glossary of philosophical terms · 2013-09-19 · glossary of philosophical terms z absolutism the...

GLOSSARY OF PHILOSOPHICAL TERMS

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absolutism The view that there are some types ofaction that are strictly prohibited by morality, nomatter what the specific facts are in a particularcase. Some have held, for example, that the inten-tional torturing or killing of an innocent person ismorally impermissible no matter what bad con-sequences could be prevented by such an action.Absolutism is an especially strict kind of deonto-logical view. It is discussed by Thomas Nagel in“War and Massacre.”

accidental and essential A property is essential foran object if the object must have the property toexist and be the kind of thing that it is. A propertyis accidental if the object has the property, butdoesn’t have to have it to exist or be the kind ofthing that it is.

Suppose Fred has short hair. That is an acci-dental property of his. He would still be Fred,and still be a human being, if he let his hair growlong or shaved it off completely. An essentialproperty is one that a thing has to have to be thething that it is, or to be the kind of thing it fun-damentally is. As a human being, Fred wouldn’texist unless he had a human body, so having ahuman body is an essential property of his.

Statements about which properties are essen-tial tend to be controversial. A dualist might dis-agree about our last example, arguing that Fred isfundamentally a mind that might exist withoutany body at all, so having a body isn’t one of hisessential properties. Someone who has been read-ing Kafka’s Metamorphoses might argue that Fred

could turn into a cockroach, so having a humanbody isn’t one of his essential properties. Somephilosophers argue that the metaphysical ideathat underlies the accidental–essential distinctionis wrong. Things belong to many kinds, whichare more or less important for various classifica-tory purposes, but there is no kind that is morefundamental than all others apart from such pur-poses. Quine, a leading skeptic, gives the exampleof a bicyclist: If Fred is a bicyclist, is he necessar-ily two-legged?

affirming the consequent Affirming the conse-quent is the logical fallacy committed by argu-ments of the following form:

If P, then Q.Q.Therefore, P.

This is an invalid argument form. Considerthis argument, which affirms the consequent:

If Jones is 20 years old, then Jones isyounger than 50 years old.

Jones is younger than 50 years old.Therefore, Jones is 20 years old.

Clearly, this argument is a bad one: Jonescould be any age younger than 50.

When someone affirms the consequent, oftenhe or she is mistaking his or her inference as aharmless instance of modus ponens.

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Some of the bolded words in the text are mere cognates to the words that appear in this glossary, so if you areunable to find the precise word that was bolded in the text, try looking for cognate words.

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agent-causation Agent-causation is a (putative)type of causation that can best be understood bycontrasting it with event-causation. When a ballhits and breaks a window, one may think of thecausal relationship here in terms of one eventcausing another, namely, the ball’s hitting the win-dow causing the window’s being broken. In an in-stance of agent causation, it is not one event thatcauses another. Rather, an agent—a persistingsubstance—causes an event. Some philosophers,such as Roderick Chisholm (see Chisholm,“Human Freedom and the Self”) have arguedthat agent-causation is required for genuine freewill. Agent-causation is also (see Chisholm)sometimes referred to as immanent causation, andevent causation sometimes referred to as transe-unt causation.

ampliative/nonampliative inference See deductiveargument.

analogy An analogy is a similarity between things.In an argument from analogy, one argues fromknown similarities to further similarities. Sucharguments often occur in philosophy. In his Dia-logues Concerning Natural Religion, David Humeconsiders an argument from analogy that pur-ports to show that the universe was created by anintelligent being. The character Cleanthes claimsthat the world as a whole is similar to things likeclocks. A clock has a variety of interrelated partsthat function together in ways that serve ends.The world is also a complex of interrelated partsthat function in ways that serve ends, such as pro-viding food for human consumption. Clocks arethe result of intelligent design, so, Cleanthes con-cludes, probably the world as a whole is also theproduct of intelligent design. Hume’s characterPhilo criticizes the argument. In “The Argumentfrom Analogy for Other Minds,” Bertrand Rus-sell uses an argument from analogy to try to jus-tify his belief that other conscious beings exist.

Arguments from analogy are seldom airtight.It is possible for things to be very similar in somerespects, but quite different in others. A loaf ofbread might be about the same size and shape as arock. But it differs considerably in weight, texture,taste, and nutritive value. A successful argument

from analogy needs to defend the relevance of theknown analogies to the argued for analogies.

analytic and synthetic Analytic statements arethose that are true (or false) in virtue of the waythe ideas or meanings in them fit together. Astandard example is “No bachelor is married.”This is true simply in virtue of the meanings ofthe words. “No bachelor is happy,” on the otherhand, is synthetic. It isn’t true or false just invirtue of the meanings of the words. It is true orfalse in virtue of the experiences of bachelors, andthese can’t be determined just by thinking aboutthe meanings of the words.

The analytic/synthetic distinction is closely re-lated to the necessary–contingent distinction andthe a priori–a posteriori distinction; indeed, thesethree distinctions are often confused with one an-other. But they are not the same. The last one hasto do with knowledge, the middle one with pos-sibility, and the first one with meaning. Althoughsome philosophers think that the three distinc-tions amount to the same thing, others do not.Kant maintains that truths of arithmetic are apriori and necessary but not analytic. Kripkemaintains that some identity statements are nec-essary, but not analytic or a priori.

analytical philosophy The term analytical philoso-phy is often used for a style of doing philosophythat was dominant throughout most of the twen-tieth century in Great Britain, North America,Australia, and New Zealand. This way of doingphilosophy puts great emphasis on clarity, and itusually sees philosophy as a matter of clarifyingimportant concepts in the sciences, the humani-ties, politics, and everyday life, rather than pro-viding an independent source of knowledge.Analytical philosophy is often contrasted withcontinental philosophy, the sort of philosophy thathas been more dominant in France, Germany,Spain, Italy, and some other European countries.

The term was first associated with the move-ment initiated by Bertrand Russell and G. E.Moore early in the twentieth century to reject theidealistic philosophy of F. H. Bradley, which hadbeen influenced by the German idealism of Hegeland others. Moore saw philosophy as the analysis

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of concepts. Analytical philosophy grew out of theapproach and concerns of Moore and Russell,combined with the logical positivist movementand certain elements of pragmatism in America.However, the term analytical philosophy nowrefers to many philosophers who do not subscribeto the exact conceptions of philosophy held by theanalysts, logical positivists, or pragmatists.

Indeed, there are really no precise conceptualor geographic boundaries separating analyticaland continental philosophy. There are manyanalytical philosophers on the continent ofEurope and many who identify themselveswith continental philosophy in English-speakingcountries. And there are important subgroupswithin each group. Within analytical philosophy,some philosophers take logic as their model, andothers emphasize ordinary language. Both ana-lytical and continental philosophers draw inspi-ration from the great philosophers of history,from the pre-Socratics, Plato, and Aristotle toHume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Mill, Frege, Husserl,James, and Dewey.

antecedent See conditionals.

anthropomorphism Anthropomorphism is thepractice of ascribing to nonhuman beings proper-ties and characteristics of human beings. In phi-losophy of religion, there is a general concernwhether and to what extent our thought aboutGod is problematically anthropomorphic. For in-stance, it is commonly held that depictions ofGod as having a body are mere anthropomor-phisms. But what about depictions of God as be-coming angry or frustrated? Whether suchdepictions ought to be taken literally or treated asmerely anthropomorphic is a matter of some con-troversy.

a posteriori and a priori A posteriori knowledge isbased on experience, on observation of howthings are in the world of changing things. A pri-ori knowledge is based on reasoning rather thanobservation.

Your knowledge that it is raining outside is aposteriori knowledge. It is based on your experi-ence, your observation of what is happening out-

side. One couldn’t figure out whether it was rain-ing or not by just reasoning about it. Now con-sider the following questions: (1) Are there anymarried bachelors? (2) What is the sum of 38 and27? After a bit of thought, you should concludethat there are no married bachelors, and 38 + 27= 65. You know these things a priori. You didn’tneed to make any observations about what washappening. You just needed to reason.

One important question about a priori truthsis whether they are all analytic, or whether thereare some synthetic a priori truths. The philoso-pher Kant thought that (1) above was a priori andanalytic, whereas (2) was a priori and synthetic.See analytic and synthetic for further discussion.

An a priori argument is one that uses no empir-ical premises. An a priori concept is one that is in-nate or could be acquired just by using one’sreason.

See also analytic and synthetic; contingentand necessary; matters of fact and relations ofideas.

a priori See a posteriori and a priori.

argument from analogy See analogy.

asymmetric attitudes To say that our attitudes to-ward two things are asymmetrical is simply to saythat they are different. The asymmetric attitudesarise as a particular puzzle when the things to-ward which we hold asymmetric attitudes are ap-parently the same in relevant ways.

A prime example of this is the asymmetric at-titudes we hold toward the time before birth andthe time after death. Both are long periods of timein which we do not exist. It would seem, then, thatour attitudes toward them should be symmetric.Intuitively, though, it seems reasonable to regarddeath as a bad thing, and unreasonable to regardthe period of prenatal nonexistence as comparablybad. That is, we hold asymmetric attitudes to-ward death and prenatal nonexistence.

atheism Atheism is disbelief in a god. Strictlyspeaking, atheists are those who don’t believe inany god or gods, but often writers will describesomeone who does not believe in the god or godsin which they believe as an atheist.

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basic structure In “A Theory of Justice,” JohnRawls says that his theory of justice concerns a so-ciety’s major social, political, and economic insti-tutions. His examples include the existence ofcompetitive markets, basic political liberties, andthe structure of the family. Rawls calls this thebasic structure of a society. G. A. Cohen, in“Where the Action Is,” argues that there is an im-portant ambiguity in this idea.

behaviorism Behaviorism is used in somewhat dif-ferent senses in psychology and philosophy. Inpsychology, behaviorism was a twentieth-centurymovement that maintained that the study of be-havior is the best or even the only way to studymental phenomena scientifically. It is opposed tothe introspective methods for the study of themind emphasized in much psychology of thenineteenth century. This is methodological behav-iorism. A methodological behaviorist might evenbelieve in an immaterial mind (see dualism), butmaintain nevertheless that there was no scientificway to study the immaterial mind exceptthrough its effects on observable, bodily behavior.

In philosophy, however, behaviorism opposesdualism; the term means some form of the viewthat the mind is nothing above and beyond be-havior. Logical behaviorists maintain that talkabout the mind can be reduced without remain-der to talk about behavior. Criteriological behav-iorists maintain that mental terms may not becompletely reducible to behavioral terms, butthey can only be given meaning through ties tobehavioral criteria.

Behaviorism is closely related to functionalism.

British Empiricism See empiricism.

Cartesian dualism See dualism.

category-mistake According to Gilbert Ryle (see“Descartes’s Myth”) a category-mistake is commit-ted (roughly) when one thinks of or representsthings of a certain kind as being or belonging to acategory or logical type to which they do not be-long. Ryle’s examples illustrate this sort of mistakenicely. Suppose someone visits your university, andyou take him on a tour of the campus, showinghim the student commons, the library, and so on.

At the end of the tour he says, “This is all very well,but what I’d like to see is the university.” Yourfriend would here be making a category-mistake.He apparently thinks that the university is yet an-other building in addition to the library, and so on,whereas in reality it is more like the sum total ofsuch buildings and their relationships.

causal determinism See determinism.

cause and effect We think of the world as more thanjust things happening; the things that happen areconnected to one another, and what happens laterdepends on what happens earlier. We suppose thatsome things cause others, their effects. The notionof cause connects with other important notions,such as responsibility. We blame people for theharm they cause, not for things that just happenedwhen they were in the vicinity. We assume thatthere is a cause when things go wrong—whenairliners crash, or the climate changes, or the elec-tricity goes off—and we search for an explanationthat discloses the cause or causes.

Causation is intuitively a relation of depend-ence between events. The event that is caused, theeffect, depends for its occurrence on the cause. Itwouldn’t have happened without it. The occur-rence of the cause explains the effect. Once we seethat the cause happened, we understand why theeffect did.

Most philosophers agree that causal connec-tions are contingent rather than necessary. Supposethe blowout caused the accident. Still, it was pos-sible for the blowout to happen and the accidentnot to occur. After all, the world might haveworked in such a way that a blowout was fol-lowed not by an accident but by the car’s gradu-ally slowing to a halt.

On one common view, however, causation im-plies laws of nature in the sense that causal con-nections are instances of such laws. So causalrelations are “relatively necessary”: they are con-tingent only insofar as the laws of nature are con-tingent. It may be a contingent fact that the lawsof physics are what they are. But, on this view,given the contingent fact that the laws of natureare as they are, the accident had to happen oncethe blowout did.

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Hume holds such a view. He claims that, atleast as far as humans can comprehend things, Acausing B amounts, at bottom, to the fact thatevents like A are always followed by events like B.Causation requires universal succession. (Suchuniversal succession is sometimes called custom-ary or constant conjunction.) At first this doesn’tseem very plausible. After all, many blowoutsdon’t lead to accidents. It seems more plausible ifwe assume that Hume is thinking of the totalcause, the blowout plus all the other relevant fac-tors that in this case led to the accident, includingthe design of the car and the skill of the driver.Taken this way, the universal succession analysisimplies that if the blowout caused the accident,then if all of these relevant conditions were du-plicated in another case, and there is a blowout,an accident would happen. If not, and if theblowout really caused the accident in the originalcase, there must be some relevant difference.This version of universal succession seems moreplausible, but perhaps not totally convincing.

Even if we grant the Humean relevant differ-ence principle, there are difficulties with the ideathat causation simply is universal succession.Consider what it means about the case of theblowout causing the accident. What is the realconnection, according to the universal successiontheory, between this particular blowout and thisparticular accident? It just seems to be that theblowout occurred, and then the accident oc-curred. That’s all there really is to causation, as itpertains to these two events. All the rest that is re-quired, on the universal succession analysis, hasto do with other events—events like the blowoutand events like the accident. It seems that there ismore to causation than this.

Hume offers a candidate for this additionalsomething involved in causation. He says it is re-ally just a certain feeling we have when we haveexperienced many cases of events of one typebeing followed by events of another. When wehave had this experience, our minds pass fromthe perception of an event of the first kind to anexpectation of one of the second kind. Humechallenges us, if we are not satisfied that causa-tion is just universal succession together with the

feeling of the mind passing from perception toexpectation, to identify what else there is.

commodification We treat some goods as subjectto norms of a market: They can be bought andsold for prices that are subject to pressures of sup-ply and demand. This is how we see, for example,cars and computers: We treat cars and computersas commodities. Are there moral limits to suchcommodification—moral limits to the appropri-ate scope of markets? If so, what are they andwhat is their justification? These are questionsDebra Satz explores in her “Markets in Women’sReproductive Labor.”

compatibilism and incompatibilism In philoso-phy, the term compatibilism usually refers to a po-sition in the issue of freedom versus determinism.Intuitively it seems that freedom excludes deter-minism, and vice versa. But this has been deniedby some philosophers; they claim that acts can beboth free and determined, usually adding that thetraditional problem is the product of confusedthinking abetted by too little attention to themeaning of words.

Hume held this position. In Section VIII of hisAn Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, hedescribes his project as one of “reconciling” lib-erty with necessity, these being his terms for free-dom and determinism. Hume said that libertyconsists of acting according to the determinationsof your will; that is, doing as you decide to do. Afree act is not one that is uncaused, but one that iscaused by the wants, desires, and decisions of theperson who performs it. Hence an act can be bothfree and an instance of a universal causal princi-ple. On this conception, an unfree act is one thatone must do in spite of one’s own desires and de-cisions, rather than because of them.

Some compatibilists go further and maintainthat freedom requires determinism. The idea isthat for our own will to determine what we do,our decisions must cause our actions, and causa-tion in turn requires determinism.

Given this distinction, the views of mostphilosophers on the issue of freedom and deter-minism can be located among the following pos-sible positions:

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1. Incompatibilism: Freedom and determin-ism are incompatible. This view leavesopen two main theoretical options:a. Libertarianism: There are some free acts,

so determinism is false.b. Hard determinism: Determinism is true,

so there are no free acts.2. Compatibilism: Freedom and determinism

are compatible. This view is typically partof a view called soft determinism, accordingto which there are free acts and determin-ism is also true. This view in turn comes intwo varieties:a. There are free acts. Determinism is as a

matter of fact true, but there would befree acts whether or not determinismwere true.

b. There are free acts. Determinism is trueand its truth is required for freedom.

3. Freedom is incoherent: Freedom both re-quires and is incompatible with determin-ism, and hence makes no sense.

Some philosophers distinguish between free-dom of action and free will. Free will involvesmore than having one’s actions determined byone’s decisions and desires. It involves havingcontrol over those desires and decisions them-selves. Someone might have freedom, as the com-patibilist understands it, without having freewill. For example, a person addicted to smokingmight be free in the sense that whether or not heor she smokes on a given occasion is determinedby personal desire. But what if this person doesn’twant to have or be controlled by that desire?Does he or she have the power to get rid of the de-sire, or weaken its hold? This is the question offree will. The issue of whether free will is com-patible or incompatible with determinism canthen be raised.

conclusion See deductive argument.

conditionals A conditional is a kind of statementthat is made out of two others. The normal formof the statements is “If P then Q.” P is the an-tecedent and Q the consequent. “If P, Q” and “Q, ifP” are stylistic variations of “If P then Q.”

Conditionals can be in various tenses and inthe indicative or subjunctive:

Indicative: If Susan comes to the party, thenMichael brings the salad. If Susan came to the party,then Michael brought the salad. If Susan will come tothe party, Michael will bring the salad.

Subjunctive: If Susan were to come to the party,Michael would bring the salad. If Susan had come tothe party, Michael would have brought the salad.

A counterfactual conditional, one in which theantecedent is false, will usually be in the sub-junctive if the speaker realizes that the an-tecedent is false.

One thing seems quite clear about condition-als: If the antecedent is true, and the consequentfalse, then the conditional as a whole is false. IfSusan comes to the party, and Michael doesn’tbring the salad, then all of the examples preced-ing are false. This is the basis for two clearly validrules of inference:

Modus ponens: From If P, then Q and P, infer Q.Modus tollens: From If P, then Q and not-Q,

infer not-P.

In symbolic logic a defined symbol (often “R”) iscalled the conditional. The conditions under whichconditional statements that involve this symbol aretrue are stipulated by logicians as follows:

1. Antecedent true, consequent true, condi-tional true

2. Antecedent true, consequent false, condi-tional false

3. Antecedent false, consequent true, condi-tional true

4. Antecedent false, consequent false, condi-tional true

This defined symbol, then, agrees with the or-dinary language conditional on the clear case,number 2, the case that is crucial for the validityof modus ponens and modus tollens. But whatabout the other cases? Suppose Susan doesn’tcome to the party, but Michael brings that salad(antecedent false, consequent true). The symboliclogic statement,

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Susan comes to the party Michael brings thesalad

is true in this case, because of part 3 of the defi-nition. It isn’t so clear that the ordinary languageconditionals are true. Suppose that Michael says, “I brought the salad because Susan couldn’t makeit. If she had come, she would have brought it.” Areany or all of the ordinary language conditionalslisted true in this case? False? What of Michael’ssecond sentence, which is also a conditional?

See necessary and sufficient conditions.

consequent See conditionals.

consequentialism Consequentialism is a view aboutwhat makes it right or wrong to do something. Itmaintains that the rightness of an action is deter-mined by the goodness or badness of relevantconsequences. Utilitarianism is a consequentialisttheory that holds that what makes consequencesbetter or worse is, at bottom, the welfare or hap-piness of sentient beings. A deontological ethicsrejects consequentialism and holds that the right-ness of action depends at least in part on thingsother than the goodness of relevant conse-quences. For example, someone who rejects con-sequentialism might hold that the principleunder which an act is done determines whether itis right or wrong. Kant held a version of thisview; see the Introduction to Part V.

constitutive luck Constitutive luck is one of thefour types of moral luck identified by ThomasNagel. One is subject to constitutive luck insofaras the sort of person that one is (one’s character,personality, etc.) is beyond one’s control and yetthe person is still seen as an apt candidate forpraise and blame. See also moral luck.

continental philosophy See analytical philosophy.

continental rationalism See rationalism.

contingent and necessary Some things are facts,but would not have been facts if things had hap-pened differently. These are contingent facts.Consider, for example, the fact that Columbusreached America in 1492. Things could have

turned out differently. If he had gotten a laterstart, he might not have reached America until1493. So the fact that he arrived in 1492 is contin-gent. Necessary facts are those that could nothave failed to be facts. The year 1492 would haveoccurred before the year 1493 no matter how longit took Columbus to get his act together. It is anecessary fact. Mathematical facts are a particu-larly clear example of necessary facts. The factthat 2 + 2 = 4 doesn’t depend on one thing hap-pening rather than another.

Philosophers sometimes use the idea of apossible world to explain this distinction. Neces-sary truths are true in every possible world.Contingent truths are true in the actual world butfalse in some other possible worlds. Necessaryfalsehoods are false in the actual world and falsein every other possible world, too. If one thinks ofthe distinction this way, one must be careful todistinguish between the truth of a sentence andthe truth of what it says. It is easy to imagine apossible world in which the sentence “2 + 2 = 4”is false. Just imagine that the numeral “2” stoodfor the number three, but “4” still stands for four.But imagining the sentence to have a meaningthat makes it false is not the same as imaginingwhat it says, given its actual meaning, to be false.It is the latter that is important when we ask if itis necessary or contingent that 2 + 2 = 4.

The distinction between the necessary andcontingent is a metaphysical distinction. It has todo with facts or propositions and truth. It isclosely related to the epistemological distinctionbetween a priori and a posteriori and the distinc-tion between analytic and synthetic statements.These three similar distinctions shouldn’t be con-fused. Some philosophers claim that they are co-extensional. But they are not cointensional, so thisis a substantive philosophical claim. For example,some philosophers claim that there are mathe-matical facts that have nothing to do with themeanings of words, and may never be known atall, and are hence not knowable a priori, but arestill necessary.

corroboration See deductivism.

cosmogony See cosmos.

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cosmological argument See cosmos.

cosmology See cosmos.

cosmos The cosmos is the universe considered asan integrated orderly system. Sometimes the cos-mos is the orderly part of a larger whole, theother part being chaos. Any account of the originof the universe as a whole, whether based onmyth, religion, philosophy, or science is a cos-mogony. An account of the nature and origin ofthe universe that is systematic is a cosmology. Thisterm is used for the particular branch of physicsthat considers this question, and also for inquiriesof a more philosophical nature. Cosmological ar-guments for the existence of God begin with verygeneral facts about the known universe, such ascausation, movement, and contingency, and thenargue that God must exist, as first cause, or un-moved mover, or necessary being, to account forthese facts. The first two ways of proving the ex-istence of God listed by St. Thomas Aquinas arecosmological arguments.

customary/constant conjunction See cause andeffect.

death The end of life; the cessation of the biologi-cal functioning of the body. All known livingthings eventually die.

deductive argument Arguments have premisesand a conclusion. The truth of the premisesshould provide grounds for the truth of the con-clusion, so that the argument gives one who be-lieves the premises a good reason for believing theconclusion.

In a valid argument, the truth of the premisesentails the truth of the conclusion. This meansthat it is impossible for the premises to be trueand the conclusion false. A valid argument mayhave a false conclusion because the validity of anargument does not imply the truth of the prem-ises. If the premises of a valid argument are true,then the argument is sound. Clearly the conclu-sion of any sound argument will be true.

An argument that aims at validity is deductive,or demonstrative. Such arguments are nonamplia-tive in the following sense: The conclusion does

not contain anything not already found in thepremises. In other words, the conclusion is sim-ply “drawn out of” the premises. They are thusnecessarily truth preserving: If the premises aretrue, the conclusion (because, logically, it says nomore than the premises) must also be true. De-ductive logic provides rules of inference that ex-hibit valid patterns of reasoning.

An argument can provide those who believeits premises good reason for accepting its conclu-sion even if it is not valid. Among arguments thatare not valid, we can distinguish between thosethat are strong and weak. A strong nondemon-strative or nondeductive argument makes thetruth of the conclusion very probable. Analogicalarguments, for example, are nondeductive but canbe quite strong.

Inductive arguments involve generalizingfrom instances. Having noticed that a certainradio station plays rock music on a number of oc-casions, you may infer that it always does so, orthat it is at least very likely that it will do so nexttime you tune in. This process is called inductionby enumeration. Inductive arguments are amplia-tive in character: The conclusion of these argu-ments “goes beyond” what is contained in thepremises. Such inferences are not valid, but itseems that they can be quite strong and in factthe whole idea of using past experiences to guideour conduct depends on them. See induction,problem of.

deductivism Deductivism is the thesis that scienceshould focus solely on deductive arguments ratherthan inductive arguments because there is no goodresponse to the problem of induction. Deductivism ismost closely associated with the twentieth-centuryphilosopher of sc\ience Karl Popper. Popper advo-cated the hypothetico-deductive model of science,which held that science should make falsifiable hy-potheses about the world and then test them. Hy-potheses that are not falsified despite severe testsare corroborated (although not confirmed). Accord-ing to this model of science, the difference betweenscientific and (say) metaphysical claims is that scien-tific claims are falsifiable. For discussion, seeSalmon, “The Problem of Induction.”

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demonstrative/nondemonstrative inference See de-ductive argument.

deontological ethics See consequentialism.

deontology Deontology is the study of ethical con-cepts having to do with permissibility and imper-missibility, e.g., rights, duties, and obligations. Seedeontological ethics.

determinism Determinism is the doctrine thatevery event, including every intentional action of ahuman being, is determined by prior causes. Thisis usually thought to imply that there are universal,nonstatistical laws of nature covering every aspectof everything that happens. See cause and effect.Given the state of the universe at any time, theselaws determine everything else that will ever hap-pen. Some philosophers oppose determinism, be-cause they think that the ultimate laws of natureare statistical. Others oppose it because theybelieve there are free actions, and that no actionscan be both free and determined. See freedom,compatibilism and incompatibilism, fatalism.

difference principle A central idea of John Rawls’stheory of justice, referred to as the difference prin-ciple, is that inequalities in the distribution ofrelevant goods are just if and only if these in-equalities are needed to improve the plight ofeveryone, in particular of those who are the worstoff. (See Rawls’s second principle of justice, “ATheory of Justice,” p. 578, and G. A. Cohen’s for-mulation, “Where the Action Is,” p. 599.)

distributive justice See justice.

double effect, doctrine of An act typically has bothintended and unintended effects. For example,swatting a fly may have the intended effect of killing a fly, and the unintended effects ofmaking a noise and waking up your brother. Thelatter effect may be unintended even though it isforeseen. You knew that swatting the fly wouldor at least might wake your brother. That’s notwhy you were doing it; you were doing it to getrid of the fly. Perhaps you didn’t much carewhether or not your brother slept. Perhaps youhated to wake him, but it was very important toyou to swat the fly. In these cases, swatting the fly

is the intended effect of your act, and wakingyour brother is merely foreseen.

According to the doctrine (or principle) of dou-ble effect, the moral status of intended effects dif-fers from those that are merely foreseen. Thisprinciple is sometimes appealed to as a part of a de-ontological moral theory. According to this princi-ple, it might be wrong to swat the fly with theintention of waking up your brother, but permis-sible to swat the fly with the intention of killing it,knowing it would wake up your brother. A moreinteresting example is abortion. Some peoplemaintain that it is wrong to act with the intentionof aborting a fetus, but that nevertheless certainoperations may be permissible, even though abor-tion of the fetus is a foreseeable result, so long asthey are done for some other purpose, such as pre-venting the injury to a mother that continuedpregnancy might involve. Some philosophersmaintain the distinction makes no sense. Othersbelieve there is a coherent distinction between in-tended and merely expected consequences, butdoubt that it has the moral significance it is givenby the doctrine of double effect.

doxastic/doxically Doxastic states are states havingto do with beliefs. If I have the belief that p, I amin the doxastic state of believing that p. A consid-eration is doxically relevant if it is relevant to one’sbeliefs.

dualism The term dualism has a number of uses inphilosophy, but perhaps the most common is todescribe positions on the mind-body problemthat hold that the mind cannot be identified withthe body or part of the body, or that mental prop-erties are not physical properties.

The form of dualism Descartes advocated iscalled Cartesian dualism or interactive dualism.The mind is that which is responsible for mentalstates of all kinds, including sensation, percep-tion, thought, emotion, deliberation, decision,and intentional action. Some philosophers main-tain that this role is played by the brain, butDescartes argued that this could not be so. Hisview was that the mind was a separate thing, orsubstance, that causally interacted with the brain,

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and through it with the rest of the body and therest of the world. Sensation and perception in-volve states of the world affecting states of senseorgans, which in turn affect the brain, whichcauses the mind to be in certain states. Action in-volves states of mind affecting the brain, which inturn affects the body, which may interact withother things in the world.

Other forms of dualism include epiphenome-nalism, parallelism, and property dualism. Theepiphenomenalist holds that the body affects themind, but not vice versa. The mind only appearsto affect the body, because the apparent mentalcauses of bodily changes (like the decision to liftmy arm) coincide with the true bodily causes(some change in my brain). Parallelists hold thatmind and body are two substances that do notinteract at all. Property dualism maintains thatthe mind can be identified with the brain (or withthe body as a whole), but mental properties cannotbe reduced to physical ones. On this view, it is mybrain that is responsible for sensation, perception,and other mental phenomena. But the fact thatmy brain is thinking a certain thought, for exam-ple, is an additional fact about it, one that cannotbe reduced to any of its physical properties.

effect See cause and effect.

efficient causation Efficient causation is one of thefour types of causation that Aristotle distin-guished. Of these four types, efficient causation isthe sort of causation that best fits contemporaryusage of the word causation. The efficient causeof an event is (roughly) the agent or event thatbrings the effect about. If a ball breaks a window,the efficient cause of this event is roughly theball’s hitting the window. If Jones raises his hand,the efficient cause of this event is, according to some, Jones himself. When (as in this lastexample) an agent is supposed to be the efficientcause of some event, this is a (putative) instance ofagent-causation (see agent-causation). For anothertype of causation distinguished by Aristotle, seefinal causation.

egoism Egoism has many usages in philosophicaldiscourse. On one usage, it refers to the view that

human beings ought to pursue their own self-interest. On another usage, it refers simply to theview that human beings do (perhaps exclusively)pursue their own self-interest.

eliminative materialism See materialism andphysicalism.

embodiment An embodied thing has taken physi-cal, tangible form. That which has been embodiedhas, literally, been put into a body. Embodimentcan mean either the process of taking form in thisway, or the state of having been embodied.Philosophers are most concerned with the em-bodiment of consciousness, that is, with the way inwhich thinking, conscious things inhabit physicalforms, and how a conscious being relates to itsembodiment.

empiricism Empiricism is an epistemological posi-tion that emphasizes the importance of experi-ence and denies or is very skeptical of claims to apriori knowledge or concepts. The empirical tra-dition in seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nine-teenth-century philosophy was centered inBritain, and Bacon, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, andMill are often referred to as British Empiricists. Seealso rationalism.

endurance See perdurance and endurance.

en-soi According to the existentialist philosopherJean-Paul Sartre, the world is divided betweentwo sorts of beings: beings-in-themselves (en-soi)and beings-for-themselves (pour-soi). Beings-in-themselves are inanimate things like rocks,whereas beings-for-themselves are beings thatexhibit feeling and agency.

entails See deductive argument.

epiphenomenalism See dualism.

epistemology Epistemology is the theory of knowl-edge, the inquiry into its possibility, nature, andstructure.

ergon This is the Greek word for function, whichis a concept that plays an important role in Aris-totle’s moral theory. For Aristotle, the ergon ofan object is more than just what we may use that

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object for—rather, it is whatever activity makesthat object the sort of thing that it is. For exam-ple, although we can use a knife to hammer anail into a wall if we wish, this is not the knife’sergon. Rather, a knife’s ergon is to cut. For dis-cussion, see Thomas Nagel’s “Aristotle on Eu-daimonia.”

error theory Some philosophical views have theimplication that we regularly but unknowinglyfall into error when we make claims about someparticular domain of inquiry. For instance, it is aconsequence of J. L. Mackie’s view in “The Sub-jectivity of Values” that although we regularlythink that at least some of our moral judgmentsare true, they are in fact systematically false.Mackie thus provides an error theory aboutmoral judgments. As Mackie points out, suchtheories require strong support because of thechallenge they pose to common sense.

essential See accidental and essential.

eternalism and presentism Of course dinosaursdon’t exist right now, but do they just plainexist? Again, of course my great-great-grandsondoesn’t exist at this moment, but does he exist nev-ertheless? According to eternalism, which is aview about past and future objects, the answer tothese questions is “Yes.” Just as The Eiffel Towerexists even though it doesn’t exist over here, sodinosaurs exist even though they don’t exist rightnow. This view is often contrasted with a viewcalled presentism, according to which the only ob-jects that exist are those that exist right now. Ac-cording to presentism, when dinosaurs wentextinct, they didn’t just cease to exist from thenon—rather, they ceased to exist altogether.

eudaimonia Eudaimonia—sometimes translated“happiness” or “flourishing”—is a central con-cept in Aristotle’s ethics. See “Aristotelian Ethics”in Part V.

Euthyphro dilemma The original Euthyphrodilemma is found in one of Plato’s dialogues inwhich Socrates is questioning an Atheniannamed Euthyphro about the nature of piety.When Euthyphro attempts to explain piety by

saying that pious actions are those actions thatthe gods love, Socrates responds by askingwhether the gods love pious actions because theyare pious or whether pious actions are piousbecause the gods love them. This is a dilemmabecause either response is to some degree unsat-isfactory. If Euthyphro says that the gods lovepious actions because they are pious, then thisseems to imply that there is something out of thecontrol of the gods—namely what actions countas pious. But, on the other hand, if we say thatpious actions are pious because the gods lovethem, then presumably the gods could haveloved morally despicable actions, in which caseit would follow that some morally despicable ac-tions would be pious.

More recently, the term Euthyphro dilemmahas come to refer to the structurally parallel prob-lem about moral rightness and wrongness, ratherthan piety. For example, are wrong actionswrong because God forbids them or does Godforbid them because they are wrong? In general,the dilemma demands an order of explanation—is an action’s being wrong explained by its beingforbidden, or is God’s act of forbidding the actionexplained by the action’s being wrong?—and soany order of explanation dilemma, whetherabout God or not, may be considered a version ofthe Euthyphro dilemma.

event-causation See agent-causation.

evil, problem of Many philosophers have thoughtthat the existence of evil poses a problem forthose who believe that there is a perfect God. Aperfect God, it seems, would be able to do any-thing (omnipotence), would know everything(omniscience), and would have all the moralvirtues, such as benevolence. If such a God cre-ated the world, why is there any evil? Does Godnot care if we suffer? Then God is not benevo-lent. Is this world the best God could make?Then God is not omnipotent. Or perhaps Godwanted to do better, and had the power, but did-n’t quite know what to do. Then God is notominscient. A perfect God would have made thebest of all possible worlds. So, the argumentgoes, the existence of our imperfect world, full

GLOSSARY 849


of sin and suffering, shows that God does notexist, or is not perfect.

The problem of evil is pressed by Philo, a maincharacter in Hume’s Dialogues on Natural Reli-gion. Both Philo and his main adversary, Clean-thes, give up the idea that God is perfect. Philoconcludes that while the world was probably cre-ated by an intelligent being or beings, there is noreason to attribute benevolence to that being orthose beings. Cleanthes allows that God may beonly finitely powerful.

Other philosophers have thought, however,that our problems with evil simply show how dif-ficult it is for finite beings to grasp the plan of aninfinitely perfect being. This is, contrary to firstimpressions, the best of all possible worlds. Thisis Leibniz’s position in “God, Evil and the Best ofAll Possible Worlds.”

experiential blank The complete absence of expe-rience. This is to be distinguished from the sort of‘experience of nothing’ that results from sensorydeprivation. An experiential blank is a complete ab-sence of consciousness and awareness. It is typicallyassumed (in secular discussions) that both the timebefore our birth (or, perhaps better, conception) andthe time after our death are experiential blanks.

extension (alternate) Things that occupy spacehave extension. Some things that (apparently)exist lack extension including numbers, proper-ties, and—according to dualism—minds or souls.This usage of extension should be distinguishedfrom the usage that concerns the application ofpredicates; see extension and intension.

extension and intension Consider a predicate like“human being.” It applies to or is true of a num-ber of individuals, those who are human beings.The set of these individuals is the extension ofthe predicate. The members of this set have theproperty of being a human being in common.This property (or, for some philosophers, theconcept of this property) is the intension of thepredicate.

Terms that have the same extension are co-extensional, terms that have the same intensionare co-intensional. It seems that terms can be

co-extensional without being co-intensional. Rus-sell’s example is “human being” and “featherlessbiped that is not a plucked chicken.” These termsare not co-intensional, as the property of being ahuman being is not the same as the property ofbeing a featherless biped that is not a pluckedchicken. But they are co-extensional. If you set asidethe plucked chickens, humans are the only bipedswithout feathers. (Probably their extensions arenot quite the same; after all there are pluckedturkeys, too, but Russell thought the example wasclose enough to being correct to make the point.)

The term extension is often used in an extendedsense in which names and sentences have exten-sions as well as terms or predicates. (The terminol-ogy is due to Rudolf Carnap, and the idea itincorporates goes back to Gottlob Frege.) The ex-tension of a name is the thing it names, the exten-sion of a sentence is its truth value, true or false.This brings out the systematic connection amongname, predicate, and sentence. The sentence “Fidois barking” will have the extension True (i.e., betrue), just in case the extension of “Fido” (i.e.,Fido) is a member of the extension of “is barking.”That is, the extension of the parts (the name“Fido” and the predicate “is barking”) determinesthe extension of the whole sentence. Sentences likethis, their truth-value being determined by the ex-tension of their parts, are extensional.

If a sentence is extensional, substitution of aname in it for another co-extensional name (or apredicate for another co-extensional predicate)won’t affect the truth value. Suppose Fido is alsocalled “Bad-breath.” Then the substitution of“Bad-breath” for “Fido” will preserve the truthvalue of our sentence. If “Fido is barking” is true,so too will be “Bad-breath is barking.”

Not all sentences are extensional. Consider thetrue sentence “Bad-breath is so called because ofhis smell.” If we substitute the co-extensionalname “Fido” for “Bad-breath” the result is “Fidois so called because of his smell.” This sentenceisn’t true. So our original sentence, “Bad-breath isso called because of his smell,” isn’t extensional,but nonextensional.

We can generalize and say that any expressionis extensional if its extension is determined by

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the extensions of its parts. Consider the predicate“is portrayed as a human being.” Suppose this istrue of Donald Duck, because he is portrayed incartoons as having so many human characteris-tics. If we substitute “featherless biped” for“human being” we get the predicate “is por-trayed as a featherless biped.” This doesn’t seemto be true of Donald, as he is always portrayed asa feathered biped.

In these examples, it seems possible to pick outthe expressions that lead to the nonextensionality.In the first example it is “so called,” in the secondit is “portrayed as.” Expressions like these thatgive rise to nonextensionality are often callednonextensional contexts.

Some concepts that are very important in phi-losophy seem to generate nonextensional sen-tences. Consider “Harold believes that Cicerowas a great Roman.” Because “Tully” is anothername for Cicero, if this sentence is extensional, itseems we should be able to substitute “Tully” for“Cicero” without changing the truth value of thewhole. But it seems that if Harold has neverheard Cicero called “Tully,” “Harold believesthat Tully was a great Roman” would not be true.

The term intensional is used in three ways, onestrict and comparatively rare, one loose and verycommon, and one incorrect. Strictly speaking, anexpression is intensional if its intension is deter-mined by the intensions of its parts. This is theway Carnap used the term. It is common to use itloosely, however, simply to mean “nonexten-sional,” so that an “intensional context” means aform of words, like “so called” and “portrayed as”and “believes,” that leads to nonextensional pred-icates and sentences. Intensional is often confusedwith intentional in the broad sense that is some-times taken to be the mark of the mental. This isunderstandable, because many words that de-scribe intentional phenomena, such as believes,seem to be intensional, in the loose sense.

In possible worlds semantics, names, predicates,and sentences are said to have extensions at possi-ble worlds—the set of things that the predicateapplies to in the world. Sentences are also said tohave extensions at worlds: their truth values in theworlds. The intension of a predicate is a function

from worlds to extensions, and the intension of asentence is a function from worlds to truth values.

extensional See extension.

extrinsic An extrinsic property is one that an ob-ject has partly in virtue of its relations to otherthings and their properties. A thing could losesuch a property without really changing at all.For example, Omaha has the property of beingthe largest city in Nebraska. It could lose thisproperty by virtue of Grand Island growing agreat deal. Omaha wouldn’t have to lose popula-tion to lose this property, or change in any otherway. Being the largest city in Nebraska is thus an extrinsic property of Omaha. An intrinsicproperty, by contrast, is one that an object has be-cause of the way it is in itself, independently of itsrelations to other things and their properties.

The distinction is often useful, because a prop-erty that we might have thought to be intrinsicturns out to be extrinsic on closer examination. Itis very difficult, however, to give a really clearand precise explanation, or unchallengeable list,of intrinsic properties of ordinary, spatiotempo-rally extended objects.

falsifiability See deductivism.

fatalism Fatalism is the doctrine that certainevents are fated to happen, no matter what. Thismight mean that an event is fated to take place ata specific time, or that someone is going to dosome deed, no matter what anyone does to try toprevent it. Fatalism differs from determinism.One way they differ is that a fatalistic view aboutthe occurrence of a certain event does not dependon the laws of nature determining only a singlecourse of events. There may be many possiblefutures that differ in many ways, but they all willinclude the fated event. Oedipus, for example,was (allegedly) fated to marry his mother and killhis father. This didn’t mean that there was onlyone course of action open to him after hearing theprophecy, but that no matter which course hetook, he would eventually end up doing thatwhich he wanted most to avoid. A second waythey differ is that an event may be determined byprior causes even though it was not fated to occur;

GLOSSARY 851


for among those prior causes may be the decisionsand efforts of human agents. So determinismdoes not entail fatalism about all events.

feminism Feminism is an intellectual, social, andpolitical movement. The movement is very di-verse, but one strand that runs through all vari-eties is the conviction that important intellectual,social, and political structures have been based onthe assumption, sometimes implicit, sometimesquite explicit, that being fully human meansbeing male. Reexamination of these structuresfrom a perspective that appreciates the interests,values, styles, ideas, roles, methods, and emotionsof women as well as men can lead to fruitful andin some cases radical reform.

final causation According to the Aristotelian doc-trine of final causes, the final cause (or telos) of athing’s existence is the purpose or end for whichit exists. For instance, the final cause of a chair issitting, and so on. Teleology is the branch ofknowledge having to do with purposes and de-sign. A fact is teleological if it is of or related toteleology or final causes. Some arguments for theexistence of God are teleological in nature; sucharguments appeal to the apparent design or pur-pose of human beings or the universe to argue forthe existence of a cosmic designer.

first cause argument The first cause argument pur-ports to prove the existence of God as the firstcause. In the world we know, everything has acause and nothing causes itself. The series ofcauses cannot go back to infinity, so there must bea first cause, and this is God. St. ThomasAquinas’s second way of proving the existence ofGod is a version of the first cause argument.Philosophers have challenged each step of theargument.

first-order desires See second-order volitions.

formal The formal properties of representations aredistinguished from their content properties. “Allcows are animals” and “all houses are buildings”have different contents, but the same form: All Fsare Gs. Formal logic seeks to classify inferences interms of their formal properties. Where P and Qare sentences, any inference of the following form,

known as modus ponens, is valid, no matter whatthe content is.

If P then QPTherefore, Q.

Some philosophers have argued that philo-sophical confusion can sometimes be avoided byputting claims into the formal mode rather thanthe material mode. To put a claim in the formalmode is to express it, as nearly as possible, as aclaim about words or other symbols, rather thanabout the things the words purport to stand for.“Santa Claus doesn’t exist” is a claim in the mate-rial mode, which may be confused or confusingbecause it looks as if we are saying somethingabout a thing, Santa Claus, who isn’t really thereto say anything about. Better to say “‘Santa Claus’doesn’t refer to anything.”

formal logic See formal.

formal mode See formal.

freedom In ordinary conversation we call peoplefree who aren’t prevented from doing what theywant to do and conducting their life as they see fit.In politics and political philosophy, freedom usu-ally means having civil or political liberty, havingcertain basic rights or freedoms, such as those cod-ified in the American Bill of Rights, the Rights ofMan, or the Charter of the United Nations.

In the realm of metaphysics and the philoso-phy of mind, the term freedom refers to a verybasic feature of decisions or actions. When weperform an ordinary act, like drinking a cup ofcoffee, or going to a movie, or helping a friend,we have a feeling that our action results from ourown decision and that we could have done other-wise. It seems that only when this is the case do wetake full responsibility (blame or credit) for ouractions. A person might be free in this sense, al-though not enjoying freedom in the sense of po-litical liberties. A writer under house arrest, andprevented from publishing, would not enjoybasic civil liberties. But many of her actionswould still be free in this metaphysical sense. Shehas coffee in the morning; she could have had tea.

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Perhaps she writes her essays even though shecan’t publish them. This is a free act, in that shecould have gardened or stayed in bed instead; ifshe had chosen to do those things, no one wouldhave forced her to write.

One fundamental question about freedom inthis sense concerns its relation to determinism. Ifdeterminism is true, are any of our actions reallyfree, or is freedom simply an illusion? This debateoften turns on the exact definition of freedom.Compatibilists are likely to think of freedom asbeing able to act in accord with one’s desires anddecisions, even if those desires and decisions arethemselves the influences of more remote causes,outside the agent. This is compatible with deter-minism, in that one’s own desires and decisionsmight be the causes of one’s actions, even thoughthose desires and decisions were themselvescaused by other things, and lie at the end of achain of causes and effects that goes back to thetime before the agent was born. An incompatibilisttypically thinks of a free decision or act as one thatis not caused by anything else, or is caused by theagent, independent of external causes.

The term free will is sometimes used to con-trast with freedom of action. One’s will in thissense is one’s decision, choice, or dominating de-sire. Even if one is free to follow one’s strongestdesire, and hence has freedom of action in thecompatibilist sense, does one have any controlover those desires and choices themselves? Canone influence the strength of one’s desires, or arethey determined by external influences? Onemight be a compatibilist with respect to free ac-tion and determinism, but an incompatibilistwith respect to free will and determinism.

In theological contexts, the question of freewill is whether humans can have any choice ifthere is a god who has foreknowledge of whatthey will do.

free will See freedom.

functionalism The function of a thing is its opera-tion within a system. It is the role the thing has,when the system is operating properly. For ex-ample, the function of a carburetor is to supply anatomized and vaporized mixture of fuel and air

to the intake manifold of an internal combustionengine. One can contrast the function of a thingwith its structure and the material from which itis made. The structure of a carburetor differsfrom that of a fuel injection system, althoughboth have the same function and are made of thesame types of materials.

Functionalism in the philosophy of mind isthe view that mental states are real states defin-able by their functions, specifically by their causalrole with respect to stimuli, other mental states,and behavior. Functionalism can be contrastedwith Cartesian dualism and behaviorism. Func-tionalism agrees with Cartesian dualism in hold-ing that mental states are real, but differs in thatthe latter maintains that the mental states are es-sentially states of an immaterial mind, defined bytheir basic nature, rather than their function.Functionalism agrees with logical behaviorism inseeing a definitional connection between mentalstates and behavior. They differ in that the logicalbehaviorist maintains that mental states are notreal at all; the terms that seem to stand for themare just misleading ways of describing behavior.For the behaviorist, the definitions that connectstimuli, behavior, and mental states are reductive;they show how to eliminate reference to mentalstates in favor of reference to stimuli and behav-ior. For this reason, a behaviorist definition of amental state cannot allow ineliminable referenceto other mental states. The selection from Arm-strong explain and defend versions of functional-ism. Nagel criticizes functionalist views in “WhatIs It Like to Be a Bat?”

Greatest Happiness Principle See utilitarianism.

hallucination, argument from See illusion, argu-ment from.

hard determinism See compatibilism and incom-patibilism.

hedonism See the discussion of utilitarianism inthe Introduction to Part V.

hedonistic utilitarianism See utilitarianism.

hierarchical model of moral responsibility Ac-cording to a hierarchical model of moral respon-sibility, a person is morally responsible for her

GLOSSARY 853


actions only if there is a ‘mesh’ between her higher-order preferences and the first-order preferences onwhich she acts. First-order preferences are ourpreferences about things—like a desire to havesushi for lunch or to go on a date with your sig-nificant other. Higher-order preferences concernother preferences. I may, for instance prefer thatmy first-order desire for a cigarette not move meto action, or I might hope that my actions will beguided by my desire to meet my deadline, leadingme to stay home and work rather than go outwith my friends. When my higher-order prefer-ences prevail and I am moved by the first-orderpreferences they designate, there is a mesh be-tween my higher-order and first-order prefer-ences. At the most basic level of analysis, ahierarchical model of the mind posits mentalstates of different orders (first-, second-, and soforth), and a hierarchical model of moral respon-sibility exploits this sort of model of the mind togive an account of moral responsibility.

hypothetico-deductive method See deductivism.

ideas There are two quite different uses of theterm idea in philosophy. The term idea is used forthe denizens of Plato’s heaven. Sometimes form isused as a less misleading translation of eidos.Plato’s ideas or forms are not parts of our minds,but objective, unchanging, immaterial entitiesthat our minds somehow grasp and use for theclassification of things in the changing world,which Plato held to be their pale imitations.

John Locke uses the term idea for that whichthe mind is immediately aware of, as distin-guished from the qualities or objects in the ex-ternal world the ideas are of. This use for theterm leaves it rather vague. Idea can be the im-ages involved in perception, or the constituentsof thought. Hume calls the first impressions, thelatter ideas, and the whole class perceptions. ForHume, the class of impressions includes passions(emotions) as well as sensations. A feeling ofanger would be an impression, as would the sen-sation of red brought about by looking at a firetruck. Later memory of the feeling of anger orthe fire truck would involve the ideas of angerand red.

The conception of ideas as immediate objectsof perception and thought, intervening betweenour minds and the ordinary objects we perceiveand think about, was part of a philosophicalmovement, sometimes called “the way of ideas,”greatly influenced by Descartes’s Meditations.Descartes there uses a form of the argument fromillusion to motivate the distinction between themental phenomena we are certain of and the ex-ternal reality that is represented by them.

identity A thing is identical with itself and noother. If a is identical with b, then there is just onething that is both a and b; “a” and “b” are twonames for that one thing. It follows from this thatthe relation of identity is transitive (if a is identicalwith b, and b is identical with c, then a is identi-cal with c), symmetrical (if a is identical with b,then b is identical with a), and confers indiscerni-bility (if a is identical with b, and a has property P,b has property P).

The term identity is not always used in thisstrict sense. For example, in this sense, “identicaltwins” are not identical—they couldn’t be twinsif they were, as there would be only one of them.We sometimes use identity to mean close resem-blance in one respect or another. It is best, inphilosophical contexts, to use identity in the waypreviously explained and some other word, likesimilar or resembles, when that is what is meant.

The terms numerical identity and qualitativeidentity are sometimes used, but are best avoided.One needs to distinguish between the identity ofqualities (red is one and the same color as rouge)and similarity with respect to a quality (the couchand the chair are both red; they are similar in re-spect of color), and this terminology obscures thedistinction.

Some issues about identity are raised in thesection on personal identity and in “The Paradoxof Identity.”

identity theory David Armstrong in “The Natureof Mind” maintains that mental states are quiteliterally identical with physical states. Our con-cept of a mental state is of a state that occupies acertain causal role; it turns out that physical statesdo occupy those roles; hence, mental states are

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physical states. This identity theory is a species ofmaterialism. It is also, strictly speaking, a form offunctionalism, because it maintains that mentalstates are definable by their function or causalrole. Many functionalists, however, think thatmental states cannot be identified with physicalstates. They maintain that the relation is a lessstringent one, supervenience. Functionalism inthis narrower sense is often contrasted with theidentity theory.

illusion, argument from Philosophers use theterm argument from illusion for a general type ofargument and for a specific version of it. Thesearguments are intended to show that what we aredirectly aware of when we perceive ordinary thingsare not those ordinary things themselves. We candistinguish three such arguments: the argumentfrom perceptual relativity, the argument from illu-sion, and the argument from hallucination.

The argument from perceptual relativity startswith the fact that perceptions of the same object indifferent circumstances involve different percep-tual experiences. For example, a building seenfrom a great distance casts a different-sized imageon your retina, and creates quite a different expe-rience, than the same building seen from a fewyards away. Consider seeing a quarter held at aninety-degree angle to your line of sight, and thesame quarter held at a forty-five-degree angle. Inthe first case a round image is cast on your retina,in the second an elliptical image. The perceptualexperience is different, although the object seen,the quarter, is the same. The conclusion drawn isthat there is something involved in the experiencebesides the agent and the quarter, which are thesame in both, that accounts for the difference. Thisis the immediate object of perception. Somephilosophers take these objects to be ideas in themind of the perceiver that represent the externalobject; see representative ideas, theory of. Othershave taken them to be nonmental sense data. Somephilosophers have taken the ideas or sense data tobe materials out of which external objects are con-structed, rather than representations of them.

The argument from illusion itself starts withthe fact that two different objects can create thesame experience. For example, a quarter held at

an angle and an elliptical disk held at ninety de-grees might cast exactly the same image on theretina and create the same experience. What is itthat is the same? Not the objects seen, which aredifferent. The answer again is an intervening ob-ject, which may be taken to be a subjective idea orsomething objective.

The argument from hallucination considersthe case in which it is to one as if one were seeingan object, although there is in fact nothing at allthere. This sort of case, a true hallucination, ismuch more unusual than those noted for theearlier two arguments. What is it that is presentin our perception when there is nothing seen?It is, again, the subjective idea or the objectivesense datum.

immanent causation See agent-causation.

immaterialism Immaterialism is the metaphysicaldoctrine held by Berkeley. He maintained thatreality consisted entirely of minds (includingGod’s) and ideas. Ordinary things were collec-tions or congeries of ideas. Berkeley thought hisview came closer to common sense than that ofthe philosophers he opposed (Descartes andLocke, for example), which implied the existenceof material substances in addition to minds andideas. Berkeley explains in his Three DialoguesBetween Hylas and Philonous that he thinks wehave no evidence for material substances, thatidentifying ordinary things with such substancesleads to skepticism, and in fact the very concept ofa material substance is incoherent.

immutability Immutability is a property often, andtraditionally, attributed to God. Roughly, a beingis immutable if and only if that being cannotchange. However, it is a matter of some contro-versy whether and to what extent God is im-mutable. Some theists have thought that sayingthat God is immutable is theologically undesir-able. According to these theists, God does thingslike creating the world and performing miracles,and (it is argued) an absolutely immutable beingcould not do such things, because doing them in-volves changing from doing one thing at one timeto doing another at another time. Such theists typ-ically argue that God’s immutability should be

GLOSSARY 855


restricted to God’s character: God’s character (orwhat God is like) cannot change.

imperatives, categorical and hypothetical See thediscussion of Kantian ethics in the Introductionto Part V.

impressions See ideas.

incompatibilism See compatibilism and incom-patibilism.

induction See induction, problem of and deduc-tive argument.

induction by enumeration See deductive argument.

induction, problem of The problem of induction,sometimes known as Hume’s problem, has to dowith justifying a very basic sort of nondeductiveinference. We often seem to infer from observa-tion that some sample of a population has a cer-tain attribute to the conclusion that the nextmembers of the population we encounter willalso have that attribute. When you eat a piece ofbread, for example, you are concluding from themany times in the past that bread has nourishedyou, that it will also do so this time. But it is con-ceivable that bread should have nourished in thepast, but not this time. It isn’t a necessary, analytic,or a priori truth that the next piece of bread youeat will be like the ones you have eaten before.How does your inference bridge the gap? It isnatural to appeal to various general principlesthat one has discovered to hold. But, as Humepoints out, the future application of principlesfound reliable in the past presents exactly thesame problem. For example, consider the mostgeneral principle of all, that the future will belike the past. All one has really observed wasthat, in the past, the future was like the past.How does one know that in the future it will be?The problem of induction is stated in Hume’s AnInquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Sec-tion IV, and discussed by Salmon, “The Problemof Induction.”

inductive argument See deductive argument.

infinity The concept of infinity is a fascinating,tricky, and complex one. It has been used in a

number of philosophical arguments, such asZeno’s arguments about motion, and in some ofSt. Thomas Aquinas’s arguments for the exis-tence of God. In the last two hundred years math-ematicians have given us a clearer framework forthinking about infinity than earlier philosophershad, but this doesn’t mean all of the puzzles andproblems are easy to resolve.

Infinite means without end. Let’s say that tocount a collection of objects is to assign the natu-ral numbers (1,2,3 . . .) in order to its members, sothat every member is assigned a number and nonumber gets assigned twice. Let’s say that to fin-ish counting a collection of objects is to assign num-bers in this way to every object in the collection.A finite collection of things is one that one couldfinish counting, at least theoretically, and say “ithas n members” where n is some natural number.An infinite collection is one for which one couldnot finish counting. One can see from this thatthe set of natural numbers is itself infinite, for onewould never finish counting it.

Assigning objects from one set to those in an-other, so that each object is assigned to only oneobject and has only one object assigned to it, iscalled putting the sets in a one-to-one correspon-dence. Sets that can be correlated in this way, arethe same size—they have the same number of el-ements. Using this idea, modern mathematics hasshown that not all infinite sets are the same size,so that one needs to distinguish among differentinfinite or transcendental numbers. The numberof natural numbers is called alepho.

Somewhat surprisingly, this is also the num-ber of even numbers, as there is a one-to-onecorrelation between numbers and even numbers(assign 2n to n). But it is not the number ofpoints in a line for there is not a one-to-one cor-relation between the set of such points and thenatural numbers. This is shown by a variation ofZeno’s Racecourse Argument. Let the line be oflength m. If we assign 1 to the point m/2, 2 tom/4, . . . n to m/2n, we will have paired a pointfrom the continuum with each natural number,but no matter how long we go on, we will neverassign a natural number to any of the points be-yond m/2.

856 GLOSSARY


In thinking about infinity, it is important tokeep certain distinctions in mind. One mighthave two quite different things in mind whencalling a magnitude “infinite”: that it goes on for-ever, or that the process of dividing it could go onforever. A finite distance like ten feet is not infi-nite in the first sense, but seems to be in the sec-ond: One could take the first half, half of what’sleft, and so on without end. Intuitively, one cantraverse a finite, but infinitely divisible, distancein a finite amount of time, but not an infinite dis-tance. Zeno’s Racecourse Argument seems toshow that one cannot even traverse a finite dis-tance. But keeping this distinction in mind, whatexactly does it show?

Aristotle distinguished between the potentialand actual infinite. When we say that a distanceof ten feet is infinitely divisible, we don’t meanone could actually divide it into an infinite num-ber of parts, but only that there are an infinitenumber of points in which one could divide it.Aristotle thought that this distinction took care ofZeno’s arguments.

intension, intensional See extension.

intentionality An intentional act or state is onethat is directed at objects and characterized by theobjects at which it is directed. Intentionality inthis sense is a feature not only of intentions, but ofmany other mental phenomena. Some philoso-phers take it to be the essence of mentality andconsciousness. Think about how you would de-scribe your intentions. You don’t say what theylook like or feel like or sound like, or what mate-rial they are made of. You say something like, “I have an intention to paint my room.” You saywhat your intention is an intention to do. This es-sential characteristic of your intention is its object,the event or state of affairs it is aimed at bringingabout. Similarly, if you are asked to describe yourwants, you would describe what you want—anew car, say, or world peace. The object of thewant or desire, the thing or state of affairs thatwould satisfy it, seems essential to it.

Beliefs and other propositional attitudes are alsoconsidered intentional. We describe our beliefsby giving the circumstances under which they are

true: “Fred believes that San Francisco is the cap-ital of California.” The object of the belief is theproposition, that San Francisco is the capital of Cal-ifornia. This proposition may be the object of thebelief even if it is not true.

The term intentional should not be confusedwith the term intensional, although they are re-lated. Many of the concepts used to describe inten-tional phenomena are nonextensional, which isone meaning of intensional. For example, “Oedi-pus intended to marry Jocasta” is a true descriptionof an intention of Oedipus. If we substitute “hismother” for “Jocasta,” we change this truth into afalsehood. So the sentence is intensional.

interactive dualism See dualism.

intrinsic See extrinsic.

intuitionism Moral or ethical intuitionism is theview that we can have some knowledge aboutright and wrong that is not acquired through in-ference. Rather, there are some moral truths thatwe can “just see” or “just know,” perhaps throughsome faculty of moral intuition. J. L. Mackie crit-icizes this view in “The Subjectivity of Values.”

justice Issues about justice are traditionally di-vided into issues about justice in the distributionof benefits and burdens to different individualsand groups in a society (distributive justice) and is-sues about the justice of various forms of punish-ment (retributive justice).

laws of nature Many scientists take themselves tobe engaged in the project of figuring out whatrules and guidelines describe the universe and itsinhabitants at the most general level. That is, theyare attempting to figure out the laws of naturethat govern our world. For instance, Einstein dis-covered the law of nature that nothing travelsfaster than the speed of light. Presumably there issome set of statements like this that is complete inthe sense that these statements would completelydescribe the behavior of the physical universe.These statements would be all the laws of nature(sometimes also called the laws of physics). For adiscussion of how the laws of nature relate to de-terminism and freedom of the will, see Peter van

GLOSSARY 857


Inwagen’s piece, “The Powers of Rational Be-ings: Freedom of the Will.”

libertarianism See compatibilism and incompati-bilism.

logical behaviorism See behaviorism.

manichean/manichaeism Manicheanism was agnostic religion that originated in Persia in thethird century A.D. In philosophy, manicheanismprimarily arises in connection with its interestingapproach to the problem of evil. According tomanicheans, there are two co-eternal powers ofLight and Darkness that are in perpetual conflict.We find ourselves in the midst of this struggle.Because the manicheans, unlike traditional the-ists, give equal priority to Light and Darkness,they do not have the problem of explaining howevil came to exist in a world created by a perfectlygood being (such as God).

materialism and physicalism Materialism is thedoctrine that reality consists of material objectsand their material, spatial, and temporal proper-ties and relations. Narrowly construed, material-ism refers to material substances and propertiesas conceived in eighteenth-century physics andphilosophy, so that material properties are con-fined to the primary qualities then recognized,including figure (shape), extension (size), num-ber, motion, and solidity. A more general term isphysicalism, where physical properties are taken tobe whatever properties physics postulates in thebest account of the physical world. The physical-ist leaves open the possibility that the fundamen-tal properties needed by physics will not be muchlike the primary qualities of the materialist. Achief obstacle to materialism or physicalism is themind. Cartesian dualists claim that the mind is animmaterial or nonphysical object; other kinds ofdualists claim that at least mental propertiesare above and beyond the physical properties.The physicalist response has taken the form ofidentity theories (the mind is the brain; mentalproperties are physical properties), behavioristtheories (mental terms are ways of talking aboutbehavior), and eliminative materialism (there areno minds or mental properties; the terms that

seem to refer to them are just parts of a discred-ited theory of how people work). Functionalism ishard to categorize; perhaps it maintains the letterof property dualism but the spirit of physicalism.

matters of fact and relations of ideas This isHume’s terminology for the analytic–syntheticdistinction, which Hume didn’t distinguish fromthe a priori–a posteriori distinction and thenecessary–contingent distinction. Hume thoughtour thinking is conducted with simple ideas thatare copied from impressions of external objectsand complex ideas that result from combiningthe simple ones. The mind can put ideas togetherin new ways not derived from perception, socomplex ideas need not correspond to externalobjects. These ideas also serve as the meanings ofwords. Relations of ideas are truths that simply re-flect the way these ideas are related to each otherand don’t depend on whether the ideas actuallyapply to anything. Hume’s examples are “thatthree times five is equal to the half of thirty” and“that the square of hypotenuse is equal to thesquare of the two sides.” Such truths “are discov-erable by the mere operation of thought, withoutdependence on what is anywhere existent in theuniverse.” The contrary of a relation of ideas willimply a contradiction and is impossible.

In contrast, matters of fact have to do withwhat the world is like, and not just how ideas arerelated. The contrary of a matter of fact is possi-ble and doesn’t imply a contradiction. Hume’s ex-ample is “that the sun will rise tomorrow.” Thisis true, and we are quite certain of it, at least mostof the time. But it is true because of what happenstomorrow, not because of the way ideas are re-lated. Its contrary, “that the sun will not rise to-morrow,” is not a contradiction.

Hume maintained that only relations of ideascan be discovered a priori, and that no matter offact can be demonstrated with only relations ofideas as premises. He argued that many principlesphilosophers had claimed to know a priori, suchas that nothing happens without a cause, werematters of fact and could not be known that way.

Most philosophers agree that mathematicaltruths, like Hume’s examples cited earlier, arenecessary and knowable a priori. But many do

858 GLOSSARY


think that they are not analytic—are not simply amatter of relations of ideas, in Hume’s sense.

means-end analysis To give a means-end analysis ofsome concept is to define it as a particular way ofachieving some goal or purpose. Thus giving ameans-end analysis involves two parts: a descrip-tion of the goal to be achieved (the end), and a de-scription of the way of achieving that goal (themeans). For instance, we might give a means-endanalysis of the concept of intimidation. We couldspecify the goal or end by saying that intimidation isa way of bringing it about that another acts in ac-cord with one’s wishes. We can then specify themeans by saying that intimidation achieves this goalby making threats of one kind or another. On thismeans-ends analysis, then, intimidation is bringingit about that another acts in accord with one’swishes by making threats of one kind or another.

mechanisms On the account of moral responsibil-ity suggested by J. M. Fischer, one is morally re-sponsible insofar as one acts from one’s own,appropriately reasons-responsible mechanism. Amechanism here is not thought of as a “thing,”but, intuitively, as a “way” of acting or “process”that issues in a choice and action.

metaphysics Metaphysics considers very generalquestions about the nature of reality. It includesthe study of the basic categories of things (ontol-ogy). Questions such as whether there are univer-sals, events, substances, individuals, necessarybeings, possible worlds, numbers, ideal objects,abstract objects, and the like arise here. Meta-physics also includes questions about space, time,identity and change, mind and body, personalidentity, causation, determinism, freedom, andthe structure of action.

methodological behaviorism See behaviorism.

mind-body problem The mind-body problem isthe problem of accounting for the way in whichour minds interact with or are related to our bod-ies. The mind-body problem thus comprises acentral area of the subfield of philosophy calledphilosophy of mind.

modus ponens See conditionals.

modus tollens See conditionals.

moral luck As Thomas Nagel uses the term in hisarticle of the same name, a person is subject tomoral luck whenever he or she is still treated as acandidate for praise or blame even though the ac-tion in question depended in some significantway on factors outside of his or her control. Nagelidentifies four types of moral luck: constitutiveluck, luck in one’s circumstances, luck in the con-sequences of one’s actions, and luck in the an-tecedents of one’s actions. When we act, ouractions are thoroughly situated in a context thatincludes the sort of person that we are (our con-stitution), the circumstances in which we findourselves, the events that led up to our actions,and the events that will follow from whatever wedo. To the extent that we lack control over any ofthese aspects of the context and yet are stilltreated as candidates for praise and blame, we areto that extent subject to moral luck.

moral responsibility If an agent is morally responsi-ble for her actions then those actions can make herthe appropriate target of certain attitudes andpractices. A morally responsible agent can be anappropriate target for what Peter Strawsondubbed the reactive attitudes. These include resent-ment, indignation, gratitude, and approval. Shecan also be the appropriate target for our practicesof praise, blame, reward, and punishment.

We should distinguish moral responsibilityfrom causal responsibility. One can be causally re-sponsible for something, but not morally respon-sible for it. For instance, if you spill a glass ofwater on my computer, then you are causally re-sponsible for the damage that ensues. You arealso morally responsible—it could be appropriatefor me to resent you for not being more careful.If, however, it is my cat that spills the water, thenthe cat, though just as causally responsible for thedamage as you would be, is not morally responsi-ble. It makes no sense for me to resent my cat: catsjust are not an appropriate target for the reactiveattitudes.

It is fairly easy to see why the cat is not morallyresponsible: the cat is not a person, and only per-sons can be morally responsible for their actions.

GLOSSARY 859


However, not all persons are morally responsiblefor their actions. For instance, children are per-sons, but are not generally taken to be fully re-sponsible for their actions. Philosophers disagreeabout the conditions under which persons aremorally responsible—about just what makessomeone an appropriate target for reactive atti-tudes and practices of praise and blame.

mutual awareness Two people are in a state of mu-tual awareness when they are not only aware ofone another, but also each aware of the other’sawareness. For instance, suppose we are both at-tending a crowded party, and I recognize youfrom across the room. I am now aware of you, butyou are not yet aware of me. Someone else en-gages me in conversation for a moment, and youhear my voice and spot me across the room. Youare now aware of me, as I am of you. This,though, is not yet mutual awareness: I am un-aware that you have noticed me, and you are un-aware that I have noticed you. Once we make eyecontact and realize that we have recognized oneanother, then we are each aware of the other’sawareness. This is a state of mutual awareness.

naive realism See realism.

natural evil In discussions about the philosophicalproblem of evil, a distinction is commonly madebetween moral evil and natural evil. Moral evil is(roughly) evil that is brought about by the bad ac-tions of human beings (or other created beings),whereas natural evil is evil that is (seemingly)brought about by nonagential forces (e.g., hurri-canes, tornados, drought, and so on). A deer’sbeing badly burned in a naturally caused forestfire is a paradigmatic instance of natural evil. It isimportant to see that responses to the problem ofmoral evil are not necessarily good responses tothe problem of natural evil.

naturalism Naturalism is a powerful if somewhatvague philosophical view, with both epistemolog-ical and metaphysical sides. All knowledge de-rives from the methods we use to study thenatural world, sense-perception extended by themethods of the natural sciences. The only objectsand properties that we should countenance are

those that we perceive in the natural world, andthose that are required to explain natural phe-nomena by our best theories. Thus, in the title ofhis Dialogues on Natural Religion, the word natu-ral tells us that Hume will consider whether basi-cally scientific methods of inquiry and argumentcan lead us to a belief in an intelligent creator.

Naturalism in ethics maintains that good andbad, right and wrong are definable in terms ofnatural properties, such as pleasure and pain, andthat there are no special methods of knowledgefor moral facts.

natural religion The term natural religion occurs inHume’s Dialogues. It is basically opposed to revealedreligion. Natural religion is religous belief based onthe same sorts of evidence that we use in everydaylife and science: observation and inference to themost plausible explanations for what is observed byprinciples based on experience. It is in this spiritthat Cleanthes puts forward his analogical argu-ment for the existence of an intelligent creator. Incontrast, revealed religion relies on sacred texts andthe authority of tradition and Church.

necessary See contingent and necessary.

necessary and sufficient conditions In the phrasesnecessary condition and sufficient condition, theterm condition may be used for properties, state-ments, propositions, events, or actions. The basicidea is always that:

A is sufficent for B. Having (being, doing) A isone way of having (being, doing) B; nothing moreis needed. You may not need to have A to have B,for there may be other ways of having B. But A isone way.

A is necessary for B. Every way of having(being, doing) B involves having (being, doing) A.A may not be all you need; it may be that everyway of having B involves not only having A but also something more. But you’ve got to have A tohave B.

For example: Having a car is sufficient, but notnecessary for having a vehicle. One could have abicycle instead. But having a car is certainlyenough.

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Having blood is necessary for being alive, butnot sufficient. A dead man can have blood; morethan blood is required to be alive. But you can’tdo without it.

Being in England is necessary, but not suffi-cient, for being in London. Being in London issufficient, but not necessary, for being in England.

Given these explanations, there is a symmetryto necessary and sufficient conditions:

If A is necessary for B, B is sufficient for A.

Indeed, if we take conditions to be statementswe can say:

When: If P, then Q,

P is sufficient for Q, and Q is necessary for P.

Philosophers are often interested in finding ananalysis of some interesting condition. This in-volves finding a set of conditions that are individ-ually necessary and jointly sufficient. If A, B, C areindividually necessary and jointly sufficient forD, then each of A, B, and C are necessary, and theconjunctive condition A & B & C is sufficient. Forexample, being a male, being unmarried, andbeing an adult are (arguably) individually neces-sary and jointly sufficient for being a bachelor.

It is necessary, finally, to distinguish differentkinds of necessity and sufficiency. Is the relation-ship a matter of logic, metaphysics, the laws ofnature, or something else? The necessity of bloodfor human life, for example, seems a matter ofnatural or causal necessity, not logic or meta-physics.

necessarily truth preserving See deductive argument.

normative/normativity Normative judgments orstatements concern how things should or oughtto be, rather than simply how things as a matterof fact are.

object The term object is used in different ways bydifferent philosophers, and one has to be carefulwhen one encounters it. Sometimes it means anysort of things at all, whether abstract or concrete,universal or particular. On this usage numbers,people, rocks, properties, moods, propositions,and facts are all objects. Sometimes it is used for

objects of thought. Sometimes it has the connota-tion of an ordinary material thing.

omnipotence Omnipotence is one of the tradi-tional attributes of God. In common usage, to saythat God is omnipotent is to say that God is “allpowerful” or that God can (in some sense) “doanything.” However, it has been notoriously dif-ficult to analyze satisfactorily the concept of om-nipotence. For instance, it is commonly held thatomnipotence must be restricted to what is logi-cally possible to bring about. That is, one mightthink that although God can do anything that islogically possible, he cannot do that which is logi-cally impossible; he cannot, say, create a squarecircle or bring it about that 2 and 2 equals 5.Descartes, however, apparently denied this thesis,holding that God’s omnipotence is unrestrainedby logical possibility. Other problems associatedwith the thesis that God is omnipotent involvethe question of whether God can sin. If God can-not sin, as has been traditionally held, it appearsthat there is something that God cannot do, andthus God is not omnipotent. This problem hasled various philosophers and theologians tomaintain that omnipotence should not bethought to entail the ability to sin, or to deny thatomnipotence is a property that ought to belong tothe greatest possible being.

omniscience Omniscience is one of the traditionalattributes of God. In common usage, to say thatGod is omniscient is to say that God is “all-knowing” or that God “knows everything.”More carefully, a common analysis of omnis-cience is that a being is omniscient if and only ifthat being knows all true propositions and be-lieves no false propositions. However, somephilosophers have sought to analyze the conceptof omniscience in terms of what is possible toknow. These philosophers argue that a being isomniscient if and only if that being knows allthat is possible to know.

ontology See metaphysics.

original position See veil of ignorance.

paradox A paradox is an argument that appearsto derive absurd conclusions from acceptable

GLOSSARY 861


premises by valid reasoning. Quine distinguishesveridical paradoxes from falsidical paradoxes andantinomies. In the case of a veridical paradox, thepremises are acceptable and the reasoning valid,and we must accept the conclusion, which turnsout not to be absurd under close analysis. A fal-sidical paradox really does have an absurd con-clusion, but upon close analysis the premises turnout to be unacceptable or the reasoning invalid.An antinomy defies resolution by close analysis,for the paradox brings to the surface a real prob-lem with part of our conceptual scheme that onlyrevision can eliminate.

parallelism See dualism.

particulars See universals and particulars.

perceptual relativity, argument from See illusion,argument from.

perdurance and endurance It certainly seems thatobjects can lose parts over time without ceasing toexist. In fact, we gain and lose cells at such a ratethat we are made up of completely new cells per-haps as quickly as every decade. But this simple factgives rise to a philosophical puzzle: If I don’t rightnow still have any of the same atoms in my body asthose that were there when I was 5 years old, thenhow can the person writing these words be thesame person as that little 5-year-old? What is it fora person to persist through time and change?According to the view called endurance, the rela-tionship between my 15-year-old self and my 5-year-old self is identity. On this view, a singleobject—me—moves from one instant of time tothe next as time passes, leaving nothing behind.According to another answer to this question,which has come to be known as perdurance, I amactually a four-dimensional object, extended notonly in the three dimensions of space but in the onedimension of time, as well. Thus I have not onlyspatial parts—like my right hand and my lefthand—but I also have distinct temporal parts—like my 5-year-old self and my 15-year-old self, andso on. According to perdurance, a single object“moves” through time by having a distinct tempo-ral part at each moment of that object’s existence.

personal identity Problems concerning personalidentity are about what makes us persons. Whatare the essential properties of persons, or thoseproperties without which a person would not bea person? What makes one person the same per-son from one moment to the next? What sorts ofchanges can a person undergo while still beingthe same person? Such questions are questions ofpersonal identity. See also perdurance and en-durance.

perversion In general, a perverse act is one that de-viates from what is regarded as normal or proper.Typically perversion carries a pejorative tone—tosay that something is perverse is to at least suggestthat it is bad or wrong. This, though, need not bethe case. Various artistic and especially comedicacts are deliberately abnormal—e.g., using a fishas a sword or making a dress out of meat. In suchcases the artistic or comedic force comes preciselyfrom the perverse nature of the action. Thus incalling such acts perverse, we might be merelycharacterizing or even complimenting ratherthan criticizing them.

Perversions, especially sexual perversions, areoften characterized as unnatural. This is to say thatthe norm the perverse act flouts is in some sense anorm of nature. Nature here might mean the nat-ural world, as opposed to the world of human cre-ations, but it need not. The nature in questionmight instead refer to the nature or essence of thething in question. If something is partly defined asthe sort of thing it is by its function or purpose,then that purpose is part of its nature. In this sense,any use of the thing that runs counter to that pur-pose or ignores it entirely would, in that sense, beunnatural and perhaps perverse. For example, askillet is for cooking—this is its function, and it isthe sort of thing it is in virtue of this function.Thus using my skillet to hammer nails runscounter to the essential nature of the skillet. Thusit is in some sense unnatural and perhaps perverse.

petitio principii The petitio principii is the Latinname for the fallacy of “begging the question.”One has committed the fallacy of petitio principiior has “begged the question” (roughly) when one

862 GLOSSARY


assumes in one’s argument what one ought to be(or is trying) to prove. This fallacy is often calledthe fallacy of circular argument: When one as-sumes what one ought to be (or is) trying toprove, one is relying on the truth of one’s conclu-sion when making one’s argument, and is thusarguing “in a circle.”

phenomenal character/qualia See qualia.

phenomenology Phenomenology is an approachto some philosophical issues developed by Ed-mund Husserl and his followers. It conceives ofphilosophy as the study of phenomena as revealedto consciousness, “bracketing” the assumptionsof an orderly external world that are made byscience and common sense. Phenomenology em-phasizes the intentionality of consciousness. Theterm phenomenology is also used more loosely, toindicate a survey of experience connected withsome topic conducted as a preliminary to theoriz-ing. The phenomenology of an experience, in thissense, refers to how an experience seems to theperson experiencing it.

physicalism See materialism.

Platonism and platonism Platonism refers to thephilosophy of Plato (428–348 B.C.) and the move-ments specifically inspired by it. Uncapitalized,platonism has become a technical term in ontol-ogy for those who countenance abstract entitiesthat are not merely abstractions from or con-structions out of particulars, and specifically, inthe philosophy of mathematics, for those whomaintain that numbers are such objects. Al-though Plato was a platonist in this sense, mostmodern platonists do not hold many of Plato’smost important doctrines in metaphysics, episte-mology, and ethics.

possible world See contingent and necessary.

Pour-soi See En-soi.

practical wisdom (phronesis) Practical wisdom isa virtue—a quality of character—that allows forthe proper application of a general, theoreticalunderstanding of morality to particular, concretecases. Someone has practical wisdom inasmuch

as they are able to make competent judgmentsabout ethical matters.

predicate The term predicate traditionally refers tothe part of a sentence that characterizes the sub-ject. In “Sally kissed Fred,” “Sally” is the subjectand “kissed Fred” is the predicate. Philosophersand logicians extend this notion, so that a sen-tence with one or more singular terms removed isa predicate. Predicates are 1-place, 2-place, and soforth, depending on the number of singularterms needed to make a sentence. A predicate issaid to be true of an object or sequence of objectsif a true sentence would result if terms referringto that object or those objects were inserted.From our example, we can get these predicates:

1. (1) kissed Fred.2. (1) kissed (2)3. Sally kissed (2)4. (1) kissed (1).

(1) is a 1-place predicate, true of Sally andwhoever else has kissed Fred. Predicate (2) is a2-place predicate, true of the pair of Sally andFred, and any other pair, the first of which haskissed the second. Number (3) is a 1-place predi-cate, true of Fred and others Sally has kissed.And (4) is a 1-place predicate, because it onlytakes one referring expression to complete thesentence, although it must be inserted twice. It istrue of people who have kissed themselves.

The notion of a predicate does not necessarilyfit very well with the categories linguists use todescribe the structure of sentences. For example,the words Sally kissed, which remain after Fred isremoved from our sentence, giving predicate (3),are not usually considered a syntactic part of theoriginal sentence.

premise See deductive argument.

presentism See eternalism and presentism.

primary and secondary qualities Locke distin-guishes ideas from the modifications of bodies thatcause ideas in us, which he calls qualities. Amongqualities, he distinguishes primary qualities fromsecondary qualities. Primary qualities includesolidity, extension (size), figure (shape), motion,

GLOSSARY 863


and number. Secondary qualities include colors,sounds, tastes, and smells. According to Locke,primary qualities are inseparable from objectsthrough alteration and division, and resemble theideas they cause. Secondary qualities are merelypowers that objects have, in virtue of the primaryqualities of their insensible parts, to produce ideasin us. So when we see that a poker chip has a cer-tain shape, an idea is being produced in us that re-sembles the quality involved in its production,and the poker chip will continue to have someshape or other even if it is bent or melted; if it is di-vided its parts will have shape. When we see thatthe chip has a certain color, however, we are hav-ing an idea that is caused by the primary qualitiesof the surface of the chip, qualities that do not re-semble the idea. If we divided the chip, at somepoint the parts would be too small to produce anycolor ideas at all and would be colorless.

Locke’s distinction, versions of which can befound in Descartes, Galileo, and Boyle, has beena source of controversy since he first proposed it.A favorite target of critics is the idea of a qualityresembling an idea, which is not easy to makemuch sense of. Berkeley makes this criticism andothers in his Dialogues.

principle of alternate possibilities In Harry Frank-furt’s article, “Alternate Possibilities and MoralResponsibility,” he formulates this principle as theclaim that a person is morally responsible for what heor she has done only if he or she could have done oth-erwise. The idea that this principle attempts to cap-ture is related to the “garden of forking paths” picturedescribed in Peter van Inwagen’s article, “The Pow-ers of Rational Beings: Freedom of the Will.”

Principle of Utility See utilitarianism.

problem of other minds The problem of how (andwhether) one can know that other minds exist be-sides one’s own. For discussion, see Russell’s “TheArgument from Analogy for Other Minds.”

properties and relations Consider these three facts:

1. Nixon was born in California.2. Carter was born in Georgia.3. Nixon was older than Carter.

These facts have different things in commonwith one another. Facts 1 and 3 are about thesame people, Nixon and Carter, but involve dif-ferent relations. Facts 1 and 2 are about differentindividuals, but involve the same relation.

The relation involved in 1 and 2 is being bornin. This is a relation between people and places.Philosophers might say that 1 states that the rela-tion being born in obtains between Nixon andCalifornia, 2 states that it obtains between Carterand Georgia, and 3 states that the relation olderthan obtains between Nixon and Carter.

Being born in and being older than are bothbinary or 2-ary relations: relations that obtain be-tween two objects. Three important properties of2-ary relations are transitivity, symmetry, and re-flexivity. Suppose that R is a 2-ary relation. Then:

• R is transitive if it follows from the fact that a hasR to b and b has R to c that a has R to c. Forexample, being longer than is a transitive relation:If a is longer than b and b is longer then c, then ais longer than c. However, liking is not transitive:From the fact that Bob likes Mary, and Mary likesCarol, it does not follow that Bob likes Carol.

• R is symmetrical if it follows from the fact that ahas R to b that b has R to a. Being a sibling of issymmetrical; being a brother of is not.

• R is reflexive if it follows from that fact that ahas R to b that a has R to a. If Bob is the sameheight as anyone at all—if he is the sort of thingthat has height at all—then he is the sameheight as himself.

Relations that are transitive, symmetrical, andreflexive are equivalence relations. There are also 3-ary relations, and in principle there are n-ary rela-tions for any n. When we say, “Nebraska City isbetween Omaha and Topeka,” we are stating thata 3-place relation obtains among three cities. It isoften useful to use variables to indicate the places ofrelations, so the relation here is x is between y and z.

It is sometimes useful to talk about the argu-ments or parameters of a relation. Thus one couldsay that the place argument (or parameter) of therelation of being born in was filled in 1 by Califor-nia and in 2 by Georgia. In the example in the last

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paragraph, we might say that Topeka filled the zargument of the relation of x is between y and z.

When we say that a person is old, or tired, orsilly, we are not saying something about a relationhe or she stands in to someone or something else,but stating a property that he or she has or doesn’thave by himself or herself. Properties are 1-aryrelations.

So far we have been ignoring time. Consider 4:

4. Carter lives in Georgia.

Number 4 is true now, but wasn’t true whenCarter was president and lived in Washington,D.C. It seems that living in is really a 3-aryrelation, among people, places, and times, eventhough it looks like a 2-ary relation. Similarly, be-cause people can be old, tired, or silly at one time,while being young, energetic, and serious at oth-ers, these are all really 2-ary rather than 1-aryrelations. When we take time into account, weneed to think of most properties as 2-ary relationsbetween individuals and times.

property dualism See dualism.

proposition Consider the report, “Russell said thatHegel was confused.” The phrase “that Hegelwas confused” identifies a proposition, whichwas what Russell said. Others could assert thesame proposition, and it could also be believed,doubted, denied, and the like. We could say,“Taylor doubted that Hegel was confused,”“Moore believed that Hegel was confused,” andso forth. It seems that the same proposition couldbe expressed in other languages, so a propositionis not just a particular sentence type. A proposi-tion is an abstract object that has conditions oftruth, and it is true or false depending on whetherthose conditions are met. Propositions are identi-fied by statements and are referred to by “that-clauses,” like “that Hegel was confused.”

The existence and ontological status ofpropositions are matters of controversy. Somephilosophers believe that propositions aremysterious entities that should be avoided; weshould get by just talking about sentences thatare true, without bringing in propositions.

Among philosophers who accept the need forpropositions, some think they should be de-fined in terms of properties, facts, possibleworlds, and other more basic categories,whereas others think they are primitive.

propositional attitude The propositional atti-tudes are those mental acts and states, such as be-lief, knowledge, and desire, that have truth orsatisfaction conditions, so that they may be char-acterized by the propositions that capture thoseconditions. We say, for example, “Russell be-lieved that Hegel was confused,” characterizingRussell’s belief by a proposition that captures itstruth conditions. And we say that Russell desiredthat there would be no more wars, thereby charac-terizing Russell’s desire by a proposition that cap-tures its satisfaction conditions.

Pyrrhonism Unless used in specialized historicalcontexts, Pyrrhonism is synonymous with skepti-cism. See sceptic, skeptic.

qualia Consider what it is like to have a headacheand how it feels. It is somewhat different fromwhat it is like to have a toothache, and vastly dif-ferent from what it is like to taste a chocolate chipcookie. We try to avoid headaches because ofwhat it is like to have them, and we try to findand eat chocolate chip cookies, because of what itis like to taste them.

What it is like to have a certain kind of expe-rience is one aspect of that experience. Philoso-phers call such aspects qualia. Other terms thatare used more or less similarly are subjective char-acters, and phenomenal characters.

Philosophers such as Thomas Nagel in “WhatIs It Like to Be a Bat?” and Frank Jackson in“What Mary Didn’t Know” claim that the qualiaor subjective characters of mental events andstates cannot be identified with or reduced tophysical aspects of those events and states. Thuseven if we suppose that headaches are brainstates, we have to admit that these brain stateshave nonphysical properties, their qualia. If weaccept the arguments of Nagel and Jackson, weseem to have to accept some form of dualism.Minds may not be immaterial things, but at least

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they have immaterial properties, such as being instates with certain conscious aspects or qualia.

David Lewis, in “Knowing What It’s Like,”claims that qualia can be handled by the physicalist.

qualities See primary and secondary qualities.

rationalism Rationalism is an epistemological posi-tion that emphasizes reason as a source of knowl-edge itself, not merely a way of organizing anddrawing further hypotheses from knowledge got-ten by sense perception. Continental rationalism isa term sometimes applied to Descartes, Spinoza,Leibniz, and other seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophers. See also empiricism.

realism In philosophy the term realism is used in acontext of controversy in which the reality of ob-jects of some category has been denied in some way,usually by claiming that the objects in question arecreations or constructions of the human mind. Therealist in the controversy is one who defends thestatus of the controversial objects. A philosophercan be a realist about one issue, while denying real-ism with respect to some other. The two most com-mon contexts in which the term is used areuniversals and the objects of sense perception. A re-alist about universals holds that they are real, in thesense of not being mere names or concepts. A real-ist about the objects of sense perception holds thatthey are real, in the sense of enjoying an existenceindependent of the perceiving mind.

Naive realism is the view that the objects ofperception not only exist, but exist just as theyseem to be. This position is often taken to be re-futed by the various forms of the argument fromillusion. See illusion, argument from; representa-tive ideas, theory of.

reason Reason is the ability or faculty to engage intheoretical and practical reasoning. A number ofphilosophical issues are concerned with the roleof reason in various spheres of human life. Ratio-nalists and empiricists disagree about the role ofreason in the formation of concepts and the de-velopment of knowledge, the latter seeing it onlyas an aid to experience. Kant supposed that therewere fundamental principles of conduct pro-vided by practical reason, whereas Hume argued

that in the practical sphere reason “is, and oughtonly to be the slave of the passions.” See reason-ing, practical and theoretical.

reasoning, practical and theoretical Theoretical rea-soning is aimed at assessing evidence and drawingconclusions about what is true. Practical reasoningis aimed at making decisions about what to do.

reasons-responsiveness This is a family of ideas thatspecify that an agent (or an agent acting on a par-ticular mechanism) has (or exhibits) a capacity toidentify and act in accordance with reasons for ac-tion. Reasons are typically thought to be consider-ations that count in favor of actions. So areasons-responsive agent (or mechanism) is capableof identifying and acting in accordance with con-siderations that count in favor of actions. Somephilosophers (including J.M. Fischer, S. Wolf, andR.J. Wallace) have given accounts of moral respon-sibility in terms of reasons-responsiveness.

reciprocity Engaging in reciprocity involves, as itwere, ‘returning the favor.’ When we help others aswe have been helped we are engaging in a recipro-cal relationship.

reductio ad absurdum Literally translated fromLatin, this phrase means “reduction to the ab-surd.” It is a form of argument in which somestatement is shown to be true because its denialhas obviously false consequences. For instance,suppose we are trying to establish that p is true.To argue for p by reductio ad absurdum wouldbe to argue that the denial of p leads to the obvi-ously false statement q. But because q is obviouslyfalse, it must have been wrong to deny p in thefirst place—so, p must be true.

reductionism In philosophy the term reductionismoccurs in the context of a controversy about thestatus of some kind of object. The reductionistmaintains that talk and knowledge about suchobjects really amount to talk and knowledgeabout some class of objects that is usually thoughtto be quite different. Talk and knowledge aboutthe first kind of object are reduced to talk andknowledge about the second kind. For example,Berkeley thought that talk and knowledgeabout ordinary objects were really just talk and

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knowledge about ideas. A philosopher can be areductionist about some categories of objectswhile being a nonreductionist about others.

refers Philosophers use a number of terms for therelationship that holds between singular termsand the objects they designate or stand for. Refersis used both for the relation between singularterms and what they stand for, and for the act ofusing a singular term to stand for something(“‘That piece of furniture’ refers to the chair” vs.“Jane used ‘that piece of furniture’ to refer to thechair.”) The thing referred to is often called thereferent. Denotes is most properly used for the re-lation between a definite description and the ob-ject that uniquely meets the descriptive part, as in“‘The author of Waverley’ denotes Sir WalterScott.” But denotes is often simply used as a syn-onym of refers. The thing denoted is sometimescalled the denotation and, less often, the denota-tum. Names is used for the relation between aname and its bearer (or nominatum), as in “ ‘Fred’names that man.” Designate and stands for areused in a very general way, as the latter has beenin this discussion. See also extension and inten-sion; singular term.

reflective equilibrium In the course of theorizing,one often has to make some sort of compromisebetween general principles and considered judg-ments about particular cases. Sometimes generalprinciples will need to be amended in the light ofconflicting considered judgments, and sometimesjudgments will need to be revised in the light ofotherwise successful general principles. To arriveat a balance between the two is to achieve reflec-tive equilibrium. For more details and furtherdiscussion, see John Rawls, “A Theory of Justice.”

relation of ideas See matters of fact and relations ofideas.

relativism The term relativism is used with referenceto a body of statements or alleged truths aboutsome sort of phenomena. The relativist maintainsthat these statements (1) are only true (or false) rel-ative to some further factor or parameter, not ex-plicitly mentioned in the statements themselves;

(2) that this parameter is a person or group of peo-ple making the judgment, or something corre-sponding to a group of people such as a culture or alanguage; (3) hence there is no objective truth or fal-sity; that is, no truth or falsity merely concerningthe objects involved in the phenomena independ-ently of the subjects making those judgments. (Inthe terms explained in properties and relations, therelativist is claiming that an n-ary property is beingtreated as an (n-1)-ary property.)

Here is an example where relativism is prettyplausible. Consider the comparative merits ofthe taste of food. Does the issue of whether car-rots taste better or worse than cucumbers havean answer? The relativist, with regard to thisissue, would say that there is an answer only rel-ative to a particular taster. Carrots may taste bet-ter than cucumbers to Mary, whereas cucumberstaste better than carrots to Fred. The relativistwould say that there is no further question ofwho is right. The question whether carrots tastebetter than cucumbers simpliciter, without fur-ther reference to a person who does the tasting,makes no sense. On the relativist view, the judg-ments of Fred and Mary are misconstrued if theyare taken to be opinions about some nonrelativetruth. Because taste is relative, there should be noroom for such a dispute.

There are many types of relativism that aremore controversial and so more interesting thanrelativism about the taste of food. Ontologicalrelativists claim that existence is relative: thatdifferent languages, cultures, or conceptualschemes recognize different classes of objects andproperties, and questions of existence make nosense considered outside of such conceptualschemes. Perhaps the most interesting example isethical relativism. Ethical relativists claim thatjudgments of right and wrong are relative to in-dividuals, societies, or cultures.

representative ideas, theory of The theory of rep-resentative ideas maintains that knowledge of ex-ternal things is mediated by ideas in the mind ofthe knower that represent those things in virtueof a twofold relation they have to them. The ideasare caused by the external things, and depict those

GLOSSARY 867


external things as having certain properties. Sup-pose, for example, one perceives a chair in frontof one. The chair causes light to fall on the retinain a certain pattern, which causes other events inthe visual system, which ultimately cause ideas ofa certain sort in the mind. These ideas have cer-tain features, which depict the object causing it tobe a chair of a certain sort.

This theory allows an account of error and atreatment of the argument from perceptual rela-tivity and the argument from illusion. The argu-ment from perceptual relativity shows thatwhich thing an idea represents and how it de-picts that object to be do not depend just on thefeatures of the idea, but also auxiliary beliefs.The same visual image might represent an ob-ject as elliptical or circular, depending onwhether it was taken to be held at a right angleor acute angle to the line of vision. Normal er-rors and illusions occur when the idea caused bya thing does not accurately depict it, either be-cause the auxiliary beliefs are wrong, or some-thing unusual in the perceiving conditions orthe perceiver’s state leads to a wrong idea beingproduced. The more radical types of error in-volved in certain kinds of delusions, such as hal-lucinations, involve having an idea that is notcaused by an external thing at all, but some dis-order in the perceiver.

Fairly explicit versions of the theory of repre-sentative ideas may be found in Descartes andLocke. Berkeley, Hume, and others have criticizedthe theory for various reasons, including that itleads to skepticism, as, it seems to provide no directmeans of knowing the external objects, that the no-tion of depiction makes no sense, and that thewhole picture of “double existence” is incoherent.

revealed religion See natural religion.

sceptic, skeptic Skeptic is an American spelling,sceptic the British. When a view is labeled skeptical,there are two things that must be ascertained, thetype of skepticism and its topic. The skeptic can beadvocating suspension of claims of knowledge orcertainty, suspension of belief, or positive disbelief.Hume, for example, thinks that we cannot know

through reason that the future will be like the past,but does not claim we should refrain from believ-ing it; indeed, he thinks it is both natural to do soand impossible not to do so except for brief periodswhile doing philosophy. He describes this positionas skeptical. Whatever type of skepticism is beingadvocated, a philosopher can be skeptical aboutsome things and not others. For example, aphilosopher might be skeptical about the existenceof God, but not about the external world.

second-order desires See second-order volitions.

second-order volitions The theory of freedom thatHarry Frankfurt constructs in his “Freedom ofthe Will and the Concept of a Person” relies onthe idea that our desires are structured hierarchi-cally. On the first order, we desire objects or statesof affairs in the world. For instance, my desire tohave another cup of coffee is a first-order desire.But humans have enough psychological com-plexity to have second-order desires, as well,which are preferences in favor of or against hav-ing certain first-order desires. So, perhaps theonly reason I desire another cup of coffee is thatI’m addicted to caffeine, but I would rather notbe addicted. In this situation, although I mayhave a first-order desire for another cup of coffee,I have a second-order desire not to have the desirefor another cup of coffee.

Roughly, to figure out what your first-orderdesires are, ask yourself, “What do I want?” Tofigure out what your second-order desires are,ask yourself, “What do I want to want?” In the-ory, the hierarchy of desires has no end (there canbe third- and fourth-order desires as well), butafter two or three the structure is quite difficult tothink about clearly.

Second-order volitions, as Frankfurt uses theterm, are special sorts of second-order desires.Some second-order desires are simply desires tohave a particular first-order desire. But others aredesires that some particular first-order desire ef-fectively move the agent to action. In otherwords, whereas sometimes we merely want tohave certain first-order desires, other times wewant those first-order desires actually to move us

868 GLOSSARY


to act. These latter sorts of second-order desiresare what Frankfurt calls second-order volitions.Frankfurt dubs creatures who lack second-ordervolitions wantons.

secondary qualities See primary and secondaryqualities.

semicompatibilism Semicompatibilism is the doc-trine that causal determinism is compatible withmoral responsibility, quite apart from the issue ofwhether causal determinism is compatible withfreedom to do otherwise. The view presupposesthat moral responsibility does not require free-dom to do otherwise. (The term was first intro-duced by J.M. Fischer.)

sense-data Some philosophers who accept thatthe various forms of the argument from illusionshow that we do not directly perceive materialobjects, use the terms sense-datum and sense-datafor what we do directly perceive. Unlike theterms idea or sensation, the term sense-data doesnot imply that the direct objects of perceptionare mental, but leaves that question open.Sense-data are objects of some sort, distin-guished from the act of being aware of them.Sense-data are usually supposed to have all ofthe properties they seem to have. Suppose, forexample, you see a blue tie in a store with fluo-rescent lighting, it looks green, and you take itto be so. A philosopher who believes in sense-data would say that you are directly aware of asense-datum that is green; your mistake is inyour inference from the fact about the sense-datum’s color to the tie’s color.

sex Sex can refer to various forms of intimate,erotic activity. Exactly which activities of thissort are, properly speaking, sex is a matter ofcontroversy, both in philosophy and elsewhere.

simplicity Simplicity is a property traditionally at-tributed to God. Roughly, a being is simple if andonly if that being lacks parts or composition. Thedoctrine of divine simplicity is very controversial;philosophers not only do not agree about whetherGod is simple, but do not agree about what thedoctrine of divine simplicity means or entails.

Classical theists such as Augustine, Anselm, andAquinas have defended the doctrine of divinesimplicity. Of course, simplicity (lacking parts orinternal structure) is a property that can be pos-sessed by entities other than God.

singular term Singular terms include propernames (John, Fred), singular definite descriptions(the author of Waverley, the present king ofFrance, the square root of two), singular pro-nouns (I, you, she, he, it), and singular demon-strative phrases (that man, this ship). These termsall identify or purport to identify a particular ob-ject, about which something further is said.

The category singular term is found in philos-ophy and philosophical logic more than in lin-guistics. The category includes expressions thatare syntactically quite different, like definite de-scriptions and names, and separates things thatsyntactically seem closely related, like singularand plural definite descriptions (“the governor ofMaryland,” “the senators from Maryland”).

solipsism Solipsism is the thesis that only the self ex-ists, or (alternatively) that only the self can beknown to exist. Solipsism is one radical solution tothe “problem of other minds,” the problem of howit is that one can know that any minds besides one’sown exist. According to the solipsist, one can’tknow that the (apparent) persons one interactswith actually have mental lives like one’s own.

sophism A sophism is a bad argument presented asif it were a good one to deceive, mislead, or cheatsomeone; sophistry is the practice of doing this.

In Ancient Greece, the sophists were itinerantteachers of the fourth and fifth centuries B.C.,some of whom, such as Protagoras and Gorgias,Socrates criticized vigorously. His negative viewwas based on the empiricism, relativism, andskepticism of their teachings; on the fact that theytook a fee; and on the fact that they taught argu-ment for the sake of persuasion and manipula-tion of others, rather than for the pursuit of truth.

sound See deductive argument.

state of nature The state of nature is the hypo-thetical situation in which human beings would

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870 GLOSSARY

find themselves without the existence of any gov-ernment or state that can exercise coercive forceover them.

subjective character See qualia.

Sub specie aeternitatis Literally, this phrase istranslated as “under the aspect of eternity.” It isused in roughly the same way as the phrase “froma God’s-eye point of view” and is meant to indi-cate an impersonal, detached, and objective viewof the world and its goings-on. Thomas Nagel in-vokes this notion while discussing the meaning oflife in “The Absurd.”

substance The term substance has been used in avariety of ways in philosophy. In modern philos-ophy, a substance is a thing capable of independ-ent existence. Substances are contrasted withqualities and relations, on the one hand, andcomplexes, on the other. These are all merelyways that substances are. Philosophers have haddramatically different opinions about what meetsthese conditions. Descartes thought that therewere two basically different kinds of substance,material and immaterial, and there were many ofeach, and that no way of being material was away of being mental and vice versa. Spinozathought that there was but one substance, andmaterial and mental reality were aspects of it. (Hecalled this thing God, although many of his oppo-nents thought his view amounted to atheism.) In“Of Scepticism with Regard to the Senses,”Hume treats our perceptions as substances—theultimate, independent constituents of reality.

supererogation If you ought to do some action, thenit is obligatory. If some action is not obligatory butwould nevertheless be good to do, then it issupererogatory. Many think that to give money tofamine relief, for instance, is to go “above and be-yond” one’s obligations and hence is to perform anaction that is supererogatory. For a challenge to thisview of giving money to famine relief, however, seePeter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality.”

supervenience A set of properties A supervenes onanother set of properties B, if all objects with thesame B-properties have the same A-properties.

Many advocates of functionalism maintain that al-though mental properties cannot be identifiedwith physical properties (as the identity theoryholds), they nevertheless supervene on them. Boththe identity theorist and the supervenience theo-rist maintain that beings that are physically in-discernible will have the same mental properties.But the supervenience theorist allows that beingsthat are mentally alike, may be quite differentphysically. For example, a philosopher mightthink that agents built out of silicon-based com-puters, humans, and individuals from outer spacewith a completely different biology than ourscould all have beliefs, desires, and intentions, inspite of the difference of their physical constitutionand organization.

syllogism A syllogism is a valid deductive argu-ment or argument form with two premises anda conclusion, that involves universal and exis-tential statements involving three terms. Forexample:

All As are Bs.All Bs are Cs.Therefore, all As are Cs.

Some As are Bs.No Bs are Cs.Therefore some As are not Cs.

In these examples, B is the middle term; it ap-pears in the premises to connect the terms in theconclusion, but does not itself appear in the con-clusion. A is the minor term because it is the sub-ject of the conclusion and C is the major termbecause it is the predicate of the conclusion. Muchof the theory of syllogism was worked out byAristotle. The class of valid deductive argumentsstudied in modern logic is much larger.

synthetic See analytic and synthetic.

teleological ethics See consequentialism.

teleology/teleological See final causation.

theodicy A philosophical response on the part of abeliever to the problem of evil.


transeunt causation See agent-causation.

transitive See properties and relations.

Turing machine A Turing machine is not a real ma-chine one can go out and buy, but an abstract con-ception invented by A. M. Turing to help thinkabout computing and computers. The machinescans a square on a tape, erases what it finds there,prints something new, moves to a new square, andgoes into a new state. What it prints, where it moves,and into what state it goes are all determined by thestate in which it was in the beginning and what itfound on the square. Computer scientists and logi-cians have shown that Turing machines—givenenough time and tape—can compute any functionthat any computer can compute.

types and tokens How many words are in thisstatement?

An argument is an argument,but a good cigar is a smoke.

There are twelve word tokens, but only eightword types. There are two tokens each of the wordtypes “an,” “argument,” “is,” and “a” and one eachof “but,” “good,” “cigar,” and “smoke.” The typesare universals, whereas the tokens are particulars.

uniformity of nature The principle of the unifor-mity of nature maintains that the same basic pat-terns or laws are found throughout nature; thefuture will be like the past, at least in terms of thebasic operations of nature; and more generallythe unexamined parts of nature will be like theparts that have been examined up to a certainpoint. This principle seems to underlie the use ofpast experience to form expectations about thefuture, but, according to Hume, it isn’t itself sus-ceptible of proof. The principle is discussed byHume and Hempel; Goodman’s new riddle ofinduction poses a puzzle about how this principleis to be understood.

universal causation, principle of The principle ofuniversal causation holds that all events havecauses, though not necessarily deterministiccauses. See also determinism.

universals and particulars A particular is what wewould ordinarily think of as a thing, with a par-ticular position in space at any one time. A uni-versal is that which particulars have in common,or may have in common. The kind, human, is auniversal; individual people are particulars. Typesare universals, tokens are particulars. Propertiessuch as being red are universals; philosophers dis-agree about whether it is red things (roses, barns)that have them in common, or particular cases ofthe property (the redness of the rose, the rednessof the barn). Not all philosophers agree that thereare universals. Nominalists maintain that univer-sals are just names that we apply to different ob-jects that resemble one another; metaphysicsshould recognize particulars that resemble eachother in various ways, but not universals aboveand beyond those particulars. A nominalistmight claim that the type–token distinction re-ally amounts to providing two ways of countingtokens, not two kinds of object to be counted.

use and mention Ordinarily when a word appearsin a statement, it is being used to talk about some-thing else. If one wants to talk about the word it-self, one has to mention it. In the statement,

The word “four” has four letters,

“four” is mentioned the first time it occurs andused the second time it occurs. When a word ismentioned, one may be talking about the token orthe type.

Utilitarianism Utilitarianism is a consequentialistethical theory. Utilitarianism is usually connectedwith the more specific doctrines of Bentham andMill, who took the goodness of consequences to bemeasured by their effect on the happiness or welfareof sentient creatures. (This is sometimes referred toas the principle of Utility or the Greatest HappinessPrinciple.) Bentham focused on pleasure, Mill on amore abstract notion of happiness that allowed himto maintain that “It is better to be a human beingdissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socratesdissatisfied than a pig satisfied.” For further discus-sion, see the Introduction to Part V.

valid See deductive argument.

GLOSSARY 871


veil of ignorance The term veil of ignorance issometimes used to characterize the skeptical con-sequences of the theory of representative ideas. Ac-cording to this theory, we only directly know thecontents of our own mind; these then form a sortof veil between us and the external world. Thisterm is also often used in religion, to suggest afundamental feature of the human condition: Allof experience is simply a veil of ignorance be-tween us and what is most real, or matters most.

The term was given a new use in ethics by JohnRawls, as an important part of his characteriza-tion of the original position. The original position isa hypothetical state of affairs in which members ofa society choose the principles of justice that willgovern them. This choice is to be made behind aveil of ignorance in the sense that the persons mak-ing this choice are not to know their class, position,social class, intelligence, strength, and so forth.The underlying intuition is that by being ignorantof these specifics, these individuals will be led tomake an impartial and fair choice.

verificationism Although it comes in many vari-eties, verificationism is characterized by a generaldistrust of claims that cannot be shown to be true,or verified, using only empirical methods likethose available to the natural sciences. Many heldthat because the claims of ethics, metaphysics,and religion cannot be empirically verified, theyare meaningless. Although this view of meaningis largely discredited today, it was highly influen-tial in the early twentieth century.

virtue ethics See virtue theory.

virtue theory (virtue ethics) This is an approach toethical theory that is frequently traced to Aristo-tle and contrasted with approaches drawn from,for example, Kant and Mill. A virtue theoryhighlights questions about the nature of thosecharacter traits that are virtues—for example,courage. Such questions are seen as in some wayfundamental to the theory.

wanton See second-order volitions.

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