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Matthew Boyle | |
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| Academic background | |
| Education | University of Pittsburgh (PhD), Oxford University (B.Phil) |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | philosophy |
| Institutions | The University of Chicago |
| Main interests | philosophy of mind |
Matthew Boyle is an American philosopher,and Emerson and Grace Wineland Pugh Professor of Humanities at The University of Chicago. He is known for his works on the philosophy of mind and on some issues in the history of philosophy. [1]
In ethical philosophy,ethical egoism is the normative position that moral agents ought to act in their own self-interest. It differs from psychological egoism,which claims that people can only act in their self-interest. Ethical egoism also differs from rational egoism,which holds that it is rational to act in one's self-interest. Ethical egoism holds,therefore,that actions whose consequences will benefit the doer are ethical.
Robert Boyle was an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher,chemist,physicist,alchemist and inventor. Boyle is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist,and therefore one of the founders of modern chemistry,and one of the pioneers of modern experimental scientific method. He is best known for Boyle's law,which describes the inversely proportional relationship between the absolute pressure and volume of a gas,if the temperature is kept constant within a closed system. Among his works,The Sceptical Chymist is seen as a cornerstone book in the field of chemistry. He was a devout and pious Anglican and is noted for his writings in theology.
Rationality is the quality of being guided by or based on reasons. In this regard,a person acts rationally if they have a good reason for what they do or a belief is rational if it is based on strong evidence. This quality can apply to an ability,as in rational animal,to a psychological process,like reasoning,to mental states,such as beliefs and intentions,or to persons who possess these other forms of rationality. A thing that lacks rationality is either arational,if it is outside the domain of rational evaluation,or irrational,if it belongs to this domain but does not fulfill its standards.
In philosophy,rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification",often in contrast to other possible sources of knowledge such as (blind) faith,tradition,or sensory experience. More formally,rationalism is defined as a methodology or a theory "in which the criterion of truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive".
Objective idealism is a philosophical theory that affirms the ideal and spiritual nature of the world and conceives of the idea of which the world is made as the objective and rational form in reality rather than as subjective content of the mind or mental representation. Objective idealism thus differs both from materialism,which holds that the external world is independent of cognizing minds and that mental processes and ideas are by-products of physical events,and from subjective idealism,which conceives of reality as totally dependent on the consciousness of the subject and therefore relative to the subject itself.
Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre is a Scottish-American philosopher who has contributed to moral and political philosophy as well as history of philosophy and theology. MacIntyre's After Virtue (1981) is one of the most important works of Anglophone moral and political philosophy in the 20th century. He is senior research fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Aristotelian Studies in Ethics and Politics (CASEP) at London Metropolitan University,Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame,and permanent senior distinguished research fellow at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture. During his lengthy academic career,he also taught at Brandeis University,Duke University,Vanderbilt University,and Boston University.
Kantianism is the philosophy of Immanuel Kant,a German philosopher born in Königsberg,Prussia. The term Kantianism or Kantian is sometimes also used to describe contemporary positions in philosophy of mind,epistemology,and ethics.
Voluntarism is "any metaphysical or psychological system that assigns to the will a more predominant role than that attributed to the intellect",or equivalently "the doctrine that will is the basic factor,both in the universe and in human conduct". Voluntarism has appeared at various points throughout the history of philosophy,seeing application in the areas of metaphysics,psychology,political philosophy and theology.
John Mitchell Finnis,,is an Australian legal philosopher and jurist specializing in jurisprudence and the philosophy of law. He is an original interpreter of Aristotle and Aquinas,and counts Germain Grisez as a major influence and collaborator. He has made contributions to epistemology,metaphysics,and moral philosophy.
A mental state,or a mental property,is a state of mind of a person. Mental states comprise a diverse class,including perception,pain/pleasure experience,belief,desire,intention,emotion,and memory. There is controversy concerning the exact definition of the term. According to epistemic approaches,the essential mark of mental states is that their subject has privileged epistemic access while others can only infer their existence from outward signs. Consciousness-based approaches hold that all mental states are either conscious themselves or stand in the right relation to conscious states. Intentionality-based approaches,on the other hand,see the power of minds to refer to objects and represent the world as the mark of the mental. According to functionalist approaches,mental states are defined in terms of their role in the causal network independent of their intrinsic properties. Some philosophers deny all the aforementioned approaches by holding that the term "mental" refers to a cluster of loosely related ideas without an underlying unifying feature shared by all. Various overlapping classifications of mental states have been proposed. Important distinctions group mental phenomena together according to whether they are sensory,propositional,intentional,conscious or occurrent. Sensory states involve sense impressions like visual perceptions or bodily pains. Propositional attitudes,like beliefs and desires,are relations a subject has to a proposition. The characteristic of intentional states is that they refer to or are about objects or states of affairs. Conscious states are part of the phenomenal experience while occurrent states are causally efficacious within the owner's mind,with or without consciousness. An influential classification of mental states is due to Franz Brentano,who argues that there are only three basic kinds:presentations,judgments,and phenomena of love and hate.
Rational egoism is the principle that an action is rational if and only if it maximizes one's self-interest. As such,it is considered a normative form of egoism,though historically has been associated with both positive and normative forms. In its strong form,rational egoism holds that to not pursue one's own interest is unequivocally irrational. Its weaker form,however,holds that while it is rational to pursue self-interest,failing to pursue self-interest is not always irrational.
Andrew Pyle is a British philosopher on the history of philosophical atomism.
Formal epistemology uses formal methods from decision theory,logic,probability theory and computability theory to model and reason about issues of epistemological interest. Work in this area spans several academic fields,including philosophy,computer science,economics,and statistics. The focus of formal epistemology has tended to differ somewhat from that of traditional epistemology,with topics like uncertainty,induction,and belief revision garnering more attention than the analysis of knowledge,skepticism,and issues with justification.
Infallibilism is the epistemological view that propositional knowledge is incompatible with the possibility of being wrong.
Robert N. Audi is an American philosopher whose major work has focused on epistemology,ethics,rationality and the theory of action. He is O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame,and previously held a Chair in the Business School there. His 2005 book,The Good in the Right,updates and strengthens Rossian intuitionism and develops the epistemology of ethics. He has also written important works of political philosophy,particularly on the relationship between church and state. He is a past president of the American Philosophical Association and the Society of Christian Philosophers.
Nikolay Onufriyevich Lossky,also known as N. O. Lossky,was a Russian philosopher,representative of Russian idealism,intuitionist epistemology,personalism,libertarianism,ethics and axiology. He gave his philosophical system the name intuitive-personalism. Born in Latvia,he spent his working life in St. Petersburg,New York,and Paris. He was the father of the influential Christian theologian Vladimir Lossky.
Moral particularism is a theory in meta-ethics that runs counter to the idea that moral actions can be determined by applying universal moral principles. It states that there is no set of moral principles that can be applied to every situation,making it an idea appealing to the causal nature of morally challenging situations. Moral judgements are said to be determined by factors of relevance with the consideration of a particular context. A moral particularist,for example,would argue that homicide cannot be judged to be morally wrong until all the morally relevant facts are known. While this stands in stark contrast to other prominent moral theories,such as deontology,consequentialism,and virtue ethics,it finds its way into jurisprudence,with the idea of justifiable homicide,for instance. In this case,the morally relevant facts are based on context rather than principle. Critics would argue that even in this case,the principle still informs morally right action.
Jonathan Lee Kvanvig is Professor of Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis.
Rational fideism is the philosophical view that considers faith to be precursor for any reliable knowledge. Every paradigmatic system,whether one considers rationalism or empiricism,is based on axioms that are neither self-founding nor self-evident,so it appeals to assumptions accepted as belief. Thus,faith is basic to knowability. On the other hand,such a conclusion is reached not with an act of faith but with reasoning,a rational argumentation.
Religious epistemology broadly covers religious approaches to epistemological questions,or attempts to understand the epistemological issues that come from religious belief. The questions asked by epistemologists apply to religious beliefs and propositions whether they seem rational,justified,warranted,reasonable,based on evidence and so on. Religious views also influence epistemological theories,such as in the case of Reformed epistemology.
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