Empirical+philosophy
121probability — The mathematics of probability is well understood. Probability is a non negative, additive set function whose maximum value is unity. What is harder to understand is the application of the formal notion to the actual world. One point of… …
122pure — 1 In the terminology of Kant, something is pure in so far as it it is unmixed with elements derived from experience. Knowledge is usually made up of what we receive through impressions and what our faculty of knowledge supplies from itself;… …
123Bacon, Francis — (1561–1626) English statesman. As a philosopher of science the first notable example of the empiricist tendency of English thought, but perhaps more importantly the prophet and protector of the dawning scientific revolution. He was a precocious… …
124certainty and doubt — We take a proposition to be certain when we have no doubt about its truth. We may do this in error or unreasonably, but objectively a proposition is certain when such absence of doubt is justifiable. The sceptical tradition in philosophy denies… …
125Comte, Auguste — (1798–1857) French philosopher and social theorist. Born in Montpellier, France, Comte was educated at the École Polytechnique, and became Secretary to Saint Simon in 1817; after 1826 he supported himself by teaching mathematics and giving… …
126conventionalism — A theory that magnifies the role of decisions, or free selection from amongst equally possible alternatives, in order to show that what appears to be objective or fixed by nature is in fact an artefact of human convention, similar to conventions… …
127dreams — are not merely the succession of visual images, but rather experiences of living in a world of events, actions, and emotions. The widespread belief in the significance of dreams, either as prophecies or divine messages, or as especially valuable… …
128empiricism — The permanent strand in philosophy that attempts to tie knowledge to experience. Experience is thought of either as the sensory contents of consciousness, or as whatever is expressed in some designated class of statements that can be observed to… …
