, people can know clear and distinct statements. They can know them by reason, which comes from God. Mind passively receives cause mental effects. However, because body can cause unclear ideas, mind has to actively find clear and distinct truths.
Facts and theories do not and cannot lead to truth. Rather, analysis or induction methods should reach one and only one basic and certain principle. From that principle, deduction and synthesis can explain everything. All knowledge can connect in logical systems.
Cause must have more reality than effects. People have an idea of perfect being. However, people are finite and not perfect and so cannot themselves conceive of perfect things. Only a perfect being can put ideas of perfect things into consciousness. Therefore, God must exist, and "God exists" is clear and distinct.
Because God is perfect and so is truthful, God never creates people so they always have error. People can therefore believe in knowledge that is clear and distinct. Most truths have clarity and distinctness and do not need deduction. For example, mathematical truths are clear and distinct. Deduction only corroborates them. People can believe bodies exist, though mind knows only their extension, number, flexibility, and motion. Qualitative judgments and sense perceptions are mental signs, are not clear and distinct, and so are not truths.
Total motion in cause equals that in effect {conservation, motion} {motion conservation}.
Ethics
Rational thinking about clear and distinct ideas results in proper willing and action. Will can judge clear and distinct ideas in only one way and so is not free in those cases. Error in willing and action can arise when ideas are not clear and distinct and will is free in those cases. Sin arises from will's incorrect choice in unclear or indistinct cases.
Feelings and desires are mental disturbances caused by body. Only humans have feelings, because only they combine mind and body. Feelings and desires come from fundamental feelings: wonder or admiration, love, hate, desire or want, pleasure or joy, and pain or sadness. The mind's duty is to control body effects on mind.
Metaphysics
There must be a first cause for all things and especially for the whole. Reality has God, souls, and matter. The mental, non-material, and spiritual world, which has mental activities or consciousness, is entirely separate from physical world. Only one mental level exists. Mental or soul substance {res cogitans} does not extend in space and is indivisible. Physical substance {res extensa, Descartes} extends and is divisible. Material objects in motion fill space and follow deterministic motion laws. The physical world is the same everywhere. Living things are complex mechanical objects with no animating force. Math and physics can apply to body {iatrophysicism} (Giovanni Alfonso Borelli).
Mind
Soul and body are two independent things but interact. Psychological properties differ from physical properties {attributive dualism}, and psychological descriptions cannot be physiological descriptions.
School had followers of Descartes and included Louis de la Forge, Clauberg, Cordemoy, Arnout Geulincx, Gibieuf, and Nicolas Malebranche. Mental events occasion physical events, and physical events occasion mental events {Occasionalism}. People have subjective experience, which they know perfectly but no one else can know. Mental experience is not quantitative.
He lived 1588 to 1679 and was materialist, rationalist, and determinist.
Epistemology
Reason is about long-term goals and means to reach them. Emotions are about short-term goals.
Sense impressions are body motions and are the only consciousness contents. Imagination and dreams are decaying sense impressions. Sense impressions combine and transform {association, Hobbes} to give thoughts and memories. All thoughts are deterministic, either by association or by purpose.
Feelings and will result from combining pleasure, pain, self-preservation desires, and sense impressions.
True knowledge is mathematical and symbolic. Mathematics gives rational knowledge of material world. Object motions in space follow geometry. Perceptions are about object motions in space. Mind thinks by combining symbols, which are perceptions and words. Rational thought uses only words.
Mind uses space and time, but physical existence has no space and time.
Laughter comes from comparing self, or superior, to inferior {superiority theory}, to build up self and disparage inferior [1651].
Ethics
Pleasure is desire for more, and pain is aversion to something already present. Desire or love determines what is good for people. Aversion or hate determines what is evil. Therefore, morality is relative. People are mostly concerned with their desires and aversions and try to do what is good for themselves to stay alive and healthy. People have absolute right to take personal action for self-defense. Therefore, people's desires conflict. Morality is the means to achieve peace. Society must impose it. People accept it to maintain peace.
Will is desire or aversion that causes action. People always will the strongest desire or aversion. Different action choices are available, and wills choose among actions, but choices are deterministic. Freedom is only the fact that choice is available and that people have ability to act.
Fear causes religion.
Happiness is always succeeding or prospering. Happiness is only process, not state.
Law
Laws can gain peace and avoid war and crime, which are the main threats to individual lives.
People have right of self-defense but no other individual liberties.
Metaphysics
Universe contains only physical things. Religious and spiritual things are separate from material world.
Mind
Mental or psychological properties are about body matter motions.
Voluntary movements begin with insensible motion {endeavor}. Motion toward something is desire, and motion away is aversion.
Politics
People's main interest is self-preservation. State prevents continual war of self-interest among people and so is necessary for self-preservation. In state of nature, without law, there is no right or wrong. Left alone, state is anarchic. State's goal is order and stability.
The best way to achieve peace is in society with sovereign assembly or monarch. Sovereign makes and enforces laws to guarantee peace and maintain lives.
Sovereignty comes from the people, because power depends on the people's will. State is contract between ruler and people. People, who are all equal, agree among themselves to yield all power to one authority, the sovereign, chosen by majority. People give rights to sovereign to protect themselves. After this, people have no power or rights, except of self-defense and refusal to fight. People yield power to get more security and liberty. Otherwise, anarchy occurs.
After agreement, people do not have right to change it. Therefore, civil war never has justification.
Political-authority basis is sovereign authority. Sovereign powers and rights must be supreme. People must fear authority and so obey.
Sovereigns must be just, because people must follow law. States must use power to maintain rule of law and must use any means to reach this end {end justifies means}. Power provides stability and physical security for citizens. With no such power, person is against person, and life is "nasty, brutish, and short."
Monarchy has less favoritism, fewer private interests, secret advice, and stable policy, compared to legislature or multiple rulers. Honest monarchy keeps order and protects people.
There should be state religion and monarch or ruler should control church, because religious belief is arbitrary.
He lived 1632 to 1677 and was determinist. He derived Cartesian philosophy from axioms and definitions. He used Scholastic concepts for axioms and definitions.
Epistemology
People know God through intuition. People can know the parts of God {doctrine of modes}.
The physical can explain the mental, and vice versa. Physical and mental worlds exhibit parallelism. Ideas have objects or relations and essence of God.
Ideas and thoughts all logically connect, and understanding and reasoning mind perceives that fixed logical relations are between all objects and events, so all determines each. Effects are cause or premise logical consequences. All actions and objects are necessary and sufficient. No cause hierarchy exists, only a systematic whole. Causes and effects do not just happen in time.
Sense perceptions and emotions are body processes. Perceptions are external-object representations used by mind as it tries to maintain existence and perfect itself. Perceptions and emotions can become perfect in mind by clear and distinct understanding of their causes.
Purpose is human idea that does not apply to God's actions.
Ethics
Only finite minds see evil. Because everything is necessary, world as a whole has no evil.
Because everything is necessary, free will does not exist.
Man should seek order, give up passion, and try to find and understand God's plan. Attaining clear and distinct understanding improves mind's reasoning powers and allows more activity and freedom. Freedom is the understanding that God grants existence to people to act in predetermined ways manifesting God's power and law. The highest state of living, insight, and understanding {intuition, Spinoza} is intellectual love of God, union of thought and emotion, and joyful realization that all is eternal necessity under control of God, not contingent on time but determined by laws. Virtue is acquiescence in this knowledge and living life based on it.
People start with emotion and experience, then learn to reason, and eventually become free through insight, if they are perfectly active, not reactive, in oneness with God and nature.
Because the future is certain, hope, anxiety, repentance, and fear are not real but are passions based on inadequate knowledge. Other passions are effects of outside world. Passions distract from vision of God and unity of all.
True freedom is feeling and acting self-determination. Control from outside is bad. Reason is outside time and is certain. Knowledge leads to proper necessary action, and error leads to wrongdoing.
Self-preservation governs all behaviors. Fundamental desires are desire or appetite, pleasure, and pain or sadness. Self-preservation requires only these.
Metaphysics
Substance needs only itself to exist {substance monism}. Physical and mental are different perspectives on same reality {anomalous monism, Spinoza} {double-aspect theory, substance} {dual-aspect theory} {dual-attribute theory, Spinoza}. Substance has God as essence and nature as laws, is infinite, and has an infinite number of attributes, such as thinking and spatial extension.
All finite things, such as minds and bodies, are not substances but are only substance parts, manifestations, fragments, states, or expressions {mode, Spinoza}. Finite things maintain their being {conatus}, perfect their existence, and are aware of pleasure and pain. Finite things can be more active or more reactive.
Nothing can be different than it is, because everything results from God, who is necessary and eternal being. God is cause and essence of all things. Actual world and all knowledge derive from God, and this unifies them. All infinite attributes unite in God's reality, whose essence involves its existence. God has no qualities, no consciousness, no will, and no body. All things are God modifications, and God is in all things.
Mind
Soul and body exhibit parallelism. Mind is thoughts of body. Body is mental matter. Mind and body are different aspects of Nature or God.
Politics
States should control the church. However, each age changes religious dogma, so state should not force dogma upon people. State religion should be about ethics, not dogma. Social life comes from individual interests. State is an agreement that unites people into group with common interests, to ensure their interests. Agreement makes people give up some rights to authority to enforce laws. Aristocratic republics are best.
He lived 1632 to 1704 and founded empirical psychology and empiricism. William Molyneux helped him and corresponded with him.
Epistemology
Mental objects are sense-data about sensations, memories of sensations or ideas, or concepts {idea}. Sensation is the way objects present to understanding when thinking. Ideas can be simple or complex. People cannot analyze simple ideas or construct them. Mind is passive as it receives simple ideas from appropriate stimuli. Mind cannot prevent or select simple ideas. The two simple-idea sources are sensation and reflection. Sensation ideas result from observing external objects. Reflection ideas result when observing mind's operations. Simple ideas come from sensations or reflections by resemblance, nearness in space and time, and cause and effect {associationism, Locke}.
Idea associations can be false or true. Human action or nature connects true associations. False associations happen by chance or custom.
People construct and analyze complex ideas, such as objects, relations, and forms, from simple ideas using consciousness. Complex ideas combine simple ideas consciously using mathematical and logical operations to rearrange words, abstract, demonstrate, prove, and construct. Words are signs for idea contents, and general ideas are mental structures using words. Complex concepts find common features among objects or events or subtract space and time from objects or events {abstraction from examples}. Mind is active while attending, remembering, discriminating, comparing, combining, enlarging, and abstracting complex ideas.
Knowledge relates ideas perceived by reason. Opinion depends on observation.
Cause and effect is the major idea.
All ideas originate in experience. At birth, mind is blank page {tabula rasa}, waiting for experience to fill. A priori knowledge, such as tautology, does not exist. Because babies and primitive peoples do not know them, there are no innate ideas or universally true or known ideas, even of God or mathematics. Because soul or mind has to later formulate them and judge them, which it does for all ideas anyway, ideas cannot reside in soul for future use. Because people must learn words and grammar first, clear and distinct or intuitively certain ideas cannot be innate. Because the most-profound truths can be so abstract that they are not intuitively certain, they are not innate.
In demonstrative knowledge, necessary formal idea is substance that holds qualities or modes. People can be certain about their ideas and sensations through reflection, but they can know nothing about thing itself, essence, soul, or soul's relation to body. The only possible knowledge is of mind and its contents.
Will a blind person that knows shapes by touch recognize shapes if able to see {Molyneux problem, Locke}?
Understanding cannot perceive itself. Sense organs cannot perceive themselves.
Ethics
God is lawgiver and has rewards and punishments to induce people to conform to law. God's law is also nature's law, so following law leads to good results and breaking it leads to bad results in world.
Public opinion and state are two other law sources, and both have rewards and punishments to induce people to conform to law.
Moral judgments can conform to known ethical laws or not, so moral judgments are demonstrative knowledge.
Metaphysics
Matter is atom groups and has properties. Properties {primary quality, Locke} can be about atoms {corpuscular theory}: mass or solidity, figure, motion, and number. Properties {secondary quality, Locke} can be about atom relations. Tertiary qualities are about object perceptions.
Mind
Mind can sense objects and events {outer sense, Locke} and think about experiencing objects and events {inner sense, Locke}, making two knowledge kinds.
Politics
Kings have no divine right to rule. Hereditary succession to power is not right. Absolute monarchy makes king both judge and accuser.
Primogeniture is unjust.
People have many basic rights. Mothers have rights the same as fathers.
Before government, men follow natural law, which comes from reason and is God's law. All people are equal and free. People judge for themselves and rely on themselves for remedies. There is no anarchy. If all people are prudent, consider their overall interests, not just current ones, and are pious because they fear hell, society needs no law, because general interests of all coincide with special interests of each, over time.
Government results from social contract, to secure life, liberty, and property. States are expressions of people's will. Property causes people to agree on government and give right of judging and enforcing law to authority. Authority must establish laws interpreting natural law, have impartial judges to judge and mete punishment, and have powers to enforce laws.
Judges should be independent of governing authority. The people should elect legislature by majority rule. Legislature and executive should be separate, with equally divided powers to make laws and enforce them. There should be checks and balances among government branches. War or compromise must resolve struggles between branches, because no higher authority can arbitrate.
The state has limited powers against people, especially against their property.
Government is moral trust. If government does not do good things, people can resist it.
There should be religious tolerance, with love of truth. People should avoid dogma.
He lived 1638 to 1715 and was Occasionalist.
Epistemology
At each occasion of experience, God places experience in people. Mind cannot know the body except through God.
God holds all perceptions and ideas. God puts innate ideas into minds so they can think. People cannot know all their mind or faculties.
Error is self-deception, so people are at fault for error.
Metaphysics
God causes all actions, including will, because they are necessary. No actual causes and effects exist, only physical motions under laws. God put initial motion in all bodies.
God wills at each instant.
Mind
Individual minds are in infinite reason, love, and God, because they modify universal reason or God. People can only oppose God in their wills, not minds.
He lived 1668 to 1738. Matter moves and lives. Mind is not separate from matter. Mind depends on body completely. All mental processes use material or mechanical processes.
He lived 1685 to 1753, was Catholic, and studied vision psychology.
Epistemology
Mind can only know sense impressions and images {immediate object}, perception contents. Mind only knows primary qualities and secondary qualities. People cannot know anything about physical world or about substance. Objects are only quality conjunctions, with no need for substance.
Mind only uses examples and analogies, not words or abstractions. Abstractions are illusions, because they just recombine words. Abstractions about object sensations are not real in thought or nature, because they must both include and exclude qualities, and no process can be so general and so specific simultaneously.
Perception cause is God's will, which maintains complex correlations between all sense qualities. All people thus perceive the same unified, continuous, and coherent world, and world really is as it appears.
People correlate visual experience and visual judgments, such as distance and size, by contingent and arbitrary associations, not by calculation. Objects in visual experience are only mental {divine visual language}, by which people infer information about environment objects. People do not know or use innate mathematical ideas or optics theorems.
Mechanical movements do not cause or explain anything, but scientific theories are useful to predict experience.
Metaphysics
Matter is not real. Only mind and sense qualities are real {subjective idealism}. To exist is to be perceived {esse est percipi}.
If consciousness is matter property, world needs no creator, and soul is mortal.
The real world is under will of God and is purposeful. God perceives, and thus guarantees, material existence.
Mind
Mind is not ideas but contains or perceives ideas. Perceiving or attending is mental action, and mind is mental actions. People are, and are only, minds or spirits, thinking things. Only intelligent active animate agents or minds can have will and cause ideas or events. People are always thinking and do not have unconscious periods {doctrine of private times} {private times doctrine}.
He lived 1711 to 1776 and was utilitarian, empiricist, and humanist.
Epistemology
Sensation or immediate experience is certain, providing basis for ideas and knowledge.
However, observations depend on uncertain assumptions.
Mental ideas are sense-impression copies. Brain does not infer sensations and ideas. Sensations and mental ideas are similar, but sense qualities have greater degree, force, and liveness. Belief in sensations and mental ideas depends on their degree, force, and liveness.
Besides original sensations and their copies, mental contents are ideas about sensations. Simple ideas are about independent sense impressions {psychological atomism}. Complex ideas have parts that are about sense impressions. All ideas depend on sense impressions. General ideas are actually about particular perceptions that have general connotation. Ideas are about sensation relations, which are resemblances, contrarieties, magnitudes, proportions, time and space relations, identities, and causations.
People can use logic and know probability of ideas and their relations. However, such reasoning does not necessarily relate to actual world. People can only know that perceptions or ideas relate, not that real objects relate. Demonstrative knowledge is about ideas and their relations. Knowledge is uncertain and relative. Beliefs are as justified as other beliefs. No uniform principles can apply. No object implies another's existence.
Perceptions are object representations. Perceptions do not prove external objects exist, because mind only has perceptions and not external objects themselves.
Statements can be facts that depend on nature or can relate ideas without needing facts {Hume's fork}.
Deduction or causation can prove statements. Causation arguments assume that laws are universal. Deductive arguments cannot show that laws are universal.
People assume causation when same event succession or conjunction {regular succession} repeats. Causation depends on constant mental association {necessary connection} {necessary relation}, which depends on contact. Causation allows inferences about the future, which is knowledge beyond observation. Belief allows us to act in practical life.
However, people do not experience causal relations but only perceive events and objects in succession. Because sensations, ideas, and events have no logical connections, people cannot know causes and causation. Association only apparently relates cause and effect. Inductive processes depend on experience, make only contingent predictions, and cannot give rational knowledge based on logic or reflection.
People can have no rational knowledge of God, causality, substance, mind, or self, because such ideas have no associated sense impressions. People cannot prove God's existence by reason.
Ethics
Moral actions can be good for people. People can perform moral actions in systems that generally are good.
Morals are about emotions, which can then produce actions. Basis of moral actions and judgments is ability to feel what others feel {sympathy, ethics}, as they experience pain or pleasure. Social life determines feelings. People approve good actions, because people feel the pleasure others gain.
Reason clarifies, orders, and evaluates feelings that people have and the ideas behind them. Reasoning, and feelings of sympathy for simple virtues, teach people sympathy for complex virtues. Besides sense qualities, people feel pleasure from justice, benevolence, fortitude, wisdom, and prudence. Though actions resulting from these virtues can be harmful or insignificant, sympathy causes people to approve.
No Ought from an Is {Hume's principle}.
Mind
Self has interactions, causes, and effects {bundle of sensations}, depending on memory. Selves are not objects or perceptions, because no sensation corresponds to "I". Mind is sum of sense impressions and ideas. Introspection only reveals perceptions, not self {elusiveness thesis}.
Politics
Compact theories of government are incorrect.
He lived 1720 to 1793 and described people who saw aliens {Charles Bonnet syndrome, Bonnet}. Consciousness unity and sensation-and-motion disconnection both imply that immaterial mind is separate from body. Nervous system initiates mind's activities but does not cause them.
He lived 1724 to 1804, was pietist, and synthesized rationalism and empiricism.
Aesthetics
Consciousness has feeling, including judging art {judgment, Kant} {aesthetics, Kant}. Aesthetics is about perceptions that reveal object formal properties {Form, Kant} and lead to feelings of the Beautiful and the Sublime.
The beautiful or sublime is subjective feeling and is not necessarily useful or agreeable. The feeling is not about physical object or concept but about mental image or perception that reveals object formal properties, exciting understanding, imagination, and sensibility. The Beautiful and Sublime belong to consciousness-in-general and are beautiful or sublime for everyone.
The sublime causes painful subjective inadequacy feelings in humans, because its greatness overcomes sensual abilities. Then human higher abilities relate sublime to super-sensual mastery, overcome awe, and obtain final delight. The sublime harmonizes sensual and super-sensual. Theoretical reason masters the mathematically sublime. Practical reason masters the dynamically sublime or powerful.
Art tries to elicit feelings of the beautiful or the sublime. Feeling suggests nature's purpose, which is to harmonize experience Forms and contents. Good artists therefore follow nature's forms.
Epistemology
Consciousness has thinking or ideation {theoretical reason} {pure reason}, which leads to questions about knowledge. Knowledge can only be about experience. Reasoning strives to find ultimate, complete, and consistent knowledge by pure reason but can only know how to act in experience {practical reason}. Through reason, people have ideas {ideas of reason} about self, physical world, and God.
Immanent principles involve Mind, which perceives world and has experience sense data {phenomena, Kant}. Transcendent principles involve reason, which uses unconditioned ideas beyond experience, such as actual objects and ideal forms {thing-in-itself} {noumena, Kant} {Idea, Kant}, about which one can have only faith in a-priori universal and necessary truths.
People can reflect and judge, using mass terms and sortal terms {natural kind, Kant}, to find experience order and purpose. Because all people use same tools, they share universal judgments of beauty and laws.
Knowledge is about perceptions, objects, and mental concepts, which can be true or not true and have value levels. Knowledge statements require subjects and predicates. Predicate to subject relations are third concepts different from subject and predicate concepts.
Applying concepts to objects using rules {judgment rule} is one cognition aspect. Judgments {analytical judgment} {explicative judgment} such as tautologies have predicate same as subject, so statement must be true. Judgments {synthetic judgment} {ampliative judgment} can have predicates that differ from subjects. Synthetic judgments have two types. People learn synthetic judgments, such as facts about world and perceptions, from experience {a posteriori synthetic judgment}. Synthetic judgments, such as mathematics and reasoning principles, relate subject and predicate in universally true and logically necessary way, unrelated to experience {a priori synthetic judgment}.
The main question about knowledge is about thinking forms or tools, how ideas originate and what mental activities are {critical method} {transcendental method}. The reason uses such concepts, principles, and judgments, but they are not innate, are not from experience, and are not consciousness contents. The fundamental categories used to understand reality are not objective features but are conceptual mental structures {Kantian idealism, Kant} and make experience possible {transcendental idealism, Kant}. Human understanding needs a priori concepts about space, time, substance, and cause to have experience, know objects, and give objects properties {transcendental argument}. A-priori synthetic judgments are only in mathematics, pure natural science, and metaphysics and are mental concepts, not physical reality. The basis for their truth is how people think.
Basic reasoning activity is synthesis {transcendental logic}, which is unifying manifolds or plurality. Sensations synthesize to perceptions, perceptions to judgments, and judgments to Ideas. First, mind combines sensations caused by physical objects {things-in-themselves} with mental space and time Forms to make perceptions. Second, mind combines perceptions with understanding concepts, which can create ideas, to make experience judgments {spontaneity, Kant}. Third, mind combines judgments about experience to make Ideas or general principles. Thus, a priori judgments do not require formal or analytical logic.
Using synthesis, people can make general synthetic judgments based on their perceptions. Such judgments are about perceived-thing relations, such as "every change must have a cause."
People cannot know physical reality itself.
Mind uses general judgments to form further concepts from perceptions.
Space and time ideas are pure perception forms and are a-priori principles, not mental concepts. Perceived particular things must be in space and time. Space and time are infinite, are about only one thing, are not subjective, do not relate to particulars as wholes relate to parts, are not necessarily actually in the physical world, are invariable, and are not universals. Space and time unify the sense manifold. Time unifies the self-perception manifold.
Twelve judgment types reflect twelve relations between subject and predicate. Universal quantity uses "all". Particular quantity uses "some". Singular quantity uses "one". Affirmative quality uses "true". Negative quality uses "false". Infinite quality uses "all" or "none". Categorical relation uses "all" or "none". Hypothetical relation uses "if ... then ...". Disjunctive relation uses "and/or". Problematic modality uses "possible" or "contingent". Assertoric relation uses existence as actuality. Apodictic relation uses necessity. Twelve Categories correspond to twelve relations. Respectively, they are totality, plurality, unity, reality, negation, limitation, inherence vs. subsistence {accident, substance}, causality vs. dependence or effect, community or reciprocity, possibility vs. impossibility, existence vs. non-existence, and necessity vs. contingency.
Categories lead to reasoning principles. Quantity gives the principle: all phenomena are extensive magnitudes. Quality gives the principle: sensation objects are intensive magnitudes. Three categories define possible, actual, and necessary {modality, Kant}. Relation category and other categories give principles. Substance is permanent. Substance quanta cannot increase or decrease. All changes have causes and effects. All substances continually interact. In mathematical form, these principles are all inferences from motion laws, because motion accounts for all events and perception changes. Principles are only about perceptions and experiences, not about actual physical reality.
The principle of pure understanding, which is self, ego, or consciousness as whole, develops from all Categories.
People can think of things-in-themselves as quality totalities, setting up intuition or non-sensuous mind perception, and so can think of world, souls, God, and imaginary creatures. World is totality of sensations. Souls are totality of self-perceptions. God is totality of everything. Such unifying totalities are the Ideas.
Subjectively, mind has sensibility and understanding. Sensibility is passive or receptive. Things in themselves can generate mental contents or representations {intuition, Kant} in sensibility {perception, Kant}. The fundamental time and space categories are in sensibility. Time is the form of inner sense, which allows people to know mind's contents. Space is the form of outer sense {outer sense}, which allows people to perceive external objects. Understanding acts on sensibility to form conceptions from intuitions. Understanding includes fundamental categories and general conceptualization principles, which allow people to find natural laws. Imagination links sense data to understanding to recognize objects and apply laws. Imagination is necessary {transcendental, Kant} mediator between receptive sense and active understanding.
Contradictions and opposite conclusions {antimony} happen when using space, time, and categories to understand things that cannot be in experience. Antimony subjects are not experience objects but are transcendent reality. Pure reason has four such unresolved principle logical contradictions. A logical contradiction is that universe had beginning and has finite space, or it had no beginning and is infinite. Space and time are both infinite and finite. A logical contradiction is that substances have simpler substances, or only one substance exists. Substance is both simple and composite.
These two antimonies are about infinities.
A logical contradiction is that people have free will separate from physical laws, or that physical laws or God determine everything. Things can be both caused and uncaused. A logical contradiction is that necessary being exists or does not exist. God does and does not exist.
These two antimonies are about causation.
Thesis and anti-thesis are true. Contradictions happen because people can only know perceptions, cannot know actual world, and try to draw conclusions about world anyway. Infinite regression through same answer type, to which human experience cannot provide unconditional answers, causes antimonies.
Neither experience nor logical operations and concepts can prove existence of actual material things or their causal relations. Substance and causality are only mental associations.
Philosophy is about concepts, is analytic, searches for definitions, depends on experience, and depends on understanding concepts. Metaphysics is synthetic but a priori, as in statements about ultimate existence and causation.
Mathematics is about magnitudes, is synthetic, uses definitions, is independent of experience, and depends on clear and distinct perceptions using space and time.
Humor depends on feelings of superiority [1790].
Ethics
Consciousness has willing, which questions morality {practical reason, Kant}. Thought contents synthesize will or purpose objects using Forms, and wills perform acts. Ordinary will tries to gain happiness or satisfy desire by synthesizing ends with means to find action courses.
Rational will has universal and necessary purpose, which is duty. Rational will follows a priori moral laws {categorical imperative}. Rational wills can want that everyone do action. People should act based on principles that they will that they should become universal laws. Such moral judgments have no conditions and are universal laws. Wrong action or thing is against reason.
People do not perform ethical actions to obtain happiness or pleasure. Following duty is action for its own sake. Consequences are not important.
Phenomena are deterministic. Noumena are not deterministic. Rational will is autonomous and free. People are free in as much as they are things-in-themselves. People's will is free to act. All actions must come from will. People consider {autonomy, Kant} which actions to take in situations to attain goals. People can choose to act morally and justly.
Conscience is feeling responsibility for actions and implies that people can choose in unconditioned ways. Being moral is having temperament that follows duty. Reverence for law causes obedience. People gain the dignity of law itself.
Pleasure or approval feelings unite and synthesize theoretical and practical reason and tell people if object or idea in theoretical reason is means for desire or purpose of practical reason. Feelings can be pleasant or show utility. Feelings can arise from Forms themselves. One feeling is what people feel when they obey or break the categorical imperative.
The Idea of the highest good connects perceptions and unconditioned things by uniting happiness, which is object of natural or sensuous will, and virtue, which is object of rational will. The only happiness is virtue or justice. All ends have highest end, to attain after death, that combines virtue and happiness.
Divinity above experience can represent the moral ideal. The moral law within us leads to faith in free will, God, and immortality.
God, society, or mental feeling or goal {heteronomy} can command moral law. Religion makes the moral law divine command. Because people, in their guilt and awe, need help, God offers man redeeming love to obey the law.
People have reason, and others must respect this reason and so respect people as persons or agents, with ends in themselves. People are subjects and should not be tools, instruments, or objects.
Logic
Logic is science of understanding. Logic has twelve judgment types. Logic {transcendental analytic} has quantity, quality, relation, and morality.
Metaphysics
People seek highest good, so a source of all morality must exist and make this idea. However, ontological and cosmological arguments are invalid.
If universe and time are infinite, everything should have happened already and everything should have same temperature. If universe began at a time, why did it begin at that instant after infinite time?
Mind
Perhaps, people have mental faculty that unifies their experiences {transcendental ego, Kant} and separate mental faculty that makes them self-conscious {empirical ego} [Kant, 1787].
Politics
Law and rights are about people's actions, not intentions or temperaments. Law is only valid if enforcement is certain. Law should unite people's wills to ensure freedom, by blocking natural or sensuous will. People's dignity, derived from moral law, makes them ends in themselves not things.
Penal law should only be for necessary retribution. Perhaps, before governments, people were innocent of duty. History has brought people closer to duty but not happiness, because it has increased people's wants. History is movement toward more rational social order.
He lived 1762 to 1814 and developed a philosophy based on Kant's idealism.
Epistemology
Sense qualities come freely from outside. Consciousness is activities {tasks, Fichte} that create objects from unconscious sense qualities and unify knowledge about such objects. In this way, experience is a consciousness product. To perform its tasks, consciousness reasons using all activities in unified ways. Consciousness starts with basic task and ideas felt to be necessary and true. The first task for people is to create oneself and unify all ideas about oneself, to be self-consciousness. Whenever task tries to create and/or unify, it encounters resistance or contradiction. To overcome contradiction, task performs dialectical process, to reach higher synthesis. Consciousness knows its actions while it acts and so has both being and consciousness. The self-consciousness perceives subject, oneself, and object, one's activities. People can only know the "I" or self by distinguishing it from the not-I or object perceived by self. The "I" has evolved historically by the dialectic to know, first, objective activity, then communities governed by law, then exercise of will and science, then realization that all is spirit, and then philosophical understanding of God's will as part of God's community. Therefore, starting from the basic task, dialectical processes create task hierarchy. Dialectic processes keep all tasks working together smoothly to form unified processes. Dialectic is essence of reason. Perhaps, self-consciousness involves unified task hierarchy [Fichte, 1794].
Besides ideas that arise from dialectic, consciousness contains ideas characterized by feelings of necessity and certainty in their truth.
Sensation has no basis in preceding mental activity and so is free and unconscious. It appears to come from outside consciousness but is the way reason sets goal or object for itself.
Ethics
Consciousness creates sensation objects for action. People follow the command of duty. People have right to work to fulfill duty.
History evolves from state of instinctive reason and morality, to impulse and will, to reason {artistic reason} under common universal consciousness. Man's goal is restfully contemplating God. "I" comes from and directs toward God.
Philosophy is to organize reason or consciousness.
Metaphysics
All being comes from objective reason. There are no things-in-themselves. Reality cannot mix material world and consciousness, because they are completely separate.
Objective-reason unity, which is not subjective, causes all things to have unity, have order, and necessarily connect.
God is the free, world-creating activity or universal self. World is teleological, not causal.
Mind
All things happen within self, and there are no things-in-themselves {critical idealism}.
The "I" is activity of being aware of self {thesis, Fichte}, which is subjective being. Things outside the "I" have their own activities {antithesis, Fichte}, which is objective world. Both interact dialectically to limit each other and make relations between self and world {synthesis, Fichte}. Theoretical-reason synthesis stages achieve purer knowledge. Consciousness knows its actions while it acts and so has both being and consciousness. The self-consciousness perceives subject as oneself and object as one's activities. People can know the "I" or self only by distinguishing it from the not-I or object perceived by self.
The "I" has evolved historically by the dialectic to know, first, objective activity, then communities governed by law, then exercise of will and science, then realization that all is spirit, and then philosophical understanding of God's will as part of God's community.
He lived 1756 to 1837 and was French Ideologist. Attention notes sensation facts. Comparison links sensations. Reason organizes sensations and comparisons. He said property taxation is illegal.
He lived 1775 to 1854, was Romantic, and worked with Fichte.
Aesthetics
Aesthetic reason or artistic genius unites conscious and unconscious.
Art works are the highest phenomenon of reason, because they realize the world of reason.
Epistemology
Dialectic is a tool of metaphysics and reason. Formal logic is for perceptions only.
Ethics
Life parallels God's self-development, an idea from Baader and St. Martin. Directed toward itself, will makes Ideas, then reason, and then world, which is consciousness of conflict between purpose and impulse. Later, self-knowledge brings consciousness of reason.
Metaphysics
Universe is a perfect organism and artwork. Organisms can share body plans {bauplan, Schelling}. Reality has archetypes, which become more perfect {Naturphilosophie}.
God created ideal mental world and real matter world by creating finite irrational things {leap}, which must return to God over history. Realizing such Ideas is falling away from God, which is selfish and evil. Falling away has no cause or reason, so Ideas are free. Ideas strive to return to God. Reality is will, going from irrational to rational.
The Absolute must have falling away in it at all times and so must have irrationality in its essence. God has primordial ground of being and striving or unconscious will. God develops from primitive essence, to self-knowledge, and then to absolute reason. God participates in history, and history of revelations and religions shows God's development.
Nature and mind cannot be separate, because they unify in the absolute or God. Nature is self in the process of becoming self. Nature is an organism whose purpose is to produce sensitive beings that have consciousness, sensation, and reason and so make higher selves. Higher reality builds over history by synthesizing opposing forces into higher unity.
Mind
Absolute and unknowable reason unites self and nature.
He lived 1766 to 1828. People can have relative knowledge of things-in-themselves, relative to themselves. Objects exist, because they resist the force of will. Subjects or selves exist, because people are conscious of willing and thus know force within themselves.
He lived 1776 to 1841.
Epistemology
Ideas are active and compete to become consciousness. Ideas have intensity, which they can lose through tension. After losing intensity, idea becomes unconscious and becomes impulse. This is how feeling and will arise.
Psychology is mechanics of ideas. Associational psychology is not true, because it makes mind faculties real and basic.
Understanding cannot produce or create, so space, time, and categories all derive from experience. They cannot mold experience. Consciousness uses concepts from experience and has no transcendental logic. Consciousness is aware of matter, which is appearance created when Reals interact, as sense qualities. Consciousness is not aware of inner states of Reals.
Something that contradicts itself cannot be real. To know reality, people must take concepts known by experience and use relation method to find what has no contradiction.
Ethics
Morals are part of aesthetics. People's aesthetic Ideas give them ability to judge or estimate. All mental relations have feelings of pain or pleasure, which judge relations aesthetically and morally. Ethical Ideas used for judging are freedom, affection, right, benevolence, and equity.
Metaphysics
Universe has many things-in-themselves or independent elements {Real}, which are simple and unchangeable. Reals interact with or influence {disturb, Herbart} each other, causing their inner states, not necessarily conscious, which are for self-preservation. Reals are like physical units of a causally interacting machine, which has interaction laws. Matter is appearance created when Reals interact.
Mind
Souls are Reals, with Ideas as inner states. Ideas disturb each other, making tension and resulting in mental activities and states. Self is activity in which new perceptions and ideas meet previous ones and assimilate.
He lived 1770 to 1831 and was empiricist and materialist. He expanded dialectical method of Kant.
Epistemology
Categories or statements {thesis, philosophy} have within them internal contradictions, which are opposite categories or statements {antithesis, philosophy}. The only available resolution is to combine the statements at a higher thought level {dialectical method}, to reach new categories or statements {synthesis, philosophy}. Dialectic applies to all subjects. Synthesis can explain all phenomena. Theses and anti-theses are not fully in consciousness until synthesized to higher knowledge.
Dialectic can continually create new theses from existing ones, without limit. Knowledge subjects develop through dialectic.
Thinking methods or categories similarly have internal contradictions. Reason as object of itself negates reason as subject. Sensations are objects, consciousnesses are subjects, and their synthesis is self-knowledge. Self perceives individual subjective spirit and objective spirit, and synthesis resolves these two into one absolute spirit, which is perception in art, image in religion, and concept in philosophy and combines personal and social.
People already contain in their minds all knowledge but must remember, grasp, or learn it through dialectic to make it exist {learning paradox}. However, theses and categories are not real but exist only in mind as mental-process parts.
Material mind cannot perceive ideal rational concept of mind or spirit but can know spirit through people's objective spirit.
Ethics
People's objective spirit causes activity, will, and spiritual life. Abstract, general objective spirit in itself is Right. Acting morally is following the commands of Right. The moral order has people in states following Right.
Morality is from family and society and so is social in origin and maintenance.
Religion relates finite spirit to infinite and absolute spirit. People can gain better absolute-spirit knowledge through better finite-spirit representations.
Freedom applies to objective spirit as it tries to know absolute spirit better and develop self and society. Subjective spirit is not free.
History
History is self-realization of absolute spirit working through individuals and nations. The Absolute comes to understand itself through the dialectic of history. States develop by such dynamic processes, not by rules or social contracts and other static abstract-principles. States are particular and individual expressions of people's objective spirits.
History develops through dialectic toward higher consciousness and more freedom. In ancient empires, only emperor had freedom. In ancient Greece, more people, as city-state individual citizens, were free and began to think more. Reformation allowed more people to be more individual and use their minds more. In the Enlightenment, states and institutions became more rational and favored more freedom.
Metaphysics
Reality is only spiritual, with subjective spirit {soul, Hegel}, objective spirit {consciousness, Hegel}, and absolute spirit {geist, Hegel}. Absolute spirit {Absolute, Hegel} {Absolute Mind} {Absolute Idea} is unconditional and unitary. Absolute spirit {absolute idealism} is real, rational, and true, because it knows itself and has no contradiction, from Fichte. Absolute spirit permeates whole universe and has synthesized and unified all concepts {gedanken, Hegel} through its dialectic, which motivates the dialectic in everything. Absolute Mind {Begriff} contains all knowledge and has reflections in intuition in art, imagination in religion, and pure logic in philosophy.
Dialectic in everything means universe is like organisms that continually develop.
Particular and finite thing is separate from infinite whole and can be only partially real and true. Combining particulars makes more reality and truth.
Because finite things have contradictions in themselves if they apply to the whole or absolute, finite things develop by thesis, anti-thesis, and resolution through the dialectic contained in absolute spirit.
Mind
Objective spirit or consciousness is a finite reflection of absolute spirit. Mind is subject that can know something other than itself {alienation, Hegel}. This thesis-antithesis resolves at higher level using absolute spirit. Because spirit is self-determined, objective spirit acts through logical necessity and develops through dialectic stages like organisms grow.
Politics
History stages have dominant groups that arise from national spirit, and groups determine people's ideas and decisions.
Ideal societies are rational communities that provide maximum benefits, so all people can give it allegiance, not just one group.
History judges actions. Therefore, power and success make whatever happened be the right or best thing {might makes right}.
He lived 1788 to 1860 and was a pessimist. Plato, Kant, and Vedic thought influenced him. Philosophy is art, not science, based on people's will.
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is perception without will.
As people become less individual, they can better know the ideal.
Epistemology
Knowledge depends on having objective concepts {Idea, Schopenhauer} {objective concept} about reasoning, space, time, and causes.
Perceptions are individual, are in space and time, and have causes. From perceptions, people abstract subjective images or representations {Vorstellung}, which are also memories and imagination objects, using reason. From representations, people can know geometry, arithmetic, space, and time. From causes, space, time, and reason, people can know the world. The Ideas unify all knowledge.
Humor depends on feelings of superiority [1819].
Ethics
The Will, and individual wills, are always unhappy, because they never have complete satisfaction.
Individual wills conflict as they try to live and gain their desires. Conflicts of wills lead to inability to satisfy desires and thus pain and suffering.
People can never overcome the will to live, but to obtain happiness people should try to deny or negate will. They should quiet desires, have contempt for life, and become selfless {self-abnegation}. People can quiet will by sympathizing with suffering and by contemplating art and science.
Pleasure is relief from suffering and dissatisfaction.
Ethics {ethics of pity} depends on sympathy, compassion for the inescapable suffering and pain felt by other people. People should feel others' pain and should not inflict suffering. By submerging self and sympathizing with others, people decrease conflict of wills. The ideal is to unify all wills, and so end suffering and obtain justice.
Will feels itself to be free, but it actually acts deterministically. Freedom is acting to deny or negate will to live.
Metaphysics
Will to live or exist is essence of reality. Will is subjective thing-in-itself that has no object except itself, and so it can only will that it exist and live. Will has no outside method, object, purpose, or conclusion and is therefore absolute unreason.
All individual wills unite in the Will {world-will}.
All existing things manifest Will {voluntarism}. Will causes things to move and so keeps individuals restless and unsatisfied.
The world formed by Will is necessary and has determination, with an infinite number of relations and ideas.
All things in world result from physical cause, logical reason, mathematical reason, or moral cause.
Mind
Undirected forces {will to live, Schopenhauer} are true natures of people {absolute virtualism}. The will to live is individual, subjective, and irrational but is part of world-will. Will is separate from body. Will feels itself to be free, but all actions are deterministic. Will encounters resistance to its acts from everything, because everything has will or manifests will.
He lived 1770 to 1831. Consciousness allows people to know being, and being allows people to know consciousness. Real and conscious activities interact. Philosophy is explanation of self, because self is conscious.
He lived 1813 to 1855, was Christian, and founded existentialism. He criticized Hegel's absolute consciousness, which left out subjectivity and personality in favor of rationalism.
Epistemology
Truth is in self. Subjectivity gives truth.
Religion knows truth first by revelation and personal feeling {Religiousness A} and then by history and the eternal {Religiousness B}.
Ethics
People should do good deeds for spiritual satisfaction alone, not to reach goal, gain reward, or avoid punishment {double-mindedness}.
To act ethically, people cannot use objective standards, because choices are personal. People must develop self or essence through ethics. Self makes choice and commits to idea or action.
People have sense of anxiety, dread, or anguish about having no control and facing life's vicissitudes {angst, Kierkegaard}. People can try to avoid spiritual satisfaction {despair, Kierkegaard}, by denying God, by not thinking about it, by trying to be someone else, or by suicide. Despair can lead to rejecting pleasurable life and discovering self. People need faith, the opposite of despair or doubt, to avoid despair and suffering.
Mind
People's use of will to make choices with meaning and passion gives them self-interest and structure. People develop themselves over life. People have essences, which try to come into existence and thus pass through three life stages: aesthetic, ethical, and religious. Societies or political groups do not define people.
He lived 1806 to 1873, was James Mill's son, and was utilitarian, empiricist, and associationist. He tried to meld the Enlightenment with romanticism.
Epistemology
Knowledge, including mathematics and logic, comes only from experience. People can know matter and objects only as sensation loci.
Reasoning is induction or generalization {inductivism}. Reasoning can be good, middling, or poor.
Science laws can result from adding similar components {homopathic law} to obtain similar results. Science laws can result from multiplying dissimilar components {heteropathic law} to obtain new properties.
Eliminating objects and events that have no effect can find true causes {Mill's methods}, by agreement, difference, joint-agreement-and-difference, residues, or concomitant-variations methods.
Language feature, word, or phrase has connotation and denotation. Connotation is meaning and gives denotation. Proper names do not have connotation, because they have no wider meaning and no defining attributes.
Associations can be real and actual or apparent and verbal ones.
Consciousness is only perception associations. It does not need intuition or subjective faculty.
Ethics
People seek only happiness. Other goals, such as virtue, are part of happiness or means to happiness.
The happiness of the greatest number is the best. Happiness requires liberty and free will. Wrong actions or things cause less happiness.
Pleasures have qualitative differences. People must account for pleasure quality, as well as quantity.
Human nature is free and individual.
Mind
Mind can have experiences, memories, and hopes or desires, experienced by self.
Other humans seem to have consciousness, but how can mind know that there are other minds {Other, Mill}.
Politics
Society should provide the basic conditions for happiness. Society can nurture human nature.
Government can coerce individuals only to prevent harm to others {harm principle}.
Society must protect people's possessions. One possession is justice.
He lived 1806 to 1856 and was of Hegelian left wing. Personal egos are reality and should use ideas and things for themselves. There should be no state, government, law, property, religion, family, ethics, or love. There should be no compulsion.
School included M. Lazarus and H. Steinthal.
He lived 1818 to 1903. Nearness in time and space, not causes or logic, causes idea associations.
He lived 1817 to 1881 and was Teleological Idealist.
He lived 1826 to 1917, was Positivist, and studied history.
He lived 1838 to 1917.
Epistemology
Psychology is about mental states, which can be mental/intentional or physical/sensational.
Phenomena are physical, such as color, cold, sound, smell, or mental, such as presentations from senses or imagination, emotion, judgment. Physical phenomena require object. Like language, mental phenomena can reference objects in thought {intentionality, Brentano} and can be conscious or unconscious. The mental is about something else.
However, some conscious states are not representational, and some representations are not conscious.
Awareness relates to objects and events external to people and their awareness, so awareness has intentionality. Subjective experiences refer to perceptions or mental ideas, independent of their external objects. Intention objects can also be selves {psychological immanentism}.
All and only mental phenomena have intentionality {irreducibility thesis}. Mental states are always intentional {Brentano's thesis} {aboutness}.
However, sensations seem not to be about something else.
Mental states are intentional states {propositional attitude, Brentano}. All intentional states are intentional, but not vice versa. Intentional states causally relate to their objects, including non-existing objects.
Consciousness acts are constitutive powers of self and are subjective experiences. Intuition can describe all subjective experience. Subjective experiences have classes {act psychology} {descriptive phenomenology} {phenomenognosis} that find causal relations between phenomena.
Intentionality grounds object concepts.
Emotions and judgments use presentation with acts of judging or emoting.
Mind
Mental is personal and self-referencing. Mental phenomena cannot be physical phenomena.
He lived 1825 to 1895, was evolutionary theorist, and promoted and defended Darwin's theory.
Epistemology
People cannot know the Absolute.
Ethics
It is immoral to believe if one cannot justify the belief from what one knows.
Mind
Animals are machines but are conscious {conscious automata}. Consciousness does not cause anything {epiphenomenalism, Huxley}.
He lived 1840 to 1912 and was of Marburg School of Immanent Philosophy. People cannot know things-in-themselves.
He lived 1820 to 1909 and was Idealist.
He lived 1828 to 1920 and was of Comtian School.
He lived 1828 to 1875 and was of Marburg School of Immanent Philosophy.
He lived 1842 to 1906. The Absolute contains both idea and will, and will's pain and suffering always persists with idea order and spirit.
He lived 1832 to 1912, started New Realism, and emphasized stream of consciousness. People know things as somethings. Physical events cause conscious events, but conscious events cause nothing. The future is the test of truth.
He lived 1844 to 1900. Schopenhauer influenced him.
Aesthetics
Art can have restraint {Apollonian} or be free {Dionysian}.
Epistemology
People cannot know truth. All things are in flux, including truth. Therefore, all things must have continual study from many perspectives, accounting for all cases and situations.
Ethics
Values should depend on world as it is, humans as they are, and all their possibilities. Morals are always changing as world and people change.
People should accept material world and human life as they are. People should express their instincts, be fully alive, have desire for power, and exercise power. People should feel free, powerful, creative, and independent {overman} {superman}, by intellectually controlling and exercising their will-to-power as much as possible. For supermen, good and evil are meaningless.
The best morality for the present time is morality for masters and free, independent persons. Only the strong ought to survive and/or rule. Anything that delays arrival of the supermen is wrong or goes against nature.
Conventional morals and society are just escapes for the weak. People deny that anything is important or any action has significance {nihilism, Nietzsche}. Nihilism, old values, old interpretations, and old thinking ways, such as theology and metaphysics, are slave or herd morality for the powerless and weary. For example, the old value of sympathy perpetuates the unfit. Old values make people sensitive to injury, inferiority, oppression, frustration, or humiliation, and they react to them with hatred, tricks, and dishonesty {resentment} {slave mentality}.
Old values should have re-examination {transvaluation} {revaluation} to find relations to creative and powerful life values.
Will and intellect oppose each other. People that can only will must suffer, as things thwart their will or they conflict with others. Intellect should control will and engage in creative, powerful, and life-affirming activities.
Truth and happiness are not important, only expression of will-to-power.
Metaphysics
Irrational-force interactions {will-to-power} have no objective purposes and no structure and create and maintain physical and biological worlds.
"God is dead" and does not exist.
Mind
People can only will. Therefore, they must suffer.
Politics
Society can develop people's awareness and activity.
He lived 1835 to 1909, was Positivist, and studied criminology.
He lived 1846 to 1924 and was utilitarian and Idealist.
Epistemology
Appearance has many objects in many relations. Relations can be independent of objects, be aspects of objects, or be parts of whole system.
People experience the whole through appearances. Experience continually revises knowledge systems, and statements are revisable {coherence theory of knowledge}.
Judgments assign predicates to reality.
People have direct knowledge only of perceptions and can build descriptions and conclusions about reality from them. Logic itself is such conclusion and is mental system.
Ethics
Morality must provide people with unity, understanding, and goal for self {self-realization}. Pleasure seeking does not supply goals. Kantian duty or rationality assigns role to self but not goal. Hegelian morality provides only duties in context of society and history.
People should try to realize their best self {ideal morality}, using everyone's pleasures, all duties, all societies, and analysis and reasoning about them.
Metaphysics
True reality is mental, eternal, self-experiencing, unified, and Absolute.
Mind
People are parts of the Absolute. The Absolute only appears to people in certain forms or appearances.
He lived 1842 to 1910 and was pragmatist, radical empiricist, and Swedenborgian.
Epistemology
Things that people experience are real. Conjunctions {association, James} between perceptions and their parts organize experience. Ideal forms or categories do not organize experience.
Hypothesis is true if consequences of believing it lead to personal well-being, success, and satisfaction {pragmatism, James}. The best test of theory is what happens when using it. True beliefs have good practical effects in thinking and acting. They help people, are profitable, correspond to actual events, or are expedient in most situations.
Useful hypothesis makes prediction about experience or behavior.
Statements do not have objective truth.
Sshort-term memory can last from seconds to minutes and be in current experience. Long-term memory can last for days and require going back to the past.
Overt body behavior, especially in viscera, causes human and animal emotion, in response to internal or external stimulation or perception {James-Lange theory of emotion}.
Fear of loud noises is innate, but conditioning and stimulus generalization cause most fears.
Sense and motor systems interact {ideomotor theory}, so actions have representations about their effects, and the representations control further actions. Actions have predicted consequences.
Ethics
Will and attention seem to require effort, which indicates self-exerted force.
Will is active and purposeful consciousness. Belief requires effort of will {will-to-believe}. One then acts according to one's beliefs.
Free will is active attention to choose or maintain belief and choose behavior.
The will-to-believe allows one to choose belief in situations in which one must choose belief, and so action, without knowing consequences. Reason does not work in such situation.
Believing is good, because people might believe the truth, whereas avoiding error is not practical and cannot lead to truth. People choose not believing when they fear trickery or mistakes, but it is better to have false hope than false fear.
People should not reject hypothesis if results are good. Therefore, people should believe in God.
Metaphysics
Pure experience is the only reality {radical empiricism}. Experiences contain knower {consciousness, James}, known {perception, James}, and their relations. Living things both participate in pure experience and can reflect on it later. Experience is neither mind nor matter {neutral monism, James}. Experience is pluralistic. Soul, self, Ideas, and matter do not exist.
God is being and existence itself. Nothing else can determine God. Thus, God cannot not be, and so is necessary and sufficient. Because necessary and sufficient, God is perfect and absolute. Because limitation is non-existence, God has no limits from within or without and so is infinite. Because God is infinite, God is one and only one. Because God is one and only, God is indivisible. God has no potentiality, because potential can lose or gain, thus contradicting necessity and absoluteness. God contains all actuality already and is immutable. Because God has no limits, God is boundless. If God has bound, God is in space and thus is composite. God is omniscient, because God knows all causes as itself. God is pervasive and omnipresent, because God is present in all time. God is omnipotent for all things that do not have logical contradictions. If God has physical substances or anything inside, they have cause other than God, so God is non-physical and spiritual. If God is material, God has parts, which something not-God must combine, which is contradiction. Therefore, God must be simple. God's nature or essence and existence or being must be the same. Potential and actual, substance and accidents, being and activity, existence and attributes unite in God. Because God has all attributes of persons, God is a person. Because God is object and subject of its activity, God is a living self-sufficient person. Because people have will and intelligence, God has them, because cause must have more than effect. The object of those things in God is God itself. God wills itself, knows itself, and must do these things. God is eternal. If God does not exist from the beginning, God needs a prior cause. If God is not present at end, God is not necessary. If God has succession, God is mutable.
God can create being from non-divine substance or out of nothing. God can will to create, because everything outside God can change. God creates to exercise his freedom and manifest his glory. God creates out of love, to make rational creations that can know and love God. God implants the Ideas in us, but people perceive them from finite viewpoint.
Evil is negation, and so God cannot be evil. God permits evil in free beings but does not will it.
Mysticism is passive, transient, ineffable, and noetic.
Mind
Brain as whole makes continuous, personal, active, and changing experience {stream of consciousness, James}, which is about near past and near future. The stream of consciousness can affect brain.
Person's individual experience can interact with other's experiences.
Mind can use different means in different situations to reach fixed goals.
An "I" {subjective self} thinks and knows. A "Me" {empirical self} {objective self} is the body {material self}, social acts {social self}, and spirit or soul {spiritual self}, which has reasoning, will, goals, conscience, and sensory experiences. Spiritual self attends, judges, and acts {active element}. The "I" is whole set of Me's, holds thoughts, and is a special thought type that remembers, selects, unifies {unity, self}, and continues {continuity, self} into next such thought, making stream of consciousness. "...thought itself is the thinker..."
Consciousness can cause attention {cause theory}, or brain can direct it {effect theory}.
He lived 1855 to 1916 and was Idealist. The Absolute Mind includes all minds. Will properties or essence explain motivation.
He lived 1859 to 1938, was a psychologist, read Frege, and became a philosopher. He developed phenomenology by extending Brentano's intentionality theory.
Epistemology
People know knowledge types only by psychological effects {psychologism}, which are subjective experiences. Psychology is about psychological effects and subjective experiences themselves and so about consciousness. People cannot know physical scientific facts or how subjective experience relates to them. Psychology needs postulates, but psychology cannot prove these fundamental ideas.
Logical structures exist independently of psychological activities, but people can only understand logical structures from psychological effects.
To study mental processes and what is in conscious mind, start with no assumptions about perception, objects, concepts, causes, or consequences. Suspend judgment {epoché, Husserl} about actual existence.
First, classify phenomena {phenomenology, Husserl} and then find their essences {eidos} and origins.
People have meaningful and logical object representations {intention, Husserl} in consciousness {phenomena, Husserl}, which reflect universals or essences {noema}. People can experience and remember unique and individual intentions in consciousness and consciousness itself {noesis}. Conscious acts are intentional and direct towards objects.
Phenomena are mental object representations {profile, Husserl}. Profiles are object-essence aspects. Essence is sum of all possible profiles, and people find it by intuition {eidetic intuition} using intentions about profiles {transcendental subjectivity} {transcendental ego, Husserl}. Finding object essence makes that essence, and so consciousness is constitutive. Eidetic intuition both finds object essence and develops its existence {eidetic reduction}.
Phenomena have ontology, because they are in object essence. Intentions have ontology, because they are about object essence. Knowing object essence relates phenomena to intentions {phenomenological reduction}. Provisional connections {bracketing} {einklam-merung} are between objects and intentions, which both refer to noema. After analyzing intentions, find all possible meaningful intentional relations {transcendental reduction}. Intentions cannot refer directly to objects, because objects are not contingent, but intentions and subjects are contingent.
Phenomenology is better way to establish physical world facts. In Western world, science appears to be the only fact source {objectivism, Husserl}. However, facts are intentions from conscious activity, and subjective experience is all people can know about world. Empiricism should account for subject, observer, and methodology. Including life, history, and society subjective experiences requires an epistemological phenomena theory, such as phenomenology.
Psychologically, numbers develop from counting set elements. Logically, numbers are symbols and wholes, which people do not count but manipulate.
Awareness has unrepresented features and has space and time {horizon of awareness} {awareness horizon}. The horizon is necessary to perception, meaning, and understanding.
Mind
Mind knows only phenomena appearances, not reality.
Egos or subjects are not consciousness or mental-experience physical objects but transcend both categories {transcendentalism, Husserl}.
People's egos can know each other {the Other, Husserl}.
The living world {Lebenswelt} {life-world} is people's subjective natural state, before science and history, which has essences upon which to build knowledge.
Conscious experience has viewpoint and object {intentionality, Husserl}.
Conscious experiences have many meanings and appearances, some sensory and some non-sensory {superposition, Husserl}.
Imaginary objects have arbitrary properties, but perceived objects have definite and often more properties {transcendence, Husserl}. Perceived objects have stable part relations {relational constancy}; have no affect from interruptions or other perception changes, will or other mental states; allow perception by different senses {perceptual invariance}; and allow improvement in perception {corrigibility}.
Perceived objects associate with objects in the past and future {temporality}, including themselves, and so have history {retention} and expectations {protention}. Consciousness moments {primal impression} include past and future. People know viewpoint or object changes by object comparisons at different times. Perceived objects have duration, and events have monotonic order. Time is global and unitary. Events nest recursively.
People have lived-in bodies {leib, Husserl} and bodies as intentional objects {körper, Husserl}. Sensations relate to proprioceptive and kinesthetic information from physical body, which allows action. Sense-organ and body movements create egocentric space, which makes intentions and experience. The sense of self is implicit, not known by higher-order thought or itself.
Pain and color sensations {hyle} (material) are not intentional but are sense contents and lead to intentions and consciousness.
He lived 1859 to 1938, was New Realist, and developed evolutionary system.
He lived 1859 to 1941.
Epistemology
Consciousness can only know the present. However, people intuit continuous time, as irreversible, never-repeating, and always-altering change {duration, Bergson}. People must feel psychological truth by instinct.
Memory interacts alive, current, and active mind and inert, past, and passive matter. Memory recollects past states during present activity.
Perceptions are limitations to and uses for active life force.
Life and movement are beyond science, so philosophy is intuitions about life force, time, and matter.
Laughter happens when people see humans acting mechanically.
Ethics
Life and will are free and creative, make unpredictable products, have no purpose or end, and are just action. Creation is good in itself. Action is for its own sake.
Metaphysics
Change is the basis of reality. The life force {élan vital, Bergson} causes purposeful evolution through change and development against matter's passive resistance. The life force is dynamic, while matter is inert. Life and matter necessarily oppose. Life tries to organize and unify matter into new forms while matter tends toward separateness.
Time is essence of life. Duration is dynamic and continuous and not a series of states.
Mind
Through acting, life has produced instinct and intellect. Intellect is passive. Instinct is active. Intellect can deal with things as stable states, in separate objects or in series, explaining why matter appears as objects. Instinct deals with things in time, by harmonizing and blending present and past states.
He lived 1843 to 1896 and was realist. All science ideas should be verifiable by sensory experience {empirio-criticism, Avenarius}.
He lived 1861 to 1916. Phenomena are effects from mathematical-theory complexes, not from single theories. Data sets can have theories that vary greatly in assumptions {underdetermination} {Duhem-Quine thesis}.
He lived 1872 to 1970 and was neo-realist. In logic, he developed theories of types, classes, and descriptions, to distinguish between logical and grammatical proposition subjects. He invented method of stating problems in logical symbols {philosophical logic}, to transform ordinary language into propositions. He axiomatized counting numbers and logic {logicism, Russell}.
Epistemology
Philosophy is about meaning and therefore language and logic. Philosophy also uses science. "What science cannot tell us, mankind cannot know."
Mathematics does not assert anything about physical world, only about logic and language.
Mind can know mental facts based on language or logic {knowledge by description, Russell}. These facts can be true or false. Mind has special relation to certain mental objects such as perceptions, introspections, and certain memory types {knowledge by acquaintance, Russell}. These are not about truth. Knowledge by description depends on objects known by knowledge by acquaintance, which provides definitions and meanings by representation.
Propositional functions form a hierarchy {proposition types}, based on variable and function categories. Variable type is one level below propositional-function type {theory of types, ramified} {ramified theory of types}. Propositional functions cannot apply to selves {theory of types, Russell}. Function types can be equivalent to first-order functions {axiom of reducibility, Russell}.
Existence, identity, and predication differ. Proper nouns identify individual things. Predicates identify object classes. Existence and description are separate and independent. Asserting existence {theory of descriptions} {descriptions theory} requires class descriptions of subject and predicate. Existences are not individual things, subjects, or predicates. Asserting quantification requires subjects or descriptions, not predicates. Quantifiers do not apply for all functions or types. Phrases like "the x" {definite description} indicate unique existence. Phrases like "an x" {indefinite description} indicate non-unique existence.
Meaningful-proposition subjects can refer to objects that do not exist. Descriptions do not refer to anything, so knowledge does not need acquaintance.
Numbers are classes of classes, and so mathematics can be a logical system.
Sentence symbols {incomplete symbol} can have meaning only in context.
All conditions define class {comprehension axiom}. This axiom is not consistent, because class can be about all things not in the class {Russell paradox, Russell}. Instead of "class", use the word "function" in these statements.
People have innate postulates, allowing inferences.
If statements change truth over time, change has happened. Something began or changed shape, size, position, or orientation.
Beliefs, wants, and desires relate person to proposition {propositional attitude, Russell}.
Appearances that radiate from objects go to minds and become sense-data, which are external to mind but phenomenal. Sense-data cause mental images, which are how appearances exist in nervous systems. Mental images can also arise from within mind. Sensed appearances relate to other appearances, so brain can distinguish them from unsensed appearances, which have no such relations.
Intention objects are not mental objects but physical objects.
People feel assent or dissent to belief content.
Ethics
Desire starts behavior, and satisfaction ends behavior.
Metaphysics
Reality is elementary predicates or sensations, which are either instantaneous or outside time {logical atomism, Russell}. Logical analysis can discover these logical atoms, which are independent and are neither physical nor mental {neutral monism, Russell}. Complex things, physical and mental, come from logical atoms by logical methods. Logical atoms radiate from physical event to cause appearances.
However, negative statements, independence, and exclusion cause problems for logical atomism, as does the possibility of logical analysis for complex statements like beliefs.
Mind
Mind can acquaint with itself as subject {ego, Russell}. Mind is not the set of all received appearances.
School included Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, and B. F. Skinner.
He lived 1876 to 1957 and started New Realism. Consciousness content is the same as consciousness object. Mind and brain are same. Anything conceived or perceived as outside mind is in mind. However, this cannot prove that nothing is outside mind {egocentric predicament}.
He lived 1889 to 1951 and was analytic philosopher.
Epistemology
Truth is about facts, not objects.
Propositions about metaphysics, ethics, religion, aesthetics, logic, propositions, and essences cannot state truth. They have no meaning, because they are about things with variable meanings. Philosophy goals are to describe and to increase understanding.
One thing is tautologically identical to itself, but two different things cannot be identical, and so identity cannot be relation {paradox of identity, Wittgenstein} {identity paradox, Wittgenstein}. Identity actually conjoins two propositions.
Models of reality need as many elements and relations as reality. Proposition sets can have as many elements and relations as reality and can model reality {picture theory of meaning, Wittgenstein}.
Actual language expresses mind's thoughts and intentions. Language description can clarify language usage. Language is not about experience. Grammar specifies how to use words {grammatical proposition}, not how world is. Language cannot explain thought structures or rules or prove them true or self-evident. No argument or appeal to other authority can prove the basic forms or ideas used in human activity or show they are self-evident. In all human activities, such as thinking, solving problems, or using language, people can distinguish correct from incorrect performance based solely on activity, not on verbal criteria or principles.
Mathematics is a rule system for using transformations and relations to produce new values or statements. Fundamental logic and mathematics forms and ideas are about nature of thought. Logical propositions are tautological rules. Logical forms cannot have name or description and are inherent in reality. Language alone can reveal them.
He described language game, family resemblance, and private language [Wittgenstein, 1953].
Language can be for shared social situations. People can agree about word meaning used in social situations, because they apply same words to same social situations and they realize they do so. The culture maintains social situations and so preserves word meaning. Meaning must be constant to allow people to communicate with others and themselves over time. Using language of social situations, people can communicate about what happens in minds, because same social situations shape mental images of perception words.
Sentences about emotions or sense qualities refer to internal things. Sentences about perceptual or physical phenomena name public reference object. Sentences about pain and anger are only about mental phenomena and have no physical object but still have public criteria through shared social situations and have constant meaning.
Like words, sentences have contingencies or applications that make them true and meaningful {truth-condition, Wittgenstein}. Using correct sentence structure determines truth and meaning, by determining truth-conditions. Truth and meaning do not depend on underlying thoughts. Mind can only assent to, dissent from, or abstain from thinking about sentences and applications.
Factual statements are the most-common statements, and conditions that make factual statements true are the best-understood statements. People judge other statement types in reference to factual statements, using assimilation or contrast. Factual statements represent the physical world but can also represent alternative possible worlds. Factual statement represents image. Factual statements should have same abstract form as the fact reported. Factual statements can express everything that people can say and so limit what people can imagine or conceive. Factual statement has sense. The sense of factual statements is what makes them true. Scrambled factual messages have no sense and are meaningless. Factual statements are truth assertions, because sense is about truth. Other statement types do not have sense but still can have meaning, by revealing physical-world or human-life features.
Things people do or use can rest on doing and thinking methods and so are not knowledge or truth but are all there is. Mind does not have or follow definitions, templates, principles, or rules. Mind interprets what to do and applies behaviors and language in particular situations. Definitions, templates, principles, rules, and understanding follow from ability to apply word to situation. Templates are not accessible to others, so people cannot know meaning. Templates typically do not precisely conform to situations, so meaning is not clear or true. Templates can change without person or others being aware of change. Templates can be wrong.
Interpretation is verbal and so itself can have interpretation. "If you can say, here is one hand, we'll grant you all the rest."
He lived 1892 to 1985.
He lived 1895 to 1975 and discussed dialogism and heteroglossia [Bakhtin, 1986] [Bakhtin, 1983].
He lived 1889 to 1976, was atheist, founded existentialism, and was Sartre's and Hans-Georg Gadamer's teacher. Later, Heidegger became more pessimistic.
Being and thinking are becoming lost {nihilism, Heidegger}, as science, logic, and technology progress. People need thinking and language, as in art and poetry {the turn}.
Epistemology
Philosophy must be careful to use correct terms and to explain why other terms are incorrect.
Being itself causes errors in understanding, because many things are possible but only several actual.
Communication concerns living being transmitting information about problem at moment.
If something is true, people can understand it. False things do not have meaning.
Ethics
Present situations or problems require decision. Situation has social or problem context, people have goals or purposes, and tools and moods affect situation. One can act mechanically or freely. People must learn to act in these situations.
People must come to accept the inevitability of death. This knowledge is motivation to action, and so death is cause from the future that can affect people in the present.
Mind
People's lives are not like things people use {Zuhandenheit} and are not like things entirely separate from people {Vorhandenheit}. People's lives are fundamental forms of being, in which they have social relations to live in communities and personal goals to meet needs. Living people, as being itself {dasein}, are non-physical existences {existenz} or life loci.
People have identity gained from family and culture {authenticity}. People can understand this identity.
Before life begins, people are nothing and after death will again be nothing, so nothingness focuses human ideas and concepts.
Angst causes reflection. Then restless soul questions and so understands existence and thus accepts the pain and hopelessness of short life in limited universe. The soul takes resolute decision to assert its existence and essence and so determines its destiny itself. This is the meaning of being {sein, Heidegger}. Being depends on existence of people who understand its being.
To gain understanding of being and self, which are hidden, deliberately obscure, or too familiar, requires a method {hermeneutics, Heidegger}.
Politics
Beings develop in societies. Social conventions and ideas from the past determine one's being. To find all possibilities of being and to understand development, people must study history.
He lived 1902 to 1989, was logical positivist, studied mind-body problem, advocated neutral monism, and was member of Vienna Circle.
He lived 1905 to 1980 and was existentialist.
Epistemology
Things {the absurd} can appear to be subject to reason, but in fact people cannot reason about them. The meaning of existence is such a subject. Reason alone also cannot guide one's choice of fundamental project.
Repression is not possible, because conscious must be aware of what to repress at each instant.
Self-knowledge is impossible, because people are not objects but agents. People can create belief, even if they know it is not true.
Ethics
The main emotion is anguish over life and existence. Moral choices are about how to resolve this anguish.
Neither god nor nature provides moral authority {abandonment}. Moral authority comes only from people's choices.
There is no fate. People shape destiny and are responsible for choices.
One must choose to act. This is the human condition {la condition humaine}. Only people's actions have meaning. Choosing makes one free and creates one existence. Morality lies in making decision to act. Choosing to make no decision is self-deception or bad faith {mauvaise foi}.
Self-essence reveals itself by asserting existence. Existence precedes essence.
People often treat other people as objects, rather than subjects.
People have one or more overall purposes {fundamental project}, which they freely chose.
The imagination is free.
Mind
Understanding consciousness involves three existence or being categories. 1. Consciousness is conscious of objects other than itself {the in-itself}. In-itself exists only in consciousness but is not part of consciousness. It is an object of intention. It is non-physical and does not follow causal laws. In-itself is passive. 2. Consciousness can be conscious of itself as a different thing than in-itself {the for-itself}. The for-itself is separate from the in-itself and is not intentional. This self-consciousness {prereflective self-consciousness} is consciousness that there are intentions and the in-itself. For-itself is active. 3. People's bodies, characters, actions, and history exhibit a consciousness form that other people or same person can perceive as physical-world object {the for-others}. For-others relates its conscious body to other conscious bodies and relates its consciousness to its body. For-other and other for-other relations are perceptive, subjective, and affective and do not involve thought, knowledge, or cognition.
No consciousness type is personal or related to ego.
Mind has something inside {in-itself}, something for both {for-itself}, and something outside {for-others}. Because it is not in-itself, self-consciousness is nothingness, intention without object. As nothingness, self-consciousness causes questioning, imagining, being skeptical, denying, feeling detachment or delusion, and feeling need or lack. Therefore, self-consciousness has freedom. People are conscious of nothingness and freedom but often fear or do not accept them. Such people desire consciousness to be in-itself, rather than for-itself, and do not accept their real being. For-others often compete. Such relations oppose free action and so typically cause or involve conflict. Love, for example, can be a wish to possess another's freedom. Human relationships typically involve control of others and restrictions on freedom, so most human relationships eventually end. Human interactions involve so many factors that people cannot know them, and knowing them makes interactions impossible [Sartre, 1943].
Politics
Preferences in ethics determine political values.
At all human-life phases, from conception to death, something has power over individual {biopolitics}. Decisions taken for other people cannot have rational bases and are always questionable.
Society builds institutions that restrict freedom and increase alienation.
In coming into existence, driven by self or self-states, people's minds can go through transformations in which mental states appear abnormal. However, if transformations continue to completion, result can be clear and balanced mental state. Social contexts can help mentally ill people live independently.
He lived 1907 to 1961, was existentialist, and opposed dualism.
Epistemology
Awareness of object has representation and has space, time, and other unrepresented features {horizon, awareness}. The horizon is necessary to perception, meaning, and understanding.
Mind
Ego or self is about body experience. Body experience is neither subject nor object. Self's essence or reality develops through actions. World is self's experiences.
He lived 1902 to 1994 and studied inductive logic.
Epistemology
Proving statements false {falsification, Popper} can gain knowledge. Hypotheses should be statements that are testable and falsifiable. Stronger tests can test strong hypothesis {corroboration}. This process can refine hypotheses {falsificationism} to approach truth {verisimilitude}.
Observation or experiment cannot directly prove or falsify hypotheses, because subjective assumptions or previous knowledge, which can be wrong, always interpret evidence. Statistical induction is not reliable truth indicator.
Hypotheses have strong support if they predict true but surprising results.
Science uses falsifiable hypotheses. Pseudo-science uses falsified theories, such as Marxism, or theories that make no testable predictions, such as psychoanalysis.
People cannot predict plans well.
Mind
Matter and mind are separate substances, and interact in synapses {interactionism, Popper}. Mind has units {psychon}.
Politics
Open societies criticize plans and rulers and can change them constructively. Closed societies are passive and accept status. History evolves according to rules and is deterministic {historicism, Popper}. Epochs have spirits or overall feelings {Zeitgeist}.
He lived 1900 to 1976.
Epistemology
Philosophy should make language clear and find why some statements have no meaning or do not work in contexts. Statements have categories {statement types}. Knowledge can be about skill {knowing how} or about facts and events {knowing that} [1949]. Statements of one category often use contexts that require another category {category mistake, Ryle} {type error}.
Words belong to categories {logical type} by usage {logical behavior}. Mental ideas mean what happens in behavior {operational behaviorism} or what disposes people to behave in way {logical behaviorism, Ryle}. Words can be about mental dispositions and feelings. Words can describe values. Words {achievement word} can be about mental processes or activities that have results, such as solving, detecting, and seeing.
Words about mental processes can have different types. For example, people perform some mental processes and have skills, while some processes seem to just happen. Mental processes can have causes or antecedents, while others seem spontaneous.
Pairs can require each other for meaning {polar concept}, like up or down and correctness or error. Because there can be error, people can be correct.
However, this does not state when or where error or correctness was. Pairs, like finite and infinite, can have one member that has no reference.
Mental-event descriptions describe agent possible actions and statements, not actual mental events.
Thinking is acting in organized ways.
Mind
The idea that thinking things reside inside bodies or minds {ghost in the machine, Ryle} is ridiculous. Mind-brain dualism does not exist, because statements about minds are not statements about matter. Mental states are dispositions {reactive disposition} to behave in specific ways {dispositional analysis}. Mental states are not substances but substance processes.
If will causes voluntary actions, and will is voluntary, will has infinite regress.
He lived 1919 to ? and associate with Quine.
Epistemology
All particulars are individuals. Individuals can be particular spatial objects, with identity. Individuals can be non-particulars, like properties, numbers, and statements. Statements are non-particular and have context. Sentences and descriptions refer to particular objects, such as statements in which "The" and "That" can interchange. Concepts can depend on or refer to other concepts.
Mind
Experience is a mental-state series {pearl view, Strawson}. Self is new each time. Introspection shows that consciousness alternates with unconsciousness. There is no personality or agent. Neural processes have mental as well as non-mental properties. Experiences depend on persons or selves {no-ownership theory, Strawson}.
He lived 1900 to 2002 and studied under Heidegger.
Epistemology
Understanding differs from explanation and depends on culture. People should be aware of culture and how it affects their understanding of world and themselves. Understanding is in the present.
Realizing factors involved in understanding allows understanding to be as correct as possible {authentic}.
In studying and understanding, it is important to know writing style, intended audience, problem, and social and historical context {hermeneutics, Gadamer}.
Mind
The life-world is social.
He lived 1922 to 1996.
Epistemology
Scientists unconsciously use assumption, theory, and concept paradigms for developed sciences. Before development, science {preparadigmatic stage} has no paradigm. When competing paradigms become incompatible {incommensurability}, the paradigm alters. Two paradigms can exist at same time, because current observations cannot decide between them. Then a science revolution happens.
History has two aspects, one factual and the other myth {double truth, Kuhn}, which situation winner determines. History and personality affect truths and objects {dirty hands}. Earlier-time scientist independence can amalgamate with current-time big science {syncretism}.
He lived 1912 to 1989 and was functionalist.
He lived 1930 to 2004 and studied language relative to philosophy. He analyzed and criticized texts based on ideas about language relativity {deconstruction, Derrida}. His criticism contrasted with that of Roland Barthes.
Epistemology
Spoken and written symbols are physical and arbitrary. Spoken and written symbols are always in context. Because meanings differ in context, meaning can be unobtainable {undecidability, meaning}. As speech or writing progresses, sign meaning changes slightly {différence}, as context changes. Thus, signs cannot know consciousness or truth. Speech expresses mental thoughts {logocentric}, and writing is secondary.
Philosophy depends on opposite-concept pairs, such as soul-body, which are not useful or real but are only about language use.
Mind
The Other must contrast with the Self. This idea was against the idea of Emmanuel Levinas that the Other is absolute.
He lived 1926 to ?, was first logical positivist, and was Carnap's student. Quine, Wittgenstein, and Nelson Goodman influenced him.
Epistemology
People should not judge beliefs individually, but only as whole system {holism, Putnam}. Senses and facts cannot be the basis of knowledge. Knowledge requires brains that communicate.
Brain {brain in a vat} can know, by electrochemical input alone, everything people know, so it is impossible to prove existence of external world.
People react to natural occurrences to establish conscious linguistic responses {causal theory of reference, Putnam}. Mental states, representing ideas, cause linguistic responses. Linguistic responses report mental state using signs. Response pattern depends on similarity or relation represented by mental state, which people do not necessarily consciously know. Because mental states vary widely, natural occurrence can have incompatible explanations.
Skepticism refutes itself, because its thoughts have different meaning than ordinary thoughts.
Relativity requires that past, present, and future have no real distinction among them.
People think and speak based on how experts use words {externalism, Putnam}.
Mind
Mental states are computations {functionalism, Putnam}, and mind is relations between beliefs, desires, memories, and all mental states. This was his early thinking, which he criticized later. Minds know objects using mental tools {internal realism}.
He lived 1926 to ? and was Australian materialist and functionalist.
Mind
Mental processes are brain states and interact causally with body {central-state materialism, Armstrong}.
He lived 1929 to ?, was of Frankfurt School, and was Adorno's pupil.
Epistemology
People can study texts by considering social, historical, and textual contexts. People can reach true consensus about text. Free public debate can achieve such consensus.
Ideologies depend on power structures and slow social change. Ideologies have weak foundations {ideological critique}.
Mind
The life-world is social.
He lived 1932 to ?.
Epistemology
People's minds have intentions, which make meaning and language. Speech acts are rule-governed behavior, with roles and laws. There is strong AI and weak AI. After receiving grammatical string of Chinese characters as input, people who do not know Chinese language can use algorithm or lookup table to send grammatical and meaningful string of Chinese characters as output {Chinese Room example}. System of man and lookup table can pass Turing test but does not have real understanding of Chinese. Symbols and grammar must relate to representation to have meaning {symbol grounding problem}.
However, people must be able to perform such complex algorithms, using many underlying brain skills, including learning and memory. People must recognize Chinese characters in strings, put such characters in series, and follow many-ruled algorithm. To use algorithm, people must know language. Recognizing patterns is an algorithm part and means one knows symbols and representation. Perhaps, whole system understands because it must be complex and integrate many subprocesses, so understanding emerges. Perhaps, it needs causal relations to outside world. Perhaps, it needs brain-simulation program.
Mind
Neurological activity causes all mental phenomena {biological naturalism}. Mental phenomena and conscious states emerge from neurons and their processes. Minds have subjective essence. Sense qualities are elements of a field {total conscious field} that unifies conscious experience.
He lived 1942 to ?.
Epistemology
People can explain system if they assume that system is rational and has beliefs and goals {intentional stance}. They can look at physical, chemical, and biological processes {physical stance}. They can look at system structure, design, or algorithm {design stance}. Factual statements can substitute equivalent phrases for each other. Intentional statements are not true under substitution, because belief, knowledge, expectation, want, recognition, understanding, imagining are about specific ideas, not semantic meanings.
Brains {Darwin Machine} can recognize patterns, activate available behavior patterns, and select patterns through competition. Patterns are in neuron populations and can change.
Patterns that require extensive processing receive attention and so become conscious. Experiences report brain-activity results or output. In given situations, researchers can ask people to report their experiences, observe their behavior, or analyze their brains. Researcher can build story about their experiences {heterophenomenology, Dennett}.
Mind
Brain is network with many pathways that make many reactions to input {Multiple Drafts}, one of which is for consciousness. Human brains create histories, which revolve around same brain {center of narrative gravity}. Brains and memes have co-evolved, so brain parallel architecture {Joycean machine} simulates serial processing used by memes. This simulation is self.
Dreams are saved-narratives rerun during sleep {cassette theory}.
People naturally feel that they can imagine philosophical zombies {zombic hunch}, because they think experiences are separate from matter.
He lived 1917 to ? and developed a meaning theory.
Epistemology
For first-order languages, sentence truth is provable from semantic sentence-part relations. All languages can transform into first-order language, for sentence-truth clarity. This allows speakers to have truth-theory. First-order language meaning depends on truth-conditions.
Language interpretation or translation should use universally true and neutral beliefs and references, to minimize errors and falsehoods.
Intention, such as belief, is a mental state in which contrast forms. Speakers speak intentionally.
Causality is only physical, with no mental component, and follows physical law.
People can describe and imagine objects. People can understand and report events. Objects and events are independent.
Mind
Mental processes are physical processes, because they have relation laws, which can only be about physical events. However, mental states are not physical states and physical states cannot describe them {anomalous monism, Davidson}.
He lived 1937 to ?. Consciousness is subjective experience. Organisms are conscious if and only if there are mental phenomena {something it is like} to be that organism. Subjective experience has one viewpoint, unlike objective physical theory.
He lived 1931 to 2007. Wilfred Sellars and Quine influenced him. Truths, and objective or transcendental judgments, do not exist. Only beliefs exist, and they can be close to truth. Such truth depends on social context {neo-pragmatism, Rorty}. Intentions and mental states do not correspond to physical brain states {eliminative materialism, Rorty}. Folk psychology is not the way brain works.
He lived 1942 to ?.
Epistemology
People use terms such as desires, intentions, and reasons {folk psychology}, but scientific terms must replace these terms {eliminativism}.
Mind
Consciousness uses short-term memory, does not need sensory input, changes attention, interprets input, disappears in deep sleep, reappears in dreaming, and unifies senses. Conscious states involve changing attention, representing inputs, using concepts, combining attention and perception in short-term memory, and processing over time {dynamical profile approach}. Consciousness can be conscious of all representations, not just self-representations or high-level representations. Brain uses recurrent neural networks for attention and memory.
He lived 1933 to ?. Brain-mind mental and physical states function together, pair one to one-or-many, cause brain and body behavior, and affect mind {union theory}.
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He lived 1932 to ?.
Epistemology
Beliefs are information about relations. People know relations by differences and similarities among related scenarios {relevant alternative}.
Mental states represent beliefs about external events.
Learning acts are the basis of representations. Learning links external events and internal natural indicators {natural sign, Dretske}. Natural signs are mental phenomena, personal experiences, and actions, not abstract or arbitrary symbols. In learning, representational system gathers information from environmental events to make new algorithms. Learning is not just sensitizing, habituating, or setting algorithm parameters.
Mental-state pattern or structure {belief, Dretske} influences neural events and provides reasons to perform behaviors {structuring cause} and so causes action {triggering event} that leads directly to behavior {structural-cause theory}.
He lived 1942 to ?. Self does not exist. Personal identity is just grouped personal characteristics {bundle theory, Parfit}. Theories {ego theory} can posit souls or selves. Personal choices can affect particular people {person-affecting principle}, possibly making those people worse off. Ethical choices are about particular people affected by particular action, as well as general considerations. Self-interest does not exist.
He invented semantics based on truth conditions. Explanation is justifiable if it increases beliefs or makes simpler, more powerful, more fruitful, or more complete and consistent explanations, inferences, or hypotheses for the whole or a larger data set {explanationism}.
She lived 1943 to ? and is eliminative materialist.
Consciousness is representational. Mental representations that are poised, are abstract, are non-conceptual, and have intentional content are conscious {PANIC theory}. Poise means that it can affect beliefs and thoughts. Abstract means that it is a code or symbol, not just a physical thing. Non-conceptual means that it is specific and continuous, not a concept or category. Intentional content means that it represents external or internal object or event.
He lived 1942 to ?.
Mind
What happens if individuals in China physically perform same algorithm used by conscious people {Chinese nation example} {China brain example}. Does chess machine that uses lookup table to know all best moves in all positions have intelligence? Does robot with all human behaviors have intelligence? Can qualia be missing or interchanged?
Sense qualities and experiences are a consciousness type {phenomenal consciousness, Block} (p-consciousness). Mental representations, used for rational thoughts and actions, are a consciousness type {access consciousness, Block} (a-consciousness). Access consciousness is under conscious control and includes self-consciousness, creativity, discrimination, generalization, and behavior flexibility.
Consciousness does not lie between perception and behavior {classical sandwich} but actively binds perception, behavior, body, and environment {dynamical singularity}.
Opening refrigerators turns light on and it always comes on, so you think that it is always on, but it really goes off when door closes {refrigerator light illusion}.
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Date Modified: 2022.0225