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

Semasiology
Noun derived from the Greek, semasia, signification of a term, the equivalent of semantics, the science of the meanings of words. -- J.J.R.

Semi-Pelagianism
A movement in Christian theology which attempted to find a middle ground between the extreme doctrine of total depravity and predestination as over against the doctrine of the determinative character of the human will in the matter of salvation. The Semi-Pelagian view held that regeneration was the result of the cooperation of divine grace and the...

Semiosis
The process in which something functions as a sign. It involves that which acts as a sign (the sign vehicle), that which the sign refers to (the designatum), and that effect upon some interpreter in virtue of which the thing in question is a sign to that interpreter. See also Semiotic.

Semiotic; Theory of Signs
A general theory of signs and their applications, especially in language, developed and systematized within Scientific Empiricism (q.v. II C). Three branches: grammatics, semantics, syntactics. 1. Pragmatics. Theory of the relations between signs and those who produce or receive and understand them. This theory comprehends psychology, sociology, a...

Sempiternal
(Lat. semper, always; aeternus, eternal) Everlasting, endless, having no beginning and no ending. -- V.F.

Sempiternity
(Lat. semper, always) Eternity conceived as everlasting existence or perpetuity. May have a beginning, but no end; an end, but no beginning; neither a beginning not end. -- R.B.W.

Seneca
(4-65 A.D.) A Roman Stoic and instructor of Nero, who ernphasised the distinction between the soul and body and developed the ethical elements of Stoicism. -- R.B.W. Main works: Naturalium quaestionum libri septem; Dialogorum libri duodecim.

Sensa
Plural of sensum (q.v.). The transitory particulars or objcctive constituents of perceptual situations that have spatial characteristics, colors, shapes, sizes, privacy and are body-dependent. (Broad) -- H.H.

Sensation
(Ger. Empfindung) In Kant: The content of sensuous intuition, or the way in which a conscious subject is modified by the presence of an object. Kant usually employs the term to designate the content sensed instead of the process of sensing. The process he calls 'intuition' (q.v.); the faculty he names 'sensibility' (q.v.). See Kantianism. -- O.F.K...

Sense and denotation
See descriptions.

Sense Datum
(pl. sense data): (Lat. sensus, a feeling -- datum, a gift from dare, to give). A datum conditioned by one of the outer senses. See Datum. -- L.W.

Sense Manifold
See Manifold of Sense.

Sense, internal
The mind's supposed ability to scrutinize reflectively its own inner operations. The term was suggested by J. Locke (Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1690, Bk. II, ch. 1, 4.) -- L.W.

Sensibility
(Kant. Ger. Sinnlichkeit) The faculty by means of which the mind receives sensuous intuitions (q.v.). The sensibility is receptive (passive), while understanding and reason are spontaneous (active). See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.

Sensing
The mental act of apprehending a sensum or sense datum. See Sense Datum. -- L.W.

Sensum-Theory
Epistemological theory which explains perception and other higher forms of knowledge by means of inferences and constructions from sensa. See Sensum. -- L.W.

Sensum
(Pl. sensa) (Lat. sensus, pp of sentiore to feel or discern by sense) Equivalent to sense datum. See Sense Datum. -- L.W.

Sentence
Denotes a certain class of complex symbols in a language. Which combinations of symbols are to be regarded as sentences in the language is normally determined (a) by certain specifiable formation rules (e.g. in English, that any proper name followed by verb in the singular constitutes a sentence), (b) by the presence of certain specific 'morphemes...

Sentences (Scholastic)
Sententiae were originally collections of various propositions and explanations thereof; e.g., the Sententiae divinitatis of Anselm of Laon. Peter Lombardus condensed the main theological and philosophical ideas of his time into the famous Quattuor libri sententiarum which became the textbook for the medieval universities and had to be studied and...

Sentential calculus
Same as propositional calculus (see logic, formal, § 1). -- A.C.

Sentential function
has been used by some as a syntactical term, to mean a sentence (q.v.) containing free variables. This notion should not be confused with that of a propositional function (q.v.), the relationship is that a propositional function may be obtained from a sentential function by abstraction (q. v.) -- A.C.

Sentience
(Lat. sentiens, from sentire, to feel) Consciousness at a rudimentary sensory level. -- L.W.

Sentimentalism
An exaggerated and distorted expression of sentiment, revealing a lack of, or a superficiality of feeling. -- L.V.

Sextus Empiricus
A physician who lived about 200 A.D. His writings contain numerous arguments of a sceptical empiricistic variety drawn from Pyrrho (q.v.) and directed against dogmatic claims to absolute truth, especially in the sciences and ethics. His Adversus Mathematicos (Against the Mathematicians) is an important source for the history of the sciences of ast...

Shaktism, Saktism
The philosophy, supported by liturgy and ritual of various degrees of purity, of the believers in the Tantra (q.v.). It explains Brahma as absolute spirit which, on becoming Shiva and Shakti, the male and female principles, produces through maya (q.v.) from itself as the One in a series of 36 tattvas (q.v.) the Many, a process which at the end of ...

Shamanism
(from Tungusic shaman) A type of religion common in Siberia and neighboring regions without systematic beliefs but entirely inspired by the shaman (priest or priestess) who, working up a frenzy bv dancing, puts himself in touch with the spirits of animals or deceased humans for purposes of magic or divination. -- K.F.L.

Shan
Goodness, 'the practice of virtue.' (Confucianism). It is antecedent to the Great Ultimate (T'ai Chi) and motion, although it is involved in the Reason of the universe. (Neo-Confucianism) -- W.T.C.

Shang t'ung
'The principle of agreement with the superior' by Mo Tzu that all people must without the slighest divergence put themselves in agreement with their superior. -- H.H.

Shang ti
Anthropomorphis, Supreme Emperor or Ruler or High, who as the highest authority, presides over an elaborate hierarchy of spirits; the supreme object of veneration used interchangeably with the above. Also called Heaven (Tien'ien), August Heaven (Huang T'ien), and Sovereign (Ti). -- H.H.

Shao K'ang-chieh
Shao K'ang-chieh (Shao Yung, Shao Yao-fu, 1011-1077) was son of a scholar (Ch'eng I-ch'uan's teacher). Although he served in the government in a few minor capacities, in general, his life was that of quietude and poverty. But his reputation of integrity and scholarship grew so high that scholars far and near regarded him as their 'teacher,' and pe...

Shao vin
The Minor Mode of Passivity. See T'ai Chi.

Shao yang
The Minor Mode of Activity. See T'ai Chi.

Shen Jen
'The spiritual man', one who has reached a state of mystical union with the universe, or 'who has not separated from the pure and the mysterious.' (Chang Tzu, between 399 and 295 B.C.) -- H.H.

Shen tu
Being watchful over himself when one is alone. This is important in Confucian moral training, because 'there is nothing more evident than that which cannot be seen by the eyes and nothing more palpable than that which cannot be perceived by the senses.' It is a way of 'making one's will sincere,' and of exhausting one's heart and nature. -- W.T.C....

Shen
(a) In religion: Spirits, heavenly spirits as against earthly spirits (kuei), spiritual power which is unfathomable in the movement of yin and yang or passive and active cosmic forces; the active or yang aspect of the soul (hun) is against the passive aspect (p'o). (b) In philosophy: god-like power, spiritual power, or creative power, mystery, the...

Sheng (jen)
(a) A person of the highest wisdom. (b) A sage (Confucianism). A great man who exercises a transforming influence (as in Mencius). (c) Confucius. (d) The ideal ruler. (Lao Tzu). (e) One who 'regards nature as the essential, the character of Tao (te) as the basis, Tao as the way, and follows the indications of changes.' (Taoism) -- W.T.C.

Shih fei
Right and wrong, with reference to both opinion and conduct, a distinction strongly stressed by the Confucians, Neo-Confucians, Mohists, Neo-Mohists, Sophists, and Legalists alike, except the Taoists who repudiated such distinction as superficial, relative, subjective, unreal in the eyes of Tao, and inconsistent with the Taoist idea of the absolut...

Shih
(a) Authority and power natural to the position of a ruler, especially the power of reward and punishment as in Han Fei Tzu (d. 233 B.C.). See fa chia. (Legalists). (b) External force; tending force; circumstances, such as that which completes things after Tao engenders them and the Individual Principle (te) develops them. (Lao Tzu). (c) Movement,...

Shih
Actuality, substance, to which a name must correspond. -- W.T.C.

Shiites
A collective name for countless groups of an Islamic sect, small in number, whose basic dogma is that Ali and his descendants are the sole legitimate successors of Mohammed. They are the rallying point for all revolutionary and heterodox tendencies among Islamic peoples outside Arabia -- H.H.

Shiva, Siva
(Skr. the kind one) Euphemistic name of the God Rudra, the ultimate destructive principle in the philosophies of Shivaism (q.v.). One of the trimurti (q.v.) -- K.F.L.

Shivaism, Sivaism, Saivism
One of the major groups of Hinduism which has evolved, in addition to religious doctrines and observances, also philosophical systems of note, based upon certain Agamas (q.v.). Shiva, as one aspect of the trimurti (q.v.), has inspired cosmological speculations no less than psychological and logical ones. As philosophy it attained its greatest flow...

Shu shu
(a) Divination and magic in ancient China, including astrology, almanacs, the art of coordinating human affairs by the active and passive principles of the universe (yin yang) and the Five Elements (wu hsing), fortune telling by the use of the stalks of the divination plant and the tortoise shell, and miscellaneous methods such as dream interpreta...

Shu
'The benevolent exercise of the principle of human nature in relation to others;' 'the extension of the principle of the self to other people and things;' 'the application of the principle of true manhood (jen);' 'the application of the principle of the central self (chung);' 'putting oneself in the position of others;' 'measuring others by onesel...

Shu
(a) Statecraft, craft, tact, or method for a ruler to keep the ministers and the people under control, 'to award offices according to their responsibilities, to hold actualities in accordance with their names, to exercise the power of life and death, and to make use of the ability of the ministers.' See fa chia. (Legalists). (b) Magic. See shu and...

Shu
Number, which gives rise to form (hsiang) according to which things become. This philosophy was based on the I Ching (I. Book of Changes), developed in the medieval interpretation of it (chan wei), and culminated in Neo-Confucianism, especially in Shao K'ang-chieh (1011-1077). According to this philosophv, to Heaven belong the odd numbers which re...

Shuo
Inference, one of the methods of knowledge of the Neo-Mohists (Mo che). -- W.T.C.

Sibylline Books
These were allegedly ancient, mythical and inspired utterances of prophecy consulted in times of calamity. Their destruction led to composite and forged versions. The so-called Sibylline Oracles were a group of Jewish and Christian writings dating from the 2nd century B.C. to the 3rd century A.D , written in Homeric style, and in imitation of the ...

Siddhi
(Skr.) Reaching of the aim, success, particularly the attainment of supernatural powers, such as clairvoyance, clairaudience, levitation, the penetration of matter, etc, claimed for the Yogin (q.v.) in the highest stage of the practice of Yoga (q.v.). -- K.F.L.

Sidgwick, Henry
(1838-1900) Last of the leading utilitarians, remembered principally for his work in ethics. He was an advocate of college education for women and one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research. See Utilitarianism. -- L.E.D. Main works: Method of Ethics 1875; Outlines of the History of Ethics (5th ed. 1902); Scope and Method of Economic...

Sign-Language
A system of signs established either traditionally (primitive tribes) or technically (deaf-mutes) for the purpose of communicating concepts or sentences, rather than letters or sounds or words as in signalling The question of the priority of vocal and gesture speech is much debated, but there is no doubt that primitive peoples used signs for commu...

Sign
(Lat. signum, sign) Logic has been called the science of signs. In psychology that which represents anything to the cognitive faculty. That which signifies or has significance, a symbol. Semasiology or sematology is the science of signs. See Logic, symbolic; Symbolism. For Theory of Signs, see Semiotic. -- J.K.F. Any event of character A whose occ...

Signate
(In Schol.) Refers to the intention or direction of the agent; as distinguished from exercite, which refers to the effects of the work or the exercise. E.g., one who studies mathematics, signate intends to acquire the knowledge of truths concerning quantity, -- but exercite, or in the exercise itself of studying, renders the mind more able and apt...

Signification
Signify may be synonymous with designate (q.v.), or it may be used rather for the meaning of words which are not or are not thought of as proper names, or it may be used to indicate the intensional rather than the extensional meaning of a word. -- A.C.

Signifies
Theory of Meaning (q.v.). See Peirce, Semiotic.

Similarity, Law of
(Lat similis, like) Association depending upon resemblance between the associated ideas. See Association, Laws of. -- L.W.

Similia similibus percipiuntur
(Lat. like things are apprehended through like things) Like knows like, the basic principle of nearly all epistemologies, viz., that knowledge involves an assimilation of subject to object, or vice versa. -- V.J.B.

Similitude) (Scholastic)
Similitudo may be called anything which stands for another so that the second may be known by the first. Aquinas uses the term as a translation of symbol in Aristotle. It does not necessarily imply any resemblance. -- R.A.

Simple Enumeration
(Bacon) The name given by F. Bacon to the Aristotelian and the Scholastic process of induction which advances to the knowledge of laws from the knowledge of facts established by observation and experiment and clearly arranged. This type of induction treats instances by noting the number of observed coincident happenings of the antecedent and the c...

Simplicius
(6th cent.) A prominent commentator on Aristotelian works in the closing years of the New Academy of Plato. -- M.F. Main works: Commentaries on Aristotle's De Caelo, Physica, De Anima, and Categoriae.

Simulacrum
(pl. simulacra) (Lat. likeness, image) A likeness or copy of an original, applied especially to a perceptual image which copies its object. See Effluxes, Theory of. -- L.W.

Simultaneity
The condition of belonging to the same time. As two or more events observed as simultaneous may actually take place at different moments, it is useful to distinguish between subjective and objective simultaneity. See Relativity, theory of. -- R.B.W.

Singular proposition
See logic, formal, §§4, 5.

Skepticism
Sec Scepticism.

Skolem paradox
See Löwenheim's theorem.

Social Contract
The original covenant by which, according to certain philosophers of modern times -- Hooker, Hohbes, Althusius, Spinoza, Locke, Pufendorf, etc. -- individuals have united and formed the state. This theory was combined with the older idea of the governmental contract by which the people conferred the power of government upon a single person or a gr...

Socialism, Marxian
Early in their work, Marx and Engels called themselves communists (e.g., the 'Communist Manifesto'). Later they found it more accurate, in view of the terminology of the day, to refer to themselves as socialists. During the war of 1914- '18, when socialists split into two camps, one supporting and the other opposing participation in the war, Lenin...

Socinians
Followers of the 16th century Italian, humanistic Christians, Socinus (Sotzzini), Laelius and Faustus. They advocated freedom of thought over against the orthodox expressions of Christianity. The Racovian Catechism (1605) states their method and doctrines. In general, they were anti-Trinitarians (see Trinitarianism), anti-Augustinian (opposing the...

Sociology of Law
The sociology of law is a comparatively infant type of investigation and consequently exhibits, to an even greater degree than most fields of sociology (q.v.), confusion and variety in methods and results. It can be defined, then, only in terms of its subject matter, which is neither the metaphysical and ethical bases of the law nor law as a separ...

Sociology
The woid 'sociologie' was coined by the French philosopher, Auguste Comte, (1798-1857). The study of society, societal relations. Originally called Social Physics, meaning that the methods of the natural sciences were to be applied to the study of society. Whereas the pattern originally was physics and the first sociologists thought that it was po...

Socrates
(c. 470-399 B.C.) Was one of the most influential teachers of philosophy. The son of an Athenian stone cutter, named Sophroniscus, and of a mid-wife, Socrates learned his father's trade, but, in a sense, practised his mother's. Plato makes him describe himself as one who assists at the birth of ideas. With the exception of two periods of military ...

Socratic method
(from Socrates, who is said by Plato and Xenophon to have used this method) is a way of teaching in which the master professes to impart no information, (for, in the case of Socrates, he claimed to have none), but draws forth more and more definite answers by means of pointed questions. The method is best illustrated in Socrates' questioning of an...

Solipsism
(Lat solus, alone + ipse, self) (a) Methodological: The epistemological doctrine which considers the individual self and it states the only possible or legitimate starting point for philosophical construction. See Cogito, ergo sum; Ego-centric predicament, Subjectivism. (b) Metaphysical: Subvariety of idealism which maintains that the individual s...

Soma
One of the three important gods of the Vedic religion, about whom the ninth book of the Rig-Veda centers. This god is associated with the plant growing in northern India which was made into an intoxicating liquor. The effects of this drink became associated with supernatural powers. -- V.F.

Somatic Datum
Somatic data are those originating within the bodily organism (e.g., feelings of muscular tension, fatigue, organic and circulatory sensations, etc.) in contrast to sense data, which are conditioned by the organs of outer senses. See Datum, Sense Datum. -- L.W.

Somatic
(Gr. somatikos, from soma, body) Pertaining to the bodily organism. -- L.W.

Some
It is now recognized that to construe such a phrase as, e.g., 'some men' as a name of an undetermined [non-empty] part of the class of men (thus as a sort of variable) constitutes an inadequate analysis. In translation into an exact logical notation the word 'some' is usually to be represented by an existential quantifier (q.v.). -- A.C.

Sophia
(Gr. sophia) Theoretical as distinguished from practical wisdom, specifically, in Aristotle, knowledge of first principles, or first philosophy. -- G.R.M.

Sophism
An eristic or contentious syllogism, distinguished from paralogism by the intent to deceive (Aristotle). -- G.R.M.

Sophistic
(Gr. sophistike) The art of specious reasoning pursued for pay, according to Aristotle, thus distinguished from eristic, whose end is simply victory in disputation. -- G.R.M.

Sophistici Elenchi
(Gr sophistikoi elenchoi) The last of the logical treatises of Aristotle, dealing with fallacies in argumentation. -- G.R.M.

Sophists
(5th Cent B.C.) Wandering teachers who came to Athens from foreign cities, and sought to popularize knowledge. They filled a need felt in Greece at this time for a general dissemination of that scientific knowledge which had previously been more or less privately cultivated in learned societies. Nowhere was this need more widespread than in Athens...

Sophocracy
(Gr. sophos, wise) Government by the wisest. (Montague) -- H.H.

Sorge
(Ger. concern) The most essential structure of human consciousness and of the world; the basis of all 'being'. (Heidegger) -- H.H.

Sorites
A chain of (categorical) svllogisms, the conclusion of each forming a premiss of the next -- traditionally restricted to a chain of syllogisms in the first figure (all of which, with the possible exception of the first and last, must then be syllogisms in Barbara). In the statement of a sorites all conclusions except the last are suppressed, and i...

Soul (Scholastic)
With few exceptions (e.g., Tertullian) already the Fathers were agreed that the soul is a simple spiritual substance. Some held that it derived from the souls of the parents (Traducianism), others that it is created individually by God (Creationism), the latter view being generally accepted and made an article of faith. Regarding the union with th...

Soul-Substance Theory
Theory that the unity of the individual mind is constituted by a single, permanent, and indivisible spiritual substance. (See Ego, Pure) The theory is usually combined with a faculty psychology. See Faculty Psychology. -- L.W.

Soul
(Gr. psyche) In Aristotle the vital principle; the formal cause, essence, or entelechy of a natural organic body. -- G.R.M.

Soviet philosophy
The contemponiy development of the philosophy of dialecticil materialism in the U. S. S. R. There are two major points of reference for tracing1 the path that Soviet philosophy has taken -- the successive controversies around the issues of mechanism and of idealism. The first began in the early twenties as a discussion centering on the philosophy ...

Space, homogeneous
A form of sensibility, an intuition peculiar to man which enables him to externalize his concepts in relation to one another, reveals the objectivity of things; foreshadows and prepares the way for social life. (Bergson). -- H.H.

Space-perception
(Lat. spatium) The apprehension of the spatial properties and relations of the concrete objects of ordinary sense perception in contrast to the conceptual knowledge of the abstract spaces of physics and mathematics. Theories of space-perception are: a) nativistic, when they endow the mind with a primitive intuition of space which becomes qualitati...

Space-Time
The four-dimensional continuum including the three dimensions of space (length, width and height) and one of time; the unity of space and time. The concept was first suggested by H. Minkowski and immediately afterward incorporated by A. Einstein into his (special) theory of relativity. The former contended that nothing can exist or be conceived of...

Space
In Aristotle, the container of all objects. In the Cambridge Platonists, the sensorium of God. In Kant: the a priori form of intuition of external phenomena. In modern math., name for certain abstract invariant gioups or set's. See Space-Time. -- P.P.W.

Species
A relatively narrow class -- or better class concept -- thought of as included (in the sense of class inclusion, ?) within a wider class -- or class concept -- the genus. -- A.C. In Scholasticism: In logic: the subdivision of genus, comprising several individuals, constituted by the differentia specifica. In ontology: the common nature or ess...

Specificative
(in Schol.) Any concrete thing is taken specificatively or denominatively when the predicate which is attributed to it belongs to it by reason of the concrete subject itself: if we say: the philosopher sleeps, philosopher is taken specificatively, for he sleeps as man. -- H.G.

Specious Present
(Lat speciosus, from species, look or apprehend) The psychological or felt present is a spread of duration embraced within the mind's momentary experience. Contrasts with the physical present which is an ideal limit or boundary between the past and the future. -- L.W.

Speculative Idealism
Doctrine, founded on the coherence theory of truth, that Reality comprises one Self, Mind, or spiritual pnnciple. See Coherence, Internal theory of Relations, Pantheism, Organicism, Dialectic, W. T. Harris. -- W.L.

Speculum
(Lat. mirror) In ordinary language a mirror. Special meanings in optics, astronomy, surgery, and in ornithology. In medieval philosophy, mind is the speculum of nature and God. -- V F.

Speech Situation
(1) A situation in which a complete utterance is made by a speaker and correctly interpreted, by a hearer to whom it is addressed, as referring to some feature of the immediate environment. (2) More generally: the circumstances attending any use of speech from which some of the defining characteristics of a primary speech situation are absent. See...

Spencer, Herbert
(1820-1903) was the great English philosopher who devoted a life time to the formulation and execution of a plan to follow the idea of development as a first principle through all the avenues of human thought. A precursor of Darwin with his famous notion of all organic evolution as a change 'from homogeneity to heterogenity,' from the simple to th...