Natural kinds

Natural kinds are widely understood to be the real classifications of things that actually exist in the world. Natural kinds are the categories we tend to aim for ...

Natural kinds

By Daly, Chris

Objects belonging to a natural kind form a group of objects which have some theoretically important property in common. For example, rabbits form a natural kind, all samples ...

Natural kinds

Objects belonging to a natural kind form a group of objects which have some theoretically important property in common. For example, rabbits form a natural kind, all samples ...

Natural kinds in biology

By Ereshefsky, Marc

Species are seen as paradigmatic natural kinds in biology. However, that assumption poses a potential problem for the traditional account of natural kinds. Many biologists and philosophers argue ...

Social metaphysics

By Mason, Rebecca

Social metaphysics concerns the existence and nature of social entities. Social metaphysicians have focused primarily on the existence and nature of three ontological categories: social facts (e.g. the ...

Philosophy of psychiatry

Psychiatry is a branch of medicine that aims to scientifically understand the causes of mental disorders and develop effective clinical interventions to address the needs of those experiencing ...

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 ...

Conceptual analysis

By Hanna, Robert

A distinction must be made between the philosophical theory of conceptual analysis and the historical philosophical movement of Conceptual Analysis. ...

Life and death

By Harris, John

Problems concerning life and death are among the most dramatic and intractable in philosophy and they feature in all fundamental areas of philosophical inquiry, especially ethics. Most basic ...

Broad, Charlie Dunbar (1887–1971)

By Smith, Peter

A Cambridge contemporary of Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein, C.D. Broad wrote on an exceptional range of topics, including causation, perception, the philosophy of space and time, probability and ...

Beeckman, Isaac (1588–1637)

By Callergård, Robert

Isaac Beeckman (1588–1637) was a Dutch pioneer of early modern atomist and mechanist speculation. By profession a maker of candles and water supply systems, and later head of ...

Hacking, Ian (1936–)

By Reijula, Samuli

Ian Hacking (born in 1936, Vancouver, British Columbia) is most well-known for his work in the philosophy of the natural and social sciences, but his contributions to philosophy ...

Science, philosophy of

By Worrall, John

Science grew out of philosophy; and, even after recognizable, if flexible, interdisciplinary boundaries developed, the most fruitful philosophical investigations have often been made in close connection with science ...

Stem cells

What is a stem cell? The term is a combination of ‘cell’ and ‘stem’. A cell is a major category of living thing, while a stem is a ...

Reference

By Devitt, Michael

It is usual to think that referential relations hold between language and thoughts on one hand, and the world on the other. The most striking example of such ...

Knowledge, concept of

By Hannon, Michael

The word ‘know’ is exceptional for a number of reasons. It is one of the ten most commonly used verbs in English, alongside basic verbs like ‘be’, ‘do’, ...

Naturalized epistemology

Epistemology, the theory of knowledge, is one of the central areas of philosophy. The questions addressed by epistemology have historically included what knowledge is, how we can or ...

Gaṅgeśa (fl. c.1325)

By Phillips, Stephen H.

Gaṅgeśa launched and solidified advances in logic and epistemology within the classical Indian school of Logic, Nyāya. He is traditionally taken to have inaugurated the ‘New’ school, Navya-Nyāya. ...

Intensional logics

By Garson, James W.

Intensional logics are systems that distinguish an expression’s intension (roughly, its sense or meaning) from its extension (reference, denotation). The purpose of bringing intensions into logic is to ...

Reductionism in the philosophy of mind

By Sterelny, Kim

Reductionism in the philosophy of mind is one of the options available to those who think that humans and the human mind are part of the natural physical ...

Functionalism

By Papineau, David

The term ‘functionalism’ means different things in many different disciplines from architectural theory to zoology. In contemporary philosophy of mind, however, it is uniformly understood to stand for ...

David of Dinant (fl. c.1210)

By Mann, William E.

A twelfth- and early thirteenth-century philosopher who may have taught at Paris, David of Dinant was noted for a heretical, pantheistic view that identified God, mind and matter. ...

Marsilius of Inghen (1330–96)

By Bos, E.P.

The theological and philosophical works of Marsilius of Inghen are characterized by a logico-semantical approach in which he followed John Buridan, combined with an eclectic use of older ...

Plutarch of Chaeronea (c. AD 45–c.120)

By Dillon, John

The Greek biographer and philosopher Plutarch of Chaeronea is the greatest Greek literary figure of the first century ad. He is properly called Plutarch of Chaeronea, to ...

Randomness

By Dembski, William A.

The fundamental intuition underlying randomness is the absence of order or pattern. To cash out this intuition philosophers and scientists employ five approaches to randomness. ...