Metaethics

By Finlay, Stephen

A tripartite distinction is often drawn in moral philosophy between (i) applied ethics, (ii) normative ethical theory, and (iii) metaethics. Applied ethics seeks answers to moral questions about ...

Metaepistemology

By Gerken, Mikkel

Metaepistemology may be partly characterized as the study of the nature, aims, methods and legitimacy of epistemology. Given such a characterization, most epistemological views and theories have an ...

Knowing how to

By Navarro, Jesús

Knowledge attributions of the form ‘knowledge-how to’ (or ‘know-how’ for short) seem to relate agents to action types, in contrast to ‘knowledge-that’ attributions, which relate them to true ...

Bradley, Francis Herbert (1846–1924)

By Basile, Pierfrancesco

Francis Herbert Bradley (1846–1924) was the most distinguished exponent of British Idealism, a movement of thought that became dominant in Britain between the end of the nineteenth and ...

Hindu philosophy

By Clear, Edeltraud Harzer

Hindu philosophy is the longest surviving philosophical tradition in India. We can recognize several historical stages. The earliest, from around 700 bc, was the proto-philosophical period, when ...

Probability theory and epistemology

By Loewer, Barry

The primary uses of probability in epistemology are to measure degrees of belief and to formulate conditions for rational belief and rational change of belief. The degree of ...

Comte, Isidore-Auguste-Marie-François-Xavier (1798–1857)

By Kremer-marietti, Angele
Translated by Pickering, Mary

The French philosopher and social theorist Auguste Comte is known as the originator of sociology and ‘positivism’, a philosophical system by which he aimed to discover and perfect ...

Epistemology in Islamic philosophy

By Inati, Shams C.

Muslim philosophers agree that knowledge is possible. Knowledge is the intellect’s grasp of the immaterial forms, the pure essences or universals that constitute the natures of things, and ...

Holism and individualism in history and social science

By Bhargava, Rajeev

Methodological individualists such as Mill, Weber, Schumpeter, Popper, Hayek and Elster argue that all social facts must be explained wholly and exhaustively in terms of the actions, beliefs ...

Mind, philosophy of

By Jackson, Frank; Rey, Georges

‘Philosophy of mind’, and ‘philosophy of psychology’ are two terms for the same general area of philosophical inquiry: the nature of mental phenomena and their connection with behaviour ...

Frege, Gottlob (1848–1925)

By George, Alexander; Heck, Richard

A German philosopher-mathematician, Gottlob Frege was primarily interested in understanding both the nature of mathematical truths and the means whereby they are ultimately to be justified. In general, ...

Poincaré, Jules Henri (1854–1912)

By Stump, David J.

Although primarily a mathematician, Henri Poincaré wrote and lectured extensively on astronomy, theoretical physics, philosophy of science and philosophy of mathematics at the turn of the century. In ...

Philosophy of nanoscience and nanotechnology

Nanoscience and nanotechnology are two interrelated fields of study centred on designing, synthesising, analysing, and investigating nanoscale materials, their properties, and their behaviours. Nanoscale materials are materials with ...

Buddhism, Yogācāra school of

By Lusthaus, Dan

Yogācāra is one of the two schools of Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism. Its founding is ascribed to two brothers, Asaṅga and Vasubandhu, but its basic tenets and doctrines were ...

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 ...

Social epistemology

Social epistemology encompasses the study of the social dimensions of knowledge acquisition and transmission (Palermos and Pritchard 2013), the evaluation of beliefs and belief-forming mechanisms in their social ...

Epistemology, history of

By Pappas, George S.

Epistemology has always been concerned with issues such as the nature, extent, sources and legitimacy of knowledge. Over the course of western philosophy, philosophers have concentrated sometimes on ...

Logic in Islamic philosophy

By Black, Deborah L.

Islamic logic was inspired primarily by Aristotle’s logical corpus, the Organon (which according to a late Greek taxonomy also included the Rhetoric and Poetics). Islamic authors were also ...

Disjunctivism

By Fish, William

The disjunctivist claims that the mental states involved in a case of successful – “veridical” – perception of an object differ from those involved in a hallucinatory experience ...