Processes

By Emmet, Dorothy

A process is a course of change with a direction and internal order, where one stage leads on to the next. Processes can be physical (such as atomic ...

Process philosophy

By Griffin, David Ray

In the broad sense, the term ‘process philosophy’ refers to all worldviews holding that process or becoming is more fundamental than unchanging being. For example, an anthology titled ...

Process theism

By Basinger, David

Process theism is a twentieth-century school of theological thought that offers a nonclassical understanding of the relationship between God and the world. Classical Christian theists maintain that God ...

Illicit process, fallacy of

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 ...

Phenomenological movement

By Embree, Lester

The phenomenological movement is a century-old international movement in philosophy that has penetrated most of the cultural disciplines, especially psychiatry and sociology. It began in Germany with the ...

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 ...

Buddhist philosophy, Korean

By Cho, Sungtaek

Buddhism was transmitted to the Korean peninsula from China in the middle of the fourth century ad. Korea at this time was divided into three kingdoms: Kokuryô, ...

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 ...

Jaina philosophy

By Soni, Jayandra

The issues in Jaina philosophy developed concurrently with those that emerged in Buddhist and Hindu philosophy. The period from the second century bc to about the tenth ...

Vision

By Egan, Frances

Vision is the most studied sense. It is our richest source of information about the external world, providing us with knowledge of the shape, size, distance, colour and ...

Bergson, Henri-Louis (1859–1941)

By Lacey, A.R.

So far as he can be classified, Bergson would be called a ‘process philosopher’, emphasizing the primacy of process and change rather than of the conventional solid objects ...

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. ...

Psychologism

By Porta, Mario González

Psychologism is a form of reductionism, either of a certain discipline to psychology, or of a certain type of objects to psychological entities, whereby a certain consensus believes ...

Introspection, psychology of

By Von Eckhardt, Barbara

Introspection is the process of directly examining one’s own conscious mental states and processes. Since the seventeenth century, there has been considerable disagreement on the scope, nature and ...

Linear logic

By Bierman, G.M.

Linear logic was introduced by Jean-Yves Girard in 1987. Like classical logic it satisfies the law of the excluded middle and the principle of double negation, but, unlike ...

Embodied cognition

By Rupert, Rob

The embodied view of cognition emphasizes the contribution of nonneural factors to the production of intelligent behaviour and to the shaping of conscious experience. Such factors include (a) ...

Vision

Vision is the most studied sense. It is our richest source of information about the external world, providing us with knowledge of the shape, size, distance, colour and ...

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770–1831)

Hegel was the last of the main representatives of a philosophical movement known as German Idealism, which developed towards the end of the eighteenth century primarily as a ...

Aristotle (384–322 BC)

By Irwin, T.H.

Aristotle of Stagira is one of the two most important philosophers of the ancient world, and one of the four or five most important of any time or ...

Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939)

By Hopkins, James

Freud developed the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, one of the most influential schools of psychology and psychotherapy of the twentieth century. He established a relationship with his ...

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770–1831)

By Horstmann, Rolf-peter
Translated by Michael-Rushmer, Jane

Hegel was the last of the main representatives of a philosophical movement known as German Idealism, which developed towards the end of the eighteenth century primarily as a ...

Learning

By Glymour, Clark

Learning is the acquisition of some true belief or skill through experience. Rationalist/idealist philosophers held that the very constitution of thought guarantees that fundamental laws hold of the ...

Abstraction

Knowledge, causal theory of

By Swain, Marshall

Epistemologists have always recognized the importance of causal processes in accounting for our knowledge of things. In discussions of perception, memory and reasoning, for example, it is commonly ...