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

Dimension
(scientific) 1. Any linear series or order of elements. 2. Any quantity of a given kind, capable of increase or decrease over a certain range, a variable. 3. In the physical system: mass, length and time. -- A.C.B.

Dimensions of Consciousness
(Lat. dimensus, pp. of dimentire, to measure off) Pervasive and mutually irreducible features of conscious processes such as quality, intensity, extent, duration and intentionality. (Cf. E. B. Titchencr, Lectures on the Elementary Psychology of Feeling and Attention, Lect. IV; E. G. Boring, The Physical Dimensions of Consciousness, Ch. 3.) -- L.W....

Ding an sich
(Ger. thing in itself) A Kantian term referring to what lies beyond human experience and observation. 'Things in themselves' are transcendent, not transcendental or applicable to any human experience. The 'thing in itself' exists independent and apart from all knowledge. It has an independent reality apart from the subjectivity of human knowledge....

Diogenes Laertius
(also B.C.) A late biographical doxographer, to whom is owed most of the biographical and source material of Pre-Socratic philosophy. Cf. R. Hope, Diog. Laertius -- E.H.

Dionysian
The art impulse in which life is relived, in which life's joys and pains are re-experienced. The dynamic and passionate of the will of life and power. (Nietzsche.) -- H.H.

Diorism
The Greek term in Plato's usage signifies division, distinction; in that of Aristotle, distinction, definition, which is also the meaning today. In mathematics, a statement of the conditions needed in order to solve a problem. -- J.J.R.

Direct knowledge
A thing is said to be known directly when our cognition terminates in and refers immediately to the thing itself; a thing is known reflexly, when our cognition terminates in and refers immediately to the image or concept of the thing previously known. E.g. I know man directly upon seeing him, but upon seeing his image, I know him reflexly, because...

Direct theories of knowing
Any theories of knowledge which maintain that objects are known directly without the intermediary of percepts, images or ideas. -- A.C.B.

Discourse
Orderly communication of thought, or the power to think logically. -- C.A.B.

Discovery
(Lat. discooperire, to discover) 1. The act of becoming aware of something previously existing but unknown. 2. The act of insight (usually more or less sudden) by which a scientific hypothesis or explanatory conception comes into consciousness. -- A.C.B.

Discrepancy
A difference from that which was expected or is required by some datum. -- C.A.B.

Discrete
A class is said to have discrete order (e.g. the whole numbers), if (1) it satisfies Dedekind's postulate (q.v.) and (2) every element (except the first if any) has a next predecessor and also (except the last if any) a next successor. Contrasted with 'dense' or 'compact' order, such as that of the rational numbers, in which no element is next to ...

Discretion
(Lat. discretum, pp. of discernere, to discern) The mental capacity for critical discrimination especially in matters of ethics and conduct. -- L.W.

Discrimination
(Lat. discriminare, to separate) (a) subjectively: the rational power to distinguish between objects, real or logical, and betwen moral right and wrong. In Aristotelianism there is also a function of internal sense (Gr. kritikon, sensory discrimination; Lat. vis aestimativa or cogitativa) by which men and the higher animals distinguish the good fr...

Discursive Cognition
(Lat. discurrere, to run about) Discursive, as opposed to intuitive cognition, is attained by a series of inferences rather than by direct insight. See Intuitive Cognition. -- L.W. Contrasted with Intuitive, and applied to knowledge; also to transitions of thought. Our knowledge of, e.g., the nature of time, is discursive or conceptual if we are a...

Disjunction
See Logic, formal, § 1.

Disjunctive syllogism
See Logic, formal, § 2.

Disjunctive
A sentence of either of the forms A ? B, A + B (or a proposition expressed by such a sentence) -- see Logic, formal, § 1 -- may be called a disjunctive sentence (or proposition). -- A. C.

Disparate
(Lat. dis + par. equal) (a) In psychology and epistemology: a term descriptive of the qualitative heterogeneity between sensations of different senses. Sensations of the same sense (e.g. a red and a green color patch) are dissimilar (see Similarity; Resemblance), sensations of different senses (e.g. a red patch and a cold surface) are disparate. T...

Disparity
See Disparate.

Disputatio
(Scholastic) Out of the quaestiones disputatae developed gradually a rigid form of scholastic disputation. The defensor theseos proposed his thesis and explained or proved it in syllogistic form. The opponentes argued against the thesis and its demonstration by repeating first the proposition and the syllogism proving it, then either by denying th...

Disputation
(a) A dispute, or the act of disputing, (b) A formal exercise in which some set topic is debated. -- C.A.B.

Dissimilarity
Difference, unlikeness, heterogeneity. -- C.A.B.

Dissociation of Personality
A disorder of personality consisting in the loss of the normally stable and constant integration of the self. Two types of disintegration of personality are distinguishable: (a) The ideas and states dissociated from the central core of the self may float about as detached and depersonalized states. See Deperonalization. (b) The dissociated ideas a...

Dissociation
(Lat. dis + socius, a companion) The operation of mind by which the elements of a complex are discriminated. Dissociative discrimination is facilitated when elements which are commonly conjoined are found in new combinations. James calls this the law of 'dissociation by varying concomitants.' (Principles of Psychology, I, 506.) -- I.W.

Distinction
(in Scholasticism) Consists in this, that one thing is not another. Absolute: There is an absolute distinction between two things when neither one is a mode of the other, e.g. that between a stone and gold. A modal distinction is a distinction between a thing and its mode, e.g. that between a body and its shape. Adequate: A distinction between two...

Distinctness
(Ger. Deutlichkeit) In Husserl: Explicit articulatedness with respect to syntactical components. (See Confused). Distinctness is compatible with emptiness or obscurity of material content. See Descartes, Leibniz. -- D.C.

Distribution (of terms)
In the four traditional Aristotelian propositional forms, the subjects of universal propositions and the predicates of negative propositions are distributed, the other terms are undistributed. -- C.A.B.

Distributive Justice
Justice as exhibited in the distribution of honor, money, rights and privileges among the members of a community; characterized by Aristotle as requiring equality of proportion between persons and rewards. See Corrective Justice. -- G.R.M.

Distributive law
is a name given to a number of laws of the same or similar form appearing in various disciplines -- compare associative law. A distributive law of multiplication over addition appears in arithmetic: x X (y + z) = (x X y) + (x X z). This distributive law holds also in the theory of real numbers, and in many other mathematical disciplines involving ...

Disvalue
Bad. Evil. Opposed to value or goodness. -- A.J.B.

Divisibility
The property in virtue of which a whole (whether physical, psychical or mathematical) may be divided into parts which do not thereby necessarily sever their relation with the whole. Divisibility usually implies not merely analysis or distinction of parts, but actual or potential resolution into parts. From the beginning philosophers have raised th...

Division
(Lat. dividere, to divide) The logical process of indicating the species within a genus, the sub-species within the species, and so on a classificatory scheme constructed on the principle of genus and species. -- A.C.B.

Divisionism
Principle of obtaining the effects of light in painting by juxtaposing instead of mixing tints. -- L.V.

Docta ignorantia
Liteially, learned ignorance, refers to men's knowledge of God which unavoidably includes a negative element, since He immeasurably surpasses the knowledge of Him gleaned from this phenomenal world, yet for man this is truly a real learning. Title given to one of his philosophical treatises by Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) who understood it in the ...

Doctrinaires
(a) In general impractical, philosophical theorists, uninterested in other views than their own; dogmatists. (b) In particular: a group of French political philosophers of the early nineteenth century. -- V.J.B.

Dogma
The Greek term signified a public ordinance of decree, also an opinion. A present meaning: an established, or generally admitted, philosophic opinion explicitly formulated, in a depreciative sense; one accepted on authority without the support of demonstration or experience. Kant calls a directly synthetical proposition grounded on concepts a dogm...

Dogmatism
(Gr. dogma, opinion) A term used by many and various philosophers to characterize their opponents' view more or less derogatorily since the word cannot rid itself of certain linguistic and other associations. The Skeptics among Greek philosophers, doubting all, called dogmatism every assertion of a positive nature. More discriminately, dogmatism m...

Donatists
Followers of Bishop Donatus, leader of a Christian sect which originated in North Africa in the beginning of the fourth century. They taught the invalidity of sacraments administered by an unworthy minister and that known sinners should be denied membership in the Church. Their most powerful opponent was Saint Augustine. -- J.J.R.

Donum superadditum
A theological term denoting a gratuitous gift of God superadded to the natural gifts which accompany human nature; hence a supernatural gift, like divine grace. -- J.J.R.

Double negation, law of
The theorem of the propositional calculus, &sim:~p = p. -- A.C.

Double-Aspect Theory
Theory that the mind and the body of an individual are two distinguishable but inseparable aspects of a single underlying substance or process. Spinoza, as a consequence of his metaphysical doctrine trnt 'thinking substance and extended substance are one and the same thing' (Ethics, Part II, prop. 7) was committed to the Two-Aspect Theory of the b...

Doubt
(Fr. doute, from Lat. dubito, to be uncertain) Partial disbelief. The denial of a proposition offered or formerly held as true. The withdrawal of belief. In psychology: suspended judgment; the state of hesitation between contradictory propositions. Philosophical doubt has been distinguished as definitive or provisional. Definitive doubt is sceptic...

Doxa
The positional character common to all modes of beliewng: not only to believing in simple positive certainty (protodoxa, Ger. Urdoxa), but to modifications of the latter, such as doubting, disbelieving, affirming, denying, and assuming. Doxa in Husseil's sense includes episteme. It is present not only in syntactical-categorial judging, but in simp...

Drama
a. State of mind characterized by human conflict. b. Literary genre in which conflicts are portrayed on the stage. -- L.V.

Dravya
(Skr.) Substance, as a substratum of qualities (see guna), accidents, or modes. Various classes are established by Indian philosophers. --K.F.L.

Drawing
Essential element of painting, sculpture and architecture. The Florentine Renaissance and all classical epochs in general considered drawing the basis of the aforesaid arts which were called the arts of drawing. -- L.V.

Driesch, Hans Adolf Eduard
(1867-1940) An experimental biologist turned philosopher, he as a rationalist became the most prominent defender of a renovated vitalism. He excludes the physical-chemical level of reality from his vitalism. He asserts that every organism has its own entelechy. For what he terms phylogenetic development, a more inclusive vitalism of the whole evol...

Dualism
(Lat. duo, two) (a) In metaphysics: Theory which admits in any given domain, two independent and mutually irreducible substances e.g. the Platonic dualism of the sensible and intelligible worlds, the Cartesian dinlism of thinking and extended substances, the Leibnizian dualism of the actual and possible worlds, the Kantian dualism of the noumenal ...

Duality
See Logic, formal, §§ 1, 3, 7, 8.

Duration
A limited extent of existence in time, more or less long, from a fraction of second to countless ages. H. Bergson gives it a special interpretation in regarding it as 'time perceived as indivisible', a living present; as such, duration becomes the very essence of creative change, of creative evolution and must be opposed to time as measurable. -- ...

Duty
(Ang-Fr. duete, what is due, Ger. Pflicht) Whatever is necessary or required; or whatever one is morally obliged to do, as opposed to what one may be pleased or inclined to do. Also, the moral obligation itself and the law or principle in which it is expressed. In ethics, duty is commonly associated with conscience, reason, rightness, moral law, a...

Dyad
(Gr. duas, two) A pair of units considered as one. In Pythagoreanism the dyad is the number two, thought of as a substantial essence, or physically, as a line, i.e. two points which do not coincide. -- V.J.B.

Dyadic Relation
A two-termed relation (q.v.).

Dyadic
(Gr. duas, two) Term meaning duality. Human experience is said to be dyadic, i.e. man's nature is dual in conflicts between good intentions and bad accomplishments, in oppositional strains and stresses. The personality of God is held to be dyadic in the confronting of difficulties or frustrations to his good will. Reality is spoken of as dyadic wh...

Dynamic Vitalism
See Vitalism.

Dynamis
(Gr. dynamis) In Aristotle's philosophy (1) a source of change or power to effect change; faculty; (2) more generally the capacity a thing has of passing to a different state; potentiality. See Aristotelianism; Energeia. -- G.R.M.

Dynamism
(Gr. dynamis, power) A term applied to a philosophical system which, in contrast to philosophy of mechanism (q.v.), adopts force rather than mass or motion as its basic explanatory concept. In this sense the Leibnizian philosophy is dynamism in contrast to the mechanism of Descartes' physics. -- L.W.

Dyophysites
A term applied to the Catholics, who held that there are two natures in Christ, the Divine and the human, by the Monophysites, or the followers of Eutyches, who advanced the formula, 'one nature after the union.' -- J.J.R.

Dysteleology
(Gr. dus, bad; telos, end or purpose) The term for the forbidding and frustrating aspects of life (such as unfavorable environmental factors, organic maladaptations, the struggle for existence, disease, death, etc.) which make difficult, if not impossible, the theory that there are good purposes predominantly at work in the world. -- V.F.

Eclecticism
The principle, tendency, or practice of combining, or drawing upon, various philosophical or theological doctrines. In its passive form, it is found in many thinkers of no great originality. In its more active form, as a deliberate attempt to create unity among discordant schools of philosophy, eclecticism was practised by the Alexandrien School (...

Economic determinism
The theory that the economic base of society determines other social doctrines often designated as economic determinism on the ground that they are too narrow and assert only a one-way causal influence (from economic base to other institutions), whereas causal influence, they hold, proceeds both ways. They refer to their own theory as historical m...

Economics
(Lat. aeconomicus, domestic economy, from oikos, house, + nomos, law) That branch of social science which is concerned with the exchange of goods. Employed by Xenophon, Aristotle and Cicero to describe treatises on the proper conduct of the household. In more recent times, combined with politics as political economy, the study of the laws and syst...

Economy, principle of
Is the modern name for the logical rule known also as Occam's Razor. Its original formula was: Entia non sunt multilicanda praeter necessitatem, i.e. of two or more explanations, which are of equal value otherwise, the one which uses the fewest principles, or suppositions, is true, or at least scientifically preferable. -- V.J.B.

Economy
An aspect of the scientific methodology of Ernst Mach (Die Analyse der Empfindungen, 5th ed., Jena, 1906); science and philosophy utilize ideas and laws which are not reproductive of sense data as such, but are simplified expressions of the functional relations discovered in the manifold of sense perceptions. -- V.J.B.

Ecpyrosis
(Gr. ekpyrosia) Conflagration; in Stoic doctrine the periodic resolution of all things into fire. -- G.R.M.

Ecstasy
(aesthetics) The contemplation of absolute beauty purified of any sensory experience. (Plotinus.) -- L.V.

Ecstasy
(Gr. ekstasis, displacement, a trance) The enraptured condition of the mystical spirit which has reached the climax of its intuitive and affective experience. Of brief duration, it is physiologically negative (resembling trance) but, according to some mystics, psychologically very rich. Usually said to be concomitant with a spiritual union of the ...

Eduction
1. In logic, a term proposed by E. E. Constance Jones as a synonym or substitute for the more usual immediate inference (see Logic, formal, § 4). -- A.C. 2. In cosmology, the production of the substantial form out of the potentiality of matter, according to the hylomorphic system. -- T.G.

Edwards, Jonathan
(1703-1758) American theologian. He is looked upon by many as one of the first theologians that the New World has produced. Despite the formalistic nature of his system, there is a noteworthy aesthetic foundation in his emphasis on 'divine and supernatural light' as the basis for illumination and the searchlight to an exposition of such topics as ...

Effect
(in Scholasticism) Formal: is the effect of a formal cause a primary and intrinsic formal effect is a concrete composite, or a designation resulting from form united to an apt subject. (i.e. to a subject capable of receiving that form) e.g. the formal primary and intrinsic effect of heat by which water is made warm is the warm water itself, so als...

Effectiveness
See Logistic system, and Logic, formal, § 1.

Effluvium
See Effluxes, Theory of.

Effluxes, Theory of
(Lat. efflux, from effluere, to flow out) Theory of early Greek thinkers that perception is mediated by effluvia or simulacra projected by physical objects and impinging upon the organs of sense. Thus Empedocles developed the theory of effluxes in conjunction with the principle that 'like perceives only like' (similia similibus percipiuntur); an e...

Ego, Empirical
(Lat. ego, self) The individual self, conceived as a series of conscious acts and contents which the mind is capable of cognizing by direct introspection. See Bundle Theory of Self. -- L.W.

Ego, Pure
The self conceived as a non-empirical principle, ordinarily inaccessible to direct introspection, but inferred from introspective evidence. See Ego, empirical. The principal theories of the pure ego are: (a) the soul theory which regards the pure ego as a permanent, spiritual substance underlying the fleeting succession of conscious experience, an...

Ego, Transcendental
See Ego, Pure. -- L.W.

Ego-centric Predicament
(Lat. ego, self, Gr. kentrikon, center) The epistemological predicament of a knowing mind which, confined to the circle of its own ideas, finds it difficult, if not impossible, to escape to a knowledge of an external world (cf. R. B. Perry, Present Philosophical Tendencies, pp. 129-30). Descartes is largely responsible for having confronted modern...

Egoism, Ethical
The view that each individual should seek as an end only his own welfare. This principle is sometimes advanced as a separate intuition, sometimes on the ground that an individual's own welfare is the only thing that is ultimately valuable (for him). -- C.A.B

Egoism, Psychological
The doctrine that the determining, though perhaps concealed, motive of every voluntary action is a desire for one's own welfare. Often combined with Psychological Hedonism. -- C.A.B.

Egological
(Ger. egologisch) In Husserl; Of or pertaining to the ego or to egology. Egological reduction phenomenological reduction as involving epoche with respect to one's own explicit and implicit positing of concrete egos other than one's own and therefore with respect to one's positing of one's own ego as one among others. See Phenomenology. -- B.C.

Eidetic Imagery
Expression used by the German psychologist E. R. Jaensch, (Ueber den Aufbau der Wahrnehmungswelt und ihre Struktur im Jugendalter, 1923) to designate images usually visual which are almost photographic in their fidelity. Eidetic imagery differs from hallucination in that the former are usually recognized by the subject to be 'subjective.' -- L.W.

Eidetic
(Ger. eidetisch) In Husserl: Of or pertaining to an eidos or to eide. Eidetic existent: anything falling as an example within the ideal extension of a valid eidos; e.g., an ideally or purely possible individual. (Purely) eidetic judgments: judgments that do not posit individual existence, even though they are about something individual. Eidetic ne...

Eidola
(Gr. eidola) Images; insubstantial forms, phantoms. Democritus and Epicurus use the term to denote the films, or groups of very fine particles, believed to be thrown off by bodies and to convey impressions to the eye. -- G.R.M.

Einfühlung
(and Einsfühlung, in Max Scheler) The emotional and dynamic understanding of nature as the operational field of living forces. See Empathy. -- P.A.S.

Eirenicon, epistemological
(Gr. eirenikos, peaceful) The purging of the negative claims and the synthesis of subjectivism, objectivism, dualism and relativism in epistemology. (Montague.) -- H.H.

Eject
(Lat. pp. of ejicere, to throw out) Term intioduced by W. K. Clifford to designate another conscious subject conceived as an outward projection of the knowing subject. -- L.W.

Elan vital
Term used by Bergson to denote the source of efficient causation and evolution in nature. See Bergson. -- R.T.F.

Election
(Lat. eligo, to choose) A choice between alternatives. In psychology: free choice by the will between means proposed by the understanding. An act of volition. -- J.K.F.

Elements
Are simple constituents, in psychology, of sense perceptions such as sweet and green. Elementary complexes are things of experience. (Avenarius.) In logic: individual members of a class. Also refers to Euclid's 13 books. -- H.H.

Elenchus
(Gr. elenchos) A syllogism establishing the contradictory of a proposition attacked; a refutation. (Aristotle.) -- G.R.M.

Elijah, Aaron ben
Karaite exegete and philosopher (1300-1369). The Ez Hayyim, i.e. Tree of Size, his philosophical work, deals with all problems of philosophy and displays the influence of both Maimonides and of the teachings of the Mutazilites. -- M.W.

Emanation
Literally, an outpouring or flowing forth, specifically, applied to the process of derivation or mode of origination, immediate or mediate, of the multiplicity of beings whether spiritual or material from the eternal source of all being, God, of Whose being consequently they are a part and in Whose nature they somehow share. It is opposed to creat...

Emergent Evolution
Generalization of emergent mentalism (q.v.) due to S. Alexander (q.v.), Space, Time and Deity. See Bergson's variation in L'evolution creatrice. See Holism.

Emergent Mentalism
(Lat. emergere, to rise out) The theory of emergent evolutionism considered as an explanation of the genesis of mind or consciousness in the world. Mind is a novel quality emerging from the non-mental when the latter attains a certain complexity of organization. Cf. C. Lloyd Morgan, Emergent Evolution, Lect. I, II, Life, Mind, Spirit, Ch. V. -- L....

Emerson, Ralph Waldo
(1803-1882) American poet and essayist. His spirit of independence early led him to leave the pulpit for the lecture platform where he earned high rank as the leading transcendentalist and the foremost figure in the famous Concord group. His profound vision, his ringing spirit of individualism and his love of democracy place him among the New Worl...

Emotion
(Lat. emovere, to stir up, agitate) In the widest sense emotion applies to all affective phenomena including the familiar ''passions' of love, anger, fear, etc. as well as the feelings of pleasure and pain. See Affect. -- L.W.

Emotive Meaning
Emotive, as distinguished from the cognitive, meaning of a statement is its ability to communicate an attitude or emotion, to inspire an act of will without conveying truth. Exclamations, commands and perhaps ethical and aesthetic judgments are emotive but not cognitive. -- L.W.

Empathic
Adjective of empathy. See Empathy. -- L.W.

Empathy
(Gr. en + pathein, to suffer) The projection by the mind into an object of the subjective feeling of bodily posture and attitude which result from the tendency of the body to conform to the spatial organization of the object (e.g. the tendency to imitate the outstretched hands of a statue). The phenomenon is of particular significance for aestheti...