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

Empedocles
Of Agrigentum, about 490-430 B.C.; attempted to reconcile the teaching of the permanence of Being of the Eleatics with the experience of change and motion as emphasized by Heraclitus. He taught the doctrine of the four 'elements', earth, water, air and fire, out of the mixture of which all individual things came to be; love and hate being the caus...

Empirical
(Gr. empeirikos, experienced) Relating to experience. Having reference to actual facts. (a) In epistemology: pertaining to knowledge gained a posteriori. (b) In scientific method: that part of the method of science in which the reference to actuality allows an hypothesis to be erected into a law or general principle. Opposite of normative. -- J.K....

Empiricism, Radical
The theory of knowledge which holds that idens are reducible to sensations, as in Hume (1711-1776). The doctrine that experience is the final criterion of reality in knowledge. Syn. with sensationalistic empiricism or sensationalism (q.v.). See Avenarius. William James, who first adopted this philosophical position, and so named it, described it i...

Empiricism, Scientific
See Scientific Empiricism. -- R.C.

Empiricism
(1) A proposition about the sources of knowledge: that the sole source of knowledge is experience, or that either no knowledge at all or no knowledge with existential reference is possible independently of experience. Experience (q.v.) may be understood as either all conscious content, data of the senses only, or other designated content. Such emp...

Empiricists
(Early English) By the beginning of the 17th century, the wave of search for new foundations of knowledge reached England. The country was fast growing in power and territory. Old beliefs seemed inadequate, and vast new information brought from elsewhere by merchants and scholars had to be assimilated. The feeling was in the air that a new, more p...

Empirio-criticism
Avenarius' system of pure experience in which all metaphysical additions are eliminated. Opposed to every form of apriorism, it admits of no basic difference between the psychical and the physical, subject and object, consciousness and being. Knowledge consists in statements about contents which are dependent upon System C in man in the form of ex...

Empty
(Ger. leer) In Husserl: Without intuitional fullness, materially indeterminate; obscure. Emptiness is compatible with distinctness. In logic: a class that happens to have no members, but is not a null-class. -- D.C.

Ends
(in Kant's ethics) (1) Humanity and every rational creature is an end in itself (never merely a means). (2) 'The natural end which all men have is their own happiness.' (Kant.) Kingdom of ends: Kant's notion of the systematic union of different rational beings by common laws. Cf. also the Practical Imperative. -- P.A.S.

End
, (in Scholasticism): That object for the attainment of which the agent moves and acts. End which (finis qui): That good the agent intends to attain, e.g. health, which a sick man intends. End for whom (finis cui): Refers to the person or subject for whom the end which (finis qui) is procured, e.g. the sick man himself for whom health is procured. ...

Energeia
(Gr. energeia, actuality) In Aristotle's philosophy (1) the mode of existence of that which possesses to the full its specific essence; actuality; entelechy; -- opposed to dynamis, or potentiality; (2) the activity that transforms potentiality into actuality. -- G-R.M.

Energism
(Lat. energia, active) Ethical theory that right action consists in exercising one's normal capacities efficiently. Not happiness or pleasure, but self-realization is the aim of ethical action. -- A.J.B.

Energy
(Gr. energos, at work) The power by which things act to change other things. Potentiality in the physical. Employed by Aristotle as a synonym for actuality or reality. (a) In physics: the capacity for performing work. In modern physics, the equivalent of mass. (b) In i axiology: value at the physical level- -- J.K.F.

Enjoyment
See Contemplation. -- L.W.

Enlightenment
When Kant, carried by the cultural enthusiasm of his time, explained 'enlightenment' as man's coming of age from the state of infancy which rendered him incapable of using his reason without the aid of others, he gave only the subjective meaning of the term. Objectively, enlightenment is a cultural period distinguished by the fervent efforts of le...

Ens Parmenideum
(Lat. ens, being) The changeless being (existence) ascribed by Parmenides to all things and events. Change was regarded by him as an illogical illusion. -- R.B.W.

Ens Rationis
(in Scholasticism) A purelv objective ens rationis is a chimera, or an impossible thing, although in a certain way it is an object of human knowledge, as a triangular circle. A logical ens rationis is that which is fashioned by the intellect with some foundation in realitv, e.g. human nature conceived as one reality because of the likeness of sing...

Entelechy
(Gr. entelecheia) In Aristotle's philosophy (1) the mode of being of a thing whose essence is completely realized; actuality; energeia; -- opposed to dynamis, or potentiality; (2) the form or essence. -- G.R.M.

Enthymeme
(Gr. enthymema) In Aristotle's logic a rhetorical syllogism, usually consisting of probable premisses, and used for persuasion as distinct from instruction. In later logic a syllogism of which one premiss or the conclusion is not explicitly stated. -- G.R.M.

Entities, neutral
Qualityless elements, simples that are in themselves neither mental nor physical. -- H.H.

Entity
A real being; also the common element in all individuals belonging to a genus or species, which may be considered apart from the individual characteristics. Sometimes used in the sense of a vague and ill-defined reality. -- J.J.R.

Entropy
Thermodynamic state approaching a maximum level of zero difference of energy potentials.

Enumerable
A class is enumerable if its cardinal number (q.v.) is aleph 0. -- A.C.

Enumerative Induction
A type of inference from a number of given instances, when these are treated by noting the number of observed coincident happenings of their conditions and their effects, and without attempting to analyze their respective contents or to determine a causal connection between them by means of one or more of the methods of research and verification. ...

Epagoge
(Gr. epagoge) In Aristotle's logic the process of establishing a general proposition by induction (seeing the univers.il in the particular). -- C.R.M.

Epicheirema
(Gr. epicheirema) In Aristotle's logic a dialectical as distinct from an apodictic or an eristic syllogism. In later logic an argument one of whose premisses is established by a prosyllogism expressed in the form of an enthymeme. -- G.R.M.

Epictetus
(c. 60-110 A.D.) A Stoic philosopher and freed slave, who established his School in Nicopolis, Epirus; his Discourses were published by Arrian, his learned disciple, they contain sharp observations of human behavior and pithy sayings on ethical matters. -- R.B.W.

Epicurean School
Founded by Epicurus in Athens in the year 306 B.C. Epicureanism gave expression to the desire for a refined type of happiness which is the reward of the cultured man who can take pleasure in the joys of the mind over which he can have greater control than over those of a material or sensuous nature. The friendship of gifted and noble men, the peac...

Epicurus
(341-270 B.C.) A native of Samos, founded his School in Athens about 306 B.C., where he instructed his disciples and admirers in the art of rational living. He taught that pleasure and happiness are the natural end of life. But, contrary to later misconceptions, he did not advocate the pursuit of all or any pleasures, but only of those which are c...

Epiphenomenalism
Theory of the body-mind relation advanced by Clifford, Huxley, Hodgson, etc. which holds that consciousness is, in relation to the neural processes which underlie it, a mere epiphenomenon. See W. James, Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. V. See Epiphenomenon. -- L.W.

Epiphenomenon
(Gr. epi + phenomenon, from phainein, to appear) A by-product of a basic process which exerts no appreciable influence on the subsequent development of the process. -- L.W.

Epistemic
(Gr. episteme, knowledge) Relating to knowledge. See Epistemological object. -- L.W.

Epistemological Dualism
See Dualism, Epistemological.

Epistemological Idealism
The form of epistemological monism which identifies the content and the object of knowledge by assimilating the object to the content. Berkeleyeyan idealism by its rejection of a physical object independent of ideas directly present to the mind is an example of epistemological monism. See Epistemological Monism. -- L.W.

Epistemological Monism
Theory that non-inferential knowledge, (perception, memory, etc.) the object of knowledge, (the thing perceived or remembered) is numerically identical with the data of knowledge (sense data, memory images, etc.). Epistemological monism may be either (a) epistemologically realistic, when it asserts that the data exist independently of the knowing ...

Epistemological Object
The object envisaged by an act of knowledge whether the knowledge be veridical, illusory or even hallucinatory in contrast to ontological object, which is a real thing corresponding to the epistemological object when knowledge is veridical. See C. D. Broad, The Mind and its Place in Nature, pp. 141 ff. -- L.W.

Epistemological Realism
Theory that the object of knowledge enjoys an existence independent of and external to the knowing mind. The theory, though applied most commonlv to perception where it is designated perceptual realism, may be extended to other types of knowledge (for example memory and knowledge of other minds). Epistemological realism may be combined either with...

Epistemology
(Gr. episteme, knowledge + logos, theory) The branch of philosophy which investigates the origin, structure, methods and validity of knowledge. The term 'epistemology' appears to have been used for the first time by J. F. Ferrier, Institutes of Metaphysics (1854) who distinguished two branches of philosophy -- epistemology and ontology. The German...

Episyllogism
Where the conclusion of one (categorical) syllogism is used as one of the premisses of another, the first syllogism is called a prosyllogism and the second one an episyllogism. -- A.C.

Equality
See Logic, formal, §§ 3, 6, 9.

Equipollence
A relation of equivalence between two propositions or propositional forms or symbols for these. (a) Some writers, following the example of Galen, use it in the sense of material equivalence, i.e., having the same truth value. (b) Others, following Apuleius, use it in a much more restricted sense such as that of strict equivalence or even reciproca...

Equivocation
is any fallacy arising from ambiguity of a word, or of a phrase playing the role of a single word in the reasoning in question, the word or phrase being used at different places with different meanings and an inference drawn which is formally correct if the word or phrase is treated as being the same word or phrase throughout. -- A. C.

Erh
(a) The active or male principle (yang) and the passive or female principle (yin), which are the products of Tao and which produce the myriad of things. (Taoism.) (b) The active or male principle (yang or ch'ien) and the passive or female principle. -- W.T.C.

Eristic
(Gr. eristike) In Aristotle's logic the art of specious reasoning, or of reasoning from specious premises, for the purpose of victory in argument; -- opposed to apodictic and to dialectical reasoning. See Apodiclic; Dialectic. A kind of polemic, characterized by the use of logical subtleties and oratorical casuistry, for which the Megarian School ...

Eriugena, Joannes Scottus
(800/815 - c. 800) Was of Irish birth and early education. He came to the Court of Charles the Bald, son of Charlemagne, as a teacher c. 845. A good linguist, he translated works of Maximus, Gregory of Nyssa and the Pseudo-Dionysius from Greek to Latin. His thought is partly Augustinian, partly a personal development inspired by the Greek Fathers....

Erlebnis
(Ger. erleben, to experience or live through) The mind's identification with its own emotions and feelings when it consciously 'lives through'; contrasts with cognition, with its characteristic duality between subject and object. See Enjoyment and Contemplation. -- L.W.

Eros
(Gr.) 1. Possessive desire or love, commonly erotic. 2. In Platonic thought, the driving force of life aspiring to the absolute Good; hence the motive underlying education, fine art, and philosophy. The connotation of aesthetic fascination, impersonality, and intense desire is retained in Plato's use of the term. Hence Eros is to be distinguished ...

Erotema
(Gr. erotema) A question in Aristotle's logic a premise stated in interrogative form for acceptance or rejection by the respondent; hence, any premise used in dialectical reasoning. -- G.R.M.

Error
(Lat. error, from errare, to wander) Distorted or non-veridical apprehension, for example illusory perception and memory. See Veridical. The term, although sometimes used as a synonym of falsity, is properly applied to acts of apprehension like perception and memory and not to propositions and judgments. -- L.W.

Eschatology
(Gr. ta eschata, death) That part of systematic or dogmatic theology dealing with the last things, namely, death, judgment, heaven and hell, and also with the end of the world. Also applied by philosophers to the complexus of theories relating to the ultimate end of mankind and the final stages of the physical cosmos. -- J.J.R.

Esoteric
Belonging to the inner circle of initiates, or experts; e.g. the esoteric doctrines attributed to the Stoics, or the esoteric members of the Pythagorean brotherhoods;contrasted with exoteric (q.v.). -- G.R.M.

Essence
(Lat. essentia, fr. essens, participle of esse, to be) The being or power of a thing; necessary internal relation or function. The Greek philosophers identified essence and substance in the term, ousia. In classic Latin essence was the idea or law of a thing. But in scholastic philosophy the distinction between essence and substance became importa...

Essence
, (Scholastic): The essence of a thing is its nature considered independently of its existence. Also non-existent things and those which cannot exist at all have a proper essence. The definition details all properties making up the essence. It is doubtful whether we can give of a ny thing a truly essential definition with the one exception of man: ...

Essential Coordination
Term employed bv R. Avenarius (Kritik der reinen Erfahrung, 1888) to designate the essential solidarity existing between the knowing subject and the object of knowledge. The theory of 'essential coordination' is contrasted by Avenarius with the allegedly false theory of introjection (q.v.). -- L.W.

Esthesis
(Gr. aisthesis, sensation or feeling, from aisthanesthai, to perceive) A state of pure feeling -- sensuous, hedonic or affective -- characterized by the absence of conceptual and interpretational elements. Aesthesis at the sensory level consists of pure sense data. See Sense datum. Though the existence of pure esthesis is challenged by most psycho...

Esthetic
See Aesthetic.

Eternal object
A. N. Whitehead's term essentially synonymous with Plato's 'Idea' or Aristotle's 'form'; a potential form determining and limiting the qualitative characteristics of actuality, a universal attributed to reality -- R.B.W.

Eternal recurrence
The view that as the dynamic energies of nature are finite, whereas time is infinite, only a limited number of combinations is possible, which results in the cyclical recurrence of every situation in infinitely numerous times. The view which assumes that the initial combination of the forces of existence will recur again and again. (Nietzsche.) --...

Eternity
An infinite extent of time, in which every event is future at one time, present at another, past at another. As everlastingness, it was formerly divided into two eternities, eternitv a parte ante, an infinite extent of time before the present, and eternity a parte post, an infinite extent of time after the present. Anything can be called 'eternal'...

Ethical formalism
(Kantian) Despite the historical over-shadowing of Kant's ethical position by the influence of The Critique of Pure Reason upon the philosophy of the past century and a half, Kant's own (declared) major interest, almost from the very beginning, was in moral philosophy. Even the Critique of Pure Reason itself was written only in order to clear the ...

Ethical Hedonism
See Hedonism, ethical.

Ethical relativism
The view that ethical truths are relative -- that the rightness of an action and the goodness of an object depend on or consist in the attitude taken towards it by some individual or group, and hence may vary from individual to individual or from group to group. See Absolutism. -- W.K.F.

Ethical rule
See Rule.

Ethics, Absolute
A phrase which is sometimes used to designate an ethics which is put forth as absolute, see Absolutism, and sometimes, as by H. Spencer, to designate the formulation of the ideal code of conduct of an ideal man in the ideal society. See Relative Ethics. -- W.K.F.

Ethics, Relative
A term due to H. Spencer and used to designate any attempt to apply the ideal code of conduct formulated by Absolute Ethics to actual men in actual societies. See Absolute Ethics. -- W.K.F.

Ethics
(Gr. ta ethika, from ethos) Ethics (also referred to as moral philosophy) is that study or discipline which concerns itself with judgments of approval and disapproval, judgments as to the rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness, virtue or vice, desirability or wisdom of actions, dispositions, ends, objects, or states of affairs. There are two ...

Ethos
(Gr. ethos) Character; moral purpose; distinguished by Aristotle from thought or intelligence as a source of dramatic action; hence that element in a dramatic composition which portrays character as distinct from the portrayal of thought or suffering. -- G.R.M.

Etiology
(1) The science or philosophical discipline which studies causality; (2) The science of the causes of some particular phenomenon, e.g. in medicine the science of the causes of disease. -- A.C.B.

Eucken, Rudolf
(1846-1926) Being a writer of wide popularity, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1908, Eucken defends a spiritualistic-idealistic metaphysics against materialistic naturalism, positivism and mechanism. Spiritual life, not being an oppositionless experience, is a struggle, a self-asserting action by resistance, a matter of great alternati...

Eudaemonism
(Gr. eu, well + daimon, spirit) Theory that the aim of right action is personal well-being or happiness, often contrasted with hedonism's aim at pleasure. -- A.J.B.

Euhemerism
The view that explains religious myths as traditional and partially distorted accounts of historical events and personages; from Euhemerus, Cyrenaic philosopher (c. 300 B.C.), who advanced the theory that the gods of mythology were deified heroes. -- G.R.M.

Euler diagram
The elementary operations upon and relations between classes -- complementation, logical sum, logical product, class equality, class inclusion -- may sometimes advantageously be represented by means of the corresponding operations upon and relations between regions in a plane. (Indeed, if regions are considered as classes of points, the operations...

Evaluation
Quantitative comparison of values. The appraisal of value; the estimation of worth. See Value. -- J.K.F.

Event-particle
A. N. Whitehead's term meaning a material event with all its dimensions ideally restricted. -- R.B.W.

Event
(Lat. evenire, to happen, come out) Anything which happens, usually something which exhibits change and does not endure over a long time; hence opposed to object (q.v.) or thing. -- A.C.B.

Evidence
(Ger. Evidenz) In Husserl: 1. Usual (strict) sense: consciousness of an intended object as itself (more or less fully) given; experience in the broadest sense. Contrasted with empty intending. Perfect evidence is a regulative idea: In any particular evidence the object is also emptily intended as the object of further, confirmative, evidence. Evid...

Evidence
(Lat. e+videre, to see) Any supposed fact which is considered as supporting the truth of a given proposition. -- A.C.B.

Evident
(Ger. evident) In Husserl: Both evidence and the object of evidence are called 'evident'. -- D.C.

Evil
(AS. yfel) Negation of the extrinsic elections of things. In practice, the positive effects of such negation. The morally bad. Hostility to the welfare of anything. Absence of the good. Opposite of goodness. See Ethics. -- J.K.F.

Evolution, creative
The conserved pluri-dimensional life force causing all the numerous varieties of living forms, dividing itself more and more as it advances. (Bergson.) -- H.H.

Evolution
The development of organization. The working out of a definite end; action by final causation. For Comte, the successive stages of historical development are necessary. In biology, the series of phylogenetic changes in the structure or behavior of organisms, best exemplified by Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. In cosmology, cosmogony is the the...

Evolutionary ethics
Any ethical theory in which the doctrine of evolution plays a leading role, as explaining the origin of the moral sense, and, more especially, as contributing importantly to the determination of the moral standard, e.g. the ethics of Charles Darwin, H. Spencer, L. Stephen. Typical moral standards set up by evolutionists are adaptation, conducivene...

Evolutionism
This is the view that the universe and life in all of its manifestations and nature in all of their aspects are the product of development. Apart from the religious ideas of initial creation by fiat, this doctrine finds variety of species to be the result of change and modification and growth and adaptation rather than from some form of special cr...

Exact
Opposite of vague (q. v.). -- A.C.

Excluded middle, law of
, or tertium non datur, is given by traditional logicians as 'A is B or A is not B.' This is usually identified with the theorem of the propositional calculus, p ? ~p to which the same name is given. The general validity of the law is denied by the school of mathematical intuitiontsm (q. v.). -- A.C.

Exclusive particularity, fallacy of
The unwarranted belief that a particular term belongs only to one system of terms; that it can function in only one relationship. -- H.H.

Exemplarism
(Lat. exemplum, a pattern or copy) The theological doctrine that finite things are copies of originals existing in the divine mind. -- L.W.

Exemplary cause
(Lat. exemplum, pattern or example) A form of causality resembling that exercised by the Ideas in Platonism, the rationes aeternae in Augustinianism and Thomism. The role of an archetypal, or 'pattern' cause is much discussed in Scholastic metaphysics because of the teaching that the universe was created in accord with a Divine Plan consisting of ...

Exemplification
(Ger. Exemphfizierung) In Husserl: The relation of an entity to any eidos or any universal type under which it falls as an instance or as containing a part which is an instance of the eidos or the type. Exemplification is distinguished from (a) the relation of species to genus, (b) the relation of a more detailed syntactical form to a less detaile...

Exercite
(in Scholasticism) The exercise (exercitium) of, for example, understanding, walking, or doing something, indicates the act itself of understanding, of walking, or of doing something. Opposed to signate (signately) (q.v.). -- H.G.

Existence
(Ger. Dasein, Existenz) In Husserl's writings the terms Dasein and Existenz are not given different senses nor restricted to the sphere of personal being, except with explicit reference to other writers who use them so. In Husserl's usage, 'existence' means being (q.v.) of any kind or, more restrictedly, individual being. -- D.C.

Existence
(Lat. existere: to emerge) The mode of being which consists in interaction with other things. For Aristotle, matter clothed with form. Essences subjected to accidentst the state of things beyond their causes. The state of being actual, the condition of objectivity. In epistemology: that which is experienced. In psychology: the presence of a given ...

Existential import
See Logic, formal, § 4.

Existential Philosophy
Determines the worth of knowledge not in relation to truth but according to its biological value contained in the pure data of consciousness when unaffected by emotions, volitions, and social prejudices. Both the source and the elements of knowledge are sensations as they 'exist' in our consciousness. There is no difference between the external an...

Existential proposition
Traditionally, a proposition which directly asserts the existence of its subject, as, e.g., Descartes's 'ergo sum' or the Christian's 'Good exists.' Expressed in symbolic notation, such a proposition has a form like (Ex)M. By an extension of this, a proposition expressible in the functional calculus of first order may be called existential if the ...

Existential Psychology
A school of introspective psychology represented in America by E. B. Titchener (1867-1927) which conceived the task of psychology to be the description, analysis and classification of the experiences of an individual mind considered as existences. Also called Existentialism. A characteristic doctrine of the school is the denial of imageless though...

Existential quantifier
See Quantifier.

Exoteric
External; belonging to or suited for those who are not initiates or experts. The exoterikoi logoi referred to in Aristotle are popular arguments or treatises, as contrasted with strictly scientific expositions. -- G.R.M.

Expectation
1. In general, the act or state of looking forward to an event about to happen. The grounds on which something is believed to happen. A supposition, an anticipation, a reasonable hope, a probable occurrence. 2. A mathematical expectation is the value of any chance which depends upon some contingent event. Thus, if a person is to receive an amount ...

Experience, pure
The elimination of all presuppositions of thought. See Avenarius, Experientialism. -- H.H.