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Sellars, Wilfrid (1912–89)

From Blackwell Companions to Philosophy: A Companion to Epistemology
American philosopher. The epistemological view most closely associated with Wilfrid Sellars is surely his thoroughgoing critique of what he called “the Myth of the Given”. The philosophical framework of givenness has historically taken on many guises, of which classical sense-datum theory is but one. But Sellars considered the very idea that empirical knowledge rests on a foundation at all, of whatever kind, to be a manifestation of the Myth of the Given, as was the assumption that one’s “privileged access” to one’s own mental states is a primitive feature of experience, logically and epistemologically prior to all intersubjective concepts pertaining to inner episodes. At the heart of Sellars’ critique of “the entire framework of givenness” is his articulate recognition of the irreducibly normative character of epistemic discourse. The essential point is that in characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing , we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or…
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One of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Enormously productive, Russell made significant contributions to logic and the foundations of mathematics, the theory of knowledge, the philosophy of science, and almost every branch of philosophy. He was also renowned for the graceful…
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Although the main currents of late-nineteenth-century Anglo-American ethics—Hegelianism, utilitarianism, and evolutionism—continued into the twentieth, only UTILITARIANISM grew in strength. Hegelian ethics gradually fell out of discussion, until it returned late in the twentieth century as…
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Full text Article Rorty, Richard

From The Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory Full text Article Cultural Theory
Richard Rorty (1931-2007) was internationally one of the most controversial and influential philosophers from the period after 1945. Though he started his career in Anglo-American analytic philosophy, Rorty began to turn against this tradition with his 1967 publication entitled The Linguistic Turn: …
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Full text Article inferentialism

From Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
broadly, any view that sees inferential relations or processes as fundamental. Typically, such views take actions, beliefs, perceptions, and other intentional elements to be in some way defective if not connected via a process of inference with their grounds. Thus, it may be held that believing that…
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Full text Article Dewey's Social Philosophy

From Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory
John Dewey was known as America's quintessential philosopher of the early twentieth century. Along with William James and Charles Sanders Peirce, he was one of the founders of the philosophical tradition known as pragmatism. This tradition grew out of a distinct US context; it rose and fell in…
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Full text Article pragmatism

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
(prăg'mӘtĭzӘm), method of philosophy in which the truth of a proposition is measured by its correspondence with experimental results and by its practical outcome. Thought is considered as simply an instrument for supporting the life aims of the human organism and has no real metaphysical…
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Full text Article Castañeda, Hector-Neri (1924–91),

From Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
American analytical philosopher. Heavily influenced by his own critical reaction to Quine, Chisholm, and his teacher Wilfrid Sellars, Castañeda published four books and more than 175 essays. His work combines originality, rigor, and penetration, together with an unusual comprehensiveness – his…
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Full text Article liberal naturalism

From Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
a philosophical outlook lying between scientific naturalism and supernaturalism. It is naturalistic in avoiding commitment to anything supernatural; but, unlike many versions of philosophical naturalism, it allows for the existence of non-scientific entities or powers of mind – where these are…
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Full text Article McDowell, John Henry (b.1942),

From Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
English philosopher best known for Mind and World (1994), he also wrote important essays on a wide range of topics collected in four volumes: Mind, Value, and Reality (1998), Meaning, Knowledge, and Reality (1998), Having the World in View (2009), and The Engaged Intellect (2009). McDowell's method, …
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Full text Article Scheler, Max

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
(born Aug. 22, 1874, Munich, Ger.—died May 19, 1928, Frankfurt am Main) German philosopher. He is remembered primarily for his contributions to phenomenology . His Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values (1913–16) contains a detailed critique of the ethics of Immanuel Kant . In Man’s…
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