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-ism
<philosophical terminology> a general suffix commonly used to
designate varieties of philosophical opinion. Although useful
for some purposes, such labels should not be taken too seriously.
Individual philosophers nearly always deal creatively with
complex specific issues, developing arguments in defense of
their own views. It is only later that we who read them find it
convenient to invent simple names for positions that several of
them seem to share. Study of philosophy benefits more from
careful reading of the texts themselves than from the artificial
classification of their themes.
[A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names]
<2002-1-18>
00-00-0000
A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names
<source>
A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names. This is a concise guide to technical terms and personal
names often encountere in the study of philosophy. What you will find here naturally reflects my own
philosophical interests and convictions, but everything is meant to be clear, accurate, and fair, a reliable source
of information on Western philosophy for a broad audience.
By Garth Kemerling (editor).
28-10-2001
a fortiori
<logic, epistemology> "to the stronger," or "even more so".
We are bound to accept an a fortiori claim because of our prior acceptance of a weaker application of the same
reasoning or truth. Thus, for example: Frank can't run to the store in less than five minutes, and the restaurant
is several blocks further away than the store. Thus, a fortiori, Frank can't run to the restaurant in less than five
minutes.
[A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names]
16-11-2001
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A Philosophical Glossary
<source>
A Philosophical Glossary (http://www.hfac.uh.edu/phil/leiber/!glossar.htm) edited by Justin Leiber, Philosophy
department, University of Houston, USA.
Some definitions in this dictionary are based on the version published in 2001-04-05.
25-04-2001
a posteriori
<logic, epistemology>
a sentence, proposition, thought, or judgement is a posteriori (literally "after") if its truth is dependent on how
our actual experience (experiment and observation) turns out. Many have thought that the truths of the
empirical, or nonmathematical, sciences are entirely a posteriori, though the rationalists and some recent
philosophers such as S. Kripke & N. Chomsky seem to deny this. Some take synthetic and a posteriori to be
equivalence. Compare a priori
[A Philosophical Glossary]
25-04-2001
a priori
<logic, epistemology>
a sentence, proposition, thought or judgement is a priori (literally "before") if its truth is not dependent on how
our actual experience (experiment and observation) happens to turn out. Some a priori truths (axiomsor first
principles) are held to be directly intuited; the rest are supposed to be deducible from these. Euclid' s geometry
provides the model for this traditional conception. With a posteriori knowledge or statements, on the other
hand, justification does invoke sensory experience either directly via perception or indirectly via induction.
Many have thought that the truths of logic and mathematics are a priori, though J. S. Mill and W. V. O. Quine
might be thought to maintain the contrary position. Some equate a priori and analytic. The ontological argument
for the existence of God is deemed a priori.
based on [A Philosophical Glossary], [Philosophical Glossary]
28-07-2001
a-consciousness
access consciousness
13-02-2004
A-Life
artificial life
13-02-2004
abduction
<logic> the process of inference to the best explanation.
The term is sometimes used to mean just the generation of hypotheses to explain observations or conclusions,
but the former definition is more common both in philosophy and computing.
The notion was first introduced by Peirce (CP 2.511, 623; 5.270) in an attempt to classify a certain form of
syllogism.
Abductive inferences are of the following form:
i) All beans from this bag are white.
ii) These beans are white.
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iii) Therefore, these beans are from this bag.
This inference results in an explanation of the observation in the second premise.
The semantics and the implementation of abduction cannot be reduced to those for deduction, as explanation
cannot be reduced to implication.
Though this method of reasoning is not logically valid (as the beans may be from a different source), Peirce
argues that scientists regularly engage in this sort of inferential reasoning. Though scientific hypotheses are
not valid by virtue of how they are abducted, abductive reasoning was thought to constitute "a logic of
discovery" in one of Peirce' s four steps of scientific investigation. These steps are :
1) observation of an anomaly
2) abduction of hypotheses for the purposes of explaining the
anomaly
3) inductive testing of the hypotheses in experiments
4) deductive confirmation that the selected hypothesis predicts
the original anomaly
Abduction is currently thought not to be well understood and Peirce' s formulation has been criticised as being
restricted to language-like mediums (Shelley, 1996). It should be noted that for Peirce, abduction was restricted
to the generation of explanatory hypotheses.
The more general characterisation of abduction as inference to the best explanation is a more recent
interpretation.
Applications include fault diagnosis, plan formation and default reasoning.
Negation as failure in logic programming can both be given an abductive interpretation and also can be used to
implement abduction. The abductive semantics of negation as failure leads naturally to an argumentation-
theoretic interpretation of default reasoning in general.
References
Peirce, C. (1958) Volume 2, paragraph 511, 623; Volume 5,
paragraph 270. In Hartshoren and Weiss.
Levesque (1989). A knowledge level account of abduction.
In Sridharan 1989 pp. 1061-1067.
Shelley, C. (1996) Visual abductive reasoning in archaeology.
Philosophy of Science Association, 63. 278-301.
abscissa
<mathematics> The x coordinate on an (x, y) graph; the input f a function against which the output is plotted.
y is the "ordinate". See Cartesian coordinates.
Based on [FOLDOC] and Chris Eliasmith - [Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind] Homepage
(http://artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/)
16-03-2001
Abelard Peter
<scholasticism, medioeval phylosophy, logic>, <aristotelianism, theology>, <realism, nominalism, rethoric,
dialectics, ethics>
french scholastic logician (1079-1142) whose sexual relationship with his teen-aged student Heloise provoked
the vengeful anger of her uncle, Fulbert, in 1118. Despite the many distractions of the turbulent life he
described in Historia Calamitatum Mearum (The History of my Misfortunes), Abelard embarked on a monastic
career of detached contemplation marked by intellectual independence from both traditional authorities and
contemporaneous fashions. In commentaries on the logic of Aristotle and his own Dialectica, Abelard invented
a novel solution to the problem of universals that rejected both realism and nominalism in their most extreme
forms. Only individual things exist for Abelard, but general terms have universal applicability to things whose
common features are known by a process of mental abstraction. Abelard also wrote on the difficulties involved
in scriptural interpretation in Sic et Non (For and Against) (1122) and on the importance of human intentions for
theological ethics in Scito te Ipsum (Know Thyself).
Recommended Reading:
Five Texts on the Mediaeval Problem of Universals, ed. by Paul Vincent Spade (Hackett, 1994);
John Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard (Cambridge, 1999);
Letters of Abelard and Heloise, ed. by Betty Radice (Penguin, 1998).
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[A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names]
16-11-2001
abscissa
<mathematics> The x coordinate on an (x, y) graph; the input f a function against which the output is plotted.
y is the ordinate.
See Cartesian coordinates.
Based on [FOLDOC] and Chris Eliasmith - [Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind] Homepage
(http://artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/)
03-02-2004
Absolute
<substance, essence, Infinite, ontology, metaphysics, absolut spirit, Romanticism> the solitary, uniquely
unconditioned, utterly independent, and ultimately all-encompassing being that comprises all of reality
according to such Romantic idealists as Schelling, and Hegel. British philosopher F.H. Bradley emphasized
that the Absolute must transcend all of the contradictory appearances of ordinary experience, while American
Josiah Royce took the Absolute to be a spiritual entity whose self-consciousness is reflected only imperfectly in
the totality of human thought.
[A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names]
16-11-2001
absolute consistency
<logic> A system S is absolutely consistent iff at least ne wff of the formal language of S is not a theorem.
[Glossary of First-Order Logic]
16-03-2001
absolute inconsistency
<logic> A system is absolutely inconsistent iff all its wffs are theorems.
16-03-2001
absolutism
<ethics, metaphysics, political philosophy> the belief that there is one and only one truth. Those who espouse
absolutism usually also believe that they know or have access to what this absolute truth is.
In ethics, absolutism is usually contrasted to relativism.
See also authoritarianism in political theory.
Based on [Ethics Glossary]
28-04-2001
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absorption
<logic, mathematics, tautology> a rule of inference of the form:
p -> q
______________
p -> ( p & q )
Example: "If Mary comes to the party, then so will George. Therefore, if Mary comes to the party, then both
Mary and
George will."
As a simple truth-table shows, any argument of this form is valid.
[A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names]
16-11-2001
abstract class
<PI> In object-oriented programming, a class designed only as a parent from which sub-classes may be
derived, but which is not itself suitable for instantiation.
Often used to "abstract out" incomplete sets of features which may then be shared by a group of sibling sub-
classes which add different variations of the missing pieces.
[FOLDOC]
16-03-2001
abstract data type
<PI> (ADT) A type whose internal form is hidden behind a set of access functions. Objects of the type are
created and inspected only by calls to the access functions. This allows the implementation of the type to be
changed without requiring any changes outside the module in which it is defined.
Abstract data types are central to object-oriented programming where every class is an ADT.
A classic example of an ADT is a stack data type for which functions might be provided to create an empty
stack, to push values onto a stack and to pop values from a stack.
[FOLDOC]
16-03-2001
Abstract entity
Sorts of things that do not occupy spacetime but are considered to have some kind of existence. For examples,
properties, relations, propositions and mathematical objects are commonly considered as abstract entities. The
main philosophical question about abstract entities is whether they really exist. This problem is strictly
connected to the definition one attaches to the concept of existence.
Giuseppina Ronzitti
See :
• Michael Jubien, Contemporary Metaphysics, Blackwell (1997).
• Bob Hale, Abstract objects, Oxford, Blackwell (1987).
28-01-2004
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abstract interpretation
<computing> A partial execution of a program which gains information about its semantics (e.g. control
structure, flow of information) without performing all the calculations. Abstract interpretation is typically used by
compilers to analyse programs in order to decide whether certain optimisations or transformations are
applicable.
The objects manipulated by the program (typically values and functions) are represented by points in some
domain. Each abstract domain point represents some set of real ("concrete") values.
For example, we may take the abstract points "+", "0" and "-" to represent positive, zero and negative numbers
and then define an abstract version of the multiplication operator, *#, which operates on abstract values:
*# | + 0 -
---|------
+ | + 0 -
0 | 0 0 0
- | - 0 +
An interpretation is "safe" if the result of the abstract operation is a safe approximation to the abstraction of the
concrete result. The meaning of "a safe approximation" depends on how we are using the results of the
analysis.
If, in our example, we assume that smaller values are safer then the "safety condition" for our interpretation (#)
is
a# *# b# <= (a * b)#
where a# is the abstract version of a etc.
In general an interpretation is characterised by the domains used to represent the basic types and the abstract
values it
assigns to constants (where the constants of a language include primitive functions such as *). The
interpretation of constructed types (such as user defined functions, sum types and product types) and
expressions can be derived systematically from these basic domains and values.
A common use of abstract interpretation is strictness analysis.
See also standard interpretation.
[FOLDOC]
16-03-2001
abstract machine
1. <language> A processor design which is not intended to be implemented as hardware, but which is the
notional executor of a particular intermediate language (abstract machine language) used in a compiler or
interpreter. An abstract machine has an instruction set, a register set and a model of memory. It may provide
instructions which are closer to the language being compiled than any physical computer or it may be used to
make the language implementation easier to port to other platforms.
A virtual machine is an abstract machine for which an interpreter exists.
Examples: ABC, Abstract Machine Notation, ALF, CAML, F-code, FP/M, Hermes, LOWL, Christmas, SDL, S-K
reduction machine, SECD, Tbl, Tcode, TL0, WAM.
2. <theory> A procedure for executing a set of instructions in some formal language, possibly also taking in
input data and producing output. Such abstract machines are not intended to be constructed as hardware but
are used in thought experiments about computability.
Examples: Finite State Machine, Turing Machine.
[FOLDOC]
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Abstract Machine Notation
<language> (AMN) A language for specifying abstract machine in the B-Method, based on the mathematical
theory of Generalised Substitutions.
[FOLDOC]
16-03-2001
abstract syntax
<language, data> A representation of data (typically either a message passing over a communications link or a
program being compiled) which is independent of machine-oriented structures and encodings and also of the
physical representation of the data (called "concrete syntax" in the case of compilation or "transfer syntax" in
communications).
A compiler' s internal representation of a program will typically be specified by an abstract syntax in terms of
categories such as "statement", "expression" and "identifier". This is independent of the source syntax
(concrete syntax) of the language being compiled (though it will often be very similar). A parse tree is similar to
an abstract syntax tree but it will typically also contain features such as parentheses which are syntactically
significant but which are implicit in the structure of the abstract syntax tree.
[FOLDOC]
16-03-2001
abstract syntax tree
<compiler> (AST) A data structure representing something which has been parsed, often used as a compiler or
interpreter' s internal representation of a program while it is being optimised and from which code generation is
performed. The range of all possible such structures is described by the abstract syntax.
[FOLDOC]
16-03-2001
Abstract-Type and Scheme-Definition Language
<language> (ASDL) A language developed as part of Esprit project GRASPIN, as a basis for generating
language-based editors and environments. It combines an object-oriented type system, syntax-directed
translation schemes and a target-language interface.
["ASDL - An Object-Oriented Specification Language for Syntax-Directed Environments", M.L. Christ-Neumann
et al, European Software Eng Conf, Strasbourg, Sept 1987, pp.77-85].
[FOLDOC]
16-03-2001
abstraction
1. Generalisation; ignoring or hiding details to capture some kind of commonality between different instances.
Examples are abstract data type (the representation details are hidden), abstract syntax (the details of the
concrete syntax are ignored), abstract interpretation (details are ignored to analyse specific properties).
2. <PI> Parameterisation, making something a function of something else. Examples are lambda abstraction
(making a term into a function of some variable), higher-order functions (parameters are functions), bracket
abstraction (making a term into a function of a variable).
Opposite of concretisation.
[FOLDOC]
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abstractionism
<metaphysics, aestethics>
1) in metaphysics see idealism.
2) in aesthetics see modernism, also called abstract expressionism.
28-04-2001
absurd
<logic, Aristotle, Leibniz, Kant, epistemology>, <modus ponens, modus tollens, mathematics>, <possible,
impossible, paradox, existensialism> Contrary to reason or beyond the limits of rationality; paradoxical,
nonsensical, or meaningless. According to Camus, Sartre, and other existentialists, absurdity is an inescapable
consequence of any sensitive effort to live in the face of an indifferent reality. The human tendency to desire
most passionately what we can never have is absurd in this sense.
Recommended Reading:
Donald A. Crosby, Specter of the Absurd: Sources and Criticisms of Modern Nihilism (SUNY, 1988);
Richard E. Baker, The Dynamics of the Absurd in the Existentialist Novel (Peter Lang, 1993);
Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd (Viking, 1992).
[A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names]
16-11-2001
Abunaser
<Aristotle, aristotelianism, mathematics, astronomy>, <medicine, Plato, neoplatonism, islamic philosophy,
logic>, <theology, existence of god> Latinized form of the name of Persian philosopher al-Farabi.
[A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names]
16-11-2001
Acceptable Use Policy
<networking> (AUP) Rules applied by many transit networks which restrict the use to which the network may
be put. A well known example is NSFNet which does not allow commercial use. Enforcement of AUPs varies
with the network.
[FOLDOC]
16-03-2001
acceptance testing
<PI> Formal testing conducted to determine whether a system satisfies its acceptance criteria and thus
whether the customer should accept the system.
[FOLDOC]
16-03-2001
acceptor
Finite State Machine
04-02-2004
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access consciousness
<philosophy of mind> Also known as a-consciousness, is a kind of direct control.
A representation is access-conscious if it is poised to be under direct control of reasoning, reporting and action.
References
Ned Block. On a confusion about a function of consciousness
(http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.block.html)
Behavioral and Brain sciences, 1995, 18: 227-287.
A. Khwaja
Chris Eliasmith - [Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind] Homepage (http://artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/)
13-02-2004
accident
<ontology, metaphysics, Aristotle, substance, essence>, <scholasticism, empiricism, idealism> A feature that
something happens to have but might have existed without having, since this feature is no part of the very
nature of the thing, in contrast to the essence without which the thing could not be at all.
[A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names]
16-11-2001
accident fallacy of
<Pietro Ispano, scholasticism, syllogism, Aristotle, logic>, <antinomy, fallacia in dictione, fallacia extra dictione>
(Lat. a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid) the informal fallacy of applying a generally reliable rule to a
particular case without considering the qualifying features that make it an exception to the rule.
Example: "Since authors of best-selling books usually appear on television talk shows, and the Pope is in fact
the author of a best-selling book, it follows that the Pope will soon appear on a television talk show".
Unlimited applicability to every instance would follow syllogistically only from a genuinely universal proposition,
the truth of which is often difficult to defend. Merely probable guidelines are easier to establish as "rules of
thumb", but do not deserve to be applied so indiscriminately.
[A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names]
16-11-2001
accidentalism
<metaphysics> the position according to which some events are accidental, that is, either they are not
predictable or they lack a cause. Accidentalism is part of some defenses of the freedom of the will (see
libertarianism).
See also indeterminism
[The Ism Book]
Edited by Giovanni Benzi
24-03-2001
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accuracy
<mathematics> How close to the real value a measurement is.
Compare precision.
[FOLDOC]
16-03-2001
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Denis Howe and to the many contributors, and especially to the Guest Editors, mirror site
maintainers and the editors of the following resources, from which some entries of FOLDOP originate:
Chris Eliasmith, Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind
Lawrence M. Hinman, Ethics Glossary
Denis Howe, FOLDOC
Justin Leiber, A Philosophical Glossary
Peter Suber, Glossary of First-Order Logic
Peter Saint-Andre' ,T he Ism Book
Garth Kemerling, A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names
28-10-2001
acronym
An identifier formed from some of the letters (often the initials) of a phrase and used as an abbreviation..
[FOLDOC]
16-03-2001
act - rule utilitarianism
<ethics, utilitarianism, Stuart Mill, pleasure>, <good, happiness, moral philosophy, liberalism> <Davide
Ricardo> Distinction between ways of applying the greatest happiness principle for moral evaluation on
utilitarian grounds. Act-utilitarianism supposes that each particular action should be evaluated solely by
references to its own consequences, while rule-utilitarianism considers the consequences of widespread
performance of similar actions. The act-utilitarian asks, "How much pleasure or pain would result if I did this
now?" The rule-utilitarian asks, "What pleasure or pain would result if everyone were always to do this?" Since
the answers to these questions may be quite different, they may lead to distinct recommendations about moral
conduct. Although Mill noted that reliance on moral rules may be of practical use in decision-making, he argued
that their influence should remain defeasible in particular circumstances.
Recommended Reading:
J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams,
Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge, 1973).
[A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names]
16-11-2001
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