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

Experience
(Lat. Experientia, from experiri: to test) The condition or state of subjectivity or awareness. (The term differs from Consciousness by emphasizing the temporal or passing character of affective undergoing. Usage, however, is not uniform, since its definition involves a theoretical standpoint. Thus Bradley identified it with Consciousness, while W...

Experientialism
The resort to concrete experience, whether perceptual, intuitive, activistic, axiological, or mystical, as the source of truth. The opposite of Intellectualism. Experientialism is a broader term than Empiricism. -- W.L.

Experiment
(Lat. experiri, to try) Any situation which is deliberately set up by an investigator with a view to verifying a theory or hypothesis. -- A.C.B.

Experimental Psychology
(1) Experimental psychology in the widest sense is the application to psychology of the experimental methods evolved by the natural sciences. In this sense virtually the whole of contemporary psychology is experimental. The experimental method consists essentially in the prearrangement and control of conditions in such a way as to isolate specific...

Explanation
In general: the process, art, means or method of making a fact or a statement intelligible; the result and the expression of what is made intelligible; the meaning attributed to anything by one who makes it intelligible; a genetic description, causal development, systematic clarification, rational exposition, scientific interpretation, intelligib...

Explication
(Ger. Auslegung) In Husserl: Synthesis of identification between a confused, non-articulated (internally indistinct, unseparated) sense and a subsequently intended distinct, articulated, sense. The latter is the explicate (Explikat) of the former. See Explanation. -- D.C.

Explicative judgment
(Lat. explicatio, unfolding) A mental action which explains a subject by mentally dissecting it, (Kant) a judgment in which the predicate is obtained by analysis of the subject. See Analytic judgment. -- V.J.B.

Exponible
Employed as a noun and as an adjective, applied to an obscure proposition which needs an exposition or explanation owing to a hidden composition. Kant applied it to propositions including an affirmation and a concealed negation, which an exposition makes apparent. -- J.J.R.

Exportation
is the form of valid inference of the propositional calculus from AB ? C to A? [B ? C]. The law of exportation is the theorem of the propositional calculus: [pq ? r] ? [p ? [q ? r]]. -- A.C.

Expression
(Ger. Ausdruck) In Husserl: A symbol that embodies and signifies the noematic-objective sense of an act of thinking. The sense is expressed; the act, manifested. -- D.C.

Expressionism
In aesthetics, the doctrine that artistic creation is primarily an expressive act, a process of clarifying and manifesting the impressions, emotions, intuitions, and attitudes of the artist. Such theories hold that art has its foundation in the experiences and feelings of its creator; it is a comment on the artist's soul, not on any external objec...

Expressive Meaning
See Meaning, Kinds of, 4.

Extension
(Lat. ex + tendere, to stretch) Physical space, considered as a single concrete, continuum as contrasted with the abstract conceptual space of mathematics. The distinction between extension and 'space' in the abstract sense is clearly drawn by Descartes (1596-1650) in The Principles of Philosophy, part II, Princ. IV-XV. -- L.W. One of the two attri...

Extension
See Intension and Extension.

Extensionality, axiom of
See Logic, formal, § 9.

Extensity
A rudimentary spatiality alleged to characterize all sensation. See J. Ward, article 'Psychology' in Encyclopaedia Bntannica, 9th Ed. pp. 46, 53 -- L.W.

Extensive quantity
Any quantity such that there exists some physical process of addition by which a greater quantity of the kind in question may be produced from a lesser one; opposed to intensive quantity (q.v.). -- A.C.B.

Exteriority
(Lit. exterior comp. of exter, without) The character of externality ascribed to physical objects by common sense and by realistic epistemology. -- L.W.

External Reference
The tendency of the mind to objectify sensory data and construe them as referring to a real external world. See Intentionality. -- L.W.

External relations, Doctrine of
Neo-realistic view that relations are not grounded in the nature of their terms; that relations are independent of the terms; that terms can pass in and out of relations without being modified. -- H.H.

External sense
In Kant, intuition of spatial properties, as contrasted with the internal sense which is that of the a priori form of time.

External World
The ideally envisaged totality of objects of actual or possible perception conceived as constituting a unified system. -- L.W.

External
(Fr. externe, outer) Outside a thing. Independent of opinion. Capable of pressure or resistance. Used by Peirce (1839-1914) in contradistinction to mental. -- J.K.F.

Externalization
(Lat. externus, external from exter, without) The mental act by which sensory data originally considered to be internal arc projected into the external world. See Introjection. The problem of externalization was formulated by Condillac in these words: 'If one admits that sensations are only modifications of the mind, how does it come about that th...

Exteroceptor
See Receptor.

Extramental
(Lat. extra + mens, mind) Possessing a status external to and independent of the knowing mind. Extramental status is attributed to physical objects by physical realists and to universals by Platonic realists. -- I.W.

Extraspective situations
'Situations in which we seem to be in direct cognitive contact with other minds and their states'. (Broad.) -- H.H.

Extrinsic
(Lat. exter, out + secus, beside) Having external value. Value in the relation of wholes to other wholes. -- J.K.F.

Extrojection
(Lat. extra + jacere, to throw) The tendency of the mind to externalize sensuous qualities and even affective states. See External Reference. -- L.W.

Ezra, Abraham Ibn
Jewish exegete and philosopher (1093-1167). Born in Spain he wandered in many lands, sojourned for a time in Italy and Provence. His philosophy is expressed largely in his commentaries but also in several short treatises, such as the Yesod Mora, i.e. Foundation of the Knowledge of God, and the Shaar ha-Shamayyim, i.e., The Gate to Heaven. Main pro...

Fa chia
The Legalists School, the Philosophers of Law, also called hsing ming chia, who 'had absolute faithfulness in reward and punishment as support for the system of correct conduct,' and made no distinction between kindred and strangers and no discrimination between the honorable and the humble, but treated them as equals before the law. They emphasiz...

Fact
(Lat. factus, pp. of facio, do) Actual individual occurrence. An indubitable truth of actuality. A brute event. Syn. with actual event. -- J.K.F.

Fact
In Husserl: 1. State of affairs (Sachverhalt): an object having categorial-syntactical structure. 2. matter of fact (Tatsache, Faktum) that which simply is, as contrasted with that which is necessarily; that which is actual, as contrasted with that which is merely possible; that which is, regardless of its valuer ; that which is non-fictive. -- D...

Factual
See Meaning, Kinds of, 2.

Faculty Psychology
(Lat. facultas, faculty or ability) The conception of mind as the unity in a number of special faculties, like sensibility, intelligence, volition, by reference to which individual processes of sensation, thought or will are explained. Faculty psychology, which originated in Plato's division of the soul into the appetitive, the spirited and the ra...

Faculty
(Scholastic) Medieval psychology distinguishes several faculties of the soul which are said to be really distinct from each other and from the substance of the soul. According to Aquinas the distinction is based on objects and operations. The faculties are conceived as accidents of the soul's substance, but as pertaining essentially to its nature,...

Faith
(Kant. Ger. Glaube) The acceptance of ideals which are theoretically indemonstrable, yet necessarily entailed by the indubitable reality of freedom. For Kant, the Summum Bonum, God, and immortality are the chief articles of faith or 'practical' belief. See Kantianism. Cf. G. Santayana, Skepticism and Animal Faith, where faith is the non-rational b...

Fallacy
is any unsound step or process of reasoning, especially one which has a deceptive appearance of soundness or is falsely accepted as sound. The unsoundness may consist either in a mistake of formal logic, or in the suppression of a premiss whose unacceptability might have been recognized if it had been stated, or in a lack of genuine adaptation of ...

Fan or fu
The greatest of all the laws underlying phenomenal change, that if any one thing moves to an extreme direction, a change must bring about an opposite result, called 'reversion' or 'return'. Reminds one of Hegel's antithesis. (Lao Tzu.) -- H.H.

Fang hsin
The lost heart, i.e., the originally good mind which has turned away from the principles of benevolence and righteousness. (Mencius.) -- W.T.C.

Fang shih
'Scholars with formulae,' or priests and magicians who flourished in the Ch'in and Han dynasties (249 B.C-220 A.D.) and who offered divination, magic, herbs, charms, alchemy, breath technique, and other crafts (fang shu) and superstitions in terms of Yin Yang and Taoist philosophies, as means to immortality, inward power, restored youth, and super...

Fang shu
Divination and magic. See Fang shih. -- W.T.C.

Fantastic
(Art) Product of an arbitrary imagination without any claim to reality. -- L.V.

Fatalism
(Lat. fatalis, fatal) Determinism, especially in its theological form which asserts that all human activities are predetermined by God. Sec Determinism. -- L.W.

Fechner, Gustav Theodor
(1801-1887) Philosophizing during the ascendency of modern science and the wane of metaphysical speculation, Fechner though as physicist believing in induction, analogy, history and pragmatic procedure, expounded a pure, objective idealism of Berkeley's type. With Oken and Schelling as spiritual guides, he held that everything is in consciousness,...

Feeling
(Ger. Gefühl) In Husserl: 1. Noetic processes of valuing (e.g., liking, disliking, preferring). 2. Non intentional, 'hyletic', processes or states, immanent in the stream of consciousness. See Hyle and Noesis. -- D.C.

Feeling
(Kant. Ger. Gefühl) A conscious, subjective impression which does not involve cognition or representation of an object. Feelings are of two kinds: pleasures and pains. These represent nothing actual in objects, but reveal the state or condition of the subject. Kant saw in pleasure and pain, respectively, life-promoting and life-destroying for...

Felicific
Making happy; conducive to happiness or pleasure. -- G.R.M.

Feuerbach. Ludwig Andreas
(1804-1872) Was one of the earliest thinkers manifesting the trend toward the German materialism of the 19th century. Like so many other thinkers of that period, he started with the acceptance of Hegel's objective idealism, but soon he attempted to resolve the opposition of spiritualism and materialism. His main contributions lay in the field of t...

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb
(1762-1814) Skillful in framing the general conception of a few great ideas, Fichte's thought centered in a passionate espousal of Kant's practical reason or of autonomous good will as the creative source of all that is distinctive in personality. He sought to discern the method of the psychogenetic process of the acceptance of the moral law as su...

Ficino, Marsilio
Of Florence (1433-99). Was the main representative of Platonism in Renaissance Italy. His doctrine combines NeoPlatonic metaphysics and Augustinian theologv with many new, original ideas. His major work, the Theologia Ptatonica (1482) presents a hierarchical system of the universe (God, Angelic Mind, Soul, Quality, Body) and a great number of argu...

Fiction
Whenever a symbol, as part of an utterance, occurs in such a context that the truth of any utterance of the same form would normally guarantee the existence of an individual denoted by that symbol, whereas in the case considered no such implication holds, the symbol may be said to occur fictitiously in that context. Thus in the utterance 'The aver...

Fictionism
An extreme form of pragmatism or instrumentalism according to which the basic concepts and principles of natural science, mathematics, philosophy, ethics, religion and jurisprudence are pure fictions which, though lacking objective truth, are useful instruments of action. The theory is advanced under the influence of Kant, by the German philosophe...

Fideism
A doctrine of Abbe Bautain which attempted to justify the teachings of Christianity by the theory that all knowledge rested upon premises accepted by faith. The premises of religion are to be found in the tradition of the Synagogue and Church. This tradition needs no rational criticism because it is self-critical. The doctrine was condemned in 184...

Fides
Faith, according to St. Augustine, means, to believe that which one does not see: Fides ergo est, quod non vides credere. That is the reason why faith is praiseworthy. Haec est enim laus fidei, si quod creditur non videtur. -- J.J.R.

Figure (syllogistic)
The moods of the categorical syllogism (see Logic, formal, § 5) are divided into four figures, according as the middle term is subject in the major premiss and predicate in the minor premiss (first figure), or predicate in both premisses (second figure), or subject in both premisses (third figure), or predicate in the major premiss and subjec...

Filioque
See Trinitarianism.

Final Causes, the doctrine of
The view that things and events in the world can be explained, and ultimately can best be explained, by reference to some end or purpose or good or final cause to which they are conducive. Held, e.g., by Aristotle and Leibniz. -- W.K.F.

Finalism
The theory that purpose is present in all the events of the physical order. Teleology. -- R.T.F.

Fine Arts
Opposite of mechanical arts. Distinction of the arts whose principle is based on beauty (poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, music). -- L.V.

Finite
For the notion of finiteness as applied to classes and cardinal numbers, see the article cardinal number. An ordered class (see order) which is finite is called a finite sequence or finite series. In mathematical analysis, any fixed real number (or complex number) is called finite, in distinction from 'infinity' (the latter term usually occurs, ho...

First Heaven
The outermost sphere in the Aristotelian cosmology, the sphere of the fixed stars. -- G.R.M.

First Mover
See Prime Mover.

First Philosophy
(Gr. prote philosophia) The name given by Aristotle (1) to the study of the principles, first causes and essential attributes of being as such; and (2) more particularly to the study of transcendent immutable i being; theology. -- G.R.M.

Fischer, Kuno
(1824-1907) Is one of the series of eminent German historians of philosophy, inspired by the impetus which Hegel gave to the study of history. He personally joined in the revival of Kantianism in opposition to rationalistic, speculative metaphysics and the progress of materialism. K. Fischer, Gesch. der neueren Philosophie, 10 vols., 1854-1877. --...

Fiske, John
(1842-1901) Harvard librarian and philosopher. He is best known as an historian of the colonial period. He was a voluminous writer in many fields. His Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy is his best known work as a pioneer in America of the evolutionary theories. He claimed an original contribution to these speculations in his studies of the period of i...

Florentine Academy
It was a loose and informal circle of scholars and educated persons which gathered in Florence around the Platonic philosopher Marsilio Ficino. Its activities consisted in regular lectures on Platonic philosophy as well as in informal discussions and parties. 'Platonic' love or friendship was considered as the spiritual link between the members of...

Flux
The characteristic of time, by virtue of which all things change inevitably. In Heracleitus' view, who brought the problem into prominence, 'all things flow; nothing abides'. -- R.B.W.

Folk-Art
A fragmentary art in which the artistic elements are not bound together by an artistic personality. -- L.V.

Folkways
(AS folc) Customs. Conventions. Mores. Traditional group behavior patterns. Cf. Sumner, Folkways. -- A.J.B.

Foreknowledge
Knowledge of the future of which two types may be distinguished: (a) anticipation or prescience which professes to be immediate and non-inferential and (b) expectation, which is inferential prediction of the future on the basis of the remembered or recorded past. See Anticipation, Prescience, Expectation. -- L.W.

Foreordination
The doctrine that events of one's life, even one's eternal destiny, are determined beforehand by Deity. See Predestination. -- V.F.

Foreshortening
Application of perspective to plastic bodies, occupying space in depth. -- L.V.

Form, logical
See Logic, formal.

Form
(Gr. eidos) The intelligible structure, characters constituting a substance or species of substances, as distinguished from the matter in which these characters are embodied; essence; formal cause. See Aristotelianism. -- G.RM. In Art: a. Opposite of content. The conclusive aspect of art, the surpassing of emotions, taste, matter, the final imprin...

Form
(in Kant) That a priori element in experience in virtue of which the manifold of sense is synthcsized and unified into meaningful perceptions and judgments. Kant attributed the form of experience to mind and reason, the matter to sensuous intuition. See Kantianism. -- O.F.K. In Scholasticism. Accidental; That which comes to a subject already subst...

Forma
Latin noun meaning shape, figure, appearance, image; also plan, pattern, stamp, mould. As a philosophic term used by Cicero and Augustine in the sense of species, and similarly by Scotus Eriugena. Boethius and fhe mediaeval writers employed it in the Aristotelian sense of a constituent of being, synonymous with causa formalis. Generally speaking i...

Formal Cause
See Form; Aristotelianism.

Formal
1. In the traditional use: valid independently of the specific subject-mattei; having a merely logical meaning (see Meaning. Kinds of, 3). 2. Narrower sense, in modern logic: independent of, without reference to meaning (compare Semiotic, 3). -- R.C.

Formalism (mathematical)
is a name which has been given to any one of various accounts of the foundations of mathematics which emphasize the formal aspects of mathematics as against content or meaning, or which, in whole or in part, deny content to mathematical formulas. The name is often applied, in particular, to the doctrines of Hilbert (see Mathematics), although Hilb...

Formalism
(a) In ethics: the term is sometimes used as equivalent to intuitionism in the traditional sense. See Intuitionism. Also used to designate any ethical theory, such as Kant's, in which the basic principles for determining our duties are purely formal. See Ethics, formal. -- W.K.F. (b) In art A form for form's sake, lacking in content. -- L.V.

Formalization
(Ger. Formalisierung) In Husserl: 1. (objective) Ideational 'abstraction' from the determination of an object as belonging in some material region. The residuum is a pure eidetic form. 2. (noematic) Substitution, in a noematic-objective sense, e.g., the sense signified by a sentence, of the moment 'what you please' for every materially determinate...

Formally
(in Scholasticism) Is sometimes trtken for mentally, i.e. according to the formalities which we distinguish by the mind alone. When formally is so understood, it has as its correlative really. Thus the omnipotence and the wisdom of God are not really but formally distinct. It is also said of the thing considered in itself or in its proper entity. ...

Founded
(Ger. fundiert) In Husserl: 1. The character of one noetic-noematic stratum as presupposing the presence of another, the founding stratum. 2. The character of an act or an act-correlate as containing founded and founding strata. E.g., intending something as a tool is founded in intending 'the same' as a material thing; correlatively, the tool-sens...

Four Elements
The four primary kinds of body recognized by the Greek philosophers, viz. fire, air, water, and earth. -- G.R.M.

Free-will
: The free-will doctrine, opposed to determinism, ascribes to the human will freedom in one or more of the following senses: The freedom of indeterminacy is the will's alleged independence of antecedent conditions, psychological and physiological. A free-will in this sense is at least partially uncaused or is not related in a uniform way with the ...

Freedom, Sense of
The subjective feeling of an agent either at the moment of decision or in retrospect that his decision is free and that he might, if he had chosen, have decided differently. This feeling is adduced by Free-Willists as empirical evidence for their position but is interpreted by their opponents as a subjective illusion. See Free-Will. -- L.W.

Freedom
(Kant. Ger. Freiheit) The autonomy or self-determination of rational beings. Kant considers the reality of freedom an indubitable, albeit an inexplicable, fact, and places it at the fulcrum of his entire system, theoretical as well as practical. See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.

Frege, (Friedrich Ludwig) Gottlob
, 1848-1925, German mathematician and logician. Professor of mathematics at the University of Jena, 1879-1918. Largely unknown to, or misunderstood by, his contemporaries, he is now regarded by many as 'beyond question the greatest logician of the Nineteenth Century' (quotation from Tarski). He must be regarded -- after Boole (q. v.) -- as the seco...

Fries, Jakob Friedrich
(1773-1843) Eminent German philosopher. The contribution of Fries lies in the continuation of Kant's work as offered in New or Anthropological Criticism of Reason and by his system of philosophy as exact science. J. F. Fries, Rechtslehre, 1804; Wissen, glauben u. Ahnung, 1805; Neue Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1807; System der Logik, 1811; Psychis...

Fringe, Psychical
See Consciousness, Field of.

Frui
St. Augustine distinguished frui, to enjoy, from uti to use. We use the things of this world; we are to enjoy God, of whom St. Augustine writes: Ista temporalia dedit ad utendum, se ad fruendum. -- J.J.R.

Fu
Correspondence, especially that between man and the Universe in the macrocosm-microcosm relationship. Tung Chung-shu, 177-104 (B.C.) -- W.T.C.

Fulfilment
(Ger. Erfüllung) In Husserl: Synthesis of identification, based on conscious processes, in the earlier of which the intended object is intended emptily or is given less evidently than it is in the later. The more evident conscious process is said to fulfil (or to fill) and clarify the noematic-objective sense of the less evident. Positive ful...

Fulguration
Is a lightning flash of the mind. To Leibniz, the monads are God's perpetual fulguration, Monadology, 47. -- J.M.

Function
In mathematics and logic, an n-adic function is a law of correspondence between an ordered set of n things (called arguments of the function, or values of the independent variables) and another thing (the value of the function, or value of the dependent variable), of such a sort that, given any ordered set of n arguments which belongs to a certain...

Functional calculus
See Logic, formal, §§ 3, 6.

Functional Psychology
(Lat. functio from fungor, I execute) A tendency in American psychology represented by W. James, G. T. Ladd, G. S. Hall, J. Dewey and J. R. Angell which considered the mental processes of sense perception, emotion, volition and thought as functions of the biological organism in its adaptation to and control of its environment. Functionalism arose ...

Functional Theory of Mind
See Functional Psychology.

Functionalism
See Functional Psychology.