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 ...
action
What an agent does, as opposed to what happens to an agent (or even what happens inside an agent's head). Describing events that happen does not of itself permit us to talk of rationality and ...
Arthur Norman Prior
(1914–69).New Zealand-born philosopher who taught at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and the University of Manchester before becoming a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. He first gained ...
Austin Ernest Duncan-Jones
(1908–67)A. E. Duncan-Jones was born in Cambridge on 5 August 1906 and died in Birmingham on 2 April 1967. He was the son of the Very Revd Arthur Stuart ...
behaviourism
n. an approach to psychology postulating that only observable behaviour need be studied, thus denying any importance to unconscious processes. Behaviourists are concerned with the laws regulating the ...
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 ...
Bertram Mitchell Laing
(1887–1960)B. M. (‘Bertie’) Laing was born at Newton Premnay, a farm near Aberdeen, on 24 November 1887 and died in Sheffield on 16 May 1960. He was a student ...
Betty Powell
(1922–2002)Betty Powell was born in Bury, Lancashire on 5 May 1922 and died in Exeter. She attended elementary school, leaving at fourteen to work in a mill and later ...
category mistake
A statement about something that belongs to one category but is intelligible only of something belonging to another category, as when the mind is referred to as if it were a physical entity. The ...
Cecil Alec Mace
(1894–1971)C. A. Mace was born in Norwich on 22 July 1894 and died in London on 7 June 1971. He studied at Queen's College, Cambridge, taking the Moral Sciences ...
Charles Arthur Campbell
(1897–1974)Charles Arthur Campbell was born in Glasgow on 13 January 1897 and died in Callander, Perthshire on 17 March 1974. He was educated at Glasgow Academy, Glasgow University and ...
common sense
In early modern writing (e.g. Descartes) the faculty responsible for coordinating the deliveries of the different senses. In this meaning the objects of common sense are the ‘common sensibles’, i.e. ...
common sense school
Title for a school of Scottish philosophy, whose most distinguished member was Thomas Reid, but which was widely disseminated by teachers, especially in the United States. It stood for opposition to ...
continental philosophy
Inaccurate term used, often polemically, to refer to the writings of philosophers influenced by European political philosophers such as Hegel, Marx, or Heidegger, by phenomenology and existentialist ...
disposition
A thing has a disposition to become F in a situation G if it is such that were G to come about, it would become F. Dispositions, potentials, or powers are thus certified by the outcomes that would ...
‘emergence’ and ‘reduction’ in explanations
A classical question of philosophy is the one/many problem: is everything in the universe ultimately one thing—or are there, as it certainly appears, many things? In another and more interesting ...
epistemology
(Greek, epistēmē, knowledge)The theory of knowledge. Its central questions include the origin of knowledge; the place of experience in generating knowledge, and the place of reason in doing so; the ...
Eric Toms
(1912–2003)Eric Toms was born in London on 10 January 1912 and died in Manchester on 9 March 2003. His father, a conscientious objector, took the family after 1914 to ...
Ernest Gellner
(1925–95)Although Gellner was born in Czechoslovakia, his family (who had Jewish origins) left immediately after the German occupation in 1939, and he spent most of his working life in England. ...
existentialism
A philosophical theory or approach which emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will.
