assent

Make a judgment. For many philosophers of the modern period, assent is the mental act of accepting the truth of a statement, whether or not one has adequate evidence for knowing it.

assertoric

A proposition stating that something actually is the case, rather than necessary or merely possible. See problematic / assertoric / apodeictic.

Association (Assoc.)

A rule of replacement of the forms:

	[ p Ú ( q Ú r ) ] º [ ( p Ú q ) Ú r ]

	[ p · ( q · r ) ] º [ ( p · q ) · r ]

Example: "Harold is over 21, and so are Jane and Kelly." is equivalent to "Harold and Jane are over 21, and so is Kelly."

The associativity of both disjunction and conjunction can be demonstrated by truth-table analysis.

Also see ColE and MacE.

association of ideas

Presumed regularities in the co-existence or succession of particular mental contents. Noted as unreliable by Locke, the process of association became a central feature of human thought in the philosophy of Hume and Mill and in the psychology of Skinner.

Also see OCP, ColE, ISM, CE, and MacE.

assumption

A proposition accepted without proof or evidence as the basis for some further conclusion.

ataraxia [ataraxia]

The Greek term used by Pyrrho and Epicurus for tranquillity, or the freedom from disturbance and pain that characterizes a balanced mind and constitutes its first step toward the achievement of pleasure {Gk. ‘hdonh [hêdonê]}.

Also see OCP and PP.

atheism

Belief that god does not exist.

Recommended Reading: Antony Flew, Atheistic Humanism (Prometheus, 1993) {at Amazon.com}; Atheism, ed. by S. T. Joshi (Prometheus, 2000) {at Amazon.com}; Michael Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification (Temple, 1992) {at Amazon.com}; and J. J. C. Smart and J. J. Haldane, Atheism and Theism (Blackwell, 1996) {at Amazon.com}.

Also see Theodore M. Drange, OCP, BGHT, Fredrick Benz, ColE, Emma Goldman, ISM, and MacE.

atomism

The belief that matter is composed of simple, indivisible, physical particles that are too tiny to be observed by human beings. The atomism of such presocratic philosophers as Leucippus and Democritus partly anticipated the corpuscularianism of the seventeenth century and modern physics.

Recommended Reading: Andrew Pyle, Atomism and Its Critics: From Democritus to Newton (St. Augustine, 1995) {at Amazon.com}.

Also see S. Marc Cohen, OCP, ColE, ISM, and MacE.

attribute

A property or feature possessed by a substance. In the philosophical nomenclature employed by Aquinas and Descartes, attributes are commonly regarded as essential to the substances that have them.

Also see OCP.

Aufklärung

German term for Enlightenment, the modern spirit of reliance on reason espoused by such philosophers as Mendelssohn and Kant.

Also see Österreich-Lexikon.

Augustine (354-430)

North African philosopher and theologian who blended the philosophy of Plato with Christianity but insisted nevertheless that faith holds an absolute priority over reason.

For a discussion of his life and works, see Augustine.

Austin, John (1790-1859)

British legal theorist. Although he shared many of the utilitarian goals of his friend Bentham, Austin became the foremost representative of legal positivism. He argued in The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832) {at Amazon.com} and the unfinished Lectures on Jurisprudence (1863) {at Amazon.com} that, as a matter of practical fact, the law is nothing more than the command of a legitimate sovereign, enforced by the imposition of effective moral sanctions.

Recommended Reading: Wilfrid E. Rumble, The Thought of John Austin: Jurisprudence, Colonial Reform, and the British Constitution (Athlone, 1985) {at Amazon.com}.

Also see SEP, OCP on Austin and indeterminacy in law, ColE, and MacE.

Austin, J. L. (1911-1960)

English philosopher who developed a unique method of approaching philosophical issues, beginning with a painstakingly detailed analysis of the the subtleties involved in day-to-day uses of ordinary language.

For a discussion of his life and works, see Austin.

authenticity

Self-conscious appropriation of the conditions of one's own existence and identity. According to Heidegger, such deliberate reflection about the goals and values of life is the only successful response to the experience of Angst without falling into self-deception.

Recommended Reading: Michael E. Zimmerman, Eclipse of the Self: The Development of Heidegger's Concept of Authenticity (Ohio, 1986) {at Amazon.com} and Heidegger, Authenticity, and Modernity: Essays in Honor of Hubert L. Dreyfus (MIT, 2000) {at Amazon.com}.

Also see OCP and Lawrence J. Hatab.

authority, appeal to (argumentum ad verecundiam)

The informal fallacy of claiming that we ought to accept the truth of a proposition because of some personal feature of the individual who affirms it.

Example: "The former Governor believes that aliens have landed in the Arizona desert, so aliens must have landed in the Arizona desert."

Recommended Reading: Douglas Walton, Appeal to Expert Opinion: Arguments from Authority (Penn. State, 1997) {at Amazon.com}.

Also see FF and GLF.

autonomy / heteronomy of the will

Kant's distinction between ways of choosing how to act. Autonomous agents are self-legislating; they act according to the categorical imperative of willing only what is universalizable as moral law. Heteronomous agents derive principles of action from outside themselves, by considering the objects or consequences of their choices or being influenced by the will of others.

Recommended Reading: Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, tr. by James W. Ellington (Hackett, 1993) {at Amazon.com}; Thomas E. Hill, Jr., Autonomy and Self-Respect (Cambridge, 1991) {at Amazon.com}; and Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency, and the Social Self, ed. by Catriona MacKenzie and Natalie Stoljar (Oxford, 2000) {at Amazon.com}.

Also see OCP, Anthony F. Beavers, and Steven Darwall.

Averroës

Latinized name of the Islamaic philosopher Ibn Rushd.

Avicebron

Latinized name of the Jewish philosopher Ibn Gabirol.

Avicenna

Latinized name of Persian philosopher Ibn Sina.

axiology

Branch of philosophy that studies judgments about value, including those of both aesthetics and ethics.

Recommended Reading: Rem B. Edwards, Formal Axiology And Its Critics (Rodopi, 1995) {at Amazon.com} and Forms of Value and Valuation, ed. by John W. Davis and Rem B. Edwards (Univ. Pr. of Am., 1992) {at Amazon.com}.

Also see OCP and MacE.

axiom

A proposition formally accepted without demonstration, proof, or evidence as one of the starting-points for the systematic derivation of an organized body of knowledge.

Also see OCP, BGHT, ColE, and MacE.

Ayer, Alfred Jules (1910-1989)

English philosopher. After studying with members of the Vienna circle, Ayer published Language, Truth, and Logic (1936) {at Amazon.com}, an excellent statement of the central views of logical positivism, including the use of verifiability as a criterion of meaning, the rejection of metaphysics and theology as meaningless, and an emotivist ethical theory. His later works include Foundations of Empirical Knowledge (1940), The Problem of Knowledge (1956), Logical Positivism (1966) {at Amazon.com}, and The Central Questions of Philosophy (1972) {at Amazon.com}.

Recommended Reading: The Philosophy of A. J. Ayer, ed. by Lewis Edwin Hahn (Open Court, 1992) {at Amazon.com}; Oswald Hanfling, Ayer (Routledge, 1999) {at Amazon.com}; and Ben Rogers, A. J. Ayer: A Life (Grove, 2000) {at Amazon.com}.

Also see OCP, ColE, ODQ, WW20th, Radical Philosophy, and MacE.

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©1997-2001 Garth Kemerling.
Questions, comments, and suggestions may be sent to: gkemerling@philosophypages.com