State, the

By Nicholson, Peter P.

States are inescapable, powerful and fundamentally important in the modern world. They spend a substantial portion of their members’ wealth; they tax, confiscate or compulsorily purchase private property; ...

Global Justice

By Tan, Kok-Chor

For introductions to the current debate on global justice, the obvious entries to start with are Simon Caney’s Global Justice, recent work on and Charles Beitz’s International Relations, ...

Armstrong, David Malet (1926–2014)

By Jackson, Frank

David Armstrong was born in Melbourne, and studied philosophy at the Universities of Sydney and Oxford. He returned to Australia to teach at the University of Melbourne and ...

Anarchism

By Crowder, George

Anarchism is the view that a society without the state, or government, is both possible and desirable. Although there have been intimations of the anarchist outlook throughout history, ...

Propositional attitudes

By Oppy, Graham

Examples of propositional attitudes include the belief that snow is white, the hope that Mt Rosea is twelve miles high, the desire that there should be snow at ...

Subjectivity

By Francescotti, Robert

Consider those aspects of the world that are the way they are in virtue of how we think about them, or the way we feel about them, or ...

Free logics, philosophical issues in

By Lambert, Karel

The expression ‘free logic’ is a contraction of the more cumbersome ‘logic free of existence assumptions with respect to both its general terms (predicates) and its singular terms’. ...

Determinism and indeterminism

By Butterfield, Jeremy

Over the centuries, the doctrine of determinism has been understood, and assessed, in different ways. Since the seventeenth century, it has been commonly understood as the doctrine that ...

Determinism and indeterminism

Over the centuries, the doctrine of determinism has been understood, and assessed, in different ways. Since the seventeenth century, it has been commonly understood as the doctrine that ...

Consciousness, Higher-Order Theories of

By Brown, Richard

Higher-order theories are theories of phenomenal consciousness. Phenomenal consciousness is the property of there being something that it is like for one to have an experience. Something that ...

War and peace, philosophy of

By Nardin, Terry

The war/peace dichotomy is a recurrent one in human thought and the range of experience it interprets is vast. Images of war and peace permeate religion, literature and ...

Geulincx, Arnold (1624–69)

By Verbeek, Theo

Rediscovered in the middle of the nineteenth century, for a long time it was only because of his relation with other more conspicuous philosophers, such as Spinoza, Leibniz ...

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 ...

Moral judgement

By Cullity, Garrett

The term ‘moral judgement’ can refer to an activity, a state, a state-content, a capacity or a virtue. The activity of moral judgement is that of thinking about ...

Moral judgement

The term ‘moral judgement’ can refer to an activity, a state, a state-content, a capacity or a virtue. The activity of moral judgement is that of thinking about ...

Happiness

By Besser, Lorraine L.

Happiness is a fundamental, prudential value. It is something good for the person who has it. Most philosophers accept that there is a difference between happiness and well-being, ...

Credences

An individual’s credence in a proposition is a measure of the strength of their belief in that proposition; that is, it measures how confident they are in that ...

Recursion theorem

Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst (1768–1834)

By Meckenstock, Gunter
Translated by Finlayson, J.G.

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher was the most notable German-speaking protestant theologian of the nineteenth century. He gave significant impetus to the re-orientation of theology after the Age of ...

Artistic interpretation

By Goldman, Alan H.

Interpretation aims to advance understanding by providing explanations of various kinds. In art, it should aim to maximize our understanding and appreciation of a work, and enable us ...

Presupposition

By Rumfitt, Ian

There are various senses in which one statement may be said to ‘presuppose’ another, senses which are in permanent danger of being confused. Prominent among them are Strawsonian ...

Epiphenomenalism

By Campbell, Keith; Smith, Nicholas J.J.

Epiphenomenalism is a theory concerning the relation between the mental and physical realms, regarded as radically different in nature. The theory holds that only physical states have causal ...

Ducasse, Curt John (1881–1969)

By Madden, Edward H.

Ducasse was a highly systematic philosopher and scarcely any field or topic escaped his attention. He criticized Hume’s account of causality, advocated ‘soft determinism’ and developed an ‘adverbial’ ...

Bible, Hebrew

By Cohn-Sherbok, Dan

Although the Bible is not a work of systematic philosophy, it none the less contains a wide variety of philosophical and theological ideas which have served as the ...

Sensations

By Myin, Erik; Zahidi, Karim

Apart from the common use of ‘sensation’ to refer to bodily feelings, the word has been adopted by philosophers and scientists to talk about specific feelings arising from ...