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Temporal Parts
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2015-10-6 12:17)
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[Revised entry by Katherine Hawley on October 5, 2015.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
Material objects extend through space by having different spatial parts in different places. But how do they persist through time? According to some philosophers, things have temporal parts as well as spatial parts: accepting this is supposed to help us solve a whole bunch of metaphysical problems, and keep our philosophy in line with modern physics. Other philosophers disagree, arguing that neither metaphysics nor physics give us good reason to believe in temporal...
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Supererogation
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2015-10-6 10:59)
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[Revised entry by David Heyd on October 5, 2015.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
Supererogation is the technical term for the class of actions that go "beyond the call of duty." Roughly speaking, supererogatory acts are morally good although not (strictly) required. Although common discourse in most cultures allows for such acts and often attaches special value to them, ethical theories have only rarely discussed this category of actions directly and systematically. A conspicuous exception is the Roman Catholic...
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Harriet Taylor Mill
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2015-10-6 9:28)
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[Revised entry by Dale E. Miller on October 5, 2015.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
- J. S. Mill (1977, 216) Harriet Taylor Mill (1807 - 1858) poses a unique set of problems for an encyclopedist. The usual approach to writing an entry on a historical figure, namely presenting a straightforward summary of her major works and then offering a few words of appraisal, cannot be...
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The Epistemology of Visual Thinking in Mathematics
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2015-10-3 10:21)
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[New Entry by Marcus Giaquinto on October 2, 2015.]
Visual thinking is widespread in mathematical practice, and has diverse cognitive and epistemic purposes. This entry discusses potential roles of visual thinking in proving and in discovering, with some examples, and epistemic difficulties and limitations are considered. Also discussed is the bearing of epistemic uses of visual representations on the application of the a priori - a posteriori distinction to mathematical knowledge. A final section looks briefly at how visual means can aid comprehension and deepen understanding of proofs....
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Anaxagoras
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2015-10-2 10:44)
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[Revised entry by Patricia Curd on October 1, 2015.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (a major Greek city of Ionian Asia Minor), a Greek philosopher of the 5th century B.C.E. (born ca. 500 - 480), was the first of the Presocratic philosophers to live in Athens. He propounded a physical theory of "everything-in-everything," and claimed that nous (intellect or mind) was the motive cause of the cosmos. He was the first to give a correct explanation of eclipses,...
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Aesthetics of the Everyday
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2015-10-1 14:25)
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[New Entry by Yuriko Saito on September 30, 2015.]
In the history of Western aesthetics, the subject matters that received attention ranged from natural objects and phenomena, built structures, utilitarian objects, and human actions, to what is today regarded as the fine arts. However, beginning with the nineteenth century, the discourse has become increasingly focused on the fine arts. This narrowing attention occurred despite the prominence of the aesthetic attitude theory in modern aesthetics, according to which there is virtually no limit to what can become a source of aesthetic experience. The tendency to equate aesthetics with the philosophy of...
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Gersonides
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2015-9-30 11:49)
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[Revised entry by Tamar Rudavsky on September 29, 2015.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
Perhaps no other medieval Jewish philosopher has been so maligned over the centuries as Gersonides (Levi ben Gerson, acronym Ralbag). Indeed, his major philosophical work, Sefer Milhamot Ha-Shem (The War of the Lord, 1329), was called "Wars against the Lord" by one of his opponents. Despite the vilification of his position, Gersonides emerges as one of the most significant and comprehensive thinkers in the medieval Jewish tradition. He has been...
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Joseph Albo
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2015-9-27 7:37)
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[Revised entry by Dror Ehrlich on September 26, 2015.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
Joseph Albo (c. 1380 - 1444) was a Jewish philosopher active in Christian Spain in the first half of the fifteenth century. His theoretical work found expression in his well-known opus Sefer ha-'Ikkarim [Book of Principles], completed in 1425 in the town of Soria in the crown of Castile. In this work, Albo addresses a wide variety of interpretive, theological and philosophical issues, in a style integrating logical, methodical...
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The Nonidentity Problem
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2015-9-26 14:41)
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[Revised entry by M. A. Roberts on September 25, 2015.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
The nonidentity problem focuses on the obligations we think we have in respect of people who, by our own acts, are caused both to exist and to have existences that are, though worth having, unavoidably flawed - existences, that is, that are flawed if those people are ever to have them at all. If a person's existence is unavoidably flawed, then the agent's only alternatives to bringing that person into the flawed existence are to bring no one into existence at all or...
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Seneca, Lucius Annaeus
from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2015-9-25 13:01)
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Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 B.C.E.65 C.E.) The ancient Greek philosopher Seneca was a Stoic who adopted and argued largely from within the framework he inherited from his Stoic predecessors. His Letters to Lucilius have long been widely read Stoic texts. Seneca's texts have many aims: he writes to exhort readers to philosophy, to encourage … Continue reading Seneca, Lucius Annaeus →
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