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Philosophy is a field of study that includes diverse subfields such as aesthetics, epistemology, ethics, logic, and metaphysics, in which people ask questions such as whether God exists, what is the nature of reality, whether knowledge is possible, and what makes actions right or wrong. The fundamental method of philosophy is the use of reasoning to evaluate arguments concerning these questions. However, the exact scope and methodology of philosophy is not rigid. What counts as philosophy is itself debated, and it varies across philosophical traditions.
The term philosophy comes from the Greek word "Φιλοσοφία" (philo-sophia), which means "love of wisdom" or less commonly "friend of wisdom". Many ancient Greek philosophers made the distinction between the desire for wisdom, as opposed to the desire for material things, vices, and the satisfaction of bodily desires. The definition of wisdom for many ancient Greeks would have been about virtue and the desire for knowledge and not false opinions. However, the term is notoriously difficult to define today (see definition of philosophy) because of the diverse range of ideas that have been labeled as philosophy. The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy defines it as the study of "the most fundamental and general concepts and principles involved in thought, action, and reality". The Penguin Encyclopedia says that philosophy differs from science in that philosophy's questions cannot be answered empirically, and from religion in that philosophy allows no place for faith or revelation. However, these points are called into question by the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, which states: "the late 20th-century... prefers to see philosophical reflection as continuous with the best practice of any field of intellectual enquiry." Indeed, many of the speculations of early philosophers in the field of natural philosophy eventually formed the basis for modern scientific explanations on a variety of subjects.
Informally, a "philosophy" may refer to a general world view or to a specific ethic or belief.
More on [ Philosophy ]
Alexander of Aphrodisias@
Armstrong, David M.@
Auriol, Peter@
Blaga, Lucian@
Brentano, Franz@
Cassirer, Ernst@
Chalmers, David@
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb@
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich@
Heidegger, Martin@
Hume, David@
James, William@
Kant, Immanuel@
Locke, John@
Ryle, Gilbert@
Searle, John@
Sellars, Wilfrid@
Turing, Alan Mathison@
Wittgenstein, Ludwig@
Cognitive Scientists :: Cognitive Science
Metaphysicians :: Metaphysics
Philosophers :: Philosophy
Bechtel, William - Editor of the journal Philosophical Psychology, and Professor of Philosophy at UCSD.
Block, Ned - Philosopher of Psychology, Cognitive Science, and Consciousness. Online articles and course outlines.
Carruthers, Peter - Folk psychology; nativism and modularity; intentional content; evolutionary psychology; cognitive architecture; consciousness; natural language in human cognition.
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Churchland, Patricia S. - Influential neurophilosopher and eliminative materialist.
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Clark, Andy - Prolific champion of connectionist and embodied approaches to understanding the mind.
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Dennett, Daniel C. - One of the most influential (and readable) contemporary philosophers of mind.
Dreyfus, Hubert - Phenomenologist and leading critic of Artificial Intelligence research.
Eliasmith, Chris - Mental representation, Dynamic Systems Theory, Connectionism, Philosophy of Neuroscience, Epistemology, etc. Editor of the online Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind.
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Goldman, Alvin I. - Distinguished epistemologist as well as a philosopher of mind and cognitive science.
Grush, Rick - Works on philosophy of representation, semantics (of natural language), theoretical neuroscience and metaphysics.
Honderich, Ted - Home page of this philosopher of mind (and of politics), giving access to his latest thought on the nature of consciousness as existence, and on the free-will versus determinism issue (amongst other things).
Horst, Steven - A critic of naturalism about the mind in general, and the computational theory of the mind in particular. Although computational approaches to cognition may be scientifically valid, they do not explain intentionality or solve the mind-body problem.
Hurley, Susan L. - Professor at the University of Warwick, UK. Author of Consciousness in Action and other works on active, situated cognition, as well as works on political and normative philosophy.
Giles, James - Philosophical psychology, philosophy of psychiatry, Buddhist and Taoist philosophy, the nonexistence of the self, early Greek thought, existentialism, psychoanalysis, and human sexuality.
Meta Description: [ James Giles is author of
The Nature of Sexual Desire and No Self to be Found: The Search
for Personal Identity. He is Associate Professor
of Philosophy at the University of Guam ]
Lepore, Ernest - Philosopher of language, logic, meatphysics and mind, and director of the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science.
Meta Description: [ [ Dr. Lepore's Homepage ] ]
Noë, Alva - Papers on the Philosophy and Cognitive Science of visual perception by this philosopher, based at the University of California, Berkeley.
Rockwell, Teed - Cognitive Questions - The Only Cognitive Science Website Without a Picture of a Brain on it! - Papers critical of Cartesian Materialism by Rockwell, with commentaries by Andy Clark, Ruth Millikan, Tim Van Gelder, U.T. Place and others.
Meta Description: [ Papers by Teed Rockwell,
commentary by Andy Clark, Ruth Millikan, Tim Van Gelder, U.T. Place and others ]
Schwitzgebel, Eric - Interests include: our poor knowledge of our own conscious experience, dispositional theories of belief, developmental psychology, and evil.
Tye, Michael - Probably the leading advocate of the representational theory of consciousness, an attempt at a physicalistic account of qualia. Has also done influential work on mental imagery, perception, the nature of mental states, etc
Meta Description: [ This page features the major publications of Professor Michael Tye of the University of Texas, including on-line versions of several articles in metaphysics and philosophy of mind. ]
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