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Dictionary of Philosophy - Dagobert D. Runes Category: Language and Literature > Philosophy Date & country: 17/05/2009, UK Words: 2784

Name relation
or meaning relation: The relation between a symbol (formula, word, phrase) and that which it denotes or of which it is the name. Where a particular (Interpreted) system does not contain symbols for formulas, it may be desirable to employ Gödel's device for associating (positive integral) numbers with formulas, and to consider the relation bet...

Name
A word or symbol which denotes (designates) a particular thing is called a proper name of that particular thing. In English and other natural languages there occur also common names (common nouns), such a common name being thought of as if it could serve as a name of anything belonging to a specified class or having specified characteristics. Unde...

Nascency
(Lat. nascens, ppr. of nasci, to be born) A potency which is in process of actualization. See Potency; Potentiality. The term may be applied generally to anything in process of coming into being but it is particularly appropriate to psychological states and feelings. -- L.W.

Nascent
A term applied to a thing or a state of mind at an early stage of its development when it is as yet scarcely recognizable. See Nascency. The term, as applied by H. Spencer (Psychology, § 195) to psychological states, foreshadowed the later theory of the subconscious. See Subconscious; Latency. -- L.W.

Nastika
(Skr.) 'Not orthodox', not acknowledging the authority of the Veda (s.v.) -- K.F.L.

Nativism
Theory that mind has elements of knowledge not derived from sensation. Similar to the common sense theory of T. Reid (1710-1796) and the Scotch School. Introduced as a term by Helmholtz (1821-1894) for the doctrine that there are inherited items in human knowledge which are, therefore, in each and every individual independently of his experience. ...

Natorp, Paul
(1854-1924) Collaborating with Cohen, Natorp applied the transcendental method to an interpretation of Plato, to psychology and to the methodology of the exact sciences. Like Cohen, Natorp really did not contribute to the scientific development of critical philosophy but prepared the way for philosophical mysticism. Cf. Platos Ideenlehre, 1903; Ka...

Natural election
The inherent desire of all things for all other things in a certain order. First employed by Francis Bacon (1561-1626) in a passage quoted by A. N. Whitehead (1861-) from the Silva Silvarum 'there is a kind of election to embrace that which is agreeable and to exclude or expel that which is ingrate'. First erected into a philosophical principle by...

Natural law
(in legal philosophy) A 'higher law' as opposed to the positive law of a state. The rules of natural law were supposed to be universally valid and therefore natural. They are discoverable by reason alone (rationalism). Natural law theories originated in ancient Greek philosophy. From the Renaissance on they were used as an argument for liberal pol...

Natural Realism
In epistemology, the doctrine that sensation and perception can be relied upon to give indubitable evidence of the real existence of the external world. Theory that realism is part of the inherent common sense of mankind. First advanced by T. Reid (1710-1796) and held by his followers of the Scotch school. Also known as the comrnon-sense philosoph...

Natural Selection
This is the corner stone of the evolutionary hypothesis of Charles Darwin. He found great variation in and among types as a result of his extensive biological investigations and accounted for the modifications, not bvysome act of special creation or supernatural intervention, but by the descent, generation after generation, of modified species sel...

Natural Theology
In general, natural theology is a term used to distinguish any theology based upon the fundamental premise of the ability of man to construct his theory of God and of the world out of the framework of his own reason and of reasonable probability from the so-called 'revealed theology' which presupposes that God and divine purposes are not open to u...

Natural
(in Scholasticism) As opposed to supernatural, is that which belongs to (or is due to) a thing according to its nature, as it is natural to man to know; as opposed to voluntary and free, it is that which is done without the command and the advertence of the will, but of nature's own accord, e.g. to sleep, as opposed to chance, it is that which hap...

Naturalism
Naturalism, challenging the cogency of the cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments, holds that the universe requires no supernatural cause and government, but is self-existent, self-explanatory, self-operating, and self-directing, that the world-process is not teleological and anthropocentric, but purposeless, deterministic (except for pos...

Naturalistic ethics
Any view according to which ethics is an empirical science, natural or social, ethical notions being reduced to those of of the natural sciences and ethical questions being answered wholly on basis of the findings of those sciences. -- W.K.F.

Naturalistic fallacy, the
The procedure involved in metaphysical and naturalistic systems of ethics, and said by G. E. Moore and his followers to be a fallacy, of deriving ethical conclusions from non-ethical premises or of defining ethical notions in non-ethical terms. See Naturalistic ethics, Metaphysical ethics. -- W.K.F.

Nature "naturing"
(Natura naturans, in Scholasticism) God. Nature 'natured' (Natura naturata) is the complexus of all created things. Sometimes nature is used for the essence of a thing or for natural causes, and in this sense it is said nature does nothing in vain, for the generation and birth of living beings, for substantial form, and for the effective or passiv...

Nature Philosophers
Name given to pre-Socratic 'physiologers' and to Renaissance philosophers who revived the study of physical processes. Early in the 16th century, as a result of the discovery of new lands, the revival of maritime trade, and the Reformation, there appeared in Europe a renewed interest in nature. Rationalism grown around the authorities of the Bible...

Nature
A highly ambiguous term, of which the following meanings are distinguished by A. O. Lovejoy: The objective as opposed to the subjective. An objective standard for values as opposed to custom, law, convention. The general cosmic order, usually conceived as divinely ordained, in contrast to human deviations from this. That which exists apart from a...

Necessary condition
F is a necessary condition of G if G(x) ?_x F(x). F is a necessary and sufficient condition of G if G(x) = F(x). -- A.C.

Necessary
According to distinctions of modality (q. v.), a proposition is necessary if its truth is certifiable on a priori grounds, or on purely logical grounds. Necessity is thus, as it were a stronger kind of truth, to be distinguished from the contingent truth of a proposition which might have been otherwise. (As thus described, the notion is of course ...

Necessitarianism
(Lat. necessitas, necessity) Theory that every event in the universe is determined by logical or causal necessity. The theory excludes both physical indeterminacy (chance) and psychical indeterminacy (freedom). Necessitarianism, as a theory of cosmic necessity, becomes in its special application to the human will, determinism. See Determinism. -- ...

Necessity
A state of affairs is said to be necessary if it cannot be otherwise than it is. Inasmuch as the grounds of an assertion of this kind may in general be one of three very distinct kinds, it is customary and valuable to distinguish the three types of necessity affirmed as logical or mathematical necessity, physical necessity, and moral necessity. T...

Negation
The act of denying a proposition as contrasted with the act of affirming it. The affirmation of a proposition p, justifies the negation of its contradictory, p', and the negation of p justifies the affirmation of p'. Contrariwise the affirmation of p' justifies the negation of p and the negation of p' justifies the affirmation of p. -- C.A.B. The ...

Negative proposition
See affirmative proposition.

Negative Sensation
Term used by Wundt to designate sensations produced by stimuli below the threshold of positive sensation. See Limits of Sensation. The term has largely been discarded because the existence of such sensations is now generally denied. -- L.W.

Nei sheng
Often used as referring to the man who attained to complete self-cultivation, sage-hood. (Confucius.) -- H.H.

Nei tan
Internal alchemy, as a means of nourishing life, attaining Tao and immortality, including an elaborate system of breathing technique, diet, and the art of preserving unity of thought (tsun i, tsun hsiang, tsun ssu). Also called t'ai hsi. For external alchemy, see Wai tan. (Taoist religion.) -- W.T.C

Neo-Confucianism
See Li hsueh and Chinese philosophy.

Neo-Criticism
The designation of his philosophy used by Cournot, and in the early stage of his thought by Renouvier, who later changed to Personalism as the more fitting title. See also Monadology, The New. -- R.T.F.

Neo-Hegelianism
The name given to the revival of the Hegelian philosophy which began in Scotland and England about the middle of the nineteenth century and a little later extended to America. Outstanding representatives of the movement in England and Scotland are J. H. Stirling, John and Edward Caird, T. H. Green (perhaps more under the influence of Kant), F. H. ...

Neo-Idealism
Primarily a name given unofficially to the Italian school of neo-Hegelianism headed by Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile, founded on a basic distinction that it proposes between two kinds of 'concrete universals' (s.v.). In addition to the Hegelian concrete universal, conceived as a dialectical synthesis of two abstract opposltes, is posited a ...

Neo-intuitionism
See Intuitionism.

Neo-Kantianism
A group of Kantian followers who regard the thing-in-itself or noumenal world as a limiting concept rather than, as did Kant, an existent, though unknowable realm. Reality is for the Neo-Kantians a construct of mind, not another realm. Even Kant's noumenal world is a construct of mind. The phenomenal world is the real and it is the realm of ideas....

Neo-Mohism
Sec Mo che and Chinese philosophy.

Neo-Platonism
New Platonism, i.e. a school of philosophy established perhaps by Ammonius Saccus in the second century A.D., in Alexandria, ending as a formal school with Proclus in the fifth century. See Plotinism. -- V.J.B.

Neo-Pythagoreanism
A school of thought initiated in Alexandria, according to Cicero, by Nigidius Figulus, a Roman philosopher who died in 45 B.C. It was compounded of traditional Pythagorean teachings, various Platonic, Aristotelian and Stoic doctrines, including some mystical and theosophical elements. -- J.J.R.

Neo-Scholasticism
See Scholasticism.

Neology
Literally, the introduction of new words or new meanings. In theology the neologist is the heretic who introduces a new doctrine. In the latter sense, the rationalist was called a neologist by the traditional theologian. -- V.F.

Nescience
(Lat. nesciens, ignorant) A state of ignorance such as is professed by the agnostic. See Agnosticism. -- L.W.

Nestorians
A Christian sect dating from the 5th century. Nestorius, a patriarch of Constantinople 428-431) opposed the designation 'Mother of God' (a declaration of Origen's) applied to Mary, the mother of Jesus. He said that Christ had two distinct natures and that Mary, a human being, could not have delivered anyone but a human. The emphasis is upon the ge...

Neti, neti
(Skr.) 'Not this, not that', famous passage in the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 2.3.6 et al. loc., giving answer to questions as to the nature of brahman (q. v.), thus hinting its indefinability. -- K.F.L.

Neutral Monism
Theory of American New Realism, derived from W. James essay 'Does Consciousness Exist?', Journal of Philosophy, 1904, which reduces the mental as well as physical to relations among neutral entities (i.e. entities which are in themselves neither mental nor physical). The theory is qualitatively monistic in its admission of only one kind of ultimat...

Neutralism
A type of monism which holds that reality is neither mind nor matter but a single kind of stuff of which mind and matter are but appearances of aspects. Spinoza is the classical representative. -- H.H.

New Academy
Name commonly given to what is also called the Third Academy, started by Carneades (214-129 B.C.) who substituted a theory of probability for the principle of doubt which had been introduced into Plato's School by Arcesilaus, the originator of the Second or Middle Academy. The Academy later veered toward eclecticism and eventually was merged with ...

New Realism
A school of thought which dates from the beginning of the twentieth century. It began as a movement of reaction against the wide influence of idealistic metaphysics. Whereas the idealists reduce everything to mind, this school reduced mind to everything. For the New Realists Nature is basic and mind is part and parcel of it. How nature was conceiv...

Newton's Method
The method of procedure in natural philosophy as formulated by Sir Isaac Newton, especially in his Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Book III). These rules are as follows: We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. Therefor...

Nicht-Ich
(Ger. non-ego) Anything which is not the subjective self. Fichte accounted for the not-self in terms of the ontologically posited subjective self. The not-self is the external, outer world opposed to the ego. -- H.H.

Nicolai, Friedrich
(1733-1811) Was one of the followers of Leibniz-Wolffian school which developed an eclectic reconciliation of rationalism and empiricism in a popular form that served to lay a foundation for the Kantian critical philosophy. -- L.E.D

Nicomachus
Of Gerasa in Arabia, a Neo-Py-thagorean (q.v.) philosopher of the second century. -- M.F.

Nidra
(Skr.) Sleep. In Indian philosophy, particularly the Yoga (s.v.), not considered void of mental activity. -- K.F.L.

Nietzsche, Friedrich
(1844-1900) Nietzsche's discovery and description of 'resentment', to mention only one of his major achievements, stamps him as one of the philosophical psychologists of the last century. His critique of the antiquated and false values of the educated middle class led pre-war generations to the pursuit of anethics of more realistic ideals. See Sup...

Nihil ex nihilo
(Lat.) Nothing comes from nothing; a negative statement of the principle of sufficient reason. -- V.J.B.

Nihilism, ethical
The denial of the validity of all distinctions of moral value. As this position involves in effect the denial of possibility of all ethical philosophy, it has seldom been taken by philosophers. In the history of thought, however, a less pure ethical nihilism sometimes appears as an intermediate stage in a philosophy which wishes to deny the validi...

Nihilism
The doctrine that nothing, or nothing of a specified and very general class, exists, or is knowable, or is valuable. Thus Gorgias held that Nothing exists; Even if something did exist it could not be known; Even if it were known this knowledge could not be communicated. Schopenhauer's pessimism and denial of the Will expresses a nihilistic attitu...

Nimbarka
An Indian thinker and theologian of the 12th century A.D., of Vedantic (q.v.), Vishnuite persuasion, who assumed the world and the human soul to be essentially and eternally different from Vishnu, yet constituting a certain unity with him because of: complete dependence. -- K.F.L.

Nirguna
(Skr.) 'Devoid of qualities' (cf. guna), predicated as early as the Upanishads (q.v.) of the Absolute as its in-it-self aspect (cf. saguna). The highest reality is conceived to be of such fulness, such transcendence that it has no part in the manifold of the phenomenal which is mere maya (q.v.) in Sankara's (q.v.) philosophy in so far as it is eso...

Nirvana
(Skr. blown out) The complete extinction of individuality, without loss of consciousness, in the beatific rejoining of the liberated with the metaphysical world-ground. A term used principally by Buddhists though denoting a state the attainment of which has been counselled from the Upanishads (q.v.) on as the summum bonum. It is invariably defined...

Nisus
The creative principle of emergent evolution. See Emergent Evolution. -- R.B.W.

Nitya-vada
(Skr.) The Vedantic (q.v.) theory (vada) which asserts that reality is eternal (nitya), change being unreal. -- K.F.L.

Niyama
(Skr.) The imposing on oneself of good and kind habits, including bathing, eating clean food, steeling the body, contentedness, cheerfulness, study, and piety. -- K.F.L.

Noema
(Ger. Noema) In Husserl: The objective sense of a noesis, together with the character of the sense as posited in a certain manner, as given or emptily intended in a certain manner, etc. For every dimension of the noesis there is a corresponding dimension of the noema. See note under noesis. -- D.C.

Noematic
(Ger. noematisch) In Husserl: Of or pertaining to noema. Noematic sense, see Sense. -- D.C.

Noesis
(Gr. Noesis) In Husserl: 1. That current in the stream of consciousness which is intrinsically intentional in that it points to an object as beyond itself. The noesis animates the intrinsically non -intentional hyletic current in the stream. (See Hyle). 2. A particular instance of the ego cogito. Note: In Husserl's usage, noesis and noema are very...

Noetic
Ihe character some entities have due to their resulting from the activity of nous or reason. Thus those concepts which are non-sensuous and non-empirical but are conceived by reason alone are noetic, the noetic aspects of reality are those which are knowable by reason. In a more general sense, 'noetic' is equivalent to 'cognitive'. -- C.A.B. (Ger....

Nolition
(Lat. nolo, I am unwilling) The state or act of negative volition. -- V.J.B.

Nominal
Hnving to do with names, nouns, words, or symbols rather than with that which would ordinarily be regarded as symbolized by these verbal forms. See Nominalism. -- C.A.B.

Nominalism
(Lat. nominalis, belonging to a name) In scholastic philosophy, the theory that abstract or general terms, or universals, represent no objective real existents, but are mere words or names, mere vocal utterances, 'flatus vocis'. Reality is admitted only to actual physical particulars. Universals exist only post res. Opposite of Realism (q.v.) whic...

Non causa pro causa
, or false cause, is the fallacy, incident to the method of proof by reductio ad absurdum (q. v.), when a contradiction has been deduced from a number of assumptions, of inferring the negation of one of the assumptions, say M, where actually it is one or more of the other assumptions which are false and the contradiction could have been deduced wit...

Non sequitur
is any fallacy which has not even the deceptive appearance of valid reasoning, or in which there is a complete lack of connection between the premisses advanced and the conclusion drawn. By some, however, non sequitur is identified with Aristotle's fallacy of the consequent, which includes the two fallacies of denial of the antecedent (q. v.) and ...

Non-Being
Non-existence or the non-existent; absence or piivation of existence or the existent; absence of determinateness or what is thus indeterminate; unreality of the unreal -- either lack of any reality or what is so lacking (absence, negation, or privation of reality), or lack of a particular kind of reality or what is so lacking; otherness or existe...

Non-centre theory
Ascribes the unity of mind to the fact a number of contemporary mental events are directly interrelated in certain characteristic ways. (Broad). -- H .H.

Non-contradiction, law of
Same as Contradiction, law of (q.v.). -- A.C.

Non-ego
The outer world that has no independent self-existence. (Fichte). -- H.H.

Non-Euclidean geometry
Euclid's postulates for geometry included one, the parallel postulate, which was regarded from earliest times (perhaps even by Euclid himself) as less satisfactory than the others. This may be stated as follows (not Euclid's original form but an equivalent one) Through a given point P not on a given line l there passes at most one line, in the pla...

Non-Natural Properties
A notion which plays an important part in recent intuitionistic ethics. A non-natural property is one which is neither natural, as yellow and pleasantness are, nor metaphysical, as absoluteness and being commanded by God are. It is, then, a property which is apprehended, not by sensation or by introspection, but in some other way, and which is som...

Non-Naturalistic ethics
Any ethical theory which holds that ethical properties or relations are non-natural. See Non-natural properties, Intuitionism. -- W.K.F.

Noology
(Gr. nous, Mind; logos, Science) A term variously used, but without common acceptance, for the science of mind or of its noetic function. According to several 17th century German writers (Colovius, Mejerus, Wagnerus, Zeidlerus) it is the science of the first principles of knowledge. Crusius identified it with psychology. According to Kant it is th...

Norm
(Lat. norma, rule) General: Standard for measure. Pattern. Type. In ethics: Standard for proper conduct. Rule for right action. In axiology: Standard for judging value or evaluation. In aesthetics: Standard for judging beauty or art. Basis for criticism, In logic: Rule for valid inference. In psychology: Class average test score. -- A.J.B.

Normative
(Lat. normatus, pp. of normo, square) Constituting a standard; regulative. Having to do with an established ideal. In scientific method: concerning those sciences which have subject-matters containing values, and which set up norms or rules of conduct, such as ethics, aesthetics, politics. The ideal formulation of any science. Opposite of empirica...

Nota notae est nota rei ipsius
(Lat) That which falls within the comprehension of a 'note', i.e. a known component of a thing, also falls within the comprehension of the thing, an attempted formulation of the supreme principle of syllogistic reasoning on the basis of comprehension rather than extension; Kant is said to have offered this principle in place of the famous extensiv...

Notations, logical
There follows a list of some of the logical symbols and notations found in contemporary usage. In each case the notation employed in articles in this dictionary is given first, afterwards alternative notations, if any. PROPOSITIONAL CALCULUS (see Logic, formal, § 1, and strict implication) pq, the conjunction of p and q, 'p and q.' Instead of...

Nothing
Literally, not a thing. According to Kant, emptiness of concept, object or intuition. According to Hegel, the immediate, indeterminate notion of being. According to Peirce, that which possesses contrary attributes. -- J.K.F. In translation into logical notation, the word nothing is usually to be represented by the negation of an existential quanti...

Notion
(Ger. Begriff) This is a technical term in the writings of Hegel, and as there used it has a dual reference. On one side, it refers to the essence or nature of the object of thought; on the other side, it refers to the true thought of that essence or nature. These two aspects of the Notion are emphasized at length in the third part of the Logic (T...

Notiones communes
Cicero's translation of the phrase koinai ennoiai, by which the Stoics designated such notions as good, evil, and the existence of God, which they regarded as common to all men, and as, in some sense, natural (physikai) or implanted (emphytai), though not, perhaps, in the sense of being literally innate. -- W.K.F.

Noumenal World
The real world as opposed to the appearance world. Kant said of the noumenal realm that it cannot be known. -- V.F.

Noumenon
(Gr. noumenon) In Kant: An object or power transcending experience whose existence is theoretically problematic but must be postulated by practical reason. In theoretical terms Kant defined the noumenon positively as 'the object of a non-sensuous intuition,' negatively as 'not an object of the sensuous intuition;' but since he denied the existence...

Noun
In English and other natural languages, a word serving as a proper or common name (q.v.). -- A.C.

Nous
(Gr. nous) Mind, especially the highest part of mind, viz. reason; the faculty of intellectual (as distinct from sensible) apprehension and of intuitive thought. In its restricted sense nous denotes the faculty of apprehending the first principles of science, the forms, and the eternal intelligible substances, and is thus distinguished from discur...

Null class
See Logic, formal, §7.

Number
The number system of mathematical analysis may be described as follows -- with reference, not to historical, but to one possible logical order. First are the non-negative integers 0, 1, 2, 3, . . . , for which the operations of addition and multiplication are determined. They are ordered by a relation not greater than -- which we shall denote by R...

Numinous
A word coined from the Latin 'numen' by Rudolf Otto to signify the absolutely unique state of mind of the genuinely religious person who feels or is aware of something mysterious, terrible, awe-inspiring, holy and sacred. This feeling or awareness is a mysterium tremendum, beyond reason, beyond the good or the beautiful. This numinous is an a prio...

Nuñez Regüeiro, Manuel
Born in Uruguay, March 21, 1883. Professor of Philosophy at the National University of the Litoral in Argentine. Author of about twenty-five books, among which the following are the most important from a philosophical point of view: Fundamentos de la Anterosofia, 1925; Anterosofia Racional, 1926; De Nuevo Hablo Jesus, 1928; Filosofia Integral, 193...

Nyaya
(Skr.) One of the great systems of Indian philosophy (q.v.) going back to the Nyaya-sutras of Gotama (q.v.) and dealing with the logical approach to reality in a science of reasoning and epistemology designed to accomplish the practical aims of all Indian speculation. Having established perception (pratyaksa), inference (anumana), comparison (upam...

Object
(Lat. objectus, pp. of objicere, to throw over against) In the widest sense, object is that towards which consciousness is directed, whether cognitively or conatively The cognitive or epistemological object of mind is anything perceived, imagined, conceived or thought about. See Eptstemological Object. The conative object is anything desired, avoi...

Objectivation
See Objectivize.

Objective idealism
A name for that philosophy which is based on the theory that both the subject and the object of knowledge are equally real and equally manifestations of the absolute or ideal. Earlier employed to describe Schelling's philosophy. Used independently by Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) and A. N. Whitehead (1861-) to describe their varieties of realism. ...

Objective Reference
The self-transcendence of an immediately given content whereby it is directed toward an object. See Object. -- L.W.

Objective Relativism
Epistemological theory which ascribes real objectivity to all perspectives and appearances of an object of perception. (See A. E. Murphy, 'Objective Relativism in Dewey and Whitehead,' Philosophical Review, Vol. XXXVI, 1927.) -- L.W

Objective rightness
An action is objectively right if it is what the agent really should do, and not merely what he thinks he should do. See Subjective rightness. -- W.K.F.