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

Protensity
(Lat. protensum from protendere, to stretch forth) Duration-spread considered as a primary characteristic of all conscious experience. This usage was introduced by Kant (Critique of Pure Reason, A 805- B 833) where the protensive is distinguished from the extensive and the intensive and this usage has been adopted by recent psychologists. -- L.W.

Protocol Sentences
See Basic Sentences.

Proximum genus
(Lat. nearest kind) In Aristotelian theory of definition (q.v.), must be used with differentia. -- R.B.W.

Pseudo-Statement
See Meaning, Kinds of, 5.

Psyche
(Gr. soul, World-Soul, spirit) In Plotinism, it is the name of the second emanation from the One. See Soul. -- V.J.B.

Psychic Fusion
The supposed merging of a number of separate psychic states to form a new state. The possibility of psychic fusion is highly questionable and alleged instances of it may be interpreted as the associative revival of images based on the memory of physical mixture. -- L.W.

Psychic or psychical
(Gr. psychikos, from psyche, the soul) (a) In the general sense, psychic is applied to any mental phenomenon. See Psychosis, Mental, (b) In the special sense, psychic is restricted to unusual mental phenomena such as mediumship, telepathy, prescience, etc. which are the subjects of 'Psychic Research.' See Telepathy, Prescience, Parapsychology. -- ...

Psychic Summation
See Psychic Fusion.

Psycho-analysis
The psychological method and therapeutic technique developed by Freud (see Freud, Sigmund). This method consists in the use of such procedures as free association, automatic writing and especially dream-analysis to recover forgotten memories, suppressed desires and other subconscious items which exert a disturbing influence on the conscious life o...

Psycho-Physical Parallelism
See Parallelism, Psycho-Physical.

Psycho-Physical Problem
(Gr. psyche, soul -- physikos, physical) See Mind-Body Problem.

Psychoid
Term applied by the German neo-vitalist, H. Driesch to the psychic factor which guides the growth of organisms. -- L.W.

Psychological Atomism
Theory of the structure of mind: any mental state is analyzable into simple, discrete components and that which the total mental state was produced by fusion and composition of the atomic states. See Associationism, Mind-Stuff Theory. -- L.W.

Psychological Egoism
See Egoism, Psychological. -- C.A.B.

Psychologism
(Ger. Psychologismus) The tendency of such philosophers as Hume, J. S. Mill and William James to approach philosophical problems, whether ethical, logical, aesthetic or metaphysical, from the stand-point of psychology. Psychologismus is used by Husserl and other German writers as a term of reproach which suggests the exaggeration of the psychologi...

Psychologists' Fallacy
The confusion of the standpoint of the psychologist with that of the subject upon whose introspective report the psychologist relies. See Wm. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, p. 196. -- L.W.

Psychology of Religion
A scientific, descriptive study of mental life and behavior with special reference to religious activities. The aim of this study is not to criticize or evaluate religion (see Philosophy of Religion) but to describe its forms as they reflect the mental processes of men. As an extended chapter in the field of general psychology, psychology of relig...

Psychology
(Gr. psyche, mind or soul + logos, law) The science of the mind, its functions, structure and behavioral effects. In Aristotle, the science of mind, (De Anima), emphasizes mental functionsl; the Scholastics employed a faculty psychology. In Hume and the Mills, study of the data of conscious experience, termed association psychology. In Freud, the ...

Psychosis
(Gr. psychosis, a giving of life or soul) (a) In the general sense, psychosis designates any mental or psychical process, just as a neurosis, in the wide sense is any neural process. (b) In the restricted sense, psychosis designates a pathological condition of mind, just as 'neurosis' is an abnormal condition of the nervous system. -- L.W.

Pu jen
Early kings, being of 'unbearing', commiserating mind, unable to bear and see others suffer, exemplified a virtuous government. (Mencius.) -- H.H.

Pu tung hsin
The state of unperturbed mind, as a result of 'maintaining firm one's will and doing no violence to the vital force' which pervades the body (Mencius.) -- H.H.

Publicity, Epistemic
(a) In the strict sense, publicity pertains to such data of knowledge as are directly and identically accessible to more than one knowing subject. Thus epistemological monism may assert the publicity of sense data, of universals, of moral and aesthetic values and even of God. See Epistemological Monism. (b) In a less exact sense, publicity is ascr...

Pudgala
(Skr. beautiful, lovely) The sou], or personal entity, admitted by some thinkers even though belonging to the schools of Buddhism (s.v.), they hold that at least a temporary individuality must be assumed as vehicle for karma (q.v.) -- K.F.L.

Purana
(Skr. ancient) One of 18 or more treatises, mainly cosmological, mythological, or legendary in character and composed in p.Ch.n. times. Interspersed are ethical, philosophical and scientific observations. -- K.F.L.

Pure Ego
See Ego, Pure.

Pure Experience
(Lat. purus, clean) (a) The qualitative ingredients of experience, e.g. sense data, feelings, images, etc., which remain after the ideal elimination of conceptual, interpretational and constructional factors. (b) The world of ordinary immediate experience which constitutes the point of departure for science and philosophy. See Avenarius, Kritik de...

Pure Theory of Law
An attempt to introduce the 'critical' method of Kant to the understanding of positive law. Kelsen, who coined the expression, intended to create 'a geometry of the totality of legal phenomena.' All legal phenomena are to be reduced to norms which have the form: 'If A is, then B ought to be', all norms are to be derived from one basic norm [Grundn...

Pure
(Ger. rein) In Kant: Strictly, that which is unmixed with anything sensuous or empirical. Loosely, whatever pertains to the form instead of the matter of our cognition. See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.

Purism
Taste tending towards archaistic and simplified form, prevailing chiefly at the beginning of the 19th century. -- L.V.

Puritanism
A term referring, in general, to a purification of existing religious forms and practices. More specifically, Puritanism refers to that group of earnest English Protestants who broke with the Roman system more completely in objection to traditional ceremonies formalities and organizations. This moral earnestness at reformation led to the emphasis ...

Purna
(Skr.) The plenum, a synonym for the Absolute, brahman, used by Ajatasatru in Kausitaki Upanishad 4.8. See also Brhadaranyaka Up. 5.1. -- K.F.L.

Purnatva
(Skr.) Fullness, as descriptive of reality. -- K.F.L.

Purpose
(Lat. propositus from pro, before + ponere, to place) An ideally or imaginatively envisaged plan or end of action. -- L.W.

Purposiveness
(in Kant's philosophy: die Zweckmässigkeit) Adaptation whether in the body of an animal or plant to its own needs or in a beautiful object to the human intelligence. We must not say dogmatically, Kant contends, that there is a purpose behind the phenomena, but we can say that they occur as if there were, though we cannot bring the purpose und...

Purusa
(Skr.) 'Man', a symbol for the world in the Veda (q.v.). One of the two cardinal principles of the Sankhya (q.v.) and Yoga (q.v.), representing pure spirituality, consciousness, and self. Various theories prevail in Indian philosophy, some semi-physical, others psycho-physical, or logical, taking the term to denote a real self or an entity produce...

Purusartha
(Skr.) Object (artha) of man's (purusa) pursuits, enumerated as four: kama (desire), artha (wealth), dharma (duty), moksa (liberation). Also, a statement of aims with which Indian philosophers traditionally preface their works. -- K.F.L.

Purvapaksa
(Skr.) 'The prior view', the first step in a logical argument, stating the view to which exception is taken. -- K.F.L.

Pyrrho of Elis
(c. 365-275 B.C.) A systematic skeptic who believed that it is impossible to know the true nature of things and that the wise man suspends his judgment on all matters and seeks to attain imperturbable happiness (ataraxy) by abstaining from all passion and curiosity. See Timon of Phlius, pupil of Pyrrho. -- R.B.W.

Pythagoreanism
The doctrines (philosophical, mathematical, moral, and religious) of Pythagoras (c. 572-497) and of his school which flourished until about the end of the 4th century B.C. The Pythagorean philosophy was a dualism which sharply distinguished thought and the senses, the soul and the body, the mathematical forms of things and their perceptible appear...

Quadrivium
(Lat. quatuor, and viae, four ways) The second, and more advanced group of liberal arts studies in the middle ages, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. -- V.J.B. See Trivium for the other three of the seven liberal arts, first proposed for education by Plato, Republic, III.

Quaestio
(Scholastic) A subdivision or chapter of some treatise. Later, the special form, imitating or actually reproducing a discussion, to which a thesis is proposed, then the arguments against it are listed, next the objections or argumenta contra are exposed, and the question is solved in the so-called corpus articuli, usually introduced by the standin...

Quakerism
The name given to that Christian group officially known at the Society of Friends founded by George Fox (1624-1691). Central principles include: guidance by an inner light, freedom from institutional or outward sanctions, the sanctity of silence, the simplicity of living; and, commitment to peaceful social relations. Three American groups are: ort...

Quale
(Pl. qualia) (Lat from qualis, of what kind) A quality considered as an independent entity rather than as a quality of a thing. A quale is usually conceded as a universal essence (like redness, sweetness, etc.) but the term may also be applied to individual qualities (this red, this sweet taste). -- L.W.

Qualities, extensional
Qualities which characterize certain complex wholes composed of point-instants related to each other in virtue of their different positional qualities. (Broad ) -- H.H.

Qualities, immaterial
Instances of non-positional qualities that are not characterized by any determinable form of quality of spatial position. (Broad.) -- H.H.

Qualities, material
Instances of non-positiond qualities characterized by the determinable qualities of spatial position. (Broad.) -- H.H.

Qualities, non-positional
Qualities like color, temperature, etc. to which no spatial or temporal position can be assigned. (Broad.) -- H.H.

Qualities, positional
Temporal and spatial positions. (Broad .) -- H.H.

Qualities, structural
Positional and extensional qualities classed together. (Broad.) -- H.H.

Quality
The four traditional kinds of categorical propositions (see logic, formal, § 4) were distinguished according to quality as affirmative or negative, and according to quantity as particular, singular, or universal. See the articles Affirmative Proposition and Particular Proposition. -- A.C.

Quantifier
Universal quantifier is the name given to the notation (x) prefixed to a logical formula A (containing the free varible x) to express that A holds for all values of x -- usually, for all values of x within a certain range or domain of values, which either is implicit in the context, or is indicated by the notation through some convention. The same...

Quantity
In Aristotle and Kant (q.v.), one of the categories (q.v.) of judgment. See Quality.

Quantum mechanics
An important physical theory, a modification of classical mechanics, which has arisen from the study of atomic structure and phenomena of emission and absorption of light by matter, embracing the matrix mechanics of Heisenberg, the wave mechanics of Schrödinger, and the transformation theory of Jordan and Dirac. The wave mechanics introduces ...

Quantum
An indivisible unit, or atom, of any physical quantity. Quantum mechanics (q.v.) is based on the existence of quanta of energy, the magnitude of the quantum of radiant energy (light) of a given frequency -- or of the energy of a particle oscillating with given frequency -- being equal to Planck's constant (q.v.) multiplied by the fiequency. -- A.C...

Quaternio terminorum
In the categorical syllogism (logic, formal, § 5), the major and minor premisses must have a term in common, the middle term. Violation of this rule is the fallacy of quaternio terminorum, or of four terms. It is most apt to arise through equivocation (q.v.), an ambiguous word or phrase playing the role of the middle term, with one meaning in...

Quiddity
(Lat quidditas, whatness) Essence; that which is described in a definition. -- V.J.B.

Quieting
The pacification of mind is the initial point of departure as well as the endpoint of a vital series. (Avenarius.) -- H.H.

Quintessence
(Lat. quinta essentia, the fifth essence) the purest, most highly concentrated form of a nature or essence; originally, in Aristotelianism, the fifth element, found in celestial bodies, distinguished from the four earthly elements. -- V.J.B.

Quotation marks, syntactical use of
See Notations, logical.

Ramanuja
A renowned Indian thinker and theologian of the 11th cent A.D. who restated within the tradition of Vishnuism (q.v.) the doctrines of the Vedanta (q.v.) in that he assumed world and soul to be a transformation of God variously articulated. -- K.F.L.

Ramayana
(Skr.) An epic poem, ascribed to Valmiki, celebrating in about 24,000 verses the doings of Rama and his wife Sita and containing ethical and philosophic speculations. -- K.F.L.

Ramified theory of types
See impredicative definition, and paradoxes, logical. B. Russell, Mathematical logic as based on the theory of types, American Journal of Mathematics, vol. 30 (1908), pp. 222- 262. L. Chwistek, The theory of constructive types, Annales de la Societe Polonaise de Mathematique, vol. 2 (1924), pp. 9-48, and vol. 3 (1925), pp. 92-141. W. V. Quine, On...

Ramsey, Frank Plumpton
(1903-1930) In the light of Wittgenstein's work, he proposed several modifications in the Principia Mathematica treatment of functions. These, he urged, made possible the omission of the Axiom of Reducibility, a simplification of the Theory of Types and an improved definition of identity. In stimulating philosophical papers he denied any ultimate ...

Rasa
(Skr. sap, juice, nectar, essence, flavor, etc.) In Indian aesthetics (q.v.), pleasure, enjoyment, love, charm, grace, elegance, taste, emotion, sentiment, spirit, passion, beauty etc. -- K.F.L.

Ratio
According to St. Augustine, reason is the mind's capacity of distinguishing and connecting the things that are learned. Ratio est mentis motio ea quae discuntur distinguendi et connectendi potens. He also calls it an aspectus animi, quo per seipsum, non per corpus verum intuetur. It precedes the exercise of the intellectual capacity. He says of ma...

Ratiocination
(Lat. ratiocinatio, reasoning) Discursive reasoning, the third act of the intellect in the Aristotelian theory of knowledge, a process of intellectual demonstration involving the use of three terms. -- V.J.B.

Rational Psychology
A speculitive and metaphvsical treatment of the soul, its faculties and its immortality in contrast to a descriptive, empirical psychology. -- L.W.

Rationalism
A method, or very broadly, a theory of philosophy, in which the criterion of truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive. Usually associated with an attempt to introduce mathematical methods into philosophy, as in Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza. -- V.J.B. The history of rationalism begins with the Eleitics (q.v.). Pythagoreans and Plato (q...

Rationalization
(Lat. rationalis, from ratio, reason) A psychological term to describe the mind's fabrication of rational argument to justify conduct of which one is really ashamed. -- L.W.

Real
(Lat. realis, of the thing itself) Absoluteness of being. The immediate object of that which is true. Invented in the 13th century to signify having characters sufficient to identify their subject, whether attributed by men or not. Sometimes, the existential as opposed to mere possibility, or the physical as opposed to consciousness. Syn. with ext...

Realism in Legal Philosophy
No connection with epistemological realism. Theory that law is not a system of rules but in flux, and part of actual social process. -- W.E.

Realism
Theory of the reality of abstract or general terms, or umversals, which are held to have an equal and sometimes a superior reality to actual physical particulars. Umversals exist before things, ante res. Opposed to nominalism (q.v.) according to which universals have a being only after things, post res. Realism means (a) in ontology that no deroga...

Realm of ends
The cosmic order viewed as the means for the achievement by a Supreme Person of higher or spiritual purposes. Teleologicil Personalism. -- R.T.F.

Reals
Are atomic or monadic beings which underlie the phenomenal world. Alike in quality, not being points of self-directive force, they are conceived to be in a state of mechanical interaction, not in the realm of phenomenal space but in the realm of intelligible space. (Herbart.) -- H.H.

Reason
(Lat. ratio, Ger. Vernunft) In Kant: The special mental faculty (distinct from sensibility and understanding) which in thinking Ideas of absolute completeness and unconditionedness transcends the conditions of possible experience. See Ideas of Pure Reason. All those mental functions and relations characterized by spontaneity rather than receptivi...

Reasoning
1. Discursive thought. Faculty of connecting ideas consciously, coherently and purposively. Thinking in logical form. Drawing of inferences. Process of passing from given data or premisses to legitimate conclusions. Forming or discovering rightly relations between ideas. Deriving properly statements from given assumptions or facts. Power, manifest...

Receptivity
(Lat. recipere, to take back) The collective name for receptive or sensory functions of the mind in contrast to its active or motor functions. In the Kantian terminology, receptivity is defined as the faculty of receiving representations in contrast to spontaneity, the faculty of knowing an object by means of concepts. See Kant, Critique of Pare R...

Receptor
The organ of sense considered as part of the total response mechanism of a human or animal organism. Receptors are classified as a) exteroceptars or receptors at the surface of the body, and b) propioceptors or receptors embedded in the muscles and bodily tissues themselves. The term interoceptors is sometimes applied to receptors embedded in the ...

Recognition
(Lat. re + cognitio, knowledge) The knowledge of an object along with the realization that the same object has been previously known. Recognition may, but need not be, effected by a comparison of a memory image with recurring objects. See Familiarity, Feeling of; Memory. -- L.W.

Recursion, definition by
A method of introducing, or 'defining,' functions from non-negative integers to non-negative integers, which, in its simplest form, consists in giving a pair of equations which specify the value of the function when the argument (or a particular one of the arguments) is 0, and supply a method of calculating the value of the function when the argum...

Recursion, proof by
, or, as it is more often called, proof by mathematical induction or complete induction, is in its simplest form a proof that every non-negative integer possesses a ceirtain property by showing that 0 possesses this property, and that, on the hypothesis that the non-negative integer x possesses this property, then x+1 possesses this property. (The...

Recursiveness
The notion of definition by recursion, and in particular of definition by primitive recursion, is explained in the article recursion, definition by. An n-adic function f (from non-negative integers to non-negative integers) is said to be defined by composition in terms of the m-adic function g and the n-adic functions h₁, h&...

Redintegration
(Lat. re + integratio, from integer, whole) The integral reproduction of a total state of consciousness when an element of it is reproduced. -- L.W.

Reducibility, axiom of
An axiom which (or some substitute) is necessary in connection with the ramified theory of types (q.v.) if that theory is to be adequate for classical mathematics, but the admissibility of which has been much disputed (see Paradoxes, logical). An exact statement of the axiom can be made only in the context of a detailed formulation of the ramified...

Reductio ad absurdum
The method of proving a proposition by deducing a contradiction from the negation of the proposition taken together with other propositions which were previously proved or are granted. It may thus be described as the valid inference of the propositional calculus from three premisses, B and B[~A] ? C and B[~A] ? ~C, to the concl...

Reduction
(Ger. Reduktion) In Husserl: See Egological and Phenomenology. -- D.C.

Reductto ad impossible
The method of establishing a proposition by showing that its contradictory involves impossible consequences; also of disproving a proposition by showing that its consequences are absurd; reductio ad absurdum (q.v.). See Apagoge. -- G.R.M.

Reduplicatively
(in Schol.) a term is taken reduplicatively or there is reduplication when to a term there is added as, just as, as though, inasmuch as, or some similar expression, either in order to double the same term, or in ordei to add another so as to indicate the meaning in which the first term is to be taken, or so as to indicate a reason why the predicat...

Referend
The vehicle or instrument of an act of reference. Thus a percept functions as a referend in relation to the perceptual object (the referent). There still exists some confusion in the terminology of reference, and the term referend is used by some authors to denote the 'object' instead of the 'instrument' of the referential act. This usage, though ...

Referent
The object towards which an act of reference is directed. See Referend. -- L.W. (1) That which is denoted by a word, sentence, utterance or judgment. (2) A term used by adherents of a certain causal theory of meaning. That event to which a symbol is actually used to refer. More explicitly: -- Let 'context' be used to mean a set of events such that...

Referential
Relating to an act of reference. See Referent. -- L.W.

Reflection
(Lat. reflectio, from re + flectere, to bend) The knowledge which the mind has of itself and its operations. The term is used in this sense by Locke (cf. Essay, II, 1, § 4) Spinoza (cf. On the Improvement of the Understanding 13) and Leibniz (cf. Monadology, and New Essays, Preface, § 4) but has now largely been supplanted by the term in...

Reflexivity
A dyadic relation R is called reflexive if xRx holds for all x within a certain previously fixed domain which must include the field of R (cf. logic, formal, § 8). In the propositional calculus, the laws of reflexivity of material implication and material equivalence (the conditional and biconditional) are the theorems, p ? p, p = p...

Reformation
The Protestant Reformation may be dated from 1517, the year Martin Luther (1483-1546), Augustinian monk and University professor in Wittenberg, publicly attacked the sale of indulgences by the itinerant Tetzel, Dominican ambassador of the Roman Church. The break came first in the personality of the monk who could not find in his own religious and ...

Regressive
See Sorties.

Regulative Principles
(regulative Prinzipien) Though this term, in Kant's philosophy, is in one passage applied to the analogies in general, it is reserved for ideas of reason as opposed to the categories. They cannot be proved like the latter, but though not known, theoretically at least, to be true of anything, serve to regulate our thought and action. -- A.C.E.

Reichenbach, Hans
Born Sept. 26, 1891, Hamburg, Germany. Successively Privatdozent at the College of Engineering at Stuttgart, Professor of philosophy in the universities of Berlin, Istanbul (1933-1938), University of California at Los Angeles (since 1938); the leading figure of the Berlin group in the development of recent logical empiricism. See Scientific Empiri...

Reid, Thomas
(1710-1796) Scotch philosopher. In his An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, he opposed the tradition of Berkeley and Hume and emphasized the common consciousness of mankind as basic. These ideas on the importance of self-evidence were further elaborated in 'Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man' and 'Essays on the A...

Relation-number
Dyadic relations R and R' are said to be similar (or ordinally similar) if there exists a one-one relation S whose domain is the field of R, and whose converse domain is the field of R', such that, if aSa' and bSb' then aRb if and only if a'Rb' . The relation-number of a dyadic relation may then be defined as the class of relations similar to it -...

Relation
The same as dyadic propositional function (q.v.). The distinction between relations in intension and relations in extension is the same as that for propositional functions. -- Sometimes the word relation is used to mean a propositional function of two or more variables, and in this case one distinguishes binary (dyadic) relations, ternary (triadic...