Compositionality in Language Compositionality is a concept in the philosophy of language. A symbolic system is compositional if the meaning of every complex expression E in that system depends on, and depends only on, (Ich) E’s syntactic structure and (Ii) the meanings of E’s simple parts. If a language is compositional, then the meaning of a sentence S in that language cannot depend directly on

Cynics Cynicism originates in the philosophical schools of ancient Greece that claim a Socratic lineage. To call the Cynics a “school” though, immediately raises a difficulty for so unconventional and anti-theoretical a group. Their primary interests are ethical, but they conceive of ethics more as a way of living than as a doctrine in need of explication. As such askēsis—a Greek word meaning a kind

Hunhu/Ubuntu in the Traditional Thought of Southern Africa The term Ubuntu/Botho/Hunhu is a Zulu/Xhosa/Ndebele/Sesotho/Shona word referring to the moral attribute of a person, who is known in the Bantu languages as Munhu (Among the Shona of Zimbabwe), Umuntu (Among the Ndebele of Zimbabwe and the Zulu/Xhosa of South Africa) and Muthu (Among the Tswana of Botswana) and Omundu (Among the Herero of Namibia) to name

Immortality Immortality is the indefinite continuation of a person’s existence, even after death. In common parlance, immortality is virtually indistinguishable from afterlife, but philosophically speaking, they are not identical. Afterlife is the continuation of existence after death, regardless of whether or not that continuation is indefinite. Immortality implies a never-ending existence, regardless of whether or not the body dies (in der Tat, manche

Aristoteles (384 v. u. Z. – 322 v. u. Z.) Aristotle is a towering figure in ancient Greek philosophy, who made important contributions to logic, criticism, Rhetorik, Physik, biology, Psychologie, mathematics, Metaphysik, Ethik, und Politik. He was a student of Plato for twenty years but is famous for rejecting Plato’s theory of forms. He was more empirically minded than both Plato and Plato’s teacher, Sokrates. A prolific writer, lecturer, and polymath, Aristotle radically

Totalitarismus Unter Totalitarismus versteht man am besten jedes System politischer Ideen, das sowohl durch und durch diktatorisch als auch utopisch ist. Es handelt sich um eine ideale Art von Regierungsvorstellung, und als solches, es kann nicht perfekt realisiert werden. Angesichts der brutalen Realität paradigmatischer Fälle wie Stalins UdSSR und Nazi-Deutschland, Philosophen, Politische Theoretiker und Sozialwissenschaftler fühlten sich nicht nur intellektuell motiviert, sondern auch moralisch verpflichtet, Erklärungen abzugeben