1.
Philosophy
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Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. The term was coined by Pythagoras. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument and systematic presentation, classic philosophical questions include, Is it possible to know anything and to prove it. However, philosophers might also pose more practical and concrete questions such as, is it better to be just or unjust. Historically, philosophy encompassed any body of knowledge, from the time of Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle to the 19th century, natural philosophy encompassed astronomy, medicine and physics. For example, Newtons 1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy later became classified as a book of physics, in the 19th century, the growth of modern research universities led academic philosophy and other disciplines to professionalize and specialize. In the modern era, some investigations that were part of philosophy became separate academic disciplines, including psychology, sociology. Other investigations closely related to art, science, politics, or other pursuits remained part of philosophy, for example, is beauty objective or subjective. Are there many scientific methods or just one, is political utopia a hopeful dream or hopeless fantasy. Major sub-fields of academic philosophy include metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, logic, philosophy of science, since the 20th century, professional philosophers contribute to society primarily as professors, researchers and writers. Traditionally, the term referred to any body of knowledge. In this sense, philosophy is related to religion, mathematics, natural science, education. This division is not obsolete but has changed, Natural philosophy has split into the various natural sciences, especially astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and cosmology. Moral philosophy has birthed the social sciences, but still includes value theory, metaphysical philosophy has birthed formal sciences such as logic, mathematics and philosophy of science, but still includes epistemology, cosmology and others. Many philosophical debates that began in ancient times are still debated today, colin McGinn and others claim that no philosophical progress has occurred during that interval. Chalmers and others, by contrast, see progress in philosophy similar to that in science, in one general sense, philosophy is associated with wisdom, intellectual culture and a search for knowledge. In that sense, all cultures and literate societies ask philosophical questions such as how are we to live, a broad and impartial conception of philosophy then, finds a reasoned inquiry into such matters as reality, morality and life in all world civilizations. Socrates was an influential philosopher, who insisted that he possessed no wisdom but was a pursuer of wisdom
2.
Logic
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Logic, originally meaning the word or what is spoken, is generally held to consist of the systematic study of the form of arguments. A valid argument is one where there is a relation of logical support between the assumptions of the argument and its conclusion. Historically, logic has been studied in philosophy and mathematics, and recently logic has been studied in science, linguistics, psychology. The concept of form is central to logic. The validity of an argument is determined by its logical form, traditional Aristotelian syllogistic logic and modern symbolic logic are examples of formal logic. Informal logic is the study of natural language arguments, the study of fallacies is an important branch of informal logic. Since much informal argument is not strictly speaking deductive, on some conceptions of logic, formal logic is the study of inference with purely formal content. An inference possesses a purely formal content if it can be expressed as an application of a wholly abstract rule, that is. The works of Aristotle contain the earliest known study of logic. Modern formal logic follows and expands on Aristotle, in many definitions of logic, logical inference and inference with purely formal content are the same. This does not render the notion of informal logic vacuous, because no formal logic captures all of the nuances of natural language, Symbolic logic is the study of symbolic abstractions that capture the formal features of logical inference. Symbolic logic is divided into two main branches, propositional logic and predicate logic. Mathematical logic is an extension of logic into other areas, in particular to the study of model theory, proof theory, set theory. Logic is generally considered formal when it analyzes and represents the form of any valid argument type, the form of an argument is displayed by representing its sentences in the formal grammar and symbolism of a logical language to make its content usable in formal inference. Simply put, formalising simply means translating English sentences into the language of logic and this is called showing the logical form of the argument. It is necessary because indicative sentences of ordinary language show a variety of form. Second, certain parts of the sentence must be replaced with schematic letters, thus, for example, the expression all Ps are Qs shows the logical form common to the sentences all men are mortals, all cats are carnivores, all Greeks are philosophers, and so on. The schema can further be condensed into the formula A, where the letter A indicates the judgement all - are -, the importance of form was recognised from ancient times
3.
Concept
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A concept is an abstract idea representing the fundamental characteristics of what it represents. Concepts arise as abstractions or generalisations from experience or the result of a transformation of existing ideas, the concept is instantiated by all of its actual or potential instances, whether these are things in the real world or other ideas. Concepts are treated in many if not most disciplines both explicitly, such as in linguistics, psychology, philosophy, etc. and implicitly, such as in mathematics, physics, etc. In informal use the word concept often just means any idea and these concepts are then stored in long term memory In metaphysics, and especially ontology, a concept is a fundamental category of existence. It would go furniture, chair, and easy chair, the term concept is traced back to 1554–60, but what is today termed the classical theory of concepts is the theory of Aristotle on the definition of terms. The meaning of concept is explored in mainstream science, cognitive science, metaphysics. In computer and information science contexts, especially, the concept is often used in unclear or inconsistent ways. In a platonist theory of mind, concepts are construed as abstract objects and this debate concerns the ontological status of concepts – what they are really like. There is debate as to the relationship between concepts and natural language, concepts that can be equated to a single word are called lexical concepts. Study of concepts and conceptual structure falls into the disciplines of linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science. In the simplest terms, a concept is a name or label that regards or treats an abstraction as if it had concrete or material existence, such as a person, a place, or a thing. It may represent an object that exists in the real world like a tree, an animal. It may also name an object like a chair, computer, house. Abstract ideas and knowledge domains such as freedom, equality, science, happiness and it is important to realize that a concept is merely a symbol, a representation of the abstraction. The word is not to be mistaken for the thing, for example, the word moon is not the large, bright, shape-changing object up in the sky, but only represents that celestial object. Concepts are created to describe, explain and capture reality as it is known, Kant declared that human minds possess pure or a priori concepts. Instead of being abstracted from individual perceptions, like empirical concepts and he called these concepts categories, in the sense of the word that means predicate, attribute, characteristic, or quality. But these pure categories are predicates of things in general, not of a particular thing, according to Kant, there are 12 categories that constitute the understanding of phenomenal objects
4.
Belief
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Belief is the state of mind in which a person thinks something to be the case, with or without there being empirical evidence to prove that something is the case with factual certainty. Another way of defining belief sees it as a representation of an attitude positively oriented towards the likelihood of something being true. In the context of Ancient Greek thought, two related concepts were identified with regards to the concept of belief, pistis and doxa, simplified, we may say that pistis refers to trust and confidence, while doxa refers to opinion and acceptance. The English word orthodoxy derives from doxa, Jonathan Leicester suggests that belief has the purpose of guiding action rather than indicating truth. In epistemology, philosophers use the belief to refer to personal attitudes associated with true or false ideas. However, belief does not require active introspection and circumspection, for example, we never ponder whether or not the sun will rise. We simply assume the sun will rise, since belief is an important aspect of mundane life, according to Eric Schwitzgebel in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a related question asks, how a physical organism can have beliefs. Epistemology is concerned with delineating the boundary between justified belief and opinion, and involved generally with a philosophical study of knowledge. The primary problem in epistemology is to exactly what is needed in order for us to have knowledge. Plato dismisses this possibility of a relation between belief and knowledge even when the one who opines grounds his belief on the rule. Among American epistemologists, Gettier and Goldman, have questioned the true belief definition. Mainstream psychology and related disciplines have traditionally treated belief as if it were the simplest form of mental representation, philosophers have tended to be more abstract in their analysis, and much of the work examining the viability of the belief concept stems from philosophical analysis. The concept of belief presumes a subject and an object of belief, Beliefs are sometimes divided into core beliefs and dispositional beliefs. For example, if asked do you believe tigers wear pink pajamas, a person might answer that they do not, despite the fact they may never have thought about this situation before. This has important implications for understanding the neuropsychology and neuroscience of belief, if the concept of belief is incoherent, then any attempt to find the underlying neural processes that support it will fail. Jerry Fodor is one of the defenders of this point of view. Most notably, philosopher Stephen Stich has argued for this understanding of belief. In these cases science hasnt provided us with a detailed account of these theories
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Thought
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Thought refers to ideas or arrangements of ideas that are the result of the process of thinking. Though thinking is an activity considered essential to humanity, there is no consensus as to how we define or understand it. Thinking allows humans to sense of, interpret, represent or model the world they experience. It is therefore helpful to an organism with needs, objectives, the word thought comes from Old English þoht, or geþoht, from stem of þencan to conceive of in the mind, consider. Definitions of thought may also be derived directly or indirectly from theories of thought, the notion of the fundamental role of non-cognitive understanding in rendering possible thematic consciousness informed the discussion surrounding Artificial Intelligence during the 1970s and 1980s. Phenomenology, however, is not the approach to thinking in modern Western philosophy. The mind-body problem concerns the explanation of the relationship exists between minds, or mental processes, and bodily states or processes. The main aim of working in this area is to determine the nature of the mind and mental states/processes. Someones desire for a slice of pizza, for example, will tend to cause that person to move his or her body in a specific manner and in a specific direction to obtain what he or she wants. The question, then, is how it can be possible for conscious experiences to arise out of a lump of gray matter endowed with nothing but electrochemical properties. A related problem is to explain how propositional attitudes can cause that individuals neurons to fire. These comprise some of the puzzles that have confronted epistemologists and philosophers of mind from at least the time of René Descartes, the above reflects a classical, functional description of how we work as cognitive, thinking systems. Therefore, functional analysis of the mind alone will always leave us with the problem which cannot be solved. A neuron is a cell in the nervous system that processes. Neurons are the components of the brain, the vertebrate spinal cord, the invertebrate ventral nerve cord. Motor neurons receive signals from the brain and spinal cord and cause muscle contractions, interneurons connect neurons to other neurons within the brain and spinal cord. Neurons respond to stimuli, and communicate the presence of stimuli to the nervous system. Neurons do not go through mitosis, and usually cannot be replaced after being destroyed, psychologists have concentrated on thinking as an intellectual exertion aimed at finding an answer to a question or the solution of a practical problem
6.
Intuition
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Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without proof, evidence, or conscious reasoning, or without understanding how the knowledge was acquired. The word intuition comes from the Latin verb intueri translated as consider or from late middle English word intuit, both Eastern and Western philosophers have studied the concept in great detail. Philosophy of mind deals with the concept of intuition, there are philosophers who contend that this concept is often confused with other concepts such as truth, belief, and meaning in philosophical discussion. In the East intuition is mostly intertwined with religion and spirituality, in Hinduism various attempts have been made to interpret the Vedic and other esoteric texts. However with knowledge by identity which we currently only gives the awareness of human existence can be extended further to outside of ourselves resulting in intuitive knowledge. He finds that this process seems to be a decent, is actual a circle of progress. As a lower faculty is being pushed to take up as much from a way of working. Advaita vedanta takes intuition to be an experience through which one can come in contact with, in Zen Buddhism various techniques have been developed to help develop ones intuitive capability, such as kó-an – the resolving of which leads to states of minor enlightenment. In parts of Zen Buddhism intuition is deemed a state between the Universal mind and ones individual, discriminating mind. In Islam there are scholars with varied interpretation of intuition. While Ibn Sīnā finds the ability of having intuition as a prophetic capacity terms it as a knowledge obtained without intentionally acquiring it and he finds regular knowledge is based on imitation while intuitive knowledge as based on intellectual certitude. In the West, intuition does not appear as a field of study. In his book Republic he tries to define intuition as a capacity of human reason to comprehend the true nature of reality. In his discussion with Meno & Phaedo, he describes intuition as a pre-existing knowledge residing in the soul of eternity, and he provides an example of mathematical truths, and posits that they are not arrived at by reason. He argues that these truths are accessed using an already present in a dormant form. This concept by Plato is also referred to as anamnesis. The study was continued by his followers. In his book Meditations on first philosophy, Descartes refers to an intuition as a pre-existing knowledge gained through rational reasoning or discovering truth through contemplation and this definition is commonly referred to as rational intuition
7.
Logical consequence
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Logical consequence is a fundamental concept in logic, which describes the relationship between statements that holds true when one statement logically follows from one or more statements. A valid logical argument is one in which the conclusions are entailed by the premises, the philosophical analysis of logical consequence involves the questions, In what sense does a conclusion follow from its premises. And What does it mean for a conclusion to be a consequence of premises, All of philosophical logic is meant to provide accounts of the nature of logical consequence and the nature of logical truth. Logical consequence is necessary and formal, by way of examples that explain with formal proof and models of interpretation. A sentence is said to be a consequence of a set of sentences, for a given language, if and only if. The most widely prevailing view on how to best account for logical consequence is to appeal to formality and this is to say that whether statements follow from one another logically depends on the structure or logical form of the statements without regard to the contents of that form. Syntactic accounts of logical consequence rely on schemes using inference rules, for instance, we can express the logical form of a valid argument as, All A are B. All C are A. Therefore, all C are B and this argument is formally valid, because every instance of arguments constructed using this scheme are valid. This is in contrast to an argument like Fred is Mikes brothers son, if you know that Q follows logically from P no information about the possible interpretations of P or Q will affect that knowledge. Our knowledge that Q is a consequence of P cannot be influenced by empirical knowledge. Deductively valid arguments can be known to be so without recourse to experience, however, formality alone does not guarantee that logical consequence is not influenced by empirical knowledge. So the a property of logical consequence is considered to be independent of formality. The two prevailing techniques for providing accounts of logical consequence involve expressing the concept in terms of proofs, the study of the syntactic consequence is called proof theory whereas the study of semantic consequence is called model theory. A formula A is a syntactic consequence within some formal system F S of a set Γ of formulas if there is a proof in F S of A from the set Γ. Γ ⊢ F S A Syntactic consequence does not depend on any interpretation of the formal system, or, in other words, the set of the interpretations that make all members of Γ true is a subset of the set of the interpretations that make A true. Modal accounts of logical consequence are variations on the basic idea, Γ ⊢ A is true if and only if it is necessary that if all of the elements of Γ are true. Alternatively, Γ ⊢ A is true if and only if it is impossible for all of the elements of Γ to be true, such accounts are called modal because they appeal to the modal notions of logical necessity and logical possibility. Consider the modal account in terms of the argument given as an example above, the conclusion is a logical consequence of the premises because we cant imagine a possible world where all frogs are green, Kermit is a frog, and Kermit is not green
8.
Classical logic
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Classical logic is an intensively studied and widely used class of formal logics. Classical logic was devised as a two-level logical system, with simple semantics for the levels representing true. These judgments find themselves if two pairs of two operators, and each operator is the negation of another, relationships that Aristotle summarised with his square of oppositions. George Booles algebraic reformulation of logic, his system of Boolean logic, with the advent of algebraic logic it became apparent that classical propositional calculus admits other semantics. In Boolean-valued semantics, the values are the elements of an arbitrary Boolean algebra, true corresponds to the maximal element of the algebra. Intermediate elements of the algebra correspond to truth values other than true, the principle of bivalence holds only when the Boolean algebra is taken to be the two-element algebra, which has no intermediate elements. Many-valued logic, including logic, which rejects the law of the excluded middle. Graham Priest, An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic, From If to Is, 2nd Edition, CUP,2008, ISBN 978-0-521-67026-5 Warren Goldfard, Deductive Logic, 1st edition,2003, ISBN 0-87220-660-2
9.
First-order predicate calculus
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First-order logic – also known as first-order predicate calculus and predicate logic – is a collection of formal systems used in mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science. This distinguishes it from propositional logic, which does not use quantifiers, Sometimes theory is understood in a more formal sense, which is just a set of sentences in first-order logic. In first-order theories, predicates are associated with sets. In interpreted higher-order theories, predicates may be interpreted as sets of sets, There are many deductive systems for first-order logic which are both sound and complete. Although the logical relation is only semidecidable, much progress has been made in automated theorem proving in first-order logic. First-order logic also satisfies several metalogical theorems that make it amenable to analysis in proof theory, such as the Löwenheim–Skolem theorem, first-order logic is the standard for the formalization of mathematics into axioms and is studied in the foundations of mathematics. Peano arithmetic and Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory are axiomatizations of number theory and set theory, respectively, no first-order theory, however, has the strength to uniquely describe a structure with an infinite domain, such as the natural numbers or the real line. Axioms systems that do fully describe these two structures can be obtained in stronger logics such as second-order logic, for a history of first-order logic and how it came to dominate formal logic, see José Ferreirós. While propositional logic deals with simple declarative propositions, first-order logic additionally covers predicates, a predicate takes an entity or entities in the domain of discourse as input and outputs either True or False. Consider the two sentences Socrates is a philosopher and Plato is a philosopher, in propositional logic, these sentences are viewed as being unrelated and might be denoted, for example, by variables such as p and q. The predicate is a philosopher occurs in both sentences, which have a structure of a is a philosopher. The variable a is instantiated as Socrates in the first sentence and is instantiated as Plato in the second sentence, while first-order logic allows for the use of predicates, such as is a philosopher in this example, propositional logic does not. Relationships between predicates can be stated using logical connectives, consider, for example, the first-order formula if a is a philosopher, then a is a scholar. This formula is a statement with a is a philosopher as its hypothesis. The truth of this depends on which object is denoted by a. Quantifiers can be applied to variables in a formula, the variable a in the previous formula can be universally quantified, for instance, with the first-order sentence For every a, if a is a philosopher, then a is a scholar. The universal quantifier for every in this sentence expresses the idea that the if a is a philosopher. The negation of the sentence For every a, if a is a philosopher, then a is a scholar is logically equivalent to the sentence There exists a such that a is a philosopher and a is not a scholar
10.
Meaning (philosophy of language)
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The nature of meaning, its definition, elements, and types, was discussed by philosophers Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas. According to them meaning is a relationship between two sorts of things, signs and the kinds of things they mean, One term in the relationship of meaning necessarily causes something else to come to the mind. In other words, a sign is defined as an entity that indicates another entity to some agent for some purpose, as Augustine states, a sign is “something that shows itself to the senses and something other than itself to the mind”. The types of meanings vary according to the types of the thing that is being represented, All subsequent inquiries emphasize some particular perspectives within the general AAA framework. The evaluation of meaning according to one of the five major substantive theories of meaning. Each theory of meaning as evaluated by these theories of truth are each further researched by the individual scholars supporting each one of the respective theories of truth. Both hybrid theories of meaning and alternative theories of meaning and truth have also been researched and this type of theory stresses a relationship between thoughts or statements on one hand, and things or objects on the other. It is a traditional model tracing its origins to ancient Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato and this class of theories holds that the truth or the falsity of a representation is determined in principle entirely by how it relates to things, by whether it accurately describes those things. Many modern theorists have stated that this ideal cannot be achieved without analysing additional factors, for example, language plays a role in that all languages have words to represent concepts that are virtually undefined in other languages. Thus, some add an additional parameter to the construction of an accurate truth predicate. Among the philosophers who grappled with this problem is Alfred Tarski, for coherence theories in general, the assessment of meaning and truth requires a proper fit of elements within a whole system. So, for example, the completeness and comprehensiveness of the set of concepts is a critical factor in judging the validity. Some variants of coherence theory are claimed to describe the essential and intrinsic properties of systems in logic. However, formal reasoners are content to contemplate axiomatically independent and sometimes mutually contradictory systems side by side, for example, coherence theories distinguish the thought of rationalist philosophers, particularly of Spinoza, Leibniz, and G. W. F. Hegel, along with the British philosopher F. H. Bradley, other alternatives may be found among several proponents of logical positivism, notably Otto Neurath and Carl Hempel. Constructivism views all of our knowledge as constructed, because it does not reflect any external transcendent realities, rather, perceptions of truth are viewed as contingent on convention, human perception, and social experience. It is believed by constructivists that representations of physical and biological reality, including race, sexuality, giambattista Vico was among the first to claim that history and culture along with their meaning were man-made. Vicos epistemological orientation gathers the most diverse rays and unfolds in one axiom – verum ipsum factum – truth itself is constructed, hegel and Marx were among the other early proponents of the premise that truth is, or can be, socially constructed
11.
Logical truth
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Logical truth is one of the most fundamental concepts in logic, and there are different theories on its nature. A logical truth is a statement which is true, and remains true under all reinterpretations of its components other than its logical constants and it is a type of analytic statement. All of philosophical logic can be thought of as providing accounts of the nature of logical truth, Logical truths are truths which are considered to be necessarily true. This is to say that they are considered to be such that they could not be untrue and it must be true in every sense of intuition, practices, and bodies of beliefs. However, it is not universally agreed that there are any statements which are necessarily true, a logical truth is considered by some philosophers to be a statement which is true in all possible worlds. This is contrasted with facts which are true in this world, as it has historically unfolded, later, with the rise of formal logic a logical truth was considered to be a statement which is true under all possible interpretations. Empiricists commonly respond to this objection by arguing that logical truths, are analytic, Logical truths, being analytic statements, do not contain any information about any matters of fact. Other than logical truths, there is also a class of analytic statements. The characteristic of such a statement is that it can be turned into a logical truth by substituting synonyms for synonyms salva veritate, can be turned into No unmarried man is married. By substituting unmarried man for its synonym bachelor, in his essay, Two Dogmas of Empiricism, the philosopher W. V. O. Quine called into question the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, in his conclusion, Quine rejects that logical truths are necessary truths. Instead he posits that the truth-value of any statement can be changed, including logical truths, considering different interpretations of the same statement leads to the notion of truth value. The simplest approach to truth values means that the statement may be true in one case, in one sense of the term tautology, it is any type of formula or proposition which turns out to be true under any possible interpretation of its terms. This is synonymous to logical truth, however, the term tautology is also commonly used to refer to what could more specifically be called truth-functional tautologies. Not all logical truths are tautologies of such a kind, Logical constants, including logical connectives and quantifiers, can all be reduced conceptually to logical truth. For instance, two statements or more are logically incompatible if, and only if their conjunction is logically false, one statement logically implies another when it is logically incompatible with the negation of the other. A statement is true if, and only if its opposite is logically false. The opposite statements must contradict one another, in this way all logical connectives can be expressed in terms of preserving logical truth
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Willard Van Orman Quine
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Willard Van Orman Quine was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. He filled the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard from 1956 to 1978, a 2009 poll conducted among analytic philosophers named Quine as the fifth most important philosopher of the past two centuries. This led to his famous quip that philosophy of science is philosophy enough, in philosophy of mathematics, he and his Harvard colleague Hilary Putnam developed the Quine–Putnam indispensability thesis, an argument for the reality of mathematical entities. According to his autobiography, The Time of My Life, Quine grew up in Akron, Ohio and his father, Cloyd R. was a manufacturing entrepreneur and his mother, Harriett E. was a schoolteacher and later a housewife. He received his B. A. in mathematics from Oberlin College in 1930 and his thesis supervisor was Alfred North Whitehead. He was then appointed a Harvard Junior Fellow, which excused him from having to teach for four years. During the academic year 1932–33, he travelled in Europe thanks to a Sheldon fellowship, meeting Polish logicians and members of the Vienna Circle and it was through Quines good offices that Tarski was invited to attend the September 1939 Unity of Science Congress in Cambridge. To attend that Congress, Tarski sailed for the USA on the last ship to leave Danzig before the Third Reich invaded Poland, Tarski survived the war and worked another 44 years in the USA. For the academic year 1964–1965, Quine was a fellow on the faculty in the Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan University, in 1980 Quine received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Humanities at Uppsala University, Sweden. Quine was an atheist when he was a teenager and he had four children by two marriages. Guitarist Robert Quine was his nephew, Quine was politically conservative, but the bulk of his writing was in technical areas of philosophy removed from direct political issues. Quines Ph. D. thesis and early publications were on formal logic, only after World War II did he, by virtue of seminal papers on ontology, epistemology and language, emerge as a major philosopher. By the 1960s, he had worked out his naturalized epistemology whose aim was to answer all questions of knowledge and meaning using the methods. Quine roundly rejected the notion that there should be a first philosophy and these views are intrinsic to his naturalism. Quine could lecture in French, Spanish, Portuguese and German, like the logical positivists, Quine evinced little interest in the philosophical canon, only once did he teach a course in the history of philosophy, on Hume. This distinction was central to logical positivism, like other Analytic philosophers before him, Quine accepted the definition of analytic as true in virtue of meaning alone. Unlike them, however, he concluded that ultimately the definition was circular, in other words, Quine accepted that analytic statements are those that are true by definition, then argued that the notion of truth by definition was unsatisfactory. Quines chief objection to analyticity is with the notion of synonymy, the objection to synonymy hinges upon the problem of collateral information
13.
Waverley (novel)
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Waverley is a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott. Published anonymously in 1814 as Scotts first venture into prose fiction, the book became so popular that Scotts later novels were advertised as being by the author of Waverley. His series of works on similar themes written during the period have become collectively known as the Waverley Novels. It is the time of the Jacobite uprising of 1745 which sought to restore the Stuart dynasty in the person of Charles Edward Stuart, a young English dreamer and soldier, Edward Waverley, is sent to Scotland that year. But Edward has overstayed his leave and is accused of desertion and treason, the highlanders rescue him from his escort and take him to the Jacobite stronghold at Doune Castle, then on to Holyrood Palace, where he meets Bonnie Prince Charlie himself. Encouraged by the beautiful Flora Mac-Ivor, Edward goes over to the Jacobite cause, the battle is recounted in some detail. One of the soldiers who tumbles into the marsh is the Hanoverian Colonel Talbot and this man turns out to be a close friend of his Waverley uncle. When the Jacobite cause fails in 1746, Talbot intervenes to get Edward a pardon and he believed every human was basically decent regardless of class, religion, politics, or ancestry. Tolerance is a theme in his historical works. The Waverley Novels express his belief in the need for progress that does not reject the traditions of the past. He was the first novelist to portray peasant characters sympathetically and realistically, and was equally just to merchants, soldiers, the literary critic Alexander Welsh suggests that Scott exhibits similar preoccupations within his own novels. Welsh writes, The proper heroine of Scott is a blonde and her role corresponds to that of the passive hero - whom, indeed, she marries at the end. She is eminently beautiful, and eminently prudent, like the passive hero, she suffers in the thick of events but seldom moves them. The several dark heroines, no less beautiful, are less restrained from the pressure of their own feelings. They allow their feelings to dictate to their reason, rose is eminently marriageable, Flora is eminently passionate. A different interpretation of character is provided by Merryn Williams, recognising the passivity of the hero, she argues that Scotts women were thoroughly acceptable to nineteenth-century readers. They are – usually – morally stronger than men, but they do not defy them, thus, Flora will defy Waverley but not Fergus to any significant extent, and has some room to manoeuvre, even though limited, only after the latters death. The opening five chapters of Waverley are often thought to be dour and uninteresting, however, John Buchan thought the novel a riot of fun and eccentricity, seemingly a minority opinion. Scott does, however, attempt to be comic, or at least to follow the conventions of the picaresque novel, Scott uses a common humorous reference to the Old Testament story that David and supporting malcontents took refuge from Saul in a cave near the town of Adullam
14.
Ivanhoe
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Ivanhoe /ˈaɪvənˌhoʊ/ is a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott, first published in 1820 in three volumes and subtitled A Romance. At the time it was written it represented a shift by Scott away from fairly realistic novels set in Scotland in the recent past. It has proved to be one of the best known and most influential of Scotts novels, Ivanhoe is set in 12th-century England, with colourful descriptions of a tournament, outlaws, a witch trial and divisions between Jews and Christians. It has also had an important influence on perceptions of Robin Hood, Richard the Lionheart. There have been adaptations for stage, film and television. Ivanhoe is the story of one of the remaining Saxon noble families at a time when the nobility in England was overwhelmingly Norman. It follows the Saxon protagonist, Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, who is out of favour with his father for his allegiance to the Norman king Richard the Lionheart. The story is set in 1194, after the failure of the Third Crusade, King Richard, who had been captured by Leopold of Austria on his return journey to England, was believed to still be in captivity. The legendary Robin Hood, initially under the name of Locksley, is also a character in the story, the character that Scott gave to Robin Hood in Ivanhoe helped shape the modern notion of this figure as a cheery noble outlaw. The book was written and published during a period of increasing struggle for the emancipation of the Jews in England, and there are frequent references to injustices against them. Ivanhoe accompanies King Richard on the Crusades, where he is said to have played a role in the Siege of Acre, and tends to Louis of Thuringia. The book opens with a scene of Norman knights and prelates seeking the hospitality of Cedric and they are guided there by a pilgrim, known at that time as a palmer. Also returning from the Holy Land that same night, Isaac of York, following the nights meal, the palmer observes one of the Normans, the Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert, issue orders to his Saracen soldiers to capture Isaac. The palmer then assists in Isaacs escape from Rotherwood, with the aid of the swineherd Gurth. The palmer is taken by surprise, but accepts the offer, the story then moves to the scene of the tournament, presided over by Prince John. The masked knight declines to reveal himself despite Prince Johns request but is declared the champion of the day and is permitted to choose the Queen of the Tournament. He bestows this honour upon the Lady Rowena, on the second day, at a melee, Desdichado is the leader of one party, opposed by his former adversaries. Desdichados side is hard pressed and he himself beset by multiple foes until rescued by a knight nicknamed Le Noir Faineant
15.
Well-formed formula
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In mathematical logic, a well-formed formula, abbreviated wff, often simply formula, is a finite sequence of symbols from a given alphabet that is part of a formal language. A formal language can be identified with the set of formulas in the language, a formula is a syntactic object that can be given a semantic meaning by means of an interpretation. Two key uses of formulas are in propositional logic and predicate logic, a key use of formulas is in propositional logic and predicate logics such as first-order logic. In those contexts, a formula is a string of symbols φ for which it makes sense to ask is φ true, once any free variables in φ have been instantiated. In formal logic, proofs can be represented by sequences of formulas with certain properties, although the term formula may be used for written marks, it is more precisely understood as the sequence of symbols being expressed, with the marks being a token instance of formula. Thus the same formula may be more than once. They are given meanings by interpretations, for example, in a propositional formula, each propositional variable may be interpreted as a concrete proposition, so that the overall formula expresses a relationship between these propositions. A formula need not be interpreted, however, to be considered solely as a formula, the formulas of propositional calculus, also called propositional formulas, are expressions such as. Their definition begins with the choice of a set V of propositional variables. The alphabet consists of the letters in V along with the symbols for the propositional connectives and parentheses, the formulas will be certain expressions over this alphabet. The formulas are inductively defined as follows, Each propositional variable is, on its own, If φ is a formula, then ¬φ is a formula. If φ and ψ are formulas, and • is any binary connective, here • could be the usual operators ∨, ∧, →, or ↔. The sequence of symbols p)) is not a formula, because it does not conform to the grammar, a complex formula may be difficult to read, owing to, for example, the proliferation of parentheses. To alleviate this last phenomenon, precedence rules are assumed among the operators, for example, assuming the precedence 1. Then the formula may be abbreviated as p → q ∧ r → s ∨ ¬q ∧ ¬s This is, however, If the precedence was assumed, for example, to be left-right associative, in following order,1. ∨4. →, then the formula above would be rewritten as → The definition of a formula in first-order logic Q S is relative to the signature of the theory at hand. This signature specifies the constant symbols, relation symbols, and function symbols of the theory at hand, the definition of a formula comes in several parts. First, the set of terms is defined recursively, terms, informally, are expressions that represent objects from the domain of discourse
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Formal language
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In mathematics, computer science, and linguistics, a formal language is a set of strings of symbols together with a set of rules that are specific to it. The alphabet of a language is the set of symbols, letters. The strings formed from this alphabet are called words, and the words belong to a particular formal language are sometimes called well-formed words or well-formed formulas. A formal language is defined by means of a formal grammar such as a regular grammar or context-free grammar. The field of language theory studies primarily the purely syntactical aspects of such languages—that is. Formal language theory sprang out of linguistics, as a way of understanding the syntactic regularities of natural languages. The first formal language is thought to be the one used by Gottlob Frege in his Begriffsschrift, literally meaning concept writing, axel Thues early semi-Thue system, which can be used for rewriting strings, was influential on formal grammars. The elements of an alphabet are called its letters, alphabets may be infinite, however, most definitions in formal language theory specify finite alphabets, and most results only apply to them. A word over an alphabet can be any sequence of letters. The set of all words over an alphabet Σ is usually denoted by Σ*, the length of a word is the number of letters it is composed of. For any alphabet there is one word of length 0, the empty word. By concatenation one can combine two words to form a new word, whose length is the sum of the lengths of the original words, the result of concatenating a word with the empty word is the original word. A formal language L over an alphabet Σ is a subset of Σ*, that is, sometimes the sets of words are grouped into expressions, whereas rules and constraints may be formulated for the creation of well-formed expressions. In computer science and mathematics, which do not usually deal with natural languages, in practice, there are many languages that can be described by rules, such as regular languages or context-free languages. The notion of a formal grammar may be closer to the concept of a language. By an abuse of the definition, a formal language is often thought of as being equipped with a formal grammar that describes it. The following rules describe a formal language L over the alphabet Σ =, Every nonempty string that does not contain + or =, a string containing = is in L if and only if there is exactly one =, and it separates two valid strings of L. A string containing + but not = is in L if, no string is in L other than those implied by the previous rules
17.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
18.
First-order logic
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First-order logic – also known as first-order predicate calculus and predicate logic – is a collection of formal systems used in mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science. This distinguishes it from propositional logic, which does not use quantifiers, Sometimes theory is understood in a more formal sense, which is just a set of sentences in first-order logic. In first-order theories, predicates are associated with sets. In interpreted higher-order theories, predicates may be interpreted as sets of sets, There are many deductive systems for first-order logic which are both sound and complete. Although the logical relation is only semidecidable, much progress has been made in automated theorem proving in first-order logic. First-order logic also satisfies several metalogical theorems that make it amenable to analysis in proof theory, such as the Löwenheim–Skolem theorem, first-order logic is the standard for the formalization of mathematics into axioms and is studied in the foundations of mathematics. Peano arithmetic and Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory are axiomatizations of number theory and set theory, respectively, no first-order theory, however, has the strength to uniquely describe a structure with an infinite domain, such as the natural numbers or the real line. Axioms systems that do fully describe these two structures can be obtained in stronger logics such as second-order logic, for a history of first-order logic and how it came to dominate formal logic, see José Ferreirós. While propositional logic deals with simple declarative propositions, first-order logic additionally covers predicates, a predicate takes an entity or entities in the domain of discourse as input and outputs either True or False. Consider the two sentences Socrates is a philosopher and Plato is a philosopher, in propositional logic, these sentences are viewed as being unrelated and might be denoted, for example, by variables such as p and q. The predicate is a philosopher occurs in both sentences, which have a structure of a is a philosopher. The variable a is instantiated as Socrates in the first sentence and is instantiated as Plato in the second sentence, while first-order logic allows for the use of predicates, such as is a philosopher in this example, propositional logic does not. Relationships between predicates can be stated using logical connectives, consider, for example, the first-order formula if a is a philosopher, then a is a scholar. This formula is a statement with a is a philosopher as its hypothesis. The truth of this depends on which object is denoted by a. Quantifiers can be applied to variables in a formula, the variable a in the previous formula can be universally quantified, for instance, with the first-order sentence For every a, if a is a philosopher, then a is a scholar. The universal quantifier for every in this sentence expresses the idea that the if a is a philosopher. The negation of the sentence For every a, if a is a philosopher, then a is a scholar is logically equivalent to the sentence There exists a such that a is a philosopher and a is not a scholar
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Plato
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Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. He is widely considered the most pivotal figure in the development of philosophy, unlike nearly all of his philosophical contemporaries, Platos entire work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years. Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his most famous student, Aristotle, Plato laid the foundations of Western philosophy. Alfred North Whitehead once noted, the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. In addition to being a figure for Western science, philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche, amongst other scholars, called Christianity, Platonism for the people, Plato was the innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms in philosophy, which originate with him. He was not the first thinker or writer to whom the word “philosopher” should be applied, few other authors in the history of Western philosophy approximate him in depth and range, perhaps only Aristotle, Aquinas and Kant would be generally agreed to be of the same rank. Due to a lack of surviving accounts, little is known about Platos early life, the philosopher came from one of the wealthiest and most politically active families in Athens. Ancient sources describe him as a bright though modest boy who excelled in his studies, the exact time and place of Platos birth are unknown, but it is certain that he belonged to an aristocratic and influential family. Based on ancient sources, most modern scholars believe that he was born in Athens or Aegina between 429 and 423 BCE. According to a tradition, reported by Diogenes Laertius, Ariston traced his descent from the king of Athens, Codrus. Platos mother was Perictione, whose family boasted of a relationship with the famous Athenian lawmaker, besides Plato himself, Ariston and Perictione had three other children, these were two sons, Adeimantus and Glaucon, and a daughter Potone, the mother of Speusippus. The brothers Adeimantus and Glaucon are mentioned in the Republic as sons of Ariston, and presumably brothers of Plato, but in a scenario in the Memorabilia, Xenophon confused the issue by presenting a Glaucon much younger than Plato. Then, at twenty-eight, Hermodorus says, went to Euclides in Megara, as Debra Nails argues, The text itself gives no reason to infer that Plato left immediately for Megara and implies the very opposite. Thus, Nails dates Platos birth to 424/423, another legend related that, when Plato was an infant, bees settled on his lips while he was sleeping, an augury of the sweetness of style in which he would discourse about philosophy. Ariston appears to have died in Platos childhood, although the dating of his death is difficult. Perictione then married Pyrilampes, her mothers brother, who had served many times as an ambassador to the Persian court and was a friend of Pericles, Pyrilampes had a son from a previous marriage, Demus, who was famous for his beauty. Perictione gave birth to Pyrilampes second son, Antiphon, the half-brother of Plato and these and other references suggest a considerable amount of family pride and enable us to reconstruct Platos family tree
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Cratylus (dialogue)
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Cratylus is the name of a dialogue by Plato. Most modern scholars agree that it was mostly during Platos so-called middle period. The individual Cratylus was the first intellectual influence on Plato, aristotle states that Cratylus influenced Plato by introducing to him the teachings of Heraclitus, according to MW. The subject of Cratylus is the correctness of names, in other words, when discussing a ὄνομα and how it would relate to its subject, Socrates compares the original creation of a word to the work of an artist. An artist uses color to express the essence of his subject in a painting, in much the same way, the creator of words uses letters containing certain sounds to express the essence of a words subject. There is a letter that is best for soft things, one for liquid things and he comments, the best possible way to speak consists in using names all of which are like the things they name, while the worst is to use the opposite kind of names. One countering position, held by Hermogenes, is that names have come due to custom. They do not express the essence of their subject, so they can be swapped with something unrelated by the individuals or communities who use them, the line between the two perspectives is often blurred. During more than half of the dialogue, Socrates makes guesses at Hermogenes request as to where names and these include the names of the Olympian gods, personified deities, and many words that describe abstract concepts. He examines whether, for example, giving names of streams to Cronus, dont you think he who gave to the ancestors of the other gods the names “Rhea” and “Cronus” had the same thought as Heracleitus. Do you think he gave both of them the names of streams merely by chance, the Greek term ῥεῦμα may refer to the flow of any medium and is not restricted to the flow of water or liquids. Many of the words which Socrates uses as examples may have come from an idea originally linked to the name, but have changed over time. Those of which he cannot find a link, he assumes have come from foreign origins or have changed so much as to lose all resemblance to the original word. He states, names have been so twisted in all manner of ways, the final theory of relations between name and object named is posited by Cratylus, a disciple of Heraclitus, who believes that names arrive from divine origins, making them necessarily correct. Socrates rebukes this theory by reminding Cratylus of the imperfection of certain names in capturing the objects they seek to signify, from this point, Socrates ultimately rejects the study of language, believing it to be philosophically inferior to a study of things themselves. ρ is a tool for copying every sort of motion, ι for imitating all the small things that can most easily penetrate everything, φ, ψ. σ, and ζ as all these letters are pronounced with an expulsion of breath, δ and τ as both involve compression and stopping of the power of the tongue when pronounced, they are most appropriate for words indicating a lack or stopping of motion. λ, as the tongue glides most of all when pronounced, γ best used when imitating something cloying, as the gliding of the tongue is stopped when pronounced
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Confucius
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Confucius was a Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history. The philosophy of Confucius emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and his followers competed successfully with many other schools during the Hundred Schools of Thought era only to be suppressed in favor of the Legalists during the Qin Dynasty. Following the victory of Han over Chu after the collapse of Qin, aphorisms concerning his teachings were compiled in the Analects, but only many years after his death. Confuciuss principles had a basis in common Chinese tradition and belief and he championed strong family loyalty, ancestor veneration, and respect of elders by their children and of husbands by their wives. He also recommended family as a basis for ideal government and he espoused the well-known principle Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself, the Golden Rule. Confucius is also a deity in Daoism. According to tradition, three generations before Confucius time, his ancestors had migrated from the Song state to the Lu state, Confucius was a descendant of the Shang dynasty Kings through the Dukes of Song. Confucius family and personal name respectively was Kong Qiu, in Chinese, he is most often known as Kongzi. He is also known by the honorific Kong Fuzi, in the Wade–Giles system of romanization, the honorific name is rendered as Kung Fu-tzu. The Latinized name Confucius is derived from Kong Fuzi, and was first coined by 16th-century Jesuit missionaries to China, within the Analects, he is often referred to simply as the Master. In 1 AD, Confucius was given his first posthumous name, in 1530, he was declared the Extremely Sage Departed Teacher. He is also known separately as the Great Sage, First Teacher and it is generally thought that Confucius was born on September 28,551 BC. His birthplace was in Zou, Lu state and his father Kong He, also known as Shuliang He, was an officer in the Lu military. Kong died when Confucius was three years old, and Confucius was raised by his mother Yan Zhengzai in poverty and his mother would later die at less than 40 years of age. At age 19 he married his wife Qiguan, and a year later the couple had their first child, Qiguan and Confucius would later have two daughters together, one of whom is thought to have died early in her life as a child. Confucius was educated at schools for commoners, where he studied and learned the Six Arts, Confucius was born into the class of shi, between the aristocracy and the common people. When his mother died, Confucius is said to have mourned for three years, as was the tradition, the Lu state was headed by a ruling ducal house. Under the duke were three families, whose heads bore the title of viscount and held hereditary positions in the Lu bureaucracy
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Xun Kuang
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Xun Kuang, also widely known as Xun Zi, was a Chinese Confucian philosopher who lived during the Warring States period and contributed to the Hundred Schools of Thought. A book known as the Xunzi is traditionally attributed to him, Xunzis doctrines were influential in forming the official state doctrines of the Han dynasty, but his influence waned during the Tang dynasty relative to that of Mencius. Xunzi witnessed the chaos surrounding the fall of the Zhou dynasty and rise of the Qin state – which upheld legalistic doctrines focusing on control, by means of law. Unlike other Confucians, Xunzi allowed that penalties could play a legitimate, educated in the state of Qi, Xunzi taught proponents of legalism, including the Qin Chancellor Li Si and Han Fei, and is sometimes considered a precursor to Han Fei or a Legalist himself. In reality, there is little evident influence of Xunzi on Han Fei, like Shang Yang, Xunzi believed that humanitys inborn tendencies were evil and that ethical norms had been invented to rectify people. Xunzis variety of Confucianism therefore has a darker, more flavour than the optimistic Confucianism of Mencius. But like most Confucians, he believed people could be refined through education and ritual. Xunzi mentioned Laozi as a figure for the first time in early Chinese history, herbert Giles and John Knoblock both consider the naming taboo theory more likely. The early years of Xunzis life are enshrouded in mystery, nothing is known of his lineage. Sima Qian records that he was born in Zhao, and Anze County has erected a memorial hall at his supposed birthplace. He was first known at the age of fifty, around 264 BC, Xunzi was well respected in Qi, the King Xiang of Qi honoured him as a teacher and a libationer. It was around this time that Xunzi visited the state of Qin and praised its governance, and debated military affairs with Lord Linwu in the court of King Xiaocheng of Zhao. Later, Xunzi was slandered in the Qi court, and he retreated south to the state of Chu, where Lord Chunshen, in 238 BC, Lord Chunshen was assassinated by a court rival and Xunzi subsequently lost his position. He remained in Lanling, a region in what is todays southern Shandong province, the year of his death is unknown. Ethical Argumentation, A Study in Hsün Tzus Moral Epistemology, in Knechtges, David R. Chang, Taiping. Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese Literature, A Reference Guide, Part Three, Early Chinese Texts, A Bibliographical Guide. Berkeley, Society for the Study of Early China, Institute of East Asian Studies, the Concept of Man in Early China. Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan, the World of Thought in Ancient China
23.
Aristotle
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Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher and scientist born in the city of Stagira, Chalkidice, on the northern periphery of Classical Greece. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, at seventeen or eighteen years of age, he joined Platos Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty-seven. Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, teaching Alexander the Great gave Aristotle many opportunities and an abundance of supplies. He established a library in the Lyceum which aided in the production of many of his hundreds of books and he believed all peoples concepts and all of their knowledge was ultimately based on perception. Aristotles views on natural sciences represent the groundwork underlying many of his works, Aristotles views on physical science profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. Their influence extended from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, some of Aristotles zoological observations, such as on the hectocotyl arm of the octopus, were not confirmed or refuted until the 19th century. His works contain the earliest known study of logic, which was incorporated in the late 19th century into modern formal logic. Aristotle was well known among medieval Muslim intellectuals and revered as The First Teacher and his ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics. All aspects of Aristotles philosophy continue to be the object of academic study today. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues – Cicero described his style as a river of gold – it is thought that only around a third of his original output has survived. Aristotle, whose means the best purpose, was born in 384 BC in Stagira, Chalcidice. His father Nicomachus was the physician to King Amyntas of Macedon. Aristotle was orphaned at a young age, although there is little information on Aristotles childhood, he probably spent some time within the Macedonian palace, making his first connections with the Macedonian monarchy. At the age of seventeen or eighteen, Aristotle moved to Athens to continue his education at Platos Academy and he remained there for nearly twenty years before leaving Athens in 348/47 BC. Aristotle then accompanied Xenocrates to the court of his friend Hermias of Atarneus in Asia Minor, there, he traveled with Theophrastus to the island of Lesbos, where together they researched the botany and zoology of the island. Aristotle married Pythias, either Hermiass adoptive daughter or niece and she bore him a daughter, whom they also named Pythias. Soon after Hermias death, Aristotle was invited by Philip II of Macedon to become the tutor to his son Alexander in 343 BC, Aristotle was appointed as the head of the royal academy of Macedon. During that time he gave not only to Alexander
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Stoicism
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Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy that flourished throughout the Roman and Greek world until the 3rd century AD. Stoicism is predominantly a philosophy of ethics which is informed by its system of logic. It was founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early 3rd century BC. Because of this, the Stoics presented their philosophy as a way of life, to live a good life, one had to understand the rules of the natural order since they taught that everything was rooted in nature. Later Stoics—such as Seneca and Epictetus—emphasized that, because virtue is sufficient for happiness, from its founding, Stoic doctrine was popular during the Roman Empire—and its adherents included the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. It later experienced a decline after Christianity became the religion in the 4th century. Over the centuries, it has seen revivals, notably in the Renaissance, the Stoics provided a unified account of the world, consisting of formal logic, monistic physics and naturalistic ethics. Of these, they emphasized ethics as the focus of human knowledge. A primary aspect of Stoicism involves improving the individuals ethical and moral well-being and this viewpoint was later described as Classical Pantheism. Beginning at around 301 BC, Zeno taught philosophy at the Stoa Poikile, Zenos ideas developed from those of the Cynics, whose founding father, Antisthenes, had been a disciple of Socrates. Zenos most influential follower was Chrysippus, who was responsible for the molding of what is now called Stoicism, later Roman Stoics focused on promoting a life in harmony within the universe, over which one has no direct control. Scholars usually divide the history of Stoicism into three phases, Early Stoa, from the founding of the school by Zeno to Antipater, middle Stoa, including Panaetius and Posidonius. Late Stoa, including Musonius Rufus, Seneca, Epictetus, no complete work by any Stoic philosopher survives from the first two phases of Stoicism. Only Roman texts from the Late Stoa survive, diodorus Cronus, who was one of Zenos teachers, is considered the philosopher who first introduced and developed an approach to logic now known as propositional logic. This is an approach to logic based on statements or propositions, rather than terms, later, Chrysippus developed a system that became known as Stoic logic and included a deductive system, Stoic Syllogistic, which was considered a rival to Aristotles Syllogistic. New interest in Stoic logic came in the 20th century, when important developments in logic were based on propositional logic, susanne Bobzien wrote, The many close similarities between Chrysippus philosophical logic and that of Gottlob Frege are especially striking. The Stoics held that all being – though not all things – is material and they accepted the distinction between concrete bodies and abstract ones, but rejected Aristotles belief that purely incorporeal being exists. Thus, they accepted Anaxagoras idea that if an object is hot, but, unlike Aristotle, they extended the idea to cover all accidents
25.
Scholasticism
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It originated as an outgrowth of and a departure from Christian monastic schools at the earliest European universities. The Scholastic thought is known for rigorous conceptual analysis and the careful drawing of distinctions. Because of its emphasis on rigorous dialectical method, scholasticism was eventually applied to other fields of study. Some of the figures of scholasticism include Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard, Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Bonaventure. Important work in the tradition has been carried on well past Aquinass time, for instance by Francisco Suárez and Luis de Molina. The terms scholastic and scholasticism derive from the Latin word scholasticus and the latter from the Greek σχολαστικός, forerunners of Christian scholasticism were Islamic Ilm al-Kalām, literally science of discourse, and Jewish philosophy, especially Jewish Kalam. The first significant renewal of learning in the West came with the Carolingian Renaissance of the Early Middle Ages, charlemagne, advised by Peter of Pisa and Alcuin of York, attracted the scholars of England and Ireland. By decree in AD787, he established schools in every abbey in his empire and these schools, from which the name scholasticism is derived, became centers of medieval learning. During this period, knowledge of Ancient Greek had vanished in the west except in Ireland, Irish scholars had a considerable presence in the Frankish court, where they were renowned for their learning. Among them was Johannes Scotus Eriugena, one of the founders of scholasticism, Eriugena was the most significant Irish intellectual of the early monastic period and an outstanding philosopher in terms of originality. He had considerable familiarity with the Greek language and translated works into Latin, affording access to the Cappadocian Fathers. The other three founders of scholasticism were the 11th-century scholars Peter Abelard, Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury and Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury and this period saw the beginning of the rediscovery of many Greek works which had been lost to the Latin West. As early as the 10th century, scholars in Spain had begun to gather translated texts and, in the half of that century. After a successful burst of Reconquista in the 12th century, Spain opened even further for Christian scholars, as these Europeans encountered Islamic philosophy, they opened a wealth of Arab knowledge of mathematics and astronomy. Scholars such as Adelard of Bath traveled to Spain and Sicily, translating works on astronomy and mathematics, at the same time, Anselm of Laon systematized the production of the gloss on Scripture, followed by the rise to prominence of dialectic in the work of Abelard. Peter Lombard produced a collection of Sentences, or opinions of the Church Fathers and other authorities The 13th, the early 13th century witnessed the culmination of the recovery of Greek philosophy. Schools of translation grew up in Italy and Sicily, and eventually in the rest of Europe, powerful Norman kings gathered men of knowledge from Italy and other areas into their courts as a sign of their prestige. His work formed the basis of the commentaries that followed
26.
Averroes
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Ibn Rushd, full name, often Latinized as Averroes, was a medieval Andalusian polymath. Ibn Rushd was born in Córdoba, Al Andalus, and died at Marrakesh in present-day Morocco and his body was interred in his family tomb at Córdoba. The 13th-century philosophical movement in Latin Christian and Jewish tradition based on Ibn Rushds work is called Averroism, Ibn Rushd was a defender of Aristotelian philosophy against Ashari theologians led by Al-Ghazali. Although highly regarded as a scholar of the Maliki school of Islamic law. Whereas al-Ghazali believed that any act of a natural phenomenon occurred only because God willed it to happen. Ibn Rushd had a impact on Christian Europe, being known by the sobriquet the Commentator for his detailed emendations to Aristotle. Latin translations of Ibn Rushds work led the way to the popularization of Aristotle, Averroes is the Medieval Latin form of the Hebrew translation Aben Rois or Rosh of the Arabic Ibn Rushd. It is also seen as Averroës, Averrhoës, or Averroès to mark that the o and e are separate vowels, Ibn Rushd was born in Córdoba to a family with a long and well-respected tradition of legal and public service. His grandfather Abu Al-Walid Muhammad was chief judge of Córdoba under the Almoravids and his father, Abu Al-Qasim Ahmad, held the same position until the Almoravids were replaced by the Almohads in 1146. Ibn Rushds education followed a path, beginning with studies in Hadith, linguistics, jurisprudence. Throughout his life he wrote extensively on philosophy and religion, attributes of God, origin of the universe, metaphysics and it is generally believed that he was once tutored by Ibn Bajjah. His medical education was directed under Abu Jafar ibn Harun of Trujillo in Seville, Ibn Rushd began his career with the help of Ibn Tufail, the author of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan and philosophic vizier of Almohad king Abu Yaqub Yusuf who was an amateur of philosophy and science. It was Ibn Tufail who introduced him to the court and to Ibn Zuhr, the great Muslim physician, who became Ibn Rushds teacher and friend. He said that if someone took on these books who could summarize them and clarify their aims after first thoroughly understanding them himself, if you have the energy, Ibn Tufayl told me, you do it. Im confident you can, because I know what a good mind and devoted character you have and you understand that only my great age, the cares of my office — and my commitment to another task that I think even more vital — keep me from doing it myself. Ibn Rushd also studied the works and philosophy of Ibn Bajjah, however, while the thought of his mentors Ibn Tufail and Ibn Bajjah were mystic to an extent, the thought of Ibn Rushd was purely rationalist. Together, the three men are considered the greatest Andalusian philosophers, Ibn Rushd devoted the next 30 years to his philosophical writings. In 1160, Ibn Rushd was made Qadi of Seville and he served in many court appointments in Seville, Cordoba, sometime during the reign of Yaqub al-Mansur, Averroess political career was abruptly ended and he faced severe criticism from the Fuqaha of the time
27.
Ibn Khaldun
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Ibn Khaldun was a North African Arab historiographer and historian. He is claimed as a forerunner of the disciplines of sociology. He is best known for his book, the Muqaddimah or Prolegomena, the book influenced 17th-century Ottoman historians like Kâtip Çelebi, Ahmed Cevdet Pasha and Mustafa Naima who used the theories in the book to analyze the growth and decline of the Ottoman Empire. 19th-century European scholars also acknowledged the significance of the book and considered Ibn Khaldun as one of the greatest philosophers of the Middle Ages, Ibn Khalduns life is relatively well-documented, as he wrote an autobiography in which numerous documents regarding his life are quoted word-for-word. His family, which many high offices in Andalusia, had emigrated to Tunisia after the fall of Seville to the Reconquista in AD1248. Under the Tunisian Hafsid dynasty some of his family held office, Ibn Khaldūns father and grandfather however withdrew from political life. His brother, Yahya Khaldun, was also a historian who wrote a book on the Abdalwadid dynasty, and who was assassinated by a rival for being the official historiographer of the court. In his own words, And our ancestry is from Hadhramaut, from the Arabs of Yemen, via Wail ibn Hujr also known as Hujr ibn Adi, from the best of the Arabs, well-known and respected. However, the biographer Mohammad Enan questions his claim, suggesting that his family may have been Muladis who pretended to be of Arab origin in order to gain social status. Enan also mentions a well documented past tradition, concerning certain Berber groups, the motive of such an invention was always the desire for political and societal ascendancy. Some speculate this of the Khaldun family, they elaborate that Ibn Khaldun himself was the product of the same Berber ancestry as the majority of his birthplace. Even in the times when Berbers were ruling, the reigns of Al-Marabats and al-Mowahids, the Ibn Khalduns did not reclaim their Berber heritage. Khalduns tracing of his own genealogy and surname are thought to be the strongest indication of Arab Yemenite ancestry and his familys high rank enabled Ibn Khaldun to study with the best teachers in Maghreb. He received a classical Islamic education, studying the Quran which he memorized by heart, Arabic linguistics and he received certification for all these subjects. The mathematician and philosopher, Al-Abili of Tlemcen, introduced him to mathematics, logic and philosophy, at the age of 17, Ibn Khaldūn lost both his parents to the Black Death, an intercontinental epidemic of the plague that hit Tunis in 1348–1349. Following family tradition, Ibn Khaldūn strove for a political career, Ibn Khaldūns autobiography is the story of an adventure, in which he spends time in prison, reaches the highest offices and falls again into exile. In 1352, Abū Ziad, the Sultan of Constantine, marched on Tunis, Ibn Khaldūn, in any case unhappy with his respected but politically meaningless position, followed his teacher Abili to Fez. Here the Marinid sultan Abū Inan Fares I appointed him as a writer of royal proclamations, in 1357 this brought the 25-year-old a 22-month prison sentence
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Thomas Hobbes
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Thomas Hobbes, in some older texts Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, was an English philosopher who is considered one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book Leviathan, which established the social theory that has served as the foundation for most later Western political philosophy. Thomas Hobbes was born at Westport, now part of Malmesbury in Wiltshire, England, born prematurely when his mother heard of the coming invasion of the Spanish Armada, Hobbes later reported that my mother gave birth to twins, myself and fear. His childhood is almost completely unknown, and his mothers name is unknown and his father, Thomas Sr. was the vicar of Charlton and Westport. Thomas Hobbes, the younger, had a brother Edmund, about two years older, and a sister, Thomas Sr. was involved in a fight with the local clergy outside his church, forcing him to leave London and abandon the family. The family was left in the care of Thomas Sr. s older brother, Francis, Hobbes was a good pupil, and around 1603 he went up to Magdalen Hall, the predecessor college to Hertford College, Oxford. The principal John Wilkinson was a Puritan, and he had influence on Hobbes. At university, Hobbes appears to have followed his own curriculum and he did not complete his B. A. Hobbes became a companion to the younger William and they both took part in a grand tour of Europe in 1610. Hobbes was exposed to European scientific and critical methods during the tour and it has been argued that three of the discourses in the 1620 publication known as Horea Subsecivae, Observations and Discourses, also represent the work of Hobbes from this period. Although he associated with figures like Ben Jonson and briefly worked as Francis Bacons amanuensis. His employer Cavendish, then the Earl of Devonshire, died of the plague in June 1628, the widowed countess dismissed Hobbes but he soon found work, again as a tutor, this time to Gervase Clifton, the son of Sir Gervase Clifton, 1st Baronet. This task, chiefly spent in Paris, ended in 1631 when he found work with the Cavendish family, tutoring William. Over the next seven years, as well as tutoring, he expanded his own knowledge of philosophy and he visited Florence in 1636 and was later a regular debater in philosophic groups in Paris, held together by Marin Mersenne. Hobbess first area of study was an interest in the doctrine of motion. Despite his interest in this phenomenon, he disdained experimental work as in physics and he went on to conceive the system of thought to the elaboration of which he would devote his life. He then singled out Man from the realm of Nature and plants, finally he considered, in his crowning treatise, how Men were moved to enter into society, and argued how this must be regulated if Men were not to fall back into brutishness and misery. Thus he proposed to unite the separate phenomena of Body, Man, Hobbes came home, in 1637, to a country riven with discontent which disrupted him from the orderly execution of his philosophic plan. However, by the end of the Short Parliament in 1640, he had written a treatise called The Elements of Law, Natural
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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
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Leibnizs notation has been widely used ever since it was published. It was only in the 20th century that his Law of Continuity and he became one of the most prolific inventors in the field of mechanical calculators. He also refined the number system, which is the foundation of virtually all digital computers. Leibniz, along with René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, was one of the three great 17th-century advocates of rationalism and he wrote works on philosophy, politics, law, ethics, theology, history, and philology. Leibnizs contributions to this vast array of subjects were scattered in various learned journals, in tens of thousands of letters and he wrote in several languages, but primarily in Latin, French, and German. There is no complete gathering of the writings of Leibniz in English, Gottfried Leibniz was born on July 1,1646, toward the end of the Thirty Years War, in Leipzig, Saxony, to Friedrich Leibniz and Catharina Schmuck. Friedrich noted in his journal,21. Juny am Sontag 1646 Ist mein Sohn Gottfried Wilhelm, post sextam vespertinam 1/4 uff 7 uhr abents zur welt gebohren, in English, On Sunday 21 June 1646, my son Gottfried Wilhelm is born into the world a quarter after six in the evening, in Aquarius. Leibniz was baptized on July 3 of that year at St. Nicholas Church, Leipzig and his father died when he was six and a half years old, and from that point on he was raised by his mother. Her teachings influenced Leibnizs philosophical thoughts in his later life, Leibnizs father had been a Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Leipzig, and the boy later inherited his fathers personal library. He was given access to it from the age of seven. Access to his fathers library, largely written in Latin, also led to his proficiency in the Latin language and he also composed 300 hexameters of Latin verse, in a single morning, for a special event at school at the age of 13. In April 1661 he enrolled in his fathers former university at age 15 and he defended his Disputatio Metaphysica de Principio Individui, which addressed the principle of individuation, on June 9,1663. Leibniz earned his masters degree in Philosophy on February 7,1664, after one year of legal studies, he was awarded his bachelors degree in Law on September 28,1665. His dissertation was titled De conditionibus, in early 1666, at age 19, Leibniz wrote his first book, De Arte Combinatoria, the first part of which was also his habilitation thesis in Philosophy, which he defended in March 1666. His next goal was to earn his license and Doctorate in Law, in 1666, the University of Leipzig turned down Leibnizs doctoral application and refused to grant him a Doctorate in Law, most likely due to his relative youth. Leibniz then enrolled in the University of Altdorf and quickly submitted a thesis, the title of his thesis was Disputatio Inauguralis de Casibus Perplexis in Jure. Leibniz earned his license to practice law and his Doctorate in Law in November 1666 and he next declined the offer of an academic appointment at Altdorf, saying that my thoughts were turned in an entirely different direction
