Philosophy (alexander)

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A specific idea, concept, or problem from philosophy.
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x Chinese room Chinese Room2 John Searle
The Chinese room is a thought experiment presented by John Searle. Suppose that there is a program that gives a computer the ability to carry on an intelligent conversation in written Chinese. If we give the program to an English speaker and they...
x Schrödinger's cat Schrödinger's cat Erwin Schrödinger
Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment, usually described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday...
x Pascal's Wager Blaise Pascal argued that it is a better "bet" to believe in God than not to do so  
Pascal's Wager (also known as Pascal's Gambit) is a suggestion posed by the French philosopher, mathematician, and physicist Blaise Pascal that since the existence of God can not be proved (or disproved) through reason, but since in his view there...
x Mary's room What Mary Didn't Know  
Mary's room (also known as Mary the super-scientist) is a philosophical thought experiment proposed by Frank Jackson in his article "Epiphenomenal Qualia" (1982) and extended in "What Mary Didn't Know" (1986). The argument is intended to motivate...
x Personal identity A savonette-type pocket watch John Locke
Personal identity is the unique numerical identity of persons through time. That is to say, the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a person at one time and a person at another time can be said to be the same person, persisting through...
David Hume
Derek Parfit
x Intentional stance   Daniel Dennett
The intentional stance is a term coined by philosopher Daniel Dennett for the level of abstraction in which we view the behavior of a thing in terms of mental properties. It is part of a theory of mental content proposed by Dennett, which provides...
x Tao Calligraphic Dao  
Dao or Tao (道, Pinyin:  Dào (help·info) ) is a Chinese word meaning 'way', 'path', 'route', or sometimes more loosely, 'doctrine' or 'principle'. Within the context of traditional Chinese philosophy and religion, Tao is a metaphysical concept...
x Secularization   Gianni Vattimo
Secularization (or secularisation) is the transformation of a society from close identification with religious values and institutions toward non-religious (or "irreligious") values and secular institutions. Secularization thesis refers to the...
x Nihilism   Gianni Vattimo
Nihilism ( /ˈnaɪ.ɨlɪzəm/ or /ˈniː.ɨlɪzəm/; from the Latin nihil, nothing) is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential...
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi
x Weak theology   Gianni Vattimo
Weak theology -- in close association with postmodern a/theology -- is a school of thought within continental philosophical theology that has been heavily influenced by Jacques Derrida's style of theorizing known as deconstruction. Weak theology...
x All products of a tradition stand within that tradition   Hans-Georg Gadamer  
x Russell's paradox Russell in 1907 Bertrand Russell
In the foundations of mathematics, Russell's paradox (also known as Russell's antinomy), discovered by Bertrand Russell in 1901, showed that the naive set theory created by Georg Cantor leads to a contradiction. The same paradox had been discovered...
x Logical atomism Russell in 1907 Bertrand Russell
Logical atomism is a philosophical belief that originated in the early 20th century with the development of analytic philosophy. Its principal exponents were the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, the early work of his Austrian-born pupil and...
x Generative grammar image:Basic_english_syntax_tree.png Noam Chomsky
In theoretical linguistics, generative grammar refers to a particular approach to the study of syntax. A generative grammar of a language attempts to give a set of rules that will correctly predict which combinations of words will form grammatical...
x Universal grammar   Noam Chomsky
Universal grammar is a theory in linguistics that suggests that there are properties that all possible natural human languages have. Usually credited to Noam Chomsky, the theory suggests that some rules of grammar are hard-wired into the brain, and...
x Transformational grammar   Noam Chomsky
In linguistics, a transformational grammar or transformational-generative grammar (TGG) is a generative grammar, especially of a natural language, that has been developed in the Chomskyan tradition of phrase structure grammars (as opposed to...
x Government and binding theory Government and binding theory Noam Chomsky
Government and binding is a theory of syntax and a phrase structure grammar (as opposed to a dependency grammar) in the tradition of transformational grammar developed principally by Noam Chomsky in the 1980s. This theory is a radical revision of...
x X-bar theory Xbarst1 Noam Chomsky
X-bar theory is a component of linguistic theory which attempts to identify syntactic features presumably common to all those human languages that fit in a presupposed (1965) framework. It claims that among their phrasal categories, all those...
x Chomsky hierarchy   Noam Chomsky
Within the field of computer science, specifically in the area of formal languages, the Chomsky hierarchy (occasionally referred to as Chomsky–Schützenberger hierarchy) is a containment hierarchy of classes of formal grammars. This hierarchy of...
x Context-free grammar   Noam Chomsky
In formal language theory, a context-free grammar (CFG) is a formal grammar in which every production rule is of the form where V is a single nonterminal symbol, and w is a string of terminals and/or nonterminals (w can be empty). The languages...
x Principles and parameters   Noam Chomsky
Principles and parameters is a framework within generative linguistics in which the syntax of a natural language is described in accordance with general principles (i.e. abstract rules or grammars) and specific parameters (i.e. markers, switches)...
x Linguistic minimalism   Noam Chomsky
In linguistics, the Minimalist Program (MP) is a major line of inquiry that has been developing inside generative grammar since the early 1990s, starting with a 1993 paper by Noam Chomsky. Chomsky presents MP as a program, not as a theory, following...
x Language acquisition device   Noam Chomsky
The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is a postulated "organ" of the brain that is supposed to function as a congenital device for learning symbolic language (i.e., language acquisition). First proposed by Noam Chomsky, the LAD concept is an...
x Poverty of the stimulus   Noam Chomsky
In linguistics, the poverty of the stimulus (POTS) is the assertion that natural language grammar is unlearnable given the relatively limited data available to children learning a language, and therefore that this knowledge is supplemented with some...
x Chomsky normal form   Noam Chomsky
In formal language theory, a context-free grammar is said to be in Chomsky normal form if all of its production rules are of the form: where A, B and C are nonterminal symbols, α is a terminal symbol (a symbol that represents a constant value), S is...
x Propaganda model NYC Times Square wide angle Noam Chomsky
The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky that states how propaganda, including systemic biases, function in mass media. The model seeks to explain how populations are manipulated...
x Bricolage FrankVagnoneBricolageSculpture Claude Lévi-Strauss
Bricolage ( /ˌbriːkɵˈlɑːʒ/ or /ˌbrɪkɵˈlɑːʒ/) is a term used in several disciplines, among them the visual arts, to refer to the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things that happen to be available, or a work created by such...
x Structuralism   Claude Lévi-Strauss
Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague, Moscow and Copenhagen schools of linguistics. At a time when structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam...
Ferdinand de Saussure
Gunther Kress
x Mythography Gustave Moreau, Hesiod and the Muse (1891) Claude Lévi-Strauss
A mythographer, or a mythologist is a compiler of myths. The word derives from the Greek "μυθογραφία" (mythografia), "writing of fables", from "μῦθος" (mythos), "speech, word, fact, story, narrative" + "γράφω" (graphο), "to write, to inscribe"....
x Culinary triangle   Claude Lévi-Strauss
The culinary triangle is a concept described by anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss involving three types of cooking; these are boiling, roasting, and smoking, usually done to meat. The boiling of meat is looked at as a cultural way of cooking...
x Practical philosophy   Hans-Georg Gadamer
The division of philosophy into a practical and a theoretical discipline has its origin in Aristotle's moral philosophy and natural philosophy categories. In Sweden and Finland courses in theoretical and practical philosophy are taught separately,...
x Justice as Fairness   John Rawls
Justice as Fairness is the political philosopher John Rawls' conception of justice. It comprises two main principles of Liberty and Equality; the second is subdivided into Fair Equality of Opportunity and the Difference Principle. Rawls arranges the...
x ’Pataphysics Ojciec Ubu, patron 'patafizyki Alfred Jarry
'Pataphysics (French: 'pataphysique) is a philosophy or pseudophilosophy dedicated to studying what lies beyond the realm of metaphysics. The term was coined and the concept created by French writer Alfred Jarry (1873–1907), who defined 'pataphysics...
x Cratylism   Cratylus
Cratylism is a philosophical theory based on the teachings of Cratylus also known as Kratylos. Vaguely exegetical, it holds that the fluid nature of ideas, words, and communications leaves them fundamentally baseless, and possibly unable to support...
x Law of the Infinite Cornucopia   Leszek Kołakowski
The Law of the Infinite Cornucopia, put forth by Polish philosopher Leszek Kołakowski suggests that for any given doctrine one wants to believe, there is never a shortage of arguments by which one can support it. A historian's application of this...
x No true Scotsman   Antony Flew
No true Scotsman is an informal logical fallacy, an ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion. When faced with a counterexample to a universal claim, rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original universal claim, this...
x Dualism Descartes mind and body Heraclitus
In philosophy of mind, dualism is the assumption that mental phenomena are, in some respects non-physical, or that the mind and body are distinct. Thus, it encompasses a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, and is contrasted...
René Descartes
x Demiurge Lion-faced deity  
The demiurge is a concept from the Platonic, Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic, and Neoplatonic schools of philosophy for an artisan-like figure responsible for the fashioning and maintenance of the physical universe. The term was subsequently adopted...
x Polydeism    
Polydeism (from Greek πολύς ( 'poly' ), meaning 'many', and Latin deus meaning God) is a polytheistic form of Deism encompassing the belief that the universe was the collective creation of multiple Gods, each of whom created a piece of the universe...
x Quietism    
Quietism is a Christian philosophy that swept through France, Italy and Spain during the 17th century, but it had much earlier origins. The mystics known as Quietists insist, with more or less emphasis, on intellectual stillness and interior...
x Georgism Henry George Henry George
Georgism (also called Geoism or Geonomics) is an economic philosophy and ideology that holds that people own what they create, but that things found in nature, most importantly land, belong equally to all. The Georgist philosophy is based on the...
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