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Scientific Method
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2015-11-14 12:32)
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[New Entry by Hanne Andersen and Brian Hepburn on November 13, 2015.]
Science is an enormously successful human enterprise. The study of scientific method is the attempt to discern the activities by which that success is achieved. Among the activities often identified as characteristic of science are systematic observation and experimentation, inductive and deductive reasoning, and the formation and testing of hypotheses and theories. How these are carried out in detail can vary greatly, but characteristics like these have been looked to as a way of demarcating scientific activity from non-science, where only enterprises which employ some canonical form...
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The Legal Concept of Evidence
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2015-11-14 12:17)
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[New Entry by Hock Lai Ho on November 13, 2015.]
The legal concept of evidence is neither static nor universal. Medieval understandings of evidence in the age of trial by ordeal would be quite alien to modern sensibilities (Ho 2003 - 2004) and there is no approach to evidence and proof that is shared by all legal systems of the world today. Even within Western legal traditions, there are significant differences between Anglo-American law and Continental European law (see Damaska 1973, 1975, 1992, 1994, 1997). This entry focuses on the modern concept of evidence that operates in the legal tradition to which Anglo-American...
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Peirce’s Logic
from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2015-11-12 18:26)
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Charles Sanders Peirce: Logic Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) was an accomplished scientist, philosopher, and mathematician, who considered himself primarily a logician. His contributions to the development of modern logic at the turn of the 20th century were colossal, original and influential. Formal, or deductive, logic was just one of the branches in which he exercized … Continue reading Peirce’s Logic →
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Stanisław Leśniewski
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2015-11-11 11:42)
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[Revised entry by Peter Simons on November 10, 2015.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
Stanisław Leśniewski (1886 - 1939) was one of the principal founders and movers of the school of logic that flourished in Warsaw between the two world wars. He was the originator of an unorthodox system of the foundations of mathematics, based on three formal systems: Protothetic, a logic of propositions and their functions; Ontology: a logic of names, and functors of arbitrary order; and Mereology, a general theory of part and whole. His concern for utmost rigor in the formalization and execution of logic, coupled with...
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Kuhn, Thomas S.
from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2015-11-11 9:23)
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Thomas S. Kuhn (19221996) Thomas Samuel Kuhn, although trained as a physicist at Harvard University, became an historian and philosopher of science through the support of Harvard’s president, James Conant. In 1962, Kuhn’s renowned The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Structure) helped to inaugurate a revolutionthe 1960s historiographic revolutionby providing a new image of science. For … Continue reading Kuhn, Thomas S. →
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Morality and Cognitive Science
from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2015-11-11 4:31)
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Morality and Cognitive Science What do we know about how people make moral judgments? And what should moral philosophers do with this knowledge? This article addresses the cognitive science of moral judgment. It reviews important empirical findings and discusses how philosophers have reacted to them. Several trends have dominated the cognitive science of morality in … Continue reading Morality and Cognitive Science →
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Optimality-Theoretic and Game-Theoretic Approaches to Implicature
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2015-11-10 11:12)
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[Revised entry by Robert van Rooij and Michael Franke on November 9, 2015.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html]
Linguistic pragmatics studies the context-dependent use and interpretation of expressions. Perhaps the most important notion in pragmatics is Grice's (1967) conversational implicature. It is based on the insight that by means of general principles of rational cooperative behavior we can communicate more with the use of a sentence than the conventional semantic meaning associated with it. Grice has argued, for instance, that the exclusive interpretation of...
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Sophismata
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2015-11-10 10:20)
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[Revised entry by Fabienne Pironet and Joke Spruyt on November 9, 2015.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
In contrast to the meaning the word 'sophism' had in ancient philosophy, 'sophisma' in medieval philosophy is a technical term with no pejorative connotation: a sophisma proper is a sentence (proposition) that raises a difficulty for logic or grammar: it is a proposition of which the truth value is difficult to determine, because it is ambiguous, puzzling or simply difficult to interpret, or a sentence that can be...
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Religious Diversity, Theories of
from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2015-11-9 15:19)
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Theories of Religious Diversity Religious diversity is the fact that there are significant differences in religious belief and practice. It has always been recognized by people outside the smallest and most isolated communities. But since early modern times, increasing information from travel, publishing, and emigration have forced thoughtful people to reflect more deeply on religious … Continue reading Religious Diversity, Theories of →
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Mohism
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2015-11-7 16:28)
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[Revised entry by Chris Fraser on November 6, 2015.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
Mohism was an influential philosophical, social, and religious movement that flourished during the Warring States era (479 - 221 BCE) in ancient China. Mohism originates in the teachings of Mo Di, or "Mozi" ("Master Mo," fl. ca. 430 BCE), from whom it takes its name. Mozi and his followers initiated philosophical argumentation and debate in China. They were the first in the tradition to engage, like Socrates in ancient Greece, in an...
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