The Routledge Dictionary of Philosophy

Michael Proudfoot, A.R. Lacey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781134250776
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

First published in 1976, the Dictionary of Philosophy has established itself as the best available text of its kind, explaining often unfamiliar, complicated and diverse terminology. Thoroughly revised and expanded, this fourth edition provides authoritative and rigorous definitions of a broad range of philosophical concepts.

Concentrating on the Western philosophical tradition, The Routledge Dictionary of Philosophy offers an illuminating and informed introduction to the central issues, ideas and perspectives in core fields such as metaphysics, epistemology, and logic. It includes concise biographical entries for more than one hundred major philosophers, from Plato and Aristotle through to contemporary figures such as Dummett, McDowell, Parfit and Singer.

All major entries are followed by helpful suggestions for further reading, including web links, and contain extensive cross-referencing to aid access and comprehension. This edition also features a brand new guide to the most useful philosophy sites on the internet. The Routledge Dictionary of Philosophy is an invaluable and up-to-date resource for all students of philosophy.

S

Salva veritate

. ‘Preserving the truth’. See INTENSIONALITY.

Santayana, George

. 1863–1952. Born in Madrid, he worked at Harvard and then in Europe, dying at Rome. An apparently paradoxical figure, a Catholic agnostic who attacked broad-churchmanship and religious and political liberalism, an aesthetically minded Platonist who called himself a materialist, a rejector of modern ideas of inevitable progress who admired the pragmatist William James, he accepted our impulses for what they were but treated reason as a further impulse, a neutral integrator of the rest. He believed in essences, but not as a superior realm. The ordinary world exists, and we must start from ordinary beliefs, and not seek the illusory foundations sought in vain by the sceptic. How far his philosophy changed in his later works is controversial. The Sense of Beauty, 1896. The Life of Reason (five volumes), 1905–6. Winds of Doctrine, 1913 (criticisms). Scepticism and Animal Faith, 1923. Realms of Being (four volumes, on Essence, Matter, Truth, Spirit), 1927–40, in single volume with new introduction, 1942. Dominations and Powers, 1951 (social philosophy).

Sartre, Jean-Paul

. 1905–80. Born in Paris, he worked mostly in France, with some study in Germany. Famous both as a writer of novels and plays and as a philosopher, he represented one form of EXISTENTIALISM, though his later work tended towards Marxism. He was the most explicitly atheistic of existentialists, and took an active part in politics. Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, 1939. Being and Nothingness, 1943. Existentialism is a Humanism, 1946 (popular, but often regarded as not representing his main thought). Critique of Dialectical Reason, 1960 (Marxist in tendency). See also BAD FAITH, MARCEL, MERLEAU-PONTY.

Satisfice

. As an optimizing policy gets, or aims to get, the best results possible so a satisficing policy gets, or aims to get, results sufficient but not necessarily the best possible. The notion derives from the economist H. A. Simon (1916–2001).

M. Slote and P. Pettit, ‘Satisficing consequentialism’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supplementary vol., 1984. (Some philosophical implications. Cf. also M. Slote, Common Sense Morality and Consequentialism, RKP, 1985, chapter 3.)

Satisfy

. A notion introduced by Tarski to help construct his semantic definition of TRUTH for formalized languages. Consider a sentential FUNCTION ‘x loves y’ and suppose that John loves Mary. Then ‘x loves y’ is satisfied by any ordered sequence of objects whose first two terms are John and Mary taken in that order. In general, suppose a certain sentential function contains n different free VARIABLES (some of which may be repeated: ‘x loves x’ has only one). Then take any sequence of objects and assign its first n terms, taken in order, to the n variables, respectively, also taken in some order (usually alphabetical). Then the sequence satisfies the function if the first n terms of the sequence are related as the resulting sentence says they are. To ensure the sequence is long enough, it is convenient to take only infinite sequences and ignore all superfluous terms, i.e. all after the first n. A sentence, or closed sentential function, contains no free variables, so that all the terms in all sequences are superfluous. ‘John loves Mary’, therefore is (vacuously) satisfied by all sequences if he does, and by none if he doesn’t. Tarski therefore defines truth by calling a sentence true if all sequences satisfy it and false if none do. The limitation to formalized languages has to do with problems like the LIAR PARADOX.

W. V. O. Quine, Philosophy of Logic, Prentice-Hall, 1970, particularly chapter 3. (Priority of satisfaction over truth.)

A. Tarski, ‘The semantic conception of truth and the foundations of semantics’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 1944, reprinted in H. Feigl and W. Sellars (eds), Readings in Philosophical Analysis, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1949. (See also the account by M. Black, ‘The semantic definition of truth’, Analysis, 1948, reprinted in M. MacDonald (ed.), Philosophy and Analysis, Blackwell, 1954.)

Saturated

. See CONCEPT.

Scepticism

. Any view involving doubt about whether something exists, or about whether we can know something, or about whether we are justified in arguing in certain ways. Throughout the ages many philosophers have held that unless we know some things for certain we cannot know anything at all, or even legitimately think anything probable (cf. FOUNDATIONALISM). Many of them, especially the Greek sceptics and Descartes, have therefore sought a sure mark or ‘criterion’ of when a proposition is true.

One can doubt whether knowledge can be had in certain spheres, or whether it can be had by certain methods. An extreme rationalist like Plato, sometimes, may doubt if we can ever get knowledge through the senses. An extreme empiricist like Hume may doubt if we can ever get it through reason, or through any reasoning except deductive (Hume again; see INDUCTION). Particular arguments may attack the reliability of particular kinds of alleged knowledge, e.g. memory, precognition, intuition.

The sceptic may doubt whether we can know something, or even have any reason to believe it (cf. agnostics). Less often he may deny that certain things exist, or that they could exist, even though he must then claim to know negative propositions (dogmatic scepticism; cf. atheists). He may deny or doubt the existence of God, of objects when not experienced (Berkeley), of any objects at all beyond our experiences themselves, i.e. beyond our SENSATIONS or SENSE DATA (Hume; cf. PERCEPTION), and that subjects like ethics contain any truths to be known (logical POSITIVISTS; cf. NATURALISM). Sceptics have asked how we could know of the past (Russell asked how we know we did not spring into existence, complete with ‘memories’, five minutes ago), or of minds other than our own. Descartes even tried, unsuccessfully, to doubt his own existence. Milder forms of scepticism allow that we can know something but only by certain methods: perhaps we can know that ordinary objects, or others’ feelings, exist, but only by inference, not by direct observation.

The views that nothing exists outside one’s own mind, or that nothing such can be known to exist, are called solipsism (literally, ‘only-oneself-ism’). A weaker version of solipsism concerns merely the existence of other minds (one form of the other minds problem, though this problem also concerns what we can know, and how, about other minds, e.g. what others are thinking and feeling).

One particular question that the sceptic asks is how I can know that I am not now dreaming.

Methodological scepticism is the adoption of sceptical views not to defend them but as a starting point, departures from which are to be justified. Thus Descartes’ method of doubt involves doubting everything until something necessarily indubitable is found, on which knowledge can be built. See also METHODOLOGICAL SOLIPSISM.

Radical forms of scepticism have often been unpopular on the grounds that they cannot coherently be stated without presupposing their own falsity (cf. TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENTS). See also PRIVATE LANGUAGE ARGUMENT, ACCESS, INCORRIGIBLE, PERCEPTION, SEXTUS EMPIRICUS.

J. L. Austin (see bibliography to SENSE DATA).

J. Bogen and M. Beckner, ‘An empirical refutation of Cartesian scepticism’, Mind, 1979. (Attacks Descartes’ argument from dreaming. For an earlier and different attack see M. Macdonald, ‘Sleeping and waking’, Mind, 1953.)

M. F. Burnyeat (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition, California UP, 1983. (Historical essays, half on ancient scepticism and half on modern reactions.)

A. P. Griffiths, ‘Justifying moral principles’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1957–8. (Tries to rescue morals from the sceptic.)

D. Hume, Treatise, 1739, and Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, 1748. (Nearest among great philosophers to scepticism.)

A. A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy, Duckworth, 1974. (Includes treatment of Greek sceptics.)

G. E. Moore, Philosophical Papers, Allen and Unwin/Macmillan, 1959. (Several items attack scepticism.)

H. Putnam, ‘Brains in a vat’, chapter 1 of his Reason, Truth and History, Cambridge UP, 1981. (How far can scepticism be coherently stated?)

G. Ryle, Dilemmas, Cambridge, UP, 1954, chapter 7. (Scepticism and perception.)

B. Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism, Clarendon, 1984. (Sympathetic treatment of scepticism, emphasizing need to ask how the problem arose and what the signif...