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Singularities and Black Holes
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2009-6-30 14:16)
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[New Entry by Erik Curiel and Peter Bokulich on June 29, 2009.]
A spacetime singularity is a breakdown in the geometrical structure of space and time. It is a topic of ongoing physical and philosophical research to clarify both the nature and significance of such pathologies. Because it is the fundamental geometry that is breaking down, spacetime singularities are often viewed as an end, or "edge," of spacetime itself. However, numerous difficulties arise when one tries...
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Folk Psychology as Mental Simulation
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2009-6-22 18:24)
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[Revised entry by Robert M. Gordon on June 22, 2009.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
The simulation (or, "mental simulation") theory (ST) is a theory of everyday human psychological competence: that is, of the skills and resources people routinely call on in the anticipation, explanation, and social coordination of behavior. ST holds that we represent the mental states and processes of others by mentally simulating them, or generating similar states and processes in ourselves: thus, for...
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Bell's Theorem
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2009-6-11 18:03)
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[Revised entry by Abner Shimony on June 11, 2009.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html]
Bell's Theorem is the collective name for a family of results, all showing the impossibility of a Local Realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics. There are variants of the Theorem with different meanings of "Local Realistic." In John S. Bell's pioneering paper of 1964 the realism consisted in postulating in addition to the quantum state a "complete state", which determines the...
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Mulla Sadra
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2009-6-9 17:21)
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[New Entry by Sajjad Rizvi on June 9, 2009.]
Sadr al-Din Muhammad b. Ibrahim b. Yahya Qawami Shirazi (ca. 1571 - 1636) is arguably the most significant Islamic philosopher after Avicenna. Best known as Mulla Sadra, he was later given the title of Sadr al-Muta'allihin (Master of the theosists) for his approach to philosophy that combined an interest in theology and drew upon insights from mystical intuition. He championed a radical...
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Pain
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2009-5-30 10:55)
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[Revised entry by Murat Aydede on May 29, 2009.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, Internet resources]
Pain is the most prominent member of a class of sensations known as bodily sensations, which includes itches, tickles, tingles, orgasms, and so on. Bodily sensations are typically attributed to bodily locations and appear to have features such as volume, intensity, duration, and so on, that are ordinarily attributed to physical objects or quantities. Yet these sensations are often thought to be logically...
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Feminist Ethics
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2009-5-5 16:43)
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[Revised entry by Rosemarie Tong and Nancy Williams on May 4, 2009.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
Feminist Ethics is an attempt to revise, reformulate, or rethink traditional ethics to the extent it depreciates or devalues women's moral experience. Among others, feminist philosopher Alison Jaggar faults traditional ethics for letting women down in five related ways. First, it shows less concern for women's as opposed to men's issues and interests. Second, traditional ethics views as...
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Ernst Mach
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2009-4-29 11:29)
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[Revised entry by Paul Pojman on April 28, 2009.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
The frequent excursions which I have made into this province have all sprung from the profound conviction that the foundations of science as a whole, and of physics in particular, await their next greatest elucidations from the side of biology, and especially, from the analysis of the sensations. [Mach in Analysis of Sensations: Preface to 1st Ed.]...
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Ancient Theories of Soul
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2009-4-23 16:17)
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[Revised entry by Hendrik Lorenz on April 22, 2009.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
Ancient philosophical theories of soul are in many respects sensitive to ways of speaking and thinking about the soul [psuche] that are not specifically philosophical or theoretical. We therefore begin with what the word 'soul' meant to speakers of Classical Greek, and what it would have been natural to think about and associate with the soul. We then turn to various Presocratic...
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Modularity of Mind
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2009-4-2 14:05)
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[New Entry by Philip Robbins on April 1, 2009.]
The concept of modularity has loomed large in philosophy and psychology since the early 1980s, following the publication of Fodor's ground-breaking book The Modularity of Mind (1983). In the twenty-five years since the term 'module' and its cognates first entered the lexicon of cognitive science, the conceptual and theoretical landscape in this area has changed dramatically. Especially...
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The Development of Intuitionistic Logic
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2009-4-2 9:06)
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[Revised entry by Mark van Atten on April 1, 2009.
Changes to: Main text]
We will be principally concerned with the historical development of the intuitionists' explanation of the logical connectives. An "explanation" here is an account of what one knows when one understands and correctly uses the logical connectives. The emphasis is on (the history of) Brouwer's explanation of logic within the framework of intuitionistic mathematics, and on (the history of) its codification in Heyting's Proof Interpretation....
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