Intellect is the ability of the human mind to reach correct conclusions about what is true and what is false in reality, and how to solve problems.
Intellect may also refer to:
In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empiricism emphasizes the central role of empirical evidence in the formation of ideas, rather than innate ideas or traditions. However, empiricists may argue that traditions arise due to relations of previous sensory experiences.
Intelligence is the ability to perceive or infer information, and to retain it.
In philosophy, the term idealism identifies and describes metaphysical perspectives which assert that reality is indistinguishable and inseparable from perception and understanding; that reality is a mental construct closely connected to ideas. Idealist perspectives are in two categories: subjective idealism, which proposes that a material object exists only to the extent that a human being perceives the object; and objective idealism, which proposes the existence of an objective consciousness that exists prior to and independently of human consciousness, thus the existence of the object is independent of human perception.
Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality. In everyday language, truth is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as beliefs, propositions, and declarative sentences.
Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, mathematics, and art, and is normally considered to be a distinguishing ability possessed by humans. Reason is sometimes referred to as rationality.
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that considers words and thought as tools and instruments for prediction, problem solving, and action, and rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality. Pragmatists contend that most philosophical topics—such as the nature of knowledge, language, concepts, meaning, belief, and science—are all best viewed in terms of their practical uses and successes.
Hylomorphism is a philosophical doctrine developed by the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, which conceives every physical entity or being (ousia) as a compound of matter (potency) and immaterial form (act), with the generic form as immanently real within the individual. The word is a 19th-century term formed from the Greek words ὕλη and μορφή.
Agency may refer to:
Meditations on First Philosophy, in which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated is a philosophical treatise by René Descartes first published in Latin in 1641. The French translation was published in 1647 as Méditations Métaphysiques. The title may contain a misreading by the printer, mistaking animae immortalitas for animae immaterialitas, as suspected by A. Baillet.
In the study of the human mind, intellect refers to, describes, and identifies the ability of the human mind to reach correct conclusions about what is true and what is false in reality; and how to solve problems. Derived from the Ancient Greek philosophy term nous, intellect derived from the Latin intelligere, from which derives the term intelligence in the French and English languages. The discussion of intellect is in two areas of knowledge that concern the relation between intelligence and intellect.
Ignacio Ellacuría was a Spanish-Salvadoran Jesuit, philosopher, and theologian who worked as a professor and rector at the Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas" (UCA), a Jesuit university in El Salvador founded in 1965. He and several other Jesuits and two others were assassinated by Salvadoran soldiers in the closing years of the Salvadoran Civil War.
Ṣadr ad-Dīn Muḥammad Shīrāzī, more commonly known as Mullā Ṣadrā, was a Persian Twelver Shi'i Islamic mystic, philosopher, theologian, and ‘Ālim who led the Iranian cultural renaissance in the 17th century. According to Oliver Leaman, Mulla Sadra is arguably the single most important and influential philosopher in the Muslim world in the last four hundred years.
Nous, or Greek νοῦς, sometimes equated to intellect or intelligence, is a concept from classical philosophy for the faculty of the human mind necessary for understanding what is true or real.
In medieval philosophy, the active intellect is the formal (morphe) aspect of the intellect (nous), according to the Aristotelian theory of hylomorphism. The nature of the active intellect was a major theme of late classical and medieval philosophy. Various thinkers sought to reconcile their commitment to Aristotle's account of the body and soul to their own theological commitments. At stake in particular was in what way Aristotle's account of an incorporeal soul might contribute to understanding of deity and creation.
The philosophy of self is the study of wisdom as self at a conceptual level. Many different ideas on what constitutes self have been proposed, including the self being an activity, the self being independent of the senses, the bundle theory of the self, the self as a narrative center of gravity, and the self as a syntactic construct rather than an entity. The self is also an important concept in Eastern philosophy, including Buddhist philosophy.
Noesis is a philosophical term, referring to the activity of the intellect or nous.
The Romantics, in seeking to understand nature in her living essence, studied the 'father of science', Sir Francis Bacon. The view of Bacon and the 'inductive method' that emerges is quite a different one from that tended to prevail both before and then after, here mainly due to John Stuart Mill's interpretation later in the 1800s. For the Romantics, induction as generally interpreted 'was not enough to produce correct understanding in Bacon's terms.' They saw another side of Bacon, generally not developed, one in which nature was a labyrinth not open to "excellence of wit" nor "chance experiments": "Our steps must be guided by a clue, and see what way from the first perception of the sense must be laid out upon a sure plan."
Romantic epistemology emerged from the Romantic challenge to both the static, materialist views of the Enlightenment (Hobbes) and the contrary idealist stream (Hume) when it came to studying life. Romanticism needed to develop a new theory of knowledge that went beyond the method of inertial science, derived from the study of inert nature, to encompass vital nature. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was at the core of the development of the new approach, both in terms of art and the 'science of knowledge' itself (epistemology). Coleridge's ideas regarding the philosophy of science involved Romantic science in general, but Romantic medicine in particular, as it was essentially a philosophy of the science(s) of life.
Ātma-bodha is a short Sanskrit text attributed to Adi Shankara of Advaita Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy. The text in sixty-eight verses describes the path to Self-knowledge or the awareness of Atman.
In perennial philosophy, scientia sacra or sacred science is a form of spiritual knowledge that lies at the heart of both divine revelations and traditional sciences, which also occupies the core of a sacred tradition. It acknowledges sources of knowledge beyond those recognized by modern epistemology, such as divine revelations and intellectual intuition, the latter of which is considered a supra-rational form of knowledge based on the human intellect. Scientia sacra embodies principles and doctrines derived from reason, revelation and intellectual intuition, with the conviction that these sources of knowledge can be reconciled without conflict in a hierarchical order and employed in the human quest to understand different orders of reality. Its objective is to show how the transmitted, intellectual, and physical sciences are related and unified within the framework of metaphysics, as traditionally defined.