Consequentialism Consequentialism is the view that morality is all about producing the right kinds of overall consequences. Here the phrase “overall consequences” of an action means everything the action brings about, including the action itself. For example, if you think that the whole point of morality is (a) to spread happiness and relieve suffering, or (b) to create as much freedom as possible in the

Naturalism Naturalism is an approach to philosophical problems that interprets them as tractable through the methods of the empirical sciences or at least, without a distinctively a priori project of theorizing. For much of the history of philosophy it has been widely held that philosophy involved a distinctive method, and could achieve knowledge distinct from that attained by the special sciences. Thus, metaphysics and epistemology

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908—1961) Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work is commonly associated with the philosophical movement called existentialism and its intention to begin with an analysis of the concrete experiences, perceptions, and difficulties, of human existence. However, he never propounded quite the same extreme accounts of radical freedom, being-towards-death, anguished responsibility, and conflicting relations with others, for which existentialism became both famous and notorious in the 1940s and

Evidentialism Evidentialism in epistemology is defined by the following thesis about epistemic justification: (EVI) Person S is justified in believing proposition p at time t if and only if S’s evidence for p at t supports believing p. As evidentialism is a thesis about epistemic justification, it is a thesis about what it takes for one to believe justifiably, or reasonably, in the sense thought

Haskell Brooks Curry (1900-1982) Haskell Brooks Curry was a mathematical logician who developed a distinct philosophy of mathematics. Most of his work was technical: he was the major developer of combinatory logic, which nowadays plays a role in theoretical computer science. This formalism was originally intended to be a basis for a system of symbolic logic in the usual sense, but the original system turned

Future Contingents The riddle of the future bewilders human beings. On the one hand, we are inclined to think that future events are real in some sense, because we ask questions and make assertions about them. On the other hand, we are inclined to think that future events may depend on our choices, because we conceive of ourselves as free agents. These two inclinations seem