Fictional entities

By ‘fictional entities’, philosophers principally mean those entities originating in and defined by myths, legends, fairy tales, novels, dramas and other works of fiction. In this sense unicorns, ...

Fictional entities

By Lamarque, Peter

By ‘fictional entities’, philosophers principally mean those entities originating in and defined by myths, legends, fairy tales, novels, dramas and other works of fiction. In this sense unicorns, ...

Models in physics

By Frigg, Roman

In its most common use, the term ‘model’ refers to a simplified and stylised version of the so-called target system, the part or aspect of the world that ...

Meta-metaphysics

By Tahko, Tuomas E.

Meta-metaphysics concerns the nature and methodology of metaphysics and metaphysical inquiry. The emergence of meta-metaphysics as a systematic area of study is relatively recent, going back to the ...

Bentham, Jeremy (1748–1832)

By Harrison, Ross

Jeremy Bentham held that all human and political action could be analysed in terms of pleasure and pain, and so made comprehensible. One such analysis is how people ...

Semantics

By Crimmins, Mark

Semantics is the systematic study of meaning. Current work in this field builds on the work of logicians and linguists as well as of philosophers. Philosophers are interested ...

Two truths in Buddhist philosophy

Contemporary academic Buddhist philosophers are putting forward some tentative proposals to articulate the nature of the two truths in Buddhist philosophy and its relationship with Western philosophical theories ...

Fictionalism in the philosophy of mathematics

By Colyvan, Mark

Fictionalism in the philosophy of mathematics is the view that mathematical statements, such as ‘8+5=13’ and ‘∏ is irrational’, are to be interpreted at face value and, thus ...

Fictionalism in metaphysics

By Caddick Bourne, Emily

Fictionalism proposes that a certain discourse – such as talk about possible worlds, or mathematical talk – is useful, perhaps even indispensable for theoretical purposes, but should not ...

Aesthetics

By Budd, Malcolm

Aesthetics owes its name to Alexander Baumgarten who derived it from the Greek aisthanomai, which means perception by means of the senses (see Baumgarten, A.G.). As the ...

Depiction

By Hopkins, Robert

How do pictures work? How are they able to represent what they do? A picture of a goat, for example, is a flat surface covered with marks, yet ...

Fiction, semantics of

By Howell, Robert

Taken at face value, ‘Anna Karenina is a woman’ seems true. By using Tolstoi’s name ‘Anna Karenina’ and the predicate ‘is a woman’ we appear to refer to ...

Scientific imagination

The scientific imagination is a cognitive ability that is crucial to a number of scientific practices aimed at producing new knowledge of contingent features of the world. Philosophers ...

Mill, John Stuart (1806–73)

By Skorupski, John

John Stuart Mill, Britain’s major philosopher of the nineteenth century, gave formulations of his country’s empiricist and liberal traditions of comparable importance to those of John Locke. He ...

Mill, John Stuart (1806–73)

John Stuart Mill, Britain’s major philosopher of the nineteenth century, gave formulations of his country’s empiricist and liberal traditions of comparable importance to those of John Locke. His ...

Mill, John Stuart (1806–73)

John Stuart Mill, Britain’s major philosopher of the nineteenth century, gave formulations of his country’s empiricist and liberal traditions of comparable importance to those of John Locke. He ...

Truthfulness

By Bok, Sissela

Humans are the only species capable of speech and thus of lies. Choices regarding truthfulness and deceit are woven into all that they say and do. From childhood ...

Art and truth

By Taylor, Paul

Some things are true within the world of a literary work. It is true, in the world evoked by Madame Bovary, that Emma Roualt married Charles Bovary. In ...

Shakespeare and philosophy

By Newman, Ira

Known for their attention to literary logic in general, philosophers have not usually focused on the works of specific literary writers. Yet unanticipated benefits often come from grounding ...

Experiment

By Morrison, Margaret C.

Experiment, as a specific category of scientific activity, did not emerge until the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. Seen primarily as an arbiter in theory choice, there ...

Depiction

How do pictures work? How are they able to represent what they do? A picture of a goat, for example, is a flat surface covered with marks, depicting ...

Goodman, Nelson (1906–98)

By Elgin, Catherine Z.

Nelson Goodman was an American philosopher who wrote important works in metaphysics, aesthetics and epistemology. Throughout his work runs a concern with the ways that the symbols we ...

Goodman, Nelson (1906–98)

Nelson Goodman (1906–98) was a twentieth century American philosopher who made important contributions to metaphysics, aesthetics, epistemology, and the philosophy of science. His works display a concern with ...

Depiction

Article summary ...

Emotion in response to art

By Levinson, Jerrold

The main philosophical questions concerning emotion in response to art are as follows. (1) What kind or type of emotions are had in response to works of art? ...