This is a concise guide to technical terms and personal names often encountered in the study of philosophy. What you will find here naturally reflects my own philosophical interests and convictions, but everything is meant to be clear, accurate, and fair, a reliable source of information on Western philosophy for a broad audience. The curriculum vitae elsewhere on this site describes my experience in academic life.
Although the entries are often brief, many include links to electronic texts and to more detailed discussions on this site or in other on-line resources, including: The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), Tom Stone's EpistemeLinks.com (ELC), The Columbia Encyclopedia (ColE), The Perseus Project (PP), Mathematical MacTutor (MMT), Peter Saint-André's The Ism Book (ISM), Eric Weisstein's Treasure Trove of Scientific Biography (TTSB), Chris Eliasmith's Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind (DPM), The Catholic Encyclopedia (CE), Kristin Switala's Feminist Theory Website (FTW), The Fallacy Files from Gary N. Curtis (FF), and Stephen Downes's Guide to the Logical Fallacies (GLF). Links to these and other resources listed in the "Also see . . . " list at the end of a dictionary entry—along with references to on-line texts—will appear in a second browser window.
Special attention is due to the search engine at
. Its on-line collection includes:
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (OCP),
The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (ODQ),
A Dictionary of Scientists (ODSt),
The Concise Dictionary of Linguistics (OCDL), and
Who's Who in the Twentieth Century (WW20th)
from Oxford University Press,
along with
Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought (BGHT),
The Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography (MDWB),
The Macmillan Encyclopedia 2001 (MacE),
Market House Books Encyclopaedia of the Renaissance (MHBER), and
Penguin Biographical Dictionary of Women (PBDW), and many other resources.
For convenient access to the work of many Internet lexicographers, see:
Bob Ware's OneLook Dictionaries and
Robert Beard's yourDictionary.com.
For additional discussion of philosophers, the issues they discuss, and the terms they use, consult other philosophy sites, especially Andrew Chrucky's Meta-Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
Harmut Krech's Bio-Bibliographical Directory, and
.Reliable print resources include:
 The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy ed. by Robert Audi (Cambridge, 1999) {Order from Amazon.com} |  Simon Blackburn The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford, 1996) {Order from Amazon.com} |  The Oxford Companion to Philosophy ed. by Ted Honderich (Oxford, 1995) {Order from Amazon.com} |  The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Routledge, 1999) {Order from Amazon.com} |
