Dieu merci, Frege: Language Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) is most celebrated today for his contributions to mathematical logic and the philosophy of language. The first section below considers why a philosophical investigation of language mattered at all for Frege, the mathematician, and why it should have mattered to him. En même temps, the considerations may serve to illustrate some general motivations that were behind the development of

Functionalism Functionalism is a theory about the nature of mental states. According to functionalism, mental states are identified by what they do rather than by what they are made of. This can be understood by thinking about artifacts like mousetraps and keys. En particulier, the original motivation for functionalism comes from the helpful comparison of minds with computers. But that is only an analogy. Le

Rudolf Carnap: Modal Logic In two works, a paper in The Journal of Symbolic Logic in 1946 and the book Meaning and Necessity in 1947, Rudolf Carnap developed a modal predicate logic containing a necessity operator N, whose semantics depends on the claim that, where α is a formula of the language, Nα represents the proposition that α is logically necessary. Carnap’s view was that Nα should

Charles Sanders Peirce: Pragmatisme Le pragmatisme est un principe d'enquête et une explication du sens proposé pour la première fois par C.. S. Peirce dans les années 1870. Le point crucial du pragmatisme de Peirce est que pour qu’une déclaration ait un sens, il doit avoir des repères pratiques. Peirce considérait l'explication pragmatique du sens comme une méthode permettant d'éclaircir la métaphysique et de faciliter la recherche scientifique.. Cela a conduit de nombreuses personnes à

Zhong Hui (Chung Hui, 225–264 C.E.) Zhong Hui (Chung Hui) was a major philosophical figure during China’s early medieval period (220-589 CE). An accomplished interpreter of the Laozi and the Yijing, Zhong Hui contributed significantly to the early development of xuanxue—literally “learning” (xue) of the “dark” or “mysterious” (xuan) Dao ("Chemin"), but sometimes translated as “Neo-Daoism“. He also was a major political figure whose ambition

Aristote (384 B.C.E.—322 B.C.E.) Aristotle is a towering figure in ancient Greek philosophy, who made important contributions to logic, critique, rhétorique, physics, biology, psychologie, mathématiques, métaphysique, éthique, and politics. 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, Socrate. A prolific writer, lecturer, and polymath, Aristotle radically