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2012-2013 INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF BUSINESS PHILOSOPHY BATSUEVA DINAH I.
INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF BUSINESSHAND –OUTS |
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PhilosophyGlossary Lecturer: Batsueva Dinah Iuryevna, senior lecturer |
The Department of Business Administration 2 term 2012-2013 academic year |
Glossary
Aesthetics – the philosophical study of beauty and taste. To define its subject matter more precisely is, however, immensely difficult. Indeed, it could be said that self-definition has been the major task of modern aesthetics. We are acquainted with an interesting and puzzling realm of experience: the realm of the beautiful, the ugly, the sublime, and the elegant; of taste, criticism, and fine art; and of contemplation, sensuous enjoyment, and charm. In all these phenomena we believe that similar principles are operative and that similar interests are engaged. If we are mistaken in this impression, we will have to dismiss such ideas as beauty and taste as having only peripheral philosophical interest. Alternatively, if our impression is correct and philosophy corroborates it, we will have discovered the basis for a philosophical aesthetics.
A posteriori – after experience.
A priori – before or beyond experience.
A priori knowledge - in Western philosophy since the time of Immanuel Kant, knowledge that is independent of all particular experiences, as opposed to a posteriori knowledge, which derives from experience alone. The Latin phrases a priori (“from what is before”) and a posteriori (“from what is after”) were used in philosophy originally to distinguish between arguments from causes and arguments from effects.
Attribute – the principal quality or feature of something or somebody.
Being – the philosophical category to define the way of existence.
Beings - the philosophical category to define everything existing.
Category - in logic, a term used to denote the several most general or highest types of thought forms or entities, or to denote any distinction such that, if a form or entity belonging to one category is substituted into a statement in place of one belonging to another, a nonsensical assertion must result.
Choice - in philosophy, a corollary of the proposition of free will—i.e., the ability voluntarily to decide to perform one of several possible acts or to avoid action entirely. An ethical choice involves ascribing qualities such as right or wrong, good or bad, better or worse to alternatives.
Determinism denies the reality of choice, because of a complete causal connectedness of motive and volition with physical, psychological, social, and even unconscious forces. Indeterminists insist, on the other hand, that human beings, however limited in choices, still are free to choose among alternatives and to put such choices into action. Thus volition (in this view) is, at least partly, independent of the strength of motivation, and itself determines which motive prevails.
The existential attitude in philosophy emphasizes such freedom of choice as well as the necessity of having to choose.
Determinism - in philosophy, theory that all events, including moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes that preclude free will and the possibility that humans could have acted otherwise. The theory holds that the universe is utterly rational because complete knowledge of any given situation assures that unerring knowledge of its future is also possible. Indeterminism - though not denying the influence of behavioral patterns and certain extrinsic forces on human actions, insists on the reality of free choice. Exponents of determinism strive to defend their theory as compatible with moral responsibility by saying, for example, that evil results of certain actions can be foreseen, and this in itself imposes moral responsibility and creates a deterrent external cause that can influence actions.
Empiricism – in philosophy, the attitude that beliefs are to be accepted and acted upon only if they first have been confirmed by actual experience. This broad definition accords with the derivation of the name from the Greek word empeiria, “experience.” More specifically, however, Empiricism comprises a pair of closely related, but still distinct, philosophicaldoctrines—one pertaining to concepts and the other to propositions.
Epistemology - from the Greek epistAmA (“knowledge”) and logos (“reason”), and accordingly the field is sometimes referred to as the theory of knowledge. Epistemology has had a long history, spanning the time from the pre-Socratic Greeks to the present. Along with metaphysics, logic, and ethics, it is one of the four main fields of philosophy, and nearly every great philosopher has contributed to the literature on the topic.
Ethics - also called moral philosophy the discipline concerned with what is morally good and bad, right and wrong. The term is also applied to any system or theory of moral values or principles.
How should we live? Shall we aim at happiness or at knowledge, virtue, or the creation of beautiful objects? If we choose happiness, will it be our own or the happiness of all? And what of the more particular questions that face us: Is it right to be dishonest in a good cause? Can we justify living in opulence while elsewhere in the world people are starving? If conscripted to fight in a war we do not support, should we disobey the law? What are our obligations to the other creatures with whom we share this planet and to the generations of humans who will come after us?
Ethics deals with such questions at all levels. Its subject consists of the fundamental issues of practical decision making, and its major concerns include the nature of ultimate value and the standards by which human actions can be judged right or wrong.
Free Will - in humans, the power or capacity to choose among alternatives or to act in certain situations independently of natural, social, or divine restraints. Free will is denied by those who espouse any of various forms of determinism. Arguments for free will are based on the subjective experience of freedom, on sentiments of guilt, on revealed religion, and on the universal supposition of responsibility for personal actions that underlies the conceptsof law, reward, punishment, and incentive. In theology, the existence of free will must be reconciled with God's omniscience and goodness (in allowing man to choose badly), and with divine grace, which allegedly is necessary for any meritorious act. A prominent feature of modern Existentialism is the concept of a radical, perpetual, and frequently agonizing freedom of choice. Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, speaks of the individual “condemned to be free” even though his situation may be wholly determined.
Idealism - the teaching which intends to show that matter is in some sense reducible to mind. There are various forms of Idealism. In one version, this philosophy maintains that there literally is no such thing as matter; what the common man takes to be material things are, upon closer consideration, nothing but experiences in minds. Nothing exists but minds and their contents; an independently existing material world is strictly no more than an illusion. This was the view taken by Berkeley. In the more sophisticated Idealism of Hegel, however, it is not maintained that mind alone exists; material things are, in one way, taken to be as real as minds. The thesis advanced is rather that the universe must be seen as penetrated by mind, indeed as constituted by it. Spirit, to use Hegel's own word, is the fundamental reality, and everything that exists must accordingly be understood by reference to it, either as being directly explicable in spiritual terms or as prefiguring or pointing forward to spirit.
Materialism – the teaching that seeks to reduce mind to matter. The simplest form of Materialism is found in the claim that only matter exists. Stated thus baldly the claim is absurd, because it is clear that all sorts of things exist that are not of the nature of matter: thoughts and numbers and human institutions would be instances. In the light of these facts, the claim has to be revised to say that matter is the only substantial existent, with appeal being made to distinctions first worked out in Aristotle's doctrine of categories.
Metaphysics - the philosophical study whose object is to determine the real nature of things—to determine the meaning, structure, and principles of whatever is insofar as it is. Although this study is popularly conceived as referring to anything excessively subtle and highly theoretical and although it has been subjected to many criticisms, it is presented by metaphysicians as the most fundamental and most comprehensive of inquiries, inasmuch as it is concerned with reality as a whole.
Ontology - the theory or study of being as such; i.e., of the basic characteristics of all reality.
Philosophy - the grounds for fundamental beliefs and an analysis of the basic concepts employed in the expression of such beliefs. Philosophical inquiry is a central element in the intellectual history of many historical civilizations.
Platonism - The essence of Platonism lies in a distinction between two worlds, the familiar world of everyday life, which is the object of the senses, and an unseen world of true realities, which can be the object of the intellect. The ordinary man recognizes the existence of the former and ignores that of the latter; he fails to appreciate the extent to which his beliefs both about fact and about values are arbitrarily assumed and involve internal contradictions. The philosopher is in a position to show him how insubstantial is the foundation on which he takes his stand. The philosopher can demonstrate how little thought there is in popular conceptions of good and evil, and he can show that the very concept of sense knowledge involves difficulties because knowledge presupposes a stable object, and the objects of sense are constantly changing. The claim, however, is that he can do more than this. Because of the presence in him of something like a divine spark, he can, after suitable preparation, fix his intellectual gaze on the realities of the unseen world and, in the light of them, know both what is true and how to behave. He will not attain this result easily—to get to it will involve not only immense intellectual effort, including the repeated challenging of assumptions, but also turning his back on everything in life that is merely sensual or animal. Yet, despite this, the end is attainable in principle, and the man who arrives at it will exercise the most important part of himself in the best way that is open to him.
Reason - in philosophy, the faculty or process of drawing logical inferences. The term “reason” is also used in several other, narrower senses. Reason is in opposition to sensation, perception, feeling, desire, as the faculty (the existence of which is denied by empiricists) by which fundamental truths are intuitively apprehended. These fundamental truths are the causes or “reasons” of all derivative facts. According to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, reason is the power of synthesizing into unity, by means of comprehensive principles, the concepts that are provided by the intellect. That reason which gives a priori principles Kant calls “pure reason,” as distinguished from the “practical reason,” which is specially concerned with the performance of actions. In formal logic the drawing of inferences (frequently called “ratiocination,” from Latin ratiocinari, “to use the reasoning faculty”) is classified from Aristotle on as deductive (from generals to particulars) and inductive (from particulars to generals).
In theology, reason, as distinguished from faith, is the human intelligence exercised upon religious truth whether by way of discovery or by way of explanation. The limits within whichthe reason may be used have been laid down differently in different churches and periods of thought: on the whole, modern Christianity, especially in the Protestant churches, tends to allow to reason a wide field, reserving, however, as the sphere of faith the ultimate (supernatural) truths of theology.
Space and time - Many metaphysicians have argued that neither time nor space can be ultimately real. Temporal and spatial predicates apply only to appearances; reality, or what is real, does not endure through time, nor is it subject to the conditions of space. The roots of this view are to be found in Plato and beyond him in the thought of the Eleatic philosophers Parmenides and Zeno, the propounder of several paradoxes about motion. Plato conceived his Forms as eternal objects whose true location was nowhere. Similarly, Christian philosophers conceived of God as existing from everlasting to everlasting and as present in all parts of the universe. God was not so much in space and time as the source of space and time. Whatever falls within space and time is thereby limited, for one space excludes another and no two times can be simultaneous. God, however, is by definition an infinite being and so must exist timelessly and apart from space.
Reference has already been made to the way in which Kant argued for an intimate connection between time and space and human sensibility: that human beings experience things as being temporally and spatially situated is to be connected with the nature of their minds, and particularly with their sensory equipment. Kant was entirely correct to describe space and time as “intuitions,” by which he meant that they are peculiar sorts of particulars; he was right again to insist on the centrality in sensing of the notions of here and now, which can be indicated but not reduced to conceptual terms. It is highly doubtful, however, whether he had sufficient grounds for claiming a priori insight into the nature of space and still more that of time; his case for thinking that space and time are “pure” intuitions was palpably inadequate. The lesson to draw from his careful discussion of this subject might well be not that there must be a form of reality lying beyond space and time but rather that nothing can be real that does not conform to spatial and temporal requirements. Space and time are bound up with particularity, and only what is particular can be real.
Tao – or Dao (Chinese: “road,” or “way”), in Chinese philosophy, a fundamental concept signifying “the correct way,” or “Heaven's way.” In the Confucian tradition, Tao signifies a morally correct path of human conduct and is thus limited to behaviour. In the rival school of Taoism (the name of which derives from Tao), the concept takes on a metaphysical sense transcending the human realm. The Tao-te Ching, a Taoist classic of contested authorship and date (sometime between the 8th and 3rd century BC), opens with these words: “The Tao that can be spoken about is not the Absolute Tao.” The Absolute Tao thus defies verbal definition, but language can make suggestions that may lead to an intuitive or mystical understanding of this fundamental reality.
One aspect of the Tao, however, can be perceived by man, namely, the visible process of nature by which all things change. From an observation of the visible manifestation of the Absolute Tao, it is possible to intuit the existence of an ultimate substratum that is the source of all things. Awareness of this process then leads toward an understanding of the Absolute Tao.
Taoists view life and death as simply different stages, or manifestations, of the Absolute Tao and consequently advocate a life in accord with nature. The serenity of such a life stands in sharp contrast to the life of public service advocated by Confucius.
Tao te Ching - (Chinese “Classic of the Way of Power”) classic of Chinese philosophical literature. The name was first used during the Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 220); it had previously been called Lao-tzu in the belief that it was written by Lao-tzu, identified by Ssu-ma Ch'ien, China's first great historian, as a 6th-century-BC curator of the Imperial Chinese archives. Lao-tzu, however, is better known as the reputed founder of Taoism, a way of life (Chinese Tao, Way) that, among many competing “Ways,” alone became known as the Tao school, or Taoism. The
Theology - discipline of religious thought that is restricted in its narrower sense, because of its origination and format, to Christianity but that may be applied in a broader sense, because of its themes, to other religions. The themes of theology are God, man, the world, salvation, and eschatology (the study of the final events in the history of mankind).
Wu-wei - (Chinese: “nonaction”), in Chinese Taoism, the principle of yielding to others as the most effective response to the problems of human existence. Wu-wei does not mean total passivity. Rather, it is natural, nonaggressive behaviour that compels others (through shame, if for no other reason) to desist voluntarily from violence or overly aggressive conduct. Taoism, therefore, is not indifferent to violence, for it counters violence in its own paradoxical way. Ideally, Taoists do not argue or debate. They rely on proper timing to set forth what they believe to be true, and they speak out against unseemly conduct only when their words are likely to be heeded. Taoists view laws and controls as undesirable repressions of human nature. For them a society with the fewest controls governs itself best. Wu-wei is thus regarded as the secret to human happiness, for through “non-action” all things can be accomplished.