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Philosophers

Mortimer Adler
Rogers Albritton
Alexander of Aphrodisias
G.E.M.Anscombe
Thomas Aquinas
Aristotle
David Armstrong
Augustine
A.J.Ayer
Mark Balaguer
William Belsham
Isaiah Berlin
Bernard Berofsky
Susanne Bobzien
George Boole
F.H.Bradley
C.D.Broad
C.A.Campbell
Joseph Keim Campbell
Carneades
Ernst Cassirer
Roderick Chisholm
Chrysippus
Cicero
Randolph Clarke
Samuel Clarke
Donald Davidson
Democritus
Daniel Dennett
René Descartes
Richard Double
Fred Dretske
John Earman
Laura Waddell Ekstrom
Epictetus
Epicurus
John Martin Fischer
Owen Flanagan
Philippa Foot
Alfred Fouilleé
Harry Frankfurt
Richard L. Franklin
Carl Ginet
Nicholas St. John Green
Ian Hacking
Ishtiyaque Haji
Stuart Hampshire
Georg W.F. Hegel
Martin Heidegger
R.E.Hobart
Thomas Hobbes
David Hodgson
Shadsworth Hodgson
Ted Honderich
Pamela Huby
David Hume
William James
Robert Kane
Immanuel Kant
Tomis Kapitan
Christine Korsgaard
Keith Lehrer
Gottfried Leibniz
Leucippus
C.I.Lewis
David Lewis
John Locke
John R. Lucas
Lucretius
Hugh McCann
Colin McGinn
Michael McKenna
Alfred Mele
John Stuart Mill
Dickinson Miller
G.E.Moore
Thomas Nagel
Friedrich Nietzsche
P.H.Nowell-Smith
Robert Nozick
William of Ockham
Timothy O'Connor
Charles Sanders Peirce
Derk Pereboom
Steven Pinker
Plato
Karl Popper
H.A.Prichard
Willard van Orman Quine
Frank Ramsey
Ayn Rand
Thomas Reid
Charles Renouvier
Nicholas Rescher
Josiah Royce
Bertrand Russell
Paul Russell
Gilbert Ryle
T.M.Scanlon
Moritz Schlick
Arthur Schopenhauer
John Searle
Henry Sidgwick
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
J.J.C.Smart
Saul Smilansky
Michael Smith
Galen Strawson
Peter Strawson
Eleonore Stump
Richard Taylor
Kevin Timpe
Peter van Inwagen
Manuel Vargas
John Venn
Kadri Vihvelin
G.H. von Wright
R. Jay Wallace
Ted Warfield
Roy Weatherford
Alfred North Whitehead
David Widerker
David Wiggins
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Susan Wolf

Scientists

Margaret Boden
Neils Bohr
Ludwig Boltzmann
Max Born
Stephen Brush
Arthur Holly Compton
Abraham de Moivre
John Eccles
Arthur Stanley Eddington
Albert Einstein
Richard Feynman
A.O.Gomes
Joshua Greene
Jacques Hadamard
Martin Heisenberg
Werner Heisenberg
Pierre-Simon Laplace
David Layzer
Ernst Mach
Henry Margenau
James Clerk Maxwell
Ernst Mayr
Jacques Monod
Steven Pinker
Max Planck
Henri Poincaré
Erwin Schrödinger
Herbert Simon
B. F. Skinner
William Thomson (Kelvin)
John von Neumann
Daniel Wegner
Steven Weinberg
 
Language
Language has been intimately tied to philosophy since Plato and his Cratylus searched for deep truths in the etymology of words. But the real disaster has been the last hundred years when so many philosophers sought solutions to (or dissolutions of) philosophical problems in language itself.
The main medium of philosophy is not its message.
Philosophy has been the history of philosophers (mis)reading their predecessors and rewriting similar arguments using new words for similar concepts.
Socrates played with words and the dangers were apparent, but it was many centuries before Leibniz insisted that philosophy requires an ideal language, one free from the ambiguities that allowed what Kant would call "word juggling." Russell and the early Wittgenstein were the last to attempt an ideal language - molecular sentences logically built up from verifiable atomic facts of sense data.
Leibniz and Russell both knew that major advances in knowledge are possible when abstract symbols are used to represent physical concepts. Symbols can be inserted in mathematical equations that express a theory analytically, and quantitative predictions become deducible and testable by experiment. Sadly, it was Russell who proved that even simple statements can contain logical paradoxes.
If language were free of ambiguity, the meaning of a statement we hear or read might be the same meaning intended by the speaker or writer.
Scientists of course use language to explain to their colleagues what they are doing, and at that point introduce the possibility of misunderstanding. But ordinary language, augmented with symbolic logic, with geometric diagrams, with mathematical equations that describe physical theories, and with computer models and simulations, can describe the knowledge that best explains how the world works, that is, science. This augmented language of science is the nearest thing we have to the ideal language of the philosophers.
When philosophers invent new terms or use existing terms in new ways, ambiguities commonly lead to misunderstanding. We hope to produce a short glossary of philosophical terms that describes how different philosophers have used important terms. And for some major concepts we have assembled a timeline of the words used over the centuries, dualisms, for example.
We quote, in their original language where feasible, the major thoughts of philosophers on our main topics, so you can see for yourself their "word juggling."
We too are guilty of adding new uses for old words, and even coining a word or two. We hope to be very clear about this new jargon. Think of it as putting new philosophical wine in the old bottles Cogito, Ergo, and Sum, and creating a new philosophical bottle, the Ergod.
For Teachers
For Scholars

Chapter 6.5 - Experiments Chapter 6.7 - Progress
Part Four - Knowledge Part Six - Solutions
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