1. In logic, a term proposed by E. E. Constance Jones as a synonym or substitute for the more usual immediate inference (see Logic, formal, § 4). -- A.C.
2. In cosmology, the production of the substantial form out of the potentiality of matter, according to the hylomorphic system. -- T.G.
R. W. Emerson: Complete Works, 12 vols. (Boston, 1903-4). -- L.E.D.
(2) A proposition about origins of ideas, concepts, or universals: that they or at least those of them having existential reference are derived solely or primarily from experience or some significant part of experience.
(3) A proposition about the nature of meaning, ideas, concepts, or universals: that they (and thus, some contend, knowledge) "consist of" or "are reducible to" references to directly presented data or content of experience; or that signs standing for meanings, ideas, concepts, or universals refer to experienced content only or primarily; or that the meaning of a term consists simply of the sum of its possible consequences in experience; or that if all possible experiential consequences of two propositions are identical, their meanings are identical.
(4) A proposition about the limitations of knowledge: that every possible referent either is something with which one has "direct acquaintance" or consists exclusively of entities with which he is acquainted, or that one can have knowledge of only immediate content of experience; or that although one can have knowledge of existents outside one's own or everyone's experience, that knowledge must always be uncertain, since it is reached through experience.
(5) A proposition about the nature or tests of truth in which proposition some relation or other between experience and truth is taken to be definitive of either the nature of truth or the means of its identification.
(6) A proposition about the existent or the real or both that experience(s) is (are) the sole existent(s) or reality or both; or the negation of the proposition that nature is a deductive process or is rational through and through; or a proposition that the variable, particular, changing, and contingent are "nearer to the heart of things" than the universal, immutable, and necessary.
(7) A combination of two or more of the above propositions, of approximations to them, of their respective immediate implications, or of their mediate implications when taken together or in conjunction with other premises.
(8) Practice, method, or methodology: relying upon direct observation or immediate experience; or precluding or excluding analysis or reflection, or employing experimentation or systematized induction as opposed to purely discursive, deductive, speculative, transcendental, or dialectical procedures, or relying upon all the ways of mind involved in inquiry.
(9) An assertion, belief, hypothesis, assumption, postulation, or attitude favoring any of the above propositions, practices, methods, or methodologies; or an attitude of dependence upon sense rather than intellect, or an insistence upon fact as against fiction, fancy, or interpretation of fact (supposing fact and interpretation separable); or an attitude favorable to application of scientific attitude or method to inquiry, or a temperament close to common sense and practicality; or a "tough-minded" temperament or attitude involving considerable disillusionment and holding facts (q.v.) worthy of utmost intellectual respect; or a tendency to rely on things' being as they appear.
The term "empiricism" has been used with extreme looseness and confused with numerous related propositions, practices, and attitudes. Many definitions here listed are themselves ambiguous, but to remove their ambiguity would require misrepresentation of usage of the term. See also Scepticism, Sensationalism, Pluralism, Phenomenalism, Pragmatism, Positivism, Intuitionalism, Nativism, Rationalism, A Priorism, Intellectualism, Idealism, Transcendentalism, Scientific Empiricism. -- M.T.K.
William James, who first adopted this philosophical position, and so named it, described it in The Meaning of Truth (Preface, xii-xiii) as consisting "first of a postulate, next of a statement of fact, and finally of a generalized conclusion.
1. "The postulate is that the only things which shall be debatable among philosophers shall be things definable in terms drawn from experience. . . .
2. "The statement of fact is that relations between things, conjunctive as well as disjunctive, are as much matters of direct particular experience . . . [as] . . . the things themselves.
3. "The generalized conclusion is that therefore the parts of experience hold together from next to next by relations that are themselves parts of experience. The directly apprehended universe needs, in short, no extraneous trans-empirical connective support, but possesses in its own right a concatenated or continuous structure."
James believed that ridical empiricism differed from ordinary or traditional empiricism primarily through the above "statement of fact" (No. 2). By this statement he wished explicitly and thoroughly to reject a common assumption about experience which he found both in the British empiricism and in Kantian and Hegelian idealism, namelv, that experience as given is either a collection of disparate impressions or, as Kant would have preferred to say, a manifold of completely unsynthesized representations, and that hence, in order to constitute a world, the material of experience must first be worked over and connective relations established within it either through the principles of the association of ideas (British empiricism) or through a set of trans-empirical categories imposed by the unity of consciousness (Kantian and Hegelian idealism). -- F.L.W.
Formal. Or end by which (finis quo) is the actual attainment of the good itself, e.g. beatitude itself in the blessed.
Of the work or of knowledge (finis operis seu scientiae): That to which an act or habit (habitus) is ordered through itself and in its proper nature -- as the end of logic is the correctness of the actions of the mind. The end of the one working or knowing (finis operantis seu scientis) is that which the one acting proposes to his will, in the exercise of the action or in the acquisition of knowledge, e.g. -- one who learns a science on account of its usefulness.
Simply ultimate: That to which all things are actually or virtually referred, -- and which itself is ordered to nothing further, as God. A relatively ultimate end (finis secundum quid ultimus): That which terminates some seiies of acts, in which it is intended ultimately and in itself, but nevertheless can be referrcd to another end, as health is the end of the art of medicine, but nevertheless it can be ordered to another end, e.g. to working. -- H.G.
Kingdom of ends: Kant's notion of the systematic union of different rational beings by common laws. Cf. also the Practical Imperative. -- P.A.S.
In Germany, the movement was initiated by G. W. Leibniz whose writings reveal another motive for the cult of pure reason, i.e. the deep disappointment with the Reformation and the bloody religious wars among Christians who were accused of having forfeited the confidence of man in revealed religion. Hence the outstanding part played by the philosophers of ''natural law", Grotius, S. Pufendorf, and Chr. Thomasius, their theme being advanced by the contributions to a "natural religion" and tolerance by Chr. Wolff, G. E. Lessing, G. Herder, and the Prussian king Frederik II. Fr. v. Schiller's lyric and dramas served as a powerful commendation of ideal freedom, liberty, justice, and humanity. A group of educators (philanthropists) designed new methods and curricula for the advancement of public education, many of them, eg. Pestalozzi, Basedow, Cooper, A. H. Francke, and Fr. A. Wolf, the father of classic humanism, having achieved international recognition. Although in general agreement with th philosophical axioms of foreign enlighteners, the German philosophy decidedly opposed the English sensism (Hume) and French scepticism, and reached its height in Kant's Critiques. The radical rationalism, however, combined with its animosity against religion, brought about strong philosophical, theological, and literal opposition (Hamann, Jacobi, Lavater) which eventually led to its defeat. The ideals of the enlightenment period, the impassioned zeal for the materialization of the ideal man in an ideal society show clearly that it was basically related to the Renaissance and its continuation. See Aufklärung. Cf. J. G. Hibben, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1910. -- S.v.F.
In later logic an argument one of whose premisses is established by a prosyllogism expressed in the form of an enthymeme. -- G.R.M.
The scope of epistemology may be indicated by considering its relations to the allied disciplines: (a) metaphysics, (b) logic, and (c) psychology.
(a) Speculative philosophy is commonly considered to embrace metaphysics (see Metaphysics) and epistemology as its two coordinate branches or if the term metaphysics be extended to embrace the whole of speculative philosophy, then epistemology and ontology become the two main subdivisions of metaphysics in the wide sense. Whichever usage is adopted, epistemology as the philosophical theory of knowledge is one of the two main branches of philosophy. The question of the relative priority of epistemology and metaphysics (or ontology) has occasioned considerable controversy: the dominant view fostered by Descartes, Locke and Kant is that epistemology is the prior philosophical science, the investigation of the possibility and limits of knowledge being a necessary and indispensible preliminary to any metaphysical speculations regarding the nature of ultimate reality. On the other hand, strongly metaphysical thinkers like Spinoza and Hegel, and more recently S. Alexander and A. N. Whitehead, have first attacked the metaphvsical problems and adopted the view of knowledge consonant with their metaphysics. Between these two extremes is the view that epistemology and metaphysics are logically interdependent and that a metaphysically presuppositionless epistemology is as unattainable as an epistemologically presuppositionless metaphysics.
(b) Despite the fact that traditional logic embraced many topics which would now be considered epistemological, the demarcation between logic and epistemology is now fairly clear-cut: logic is the formal science of the principles governing valid reasoning; epistemology is the philosophical science of the nature of knowledge and truth. For example, though the decision as to whether a given process of reasoning is valid or not is a logical question, the inquiry into the nature of validity is epistemological.
(c) The relation between psychology and epistemology is particularly intimate since the cognitive processes of perception, memory, imagination, conception and reasoning, investigated by empirical psychology are the very processes which, in quite a different context, are the special subject matter of epistemology. Nevertheless the psychological and epistemological treatments of the cognitive processes of mind are radically different: scientific psychology is concerned solely with the description and explanation of conscious processes, e.g. particular acts of perception, in the context of other conscious events; epistemology is interested in the cognitive pretentions of the perceptions, i.e. their apparent reference to external objects. In short, whereas psychology is the investigation of all states of mind including the cognitive in the context of the mental life, epistemology investigates only cognitive states and these solely with respect to their cognitive import. Psychology and epistemology are by virtue of the partial identity of their subject matter interdependent sciences. The psychology of perception, memory, imagination, conception, etc. affords indispensable data for epistemological interpretation and on the other hand epistemological analysis of the cognitive processes may sometimea prove psychologically suggestive. The epistemologist must, however, guard against a particularly insidious form of the genetic fallacy: viz. the supposition that the psychological origin of an item of knowledge prejudices either favorably or unfavorably its cognitive validity -- a fallacy which is psychologism at its worst.
An examination of the generally recognized problems of epistemology and of the representative solutions of these problems will serve to further clarify the nature and scope of epistemological inquiry. The emphasis in epistemology has varied from one historical era to another and yet there is a residium of epistemological problems which has persisted to the present.
(a) The initial and inescapable problem with which the epistemologist is confronted is that of the very possibility of knowledge: Is genuine knowledge at all attainable? The natural dogmatism of the human mind is confronted with the sceptic's challenge: a challenge grounded on the relativity of the senses (sensory scepticism) and the contradictions into which the reason is often betrayed (rational scepticism). An alternative to both dogmatism and extreme scepticism is a tentative or methodological scepticism of which Descartes' systematic doubt, Locke's cautious empiricism and Kant's critical epistemology are instances. See Dogmatism; Scepticism; Criticism. Scepticism in modern epistemology is commonly associated with solipsism, since a scepticism regarding knowledge of the external world leads to solipsism and the ego-centric predicament. See Solipsism; Ego-centric predicament.
(b) An epistemologist who rejects an extreme or agnostic scepticism, may very properly seek to determine the limits of knowledge and to assert that genuine knowledge is, within certain prescribed limits, possible yet beyond those limits impossible. There are, of course, innumerable ways of delimiting the knowable from the unknowable -- a typical instance of the sceptical delimitation of knowledge is the Kantian distinction between the phenomenal and noumenal world. See Phenomenon; Noumenon. A similar epistemological position is involved in the doctrine of certain recent positivists and radical empiricists that the knowable coincides with the meaningful and the verifiable, the unknowable with trie meaningless and unverifiable. See Positivism, Logical; Empiricism, Radical.
(c) The traditional problem of the origin of knowledge, viz. By what faculty or faculties of mind is knowledge attainable? It gave rise to the principal cleavage in modern epistemology between rationalism and empiricism (q.v.) though both occur in any thinker. The rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz) rely primarily -- though not exclusively -- on reason as the source of genuine knowledge, and the empiricists (Locke, Berkeley and Hume) rely mainly on experience. A broadly conceived empiricism such as Locke's which acknowledges the authenticity of knowledge derived both from the inner sense (see Reflection; Introspection), and the outer senses, contrasts with that type of sensationalism (q.v.) which is empiricism restricted to the outer senses. Various attempts, the most notable of which is the critical philosophy of Kant, have been made to reconcile rationalism and empiricism by assigning to reason and experience their respective roles in the constitution of knowledge. Few historical or contemporary epistemologists would subscribe either to a rationalism or an empiricism of an exclusive and extreme sort.
(d) The methodological problem bulks large in epistemology and the solutions of it follow in general the lines of cleavage determined by the previous problem. Rationalists of necessity have emphasized deductive and demonstrative procedures in the acquisition and elaboration of knowledge while empiricists have relied largely on induction and hypothesis but few philosophers have espoused the one method to the complete exclusion of the other. A few attempts have been made to elaborate distinctively philosophical methods reducible neither to the inductive procedure of the natural sciences nor the demonstrative method of mathematics -- such are the Transcendental Method of Kant and the Dialectical Method of Hegel though the validity and irreducibility of both of these methods are highly questionable. Pragmatism, operationalism, and phenomenology may perhaps in certain of their aspects be construed is recent attempts to evaluate new epistemological methods.
(e) The problem of the A PRIORI, though the especial concern of the rationalist, confronts the empiricist also since few epistemologists are prepared to exclude the a priori entirely from their accounts of knowledge. The problem is that of isolating the a priori or non-empirical elements in knowledge and accounting for them in terms of the human reason. Three principal theories of the a priori have been advanced:
(f) The problem of differentiating the principal kinds of knowledge is an essential task especially for an empirical epistemology. Perhaps the most elementary epistemological distinction is between
(g) The problem of the structure of the knowledge-situation is to determine with respect to each of the major kinds of knowledge just enumerated -- but particularly with respect to perception -- the constituents of the knowledge-situation in their relation to one another. The structural problem stated in general but rather vague terms is: What is the relation between the subjective and objective components of the knowledge-situation? In contemporary epistemology, the structural problem has assumed a position of such preeminence as frequently to eclipse other issues of epistemology. The problem has even been incorporated by some into the definition of philosophy. (See A. Lalande, Vocabulaire de la Philosophie, art. Theorie de la Connaissance. I. and G.D. Hicks, Encycl. Brit. 5th ed. art. Theory of Knowledge.) The principal cleavage in epistemology, according to this formulation of its problem, is between a subjectivism which telescopes the object of knowledge into the knowing subject (see Subjectivism; Idealism, Epistemological) and pan-objectivism which ascribes to the object all qualities perceived or otherwise cognized. See Pan-obiectivism. A compromise between the extrernes of subjectivism and objectivism is achieved by the theory of representative perception, which, distinguishing between primary and secondary qualities, considers the former objective, the latter subjective. See Representative Perception, Theory of; Primary Qualities; Secondary Qualities.
The structural problem stated in terms of the antithesis between subjective and objective is rather too vague for the purposes of epistemology and a more precise analysis of the knowledge-situation and statement of the issues involved is required. The perceptual situation -- and this analysis may presumably be extended with appropriate modifications to memory, imagination and other modes of cognition -- consists of a subject (the self, or pure act of perceiving), the content (sense data) and the object (the physical thing perceived). In terms of this analysis, two issues may be formulated
(h) The problem of truth is perhaps the culmination of epistemological enquiry -- in any case it is the problem which brings the enquiry to the threshold of metaphysics. The traditional theories of the nature of truth are:
Bibliography:
(a) Some writers, following the example of Galen, use it in the sense of material equivalence, i.e., having the same truth value.
(b) Others, following Apuleius, use it in a much more restricted sense such as that of strict equivalence or even reciprocal entailment. In the latter sense the relation holds when and only when the two sentences express the same fact. -- C.A.B.
Carnap proposes a purely syntactical definition of equipollence by defining two sentences (or two classes of sentences) to be equipollent if they have the same class of non-valid consequences. See the article Valid. -- A.C.
Equivalence: (Lat. aequivaleo, have equal power) Identical value. Having the same relation or force. In logic, syn. of equipollence (q.v.) -- J.K.F.
(a) The active or male principle (yang) and the passive or female principle (yin), which are the products of Tao and which produce the myriad of things. (Taoism.)
(b) The active or male principle (yang or ch'ien) and the passive or female principle. -- W.T.C.
A kind of polemic, characterized by the use of logical subtleties and oratorical casuistry, for which the Megarian School was particularly famous. See Megarians. -- R.B.W.
In harmony with Kant's major concern in his other Critiques, -- namely the establishment of lawfulness in each respective sphere (of scientific knowledge, of moral action, and of artistic and religious hopefulness) -- Kant's primary aim in ethics is the unification or synthesis of the field of action. Since, however, action is ever changing and since eternally new and creative possibilities of action are constantly coming into view, Kant saw that lawfulness in the ethical sphere could not be of either a static or predetermined nature.
As against the faulty ethical procedures of the past and of his own day, therefore, Kant very early conceived and developed the more critical concept of "form," -- not in the sense of a "mould" into which content is to be poured (a notion which has falselv been taken over by Kant-students from his theoretical philosophy into his ethics), but -- as a method of rational (not ratiocinative, but inductive) reflection; a method undetermined by, although not irrespective of, empirical data or considerations. This methodologically formal conception constitutes Kant's major distinctive contribution to ethical theory. It is a process of rational reflection, creative construction, and transition, and as such is held by him to be the only method capable if coping with the exigencies of the facts of hunnn experience and with the needs of moral obligation. By this method of creative construction the reflective (inductive) reason is able to create, as each new need for a next reflectively chosen step arises, a new object of "pure" -- that is to say, empirically undetermined -- "practical reason." This makes possible the transition from a present no longer adequate ethical conception or attitude to an untried and as yet "indemonstrable" object. No other method can guarantee the individual and social conditions of progress without which the notion of morality loses all assignable meaning. The newly constructed object of "pure practical reason" is assumed, in the event, to provide a type of life and conduct which, just because it is of my own construction, will be likely to be accompanied by the feeling of self-sufficiency which is the basic pre-requisite of any worthy human happiness. It is this theory which constitutes Kant's ethical formalism. See also Autonomy, Categorical Imperative, Duty, End(s), Freedom, Happiness, Law, Moral, Practical Imperative, Will. -- P. A.S.
Either sort of enquiry involves an investigation into the meaning of ethical statements, their truth and falsity, their objectivity and subjectivity, and the possibility of systematizing them under one or more first principles. In neither case is ethics concerned with our conduct or our ethical judgments simply as a matter of historical or anthropological record. It is, however, often said that the first kind of enquiry is not ethics but psychology. In both cases it may be said that the aim of ethics, as a part of philosophy, is theory not practice, cognition not action, even though it be added at once that its theory is for the sake of practice and its cognition a cognition of how to live. But some mornlists who take the second approach do deny that ethics is a cognitive discipline or science, namely those who hold that ethical first principles are resolutions or preferences, not propositions which may be true or false, e.g., Nietzsche, Santayana, Russell.
Ethical judgments fall, roughly, into tw o classes, (a) judgments of value, i.e. judgments as to the goodness or badness, desirability or undesirability of certain objects, ends, experiences, dispositions, or states of affairs, e.g. "Knowledge is good," (b) judgments of obligation, i.e. judgments as to the obligatoriness, rightness or wrongness, wisdom or foolishness of various courses of action and kinds of conduct, judgments enjoining, recommending or condemning certain lines of conduct. Thus there are two pnrts of ethics,
Historically, philosophers have, in the main, taken the latter approach in both parts of ethics, and we may confine our remaining space to it. On this approach a theory of value is a theorv as to what is to be pursued or sought, and a theory of obligation, a theory as to what is to be done. Now, of these two parts of ethic, philosophers have generally been concerned primarily with the latter, busying themselves with the former only secondarily, usually because it seemed to them that one must know what ends are good before one can know what acts are tn be performed. They all offer both a theory of value and a theory of obligition, but it was not until the 19th and 20th centuries that value-theory became a separate discipline studied for its own sake -- a development in which important roles were played by Kant, Lotze, Ritschl, certain European economists, Brentano, Meinong, von Ehrenfels, W. M. Urban, R. B. Perry, and others.
In the theory of value the first question concerns the meaning of value-terms and the status of goodness. As to meaning the main point is whether goodness is definable or not, and if so, how. As to status the main point is whether goodness is subjective or objective, relative or absolute. Various positions are possible.
The second question in value-theory is the question "What things are good? What is good, what is the highest good, etc.;" On this question perhaps the main issue historically is between those who say that the good is pleasure, satisfaction, or some state of feeling, and those who say that the good is virtue, a state of will, or knowledge, a state of the intellect. Holding the good to be pleasure or satisfaction are some of the Sophists, the hedonists (the Cyrenaic, the Epicureans, Hobbes, Hume, Bentham, Mill, Sidgwick, Spencer, Schlick). Holding virtue or knowledge or both to be good or supremely good are Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Neo-Platonists, Augustine, Aquinas, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, G. E. Moore, H. Rashdall, J. Laird, W. D. Ross, N. Hartmann.
In the theory of obligation we find on the question of the meaning and status of right and wrong the same variety of views as obtain in the theory of value: "right," e.g., has only an emotive meaning (Ayer); or it denotes an intuited indefinable objective quality or relation of an act (Price, Reid, Clarke, Sidgwick, Ross, possibly Kant); or it stands for the attitude of some mind or group of minds towards an act (the Sophists, Hume, Westermarck). But it is also often defined as meaning that the act is conducive to the welfare of some individual or group -- the agent himself, or his group, or society as a whole. Many of the teleological and utilitarian views mentioned below include such a definition.
On the question as to what acts are right or to be done ethical theories fall into two groups (1) Axiological theories seek to determine what is right entirely by reference to the goodness or value of something, thus miking the theory of obligation dependent on the theorv of value. For a philosopher like Martineau it is the comparative goodness of its motive that determines which act is right. For a teleologist it is the comparative amount of good which it brings or probably will bring into being that determines which act is right -- the egoistic teleologist holding that the right act is the act which is most conducive to the good of the agent (some Sophists, Epicurus, Hobbes), and the universalistic teleologist holding that the right act is the act which is most conducive to the good of the world as a whole (see Utilitarianism). (2) On deontological theories see Deontological ethics and Intuitionism.
Historically, one may say that, in general, Greek ethics was teleological, though there are deontological strains in Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. In Christian moralists one finds both kinds of ethics, according as the emphasis is on the will of God as the source of duties (the ordinary view) or on the goodness of God as somehow the end of human life (Augustine and Aquinas), theology and revelation taking a central role in either case. In modern philosophical ethics, again, both kinds of ethics are present, with the opposition between them coming out into the open. Starting in the 17th and 18th centuries in Britain are both "intuitionism" (Cambridge Platonists, Clarke, Butler, Price, Reid, Whewell, McCosh, etc.) and utilitarianism (q.v.), with British ethics largely a matter of controversy between the two, a controversy in which the teleological side has lately been taken by Cambridge and the deontological side by Oxford. Again, in Germany, England, and elsewhere there have been, on the one hand, the formalistic deontologism of Kant and his followers, and, on the other, the axiological or teleological ethics of the Hegelian self-realizationists and the Wertethik of Scheler and N. Hartmann.
Ethical theories are also described as metaphysical, naturalistic, and non-naturalistic or intuitionistic. See Intuitionism., Non-naturalistic ethics, Metaphysical ethics, Naturalistic ethics, Autonomy of ethics.
Histories of Ethics: H. Sidgwick, Outlines of the History of Ethics, Rev. Ed. 1931. Gives titles of the classical works in ethics in passing. C. D. Broad, Five Types of Ethical Theory, 1930.
Elementary Texts: T. Dewey and J. H. Tufts, Ethics, Rev. Ed. 1932. W. M. Urban, Fundamentals of Ethics, 1930.
Treatises: H. Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 7th Ed. 1907. G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, 1903. W. D. Ross, Foundations of Ethics, 19^9 N. Hartmann, Ethics, 3 vol., trans. 1932. M. Schlick, Problems of Ethics, trans. 1939. R. B. Perry, General Theory of Value, 1926. -- W.K.F.
Euclid of Megara identified the good and the One. The many are unreal. Not to be confused with the great geometer who lived at Alexandria (c. 300 B.C.), author of the Elements in 13 books. -- M.F.
Eudaemonia: (Gr. eudaimonia) Happiness, or well-being, acclaimed by Aristotle as the universally recognized chief good, and described by him as consisting in the activ exrcise (energeia) of the soul's powers in accordance with reason. See Aristotelianism. -- G.R.M.
1. Usual (strict) sense: consciousness of an intended object as itself (more or less fully) given; experience in the broadest sense. Contrasted with empty intending. Perfect evidence is a regulative idea: In any particular evidence the object is also emptily intended as the object of further, confirmative, evidence. Evidence is either original ("perceptual" in the broadest sense) or directly reproductive ("memorial" in the broadest sense); again, it is either impressional or retentional evidence. Empirical evidence, in general, is the category of evidence of real individual objects; within this category, sensuous perceiving is original evidence of sensible real individuals and their sensible real individual determinations. For every other category of objects there is a corresponding category of evidence in general and original evidence in particular.
2. In a broader sense, "evidence" may be either immediate (evidence in the first sense) or mediate. E.g., an intended fact is mediately evident if (and only if) there is immediate evidence of its entailment as the consequence of an immediately evident fact.
3. In a still broader sense, evidence of an intended object may be indirect, i.e., by way of direct evidence (evidence in the first or second sense) of evidence of the intended object in some other consciousness, perhaps the consciousness belonging to another ego.
The concept of original evidence is accordingly relativized and broadened to include all kinds of consciousness in which the intended object is given in the most original manner possible for an object of its kind and status. Thus, e.g., clear direct remembering is original evidence of one's own retained past, qua past, and perceptive empathy is original evidence of another's consciousness. Evidence of every kind (and in each of the above-defined senses) has its parallel in phantasy (fictive consciousness). Fictive empirical evidence involves non-fictive evidence of the essential possibility of an individual having the fictively presented determinations. The evident incompatibility of fictively experienced determinations is evidence of the essential impossibility of any individual having such determinations. Apodictic evidence is evidence together with the further evidence that no conflicting evidence is essentially possible. Essential possibilities, impossibilities, and necessities, admit of apodictic evidence. The only actual individual object that can be an object of apodictic evidence is one's own subjectivity. Evidence is not to be confounded with certainty of positing (see Modality) nor conceived as restricted to apodictic evidence. Furthermore, it is evident that no evidence is a talisman against error. What is evident in one process may evidently conflict with what is evident in another, or, again, the range of evidence may be overestimated. Evidence is exemplified in valuing and willing as well as in believing. It is the source of all objective sense (see Apperception and Genesis) and the basis of all rationality (see Reason). -- D.C.
Existential Philosophy arose from disappointment with Kant's "thing-in-itself" and Hegel's metaphysicism whose failure was traced back to a fundamental misrepresentation in psychology. It is strictly non-metaphysical, anti-hypothetical, and contends to give only a simple description of existent psychological realities. "Existence" is therefore not identical with the metaphysical correlative of "essence". Consciousness is influenced by our nerveous system, nutrition, and environment; these account for our experiences. Such terms as being, equal, similar, perceived, represented, have no logical or truth-value; they are merely biological "characters", a distinction between physical and psychological is unwarranted. Here lies the greatest weakness of the Existential Philosophy, which, however, did not hinder its spreading in both continents.
Resuming certain ideas of Locke and Berkeley, it was first propounded by the physicist Kirchhoff, and found its best representation by Richard Avenarius (1843-96) in Menschlicher Welthegriff, and, independently, by Ernst Mach (1838-1916) in Anal, d. Empfindungen. Many psychologists (Wm. Wundt, 0. Kuelpe, Harold Hoeffding, E. B. Titchener) approved of it, while H. Rickert and W. Moog discredited it forcefully. Charles Peirce (Popular Science Monthly, Jan. 1878) and Wm. James (Principles of Psych. 1898) applied Avenarius' ideas, somewhat roughly though, for the foundation of ''Pragmatism". John Dewey (Reconstruction in Philos.) used it in his "Instrumentalism", while F. C. S. Schiller (Humanism) based his ethical theory on it. -- S.v.F.
By an extension of this, a proposition expressible in the functional calculus of first order may be called existential if the prenex normal form has a prefix containing an existential quantifier (see Logic, formal, § 3).
Brentano (Psychologie, 1874) takes an existential proposition (Existentialsatz) to be one that directly affirms or denies existence, and shows that each of the four traditional kinds of categorical propositions is reducible (i.e., equivalent) to an existential proposition in this sense; thus, e.g., "all men are mortal" becomes "immortal men do not exist." This definition of an existential proposition and the reduction of categorical propositions to existential appears also in Keynes's Formal Logic, 4th edn. (1906). -- A.C.
2. A mathematical expectation is the value of any chance which depends upon some contingent event. Thus, if a person is to receive an amount of money upon the occurrence of an event which has an equal chance of happening or failing, the expectation is worth half that amount. The mathematical expectation of life is the average duration of life (of an individual or a group) after a given age, as determined by computation from the mortality tables.
3. The term actuarial expectation is used analogically by Lloyd Morgan to denote the qualitative probability of the emergence of a genuine or primary novelty. -- T.G.
A distinction is frequently drawn between two observational methods in psychology: (a) introspection which appeals to private data, accessible to a single observer (see Introspection), and (b) objective observation of public data, accessible to a number of observers among whom there is substantial agreement (see Behaviorism). These two methods, though they are often regarded as disparate, may perhaps be more properly regarded as the extremes of a continuum of observational objectivity, many varying degrees of which can be found in psychological experimentation.
(2) The term experimental psychology is also used in a more restricted sense to designate a special branch of psychology consisting of laboratory studies conducted on normal, human adults as distinguished from such branches as child, abnormal, differential, animal or comparative, social, educational and applied psychology. This restricted sense is employed in the titles of text-books and manuals of "experimental psychology." Included in this field are such topics as sensory phenomena, perception, judgment, memory, learning, reaction-time, motor phenomena, emotional responses, motivation, thinking and reasoning. This identification of experimental psychology with a specific type of content is largely a result of historical accident, the first experimental psychologists were preoccupied with these particular topics.
The historical antecedents of experimental psychology are various. From British empiricism and the psychological philosophy of Locke, Berkeley and Hume came associationism (see Associationism), the psychological implications of which were more fully developed by Herbart and Bain. Associationism provided the conceptual framework and largely colored the procedures of early experimental psychology. Physics and physiology gave impetus to experiments on sensory phenomena while physiology and neurology fostered studies of the nervous system and reflex action. The names of Helmholtz, Johannes Müller, E. H. Weber and Fechner are closely linked with this phase of the development of experimental psychology. The English biologist Galton developed the statistical methods of Quetelet for the analysis of data on human variation and opened the way for the mental testing movement; the Russian physiologist Pavlov, with his researches on "conditioned reflexes," contributed an experimental technique which has proved of paramount importance for the psychologist. Even astronomy made its contribution; variations in reaction time of different observers having long been recognized by astronomers as an important source of error in their observations.
The first laboratory of experimental psychology was founded at Leipzig in 1879 by Wundt, who has been called "the first professional psychologist." With such research as that of Stumpf on sound; G. E. Müller on psycho-physics, color and learning; Ebbinghaus on memory; and Kulpe and the Würzburg school on the "higher thought processes," experimental psychology made rapid strides within the next two decades. In America, the chief standard bearer of Wundtian psychology was Titchener. Among the others who were instrumental in the introduction and development of experimental psychology in America, may be mentioned James, Hall, Münsterberg, Cattell, and Watson.
A. More technically, the method of showing discursively that a phenomenon or a group of phenomena obeys a law, by means of causal relations or descriptive connections, or briefly, the methodical analysis of a phenomenon for the purpose of stating its cause. The process of explanation suggests the real preformation or potential presence of the consequent in the antecedent, so that the phenomenon considered may be evolved, developed, unrolled out of its conditioning antecedents. The process and the value of a scientific explanation involve the question of the relation between cause and law, as these two terms may be identified (Berkeley) or distinguished (Comte). Hence modern theories range between extreme idealism and logical positivism. Both these extremes seem to be unsatisfactory: the former would include too much into science, while the latter would embrace a part of it only, namely the knowledge of the scientific laws. Taking into account Hume's criticism of causality and Mill's reasons for accepting causality, Russell proposes what seems to be a middle course, namely
B. There are three specific types of causal explanation, and their results may be combined:
C. More formally, explanation is a step towards generalization or the establishment of a theory. It is the process of linking a statement of fact to its logical implications and consequences;or the process of fitting a statement of fact into a coherent system of statements extending beyond the given fact, or the construction of a logically related body of statements including the statement of fact to be justified. In the most general terms, explanation is the search for generalizations whose variables are functionally related in such a way that the value of any one variable is calculable from the value of the others, whether or not causal relations are noticeable or ultimately involved in the elements of the generalization. -- T.C.
[pq ⊃ r] ⊃ [p ⊃ [q ⊃ r]].-- A.C.
One of the two attributes (q.v.) of God which, according to Spinoza, are accessible to the human intellect (Ethics, II, passim). While the attribution of thought (cogitatio, q.v.) to God was a medieval commonplace, the attribution of extension to God was, in the tradition, highly heretical. Spinoza, however, was at great pains to show (Ibid, I, 14-18) that unless such attribution was made, all theories of God's causality were rendered either nonsensical or explicitly contradictory. -- W.S.W.