The second proposition, that the non-I is determined by the I, gives rise to the practical Wissenschaftslehre, and this is, for Fichte, crucial to the I’s construction of the world. First, the I’s motive for producing a world, and a world of a certain type, is to have a field for its activity, primarily for the performance of its moral duty. Second, it is only with the practical Wissenschaftslehre that the world ceases to be merely a network of ideas (Vorstellungen) and becomes genuinely objective with respect to the I. The perform- ance of duty requires the existence of other Is on a par with myself and I must regard other people as independent centres of consciousness and activity, not simply as my own ideas. But if the world is perceived by other beings, as well as myself, it is relatively independent of myself and my mental states. In other works of the period, notably The Science of Rights (1796–7; tr. London, 1889) and The Science of Ethics (1798; tr. London, 1897), Fichte develops the implications of practical Wissenschaftslehre. The latter work attempts to derive the content of our duties from the mere fact that we must act morally, arguing, for example, that since moral activity requires the existence of others, we have a duty not to kill others or otherwise impair their capacity for moral activity. The Science of Rights applies ethical principles to law, the family, individual rights within the state, and relations between states. The state exists to protect the rights of its citizens and is ‘nothing but an abstract conception; only the citizens, as such, are actual persons’. States should form a confederation to secure the freedom of all men, and ultimately all men should belong to a single commonwealth. This did not prevent him from arguing, in The Closed Commercial State (1800), that a state should rigidly control the eco- nomic activity of its citizens and prohibit international trade. Fichte’s doctrines so far are well summarized in The Vocation of Man (1800; tr. New York, 1956), in which he considers three increasingly adequate views of the world: first, naturalistic *determinism, which dissolves man’s freedom in the ‘rigid necessity of nature’; second, theor- etical *idealism, which reduces the world, including oneself and other people, to a ‘system of pictures’; and third, prac- tical idealism, in which oneself and others emerge as free, but embodied, moral agents occupying an objective world. The work concludes with the affirmation that God is the moral order of the world and that we exist ‘only in God and through God’. But after about 1800 Fichte’s thought underwent a change. In the Wissenschaftslehre of 1794 he contrasted his own philosophy, idealism, with the ‘dogmatism’ or realism of such thinkers as Spinoza. (He claimed that which of these philosophies one adopts depends on what kind of man you are, but he also gave reasons, such as dogmatism’s inability to explain con- sciousness and freedom, for preferring idealism.) But now he moves closer to Spinoza, and to Schelling. In The Way to the Blessed Life or the Doctrine of Religion (1806) and in vari- ous other works of the period—including later rework- ings of the Wissenschaftslehre—the ‘infinite impulse’ of the I is no longer independent and self-sustaining, but emanates from an ‘absolute being’ (Sein) which cannot itself come into being, change, or pass away, and which Fichte also calls God, the Word (Logos), and the Absolute. Finite things are still deduced as products of conscious- ness. But the infinite activity of consciousness is now deduced from the end of ‘imitating’ God, and our voca- tion is more the ‘blessed life’ of contemplating God than moral activity. One of the problems that led Fichte to this conclusion seems to have been the difficulty of maintain- ing that the I that produces the world and that does not, until a fairly late stage of the Wissenschaftslehre, con- trast with other Is (‘you’ and ‘s/he’) is in any significant sense an ‘I’ rather than an ‘it’. (Hegel contended that Fichte’s absolute I amounts to much the same as pure being.) Throughout his career Fichte held that the vocation of man is to restore on a higher plain the pure absolute from which the Wissenschaftslehre began, whether this be the I or being, and whether the restoration of it consist in philo- sophical or religious insight, moral perfection, or political harmony. Thus his thought operates on two levels. First, there is a logical development of the relation between the absolute (I, being) and its manifestation; this occurs in his more esoteric works. Second, there is a psychological his- tory of the stages of reflection by which this logical rela- tion is revealed to the finite subject; this tends to appear in his more popular works. In Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), he presented a universal history, advancing from the ‘Arcadian’ stage of ‘instinctive reason’, by way of the ‘complete sinfulness’ of the ‘state based on needs’ (Noth- staat), to the ‘Elysian’ stage of ‘artistic reason’. Under the influence of Schiller, the aesthetic is assigned a crucial role in reconciling the antitheses of the Wissenschaftslehre. But in other works religion is more prominent than art. According to The Way to the Blessed Life absolute being is refracted by consciousness into an endless variety of indi- vidual forms. But this world of phenomena and its relation to the absolute is conceived by human reflection in five historically successive stages: (1) empirical phenomena are seen as the sole reality; (2) the ultimate reality is seen as a law-governed community of free, independent persons, with equal rights; (3) the heroic moral life devoted to the realization of the divine will, of the ideas underlying art, science, politics, and religion; (4) the religious withdrawal from heroic conduct into the recognition of all earthly life as a manifestation of the divine; (5) clear philosophical understanding of the plan of existence and of the unity of all men in a community of free intelligences with a common purpose: ‘Religion without science is a mere faith, though an immovable faith; science supersedes all faith and converts it into insight.’ At this last stage absolute being has in a sense been restored to its original purity. Fichte’s earlier thought had an immense influence on younger philosophers, especially Schelling and Hegel: Hegel’s philosophical method, for example, derives largely from Fichte, and his Phenomenology of Spirit is the 300 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb culmination of the tradition represented by Fichte’s philo- sophical histories. Fichte also influenced the literary works of such Romantics as Novalis and their concept of irony: ‘The three greatest tendencies of the age are the French revolution, Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, and Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’ (F. Schlegel). m.j.i. *Kantianism. R. Adamson, Fichte (Edinburgh, 1881). F. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vii: Modern Philosophy, pt. 1: Fichte to Hegel (Westminster, Md., 1963). D. Henrich, Fichte’s Original Insight, in D. E. Christensen (ed.), Contemporary German Philosophy, i (University Park, Penn., 1982). X. Léon, Fichte et son temps, 3 vols. (Paris, 1916–28). E. Tugendhat, Self-consciousness and Self-determination (Cam- bridge, Mass., 1986). Ficino, Marsilio (1433–99). Italian philosopher who pro- duced Latin translations of all Plato’s dialogues, along with a number of Neoplatonic works, making the com- plete corpus accessible to Western scholars for the first time. He also wrote commentaries on several of the dia- logues, most notably the Symposium (1469), where he pre- sented his influential theory of Platonic love as an attraction which moves from a physical to a spiritual plane, ultimately leading the lover to God. Shortly after being ordained a priest in 1473, he completed his Theologia Platonica, in which he demonstrated that rational confirmation of the Christian belief in the personal immortality of the soul could be found in the doctrines of the Platonists. He argued that *Platonism, unlike *Aristotelianism, was fundamentally compatible with Christianity and claimed for it a central place in the philosophical curriculum. j.a.k. *Neoplatonism. G. C. Garfagnini (ed.), Marsilio Ficino e il ritorno di Platone: Studi e documenti, 2 vols. (Florence, 1986). fiction. Fiction raises puzzles not only about what kind of thing fictional characters are, but also about our attitudes to what is not real. In reading a novel or seeing a drama, people apparently feel emotions towards or about the characters. Aristotle thought that it was essential to tragic drama, for instance, that the depicted course of events should arouse fear and pity in the spectator. However, some philosophers have contended that we cannot feel genuine emotions such as fear and pity, unless we believe a situation to be real. It is a common assumption that fic- tion is valuable because we are able to learn in a unique way from it, perhaps learning ‘how to feel’ certain things. How does this happen, if what we feel for fictions is not real *emotion? c.j. *fictional names. C. Radford, ‘How can we be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karen- ina?’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1975). fictional names. Names of fictional (including myth- ical) characters, places, etc., such as ‘Emma Bovary’, ‘Huckleberry Finn’, ‘Dotheboys Hall’, ‘Santa Claus’, ‘Persephone’. Their use has puzzling features. ‘Don Quixote’ appears to refer to a fictional character. Yet surely fictional characters do not exist—otherwise they would not be fictional. But how can referring to a non- existent Don Quixote differ from failing to refer to any- thing? Further, if Austen’s Mr Wickham did not exist, how can it be true—as it seems to be—that he eloped with Lydia Bennet? These puzzles have often prompted one or two responses: either fictional characters do somehow exist (but where? e.g. does Sherlock Holmes really live in London?) or typical sentences employing fictional names (e.g. ‘Maigret smoked’) are to be analysed differently from superficially similar sentences employing non-fictional names (e.g. ‘Churchill smoked’). p.j.m. *referring; names; existence. D. Lewis, ‘Truth in Fiction’, American Philosophical Quarterly (1978). fideism. Fideists hold that religious belief is based on faith rather than reason. Extreme fideists maintain that it is con- trary to reason; moderate fideists argue that what must first be accepted on faith may subsequently find rational support. The maxim *credo quia absurdum est encapsulates the former view; the slogan *credo ut intelligam epitomizes the latter. There being no reason to prefer one absurdity to another, the commitments of extreme fideists are bound to seem arbitrary. p.l.q. T. Penelhum, God and Skepticism: A Study in Skepticism and Fideism (Dordrecht, 1983). Field, Hartry H. (1946– ). American philosopher of lan- guage and *mathematics. Primarily influential through his fictionalist philosophy of mathematics—the Field pro- gramme. Quine and Putnam argue that since mathemat- ics is indispensable in the formulation of scientific theories, any evidence for the truth of a scientific theory is equally evidence for the truth of the mathematical theory which is its essential part. Field’s programme aims to undercut this argument in two steps. First, he claims that any scientific theory can be nominalistically rewritten, that is, formulated free from commitment to mathemat- ical entities. Second, he aims to account for the evident usefulness of mathematical formulations of scientific the- ories by arguing that the mathematical formulations are advantageous because they lead to shorter proofs of nominalistic conclusions, but that those conclusions could be reached more long-windedly from nominalistic premisses. a.d.o. H. H. Field, Realism, Mathematics and Modality (Oxford, 1989). —— Science without Numbers (Oxford, 1980). —— Truth and the Absence of Fact (Oxford, 2001). field theory. The postulation of fields—regions under the influence of some force—allows the explanation of instant- aneous interaction between spatially separated bodies (such as magnetic attraction or repulsion) without requir- ing *action at a distance. In modern physics, quantum field field theory 301 theory is arguably required in order to reconcile non- relativized *quantum mechanics with *Einstein’s special relativity, and it is widely hoped that some version of this theory might provide a ‘grand unified theory’ or ‘theory of everything’ in which the four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces) are shown to be manifestations of a single field. However, despite success in providing a unified explan- ation of the latter three forces, quantum field theory has yet to give a satisfactory account of gravity, and thereby remains inconsistent with general relativity, with some suggesting that a radically new physical theory will be needed. Field theory has also generated debate about whether the fundamental ontology of the world is one of fields, rather than individuable, localizable *particles. s.r.a. *Bell’s theorem; Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen para- dox; energy; identity of indiscernibles; individuation; quantum theory and philosophy. Marc Lange, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Physics: Locality, Fields, Energy and Mass (Oxford, 2002). Paul Teller, An Interpretative Introduction to Quantum Field Theory (Princeton, 1995). figures of the syllogism: see syllogism. film, philosophy of. Analytic philosophers have written infrequently on the aesthetics of the film though there are some recent signs of increasing interest. It is the question of what is distinctive about the film, what is its essence, that has preoccupied most philosophers. A film is photo- graphic and photographs are of reality or nature, as Cavell puts it. Scruton defines film as photographed dramatic representation. It is the fact that a photograph captures reality which makes film, like photography, unique in the way its creativity is somewhat displaced. It is then an easy move to the proposal that the use of some specific device such as montage is what is essential about film but, in truth, there is no single technique the exploitation of which typifies the major achievements in film, from Citi- zen Kane to Heimat. Far more than photography, film has followed traditions of its own making and its debts to painting or architecture are no greater than the influence of drama on opera or on *fiction or film’s own influence on the novel. The question of realism has haunted philo- sophical writing on film in other ways; is the audience under an illusion that the events on the screen are real and present? Does a member of the audience assume the pos- ition of the camera? Does he or she identify with the eye of the camera? r.a.s. *poetry. Noel Carroll, Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory (Princeton, NJ, 1988). —— The Philosophy of Mass Art (Oxford, 1998). Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of the Film, enlarged edn. (Cambridge, Mass., 1979). V. F. Perkins, Film as Film (Harmondsworth, 1972). Roger Scruton, The Aesthetic Understanding (London, 1983). Filmer, Robert (1588–1653). English political philosopher who defended the divine right of kings. Sir Robert Filmer was an English landowner who wrote a number of Royal- ist pamphlets. These were not noticed in his lifetime. But after his death his best-known work, Patriarcha; or, The Natural Power of Kings, was published in 1680. The book is an attack on what Filmer saw as the two enemies of Royal power, the Jesuits and the Calvinists, and it stated two royalist principles: divine right and the duty of passive obedience. Filmer tried to show that the king’s power is derived from the natural authority of parents. In other words, Adam was the first king. John Locke and others attacked the absurdity of this view. Unfortunately this side of Filmer’s writings has obscured the fact that (borrowing from Hobbes) he launched a plausible attack on concep- tions such as contract and consent as explanations of *political obligation. r.s.d. Sir Robert Filmer, Patriarcha, ed. with intro. and notes by Peter Laslett (Oxford, 1949). final causes. One of Aristotle’s ‘four causes’, the final cause is ‘that for the sake of which’, or the end or goal (Latin finis; Greek telos; hence *‘teleological explanation’). To explain by citing a final cause is to explain something by reference to a goal that it serves. Aristotle invoked final causes throughout his scientific works, including many cases that appear not to involve genuine purpose (as when webbed feet are said to be for swimming). An emphasis on teleological explanation (shared by Plato) characterizes most subsequent Western philosophy of science until the seventeenth century. Whether final-cause explanations are legitimate where no agency is involved, and whether they can ever be fundamental explanations, are regarded as controversial issues by some philosophers. p.j.m. *causality. J. L. Ackrill, Aristotle the Philosopher (Oxford, 1981), ch. 4. Fine, Kit (1946– ). Logician, metaphysician, and philoso- pher of mathematics, known for his contributions to modal logic and the metaphysics of *essence. Since the revival of essentialism in the 1970s through the work of *Saul Kripke in modal logic, it has been widely assumed that the concept of essence is to be explained through the concept of metaphysical *necessity, which is in turn to be explicated in terms of the concept of truth in every *pos- sible world. Fine has argued that the proper direction of explanation is quite the reverse of this. To talk of some- thing’s essence is to talk of its very nature or identity. Thus, water is essentially H 2 O, because it is in the very nature of any chemical compound to be composed in the way that it is. This is why it is metaphysically necessary that water is H 2 O. In the philosophy of mathematics, Fine has developed a general theory of abstraction which pro- vides a foundation for number theory and analysis. e.j.l. K. Fine, ‘Essence and Modality’, in Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 8, ed. J. Tomberlin (Atascadero, Calif., 1994). —— The Limits of Abstraction (Oxford, 2002). 302 field theory fingering slave Physician art thou?—one, all eyes, Philosopher!—a fingering slave, One that would peep and botanize Upon his mother’s grave? (William Wordsworth, ‘A Poet’s Epitaph’ (1800), lines 17–20) Wordsworth’s distaste for the philosopher is at least not exclusive, but meted out to the representatives of other professions—statesman, lawyer, soldier, doctor, moral- ist—whom he imagines approaching an anonymous grave at which he meditates. In fact a philosopher is not among them, but ‘philosopher’ is an exclamation against the allegedly philosopher-like doctor abhorred for an objectivity which denigrates its human objects. For Wordsworth, it seems, the essence of the philosopher, like that of the moralist for whom he reserves his greatest con- tempt, is cerebral detachment, a lack of the emotionality he so prized. Perhaps had he been writing today he would have used a word that is not attested till 1840—‘scientist’. j.o’g. Finnis, John (1940– ). Legal philosophy has been influ- enced by his assault on standard oppositions between *natural law and *legal positivism. Oxford jurisprudence tutor from 1967, Professor of Law and Legal Philosophy in Oxford University from 1989, his doctoral thesis on the idea of judicial power was supervised by H. L. A. Hart, who commissioned Natural Law and Natural Rights (1980) for the Clarendon Law Series. Social theory cannot be value-free, it argues, and Humean ethics, unlike genuine (not neo-scholastic) Thomist ethics, commits a naturalistic fallacy. Finnis bases his radically rearticulated Aristotelian political and legal theory on dialectically defended first principles of practical reason and methodological principles of practical reasonableness (morality). Subsequently he has published Fundamentals of Ethics (1983); Nuclear Deterrence, Morality and Realism (1987; co-authors include Germain Grisez, on whose philosophical work Finnis openly builds); Moral Absolutes (1991); and Aquinas (1998). r.p.g. *law, philosophy of. Finnish philosophy. Philosophy has played an important role in the scholarly and cultural life of Finland. Most of the actual philosophical work has, nevertheless, been done in an academic setting—when the University of Helsinki (originally located in Turku) was founded in 1640, philosophy merited two chairs out of eleven. For a long time, Finnish academic philosophy was little more than a succession of international trends arriving in Finland one after the other, such as neo-Aristotelianism, Cartesianism, Wolffianism, Kantian philosophy, and Hegelianism. However, a unique twist was given to it by Johann Wilhelm Snellman (1805–81), who was not only the most important statesman in the history of the coun- try, but an independent, forceful philosopher in the Hegelian tradition. Partly because of Snellman’s impact as an ideologue and statesman, there has ever since been a keener awareness of the public role and general signifi- cance of philosophy in Finland than in almost any other country. Even recently, the main impact of some profes- sional Finnish philosophers has been on the general cul- tural and ideological discussion in the country. Oiva Ketonen (1913–2000) was a distinguished case in point. Some philosophers have become public figures, not to say cult figures, most recently Esa Saarinen (1953– ), alias ‘Dr Punk’ of the popular Press. Hegelianism did not for very long remain a live force in professional philosophy itself. The main reaction came from a group of young radicals inspired largely by Dar- winian ideas. This group included the first Finnish philosophers to have a significant international impact, Edvard Westermarck (1862–1939) in moral philosophy and social anthropology, and Yrjö Him (1870–1952) in aes- thetics. Though antiquated, Westermarck’s monumental studies The History of Human Marriage (1891) and The Ori- gin and Development of Moral Ideas (1906–8) are classics in their fields, and his Ethical Relativity (1932) was a widely noted contribution to international discussion. The contemporary philosophical scene in Finland has not been moulded by Westermarckian neo-Darwinism, however, but by a local version of *analytic philosophy, originally inspired largely by Eino Kaila (1890–1958). The label ‘analytic’ is, nevertheless, both accurate and inaccu- rate as applied to Kaila. It is historically accurate in that Kaila befriended the Logical Positivists and for a while par- ticipated in the discussions of the *Vienna Circle. It is psycho- logically inaccurate in that Kaila’s ultimate stance was that of an old-fashioned philosopher of nature who tried to integrate the insights of contemporary physics, biology, and psychology into a grand philosophical synthesis. By and large, the best work of subsequent Finnish philosophers has been in the analytic tradition. The philosophers influenced or inspired by Kaila include most notably G. H. von Wright (1916–2003) and Erik Stenius (1922–90). Stenius’s early work was in logic and founda- tions of mathematics. Later he published an excellent book on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and a large number of articles known for their critical edge. Among Stenius’s former students the best known is Ingmar Pörn (1935– ). Von Wright’s early work was on the problem of *induc- tion. He was a friend, later a trustee and a successor, of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and did a lot to bring about Wittgenstein’s impact on contemporary philosophy. His own work was not overtly in the Wittgensteinian trad- ition, however, and included important contributions to modal logic, especially deontic logic, action theory, the problems of explanation and understanding, and ethics. Von Wright was also a most influential, widely respected public figure in Finland. One of von Wright’s former students is Jaakko Hintikka (1929– ), who has also been active outside of Finland, mostly in the United States. Several of Finland’s most active philosophers are Hintikka’s former students or Finnish philosophy 303 associates. The work of these philosophers and their con- temporaries covers most of the field of analytic philoso- phy, especially philosophy of science, and amounts to a vigorous and extensive contribution to the international discussion in this area. Unlike many other analytic philosophers, the Finns have consistently maintained a strong interest also in the history of philosophy. k.j.j.h. *Darwinianism. Radu J. Bogdan (ed.), Jaakko Hintikka, Profiles, viii (Dordrecht, 1987). Iikka Niiniluoto, ‘After Twenty Years: Philosophy of Science in Finland 1970–1990’, Journal for General Philosophy of Science (1993). —— et al. (eds.), Eino Kaila and Logical Empiricism, Acta Philo- sophica Fennica, lii (Helsinki, 1992). P. A. Schilpp and L. E. Hahn (eds.), The Philosophy of Georg Henrik von Wright, Library of Living Philosophers, xix (La Salle, Ill., 1989). Timothy Stroup (ed.), Edward Westermarck: Essays on his Life and Works, Acta Philosophica Fennica, xxxiv (Helsinki, 1982). fire: see Bachelard. first cause argument. This argument for God’s existence assumes that each natural thing’s existence is caused by something other than itself. It argues there cannot be an infinite series of such causes and concludes there is a first cause of existence whose existence is not caused by some- thing other than itself. Further argument is needed to show there is only one such cause and it has such traditional divine attributes as perfect goodness. p.l.q. *God, arguments against existence; God, arguments for existence; prime mover. W. L. Craig, The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz (New York, 1980). first-person perspective: see dualism. five ways. Aquinas’s five ways of proving God’s existence are based on the necessity of positing (1) a first changer in various observable series of changes; (2) a first efficient cause in various observable causal set-ups; (3) an absolutely necessary being, given the existence of contin- gent beings; (4) a maximum item to ground certain com- paratives in particular goodness; and (5) ‘some intelligent being . . . by whom all natural things are directed’. j.j.m. *God, arguments against existence; God, arguments for existence. A. Kenny, The Five Ways (London, 1969). flaccid designator. A term designating different objects in different *possible worlds. More precisely, a singular term that would designate different objects if certain cir- cumstances other than its meaning were different. A *def- inite description like ‘the thirty-fifth President of the United States’ is a flaccid designator. The term actually designates John F. Kennedy. But if Richard Nixon had won the 1960 election, Nixon would have been the thirty- fifth President. In that case, ‘the thirty-fifth President’ would have designated Nixon. Hence ‘The thirty-fifth President might not have been the thirty-fifth President’ is true on one interpretation. Flaccid designators are opposed to *rigid designators, which designate the same object in all possible cases. A proper *name like ‘John F. Kennedy’ is rigid. Even if Nixon had won the 1960 elec- tion, for example, ‘John F. Kennedy’ would have desig- nated John F. Kennedy. ‘Kennedy might not have been Kennedy’ is unequivocally nonsensical. w.a.d. Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, Mass., 1980). flesh: see Merleau-Ponty. flow of the wind: see Korean philosophy. flux. Everything is in flux according to Heraclitus, who is reputed to have said that ‘everything flows’, and that ‘you cannot step into the same river twice’. The idea, in Plato’s interpretation, was that the world consists entirely of per- ceived items each one of which is relative to the perceiver and time of perception with no place for a stable, objective reality. Plato and Aristotle exposed fatal weaknesses in the view. o.r.j. *process. Myles Burnyeat, The Theaetetusof Plato (Indianapolis, 1990). focal meaning. Aristotle’s account of the *meanings of grammatically different variations of the same word— ‘health’, ‘healthy’, and ‘healthful’, for example—which say different but systematically related things about items of different sorts. Foods and exercises are called healthful because of their connection with health, while organisms are called healthy if they possess health. On Aristotle’s account, the words ‘healthy’ and ‘healthful’ derive their meanings from what constitutes health, and thus from the meaning of the term ‘health’. G. E. L. Owen coined the term ‘focal meaning’ for this account because it treats the meaning of one member of a family of grammatical variants as the focus toward which explanations of the meanings of the others converge. j.b.b. G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science, and Dialectic: Collected Papers in Greek Philosophy, ed. M. Nussbaum (London, 1986), 184 ff. Fodor, Jerry A. (1935– ). American philosopher who has been one of the leading figures in the recent attempt to unify the philosophy of mind with *cognitive science. Against the background of his early influences—Putnam’s *functionalism and Chomsky’s innatism—Fodor has defended an influential conception of the mind, according to which there are laws of *folk psychology which are underpinned by the computational structure of mental processes. Central to his theory is his bold hypothesis that we think in a *‘language of thought’: a computational sys- tem of symbols, realized in the neural structure of the brain, with semantic and syntactic properties. The nub of the language-of-thought hypothesis is that thinking has a 304 Finnish philosophy causal structure that mirrors the logical structure of trains of thought. More recently, Fodor has been preoccupied with providing a naturalistic account of the semantics of the sentences of the language of thought. t.c. Jerry A. Fodor, Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Phil- osophy of Mind (Cambridge, Mass., 1987). —— Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong (Oxford, 1998). Fogelin, Robert J. (1932– ). American philosopher who taught at Yale University before moving to Dartmouth College. As his collection Philosophical Interpretations (1992) shows, he has worked extensively in the history of philosophy, his work insisting on taking seriously authors’ own views of the meaning and importance of their writ- ings. His books reflect his major interests in Wittgenstein (1976) and Hume’s Skepticism in the Treatise of Human Nature (1985). The latter has contributed to reversing a tendency to play down Hume’s avowed scepticism. But Fogelin has also written in the area of informal logic and the philosophy of language: his first published book was concerned with meaning and verification, and Figuratively Speaking (1988) is an elegant examination of *metaphor and other kinds of non-literal discourse. c.j.h. folk psychology. The subject-matter of people’s every- day understanding of one another in psychological, or mental, terms; contrasted with scientific, or experimental, psychology. In recent philosophy, it is sometimes supposed that the basis of our ability to explain and predict what other people will do, using terms like ‘believes’ and ‘desires’, is a *theory which we know implicitly, acquired as we came to gain psychological understanding. The question can be raised how this theory, named folk psychology, relates to others—in the first instance how it relates to scientific psychology, and then how it relates to neuroscientific the- ories of brains’ workings. Traditional questions about the relation between mind and body come to be recast as questions about relations between different theories; and *eliminativism can be stated as the doctrine that folk psychology is a false theory. Folk psychology may be denied the status of theory. Questions can still be raised about its relations to other subject-matters; but these will not now be questions about intertheoretic relations. j.horn. M. Davies and T. Stone (eds.), Folk Psychology (Oxford, 1995). John D. Greenwood (ed.), The Future of Folk Psychology (Cam- bridge, 1991). Føllesdal, Dagfinn (1932– ). Norwegian philosopher, interpreter of Husserl to analytic philosophers. Føllesdal was educated mainly at the University of Oslo and at Har- vard University, where he taught from 1961 to 1964. He is a professor at the University of Oslo (1967– ) and at Stan- ford University (1968– ). In the philosophy of language, Føllesdal emphasized the need of ‘genuine singular terms’ before Kripke, who renamed them *‘rigid designators’. Føllesdal has also dis- cussed the normative element in reference and the rea- sons for the *indeterminacy of translation in the social nature of language. Føllesdal has put forward influential interpretations of Husserl’s philosophy, which he considers as a generalized meaning theory. For instance, Husserlian noema is a gen- eralization of meaning to the realm of acts. Føllesdal does not consider Husserl as a foundationalist but claims that for Husserl ultimate justification is like Rawls’s *‘reflect- ive equilibrium’. k.j.j.h. Dagfinn Føllesdal, ‘Husserl’s Notion of Noema’, Journal of Philosophy (1969). Foot, Philippa R. (1920– ). Best known for her work in moral philosophy, Professor Foot wrote two highly influ- ential articles in the 1950s arguing against *prescriptivism, the analysis of ethical belief and judgement propounded by R. M. Hare. In these papers (‘Moral Arguments’ (1958), ‘Moral Beliefs’ (1958)), she argues that moral beliefs must concern traits and behaviour that are demonstrably bene- ficial or harmful to humans, and that what shall be regarded as beneficial or harmful is not a matter for human decision. Moral beliefs cannot, therefore, be dependent on human decision. For the better part of a decade, the controversy between her brand of naturalistic ethics and Hare’s views was at the forefront of Anglo- Saxon moral philosophy. More recently her work has been concentrated on *virtue theory and on the limits of utilitarianism. For many years a Fellow of Somerville Col- lege, Oxford, she has also held many posts in America. Many of her best-known articles are collected in Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices (Oxford, 1978). n.j.h.d. *conscience; fact–value distinction. P. R. Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford, 2001). footnotes to Plato. A. N. Whitehead once wrote that ‘the safest general characterization’ of Western thought is that ‘it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato’. This testy assessment of an entire tradition is often recited by Pla- tonists and has earned for Whitehead the accolades of the aphorism crowd. The great thinkers of the past certainly did not think that they were adding footnotes to Plato’s text. Had Kant thought he was adding one, he would surely have kept the Critique of Pure Reason under 500 pages. And should Wittgenstein have suspected that he was producing scholia, he would have spent at least a little time reading the text. Interestingly, those who say that all subsequent thought is a footnote to Plato or to ancient sages also com- plain of wholesale and lamentable modern innovations. Aside from the inconsistency, this raises the question what counts as a footnote. Does Descartes, who subverted the starting-point of ancient philosophy, constitute no more than an afterthought to it? Should Hume, who rejected both its premisses and its conclusions in favour of his own footnotes to Plato 305 original views, get no credit beyond having discovered a new wrinkle on wisdom’s old face? Can we even think that in his stunning synthesis of everything ancient and mod- ern, Hegel rehearsed only what Plato had always known? To be sure, sometimes those who wish to write foot- notes to Plato manage to establish only a feeble connec- tion with the original text. But this does not imply that philosophical works taking little or no account of anything Plato said are oblique or unsuccessful commentaries on his thought. Supposing that they are makes it impossible to appreciate their novelty and difficult to see their point. It amounts, moreover, to an affront to the integrity of philosophers and a cynical assessment of the significance of their field. Possibly, however, Whitehead’s statement was made in the spirit of rampageous over-generalization one can expect from footnoters to Plato. If so, it must be taken with a grain of salt or greeted by rolling one’s eyes. But even then, in one clear respect, the claim he makes is false. For the safest way to deal with the history of Western thought is not to characterize it in general terms at all. j.lac. *philosophy; ancient philosophy; Platonism. René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, in The Philosoph- ical Works of Descartes (Cambridge, 1967). G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford, 1977). David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford, 1958). Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (London, 1953). A. E. Taylor, Plato: The Man and his Work (London, 1937). A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York, 1978). foreknowledge: see prediction. forgery. In art, forgery can mean imitating someone’s style, or passing an exact duplicate off as a specific work. The latter raises questions about the nature of artworks. A duplicate painting would be a distinct work from the ori- ginal. But if I write down exactly the notes that make up the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, have I not simply copied it out again? If my indistinguishable copy were played to an unsuspecting audience instead of Beethoven’s, would they be hearing a forgery? Some would argue that an intentional duplicate of a sonata or novel does not succeed in being a distinct work at all. On the other hand, there are strong arguments for saying that historical context and authorial intentions determine the identity of a work—in which case, my piece and Beethoven’s might be distinct though sharing the same notes. c.j. *lying; plagiarism. N. Goodman, Languages of Art (Indianapolis, 1968), ch. 3. forgiveness. To forgive someone is to hold him or her excused from an offence, even in one’s thoughts, while still acknowledging his or her *responsibility for the offence. It is, perhaps, only appropriately granted by those affected by the offence. Unlike the granting of a pardon, which may be merely a permitting to go unpunished, the act of forgiveness involves a refusal to blame. However, the relationship of forgiveness to both contrition and *punishment is imprecise: the possibility of forgiveness appears to make remorse possible and prevents *desert being a sufficient condition of the latter. Though an essen- tial element of all personal relationships, the importance of forgiveness is not much reflected in contemporary ethical theory. p.w. *revenge. J. G. Murphy and J. Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy (Cambridge, 1988). for-itself and in-itself. The distinction drawn by Sartre between the mode of being of *consciousness (‘being for- itself’) and that of other things (‘being in-itself ’). This is not a dualism of substances, since Sartre holds that con- sciousness is not a substance: it is the view that there are two kinds of truth. But it remains problematic: Sartre’s being in-itself is as inaccessible as Kant’s *thing-in-itself, and being for-itself relies on a questionable conception of consciousness. t.r.b. J P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, tr. H. Barnes (London, 1958), intro. fork, Hume’s. Term applied today to Hume’s distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact. Relations of ideas—like the proposition that ‘three times five is half of thirty’—are ‘discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere exist- ent in the universe’. Matters of fact—like the proposition that ‘the sun will rise tomorrow’—cannot be demon- strated by thought alone, and are contingent, in that their negation is conceivable. Hume’s distinction includes elem- ents of the three current distinctions between necessary and *contingent, *a priori and a posteriori, and *analytic and synthetic—and he seems to presume that the three distinctions coincide. This supposition has been chal- lenged in various ways: it leaves no place for the synthetic a priori, which Kant placed at the centre of metaphysics, nor for contingent a priori and necessary a posteriori propositions, of which Kripke has recently proposed examples. The term has also been applied to Hume’s related dis- tinction between ‘demonstrative’ argument (such as deduction) and ‘probable’ (or causal) reasoning. Hume uses the dichotomy repeatedly to pose a dilemma for rationalists. If reason tells us, say, that the future resem- bles the past, then it must be by demonstrative arguments or probable. But demonstrative arguments cannot prove the uniformity of nature—since non-uniformity is con- ceivable. And probable arguments cannot prove it either—since probable arguments themselves presuppose the uniformity of nature, hence it would be circular to employ them in support of that uniformity. For another use, see the entry ‘reason as slave of the passions’. Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding ends with a dramatic employment of the fork, beloved of Logical Positivists in the 1930s for making havoc with false 306 footnotes to Plato metaphysics. ‘If we take in our hand any volume; of divin- ity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.’ j.bro. *Logical Positivism; verification principle. David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, pt. iii, sect. 4 and 12. Antony Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief (London, 1961), ch. 3. form, logical. The logical form of a sentence—or of the *proposition expressed by the sentence—is a structure assigned to the sentence in order to explain how the sen- tence can be used in logical arguments, or how the mean- ing of the sentence is built up from the meanings of its component parts. A translation of a sentence into logical notation is sometimes called its ‘logical form’. Views differ on the reality and uniqueness of logical forms, and whether they are in some way prior to the sentences which have them. Analytic philosophers have seen it as a goal of philosophy to uncover the logical forms of propos- itions. Chomsky and other linguists have argued that a *grammar of a natural language should show how to ascribe logical forms to sentences. w.a.h. G. Preyer and G. Peter (eds.), Logical Form and Language (Oxford, 2002). formal and material mode. Influenced by developments in foundations of mathematics, Carnap elaborated on the claim that formal features of a language (L) are clearly dis- tinguishable from semantical features. Formal features of L are given by its syntax, which includes a sorted vocabu- lary, formation rules for *well-formed formulae, as well as transformation rules for deriving sentences from sentences. Genuine object sentences of an interpreted language L are not translatable into syntactical sentences about L. It is claimed, however, that there are sentences which seem to be genuine object sentences (characterized as pseudo- object sentences) but which are translatable into sentences about L’s syntax. The former are said to be in the material mode, the latter are said to be in the formal mode. Material mode sentences are often unproblematic. However, some are seen as generating confusions resolv- able by translation into the formal mode. Examples adapted from Carnap are the two sentences: 5 and 3 + 2 are the same. 5 and 3 + 2 are equal but not the same. in the material mode, which are, in the language of arith- metic, both translatable into the single formal mode sentence: The expressions ‘5’ and ‘3 + 2’ are interchangeable *salva veritate. The words ‘formal’ and ‘material’ were first applied to the distinction in the Middle Ages, but the other way round. r.b.m. R. Carnap, Logical Syntax of Language (London, 1937). formalism. A number of philosophical views concerning mathematics go by this name. They all seem to focus on the extent to which mathematical proof can be construed or modelled as the following of mechanical rules on sequences of typographic characters. The formulae may as well be meaningless, as far as the philosophies are con- cerned. One aim is to provide a tractable epistemology for mathematics while avoiding commitment to a presum- ably dubious ontology. Opponents of formalism claim that mathematics is inherently informal and perhaps even non-mechanical. Mathematical language has meaning and it is a gross distortion to attempt to ignore this. At best, formalism focuses on a small aspect of mathematics, deliberately leaving aside what is essential to the enterprise. One version of formalism, which might be called ‘game formalism’, holds that the essence of mathematics is the following of meaningless rules. Mathematics is likened to the play of a game like chess, where characters written on paper play the role of pieces to be moved. All that matters is that the rules have been followed correctly. Many formalist programmes are connected to develop- ments in mathematical logic earlier this century. (*Logic, history of.) Formal languages and deductive systems were formulated with mathematical rigour, and the systems themselves became objects of mathematical study. Such efforts became known as metamathematics. Presumably, the essence of metamathematics goes beyond the mere following of meaningless rules. Its goal is to shed light on a subject-matter, namely formal languages and deductive systems. Thus, a game formalist would either demur at this point, or else hold that metamathematics is not math- ematics—an oxymoron at best. But not all formalists are game-formalists. David Hilbert and his followers held that the only meaningful, or ‘contentful’, parts of mathematics consist of finitary assertions about finitary objects, like natural numbers. This includes particular statements like ‘234+ 123 = 357’ and generalizations like ‘a + b = b + a’, made with free variables. It does not include statements, like ‘for every n there is a p greater than n, such that p and p + 2 are both prime’, that contain bound variables ranging over an infinite domain. The infinitary, or ‘ideal’, parts of math- ematics, including analysis and set theory, have value only in the role of facilitating the production of finitary, con- tentful statements. In each case, we need to be assured that the use of ideal mathematics does not yield anything incorrect about the finitary part. (*Instrumentalism.) The Hilbert programme called for each branch of mathematics to be formalized and for the formalisms to be studied metamathematically. Noting that the subject-matter of metamathematics—sequences of characters—is finitary, Hilbert declared that metamathematics be conducted formalism 307 with only finitary means. Then, once the consistency of a formal deductive system is established, the system can confidently be used to produce finitary results. (*Consistency proofs.) The ensuing metamathematical research culminated with Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, which dealt a seri- ous blow to the Hilbert programme. In particular, the ‘second’ theorem is that if Peano arithmetic is consistent, then its own consistency cannot be established by methods codified in that system, let alone in a finitary fragment. The same goes for classical analysis, set theory, and virtually any other sufficiently rich formal system. If the theory is consistent, its consistency cannot be estab- lished in the system itself. Another formalist philosophy of mathematics was pre- sented by Haskell Curry. The programme depends on a historical thesis that as a branch of mathematics develops, it becomes more and more rigorous in its methodology, the end-result being the codification of the branch in for- mal deductive systems. Curry claimed that assertions of a mature mathematical theory should be construed not so much as the results of moves in a particular formal deduct- ive system (as a game-formalist might say), but rather as assertions about a formal system. An assertion at the end of a research paper would be interpreted in the form: ‘Such and such is a theorem in this formal system.’ For Curry, then, mathematics is an objective science, and it has a sub- ject matter—formal systems. In effect, mathematics is metamathematics. Constructively established results in metamathematics count as legitimate mathematics. (*Constructivism.) Non-constructive results in meta- mathematics, like most of model theory, are accommo- dated by producing a formal system for metamath- ematics, and construing the results in question as theo- rems about that formal system. s.s. *mathematics, problems of the philosophy of; math- ematics, history of the philosophy of. Paul Benacerraf and Hilary Putnam (eds.), Philosophy of Math- ematics, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 1983). Haskell Curry, Outlines of a Formalist Philosophy of Mathematics (Amsterdam, 1951). Michael Detlefsen, Hilbert’s Program (Dordrecht, 1986). Michael Resnik, Frege and the Philosophy of Mathematics (Ithaca, NY, 1980). formalism, ethical: see ethical formalism. formalization. To formalize something, such as an argu- ment, is to spell it out in a formal, or perhaps semi-formal, language, such as the *predicate calculus. The purpose may simply be to render perspicuous something that was not so perspicuous in the original. Or it may be to display what is thought to be the *logical form of the original. In either case, certain assumptions will need to be made about the relation of ordinary language to formal lan- guages. One strand in the ‘ordinary-language philosophy’ of the 1950s and 1960s was an attitude of suspicion towards formalization in philosophy (apart, of course, from philosophy of logic and maths). Some might think that the pendulum has swung rather too far back now; cer- tainly, the aim of perspicuity is often better served by a lucid vernacular than by symbols. r.p.l.t. M. Sainsbury, Logical Forms (Oxford, 1991). formal language. A formal language is a language two of whose features are formally specified: the linguistic sym- bols of the language and rules for joining together or con- catenating these symbols into *well-formed formulae or words which can be assigned precise meanings. In stand- ard first-order logic the formal language consists of vari- ables, constants, logical connectives, function and relational symbols, parentheses, and quantifiers, together with rules for the construction of well-formed formulae. Kurt Gödel discovered a method for assigning natural numbers to the well-formed formulae of standard first- order theory, and this discovery provided the basis for the proof of his famous incompleteness theorem. The development of formal languages for computer programs in the 1950s was inspired by the established formal languages used by logicians. g.f.m. R. Wilder, Introduction to the Foundations of Mathematics (New York, 1952). formal logic: see logic, formal or symbolic. formal semantics, the philosophical relevance of. Philosophers and logicians have developed mathemat- ically precise ways to study the relationship between a lan- guage and its subject-matter by using methods originally developed for the interpretation of formal systems in logic. The extension of this framework from formal to nat- ural languages is justified by adopting Frege’s truth- conditional approach to meaning. The key idea here is that since a declarative sentence can represent the world as being a certain way, the meaning of a sentence can be given by stating the conditions the world has to meet for things to be as the sentence says they are. These are *truth- conditions. To give the meaning of every sentence of the language we must specify the truth-conditions of each declarative sentence, then relate non-declarative to declarative sentences. Formal semantics addresses the former task, the theory of force attempts the latter. *Semantics studies the relation between language and the world, but the relationship is complicated by the fact that sentences are also inferentially related to one another. For example, by sharing some of the same parts, sentences can be about the same thing, and can even contradict one another. When logical connections obtain between sen- tences, the truth of one may require or preclude the truth of others. So in relating language to the world these con- nections must be preserved to ensure the right patterns amongst the truth-values assigned to whole sentences. Logicians first studied these connections in the context of formal systems: languages in which we construct proofs by applying rules of inference to formulae built up from a fixed set of rules and symbols. To ensure that 308 formalism inferences rules are valid (i.e. that their transitions are truth-preserving) we must interpret the formal language, provide definitions for the truth of its formulae, then dis- cover whether the inferential relations are logical conse- quences, permitting only the derivation of truths from truths. Interpretations, or models, of these systems are speci- fied in terms of abstract mathematical structures. First we specify a structure, and then construct an interpretation function by assigning elements of the structure to the basic symbols of the language as their semantic values. The semantic values of complex expressions are then defined inductively in terms of the values of their simpler parts. In this way, the truth-value of a formula is deter- mined by the semantic values of its parts, the syntactic arrangement of the formula, and relations in the structure between those semantic values. Formulae true in all models are logical truths; truth links which hold in all models are logical consequences. Model-theoretic and truth-theoretic semantics provide the two leading versions of truth-conditional semantics for natural language. Model theory maps sentences and their parts on to configurations of elements in the domain, or structure, of a model. The mapping reveals meaning- connections between sentences by exhibiting relations between configurations in the domain. Sentences which share parts will have elements of their truth-conditions in common; namely, the entity, or entities, assigned to those expressions. By this mapping we can plot relations between sentences as represented by the patterns amongst the objects, properties, and relations assigned to expressions which figure in those sentences. Each set of assignments, or model, corresponds to a world in which some of those sentences are true and others are false. The best-worked-out semantics for a fragment of Eng- lish occurs in Richard Montague’s paper ‘The Proper Treatment of Quantification in Ordinary English’, in which set-theoretical constructs used in specifying the models are not restricted to domains of real entities but include objects existing in other possible worlds and at other times. Thus possible world semantics can be carried out model-theoretically to provide truth-conditions for sentences not just in the actual world but in all possible worlds. Truth theory offers another version of the truth- conditional approach to meaning. Drawing on the work of Tarski in defining truth for formalized languages, a truth theory aims to state the truth-conditions for every declarative sentence of the language L by proving every T-sentence of the form: (T) S is true-in-L if and only if p, where the metalanguage ‘is true-in-L’ is appended to a sen- tence S of the object language L when and only when cer- tain conditions p obtain. Proof of each instance of T proceeds from axioms which assign references to the sim- ple parts of the object-language sentence, together with axioms that state the consequences for truth of combining those expressions in sentences. A truth theory for a lan- guage is a finite set of such axioms. Davidson has argued that such theories can serve as theories of meaning. In the early 1980s a new paradigm, called situation semantics, was developed by Barwise and Perry. It treats utterances as containing not only information about the world, as in model-theoretic semantics, but also inform- ation about speakers and their relations to the world. Sen- tence-meanings are not given by truth-conditions, but defined in terms of relations between situations, the utter- ance being itself a situation which carries information used in interpreting the sentence. Meaning-connections between sentences reflect the relation of one situation- type to another; e.g. kissing involves touching. More work is needed, however, before this serves as a competitor to truth-conditional semantics. b.c.s. *snow is white. J. Barwise and J. Perry, Situations and Attitudes (Cambridge, Mass., 1983). M. Davies, Meaning, Quantification, Necessity (London, 1981). R. Dowty, R. Wall, and S. Peters, Introduction to Montague Seman- tics (Dordrecht, 1981). G. Evans and J. McDowell (eds.), Truth and Meaning (Oxford, 1976). M. Platts, Ways of Meaning (London, 1979). form and matter. The complementary notions of form and *matter are wholly central to the metaphysical the- ories of Plato and Aristotle, indeed to all ancient and mod- ern metaphysical inquiry. Most primitively, the matter of any item is the stuff, the material of which it is made, for example clay or iron; the form is the organization, shape, pattern given to that stuff by a craftsman, for example by a potter in making a bowl. From such elementary begin- nings the most difficult and exciting metaphysical theses have evolved, such as Plato’s theory of Forms (or Ideas), where Forms were conceived of as separate existents which were, somehow, responsible for particulars being of the kind they were. Aristotle, by contrast, believed in immanent forms; the only real existents are already parcels of informed matter or enmattered form. Neither *prime matter (formless and inchoate), nor pure forms, can exist independently. Debates over matter and form merge into debates over *universals; and, although not central to the current agenda of metaphysical debate, these notions are, in some fashion or another, indispensable in thinking about the world and its structure. n.j.h.d. *Forms, Platonic. Jonathan Lear, Aristotle: The Desire to Understand (Cambridge, 1988) is useful on this topic. form of life. An expression which occurs six times in Wittgenstein’s published works. Much used by some *Wittgensteinians, it has occasioned exegetical contro- versy. Wittgenstein employed it to indicate the roots of language and of agreement in application of linguistic rules, in consensual, regular forms of behaviour. This includes natural, species-specific action and response, form of life 309 . encapsulates the former view; the slogan *credo ut intelligam epitomizes the latter. There being no reason to prefer one absurdity to another, the commitments of extreme fideists are bound to seem. certain way, the meaning of a sentence can be given by stating the conditions the world has to meet for things to be as the sentence says they are. These are *truth- conditions. To give the meaning. of the structure to the basic symbols of the language as their semantic values. The semantic values of complex expressions are then defined inductively in terms of the values of their simpler parts.