statements of supporting evidence being suppressed. On this view we have no dispute with Dalton, since he was speaking (presumably correctly) about the relation of a theory to the evidence available to him. m.c. L. J. Cohen, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Induction and Prob- ability (Oxford, 1989). D. Gillies, Philosophical Theories of Probability (London, 2000). I. Hacking, An Introduction to Probability and Deductive Logic (Cambridge, 2000). J. R. Lucas, The Concept of Probability (Oxford, 1970). S. E. Toulmin, The Uses of Argument (Cambridge, 1958). R. von Mises, Probability, Statistics and Truth (New York, 1957). probability, conditional: see conditional probability. problematic. (1) Perplexing, questionable. (2) In trad- itional logic, problematic propositions are those that are marked with a sign of *possibility, especially in connection with Aristotle’s modal syllogistic; e.g. ‘It is possible for all eggs not to be speckled’, ‘Some people can touch their toes’. The possibility might be logical, physical, epistemic, etc. Its *scope is often ambiguous. (3) The word is some- times used in the German manner as a noun, for a set of problems or a way of seeing problems. c.a.k. H. W. B. Joseph, An Introduction to Logic, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1916). process. A process is a series of *changes with some sort of unity, or unifying principle, to it. Hence ‘process’ is to ‘change’, or ‘event’, rather as ‘syndrome’ is to ‘symptom’. What sort of unity might a given process have? Perhaps just this: that the process is found to recur sufficiently often in nature—it seems to belong to a ‘natural kind’. In this case, lumping the constituent changes together is as natural as lumping the different features of a cow together as a unity. But with both cows and processes, some philosophers have thought there must be some underlying principle of unity that binds the constituent features, or changes, together. Whitehead made much use of the notion of a process, and ‘process theology’ grew out of his work. On the whole, however, modern metaphysics has rather dropped the notion of a process in favour of the notion of an event, the influence of Einstein perhaps supplanting that of Whitehead, Bergson, et al. r.p.l.t. *event; process philosophy. A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York, 1929). process philosophy. The doctrine that either what is is becoming, or that what is ultimately consists in *change, or both. A *process is a sequence of changes. Strong and weak process philosophy may be usefully distinguished. On the weak version, x changes if and only if either x is F at a time, t 1 , and x is not F at a later time, t 2 , or x is not F at t 1 and x is F at t 2 ; so something’s changing consists in its gaining or losing at least one property. It is sometimes maintained (with dubious coherence) that each thing is always changing in every respect. On the strong version, there are only changes or, at least, the existence of enduring items logically depends upon changes such that it is ontologically misleading to speak of what is or things that are. One locus classicus of strong process philosophy is Plato’s Theaetetus, where the thesis is ascribed by Socrates to Protagoras, Heraclitus, and Empedocles; another is Heraclitus’ Cosmic Fragments. More recently, ‘process philosophy’ has been used as a name for the *event ontologies of James, Bergson, and Whitehead (notably, in his Process and Reality). It should also be extended to Russell’s neutral monist doctrine that minds and physical objects are logical constructions out of events. The existence of change, which is logically entailed by the existence of process, has been denied by Parmenides in his poem, by F. H. Bradley in Appearance and Reality, and by J. M. E. McTaggart in The Nature of Existence. If some of the arguments of these philosophers are sound then there really is no change and a fortiori no true process philoso- phy. However, at least prima facie, change is a pervasive feature of what is, and many things that are may be described without contradiction as processes. s.p. *neutral monism. Aristotle, Physics, books 1 and 2, tr. William Charlton (Oxford, 1970). Aristotle, Physics, books 3 and 4, tr. Edward Hussey (Oxford, 1983). Jonathan Barnes (ed.), Early Greek Philosophy (London, 1987). Plato, Theaetetus, tr. John McDowell (Oxford, 1973). Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York, 1929). process theology: see theology and philosophy. Proclus (c.ad 410–485). Pagan philosopher of *Neoplaton- ism who became head of the Academy at Athens and was the last great systematizer of Greek philosophy. His works, which survive in bulk, include: The Elements of Theology (tr. E. R. Dodds, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1963)),Platonic Theology, and commentaries on several Platonic dialogues and on Euclid. His thought abounds in triads: Plotinus’ procession (emanation) and return is replaced by abid- ing–procession–return. He is theurgical, magical, and often fanciful, as when he derives the Greek khronos, ‘time’, from khoros and nous, arguing that time is the (cir- cular) ‘dance’ of the ‘mind’. By way of Dionysius the Are- opagite (c.ad 500) he influenced medieval thought and especially the Renaissance revival of Platonism. Hegel admired him: he was compared to Proclus and Schelling to Plotinus. m.j.i. A. H. Armstrong (ed.), The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge, 1967). professional ethics. The codes and guide-lines which govern the conduct of professions. Such codes can be seen as the application of general morality to the specific con- texts of professional relationships. The oldest and most familiar of these is the Hippocratic oath, which in a modi- fied form still applies to the doctor–patient relationship. In the contemporary world many occupations consider 760 probability themselves professions, and the governing bodies of these occupations issue codes of professional ethics. They have a status in between that of morality and that of law, in the sense that while their content is like that of morality, any breach of their prohibitions can result in serious disciplin- ary sanctions by the relevant governing body. The con- tent of professional codes always contains provisions that the professional will work for the best interests of the patient/client. For this reason professional ethics can be in conflict with *consumerist ethics, which approaches the professional relationship from the point of view of client demand and rights rather than professional perceptions of need and duty. r.s.d. *business ethics. R. S. Downie, ‘Professional Ethics and Business Ethics’, in S. A. M. McLean (ed.), Contemporary Issues in Law, Medicine and Ethics (Aldershot, 1996). programs of computers. A formally specified set of instructions which guide the operations of a symbol- manipulating device. A program written in a particular programming language is executed in a given computer when a processor carries out the sequence of instructions in the program, or converts them into instructions corres- ponding more closely to the basic operations of the machine. The resulting process, which consists in the manipulation of symbols, or data structures, determines the subsequent behaviour of the machine. By program- ming computers we enable them to produce certain behaviours in response to certain inputs. Psychologists use programs to model the structure of human psycho- logical processes; e.g. reasoning (*cognition); and philoso- phers dispute whether mind is a program implemented in neural hardware (*computers) or whether a correctly pro- grammed computer can replicate as well as simulate men- tality (*artificial intelligence). Constructivist logic offers another application of programming where a proof can be treated as a class of programs for verifying a formula. b.c.s. J. Haugeland, Artificial Intelligence: The Very Idea (Cambridge, Mass., 1985). P. Martin-Lof, ‘Constructive Mathematics and Computer Pro- gramming’, in Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, vi (1982). progress. Improvement over time, especially the gradual perfection of humanity. A robust sense of confidence in human progress is characteristic of the philosophers of the eighteenth-century *Enlightenment. The French philoso- pher Condorcet enthusiastically expressed this view of ‘the human race, emancipated from its shackles, released from the empire of fate and from that of the enemies of its progress, advancing with a firm and sure step along the path of truth, virtue and happiness’. But philosophers have not always been so sanguine about the future. Some historians (e.g. J. B. Bury) have argued that the idea of progress is a peculiarly modern concept, although a few (e.g. Robert Nisbet) have argued that it is an idea which has its origins in the medieval Christian conception of providence, if not even earlier. In its most straightforward version, the belief in progress acknowledges a single, tem- poral progression of all peoples from the most ‘primitive’ to the most advanced, usually one’s own society. The epit- ome of this sort of teleological thinking is to be found in G. W. F. Hegel, who argued that not only in philosophy and the arts, but in human history and religion too, rational progress is demonstrable, if only we turn a ‘rational eye’ to look for it. It is important to distinguish between progress in the realm of science and technology, where improvements in medical cures, modes of transport, and various scientific theories are easily established, and moral or spiritual progress, which raises profound philosophical problems about the nature of happiness and morals. It is by no means obvious that we are happier, more moral or com- passionate, less dogmatic or belligerent, than our more ‘primitive’ peers and ancestors. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for example, argued (during the Enlightenment) that advances in the arts and sciences had corrupted rather than improved humanity. At the end of the twentieth century, after two world wars and fifty years of potential nuclear conflict, the con- cept of progress had come into ill repute. The conserva- tive philosopher Friedrich von Hayek bemoaned the fact that confidence in progress had become a mark of ‘a shallow mind’. But even those who see history as ‘just one damn thing after another’ (in the eloquent phrase of poet John Masefield) tend to insist that we can neverthe- less learn from history, improve ourselves, and progress beyond it. r.c.sol. *pessimism and optimism. J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress (London, 1920). R. Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (New York, 1980). projectivism. The thesis that some apparent properties of the external world really belong to the mind that perceives it. For example, the world appears coloured, auditory, olfactory, gustatory. Actions seem good or evil, and objects ugly or beautiful, events necessary or contingent, but, according to projectivist views, these characteristics are at least partly due to our mental constitution and are not, or are not wholly or really, in the object. If *Hume is right about causation, we do not perceive objective causal necessities but mistake our own psychological expect- ation that one event will follow another for such mind- independent inevitability. This is projectivism about causation. Projectivism is *idealism about a restricted class of properties. s.p. *quasi-realism; primary and secondary qualities. Simon Blackburn, Essays in Quasi-Realism (Oxford, 1993). John McDowell, ‘Values and Secondary Qualities’, in Ted Honderich (ed.), Morality and Objectivity: Essays in Honour of J. L. Mackie (London, 1985). proletariat: see bourgeoisie and proletariat. proletariat 761 proletariat, dictatorship of the: see dictatorship of the proletariat. proof theory. The study of formal proofs in logic. As a dis- cipline in its own right, proof theory is usually reckoned to begin in 1934, when Gerhard Gentzen introduced *nat- ural deduction and the sequent calculus for classical first- order logic. He showed that any proof in either of these systems can be converted to a proof in the other. His cut elimination theorem—still undoubtedly the best theorem in proof theory—showed that any sequent calculus proof can be converted into a tableau (or truth-tree) in which formulae are steadily broken down, not built up. He adapted this theorem to give a *consistency proof for arithmetic. Gentzen’s intuitionist versions of the natural deduction and sequent calculuses are an essential tool for studying intuitionist logic. w.a.h. S. R. Buss (ed.), Handbook of Proof Theory (Amsterdam, 1998). propensity. A propensity is a probabilistic *disposition of an object or person to behave in a certain way—for example, the disposition of a radium atom to undergo radioactive decay in a given time-period with a certain degree of chance. Propensities are more firmly linked to behaviour than mere tendencies are, because the mere tendencies of an object may be counteracted by the con- trary tendencies of other objects. e.j.l. *capacity; power; potential. R. Tuomela (ed.), Dispositions (Dordrecht, 1978). proper names: see names. properties. Things may be said to own in some sense the attributes that they are acknowledged to have; hence the term ‘property’. In traditional logic, deriving from Aris- totle, however, the term has a more restricted use. According to the so-called doctrine of the predicables, which is concerned with the different things that can be predicated of a species (i.e. whether or not they are essen- tial to the species and whether or not all and only members of the species can have these things predicated of them), a property or proprium is something that is not essential to the species but is such that all and only members of the species have it. Thus, arguably, the ability to laugh might be a proprium of man. However that may be, a property has come to be regarded as the same as an attribute, and anything that is picked out by a predicate which can be applied to a thing in such a way as to characterize it is thus a property of that thing. Likewise, ‘property’ and ‘quality’ are sometimes used synonymously, although according to Aristotle’s doctrine of the categories a *quality is simply one category of things that can be predicated of a subject, and thus just one kind of property. There has been much discussion among philosophers about the exact ontological relation which holds between a thing (and more specifically a *substance) and its proper- ties. Leibniz, for example, argued that substances were nothing but collections, though infinite collections, of properties. Other philosophers have argued, in a similar spirit, that statements about substances can be analysed into statements about the location of properties at given places and times. But the notion of a predicate, of which that of a property is a counterpart, depends on the idea that there is a subject for predicates to be of, and there seems to be no good reason for supposing that properties have any ontological priority among the kinds of entity that exist. Like predicates, properties are general and can in prin- ciple belong to many things, whether or not they do so in fact. There is nothing in the generality of a property that prevents its belonging in fact to one thing only; but it must be logically possible for it to be attributed to more than one thing. Whether there are, despite this, such things as individual properties is a disputed matter. d.w.h. *essentialism; properties, individual. D. W. Hamlyn, Metaphysics (Cambridge, 1984). H. W. B. Joseph, An Introduction to Logic, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1916). D. H. Mellor and A. D. Oliver (eds.), Properties (Oxford, 1997). P. F. Strawson, Individuals (London, 1959). properties, individual. Consider a red tomato. Some philosophers (e.g. Stout) argue that there exists a particu- lar redness of the tomato. This redness is an individual property, or ‘abstract particular’. Other objects may be the same shade of red; those rednesses resemble, but are not identical to, the redness of the tomato. It is sometimes claimed, further, that individual properties are constitu- tive of events and physical objects and they play a key role in causal relations. In contrast, others (e.g. Armstrong) argue that ontological economy speaks to eliminating individual properties in favour of ordinary particulars, which exist in any case, and universal properties, which can be exemplified in indefinitely many ordinary particulars. m.b. *haecceity; properties; tropes. D. M. Armstrong, Universals and Scientific Realism, i (Cambridge, 1978). G. F. Stout, Studies in Philosophy and Psychology (New York, 1930). properties, non-natural: see non-natural properties. property. What is owned. Property in general is defined by a system of rules that assigns to persons rights over things, where the things capable of being owned can range from a person and his or her labour to land, natural resources, and what is produced by labour from land and natural resources. The rules of property defining rights of owners and duties owed to owners may be moral, legal, or both. Specific forms of property differ from each other depending on the rights and duties which the rules confer, how the rights or duties are acquired, and the kinds of things which are capable of being owned. Thus, all specific 762 proletariat, dictatorship of the forms of property rules must perform two essential func- tions: to assign rights to persons (natural or artificial), and to prescribe mechanisms for the acquisition, transfer, and alienation of those rights. One specific form of property is private property. This form, associated with John Locke’s political philosophy and with *capitalism, assigns to owners the rights to use what they own in any way they choose so long as they respect the moral or natural rights of others. In private property persons acquire rights over things that are not owned by being the first to appropriate them or labour upon them, and they acquire rights to own things from others by gift, bequest, or exchange. First appropriation and labour, according to private property, justifies per- sons owning and profiting from land, natural resources, and material goods they produce from what they own. Not everyone will be able to have private property in land if all land is already owned; however, land may be pur- chased or leased from owners by those who have suffi- cient money or goods to exchange. In private ownership each person owns himself or herself; that is, each person has the right to decide how he or she is to labour, and has the right to exchange his or her labour for goods or money with whoever will pay. Communal property, a specific form associated with Karl Marx and with *socialism, assigns rights over land and the means of production to the workers or the com- munity as a whole, rather than to individual persons. As communal property, land and the means of production may not be privately appropriated. Rather, decisions con- cerning the use of land or the means of production are made collectively by the workers involved or, depending on the specific form of communal ownership, by all the members of the community or their elected representa- tives. Any surplus or profits realized from land and resources may be distributed to the workers or commu- nity members equally, in proportion to their labour and contribution, or according to their needs. Corporate property, public property, and joint prop- erty are forms which combine elements of the private and communal forms. Corporate ownership resembles pri- vate ownership in the rights of owners to use what they own as they, alone, choose; but it resembles communal ownership in that there may be many persons who share the ownership rights. Great interest lies in discovering which specific form of property is morally or politically justifiable. While private ownership has often been considered superior because it supposedly stimulates efficient production of great wealth and preserves the freedom of owners, it is also criticized because it perpetuates unjust distributions of income, cre- ates unnatural desires for material goods, and lacks respect for the quality of the environment. Communal ownership is supposed to create insufficient incentives for economic growth, be wasteful of labour and energy, and inadequately satisfy consumer demand. But communal ownership is believed to create more just distributions of wealth, less *exploitation and *alienation among workers, and greater control by the community as a whole over its environment and economy. j.o.g. *libertarianism, left; markets; conservatism; Proudhon. James O. Grunebaum, Private Ownership (London, 1987). Stephen R. Munzer, A Theory of Property (Cambridge, 1990). Jeremy Waldron, The Right to Private Property (Oxford, 1988). proposition. The precise formulation varies, but a propos- ition, or propositional content, is customarily defined in modern logic as ‘what is asserted’ when a sentence (an indicative, or declarative, sentence) is used to say some- thing true or false, or as ‘what is expressed by’ such a sen- tence. The term is also applied to what is expressed by the subordinate clauses of complex sentences, to forms of words which, if separated from the complex sentences of which they are part, can stand alone as indicative sen- tences in their own right. Accordingly, such sentences and clauses are often called ‘propositional signs’. In medieval logic, by contrast, a propositio was what would now be called a propositional sign. It was with this sense in mind that some of the ‘traditional logicians’ of the nineteenth century held that we should not be concerned with the proposition, a mere linguistic entity, but with the judgement, the (possibly mental) act of affirming or deny- ing a predicate of a subject. Some modern logicians have argued what would appear, were it not for this shift in meaning, to be the opposite view: that we should not be concerned with the sentence, a mere linguistic entity, but with the proposition, an abstract entity designated by declarative sentences in particular languages. It is, though, an obvious mistake to suppose that, because different sen- tences say the same thing, there must be a same thing they say. Probably the most sensible view is that a proposition is neither a sentence ‘in itself’ nor some entity other than a sentence, but merely a certain sort of sentence used in a certain sort of way. c.w. *statements and sentences. A. N. Prior, ‘Propositions and Sentences’, in The Doctrine of Propositions and Terms (London, 1976). C. Williamson, ‘Propositions and Abstract Propositions’, in N. Rescher (ed.), Studies in Logical Theory (Oxford, 1968). propositional attitude. A kind of state of mind, the term for which was introduced by Russell and has gained cur- rency in recent philosophy of language and mind. Predications of some mental states (e.g. of belief in ‘Ted believes that p’) appear to express a relation between a person (here Ted) and a proposition (here the proposition that-p); these states are the propositional attitudes. Want and desire, though not usually ordinarily attributed using ‘that’ clauses, are often included. The class is singled out by philosophers for two reasons: (i) a set of questions pertains to the sentences used in ascribing attitudes; (ii) the attitudes feature in a distinctive mode of explanation—of rational beings; one species of such explanation is of action, considered usually to require ascriptions of the attitudes belief and desire. j.horn. propositional attitude 763 *content; intentionality; referential opacity. Jerry A. Fodor, ‘Propositional Attitudes’, Monist (1978). propositional calculus. A systematization of that part of logic concerned with operators corresponding to some uses of ‘not’, ‘or’, ‘and’, ‘If . . . then’, and ‘If and only if’, some of which are interdefinable. They are represented in the *propositional calculus (PC) in one standard notation as ‘~’, ‘∨’, ‘·’, ‘ ⊃’, and ‘≡’, respectively. A class of *well- formed formulae is defined for PC and a definition of *proof which generates the set of *theorems of PC. A desideratum is a system where the set of well-formed for- mulae of PC which are logical truths are derivable as the- orems. This can be shown for PC quasi-syntactically by a method of normal forms. Alternatively, on the semantics of the connectives given by *truth-tables, it can be shown that a formula is a theorem if and only if it is a *tautology. (*Completeness; *consistency; *decision procedure; *decidability.) There are alternative axiomatizations of PC which gen- erate the same set of theorems. In an axiomatization a the- orem is defined as an axiom or derivable from axioms in accordance with the specified rules. An alternative to axiomatization of PC is to dispense with axioms and to use only rules of inference. (*Natural deduction.) Here a theorem will be a formula derivable from the empty set of premisses. r.b.m. B. Mates, Elementary Logic (Oxford, 1972). propositional function. A function from individuals to propositions with a common structure about those indi- viduals, or a formula representing such a function. Thus C(x) might assign Bach was a composer to Bach, Chopin was a composer to Chopin, and so on. When a *quantifier is pre- fixed, propositional functions are used to represent gen- eral propositions. Thus ∀xC(x) asserts that all C(x) is true for all x, and so represents the false proposition Everything was a composer. w.a.d. *propositional calculus. I. M. Copi, An Introduction to Logic, 6th edn. (New York, 1982), ch. 10. proprioception: see perception. Protagoras (c.490–420 bc). The most celebrated of the *Sophists of the fifth century bc, he came from Abdera on the north coast of the Aegean, also the birthplace of Dem- ocritus. He travelled widely throughout the Greek world, including several visits to Athens, where he was associated with Pericles, who invited him to write the constitution for the Athenian colony of Thurii. The ancient tradition of his condemnation for impiety and flight from Athens is refuted by Plato’s evidence (Meno 91e) that he enjoyed a universally high reputation till his death and afterwards. He was famous in antiquity for agnosticism concerning the existence and nature of the gods, and for the doctrine that ‘Man is the measure of all things’, i.e. the thesis that all sensory appearances and all beliefs are true for the person whose appearance or belief they are; on the most plausible construal that doctrine attempts to eliminate objectivity and truth altogether. It was attacked by Democritus and Plato (in the Theaetetus) on the ground that it is self- refuting; if all beliefs are true, then the belief that it is not the case that all beliefs are true is itself true. While that charge of self-refutation fails because it ignores the rela- tivization of truth in the theory, it may be reinstated as fol- lows: either the theory undermines itself by asserting as an objective truth that there is no objective truth or it merely asserts as a subjective truth that there is no objective truth. But to assert a subjective truth is to make no assertion. So either the theory refutes itself, or it asserts nothing. In the Protagoras Plato represents him as maintaining a fairly conservative form of social morality, based on a version of social contract theory; humans need to develop social institutions to survive in a hostile world, and the basic social virtues, justice and self-control, must be generally observed if those institutions are to flourish. c.c.w.t. G. B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement (Cambridge, 1981). protasis. In a conditional proposition, the ‘if ’ clause, i.e. ‘P’ in such forms as ‘If P, Q’, ‘Q, if P’, ‘(P → Q)’ or ‘(P — 3 Q)’, is called the protasis, or antecedent, and the main clause ‘Q’ is called the apodosis, or consequent. c.a.k. protocol sentences. According to *Logical Positivism, ‘pro- tocol sentences’ provide a record of scientific experience which is to be used in assessing theories and hypotheses. In accordance with his *empiricism, Carnap insisted that they should record experience directly, contain nothing which resulted from induction. Whether protocol sentences described *sense-data or were like ordinary observation reports was a matter of controversy which, Carnap eventu- ally held, was to be settled by a decision. c.j.h. O. Neurath, ‘Protocol Sentences’, in A. J. Ayer (ed.), Logical Positivism (London, 1959). Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph (1809–1865). French philoso- pher and social critic whose book What is Property? influ- enced many nineteenth-century socialists, anarchists, and communists. His famous answer to the question posed by the title of his book is that *‘property is theft’. Man, Proud- hon believed, is born a social being who seeks justice and equality in all his relations, but large landed estates that create rent for the owner of private property make these impossible. He did not oppose all forms of property. Rather, he believed that small producers and farmers bound together by free contracts were the best safeguards of liberty, justice, and equality. Many of his ideas were adopted by the syndicalist trade union movement. Both Bakunin and Sorel recognized their debt to Proudhon, while Marx attacked many of his ideas as too utopian. j.o.g. *syndicalism. George Woodcock, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (London, 1956). 764 propositional attitude pseudonyms, philosophical. Søren Kierke-gaard’s elabor- ate use of pseudonyms inspires scholarly attention. His motives apparently included the desire to attack under one name his own writings under another. Posterity thereby knows his disdain for the construction of unified systems. Research on the motives of other philosophers who use pseudonyms awaits further identifications of these writers. Here are a few examples. Several antholo- gies include ‘Free Will as Involving Determinism and Inconceivable without It’, by ‘R. E. Hobart’, without men- tioning that the author’s real name is Dickinson S. Miller. In collections she edits herself, Amélie Oksenberg Rorty sometimes includes essays of her own signed by ‘Leila Tov-Ruach’. The author of this entry does not know the real name of the entrant to the Analysis Competition ‘Problem’ No. 10, Analysis 17/3 ( January 1957), who uses the pseudonym ‘Al. Tajtelbaum’. The name is interesting because it belonged originally to the philosopher-logician- mathematician better known as Alfred Tarski. d.h.s. pseudo-philosophy consists in deliberations that mas- querade as philosophical but are inept, incompetent, defi- cient in intellectual seriousness, and reflective of an insufficient commitment to the pursuit of truth. In particu- lar, this encompasses discussions that deploy the rational instrumentalities of philosophical reflection in the inter- ests of aims other than serious inquiry—the fostering of power interests or ideological influence or literary éclat or some such. (To be sure, philosophers in general incline to pin this charge of insufficient intellectual seriousness and cogency on those who adhere to rival schools of thought that differ from their own position in matters of funda- mental principle.) Such ineptitude is seldom professed by exponents on their own account but emerges in the objections of oppo- nents. Some key examples are the no-truth theory attrib- uted by the Platonic Socrates to the Sophists of classical antiquity, the conflicting-truth theory attributed to the so- called Averroists by the medieval schoolmen, the radical nihilism sometimes attributed to Renaissance sceptics, and the irrationalism and relativism imputed to existen- tialists and post-modernists by the more orthodox philosophers of our own day. The more extreme enthusi- asts of Derrida-inspired deconstruction afford a graphic case in point. For there is little point in spinning elaborate textual webs to demonstrate that texts never bear any stable interpretative construction. If texts are unable to convey any fixed message, there is clearly no point to any endeavour to convey this lesson by textual means. The ‘pseudo-’ label is particularly apt in application to those who use the resources of reason to substantiate the claim that rationality is unachievable in matters of inquiry. For their practice patently belies their teaching. About that which cannot be treated with philosophical cogency, philosophers must needs remain silent. n.r. *ideology; pseudo-science; philosophy: world and underworld. Avner Cohen and Marcelo Dascal (eds.), The Institution of Philoso- phy: A Discipline in Crisis (La Salle, Ill., 1989). Hugh J. Silverman and Gary E. Aylesworth (eds.), The Textual Sublime: Deconstruction and its Differences (Albany, NY, 1990). pseudo-science. A term of epistemic abuse of variable and disputed content. The most general feature of the sit- uation is one in which one segment of the epistemic com- munity attempts to alert another that certain theses have had conferred on them an epistemic status they do not deserve. Important features of these discussions are at variance with the common philosophical assumption of the centrality of testability. But testability appears not to exonerate, nor its lack to inculpate. If we consult the grounds implicit in adverse appraisals we find that objec- tions are commonly to spurious claims as to the war- rantability of a thesis rather than its untestability. Someone who maintains that Cassius was wrong, and that the fault was in our stars but that he could not say which stars, is advancing an untestable thesis, but ought not to be conflated on that account with someone who casts horoscopes. Another ostensibly pertinent ground is failure to capitu- late to repeated falsification reports. But it is conceded both that there are no rules for determining when a thesis should be abandoned and that there have been occasions when those who clung to their theories did well to do so. Moreover, non-capitulation is often a misleading descrip- tion of a more pernicious practice—that of implying that a thesis has been repeatedly confirmed when the most that has been shown is that it can be reconciled with its appar- ent falsifiers. Popper’s Adler anecdote, in which Adler explains away an apparent refutation on the score of his ‘thousandfold experience’ and is met with the sarcastic rejoinder, ‘And now I suppose your experience is a thou- sand-and-one fold’, illustrates a distinct and more perti- nent malpractice than wanton tenacity—that Adler will henceforth illicitly treat his ability to turn the force of a falsifier as further confirmation of the theory. Neither can capitulation to falsification reports serve as a rebuttal of the charge, for it is not uncommon for excep- tions to a general thesis to be generously conceded while the putatively verified instances on which the prestige of the theory depends are without rational justification. Freud’s concession that not all dreams are wish- fulfilments in the light of the recurring traumatic dreams of war neurotics does not absolve his dream theory of sus- picion if there is reason to think that his reports of con- firming instances were the outcome of Procrustean methods of interpretation. Popper introduced the relevance of the investigator’s sincerity. Once it is recognized that the charge of pseudo- science involves not just methodological inadequacy but imponderable judgements about its tendentious motiv- ation, the intractability and longevity of the disputes is less surprising. Those who characterize an epistemic doctrine or practice as pseudo-scientific are normally responding to a Gestalt which they may then confusedly rationalize pseudo-science 765 according to whatever view of the nature of science pre- vails. In the end we may be compelled to say of pseudo- science what Duke Ellington said about jazz—that it is impossible to define because it is a matter of how it sounds. f.c. *pseudo-philosophy. Ernest Gellner, The Psychoanalytic Movement (London, 1985). Terence Hines, Pseudo-Science and the Paranormal (Buffalo, NY, 1988). psyche (‘soul’). In ancient philosophy the psyche is the animator of each animated (living) or ‘ensouled’ thing (empsukhon). Plato uses the idea that the psyche is the prin- ciple of *life in a famous argument for the immortality of the psyche (Phaedo 105c–e). Aristotle, in his De anima, counts self-nutrition, reproduction, movement, and per- ception as ‘psychical’ powers, as well as thinking, and then speculates that the rational part of the psyche may be sep- arable from the body. g.b.m. *soul. M. Nussbaum and A. Rorty (eds.), Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima (Oxford, 1992). psychic research: see ESP phenomena, philosophical implications of. psychoanalysis, philosophical problems of. Philoso- phers have long debated whether psychoanalysis is a *science, a *pseudo-science, or something sui generis. There are many reasons for the longevity of the controversy which are of little philosophic interest. These include a lack of consensus on whether what is in question is a ther- apeutic or an explanatory enterprise and, if explanatory, which theses are to be considered definitive of it. There is also a general ambiguity. Is substantive or methodological psychoanalysis under discussion? Is the subject such state- ments as ‘the main sources of human character are, for example, the incestuous and sexual conflicts of infancy’, or such statements as ‘the main formative influences and pathogenic occasions in a person’s life can be discovered by the use of a method devised by Freud deploying *dream interpretation, free association, and analysis of the behaviour of the subject in the analytic situation’? A great deal of discussion has been devoted to testability and kindred notions such as the willingness to capitulate to falsification reports. The lack of consensus on the test- ability of psychoanalytic theory is due not merely to differ- ing conceptions of psychoanalytic theory but to differing conceptions of testability. Those who hold the theory untestable are often said to have confused the obstinacy of its adherents with the formal properties of ‘the theory in itself’. This meets the objection that it is inappropriate to speak of the ‘in-itself ’ of a theory much of which is so neolo- gistic that we can only discover what falsifies it by taking note of what is permitted to count against it, and is so equivocal that almost a century later radically divergent accounts are still given of its commitments. The testability of psychoanalytic theses is sometimes confused with the testability of statements about the consequences of credit- ing them. Catholic theology does not become testable because the consequences of pilgrimages to Lourdes are. The testability of the therapeutic claims themselves is also in dispute because it has been argued that, although a thesis may seem to be indisputably testable where its advocates have in fact modified it in the light of falsifying reports, this does not show the theory to be testable unless the advocates had no discretion in the matter. In view of these considerations it is understandable that even when precautions are taken to restrict discussion to the same substantive theses, or at least the same verbal formulas, disagreement persists. Some analysts think that Freud’s claims about infantile life could be validated by a movie camera (Robert Waelder); others have denied this ( Joan Riviere). Some think that Freud’s aetiological claims are as epidemiologically testable as those linking smoking to lung cancer (Grunbaum); others do not. The relevance of the outcome of controlled inquiry is in any case bypassed by those who hold that psychoanalytic discourse ought not to be subjected to the same modes of assess- ment as are conventionally held to characterize sciences such as medical epidemiology. An alternative criterion often invoked, and to which Freud himself frequently appealed, is that of narrative comprehensiveness. Freud holds his infantile sexual aetiology up like the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle and defies his critics to give an adequate account of the neuroses without it. A disabling assumption of much discussion is that it is the legitimacy of this narrative rationale which divides critics from sup- porters of psychoanalytic theses; but just as divisive is the conviction that psychoanalytic narratives tend to be unpersuasive or tendentious. Another mode of validation whose merits have been debated is that of therapeutic efficacy. Therapeutic effi- cacy is incapable by its nature of warranting the historicity of a reconstruction or the veridicality of an interpretation; these may be false and the therapy based on them nevertheless efficacious, just as they may be true but ther- apeutically unhelpful. A further, though philosophically redundant, difficulty is that the appeal to therapeutic results played a nugatory role in the controversies. Freud himself seemed to have little confidence in it since he nor- mally met the suggestibility objection by denying that he had any prior conviction which might have influenced his patients’ responses, and by invoking data such as the fan- tasies of psychotics, or the anonymous productions of cul- ture in which contamination was presumed not to operate. Where it was the generality of his conclusions about infantile life that were disputed, it was maintained that these had been confirmed (and the method thus vin- dicated) by the direct observation of children. Another much discussed issue is whether unconscious wishes are *reasons or causes. The substantive question ‘Are unconscious wishes like reasons?’ must be distin- guished from ‘Are even rationalizing wishes deterministic- ally related to the behaviour they rationalize?’ Put 766 pseudo-science otherwise, the first question is whether the hysteric, say, stands in relation to his symptoms as a malingerer to his deceptive performances, except that he is not consciously monitoring them, or whether repressed wishes act, rather, like psychic splinters and the symptoms they pro- duce are thus conceptually analogous to inflammations. Whether the assimilation of causes to reasons is justifiable has no bearing on this question, which can only be resolved by an inspection of the grounds proffered for believing an unconscious wish operative, and these vary. The pertinent question is thus: What makes an explan- atory narrative credible? This in turn resolves into two dis- tinct problems: the degree of circumstantiality required to support a causal narrative, or to warrant a choice between narratives, and the degree to which the subject’s epistemic authority (belated in the case of analytic accounts) allows us to dispense with both laws and circumstantiality. The first problem is one of devising rules of thumb for judging the goodness of a case for a causal connection when all we have to go on is the circumstantial density of a narrative (and perhaps its analogy to better-attested, less questionable ones). The second problem is that of deciding, in cases where narrative coherence is insufficiently probative, whether its probative value can be enhanced, or even replaced, by the endorsement of the subject. Is not Shylock the arbiter of the sources of his resentment of Antonio? Why then can we not allow that someone who is initially ignorant of the sources of his attitudes, propensities, vulnerabilities, etc. might not ultimately come to stand in relation to them as Shylock continuously did to his murderous resentment? The assessment of this argument requires delicate taxono- mizing not often in evidence. Apologists have often claimed for Freud’s narratives virtues which he did not consistently claim for them himself, appealing rather to unreproducible nuances of the psychoanalytic inter- action. This raises a distinct issue: What makes a narrator credible? This absolves those who insist on discussing the credibility of psychoanalytic narrators of gratuitously per- sonalizing the issue. Beyond the dispute over whether the knowledge psy- choanalysis aims to provide is to be judged by natural sci- ence or humanistic standards looms another: whether epistemic criteria of either kind are in order. It is held that, however matters may stand with respect to vulgar notions of correspondence truth, psychoanalysis has pro- vided vistas whose poetic truth is beyond reproach. f.c. *stories and explanation; unconscious and subcon- scious mind. Behaviour and Brain Research (1986). Précis and peer group review of Grunbaum’s Foundations of Psychoanalysis. F. Cioffi, ‘Wollheim on Freud’, Inquiry (1972). Peter Clark and Crispin Wright (eds.), Mind, Psychoanalysis and Science (London, 1988). R. Wollheim, Freud, 2nd edn. (London, 1990). psychologism. Acceptance of some or all of the following commitments jointly define a psychologistic outlook: a belief that logical laws are ‘laws of thought’, i.e. psycho- logical laws; a conflation of truth with verification; a belief that the private data of consciousness provide the correct starting-point for epistemology; and belief that the mean- ings of words are ideas. Gottlob Frege rejected all these theses, and therefore much of prevailing nineteenth- century germanophone philosophy. His criticisms con- verted Edmund Husserl to anti-psychologism. They have been profoundly influential in anglophone *analytic philosophy. a.c.g. M. A. E. Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language, 2nd edn. (London, 1981), ch. 5. psychology and philosophy. Psychology, for most of its history, coincided with the philosophy of mind. Everyday reflections on one’s own thoughts and deeds and on the behaviour—bodily motions, verbal and otherwise—of others lead naturally to speculations concerning the springs of action. Such speculations, refined and system- atized, are prominent in the writings of Plato and Aris- totle, and in the philosophical tradition that runs from them through Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, and James, to our own day. Along the way, psychology as a self-standing discipline gradually condensed from the philosophical fog. Recent years have seen a partial reversal of this process as philosophers, anxious to attain scientific respectability, have sought to psychologize philosophy under the banner of *‘cognitive science’. While it is convenient to date the onset of psychology’s emancipation from philosophy from 1879, the year Wil- helm Wundt established the first psychological laboratory at the University of Leipzig, it was well into the twentieth century before psychology became generally recognized as a distinguishable academic speciality. Even today, how- ever, it is easy to find parallels in empirical psychology to virtually any philosophical view of the mind. This is scarcely surprising. Our conception of the mental as com- prising a distinctive subject-matter, one that includes per- ceiving, knowing, imagining, planning, and the initiating of action, is a philosophical staple. Psychology emerged as a science once questions about such things began to be for- mulated in a way that demanded empirical investigation. Thus Hume, impressed by Newton, advanced associative principles designed to account for familiar mental oper- ations and to set the study of *‘human nature’ on an appro- priately scientific footing. Hume holds that ideas— mentalistic counterparts of material particles—attract one another in accordance with three simple associative prin- ciples: resemblance, contiguity, cause and effect. Hume was not the first associationist, nor was he the last. Clark Hull’s conception of stimulus–response bonds and B. F. Skinner’s notion of reinforcement put a behav- iourist spin on *associationism. More recently, advocates of ‘connectionist’ or ‘neural network’ accounts of the mind, abjuring *behaviourism, have advanced mathemat- ically sophisticated associationist models of cognitive and perceptual processes. These compete with computational approaches traceable to Hobbes. psychology and philosophy 767 Early psychologists wore their philosophical commit- ments on their sleeves. William James’s Principles of Psychology (1890) mingles chapters on the brain, instinct, and hypnotism with chapters advancing views on the *mind–body problem, and E. B. Titchener’s debt to the atomistic, sensationalistic doctrines of the British Empiri- cists in Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought Processes (1904) is explicit. Nowadays psychologists are less aware of, or at any rate less willing to acknowledge, their philosophical roots. The ongoing influence of philosophical theses might be thought to provide a partial explanation of the fitful, two-steps-forward, one-step-back quality of theoretical advance in psychology, but it would be naïve to imagine that the discipline might be streamlined simply by writing out the philosophers. The exclusion of philosophers does not amount to the exclusion of philosophical presuppos- itions, and wholesale elimination of these presuppositions, in eliminating as well everything that depends on them, would amount to changing the subject. Still, it is widely believed that philosophy, qua philosophy, has little to offer physics, biology, or medicine. Why, then, should anyone imagine that philosophers are in a position to offer advice about the nature of *mind? Perhaps minds are distinctive, different from hearts, or livers, or the amino acids. But why should anyone presume this to be so? The question is not whether imaginary disciplinary boundaries between philosophy and the empirical sci- ences are to be enforced, but whether the relation between philosophy and psychology is, or has been, or must be, special. According to one influential view, eman- ating from the work of Wittgenstein and aggressively promoted by D. C. Dennett, psychology presupposes a discredited Cartesian conception of mind according to which mental states and processes occur in private. Our access to mental items is asymmetrical: you observe the contents of your own mind directly, I can only infer those contents from what you say and do. Such a picture frus- trates both philosophers, bent on resolving epistemo- logical and metaphysical puzzles, and psychologists, who seek scientific legitimacy for their inquiries. Skinner, following John B. Watson in turning *empiri- cism on its head, declared that, because we observe only behaviour, reference to inferred mental causes of behav- iour must be eliminated. Psychological explanation, then, amounts to the correlation of environmental contingen- cies and subsequent behavioural responses. On the philo- sophical front, Gilbert Ryle in The Concept of Mind (1949) attacked the ‘Cartesian Myth’ on very different grounds. Ryle held that descriptions of mental goings-on are descriptions of what agents say and do (or are apt to say and do), not descriptions of hidden occurrences causally responsible for sayings and doings. Although Ryle is often called a behaviourist, the arguments he deploys have little in common with those used in support of the psycho- logical doctrine of the same name. The ‘functionalist’ conception of mind, traceable to Aristotle, fine-tuned by Hilary Putnam, D. M. Armstrong, and Jerry Fodor, and now beloved of philosophers and psychologists alike, can be seen as a direct descendant of Ryle’s anti-Cartesianism. *Functionalism, as a replace- ment for psychological *behaviourism, however, has proved attractive in part owing to the increasing promin- ence of the digital computing machine. Perhaps the brain resembles such a device. Were that so, we could assume that minds are ‘realized’ in brains just as programs are ‘realized’ in computing machines. To engage in psych- ology, on such a view, is to seek to discover by empirical means the brain’s program. A view of this sort promises simultaneously to liberate psychology from traditional metaphysical worries about the mind and its relation to the body, and to provide it with a subject-matter distinct from neurophysiology and biology. Although psychologists have been on the whole happy with these results, functionalism is under fire in philoso- phy. In characterizing mental items exclusively by refer- ence to actual and possible inputs and outputs, functionalism evidently ignores their qualitative dimen- sion. In the earliest accounts of the doctrine, this was touted as a virtue, a way of factoring out spooky mental *qualia and allowing for the ‘multiple realizability’ of men- tal characteristics. (A characteristic is multiply realizable if it is capable of being embodied in very different sorts of physical system: human brains, computing machines, pos- sible alien silicon-based ‘brains’.) Recently, however, Thomas Nagel, Frank Jackson, David Chalmers and others have argued that any account of the mind must accommo- date non-material mental qualities, exhibited in *con- sciousness. Some of these arguments are intended to encourage us to return to a fundamentally Cartesian con- ception of mind, a conception not unlike that embraced by Wundt and Titchener in the earliest days of experimental psychology. Does this portend the reintroduction into psychology of non-physical entities? Perhaps not. Perhaps it is simply a reflection of a powerful conviction that, as C. B. Martin puts it, ‘every quantity stands in need of a quality’. The subjectivity of consciousness poses additional prob- lems. Conscious awareness incorporates a point of view inaccessible to objective scientific investigation. Some, like Colin McGinn, have despaired at finding a home for points of view in the natural world; others—Ted Honderich, for instance—locate subjectivity in perfectly natural relations which perceivers bear to their environments. Such considerations make it clear that the historical break between philosophy and psychology was never a clean one. Psychologists continue to look over their shoul- ders at philosophers, and philosophers continue to offer advice to psychologists. There is no reason to think that it should always be this way, but there is no reason to sup- pose that things are destined to change much in the forsee- able future. j.heil *consciousness; epistemology and psychology; dualism; qualia. D. J. Chalmers, The Conscious Mind (New York, 1996). D. C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained (Boston, 1991). 768 psychology and philosophy B. A. Farrell, ‘Experience’, Mind, 59 (1950). R. J. Herrnstein and E. G. Boring (eds.), A Source Book in the History of Psychology (Cambridge, Mass., 1965). T. Honderich, ‘Consciousness as Existence’, in A. O’Hear (ed.), Current Issues in the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge, 1998). F. Jackson, ‘Epiphenomenal Qualia’, Philosophical Quarterly (1982). T. H. Leahey, A History of Psychology, 6th edn. (Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2003). C. B. Martin, ‘The Need for Ontology: Some Choices’, Philosophy, 68 (1993). C. McGinn, ‘Can We Solve the Mind–Body Problem?’, Mind(1989). T. Nagel, ‘What Is it Like to Be a Bat?’, Philosophical Review (1974). Hilary Putnam, ‘The Nature of Mental States’, in Mind, Language, and Reality (Cambridge, 1975). psychoneural intimacy. The term is used to describe what is generally recognized to be the close tie between neural events and mental events. It is held that there is a necessary co-occurrence of some sort between types of mental events and types of neural events. The thesis of psychoneural intimacy is compatible with most of the doctrines put forward in the literature concerning the rela- tionship between mental events and physical events—but not some that radically separate mind and brain, perhaps to safeguard free will. Most doctrines of the psychoneural relation can be read as different proposals about the nature of the necessity involved. p.j.p.n. *mind–body problem. T. Honderich, A Theory of Determinism: The Mind, Neuroscience and Life-Hopes (Oxford, 1988), ch. 2. psychophysical laws. Putative natural *laws reporting regular or necessary relationships between mental events and physical events. For example, if, as Honderich main- tains, the occurrence of some neurological event is a suffi- cient condition for the occurrence of some psychological event (and, as is entailed by this, the occurrence of that psychological event is a necessary condition for the occur- rence of that neurological event), then arguably some psy- chophysical law could be discovered which would facilitate the prediction of psychological events from knowledge of neurological events, because true neuro- logical sentences would logically entail the occurrence of psychological events. Not only Honderich’s physicalistic *determinism but certain versions of the mind–brain *identity theory logic- ally imply the existence of psychophysical laws. Some philosophers have maintained that types of mental event may be identified with types of physical process in the brain (or central nervous system) and that there is no a priori reason why predictive inferences about mental event-types should not be drawn from premisses about physical event-types. Unfortunately such type identifica- tions have proved most difficult to establish empirically. On a token version of the mind–brain identity theory it is less plausible that there should exist psychophysical laws. Although, on this theory, any token mental event is numerically identical with some token neurological event, it does not follow that qualitatively similar mental events are numerically identical with qualitatively similar neurological events. From the fact, then, that an event of some specifiable neurological type had occurred it would not follow that an event of some specifiable psychological type had occurred (even though it would still follow that a psychological event of some psychological type had occurred). Donald Davidson, for example, argues that, although every mental event is numerically identical with some physical event and although every event (including every mental event) may be subsumed under some nat- ural law, nevertheless there are no psychophysical laws. This is because it is qua physical events, not qua mental events, that mental events are law-governed, and even a complete knowledge of physical events would not facili- tate predictions of (specifiable) types of mental event. All the philosophical problems accruing to natural laws accrue a fortiori to psychophysical laws. For example, whether natural laws are causal laws, Humean regular- ities, relations between *universals, essentially predictive, or descriptive of necessities are all also questions about psychophysical laws. Deciding whether there are psy- chophysical laws and if so what they are like requires specifying correctly the ontology of the psychophysical relation. However, their existence is consistent with most traditional solutions to the *mind–body problem. s.p. *anomalous monism. Donald Davidson, ‘Mental Events’, in Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford, 1980). Ted Honderich, A Theory of Determinism: The Mind, Neuroscience and Life-Hopes (Oxford, 1988). Stephen Priest, Theories of the Mind (London, 1991). public morality. As traditionally understood, the ‘police powers’ of government extend to the protection of public health, safety, and morals. Legislation to protect public morals prohibits or restricts acts and practices judged to be damaging to the character and moral well-being of persons who engage in them or who may be induced to engage in them by the bad example of others. Typical forms of ‘morals legislation’ prohibit or restrict prostitu- tion, pornography, and other forms of sexual vice, as well as gambling, cruelty to animals, and the recreational use of drugs. In recent times, the legitimacy of such legislation has come under severe attack from certain forms of liberal political thought. Under pressure from ‘law reform’ movements inspired by the philosophy of J. S. Mill and others, many jurisdictions have decriminalized a variety of putatively ‘victimless’ offences. In the early 1960s the legitimacy of morals laws, particu- larly the legal prohibition of consensual homosexual sodomy, was the subject of a celebrated debate between two eminent British jurists: Patrick Devlin defended ‘legal moralism’ on the ground that a society is constituted in significant measure by the sharing of moral beliefs by its members and that the legal toleration of acts condemned by a society’s constitutive morality puts that society at risk of disintegration. Therefore, Devlin argued, a society has public morality 769 . examples are the no-truth theory attrib- uted by the Platonic Socrates to the Sophists of classical antiquity, the conflicting-truth theory attributed to the so- called Averroists by the medieval. deterministic- ally related to the behaviour they rationalize?’ Put 766 pseudo-science otherwise, the first question is whether the hysteric, say, stands in relation to his symptoms as a malingerer to his deceptive. consciously monitoring them, or whether repressed wishes act, rather, like psychic splinters and the symptoms they pro- duce are thus conceptually analogous to inflammations. Whether the assimilation