Grundbegriffe der Philosophie

(1) A proposition, or a statement, is factually meaningful only if it is verifiable. This is understood in the sense that the proposition can be judged probable from experience, not in the sense that its truth can be conclusively established by experience.
(2) A proposition is verifiable only if it is either an experiential proposition or one from which some experiential proposition can be deduced in conjunction with other premises.
(3) A proposition is formally meaningful only if it is true by virtue of the definitions of its terms--that is, tautologous.
(4) The laws of logic and mathematics are all tautologous.
(5) A proposition is literally meaningful only if it is either verifiable or tautologous.
(6) Since metaphysical statements are neither verifiable nor tautologous, they are literally meaningless.
(7) Since ethical, aesthetical, and theological statements also fail to meet the same conditions, they too are cognitively meaningless--although they may possess "emotive" meaning.
(8) Since metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of religion, and aesthetics are all eliminated, the only tasks of philosophy are clarification and analysis. Thus, the propositions of philosophy are linguistic, not factual, and philosophy is a department of logic.

The Vienna Circle disintegrated in the late 1930s after the Nazis took Austria, but its influence spread throughout Europe and America, and its concept continues in the modern emphasis on the analysis of language as a function of philosophy.

...is a major kind of reasoning process in which a conclusion is drawn from particular cases. In inductive reasoning there is no logical movement from premises to conclusion. The premises constitute good reasons for accepting the conclusion.
The premises in inductive reasoning are usually based on facts or observations. There is always a possibility, though, that the premises may be true while the conclusion is false, since there is not necessarily a logical relationship between premises and conclusion.
For example, a child growing up in a community where only English is spoken may wrongly conclude by induction that everyone in the world speaks English.

Inductive reasoning plays a very important role in our acquisition of knowledge about the world. Practically all our scientific and practical knowledge is based on induction. Past experience is used as the basis for generalizing about future experience.

David HUME pointed out what is now called the problem of induction, namely, that the results of the inductive processes are always in doubt, because one cannot justify the movement to the conclusion, and the conclusion can turn out to be false.
There has been a great deal of work in the last 200 years in the philosophy of science to find some solution to Hume's analysis-some way of justifying inductive procedures. This type of study continues because, Hume's arguments notwithstanding, inductive reasoning is essential to science, law, and other fields of knowledge.

What is called mathematical induction is actually not a form of induction at all; rather, it is a special kind of deductive mathematical reasoning process.

...is a method of logical reasoning, as well as the conclusion reached by use of such a method. The deductive method is the method of proof that is used in any situation for which there exists a set of underlying assumptions (axioms or postulates).
Any conclusion reached by the deductive method, however, must be true in all circumstances in which the assumptions are true.

In each area of knowledge that has a set of underlying assumptions, the deductive method is used to discover as many consequences as possible. If some of the consequences do not fit the observations, then revisions of the assumptions are considered in an effort to make the theoretical consequences compatible with the observations.

Causality

One of the most distinctive of Aristotle's philosophic contributions was a new notion of causality. Each thing or event, he thought, has more than one "reason" that helps to explain what, why, and where it is. Earlier Greek thinkers had tended to assume that only one sort of cause can be really explanatory; Aristotle proposed four. (The word Aristotle uses, aition, "a responsible, explanatory factor" is not synonymous with the word cause in its modern sense.) These four causes are the

material cause, the matter out of which a thing is made;
the efficient cause, the source of motion, generation, or change;
the formal cause, which is the species, kind, or type;
and the final cause, the goal, or full development, of an individual, or the intended function of a construction or invention.

Examples:
Thus, a young lion is made up of tissues and organs, its material cause;
the efficient cause is its parents, who generated it;
the formal cause is its species, lion;
and its final cause is its built-in drive toward becoming a mature specimen.
In different contexts, while the causes are the same four, they apply analogically. Thus, the material cause of a statue is the marble from which it was carved;
the efficient cause is the sculptor;
the formal cause is the shape the sculptor realizedóHermes, perhaps, or Aphrodite;
and the final cause is its function, to be a work of fine art.
The material cause is what anything is made of, for example, brass or marble is the material cause of a given statue.
The formal cause is the form, type, or pattern according to which anything is made;
thus, the style of architecture would be the formal cause of a house.
The efficient cause is the immediate power acting to produce the work, such as the manual energy of the laborers.
The final cause is the end or motive for the sake of which the work is produced, that is, the pleasure of the owner.

In each context, Aristotle insists that something can be better understood when its causes can be stated in specific terms rather than in general terms. Thus, it is more informative to know that a "sculptor" made the statue than to know that an "artist" made it; and even more informative to know that "Polycleitus" chiseled it rather than simply that a "sculptor" did so.
Aristotle thought his causal pattern was the ideal key for organizing knowledge.
His lecture notes present impressive evidence of the power of this scheme.

Rival Notions

In early modern philosophy, Aristotle's laws of causality were again challenged, resulting in two rival notions of cause.

The French philosopher and mathematician Renè Descartes and his school made cause identical with substance. The physical scientists often had a mechanical view of causality, reducing cause to a motion or change followed by other motion or change with a mathematical equality between measures of motion.

The British philosopher David Hume carried to a logical conclusion the contention of Sextus Empiricus that causality is not a real relation, but a fiction of the mind. To account for the origin of this fiction Hume used the doctrine of association.

Hume's explanation of cause led the German philosopher Immanuel Kant to posit cause as a fundamental category of understanding. Kant held that the only knowable objective world is the product of a synthetic activity of the mind. He accepted Hume's skeptical result as far as it concerned itself with the world of things-in-themselves. Dissatisfied, however, with the concept that experience is only a succession of perceptions without any discoverable relationship or coherence, Kant decided that causality is one of the principles of coherence obtaining in the world of phenomena, and that it is universally present there because thought, as part of its contribution to the nature of that world, always puts it there.

The British philosopher John Stuart Mill took up the problem at this point. He denied the fundamental postulate of Kant's transcendentalism, namely, that thought is responsible for the order of this world. Mill sought to justify belief in universal causation on empiricist principles; for him, a proposition is meaningful only if it describes what can be experienced.

Modern Directions

Along with the method of empiricism as the source of all knowledge goes a definition of cause that is widely accepted today. The cause of any event is a preceding event without which the event in question would not have occurred. This is a mechanistic view of causality popular in scientific circles. All the previous events would constitute the complete cause.
Many philosophers deny the ultimate reality, or at least the fundamental validity, of the causal relation.
Thus, the American philosopher Josiah Royce maintained that the category of serial order, of which the category of cause is a particular case, is itself subordinate to the ultimate category of purpose.
The French philosopher Henri Bergson maintained that ultimate reality or life is not bound by exact causal sequences. It is a process of growth in which the unpredictable, and therefore the uncaused, constantly occurs. No exact repetition happens in real time; and where there is no repetition, there is no cause, for cause means the antecedent that repeatedly is followed by the same consequence.

Dialectic

... in philosophy, method of investigating the nature of truth by critical analysis of concepts and hypotheses. One of the earliest examples of the dialectical method was the Dialogues of Plato, in which the author sought to study truth through discussion in the form of questions and answers.
The term dialectic has both logical and metaphysical meanings in philosophy. In logic, it generally refers to a process of critical reasoning used either for refutation or for the discovery of truth.
Plato conceived of dialectic primarily as question and answer, and as the critical dialogue one has with one's soul. In the 18th century KANT used the term dialectic systematically in his CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON, arranging the four contradictions of pure reason as four sets of thesis and antithesis. For Hegel, dialectic is a threefold process in which reason is revealed through reality, which is both rational and spiritual in nature.
Aristotle thought of dialectic as the search for the philosophic basis of science, and he frequently used the term as a synonym for logic. In his logic, Aristotle distinguished between dialectic and analytic. Dialectic, he held, only tests opinions for their logical consistency; analytic works deductively from principles resting on experience and precise observation. This is clearly an intended break with Plato's Academy, where dialectic was supposed to be the only proper method for science and philosophy alike.
To the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, dialectic meant the study of ultimate realities as distinguished from objective phenomena.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte, followed by Friedrich Wilh. Joseph von Schelling, applied the term synthesis to the third stage of resolving the contradictions in the thesis and antithesis. This triadic concept, which characterizes the usual meaning of the term dialectic today, was advanced and elaborated by HEGEL and MARX.

ethnology
The science that analyzes and compares human cultures, as in social structure, language, religion, and technology; cultural anthropology. The branch of anthropology that deals with the origin, distribution, and characteristics of the races of humankind.
(ethnos, people)