The Oxford Companion to Philosophy Part 21 pps

evidence suggests—the universe looks roughly the same
in all directions from any point of view, then it must be
either expanding or contracting. About the same time,
and using the same method (the Doppler effect) by which
we can tell whether an ambulance is moving towards or
away from us, namely from the pitch of its siren, Hubble
verified that distant galaxies are receding from the earth.
One might think Hubble’s observation suggests that the
focal point of the universe’s expansion must be some-
where near the earth, and therefore that the universe is not
the same from any point of view. But if the earth’s location
is like a point on a uniformly expanding sphere (say, an
inflating balloon), then from any other standpoint on the
sphereone would have to observe the very same expansion.
There are in fact three general relativistic scenarios
compatible with Hubble’s observation. The first extreme
is that the universe started expanding so slowly that at a
certain point in our future gravitational forces are going to
take over and cause it to collapse back on itself. The sec-
ond extreme is that the universe started out expanding so
quickly that gravitational forces will never hold it back and
it will go on expanding for ever. Finally, there is a middle
way: the universe started off with just enough expansion to
allow it to just escape eventual collapse. None of these sce-
narios has yet been totally ruled out (though, curiously,
something like the middle way looks to be the best candi-
date). But they all require that the universe began in a
highly compressed ‘big bang’ state following an initial sin-
gularity, i.e. a point at which physical laws break down.
All this has revived two old bones of contention:
whether the universe needs a creator, and whether its

unique features are evidence of design.
To avoid the need for divine intervention at the big
bang, some physicists modified general relativity to pro-
duce a ‘steady state’ model of the universe. In this model,
the universe has always existed, and new matter is continu-
ally being created to fill the gaps left behind by expanding
galaxies, ensuring that the overall matter density of the
universe remains constant. However, there are empirical
reasons for rejecting this model—not least, Penzias and
Wilson’s discovery that the earth is being showered from
all directions by microwave radiation as a by-product of
the big bang. Moreover, Hawking and Penrose proved
that, under minimal, very reasonable conditions (e.g. sup-
posing that matter is attractive), we should expect a big
bang singularity to exist in any classical relativistic model
of the universe. On the other hand, Hawking and Hartle
have recently found a quantum mechanical model of an
expanding space-time which doesn’t begin in a singularity,
and so no longer has any natural point through which a
creator could intervene.
As evidence of design, some point to things like the fact
that to avoid our universe collapsing back on itself in the
early stages of the big bang, yet prevent it from expanding
so fast that galaxy formation would have been impossible,
the rate of expansion at early instants needed to be ‘fine-
tuned’ to within one part in 10
55
. Others respond that many
causally disjoint universes actually exist, each initially
expanding at different rates (e.g. each could be a different

cycle in an infinite sequence of big bangs and big
crunches). With so many universes around, it would then
be no surprise to find ourselves in one of the very few hos-
pitable to life. r.cli.
*anthropic principle; cosmology and religious belief.
A. Grünbaum, ‘The Pseudo-Problem of Creation in Physical Cos-
mology’, Philosophy of Science (1989).
S. Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes
(London, 1988).
J. Leslie, Universes (London, 1989).
cosmology and religious belief. It is fundamental to
Christian belief that *God is held to exist in a cosmos-
transcending mode, however much he is seen also as
immanent in the world. God creates and continues to give
actuality to the world; otherwise it would lapse into non-
being. No rival cosmological principles or powers share
God’s dominion, his sovereignty over the universe.
The metaphysical difficulties attending that cosmo-
logical dimension have prompted its abandonment by
some religious writers; and Christian discourse may then
be taken to be essentially and solely moral (or existential)
discourse. The language of divine creation, command,
and judgement is understood as parable or myth, giving
imaginative vividness and urgency to a style of life centred
on neighbour-love and moral accountability. Such a view,
however, is not a clarification of Christian belief, but,
rather, a drastic revision.
Both types of religious orientation have their defenders
among philosophers of religion today: some having confi-
dence in reworkings of *cosmological and *design argu-

ments for a transcendent God; others developing
conceptions of religion as a ‘Way’, or a discipline of atten-
tion, imagination and will, with worthwhile moral and
aesthetic goals. r.w.h.
*cosmology; religion, history of the philosophy of; reli-
gion, problems of the philosophy of.
Richard M. Gale, On the Nature and Existence of God (Cambridge,
1991).
Germain Grisez, Beyond the New Theism (Notre Dame, Ind., 1975).
John Polkinghorne, Science and Creation (London, 1988).
could have done otherwise: see freedom and deter-
minism.
counselling, philosophical. The remedial use of philo-
sophical discussion (in a very wide sense of the term) to
help individuals reflect on their lives and deal with ‘per-
sonal problems’ such as relationship issues and career
dilemmas. As with other one-to-one psychotherapies, the
objects of the activity are to generate fees for the counsel-
lor and to alleviate the mental anxiety or intellectual
imbalance of the counselled. Modern (post-1980) coun-
selling thus differs from the *Socratic method, to which it
is sometimes compared, where the objective is the disin-
terested pursuit of truth and/or the exposure of simplistic
claims to have the truth. The saying of Epicurus, ‘Vain is
180 cosmology
the word of a philosopher which healeth not the sufferings
of man’, might seem to associate him with the interested
purposes of counselling, but *Epicureanism (like *Sto-
icism) was held to be a universal truth commended by
valid reasons and good evidence, not merely or mainly a

therapy for individuals. Objectives apart, a main question
about philosophical counselling is whether, and how, a
learnt, critical, academic discipline such as philosophy can
be used with integrity as a form of treatment for those
with no critical training in, or academic awareness of, the
issues. j.c.a.g.
Journal: Practical Philosophy.
counter-example, philosophy by. A strategy for showing
that a philosophical assertion is false and generating data
to be taken into account in working toward true assertions
on the topic. A counter-example to the claim that all A’s are
B’s is an example of an A that is not a B. A counter-example
to the claim that something is an A if and only if
it is a B is an example of an A that is not a B or an example
of a B that is not an A. When something is asserted to be
necessarily true, as in conceptual analysis, mere possibil-
ities may serve as counter-examples. Suppose it is claimed
that, necessarily, a case in which my arm rises is a case in
which I raise it if and only if the rising has my intention to
raise it as a cause. A logically possible scenario in which,
unbeknownst to me, mind-reading Martians respond to
my intention by levitating my arm is a counter-example.
Edmund Gettier produced well-known counter-examples
to the assertion that knowledge is to be analysed as justi-
fied, true belief. His examples feature people who have a
justified, true belief that p but do not know that p. Philoso-
phy by counter-example has both a negative side—show-
ing that a philosophical assertion is false—and a positive
side. Counter-examples to attempted conceptual analyses
typically motivate revised analyses designed to yield,

among other things, the correct pronouncement about
those examples. If a new counter-example falsifies a
revised analysis, the process typically continues. Some
philosophers attempt to motivate their own conceptual
analyses by starting with a suggestive analysis they deem
false and producing counter-examples to it and to revised
versions until they arrive at an analysis that seems to them
to be immune to counter-examples. Roderick Chisholm
was well known for this practice. In many of Plato’s dia-
logues, Socrates offers a counter-example to a character’s
attempted analysis of a concept (e.g. justice or know-
ledge), the analysis is revised to handle the counter-
example, Socrates produces a counter-example to the
revised analysis, and the process of revision and counter-
example continues until Socrates’ conversation partners
run out of steam. It has been said that philosophical con-
versations without counter-examples are like ham and
cheese omelettes without eggs. a.r.m.
R. Sorensen, Thought Experiments (Oxford, 1992).
counterfactuals. A counterfactual is a *conditional
whose antecedent is false (typically, in philosophical prac-
tice, known to be false). The term is usually reserved for
those (non-truth-functional) counterfactuals which are
not true in virtue simply of their antecedent’s falsity. Law-
like generalizations support counterfactuals: ‘Sugar dis-
solves in water’ licenses ‘If this sugar cube were dropped in
water it would dissolve’; but ‘All coins in my pocket are
silver’ does not yield ‘If this penny were in my pocket it
would be silver’. j.j.m.
N. Goodman, Fact, Fiction and Forecast, 4th edn. (Cambridge,

Mass., 1983).
counterpart theory. According to some theories of *pos-
sible worlds, an individual object which exists in this
world—the actual world—can be identical with one
which exists in another possible world. Such identity
across possible worlds, or transworld identity, is rejected
by counterpart theorists like David Lewis, who insist that
no individual can exist in more than one possible world.
For the counterpart theorist, each possible world is simply
an aggregate of spatio-temporally interrelated individuals,
and the individuals of one world stand in no spatial or tem-
poral relation to the individuals of any other. While a
transworld identity theorist would interpret a modal
proposition such as ‘Napoleon could have died young’ as
meaning ‘There is some possible world in which
Napoleon dies young’, the counterpart theorist interprets
it as meaning ‘There is some possible world in which a
counterpart of Napoleon dies young’. Napoleon’s coun-
terpart in another possible world, if he has one, is the indi-
vidual in that world that is most similar to Napoleon in
every relevant respect. e.j.l.
D. Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford, 1986).
counting. To determine the numerical size, or cardinality,
of any but a very small group of objects we count them.
Distinguish the process of counting from the product of
that process. The transitive process of counting consists in
establishing a one-to-one correspondence between the
members of an uttered sequence of number-words, ‘one,
two, three’, and the members of the set counted. The
product of the process is a cardinality judgement, ‘This set

has three members’, with the number of the set being the
number denoted by the last number-word uttered. For a
set with finitely many members, the order in which we
pair off the members with the number-words does not
affect the cardinality judgement. In intransitive counting,
we just say the number-words in their order, perhaps to
send us to sleep. a.d.o.
*numbers.
R. L. Goodstein, Essays in the Philosophy of Mathematics (Leicester,
1965), ch. 4.
count noun. Noun in connection with which ‘how many?’
is appropriate; alternatively, one that provides a principle
for counting items to which it applies. Thus defined, the
notion is not purely grammatical, but a rough test is
count noun 181
whether the noun takes plural forms and (in languages
that have one) the indefinite article. ‘Shoe’, ‘ship’, and
‘walrus’ are count nouns; ‘sand’, ‘butter’, ‘greed’, and
‘sunlight’ are not; nor are proper *names (as standardly
used, but cf. ‘some mute inglorious Milton’). Some deny
that ‘thing’ is a count noun, on the grounds that there is no
principle for counting things as such. Words with both
count-noun and non-count-noun senses include ‘wine’,
‘philosophy’, ‘misery’. p.j.m.
*sortal; number.
V. C. Chappell, ‘Stuff and Things’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society (1970–1).
courage. A *virtue indispensable to the good life: a readi-
ness to persist in a valued project, despite risk of harm,
injury, death, censure, or loss of personal standing. Given

the nature of the human life-world, few worthwhile enter-
prises are possible for those who will take no avoidable risks:
such a policy would entail (at the everyday level) no parent-
hood, little travel, few ventures in work or play; and (in
extreme situations) no standing up to tyranny, no speaking
out against injustice. For an act to be courageous, as distinct
from reckless, or stubborn, or obstinate, the risks must be
reasonable in relation to the goal, and the goal itself soundly
appraised. r.w.h.
Peter Geach, The Virtues (Cambridge, 1977).
Couturat, Louis (1868–1914). A French philosopher-
logician with a central interest in the concept of the infinite,
he was especially influenced by Leibniz. In his first major
work, L’Infinie mathématique (1896), he argued, against the
prevailing current, in support of the doctrine that there
must be an actual, and not a merely possible, infinite. Leib-
niz also had devoted himself to mathematical and philo-
sophical questions concerning the infinite, and Couturat’s
interest in Leibniz’s work resulted in publication by him of
an edition of a number of writings by Leibniz which had
until then lain unpublished. Leibniz had had an abiding
interest in the possibility of a universal language and, as
further indication of his debt to Leibniz, Couturat devoted
much of his short life to the development of such a lan-
guage. The monthly journal Progreso, which he founded,
was written in his language (Ido). The subsequent history
of Ido suggests, however, that the language, or at least its
supporters, did not have the resources to withstand the
hostility of the Esperanto lobby. a.bro.
*infinity.

André Lalande, ‘L’Œuvre de Louis Couturat’, Revue de méta-
physique (1914).
covering-law model. According to this model of scientific
*explanation, developed by Carl Hempel, a statement of
particular or general fact is explained if and only if it is
deduced from other statements which include at least one
general scientific law. For particular facts, this model
implies a symmetry between explanation and prediction:
if an event can be explained, it could have been predicted,
and vice versa. The covering-law model has close affinities
with David Hume’s equation of causation with *constant
conjunction, and accordingly faces similar difficulties
about causal priority and indeterministic causation. d.p.
*causality.
C. Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation (New York, 1965).
Craig’s theorem. A result in mathematical logic that has
been used to argue for the in-principle dispensability of
theoretical terms. Suppose T is a formal axiomatic theory
of the usual sort (for instance T may be a formalization of
physics). Suppose O is a restricted part of T’s vocabulary
(perhaps O contains just the ‘observational’ terms).
Craig’s theorem states that there is a formal axiomatic the-
ory T* such that (i) the axioms of T* contain only terms in
O and (ii) T and T* imply the same O-sentences, i.e. sen-
tences built out of terms in O. a.gup.
For a proof of the theorem see W. Craig, ‘On Axiomatizability
within a System’, Journal of Symbolic Logic (1953).
Cratylus ( fl. c.400 bc). A self-declared follower of Heracli-
tus, who maintained that all sensible particulars are chang-
ing in every respect all the time. According to Aristotle

(Metaphysics 987
a
32–
b
1), this doctrine influenced the
young Plato. Also according to Aristotle (Metaphysics
1010
a
10–15), Cratylus drew radical conclusions about the
impossibility of reference to things in the perceptible
world: he ‘rebuked Heraclitus for saying that you cannot
step twice into the same river; he himself [Cratylus]
thought you cannot even step into it once’; and ‘in the end
he thought that one should not say anything at all, and
merely moved his finger’. This position seems to be
included in the ‘Heraclitean’ doctrines of *‘flux’ which are
severely criticized by Plato in his dialogue Theaetetus. It is
this dialogue if anything which may give further insight
into Cratylus’ thinking. (Plato’s dialogue Cratylus repre-
sents Cratylus as developing a theory of the Greek
language, involving a system of non-conventional corres-
pondences between (parts of) words and the world.)
e.l.h.
M. Burnyeat, The Theaetetus of Plato, tr. M. J. Levett (Indiana-
polis, 1990), 7–65.
creation. The bringing of something into existence. In
Christian *cosmology creation often means the bringing
of the universe into existence ex nihilo by God. A contrast-
ing conception of a much longer ancestry and of a wider
spread in the world is the conception of creation as the

fashioning of the cosmos out of a pre-existing indetermin-
ate stuff by some divine being or principle. Apart from
other grave problems, it is not clear how ex nihilo creation
coheres with the principle ex nihilo nihil fit embraced
by most classical Christian philosophers. Nor are the
prospects of intelligibility rosy for the notion of a presum-
ably absolutely indeterminate and therefore unconceptu-
alizable original stuff. Such are some of the problems
created by creation. In recent times some fallacious
182 count noun
interpretations of the big bang theory have sought to
boost ex nihilo creation. k.w.
John Leslie (ed.), Physical Cosmology and Philosophy (New York,
1990), esp. Adolf Grünbaum, ‘The Pseudo-Problem of Cre-
ation in Physical Cosmology’ and Paul Davies, ‘What Caused
the Big Bang?’.
Creationism is the American Protestant movement that
takes the early chapters of Genesis as literally true
accounts of the origin of the universe, including our globe,
of the plants and animals that inhabit the earth, and of the
human species. Also known as fundamentalism, it cli-
maxed in 1925 in the so-called Scopes trial, when a young
Tennessee schoolteacher was tried and convicted for
teaching that there were humans before the time when
Adam is supposed to have lived. By the 1960s, the move-
ment adopted the term ‘Creation science’, arguing that
the best scientific evidence points to a young earth (about
6,000 years old), the miraculous arrival of all living beings,
and shortly thereafter a world-wide deluge (Noah’s
Flood). The most recent manifestation now goes under

the title of ‘Intelligent Design’. Its supporters argue that
the organic world shows irreducible complexity, and this
can be explained only by reference to causes out of the
usual course of nature—causes that imply intelligence.
Critics point out that Creationism judged as science is sim-
ply false. Physics points to a universe that is about 20
(American) billion years old and an earth that is 4½ billion
years old. Life has been evolving here on earth for nearly 4
billion years. As significantly, Creationism is bad religion.
Since the days of St Augustine (ad 400), it has been agreed
by mainstream Christians that Genesis is not a scientific
account of origins, and must be interpreted metaphor-
ically to understand the relationship of humans to their
Creator. m.r.
R. L. Numbers, The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creation-
ism (New York, 1992).
M. Ruse (ed.), But is it Science? The Philosophical Question in the
Creation/Evolution Controversy (Buffalo, 1988).
credo quia absurdum est
(‘I believe because it is absurd’).
This is an inexact quotation from Tertullian’s De carne
Christi, a diatribe against the gnostic Marcion, who had
sought to remove the apparent contradiction in believing
that God became man. Tertullian responded, angrily, that
the very impossibility of the incarnation was the mark of
divine agency.
The saying is often used, unsympathetically, to express
the idea that religious belief is irrational. g.b.m.
*reductio ad absurdum.
Bernard Williams, ‘Tertullian’s Paradox’, in A. Flew and A.

Maclntyre (eds.), New Essays in Philosophical Theology (New
York, 1955).
credo ut intelligam.
This means ‘I believe so that I may
understand’. The words come in the first chapter of
St Anselm’s Proslogion, the book which contains his famous
proof, commonly called *‘ontological’, of the existence of
God. Anselm adds that, without faith, understanding is
impossible. This doctrine has appealed to those, like
Karl Barth, who regard reason, unassisted by God’s grace,
as unable to discover anything about God. c.j.f.w.
Karl Barth, Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum (London, 1960).
Crescas, H
.
asdai ibn (1340–c.1412). Jewish philosopher,
born in Barcelona. Imprisoned for ‘desecrating the host’,
Crescas became a courtier in Aragon and was charged by
the Crown with rehabilitating Spanish Jewry after the
anti-Jewish riots of 1391, in which he lost his son. His Light
of the Lord (1410; printed in Ferrara, 1555) criticized Mai-
monidean *Aristotelianism, which seemed to shelter
would-be apostates: Maimonides wrongly treated belief
in God as a commandment; rather, it is presupposed by
any divine commandment. Aristotelian *cosmology, as
outlined by Maimonides, is systematically refuted. There
is no contradiction in the idea of empty space or an infinite
magnitude; all bodies have weight, not a natural tendency
upward or downward. Citing the Talmudic view that God
governs 18,000 worlds, Crescas suggests that worlds may
be infinite, each providing its own ‘centre’ for the heavi-

ness of falling objects. Many of these views are welcomed
by Spinoza. l.e.g.
Harry Wolfson, Crescas’ Critique of Aristotle (first pub. 1929; Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1971).
criterion. A standard by which to judge something; a fea-
ture of a thing by which it can be judged to be thus and so.
In the writings of the later Wittgenstein it is used as a
quasi-technical term. Typically, something counts as a cri-
terion for another thing if it is necessarily good evidence
for it. Unlike inductive evidence, criterial support is deter-
mined by convention and is partly constitutive of the
*meaning of the expression for whose application it is a
criterion. Unlike *entailment, criterial support is charac-
teristically defeasible. Wittgenstein argued that behav-
ioural expressions of the ‘inner’, e.g. groaning or crying
out in pain, are neither inductive evidence for the mental
(Cartesianism), nor do they entail the instantiation of the
relevant mental term (behaviourism), but are defeasible
criteria for its application. p.m.s.h.
P. M. S. Hacker, An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical
Investigations, iii: Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind (Oxford,
1990), 545–70.
Critical Realism. American Critical Realism was a collab-
orative effort to oppose American *New Realism. Critical
Realists opposed the New Realists’ epistemological
monism, the assertion of identity of the contents of con-
sciousness and its object. Critical Realists held the theory
of epistemological dualism, which maintained that con-
tent and object were ontologically different. They divided
on how to move from content to object without recourse

to a Lockean theory, which would lead to *idealism. Most
of the Critical Realists were also psychophysical dualists
and assigned a greater role to mental activity than was
Critical Realism 183
allowed by New Realism, which thereby showed itself
incapable of solving the problem of sensory illusion.
Beyond insisting upon the two dualisms the Critical Real-
ists could agree on little else, and the movement shortly
lost its coherence. The most important Critical Realists
were George Santayana, R. W. Sellars, and A. O. Lovejoy.
l.w.b.
Durant Drake, A. O. Lovejoy, et al., Essays in Critical Realism: A
Cooperative Study of the Problem of Knowledge (London, 1920).
A. O. Lovejoy, The Revolt against Dualism (La Salle, Ill., 1960).
critical theory: see Frankfurt School.
critical thinking: see informal logic.
Croatian philosophy. The earliest contact Croatians had
with philosophy was in the ninth century, with the stay of
the German philosopher-theologian Gottschalk at the
Court of the Croatian duke Trpimir, but the first figure of
importance was Hermann of Dalmatia (twelfth century),
pupil of Thierry de Chartres, translator of Euclid and of
Arabic astronomic treatises, and author of the work
De Essentiis.
The golden age of Croatian philosophy was the Renais-
sance and the Baroque period. At this time several
philosophers chose to present their opinions through
commentaries on Aristotle, notably Aristotelians like
Antun Medo (1530–1603), who inclined towards nominal-
ism, and Juraj of Dubrovnik (1579–1622), whose tone was

more conservative. Franjo Petric´ (1529–97) was a critic of
Aristotle, and the author of a Neoplatonic synthesis, Nova
de Universis Philosophia. Other philosophers of Neoplaton-
ist leanings were Frederik Grisogono (1472–1538), Nikola
Vito Gucˇetic´ (1549–1610), and Miho Monaldi (1540–92).
The early Protestant theologian and philosopher
Matija Vlacˇic´ Ilirik (1520–75) made an important contri-
bution to hermeneutics. Other distinguished names are
the theologians Benedikt Benkovic´ and Juraj Dragiscˇic´
(fifteenth century). Dragiscˇic´ was active in Florence; his
best-known work is a defence of Savonarola entitled
Prophetic Solutions. On the more scientific side were the
scientist-theologians M. A. de Dominis and F. Vrancˇic´
(sixteenth and seventeenth century), both working on
logic and methodology of science.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century in the
wave of Counter-Reformation, several important church
schools were founded (such as the Jesuit Academy in
Zagreb in 1606 and the Croatian Collegium in Vienna
1624) in which philosophy was taught and studied.
The most famous Croatian scientist and philosopher
was Ruœer Boscˇkovic´ (1711–87), whose dynamic theories
of space and matter inspired Faraday and Maxwell and
anticipated modern physics.
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
Croatian philosophers actively and swiftly followed philo-
sophical developments in Europe. Kant’s philosophy, for
example, was commented upon critically by J. B. Horvath
at the close of the eighteenth century, and approvingly by
Simeon C

ˇ
uccˇic´ in 1815. Andrija Dorotic´ (1764–1837), who
taught philosophy in Rome, wrote, among others, on
philosophical anthropology (Philosophicum Specimen de
Homine (1795) ) and on history of philosophy. Philosophy
of language was discussed by two Dalmatians, F. Bottura
(1779–1861) and J. Pulic´ (1816–83). The early reception of
mathematical logic (of Peano and Schröder) was in the
work of Albin Naœ (1866–1901). The best-known nine-
teenth-century author was the aesthetician Franjo
Markovic´ (1845–1914). His aesthetics was a pioneering
work in Croatian philosophy, although somewhat conser-
vative and over-formalistic when viewed in the European
context. For him, beauty resides in harmony or unity-in-
plurality, in the ‘final harmonic reconciliation which
resolves temporary historical dissonances’, and then in
clarity, vividness, and completeness. Djuro Arnold, a
pupil of H. Lotze, developed a metaphysical system of
spiritualist kind, inspired in part by Leibniz.
The most original philosopher in the first part of the
twentieth century was Pavao Vuk-Pavlovic´, the author of
Knowledge and the Theory of Knowledge (1926). He argued
against the possibility of epistemology: knowledge does
not form a unitary domain, since it encompasses both cog-
nitive processes, which are the province of psychology,
and the objects of cognition, which are the province of
metaphysics. Important historians of philosophy were
Albert Bazala and Vladimir Filipovic´. In the period after
the Second World War the most important group was the
Praxis group, or Zagreb school of Marxism (the late Gajo

Petrovic´, then Milan Kangrga, Branko Bosˇnjak, and
others), defending a humanistic Marxism with idealistic
and Heideggerian overtones. Analytical philosophy is
represented by the Zadar-Rijeka school and by Neven
Sesardic´, author of a book on physicalism. n.m.
*Serbian philosophy; Slovene philosophy.
The most authoritative sources are publications of the Depart-
ment for the History of Philosophy of the Institute for History at
Zagreb University, notably the review Prilozi za istrazˇivanje
hrvatske filozofske basˇ tine, which has begun to appear also in Eng-
lish and German versions. The Institute also publishes a series of
monographs (all in Croatian). A publication in English and Ger-
man is the issue on Croatian Philosophy of the review Synthesis
philosophica (1993).
Croce, Benedetto (1866–1952). Italian philosopher influ-
enced by Vico, Francesco de Sanctis, an Italian literary
critic and historian, and German idealism. Croce defines
art as intuizione, or lyrical intuition, the presentation of
images that are beautiful or well expressed. Image pro-
duction simpliciter is not necessarily the manufacture of
art: images assembled randomly, juxtaposed, copied, or
mechanically distorted may reveal an artist’s boredom or
competitiveness, but are not articulated, coherent unities
unless ‘animated’ by intense feeling. Nor are there art-
works in passionate artists’ heads which are not yet trans-
lated into external form. Artworks are individualized
universals: the poem is ‘born’ in these words, that rhythm.
‘Heroism and meditation on death are in the faultless
184 Critical Realism
blank-verse hendecasyllables of Foscolo.’ An artwork is an

aesthetic a priori synthesis of image and feeling in intu-
ition, so each artwork is original, untranslatable, and
unclassifiable in artistic genres and categories. But art-
works are not physical facts, nor are artists making asser-
tions about reality: Dante’s Francesca is immune to moral
censure, fire, and critical evaluation. b.t.
Benedetto Croce, Breviario di estetica: quattro lezioni, 12th edn.
(Bari, 1954).
crucial experiment. An *experiment whose result enables
us to decide between two opposing scientific theories. The
idea is that when two theories predict contrary results for
an experimental situation, the crucial experiment will
decide in favour of one theory against the other. According
to Francis Bacon such an experiment is sometimes decisive.
Popper argued that the most such an experiment can do is
falsify one of the theories. Others, e.g. Lakatos, held that
they are never, in themselves, finally decisive. o.r.j.
Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (London, 1963).
Cudworth, Ralph (1617–80). Belonged to the *Cambridge
Platonists, a school which drew on Plato to assert the pri-
macy of mind as ‘senior to the world, and the architect
thereof’. Cudworth’s major work was The True Intellectual
System of the Universe (1678). It was conceived as a refuta-
tion of Hobbes, but it incorporates many ideas which
are anticipations of twentieth-century philosophy. For
example, there is an interesting anticipation of one of G. E.
Moore’s (dubious) arguments for the autonomy of moral-
ity: ‘ . . . the nature of things [is] that which it is, and noth-
ing else . . . ’. In other words, any quality of an object or
situation is what it is by reason of its own nature—justice

is justice and whiteness is whiteness—and cannot be made
that quality by any command, even God’s. The general
thrust of Cudworth’s arguments is against any sort of
reductivism, whether of mind to brain or of morality to
command. r.s.d.
A. N. Prior, Logic and the Basis of Ethics (Oxford, 1956).
culture. The word may be used in a wide sense to describe
all aspects characteristic of a particular form of human life,
or in a narrow sense to denote only the system of values
implicit in it. Understanding culture in the wide sense is
one typical concern of historical, anthropological, and
sociological studies. The study of culture in the narrow
sense is the province of the humanities, whose aim is to
interpret and transmit to future generations the system of
values in terms of which participants in a *form of life find
meaning and purpose. In either of its senses, culture may
be thought of as a causal agent that affects the evolution-
ary process by uniquely human means. For it permits the
self-conscious evaluation of human possibilities in the
light of a system of values that reflect prevailing ideals
about what human life ought to be. Culture is thus an
indispensable device for increasing human control over
the direction in which our species changes. j.k.
C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 1973) explores
the implications of the evolutionary influence of culture.
E. Hatch, Theories of Man and Culture (New York, 1973) is a survey
of anthropological theories of culture.
R. Williams, Culture and Society (London, 1958) traces the develop-
ment of the idea of culture in the history of ideas.
curve-fitting problem. If finitely many data connecting

two quantities (e.g. temperature and pressure) are plotted
on a graph, infinitely many curves can be drawn passing
through them all, each representing a theory. Which
curve represents the best theory? The simplest? (But
which is the simplest?) Or perhaps a still simpler one pass-
ing near but not through them? The problem is of funda-
mental importance for any attempt to solve the problem
of *induction. a.r.l.
*grue.
D. Stalker (ed.), Grue! The New Riddle of Induction (Chicago, 1994).
custom: see convention.
cybernetics. The study of artificial or natural systems
which store information and use feedback mechanisms to
guide and control their behaviour. Such devices have a
fixed behavioural repertoire and thus lack the flexibility of
modern programmable *computers. The notion of inform-
ation is precisely mathematically specified in a branch of
electrical engineering called communication theory. The
notion of feedback has been studied widely in biology.
Both of these disciplines have studied such systems. The
interest for philosophers resides in the complex patterns of
behaviour that can emerge from compounds of such rela-
tively simple components. b.c.s.
K. Sayre, Cybernetics and the Philosophy of Mind (London, 1976).
Cynics. The major assault on ‘civilized values’ in the
ancient world, as being no true values, was mounted by
the Cynics. One of Socrates’ disciples, Antisthenes, was
later reckoned the first of that order, but it was Diogenes,
whom Plato described as Socrates run mad, that fixed the
type. Many a Cynic, literally ‘doggish’, was doubtless no

more than a tramp—but every age and nation but our
own has recognized that many a tramp may be a wander-
ing sage. Diogenes, formerly of Sinope but long resident in
Corinth (404–323 bc), is known, like other philosophers of
the time, through anecdotes: as that, asked by a momen-
tarily respectful Alexander what he, Alexander, could do
to help, he replied ‘Get out of my light’ (a request that
could have had a larger meaning than the literal). Like
*Pyrrho, he seems to have identified animals as admirable:
the mouse running unafraid about the house to find its
food. At first he kept a cup as well as a cloak and knapsack,
but seeing a boy drink from cupped hands, threw away the
cup. Being sold into slavery, he pointed out a potential
purchaser with the words, ‘Sell me to him: he needs a mas-
ter’, and devoted himself to bringing up his owner’s chil-
dren in good health and spirits. He is said eventually to
Cynics 185
have died from eating a raw octopus (in an attempt to
prove a point about the unnaturalness of cooking). Many
of the anecdotes concerning him are crude (found mastur-
bating in the market-place, he remarked that it was a pity
hunger could not be assuaged so easily). Many are by now
incomprehensible. What survives is the image of intransi-
gent devotion to the ‘natural life’. Amongst his followers
was Crates, who had abandoned a rich inheritance to live
the Cynic’s life (accompanied by a similarly devoted wife,
Hipparchia). He left his fortune in trust, with instructions
that if his sons were ordinary men, they should have the
money, and if they were philosophers, it should be given
to the people, as his sons would have no need of it. He

wrote popular verse extolling the natural life, devoid of
luxury, pride, or malice. A merchant from Citium in
Cyprus, *Zeno, happened on Xenophon’s account of
*Socrates at an Athenian bookstall and asked where he
could find such a man: the bookseller pointed to Crates,
and Zeno abandoned trade for good, eventually establish-
ing himself in the Painted Portico, the Stoa.
Those early *Stoics, his followers, were almost as
shameless as the Cynics, acknowledging no merit in trad-
itional distinctions and taboos. Why not have sex in tem-
ples, eat one’s dead parents, and reckon other people’s
property one’s own? The gods, after all, own everything;
friends have everything in common, and only the wise are
really friends of the gods: so the wise own what they
please, though being wise they will not use it to satisfy
escapable desires. Cynics put more of this into practice
than the Stoics did, and despised the cosmological and log-
ical enquiries of Stoics and the Academy. What we need to
know is only how to live here-now, reducing our wants to
what can easily be achieved, and entertaining no opinions
about how things happen. This antinomian detachment,
unexpectedly, has echoes in the sermons of another sect of
wanderers, whom we now identify as Christian mission-
aries. These would have seemed to most of their contem-
poraries just another sort of Cynic. There are indeed many
echoes of Cynic conversation in the Gospels (as one might
expect from natives of a heavily Hellenized Galilee). The
Cynics’ rule was, as it were, to take up their knapsack and
follow Heracles, identified as one who pursues the rugged
path of laborious virtue rather than of pleasure, despite

the shame that others see in this.
The history of the term since Hellenistic days is curious.
Diogenes and the rest may have despised the intellectual
and political currency of their day: Diogenes was indeed
said to have been exiled from Sinope for (literally) defac-
ing the coinage. But they were dedicated moralists, not
nihilists. ‘Cynic’ once meant ‘one who lives a dog’s life:
shamelessly, and without any settled home’. Now, draw-
ing on an anecdote of Diogenes’ searching in daylight with
a lantern for a genuinely ‘just’ man, cynics despise all
moral or altruistic claims. Some part of this derives from
the poor reputation of Cynics during the early centuries
ad, described by such satirists as Lucian. But the major
explanation lies in the natural assumption that those who
despise our values must despise all values. Cynics, like
early Christians, were reckoned misanthropes because
they preached against class division, greed, and enmity,
and showed their own vulgarity by not being as ashamed
as others thought they should be of their lack of honour.
s.r.l.c.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, tr. R. D. Hicks, Loeb
Classical Library (London, 1925).
F. Gerald Downing, Christ and the Cynics (Sheffield, 1988).
D. R. Dudley, A History of Cynicism (London, 1937).
F. Sayre, The Greek Cynics (Baltimore, 1948).
Cyrenaics: see Aristippus.
Czech philosophy. The first central European university,
which owed much to the Czech cultural tradition of orien-
tation to the West, was founded by the emperor Charles
IV in Prague in 1348. This French-educated sovereign

gathered around him representatives of early *humanism
whom the spiritual father of the school, Petrarch,
described as being as significant and gentle as if they had
been born in ancient Athens. One was the religious
reformer, a rector of the university, Jan Hus (1370/
1–1415). His injunction was ‘Seek the truth, love the truth,
nurture the truth, cling to the truth, defend the truth’.
The thought of Amos Komensky´—Comenius (1592–
1670)—the Czech counterpart of Descartes, tended to
humanism, toleration, non-violence, and a harmonic
coexistence with the order of nature. The outstanding fig-
ure of a later age was Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848), whose
work on logic later influenced Husserl, Tarski, and others.
Subsequently, followers of the German philosopher J. F.
Herbart came to the fore in Prague University. Although
tedious, the Herbartians made Czech thought more fac-
tual, sober, and precise, and prepared the ground for a
later *positivism.
It was T. G. Masaryk (1850–1937), the great Czech
philosopher and statesman, who played a key role in reori-
entating Czech thought away from German to English
and French models. ‘Courage and honesty’ was his life’s
model. He was elected the first president of the
Czechoslovak republic in 1918. Another remarkable fig-
ure of this period was Ladislav Klima (1878–1927), who
built on the thought of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and
anticipated both *existentialism and *phenomenology.
Russell and Bergson were the foreign philosophers most
translated into Czech at this time.
The pro-Western orientation was badly affected by the

Munich Agreement. In the struggle against the Nazi occu-
pation, earlier Russophile and pan- Slavic moods emerged
again. Many intellectuals spontaneously accepted Marx-
ism. Only after the Communist coup in 1948 were illu-
sions dispelled.
After the failed hopes of the Prague Spring of 1968,
there emerged a dissident movement bringing together
critical neo-Marxists with liberals and Christians. The
leading Czech philosopher of the twentieth century,
Jan Patocˇka (1907–77), Husserl’s pupil and himself a
186 Cynics
Czech philosophy 187
phenomenologist, became a leading personality in this
opposition. His various works, including The Natural
World as a Philosophical Problem, developed the thought of
his teacher in a distinctive way.
The Velvet Revolution in 1989 brought about a
renewal of free philosophical life. Formerly persecuted
dissidents returned to the university, as did exiles from
abroad. The new head of state, Vaclav Havel (1936– ),
was the second Czech philosopher-king. In the footsteps
of Masaryk he strove to base his policy consistently on
ethics. i.t.
E. Kohák, Jan Patocˇka (Chicago, 1989).
T. G. Masaryk, Masaryk on Thought and Life: Conversations
with Karel Capek, ed. and tr. M. and R. Weatherall (New York,
1971).
—— The Meaning of Czech History (Chapel Hill, NC, 1974).
d’Alembert, Jean le Rond (1717–83). Leading mathemat-
ician and co-editor, with Diderot, of the Encyclopédie.

D’Alembert composed the Discours préliminaire de l’Ency-
clopédie (1751) in which, influenced by Bacon, Newton,
and Locke, he defended the reliability of the senses, and
the basis they provided for all our knowledge. D’Alembert
was, however, strongly rationalist, making mathematics
the ideal form of knowledge, and physics the basic science.
He insisted that all truth was derivable from a single
ultimate principle, could we but know what it was.
Diderot, by contrast, took biology to be the basic science
and thought d’Alembert’s emphasis on mathematics out-
moded. These and personal differences led d’Alembert to
resign as an editor. Initially a deist, d’Alembert denied that
mere matter could produce intelligence; but he later
became an atheist and materialist. t.p.
*deism; materialism; Encyclopaedists.
J. d’Alembert, Discours préliminaire de l’Encyclopédie, ed.
P. Picavet (Paris, 1912)
Danish philosophy. The philosophical tradition in
Denmark has always been a part of mainstream European
philosophy. In the late thirteenth century Danish philoso-
phers co-operated in the revival of Aristotelian philosophy
in France, and contributed to the development of specula-
tive grammar. In the late sixteenth century Danish philoso-
phy and theology were influenced by Melanchthon’s
Aristotelian school of philosophy and that of its opponent
Ramism, the intellectual and pedagogical movement
inspired by the critique of Aristotelianism by the French
philosopher Petrus Ramus. The attempt to establish
Lutheran orthodoxy within the Danish Church led to the
elimination of Ramism, and to the dominance of *Aris-

totelianism, which, later in the seventeenth century, com-
bined with *Cartesianism.
In the first half of the eighteenth century the teaching of
philosophy in Denmark was strongly influenced by Wolf-
fianism, which was based on the German philosopher
Christian Wolff’s Leibnizian systematization of human
knowledge (in particular metaphysics, logic, and ethics).
Jens Kraft (1720–65), an undogmatic pupil of Wolff, tried
to give Newtonian physics a Leibnizian metaphysical
foundation, diverging from Wolff in rejecting the
possibility of metaphysical knowledge of individual sub-
stances, in that respect anticipating Kant.
Later in the century *Kantianism caused a considerable
debate among Danish intellectuals. The philosophers
Johannes Boye (1756–1830) and Niels Treschow (1751–
1833) both rejected Kant. Boye opposed Kantian ethics
from a position influenced by English and Scottish phil-
osophy, especially that of Adam Smith. Treschow, who
opposed Kantianism from a nominalist and empiricist
point of view, also rejected romantic philosophy and
Hegelianism, ultimately turning to a kind of *Neoplaton-
ism. The natural philosopher H. C. Ørsted (1777–1851)
was originally inspired by Kant. Later he turned to
Schelling. His brother, the lawyer A. S. Ørsted (1778–
1860), first subscribed to Kantian ethics, but was later con-
vinced by Fichte that the principles of ethics differ from
those of jurisprudence.
Intellectuals at the turn of the eighteenth century were
introduced to German romantic philosophy by the Nor-
wegian philosopher and naturalist H. Steffens (1773–

1845), but the next generation was turning to Hegelian-
ism. By about 1840 a whole generation of students was
under the spell of Hegelian speculative theology. How-
ever, one of their number, Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55),
soon reacted against the reduction of faith to knowledge
he found in Hegelianism. Kierkegaard’s impact on Danish
philosophy was mainly indirect. His stern interpretation
of Christianity, and the strictures he passed on the Danish
Church, caused several Danish philosophers to break with
Christianity. Thus Kierkegaard paved the way for the sep-
aration of theology and philosophy, and his irrationalism
may have indirectly promoted the influence of positivism
and naturalism in the late nineteenth century.
F. C. Sibbern (1785–1872) and P. M. Møller (1794–
1838), with whom Kierkegaard had studied philosophy,
had also attacked Hegelianism. They maintained that
philosophy always presupposes and is limited by human
existence, with all the latter’s uncertainties. Kierkegaard
repeats this in his dictum that human existence cannot be
confined within a philosophical system.
In about 1870 French *positivism and English *empiri-
cism were introduced by the literary critic George Brandes
(1842–1927) and the philosopher Harald Høffding
(1843–1931). Høffding’s broad humanistic and positivist
D
approach made a great impact on Danish culture in the
first half of the twentieth century. Høffding’s pupil the
logical positivist J. Jørgensen (1894–1969) maintained his
antimetaphysical, empiricist attitude. After the Second
World War academic philosophy took a linguistic turn,

while the philosophizing theologians and poets were
influenced by *existentialism, *phenomenology, and
German *hermeneutics. The nuclear physicist Niels
Bohr’s (1885–1962) philosophical thoughts have also left
their mark on Danish philosophy.
Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, a
broad spectrum of competing trends exists, as in other
European countries. Analytical philosophy still enjoys
some support in academic philosophy, but modern
French and German philosophy have made a strong
impact on both popular philosophical discussion and aca-
demic philosophy. Perhaps this ability and readiness to
receive and adopt philosophical movements from abroad
is the distinctive character of Danish philosophy. c.h.k.
*Norwegian philosophy; Swedish philosophy.
J. Hartnack, ‘Scandinavian Philosophy’, in P. Edwards (ed.),
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York, 1967).
S. E. Stybe, ‘Trends in Danish Philosophy’, Journal of the British
Society for Phenomenology (1973).
Dante Alighieri (1265–1321). Italian poet and political
philosopher famed for his visionary poem The Divine Com-
edy, a daunting moral philosophical apologetic of individ-
ual freedom and responsibility, and their divine retribution
and reward. Dante’s most rigorously argued treatise is
Monarchia, which proposes, in contrast to his contem-
porary Marsilius of Padua, a strong universal monarchy as
the only solution to the ruinous Italian factionalism of his
day. But Dante’s most original theories cleanly separate the
spheres of influence of Church and State. Human society
is directed to its end of happiness by two, not one, divinely

appointed authorities, Emperor and Pope, each independ-
ent of the other. The Church, by means of divine revela-
tion and the theological virtues, confers heavenly
beatitude on the immortal soul; but the State, by means of
(mainly moral) philosophy and the natural virtues, con-
fers earthly happiness on mankind. Temporal authority
descends directly from God to the Emperor, and is not
mediated by the Pope, as medieval canon lawyers fiercely
argued. l.p.
*Italian philosophy.
E. Gilson, Dante and Philosophy (London, 1948).
G. Holmes, Dante (Oxford, 1980).
Danto, Arthur C. (1924– ). American philosopher, at
Columbia University, who has contributed to many areas
of philosophy, including philosophy of history and episte-
mology; but, with the exception of a seminal paper
defining the idea of a *basic action (an action which we
perform without doing anything else to bring it about), his
major work has been in aesthetics, where he is largely
responsible for bringing the idea of the ‘artworld’ into
prominence. For Danto, works of *art are only recognized
and understood as such if they are located within a context
which constitutes the artworld, involving, inter alia, the
works of other artists and the practices of critics. Art is sur-
rounded by an ‘atmosphere of theory’. We cannot sep-
arate work and interpretation. r.a.s.
A. C. Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Cambridge,
Mass., 1981).
Darwinism. In a general sense the term Darwinism is
taken to refer to any view which sees the development of

species, including the human species, as the result of com-
petition among and within species, which weeds out the
less fit. The mechanism fuelling this process is that of the
selective retention by the environment of those individ-
uals who have particular genetically based features which
give them competitive advantage over their fellows. They
then transmit these features to their offspring. Since in
nature genetically based variations within species arise
randomly, Darwinism is a non-teleological theory of
order: the variations chosen by the environment and
which fit it were not designed to do so, nor did they arise
in direct response to environmental pressure (contra
Lamarck). The absence of *teleological explanation
means that it cannot be applied directly to developments in
human society or culture. a.o’h.
*evolution; social Darwinism.
J. Dupre, Darwin’s Legacy: What Evolution Means Today (Oxford,
2003).
Dasein
. German compound from da (‘there, here’) and
sein (‘to be’), thus literally ‘to be there’ and, as a substan-
tival infinitive, ‘being there’. In Kant, Hegel, etc. it is ‘deter-
minate being’, especially in space and time, but also the
‘existence’ of God. It often amounts to a person’s ‘life’. For
Nicolai Hartmann it is the Dasssein of something (‘the fact
that it is, its existence’), in contrast to its Sosein (‘essence,
being thus’). Heidegger uses it for ‘the entity which each
of us himself is’ and ‘the being of man’. He does so for sev-
eral reasons. Dasein is a neutral term: it does not commit
us to viewing man as a biological entity, as consciousness

(Bewusstsein, a formation parallel to Dasein), or as essen-
tially rational. Dasein has no determinate essence; its being
consists in its possibilities, in what it can make itself be: for
Dasein, ‘To be or not to be, that is the question’. It is ‘there’
in the world. But it is not confined to a particular place (or
time); it ‘transcends’ and is ‘there’ alongside others or past
events. It is the ‘there’ or locus of ‘being’: without Dasein
there would be beings, but no being as such. m.j.i.
*German philosophy.
M. Heidegger, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, tr.
M. Heim (Bloomington, Ind., 1984).
Davidson, Donald (1917–2003). American philosopher
who developed a widely admired and influential theory of
mind and language. Davidson’s deepest influence was
Davidson, Donald 189