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 ?.
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Date Modified: 2022.0225