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

Possible
(Gr. endechomenon) According to Aristotle that which happens usually but not necessanly, hence distinguished both from the necessary and from the impossible. -- G.R.M.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc
(Lat. after this, therefore on account of this) A logical fallacy in which it is argued that a consequent is caused by an antecedent, simply because of the temporal relationship. -- V.J.B.

Postulate
(Lat. postulatum; Ger. Postulat) In Kant (1) An indemonstrable practical or moral hypothesis, such as the reality of God, freedom, or immortality, belief in which is necessary for the performance of our moral duty. (2) Any of three principles of the general category of modality, called by Kant 'postulates of empirical thought.' See Modality and Ka...

Postulate
See Mathematics.

Potency
(Scholastic) Potency is opposed to act as asserted of being. It means the capacity of being or of being thus. Prime matter (q.v.) is pure potency, indetermined in regard to actual corporeal being. Any change or development or, generally, becoming presupposes a corresponding potency. Some potencies belong to the nature of a thing, others are merely...

Potentiality
See Dynamis.

Power
In general: the physical, mental and moral ability to act or to receive an action; the general faculty of doing, making, performing, realizing, achieving, producing or succeeding; ability, capacity, virtue, virtuality, potency, potentiality, faculty, efficacy, efficacity, efficiency, operative causality, process of change or becoming; natural oper...

Practical Imperative
(in Kant's ethics) Kant's famous dictum: 'So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as means only.' -- P.A.S.

Practical Reason
(Kant. Ger. praktische Vernunft) Reason or reflective thought concerned with the issues of voluntary decision and action. Practical reason includes 'everything which is possible by or through freedom.' In general, practical reason deals with the problems of ethics. Kant asserted the primacy of practical reason over theoretical reason, and also ass...

Practical Theology
A special department of conventional theological study, called 'practical' to distinguish it from general theology, Biblical, historical and systematic studies. As the term denotes, subjects which deal with the application of the theoretical phases of the subject come under this division: church policy (ccclesiology), the work of the minister in w...

Practical
(Ger. praktisch) In Husserl: Of or pertaining to such conscious processes as reach fulfilment in behavior. -- D.C.

Practical
Relating to praxis, or conduct. -- G.R.M.

Practice
(Lat. practice, business) The deliberate application of a theory. Formerly, an established custom; the pursuance of some traditional action. Now, the organization of actuality according to some general principle. Sometimes, opposed to, sometimes correlative with, theory (q.v.). -- J.K.F.

Praedicabilia
(Lat. that which is able to be predicated) Since Greek philosophic thinking, the modes of predicating or the concepts to be affirmed of any subject whatsoever, usually enumerated as five: genus, species, difference, property (or, characteristic), and accident. They assumed an important role in the scholastic discussions of universals. According to...

Praedicamenta
(Scholastic) The ten praedicaments are, according to Aristotle (Met. V.) and the Schoolmen substance, quantity, quality, relation, habitus, when, where, location, action, passion. -- R.A.

Pragmatic Realism
The doctrine that knowledge comes by way of action, that to know is to act by hypotheses which result in successful adaption or resolve practical difficulties. According to pragmatic realism, the mind is not outside the realm of nature; in experience the organism and the world are at one; the theories of knowledge which follow the alleged dualism ...

Pragmatic theory of truth
Theory of knowledge which maintains that the truth of a proposition is determined by its practical consequences. See Pragmatism. -- A.C.B.

Pragmaticism
Pragmatism in Peirce's sense. The name adopted in 1905 by Charles S. Peirce (1893-1914) for the doctrine of pragmatism (q.v.) which had been enunciated by him in 1878. Peirce's definition was as follows: 'In order to ascertain the meaning of an intellectual conception one should consider what practical consequences might conceivably result by nece...

Pragmatics
The study of the relations between signs and their interpreters in abstraction from relations to their designata or to other signs. A department of Semiotic (q.v.). -- M.B.

Pragmatism
(Gr. pragma, things done) Owes its inception as a movement of philosophy to C. S. Peirce and William James, but approximations to it can be found in many earlier thinkers, including (according to Peirce and James) Socrates and Aristotle, Berkeley and Hume. Concerning a closer precursor, Shadworth Hodgson, James says that he 'keeps insisting that r...

Prajapati
(Skr.) 'Lord of creatures', originally applied to various Vedic (q.v.) gods, it assumed as early as the Rig Veda the importance of a first philosophical principle of creation, and later of time as suggestive of gestation and productive periodicity. -- K.F.L.

Prajna
(Skr.) Realization, insight into the true and abiding nature of the self, atman, purusa, etc. -- K.F.L.

Prajnana
(Skr.) Intelligence. -- K.F.L.

Prakrti
(Skr.) Primary matter or substance, nature, with purusa (q.v.) one of the two eternal bases of the world according to the Sankhya and the Yogasutras. It is the unconscious yet subtle cause of all material phenomena having three gunas (q.v.), sativa, rajas, tamas. Modifications of this view may be met throughout Indian philosophy. -- K.F.L.

Prama
(Skr.) In its philosophical sense equivalent to pramana (q.v.). -- K.F.L.

Pramana
(Skr. measure) A standard of action or reasoning; knowledge as such or as a logical criterion having validity; a mode of proof, a criterion of truth, such as authority, perception, inference, customarily acknowledged at the outset by all Indian philosophic systems, according to predelection. -- K.F.L.

Prameya
(Skr. to be measured, measurable) The proposition or thing to be proved; the object of knowledge. -- K.F.L.

Prana
(Skr.) Originally meaning 'breath', the word figures in early Indian philosophy as 'vital air' and 'life' itself. Subspecies of it are also recognized, such as apana, udana, etc. -- K.F.L.

Pranayama
(Skr.) Breath (prana) exercise considered, like asana (q.v.), a necessary accessory to proper functioning of mind, manas (q.v.). -- K.F.L.

Prasada
(Skr. inclining towards) Favor, grace, recognized by some Indian religio-metaphysical systems as divine recompense for bhakti (q.v.). -- K.F.L.

Pratyabhijna
(Skr.) 'Recognition', particularly the rediscovery or realization that the divine and ultimate reality is within the human soul or self. One phase of the philosophy of the Trika (q.v.). -- K.F.L.

Pratyahara
(Skr.) Withdrawal of the senses from external objects, one of the psycho-physical means for attaining the object of Yoga (q. v.). For the theory of the senses conceived as powers, see Indriya. -- K.F.L.

Pratyaksa
(Skr.) Perception, evidence of the senses. -- K.F.L.

Praxis
(Gr. praxis) Activity that has its goal within itself; conduct, distinguished from poiesis, or production, which aims at bringing into existence something distinct from the activity itself. -- G.R.M.

Pre-critical
This adjective is commonly applied to all Kant's works prior to the Critique of Pure Reason since they all dogmatically assume knowledge of things-in-themselves to be possible. It is also applied to the sections of the Critique which are thought to have been written earliest, whether or not they imply this assumption. See Kantianism. -- A.C.E.

Preception
(Lat. prae + perceptio, a taking) The anticipatory representation of an object which guides and facilitates the perception of it. -- L.W.

Predestination
The doctrine that all events of man's life, even one's eternal destiny, are determined beforehand by Deity. Sometimes this destiny is thought of in terms of an encompassing Fate or Luck (Roman and Greek), sometimes as the cyclic routine of the wheel of Fortune (Indian), sometimes as due to special gods or goddesses (Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos in...

Predetermination
Purpose set up beforehand. -- V.F.

Predicables
(Lat. praedicabilia) In Aristotle's logic the five types of predicates that may be affirmed or denied of a subject in a logical proposition, viz. definition, genus, differentia, property, and accident. The list of predicables as formulated by Porphyry and later logicians omits definition and includes species. See Definition: Genus; Species; Differ...

Predicament
(Ger. from Lat. praedicamentum, a category) The Kantian name for the innate a priori forms of the understanding, since each category is a way of predicating something of a subject, and since there are twelve types of judgment, Kant enumerated twelve praedicaments: totality, plurality, unity, reality, negation, limitation, substantiality-inherence,...

Predicate
The four traditional kinds of categorical propositions (see Logic, formal, § 4) are: all S is P, no S is P, some S is P, some S is not P. In each of these the concept denoted by S is the subject and that denoted by P is the predicate. Hilbert and Ackermann use the word predicate for a propositional function of one or more variables, Carnap us...

Prediction
1. The process and the expression of an inference made with respect to a future event. 2. According to Plato, a prophetic prediction is a form of inspired 'frenzy' which produces a good result which could not be obtained in a normal state of mind (Phaedrus). The other two forms of this abnormal activity are poetic inspiration and religious exaltat...

Preestablished Harmony
A theory expounded by Leibniz and adopted in modified form by other thinkers after him, to refute the theories of interactionism, occasionalism, and the parallel ism of the Spinozistic type, in psycho-physics. According to its dynamism, matter and spirit, body and soul, the physical and the moral, each a 'windowless', perfect monad (q.v.) in itsel...

Preformationism
(Lat. pre + formare, to form before) The doctrine, according to which, the organs and hereditary characters of living creatures are already contained in the germ either structurally or by subsequent differentiation. Cf. Leibniz (q.v.) (Monadology, sect. 74) who was influenced by Leeuwenhoek's microscopic discoveries and theory of the homunculus (l...

Prehension, Span of
The maximum number of items or groups of items which an individual mind is capable of embracing within the unity of attention. See J. Ward, Psychological Principles, pp. 222 ff. See Attention, Span of. -- L.W.

Prehension
(Lat. prehensus, from prehendere, to seize) In the terminology of A. N. Whitehead, prehension is the process of feeling whereby data are grasped or prehended by a subject. See Process and Reality, Part III -- L.W.

Prehistory
That part of history of which we have no written records, documents or oral accounts, but which is reconstructed from material remains by archeologists and anthropologists.

Premiss
A proposition, or one of several propositions, from which an inference is drawn, or the sentence expressing such a proposition. Following C. S. Peirce, we here prefer the spelling premiss, to distinguish from the word premise in other senses (in particular to distinguish the plural from the legal term premises). -- A.C.

Prenex normal form
See Logic, formal, §3.

Prescience
Supposedly direct acquaintance with the future in contrast to fore-knowledge which is usually considered to be descriptive and inferential (see Fore-Knowledge) Prescience is usually attributed only to God. -- L.W.

Present
That momentary and transient part of time in which all events and experiences take place. Is usually conceived as having no duration ('knife-edge') or small duration ('saddleback'). -- R.B.W.

Presentation
(Lat. praesentatio, a showing, representation) (a) In the narrow sense anything directly present to a knowing mind such as sense data, images of memory and imagination, emotional and hedonic states, etc. See Datum. (b) In the wider sense any object known by acquaintance rather than by description for example, an object of perception or memory. See...

Presentational continuum
(Lat. praesentare, to present) The conception of an individual mind as an originally undifferentiated continuum which becomes progressively differentiated in the course of experience. See article Psychology by J. Ward in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed., also J. Ward Psychological Principles, Ch. IV. -- L.W.

Presentational Immediacy
(Lat. praesens ppr. of praeesse, and in + medius, middle) Presentational immediacy characterizes any items which are in the direct cognitive presence of the mind such as sense data, images, emotional and affective data. Immediacy is ascribed by some epistemologists to higher levels of knowledge, e.g. perception and memory and by the mystic to the ...

Presentationism
The epistemological theory that the mind is in perception and perhaps also memory and other types of cognition directly aware of its object (see Epistemological Monism). Although the term is ordinarily applied to realistic theories of perception (see Epistemological Realism, Naive Realism), it is equally applicable to idealistic and phenomenalisti...

Presupposition
That which must antecedently be assumed if a desired result is to be derived, thus, a postulate That which is logically necessaiy, thus, that which is implied, an implicate. That which is causally necessary, thus a condition or result. -- C.A.B.

Prevarication
A deviation from truth or fact; an evasion or equivocation, a quibble, a lie. -- C.A.B.

Prima facie duties
A phrase used by W. D. Ross to indicate the nature of the general material rules of duty which he regarded as self-evident. Promise-keeping is a prima facie duty, one among others. I.e., if I have made a promise, I have a prima facie duty to keep it, which means that I will have an actual duty to keep it, if no higher prima facie duty is incumbent...

Primary Qualities
The inherent qualities of bodies solidity, extension, figure, motion, rest, number. These qualities are conceived to be utterly inseparable from objects, they are constant. John Locke made classic the distinction of primary and secondary qualities made by Galileo and Descartes. -- V.F.

Primary truth
(Lat. primus, first) A conception or proposition which is dependent for its truth on no other principle in the same order of thought, it may be considered self-evident from common experience, special intuitive insight, or even by postulation, but it is not demonstrated -- V.J.B.

Prime Matter
See Matter.

Prime Mover
In Aristotle's philosophy that which is the first cause of all change and, being first, is not subject to change by any prior agent. See Aristotelianism. -- G.R.M.

Primitive Communism
That stage of primitive society in which there is some form of socialized ownership of the basic means of production (the land, fisheries, natural resources and the like), an absence of economic classes (q.v.) and of the state as a special apparatus of internal force. -- J.M.S.

Primitivism
A modern term for a complex of ideas running back in classical thought to Hesiod. Two species of primitivism are found, (1) chronological primitivism, a belief that the best period of history was the earliest; (2) cultural primitivism, a belief that the acquisitions of civilization are evil. Each of these species is found in two forms, hard and so...

Primum cognitum
(Lat. primus, first, cognitus pp. of cognoscere, to know) In Scholastic philosophy the most primitive intellectual cognition of the mind, in contrast to mere sensible cognition. -- L.W.

Principal coordination
(Ger. prinzipialkoordination) The ego and the environment are the two central links in the originally given. The restoration of the natural world conception in which the perceived environmental fragments are no more viewed as ideas in us. It forms the correlative functioning of object and subject. (Avenarius.) -- H.H.

Principium individuationis
(Lat.) Principle of individuation (q.v.); the intrinsic, real factor in an existing singular thing which causes the individuality of the thing. -- V.J.B.

Principle of non-sufficient reason
According to this law, the probabilities of two propositions may be said to be equal, if there is no adequate ground for declaring them unequal. When applied without qualification, this principle may lead to unwarranted results. Such a difficulty may be avoided by an adequate formulation of the Principle of Indifference. -- T.G.

Principle of Organic Unities
A principle enunciated by G. E. Moore to the effect that the intrinsic value of a whole need not be equal to the sum of the intrinsic values of its parts. See Intrinsic value. -- W.K.F.

Principle of sufficient reason
According to Leibniz, one of the two principles on which reasoning is founded, the other being the principle of Contradiction. While the latter is the ground of all necessary truths, the Principle of Sufficient Reason is the ground of all contingent and factual truths. It applies especially to existents, possible or factual, hence its two forms ac...

Principle
(Lat. principe, from principium, a beginning) A fundamental cause or universal truth, that which is inherent in anything. That which ultimately accounts for being. According to Aristotle, the primary source of all being, actuality and knowledge. (a) In ontology: first principles are the categories or postulates of ontology. (b) In epistemology: as...

Priority
The condition of being earlier in a succession of events. This condition is meaningful only in the past-present-future series relative to a given event or experience. In its logical sense, the term signifies a condition without which something else cannot be understood, explained, or thought of. -- R.B.W.

Privacy, Epistemic
(Lat. privatus, from privus, private) Status of data of knowledge, e.g. somatic sensations, hedonic and emotional states, and perhaps even sense data, in so far as they are directly accessible to a single knowing subject. See Publicity, Epistemic. -- L.W.

Privation
(Lat. privatis) In Aristotle's philosophy the condition of a substance that lacks a certain quality which it is capable of possessing and normally does possess. -- G.R.M

Proaeresis
(Gr. proairesis) Reflective choice, especially of means to an end, deliberate desire (Aristotle). -- G.K.M.

Probabilism
The doctrine of the ancient Skeptics that certainty is unattainable, and that probability is the only guide to belief and action, especially characteristic of the New Academy. See Petrce. -- G.R.M.

Probability
In general Chance, possibility, contingency, likelihood, likehness, presumption. conjecture, prediction, forecast, credibility, relevance; the quality or state of being likely true or likely to happen; a fact or a statement which is likely true, real, operative or provable by future events; the conditioning of partial or approximate belief or ass...

Problem
(Gr. problema, anything thrown forward) 1. Any situation, practical or theoretical, for which there is no adequate automatic or habitual response, and which therefore calls up the reflective processes. 2. Any question proposed for solution. -- A.C.B.

Problematic knowledge
Knowledge of what might occur or is capable of occurring as opposed to knowledge of what is actual or of what must occur; opposed to assertoric knowledge and apodictic knowledge. -- A.C.B. In Kant, the domain of things beyond possible experience is completely problematic because of the a priori limitations of human knowledge (cf. J. Loewenberg, Ca...

Process Theory of Mind
The conception of mind in terms of process in contrast to substance. A mind, according to the process theory is a relatively permanent pattern preserved through a continuously changing process. Leibniz doctrine of the self-developing monad signalizes the transition from the substance to the process theory of mind and such philosophers as Bradley, ...

Process
(Lat. processus, pp. of procedo, to go before) A series of purposive actions, generally tending toward the production of something. A systematic forward movement, resulting in growth or decay. As employed by Whitehead (1861-), the course of actuality in its cosmological aspects. Syn. with action, becoming, existence. -- J.K.F.

Proclus
(411-485) A prominent Neo-Platonist and theological commentator, who taught that man becomes united with God through the practice of love, truth and faith. Main works: Commentaries on Timeus, on Republic, on Parmenides; Instit. Theol.; In Platonis Theol., Comment on First Book of Euclid. -- R.B.W.

Project method
An education method which makes use of practical activities, organizing the scholastic work of the child about complex enterprises, such as making a garden, planning a circus. -- J.E.B.

Projection
(Lat. projectio, from projicere, to throw forward) The mental act of attributing to sensations or sense qualia, an external and independent existence. The projection theory of Condillac and other sensationalists (see Sensationalism) asserts that sensations are first experienced as subjective states and are subsequently externalized by a special ac...

Prolegomena
(Cr. pro. before; lego, say) Introductory material. (Singuhr form prolegomenon.) Cf. Prolegomena to Every Future Scientific Metaphysic, by Kant (q.v.). -- T.F.

Prolepsis
(Gr. prolepsis) Notion, preconception. The term is used by the Stoics and Epicureans to denote any primary general notion that arises spontaneously and unconsciously in the mind is distinguished from concepts that result from conscious reflection. These prolepses are regarded by the Stoics as common to all men as rational beings, and are sometimes...

Proof by cases
Represented in its simplest form by the valid inference of the propositional calculus, from A ? C and B ? C and A ? B to C. More complex forms involve multiple disjunctions, e.g., the inference from A ? D and B ? D and C? D and [A ? B] ? C to D. The simplest form of proof by cases is thus the same as the simple constru...

Proof theory
The formalization of mathematical proof by means of a logistic system (q. v.) makes possible an objective theory of proofs and provability, in which proofs are treated as concrete manipulations of formulas (and no use is made of meanings of formulas). This is Hilbert's proof theory, or metamathematics. p A central problem of proof theory, accordin...

Propensity
(Lat. propensio, from propendere, to hang forth) A term used to designate a mental appetite or desire. See Appetition. Hume applied the term to the tendency of the mind to pass from one to the other of two associated ideas. -- L.W.

Proper sensible
(in Scholasticism) That which through itself, or through its proper species is perceived by only one external sense without error, as light is perceived by the eys, sound by the ear. Common sensible is that which is perceived by several external senses through modified species of the proper sensibles, e.g. quantity, distance. Accidental sensible (...

Property
(Gr. idion; Lat. proprium) In Aristotle's logic (1) an attribute common to all members of a species and peculiar to them; (2) an attribute of the above sort not belonging to the essence of the species, but necessarily following from it. -- G.R.M.

Propitiation
The attempt by act or intent of gaining the favor of a god, removing one's guilt and the divine displeasure. Such acts have taken on innumerable forms: sacrifice of precious possessions, even of human life, of animals, by pilgrimages, tithing, self-imposed asceticism of one kind or another, fastings, rituals, tortures, contrition, etc. The substit...

Proposition
This word has been used to mean a declarative sentence (in some particular language); the content of meaning of a declarative sentence, i e., a postulated abstract object common not only to different occurrences of the same declarative sentence but also to different sentences (whether of the same language or not) which are synonymous or, as we sa...

Propositional calculus, many-valued
The truth-table method for the classical (two-valued) propositional calculus is explained in the article logic, formal, § 1. It depends on assigning truth-tables to the fundamental connectives, with the result that every formula -- of the pure propositional calculus, to which we here restrict ourselves for the sake of simplicity -- has one of...

Propositional calculus
See Logic, formal, § 1.

Propositional function
is a function (q.v.) for which the range of the dependent variable is composed of propositions (q.v.) A monadic propositional function is thus in substance a property (of things belonging to the range of the independent variable), and a dyadic propositional function a relation. If F denotes a propositional function and X₁, X...

Proprioceptor
See Receptor.

Prosyllogism
See Episyllogism.

Protagoras of Abdera
(about 480-410 B.C.) A leading Sophist, renowned for his philosophical wisdom; author of many treatises on grammar, logic, ethics and politics; visited Athens on numerous occasions and was finally forced to flee after having been convicted of impiety. His famous formula that man is the measure of all things is indicative of his relativism which ul...

Protasis
(Gr. protasis, placed first) In Aristotle's logic a proposition, more particularly a proposition used as a premiss in a syllogism. -- G.R.M.