Continuants

By Le Poidevin, Robin

There is a common-sense distinction between terms such as ‘statue’ or ‘chair’ on the one hand, and ‘concert’ or ‘war’ on the other. A long-standing tradition in metaphysics ...

Continuous set

Continuum hypothesis

By Tiles, Mary

The ‘continuum hypothesis’ (CH) asserts that there is no set intermediate in cardinality (‘size’) between the set of real numbers (the ‘continuum’) and the set of natural numbers. ...

Continuity theorem

Continuum hypothesis

Generalized continuum hypothesis

Brouwer’s continuity theorem

Renaissance philosophy

By Ashworth, E.J.

The term ‘Renaissance’ means rebirth, and was originally used to designate a rebirth of the arts and literature that began in mid-fourteenth century Italy (see Humanism, Renaissance). Here ...

Mathematics, foundations of

By Detlefsen, Michael

Conceived of philosophically, the foundations of mathematics concern various metaphysical and epistemological problems raised by mathematical practice, its results and applications. Most of these problems are of ancient ...

Japanese philosophy

By Kasulis, Thomas P.

The most distinctive characteristic of Japanese philosophy is how it has assimilated and adapted foreign philosophies to its native worldview. As an isolated island nation, Japan successfully resisted ...

Chinese philosophy

By Hall, David L.; Ames, Roger T.

Any attempt to survey an intellectual tradition which encompasses more than four thousand years would be a daunting task even if it could be presumed that the reader ...

Biology, philosophy of

By Lewens, Tim

Biologists sometimes look perplexed when they are told of the existence of a subject called ‘The Philosophy of Biology’. What, they ask, is there to philosophise about in ...

Epistemology

Epistemology has been traditionally concerned with questions about the nature, value, and scope of knowledge, together with other questions that arise in relation to these. Hence, another name ...

Poland, philosophy in

By Czerkawski, Jan; Stepien, Antoni B.; Wielgus, Stanislaw

Philosophy in Poland has developed largely along the same lines as its Western European counterpart. Yet it also has many aspects which are peculiar to itself. Historically, the ...

Twentieth-century philosophy

By Livingston, Paul M.

Although it is difficult to generalize, twentieth-century philosophy has a number of broadly characteristic and widely shared concerns. These include the ambition to clarify the nature and foundations ...

Global Justice

By Tan, Kok-Chor

For introductions to the current debate on global justice, the obvious entries to start with are Simon Caney’s Global Justice, recent work on and Charles Beitz’s International Relations, ...

Personal identity

By Garrett, Brian

What is it to be the same person today as one was in the past, or will be in the future? How are we to describe cases in ...

Parmenides (early to mid 5th century BC)

By Sedley, David

Parmenides of Elea, a revolutionary and enigmatic Greek philosophical poet, was the earliest defender of Eleatic metaphysics. He argued for the essential homogeneity and changelessness of being, rejecting ...

Discrete set

Bradwardine, Thomas (c.1300–49)

By Sylla, Edith Dudley

Thomas Bradwardine was a leading figure in fourteenth-century philosophy and theology from 1328, when he completed De proportionibus velocitatum in motibus (On the Ratios of Velocities in Motions), ...

Locke, John (1632–1704)

By Ayers, Michael

John Locke was the first of the empiricist opponents of Descartes to achieve comparable authority among his European contemporaries. Together with Newton’s physics, the philosophy of An Essay ...

Personal identity

While many areas of philosophy are concerned with issues of personal identity, the investigation most usually referred to as ‘the problem of personal identity’ within analytic philosophy centers ...

Mechanics, classical

By Wilson, Mark

Understood at its most general, ‘classical mechanics’ covers the approach to physical phenomena that dominated science from roughly the time of Galileo until the early decades of the ...

Mulla Sadra (Sadr al-Din Muhammad al-Shirazi) (1571/2–1640)

By Cooper, John

Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi (Mulla Sadra) is perhaps the single most important and influential philosopher in the Muslim world in the last four hundred years. The author of over ...

Personal identity

By Schechtman, Marya

The ‘problem of personal identity’ as it is usually construed in philosophy is a special case of more general questions about the identity of objects over time. There ...