Overview
Bertrand Russell
(1872—1970) philosopher, journalist, and political campaigner
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A. J. Ayer
(1910–1989)British philosopher, responsible for introducing the principles of logical positivism of the Vienna Circle to British philosophers. He was knighted in 1970.Born in London, Ayer was ...
Absolute Idealism
19th-century version of idealism in which the world is equated with objective or absolute thought, rather than with the personal flux of experience, as in subjective idealism. The doctrine is the ...
acquaintance and description
Distinction in our ways of knowing things, highlighted by Russell and forming a central element in his philosophy after the discovery of the theory of definite descriptions. A thing is known by ...
Alfred Cyril Ewing
(1899–1973)A. C. Ewing was born in Leicester on 11 May 1899 and died in Manchester on 14 May 1973. He was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School in Leicester and ...
Alfred North Whitehead
(1861–1947)British mathematician, logician, and metaphysician.The son of a clergyman, Whitehead was born in Ramsgate, Kent, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained as student, ...
Alfred Sidgwick
(1850–1943)Alfred Sidgwick was born at Skipton in Yorkshire and died on 22 December 1943. He was the eldest son of Robert Hodson Sidgwick, a cotton manufacturer, and his wife ...
analysis
The process of breaking a concept down into more simple parts, so that its logical structure is displayed. At its most elementary this may be revealed by a dictionary definition (‘to be a vixen is to ...
analytic philosophy
The philosophy that takes the process of analysis to be central to philosophical method and progress. The common idea of analytical philosophers was that the surface form of a language may conceal ...
Anthony Clifford Grayling
(1949–)Anthony Grayling was born in Luanshya, Zambia on 3 April 1949. He grew up in the English expatriate community of Central and East Africa, which afforded him eclectic philosophical ...
Anthony John Patrick Kenny
(1931– ).British philosopher who has written on topics in the philosophy of mind, medieval philosophy, ancient philosophy, the philosophy of Wittgenstein, the philosophy of Descartes, moral ...
Anthony Richards Manser
(1924–95)Anthony Richards Manser was born in Wandsworth on 24 June 1924 and died in Southampton. After World War II he went up to Oxford University, where he gained his ...
Archibald Allan Bowman
(1883–1936)Archibald Allan Bowman was born in the Congregational Union manse in Beith, Ayrshire, on 4 April 1883 and died at his home in the Professors' Square of Glasgow University ...
Arthur David Ritchie
(1891–1967)Arthur David Ritchie was born in Oxford on 22 June 1891 and died in Edinburgh on 12 March 1967. Brought up in St Andrews following his Edinburgh-born Hegelian father's ...
axiom of reducibility
Axiom introduced by Russell and Whitehead in Principia Mathematica. In that system propositional functions are sorted into levels, as part of the ramified theory of types. The axiom says that for any ...
Bernard Francis McGuinness
(or Brian: 1927–)Brian McGuinness was born in Wrexham on 22 October 1927. He was educated at Mount St Mary's College (Sheffield) and went up to Balliol College, Oxford in ...
Bryan Magee
(1930–)Bryan Magee was born on 12 April 1930 of working-class parents in Hoxton. During World War II he served in the Army Intelligence Corp. After demobilization he obtained a ...
Cambridge change
A thing changes in a sense associated with Russell (hence, at Cambridge) if it satisfies a description at one time that it does not satisfy at another. However, some such changes are ‘merely’ ...
Charles Kay Ogden
(1889–1957) English book collector of wide-ranging interests.In 1953, he sold his MSS and early printed books, as well as materials on Jeremy Bentham and Lord Brougham, to University College ...
Charlie Dunbar Broad
(1887–1971).English philosopher, professor of moral philosophy at Cambridge (1933–53). He carried out detailed conceptual analyses of science (Scientific Thought, 1923), of mind (Mind and its Place ...
Christopher John Fardo Williams
(1930–97)C. J. F. Williams was born in Walsall on 31 December 1930 and died in Bristol on 25 March 1997. After going to school at Shrewsbury he went up ...
