Projectivism

By Blackburn, Simon

‘Projectivism’ is used of philosophies that agree with Hume that ‘the mind has a great propensity to spread itself on the world’, that what is in fact an ...

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 ...

Intuitionism in ethics

By Frazier, Robert L.

To intuit something is to apprehend it directly, without recourse to reasoning processes such as deduction or induction. Intuitionism in ethics proposes that we have a capacity for ...

Ontology

By Craig, Edward

The word ‘ontology’ is used to refer to philosophical investigation of existence, or being. Such investigation may be directed towards the concept of being, asking what ‘being’ means, ...

Wittgensteinian ethics

By Lovibond, Sabina

Although the strict ‘fact-value distinction’ of Wittgenstein’s early period has shaped much subsequent work on ethics, his most profound influence on the subject stems from the later Philosophical ...

Value, ontological status of

By Oliver, Alex

We evaluate persons, characters, mental states, actions, inanimate objects and situations using very abstract terms such as ‘good’, ‘unjust’ and ‘beautiful’, and more concrete terms, such as ‘courageous’, ...

Metaphysics

By Craig, Edward

Metaphysics is a broad area of philosophy marked out by two types of inquiry. The first aims to be the most general investigation possible into the nature of ...

Moral realism

By Dancy, Jonathan

Moral realism is the view that there are facts of the matter about which actions are right and which wrong, and about which things are good and which ...

Objectivity

By Miller, Alexander

Objectivity is one of the central concepts of metaphysics. Philosophers distinguish between objectivity and agreement: ‘Ice-cream tastes nice’ is not objective merely because there is widespread agreement that ...

Naturalism in ethics

By Sturgeon, Nicholas L.

Ethical naturalism is the project of fitting an account of ethics into a naturalistic worldview. It includes nihilistic theories, which see no place for real values and no ...

Frege–Geach problem

By Schroeder, Mark

The Frege–Geach problem is an important and well-known obstacle to metaethical theories belonging to the broadly noncognitivist tradition, including emotivism, prescriptivism and expressivism. It is also sometimes called ...

Moral realism

Moral realism is the view that there are facts of the matter about which actions are right and which wrong, and about which things are good and which ...

Colour and qualia

There are two basic philosophical problems about colour. The first concerns the nature of colour itself. That is, what sort of property is it? When I say of ...

Objectivity

Objectivity is one of the central concepts of metaphysics. Philosophers distinguish between objectivity and agreement: ‘Ice-cream tastes nice’ is not objective merely because there is widespread agreement that ...