Adler's Philosophical Dictionary

125 Key Terms for the Philosopher's Lexicon

Mortimer J. Adler

• Publisher: Touchstone
• Year: 1996
• ISBN:
  9781439105665
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Stimulating, engaging, and organized in an easy-to-use, A-to-Z format, Adler's Philosophical Dictionary is an ideal introduction to the history of the great ideas. The terms and concepts that have simulated thinkers from Aristotle onward come to life in the latest work by the man TIME magazine has called "America's philosopher for everyman." Is the human soul immortal? What does it mean to know something? What is the nature of erotic love? Adler examines these questions as well as many others with his trademark clarity, rigor, and common sense.

ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE The words “absolute” and “relative” are generally misused. At this time and in the present state of our culture, to affirm absolutes and assert that not everything is relative goes against the grain of popular prejudice. The popular prejudice is, for the most part, unenlightened. The difference between what is absolute and what is relative needs to be clarified.

A moment’s consideration of the word “relative” should help anyone to see that what is relative is called so because it stands in relation to certain conditions or circumstances.

The absolute is that which does not stand in relation to any conditions or circumstances. It prevails at any time or place and under any circumstances. Thus, for example, the truth that atoms are divisible or fissionable is absolute, but the judgment we may make that that statement is true or false is relative to the time and place at which it is made.

For most of the past centuries the greatest physical scientists would have said that if atoms exist, they are indivisible. Relative to the time and place at which that judgment was made, and to the knowledge available at that time, the judgment had relative truth, but it is still absolutely true, at all times and places, that atoms are divisible or fissionable.

The related distinction between the objective and the subjective might be considered here. Objective is that which is the same for you and me and for every other human being. Subjective is that which differs from one person to another. The objective is absolute; the subjective is relative to individual human beings.

Finally, these two distinctions (between the absolute and the relative, and between the objective and the subjective) bring to mind a third distinction—between matters of truth and matters of taste. That which belongs in the sphere of taste rather than truth includes everything that is relative to the circumstances of different times and places. Matters of taste are those which differ from culture to culture and from one ethnic group to another, such as modes of salutation and preferences in cuisine, in dance, in customs. But if anything is absolutely true when it is entertained without any human judgment, such as the divisibility or fissionability of atoms, that truth is transcultural.

At present, mathematics, the physical sciences, and technology are transcultural. Whether we think that history, the social sciences, and philosophy will become transcultural in the future depends on how we view them now—either as bodies of knowledge or as matters of unfounded opinion.

ABSTRACT AND CONCRETE The words “abstract” and “concrete” are used loosely in everyday speech. Concrete terms are logically those terms which refer to sensible particulars. A particular is an individual that is of a certain kind; and being of a certain kind is a member of a class. Sensible particulars are apprehended at once by sense-perception and by the intellect unless we are conceptually blind. Then these are apprehended only by the senses.

Such conceptual blindness occurs when the sensible individual thing is apprehended by one sphere of sense-perception and not by another, as when that which is perceived is not understood at all. For example, a person who is conceptually blind in his or her sense of touch may be able to identify the object by the sense of smell. This happens when a person cannot identify the kind of object it is by touching it, but can do so by smelling it. When it is just touched by this person, the individual sensible thing is a raw individual, perhaps in some way familiar, as having been touched before, but without an identity, a name.

When we are not conceptually blind, the terms “flower” or “pencil” name certain things that are both perceived and also understood as being of a certain kind. Human apprehension differs radically from the purely sensible apprehension of brute animals that do not have intellects. For them, the world consists of raw individuals. We cannot imagine how the world of sensible objects appears to them.

In human apprehension, which is both sensitive and intellectual, the abstract object of thought is one that cannot be instantiated. We call the object of thought abstract if we cannot give particular instances of it that are sensible.

Such words as “freedom” or “justice” name objects of thought that cannot be perceptually instantiated. They are, therefore, abstract in their referential significance.

In short, concrete terms are those which can be perceptually exemplified or instantiated; abstract terms are those which cannot be perceptually exemplified or instantiated. They refer to objects that are purely objects of conceptual thought.

ANALOGICAL SPEECH: ITS DISTINCTION FROM UNIVOCAL AND EQUIVOCAL SPEECH The words “analogical,” “univocal,” and “equivocal” are not generally used. But they are of great importance philosophically. Philosophers are concerned with the different senses in which we attribute characteristics to a number of things; or, to speak of this matter grammatically, they are concerned with the different ways in which we apply a predicate to two or more subjects.

For most people, the only distinction with which they are concerned is that between the univocal and the equivocal. They are seldom aware that they are saying anything analogically. The only thing that should be clear to us is that we all do need to be aware that we sometimes speak in a manner that is neither univocal nor equivocal, especially if we venture to speak about God and his creatures, or about material and spiritual things.

We speak univocally when in naming things we use a word with exactly the same meaning. If in a field of cows, we use the word “cow” in the plural to name this cow, that cow, and every other cow that we can see, we are using the word “cow” in exactly the same sense every time we use it. Similarly, if we call all the cows animals, we are using that word in the same sense when we use it to characterize all the cows.

Equivocation is of two sorts: equivocation by chance and equivocation by intention. Equivocation by chance occurs infrequently in the everyday use of language. It happens when the same word is used to name two things which have nothing whatsoever in common—which are alike in no respect whatsoever. That one and the same word should have such strange ambiguity can often be explained in terms of the history of the language, but sometimes no explanation can be found.

For example, the word “pen” is used equivocally by chance when it is used to name, on the one hand, an enclosure for pigs and, on the other hand, a writing instrument. Similarly the word “ball” is used equivocally by chance when it is used to name a football or a basketball, and also used to name a festivity where an assemblage of persons will be found dancing.

Equivocation by intention occurs when a person uses a word in its literal sense, on the one hand, and in a figurative sense, on the other hand. When the Russian Emperor was called the father of his people, the word “father” was being used in a figurative sense. The Emperor stood in relation to the Russian people in a manner that bore some comparison to the relationships between a father, who is a biological progenitor, and his progeny or offspring.

Words used in a metaphorical sense are usually words that are used equivocally by intention. Every metaphor is a condensed simile. To call the Russian Emperor the father of the Russian people is to say that he stands in relation to them like a biological progenitor to his progeny.

I have already said that we speak analogically in a manner that is neither univocal nor equivocal—using a word in neither the same sense, nor in different senses, when the senses are related (as in equivocation by intention) or unrelated (as in equivocation by chance). Yet at first glance what I am calling analogical speech looks somewhat like equivocation by chance. It is certainly not univocal speech.

The example that Aristotle gives for speech that is analogical involves the same word applied to objects of the different senses. Take the word “sharp.” We speak of a sharp point when the sharpness is in the sphere of touch. We speak of a sharp sound when the sharpness is in the auditory field; and of a sharp light when it is in the visual field.

In these three cases, we are using the word “sharp” in a manner that appears to be equivocal; but it is not, because the different senses of “sharp” when we use the word in these three ways derive from the differences between the subjects of which we predicate “sharp.” In addition—and this is the distinguishing mark of the analogical—we find it impossible to say what it is that is common to these three uses of the predicate “sharp.” We cannot specify what the sharpness is that makes it proper to speak of a sharp point, a sharp sound, and a sharp light.

The importance of this point should be clear to persons who speak of God and human beings and other of God’s creatures. We recognize that we are not using the word “exists” in the same sense when we say that we and other things exist and that God exists; but we cannot specify the difference between God’s mode of being and our mode of being except negatively. We know it is not the same.

We know that in the sense in which God exists, we do not exist; and in the sense in which we exist, God does not exist. The word “exists” is used analogically of God and God’s creatures. Similarly, the word “knows” is used analogically when we say that we know and that God knows. The difference between the two meanings of a word used analogically is like the difference between two words being used equivocally, but here the equivocation is not by intention nor is it by chance. It is derived from the difference between the two subjects to which the word is applied.

Turning from theology to philosophy, we use the word “generalization” analogically, if we speak of the kind of generalization that occurs in the sphere of animal or perceptual intelligence and in the sphere of human or conceptual intelligence. If brute animals do not have intellects and human beings do, then if we ever use the word “concept” for what is in the minds of animals and what is in the human mind, when both animals and human beings solve problems by thinking, we are using the words “concept” and “thinking” neither univocally nor equivocally, but analogically.

ANALYTIC AND SYNTHETIC JUDGMENTS Modern philosophy is suffering from the mistake that Immanuel Kant made in his distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments. According to Kant, an analytical judgment is a verbal tautology. It is uninstructive. We learn nothing from it, for the predicate is contained in the meaning of the subject. To assert that lead does not conduct electricity merely asserts that it is true that lead is classified as nonconductive metal.

In contrast to all such verbal tautologies or noninstructive propositions are judgments of the mind that are based on empirical evidence. Here, according to our experience, we affirm a proposition in which the predicate is independent of its subject. An example of a synthetic judgment is that hot bodies cool off by radiating their heat to the environment.

To assert that all judgments are either analytic or synthetic is to deny that there are any judgments that are neither analytic nor synthetic in Kant’s sense of the term. These are judgments in which both the subject and the predicate are indefinable terms, such as “whole” and “part.” You cannot say what a whole is without mentioning parts; nor can you say what a part is without mentioning wholes. The foregoing statement introduces us to the meaning of self-evident propositions.

A self-evident proposition is one in which the opposite is unthinkable. We cannot think that the whole is less than any one of its parts or that a part is greater than the whole to which it belongs. The proposition that the whole is greater than any of its parts is certainly instructive as well as being self-evidently true.

There are not many propositions that are self-evidently true. Among self-evident truths, the most important is the law of contradiction: nothing can be and not-be at the same time. Nothing can have an attribute and not have it at one and the same time.

The philosophical and scientific thought of Western civilization is governed by this rule of noncontradiction, a rule that instructs us that we ought never to affirm two propositions that cannot both be true. If truth is the agreement of the mind with reality—with the way things are—then the logical rule prohibiting contradiction reflects the self-evident, ontological principle that contradictions do not exist in reality.

Mystics, Western as well as Eastern, may embrace contradictions and even think that the ultimate nature of reality is replete with contradictions. The Zen Buddhist Master teaches his disciples how to give contradictory answers to the questions he asks. But if the Zen Master is flying from Tokyo to Kyoto he will be willing to fly only in a plane whose aeronautical engineering is based on physical science that is governed by the principle of noncontradiction.

ANARCHY What most people have in mind when they use the word “anarchist” is the image of a bomb-throwing revolutionist. They do not know about the existence of philosophical anarchists.

The philosophical anarchist is one who mistakenly believes that human beings can live together peacefully and harmoniously without government. He denies the necessity and indispensability of government for the existence of society.

The following example will show why this is an error. Let us suppose three scientists are going off to explore the jungles of the Amazon River. Before they depart, they must agree on some principles that they unanimously accept as governing their decisions while they remain together. Either they must appoint one of them as their leader and agre...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Preface
• The Terms
• Appendix I: Notes for Continued Discussion
• Appendix II: Cited Works by Mortimer Adler
• Index