The Oxford Companion to Philosophy Part 96 pptx

Timothy J. McGrew, David Shier, and Harry S. Silverstein, ‘The
Two-envelope Paradox Resolved’, Analysis (1995).
tychism: see Peirce.
type: see token.
types, theory of. Let r be the set of all sets that are not
members of themselves: {x|x
∉ x}. It follows that r ∈ r if
and only if r
∉ r, a contradiction. This is known as *Rus-
sell’s paradox. A similar result can be obtained from the
property of those properties that do not hold of them-
selves (i.e. R(P) if and only if ¬P(P)). Type theory avoids
these consequences by segregating properties, relations,
and sets into ‘types’. Type 0 items are ordinary objects,
which are not properties. Type 1 items are properties of
ordinary objects; type 2 items are properties of type 1
properties, etc. ‘Personhood’ is type 1, and ‘holding of
exactly six objects’ is type 2. Things get more complex
when relations are considered. There is, for example, a
type of relations between type 1 properties and ordinary
objects. In ‘ramified type theory’, types are further segre-
gated into levels. Type 1, level 0 properties are those that
can be defined with reference to type 0 items (ordinary
objects) alone. Type 1, level 1 properties are those that can
be defined with reference to type 0 items and type 1, level
0 properties, etc. In general, each property must be
defined with reference to only properties of lower type
and properties of its type but lower level. ‘Simple type the-
ory’ does not employ levels, and allows unrestricted, or
impredicative, definitions. s.s.
*higher-order logic; vicious circle; reducibility, axiom

of; logic, history of.
Allen Hazen, ‘Predicative Logics’, in D. Gabbay and F. Guenthner
(eds.), Handbook of Philosophical Logic, i (Dordrecht, 1983).
930 two-envelope paradox
ugliness. The property of having aesthetic disvalue,
eliciting not indifference but discomfort or misery. Modes
of ugliness in art correspond to the various modes
of beauty or aesthetic value. If the mode is formal, ugliness
is the ill-formed or deformed, misshapen, ill-placed. If
the mode is expressive, the ugly may be the sentimental,
the mawkish, clichéd, sickening: or it may arise from
uncontrolled emotion—bombastic, ranting, or hysterical.
If considered from a representational point of view,
the objects represented may be judged unrelievedly
disagreeable or painful to contemplate. Nevertheless,
art can make use of the ugly; and the question must always
be asked: Does this prima facie ugly work possess any
justifying, compensating features—perhaps social or
moral point? Or has this ugly component been trans-
formed—by the medium—by the context—to be an
ingredient in a new whole with positive aesthetic value?
r.w.h.
*beauty.
There is a dearth of recent substantial discussions. One locus clas-
sicus is Plotinus, Enneads, i. 6. See also Bernard Bosanquet, Three
Lectures on Aesthetics (London, 1915).
Unamuno, Miguel de (1865–1936). Multi-faceted Spanish
writer (novelist, poet, essayist) and professor (philologist).
Deeply concerned about the meaning of life and death,
which inspired all his writings, and dissatisfied by the scep-

tical answers of science and reason as regards eternal life,
Unamuno argued for an existential attitude—the ‘tragic
sense of life’—consisting in acting as if human life has in
fact a transcendent significance, even given our uncer-
tainty that it has.
Unamuno found this attitude exemplified in lonely
heroes such as Don Quixote and Jesus: men who, despite
their respective folly and doubts (or maybe because of
them), carried out their missions, thus redeeming them-
selves and others. This attitude has a clear religious
dimension, closer to Protestant spirituality than to Span-
ish orthodox Catholicism. In fact, some of Unamuno’s
works were included in the Index, until the Second Vati-
can Council. a.gom.
R. R. Ellis, The Tragic Pursuit of Being: Unamuno and Sartre
(Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1988).
uncertainty principle. Also called the indeterminacy
principle, it is based on the orthodox (‘Copenhagen’)
interpretation of a set of mathematical inequalities
entailed by *quantum mechanics, called uncertainty rela-
tions. Roughly, these put a fundamental limit on the accur-
acy with which one can simultaneously predict the values
of certain pairs of physical magnitudes (termed ‘incom-
patible’), such as the position and momentum of a parti-
cle. More precisely, if one can predict that a particle’s
position will (most probably) be found on measurement
to fall within some narrow range of values, then accuracy
in predicting its momentum to fall within a similarly nar-
row range must be sacrificed, and vice versa. Orthodoxy
interprets this as more than just a limitation on the statis-

tical spread of measurement results, but as a principle gov-
erning what can be said about a single particle. Heisenberg
mainly argued that the limitation is epistemic, preventing
the simultaneous determination of a particle’s position
and momentum (and so forever blocking the possibility of
predicting its future behaviour); while Bohr argued that
the limitation is also ontic, rendering inapplicable the clas-
sical concepts of ‘position’ and ‘momentum’ to a particle.
r.cli.
M. Jammer, ‘The Indeterminacy Relations’, in The Philosophy of
Quantum Mechanics: The Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics in
Historical Perspective (New York, 1974).
unconscious and subconscious mind. Although Freud
claimed to have discovered the unconscious mind, there
is little doubt that the view that there are aspects of our
mental life to which we are not privy was widely avail
able throughout the nineteenth century. Anticipations
are to be found in Leibniz, Schelling, and Nietzsche.
Freud’s own preference was for the term ‘unconscious’
rather than ‘subconscious’, which was also widely used,
on the grounds that the latter term encourages the equa-
tion of the psychical with the conscious. His conception
of the unconscious allows that we may possess wishes
which may be inaccessible to us. Freud believed that we
need assistance from *psychoanalysis to recover them.
r.a.s.
H. F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious (New York,
1970).
U
undecidability. Term not only used in the philosophy of

mathematics but also deployed by Jacques Derrida and
those who have adopted his heterodox procedures in the
deconstructive reading of philosophical and literary texts.
Here it signals the impossibility of deciding between dis-
crepant (often contradictory) orders of meaning, as for
instance between the constative and performative, the lit-
eral and metaphoric, or the overt and the latent orders of
sense. c.n.
*deconstruction; différance; logocentrism; decidability.
Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, tr. Alan Bass (Chicago,
1982).
underdetermination. The problem of underdetermination
concerns the relationship between *theory (scientific the-
ory, or any generalization) and the *empirical data. For
any given theory, the evidence will never determine the
choice between that theory and some rival theory. The
problem then is to show how theory choice can ever be
rational. r.l
e p.
*induction; translation, indeterminacy of.
W. H. Newton-Smith, The Rationality of Science (London,
1981).
understanding. What it is about humans, uniquely so far
as is known, that enables us to understand other minds, do
mathematics and science, cheat evolution by manipulat-
ing our environment, and speculate about itself in
philosophy. Philosophers debate about the limits of
understanding—for instance, how could we know either
that there are or that there are not things for ever beyond
our grasp? But it is easier to be amazed at its scope. Why

should an average mammal on a peripheral planet be able
to fathom the nature of preceding creatures millions of
years back, the interior of stars, the laws of nature, the
early moments of the whole universe? That is far in excess
of what we need in order to get by, as the other animals
(who do not reciprocate our interest in them) get by. The
most astounding thing in the world, it may seem, is that
we can understand it and the creatures within it. So much
understood so recently. Yet the brains of Stone Age people
were as capacious as ours. I wonder if they felt the same
awe. j.e.r.s.
*thinking; belief; cognition; wisdom.
John Leslie, Universes (London, 1989), e.g. ch. 5.
L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford, 1953), sects.
143–242.
underworld of philosophy: see philosophy, world and
underworld.
undistributed middle. It was a rule of traditional logic
that the middle term of a valid *syllogism (the term com-
mon to the premisses) must be distributed in at least one
of its occurrences: not meeting this requirement was the
fallacy of undistributed middle. (*Distribution of terms.)
On this view
All who train regularly are fit
All Olympic athletes are fit
Therefore, all who train regularly are Olympic
athletes
is invalid because the middle term (‘those who are fit’) is in
both instances the predicate of a universal affirmative
(*logic, traditional) and therefore undistributed. The

uneasy wording of the rule, which permits the middle
term to be distributed either once or twice, reflects weak-
nesses in the standard doctrine of distribution. c.w.
J. N. Keynes, Formal Logic, 4th edn. (London, 1906), 288–94.
unhappy consciousness: see alienation; Feuerbach.
uniformity of nature. Newton stated that certain qual-
ities (such as inertia and impenetrability) ‘which are found
to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experience,
are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies
whatsoever’. Such an inference must be based, Mill said,
on the ‘ultimate major premise’ that ‘the course of nature
is uniform’. Taking that to mean that ‘whatever is true in
any one case, is true in all cases of a certain description’,
Mill thought that ‘the only difficulty is, to find what
description’. But any doubts about the truth of such gen-
eralizations are not settled by invoking as an assumption
the alleged ‘uniformity of nature’: without the relevant
descriptions the principle is empty, while with them it says
no more than the generalizations themselves. m.c.
*grue; induction.
E. Nagel, The Structure of Science (London, 1961).
union theory. The union theory concerns the relation
between mental events and neural events, and their com-
bined causal efficacy. It holds that all types of mental event
are nomically correlated with types of neural event, that
the correlation is most likely to be that of one type of men-
tal event with one of many types of neural event, and that
these ‘psychoneural’ correlates are pairs. The last idea is
the most distinctive and original component of the the-
ory. Psychoneural pairs are thought to function as a causal

unit, in other words as a single cause and effect of things,
rather than being separable into individual causes and
effects. The principal recommendation of the theory is
that it allows for the irreducibility of the mental while
avoiding *epiphenomenalism. p.j.p.n.
*consciousness, its irreducibility.
T. Honderich, A Theory of Determinism (Oxford, 1988), chs. 2
and 3.
unity of science. The unity of science, in its traditional
positivistic formulation, is the view that all science is
reducible to physics, in that lawful relations for any sci-
ence can be derived in an appropriate way from the laws of
physics. Alternatively, the unity of science might be
understood as a methodological constraint on scientific-
theory formation, where reduction to physics plays a
932 undecidability
regulatory role in scientific practice. Many philosophers
(e.g. Fodor) argue that the special sciences, such as
psychology, are legitimate even though they cannot in
principle be so reduced. m.b.
*reductionism.
A classical statement is R. Carnap, The Unity of Science, tr. Max
Black (London, 1934). Cf. J. Fodor, The Language of Thought (Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1979), ch. 1.
universal grammar. A set of principles true of all human
languages and thought to be mentally represented in the
minds of language-users. The principles characterize the
genetically determined initial state of the language fac-
ulty—a biological endowment, specific to the human
species, which provides the innate conditions for the

growth of linguistic knowledge in the individual. Grammars
for particular languages result from the exposure of the
language faculty to the available linguistic data. b.c.s.
*grammar.
N. Chomsky, ‘On Cognitive Structures and their Development’,
in M. Piattelli-Palmarini (ed.), Language and Learning: The
Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky (London, 1980).
V. Cook, Chomsky’s Universal Grammar (Oxford, 1988).
universalizability. A judgement about an individual
instance of a certain kind is universalizable if it applies also
to every relevantly similar instance of that kind. An
assumption of universalizability underlies appeals to the
*golden rule (in ethics), the uniformity of nature (in sci-
ence), equality before the law (in jurisprudence), logical
form (in deductive proof), reasonableness (in common-
sense inference), etc. In sum, all arguments about individ-
ual things ought to be universalizable. l.j.c.
R. M. Hare, Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method and Point (Oxford,
1981), 107–29.
universalizability, moral. The concept of *universaliz-
ability has been thought by some philosophers to provide
a rational basis for moral principles of impartiality and
justice. It is suggested that, if I maintain that I ought to act
in a certain way towards others, the universalizability of
‘ought’ requires me to accept that others ought to act in
the same way towards me. This then commits me, it is
said, to accepting only those ‘ought’ judgements which
give the same consideration to others’ interests as to
my own.
Critics have retorted that this is an attempt to build too

much on the purely formal requirement of consistency. I
can be a consistent egoist; if I think that I ought to pursue
my own interests, universalizability commits me only to
accepting that others ought also to pursue their own inter-
ests. And why should I not accept this? r.j.n.
R. M. Hare, Freedom and Reason (Oxford, 1963).
universal proposition. In traditional logic propositions
construed as having the form ‘All S are P’ or ‘No S are P’
(which implies ‘All S are not P’) were called universal and
contrasted with the particular forms ‘Some S are P’ and
‘Some Sare not P’. In *predicate calculus, propositions like
‘All men are mortal’ are represented as having the form
‘For all x: if x is S, x is P’, which may be symbolized as
∀x (Sx → Px). c.w.
P. F. Strawson, Introduction to Logical Theory (London, 1952),
chs. 6 and 7.
universal quantifier: see quantifier.
universals. Universals are the supposed referents of gen-
eral terms like ‘red’, ‘table’, and ‘tree’, understood as
entities distinct from any of the particular *things describ-
able by those terms. But why should we suppose that such
entities exist, and what must be their nature if they do?
One traditional argument for their existence, traceable to
Plato, is that they are needed to explain why all and only
the particular things correctly describable as red, say, are
indeed correctly describable as such. Surely all these dis-
tinct particular things must have something identifiable in
common in order to be legitimately classified alike?—and
that which is common to all and only red things is pre-
cisely the universal red. Red things are all red by virtue of

their relationship to this one universal, according to trad-
itional ‘realism’. As to the nature of this relationship and
the nature of universals themselves, however, realists are
divided. ‘Platonists’ hold that the universal red has a non-
spatio-temporal existence distinct and separable from all
particular red things, which need not even exist in order
for that universal to exist. ‘Aristotelians’ hold, conversely,
that the universal red only exists inseparably from the exist-
ence of particular red things. But the Platonic view creates
difficulties concerning the relationship between particular
red things and the universal red, while the Aristotelian
view seems to render the sense in which universals are
‘real’ somewhat tenuous. Furthermore, the argument just
mentioned for the existence of universals is not entirely
convincing. ‘Conceptualism’ holds that our classification
of particulars under general terms is a product of our selec-
tive human interests rather than a reflection of meta-
physical truth, while *‘nominalism’ holds that resem-
blances between particulars are sufficient to justify our
application of the same general term to them without
appeal to any additional entity.
However, the failure of one traditional argument for
realism and internal difficulties in certain realist positions
do not suffice to undermine the realist case. In recent years
new arguments for realism have emerged which invoke
universals to explain the status of natural laws and causal
generalizations. Philosophers like D. M. Armstrong urge
that natural necessity is to be explained as a relationship
between universals, and that only by appeal to this notion
can the logical distinction between lawlike and accidental

generalizations be captured. On this view, it is not neces-
sary to suppose that every meaningful general term refers
to a real universal, since only those universals need be
admitted that play a role in scientific laws. Hence this view
need not be embarrassed by Wittgenstein’s observation
universals 933
that there are general terms like ‘game’ for which it seems
impossible to isolate any single feature common to all and
only the particulars to which it applies.
Another reason why a realist need not be totally undis-
criminating about general terms is that such terms clearly
fall into a number of distinct semantic categories, not all of
which equally invite a realist treatment. Thus, of the three
general terms mentioned at the outset—‘red’, ‘table’, and
‘tree’—only the latter two are *sortals, and of these only
the last is a natural-kind term. Sortals differ from general
terms like ‘red’ in that they convey not only a criterion of
application but also a criterion of identity for the particu-
lar things to which they apply. Since particulars cannot be
individuated at all save relative to an appropriate sortal
classification, it is arguable that realism with regard to par-
ticulars demands realism with regard to at least some uni-
versals, namely, those that are the putative referents of
bona fide natural kind terms. e.j.l.
*qualities; properties; properties, individual.
D. M. Armstrong, Universals and Scientific Realism (Cambridge,
1978).
M. J. Loux (ed.), Universals and Particulars (New York, 1970).
E. J. Lowe, Kinds of Being(Oxford, 1989).
universals, concrete: see concrete universals.

unlikely philosophical propositions. Perhaps most
philosophers are ready enough to make a list of these. Cer-
tainly in their talk they give evidence of having the mater-
ials ready to hand. Philosopher-editors, being accessories
to the publication of much that by their lights is unlikely to
be true, maybe even a thing or two that are just confused,
are readier to make a list. It may be a cri de cœur. Here is
mine.
1. Philosophy is one subject in which formal logic is funda-
mental. This book is a proof that philosophy is a family of
subjects, indeed an unruly one. In that family, as the book
also demonstrates, formal logic is neither father nor even
elder brother. (Maybe philosophical logic has more claim
to such a position, but still not a large claim.) How many
large philosophical problems have been solved or made
more tractable by formal logic? Have any? Why is there
no formal logic to speak of in the greatest works of
philosophy?
2. A service is done to students or other innocents, or to logic,
by those logicians who allow it to be thought that the ordinary ‘If
. . . then . . . ’ thoughts that we depend on in life and science some-
how come down to a thing, fundamental to a basic part of logic
and called a material implication, which by definition is true
except when its first part is true and its second part false. If you
are tempted to go along with the idea, reflect on ‘If Holly-
wood is in California, then Edinburgh is in Scotland.’ Do
not neglect, either, ‘If Edinburgh is in California, then
Aristotle was a photographer’.
3. Our own conscious thoughts and feelings are not different
from electrochemical events in our brains. They are nothing but

electrochemical events which are causally or logically related to
certain other things, notably what is called input and output.
This is the root proposition of functionalism, cognitive sci-
ence, and much psychologized and computerized philoso-
phy of mind in so far as it applies to us rather than
computers, Martians, or whatever else. If it is true, then
what we are most sure about does not exist.
4. If you and I both see the same copy of this book, there are
two objects of awareness in question—each of us is just aware of
a subjective thing, a ‘sense-datum’ or whatever. Great philoso-
phers have thought so. They have thought in this way
about the external world in general. If so, as far as percep-
tion goes, each of us is in a kind of perpetual solitary con-
finement. No books, either. There's got to be something
wrong with that, doesn't there, even if perceptual con-
sciousness like the rest of consciousness somehow has a
subjective side?
5. The truth of a statement about the world, say about the
weight of this book, does not consist in the statement’s corres-
ponding to actual things, but in some quite different relation,
maybe one of coherence with other statements. If so, whatever
the attractions of anti-realism for mathematics and logical
systems, the world is as incidental to truth as it is to con-
sistent imagining. Nor, by the way, can difficulties in get-
ting clear about the general relation between language
and the world, or the mistake of talking about facts rather
than things, reduce us to the deflationary policy of saying
‘ “Snow is white” is true if and only if snow is white’, and a
like thing about any other proposition—and saying no
more than that.

6. ‘In the possible world where I’m wearing brown shoes and
a hat . . . ’ can mean something other than and grander than ‘In
this world, if I were wearing brown shoes and a hat . . . ’. Some
who want to give a helping hand to modal logic think so,
and some others, a lot more, mystify the impressionable
by joining into the talk. Conditional statements, and
notably the counterfactual ones, aren’t easy to explain,
but we can get somewhere without the science fiction.
7. An effect is not something that had to happen or was neces-
sitated, but just an event which was preceded by something
necessary to it, something without which the event wouldn’t
have happened. If so, we can say our choices and decisions
are effects without getting worried about whether we
have free will. But effects aren’t what we thought they
were, which is things that actually have explanations.
8. An effect by itself, as distinct from a thought of it in advance
or earlier similar effects or anything else, sometimes explains
why its cause happened. This, the ancient and wonderful
idea of teleological or functional explanation, is some-
times veiled by technicalities, sometimes turns up in
Marxist reflections on base and superstructure, and is
sometimes discerned in biology. The idea is aided by the
example, about which it is a good idea to think again, that
birds have hollow bones because that enables them to fly
better.
9.Moral judgements, say the judgement ‘Socialism is morally
right’, are not a matter of our disputable attitudes or inclin-
ations, but are like ‘That rose is red’, which, although it is some-
how dependent on our perceptual apparatus, is definitely true or
934 universals

false in the plain sense. This, too good to be true, has stolen
the name of moral realism. Maybe moral judgements can
be rooted in real truths of human nature. That is a differ-
ent realism, less dramatic but more reassuring.
10. There are moral reasons for actions that do not rest on
consequences of those actions. So consequentialism as it is called
is a mistake, a low one. The idea is edifying but surely it can't
be right. A moral reason, like any reason, is a kind of desire
that an action is to satisfy. How could there be such a
desire without reference to consequences of or in the
action? How could the reason ‘He’s my son’ be such? Sup-
posedly non-consequentialist reasons are about somehow
self-serving consequences, aren't they?
11. To argue for punishment by saying, in one way or
another, that it is deserved or is a retribution is to give some rea-
son for it other than the disagreeable one that it satisfies griev-
ances—desires for the distress of offenders. What is offered
instead in analysis or explanation of arguments of desert
or retribution is usually high-minded, but not such as to
provide an actual reason.
12. There is some principle of justice or equality or well-
being, or some other principle of political morality, that should
have priority over this: that we must seek by rational means to
make well-off those who are badly off, one of our means being the
reducing of demands for rewards by larger contributors to soci-
ety. I don’t think we’ll find anything closer to true than the
Principle of Humanity. In liberalism or anything else.
13. Philosophy, to come back to that whole subject, has less to
contribute to the understanding of realities of one kind and
another than science, literature, economics, history, or nar-

rower specialities. You can think instead that there is a div-
ision of labour in thinking about consciousness, the world
of which Quantum Theory as interpreted is a theory,
time, free will, genes, terrorism, and more. There are sci-
entific and other disasters in those neighbourhoods.
Decent philosophy's contribution, as essential as any, is a
general logic—a clarity, consistency and completeness.
We can't get along without it. There should be a book,
too, on why science regularly gets philosophical subjects
so wrong.
Why are philosophers not detained by the certainty
that their published or unpublished lists of unlikely philo-
sophical propositions have no chance of being widely
accepted as unlikely? (There is some philosopher, decent
enough and paid for his work, whose list contains exactly
the contradictories of the propositions above.) Does this
show that philosophy is the particular line of life whose
questions are hardest, and that surviving in its resulting cli-
mate of uncertainty brings out bumptiousness? t.h.
*Honderich.
unsaturated expression. An expression that needs sup-
plementation before it has what Frege calls a complete
sense; an expression that refers to functions, not objects.
Frege views an expression such as ‘Caesar conquered
Gaul’ as analysable into two sorts of constituents, one
complete in itself and the other unsaturated. ‘Caesar’ and
‘Gaul’ are of the first sort; these refer to objects. ‘——
conquered ——’ is of the second sort; it must have its
blanks ‘saturated’ before it can express a complete sense.
Other examples of unsaturated expressions are ‘the father

of ——’ and ‘either —— or ——’. Observe that the notion
of unsaturated expression is quite different from Russell’s
notion of *incomplete symbol. Frege explains the notion
in, among other places, ‘Function and Concept’, in
Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy
(Oxford, 1984). a.gup.
Upanishads. Theoretical sections of the orally transmit-
ted corpus of sacred Sanskrit literature called ‘Veda’ and
traditionally believed to have no beginning in time. The
Upanishads were compiled in India 400 to 500 years before
Socrates. These parts of the Vedic corpus were so named
because pupils had to sit (s
.
ad) down (ni) close (upa) to their
teacher to learn them. There are nearly 100 of them, many
of which are apocryphal. The twelve principal ones
include texts called ‘The Lord’, ‘By Whom?’, ‘Questions’,
‘The Big Forest’, etc. Commenting upon these major
Upanishads was essential for a philosopher starting a new
school of *Veda¯nta. The Upanishads use the forms of dia-
logue, anecdote, parable, and allegory to make their point.
For example, we find a dialogue in the court of philoso-
pher-king Janaka between Ya¯jñavalkya and a woman
philosopher Ga¯rgı¯ about the phenomenology of dreams
and deep sleep; the anecdotes of the candid son of a prosti-
tute who was treated as belonging to the highest caste of
priests because of his love of truth, and of the young lad
Nachiketas walking up to the palace of Death to ask about
the afterlife; a parable of ten people who could never find
the tenth because no one counted himself; the allegory of

transcendental and empirical selves as two birds on a
branch, one watching the other nibble at objects of experi-
ence. There are also pieces of straightforward reasoning
like ‘Fear and constraint come from a second, therefore to
realize that the self alone is real without a second, is to be
fearless and free’.
By distinguishing pleasure from the good, the Upani-
shads claim self-knowledge to be the ultimate good. The
notion of the Self or A
¯
tman is analysed in much detail,
with accounts like that of the ‘five sheaths’ of food, breath,
mind, intellect, and bliss being the progressively subtler
individuators of consciousness yielding progressively
deeper notions of a person. True self-knowledge is
attained by philosophical reflection supported by greed-
less performance of social duties. A virtue ethics enjoining
truthfulness, universal love, self-control, and inward-
ization of the senses is developed with a liberating union
of the self with the world-spirit Brahman, as the final goal
of life.
The notion of a world-spirit is arrived at by ignoring
structural and functional differences and reducing effects
to their material causes. The appeal here is to intuitions
like ‘What is the nail-clipper except the steel?’ Such reduc-
tive logic is then applied to resolve all objects into inten-
tional transformations of the knowing consciousness.
Upanishads 935
This witnessing consciousness, like the watching bird
mentioned in the allegory above, can never really be made

an object. Since the real is that which stays the same
through change and cannot be thought away, the undif-
ferentiated unlimited pure Consciousness is arrived at as
the stuff of which both we and the world are made.
This Supreme Reality is also pure Being and pure Bliss.
It is essentially formless and indescribable in words, but
when personalized it is called God or the Lord. At its
monistic height, meditation on this first philosophy shows
that I am Brahman, which is all there is. Wittgenstein’s
remark that ‘the spirit of the snake . . . is your spirit for it is
only from yourself that you are acquainted with spirit at
all’ (Notebooks, 85e) reveals the impact of the Upanishads,
which trickled down to him through Schopenhauer, who
admits to being deeply influenced by them. a.c.
*Indian philosophy.
Paul Deussen, Philosophy of the Upanishads (New York, 1966).
use and meaning. What gives words their *meaning?
According to Wittgenstein, in his later writings, what
breathes life into dead signs is their use. His thesis that
meaning is use replaces views of word meaning as ideas in
the minds of speakers, or as the things words stand for. But
what is the relationship between meaning and use? Not
every way of using a word is part of its meaning. There are
correct and incorrect uses of words. Wittgenstein saw the
correct use of a word as governed by a rule, and supposed
that it was the existence of common rules of use for words
that guaranteed them a meaning among a linguistic com-
munity. On this account, meaning does not precede use
but is constituted by rule-governed use of a word. Equally,
meaning cannot transcend use: there can be no more to

the meaning of an expression than can be discerned by
observing the use that speakers make of it. Thus Wittgen-
stein treats meaning as a public not a private matter. How-
ever, problems remain. Rules extend beyond any instance
we reach, but how can their indefinite application be
extrapolated from current use? Furthermore, rules sug-
gest a normative dimension to meaning, but which fea-
tures of use reveal these linguistic norms? These problems
remain matters of intense philosophical scrutiny. b.c.s.
P. Horwich, Meaning (Oxford, 2001).
use and mention. A distinction between talk about the
world by means of a word and talk about that word. For
example, in ‘Numbers are abstract objects’ the word
‘number’ is used, but in ‘ “Number” has six letters’ the
word ‘number’ is mentioned. To mark the distinction, it is
customary to place a word in quotation marks in cases
where it is being mentioned. As a test for the distinction,
translate the sentence embedding the word into another
language. If the word is mentioned, it is appropriate to
leave it untranslated; if used, inappropriate.
It is important to observe the distinction to avoid con-
fusion between ascribing properties to language and
ascribing properties to non-linguistic reality. s.p.
*formal and material mode.
utilitarianism is an approach to morality that treats pleas-
ure or desire-satisfaction as the sole element in human
good and that regards the morality of actions as entirely
dependent on consequences or results for human (or
sentient) well-being. Utilitarianism has its origins in
late seventeenth-century Britain, received its ‘classical’

formulations in the work of Bentham, Mill, and Sidgwick,
and has continued to have a prominent place in the Eng-
lish-speaking philosophical world up to the present day.
Bentham and most subsequent utilitarians discard reli-
gious traditions and social conventions in favour of treat-
ing human *well-being or *happiness as the touchstone
for all moral evaluation; and in the nineteenth century, in
Britain and elsewhere, the doctrine played an important
role in democratic and humane political reforms.
Present-day utilitarianism is best understood by break-
ing it down into its separable elements, by focusing on cer-
tain formal and controversial aspects of utilitarian
thought, and by indicating important variations and dis-
agreements within utilitarianism itself. In its earliest and
best-known examples, utilitarianism is a hedonistic doc-
trine: it treats pleasure and pain as the sole good and bad
things in human lives. This *ethical hedonism was origin-
ally tied to *psychological hedonism about human motiv-
ation. Bentham assumed that all humans are basically and
exclusively motivated by the desire to gain *pleasure and
avoid *pain, but it is possible to maintain ethical hedonism
while rejecting, as most present utilitarians are inclined to
do, psychological hedonism. However, certain later and
contemporary versions of utilitarianism broaden the
notion of ethical hedonism so that human or personal
good is understood to be constituted by whatever satisfies
people’s desires or preferences or makes people happy.
Utilitarians nowadays also typically accept some form
of outcome utilitarianism (Amartya Sen’s term), according
to which, roughly, the goodness of any state of affairs is

solely a matter of how much overall (or average) well-
being people (or sentient beings generally) are enjoying in
that state of affairs. But the major ethical element in most
contemporary utilitarianism is direct *consequentialism, the
view that the rightness and goodness of any action,
motive, or political institution depends solely on the
goodness of the overall state of affairs consequent upon it
(this state of affairs includes the act or motive itself). Com-
bining these elements (and adding the assumption that
morality requires us to do our best), most current direct (or
act-) utilitarians want to say that an act is morally obliga-
tory if and only if it produces a greater balance of pleasure
over pain, or of desire satisfaction, than any alternative
action available to the agent. An act is then morally right,
or not wrong, if it produces as great a balance of pleasure
over pain as any alternative action open to the agent. (An
act may be right but not obligatory if it is tied for first place
with one or more alternatives.) These general claims
about rightness and obligation are often referred to as
(forms of) the principle of *utility.
936 Upanishads
jeremy bentham did not invent the principle of utility, but
he devised the first comprehensive theory of utilitarianism
and urged its practical application.
john stuart mill, famous first for his system of logic,
then for his moral philosophy, devoted himself largely to
political reform after the death of his wife Harriet, who had
shared his work and influenced him greatly.
mary wollstonecraft was one of the ‘English Jacobins’;
social reformers of the revolutionary era at the end of the

eighteenth century. She envisioned a new social order
which would free every person to develop her or his own
capabilities.
edmund burke, aesthetician, parliamentarian, Conserva-
tive icon, scourge of the French Revolutionaries, advocate
of independence for Britain’s overseas territories.
british political thinkers
On a direct utilitarian view, moral evaluation is a form
of instrumental evaluation: acts are not right or obligatory
because of their inherent character, their underlying
motives, or their relation to divine or social dictates, but
because of how much overall human or sentient well-
being they produce. Moreover, if one thinks one should
produce the best state of affairs one can, but believes, for
example, that equality (rather than sheer quantity) of well-
being or (unobserved) natural beauty makes a fundamen-
tal difference to the goodness of states of affairs or
situations, then one may be a consequentialist but one is
not a utilitarian. (According to an older, now discarded
usage, such a position would be characterized as ‘ideal
utilitarianism’.)
Some utilitarians reject direct consequentialism in
favour of ‘rule-consequentialism’, according to which the
rightness of an action depends on the consequences not of
the action itself, but of various sets of rules. Such indirect
consequentialism says, for example, that an act is right if it
accords with a set of rules whose being accepted, or fol-
lowed, would have consequences as good as those that
would result from any other set of rules’ being accepted,
or followed. Act-consequentialism, by contrast, evaluates

actions directly in terms of their own consequences. The
chief advantage of rule-consequentialism is that its evalu-
ations of actions accord better with ordinary moral beliefs
and intuitions than familiar forms of act-consequentialism
do. For direct (or act-) consequentialism, any means can
be justified by a good-enough end, and if framing an inno-
cent person will almost certainly prevent race riots and
many consequent fatalities, act-utilitarianism and most
other forms of direct consequentialism tell us it is (or may
well be) our obligation to frame the innocent person. But
this seems morally unacceptable to most people, and rule-
consequentialism can avoid such a result by claiming that
any accepted set of social rules that permitted framing
innocent people would be more destructive of social har-
mony and well-being than could possibly be made up for
by the occasional prevention of a race riot, and then saying
that the act of framing an innocent person is wrong
because it fails to accord with that set of social rules that
would best produce overall social harmony and well-
being. However, rule-consequentialism has been criti-
cized on the theoretical grounds that it offers no adequate
or consistent reason why rules should be evaluated by
their consequences but acts should not be, and most pre-
sent-day utilitarians accept direct consequentialism, while
at the same time in one way or another attempting to
reduce or play down the importance of the divergence
between utilitarian moral views and common-sense
moral thinking.
By contrast with ordinary or common-sense morality,
utilitarianism is an impartial or impersonal moral view.

Ordinarily, we think a person is morally entitled to favour
herself or her family (to some extent) over other people,
but direct (or act-) utilitarianism claims that our obliga-
tions depend on an impersonal assessment of the conse-
quences of our actions, and if we have a choice between
doing more for strangers or less for ourselves and/or our
friends and relations, then we must give preference to the
strangers. Ordinary morality is ‘agent-relative’ and allows
each person to favour those near and dear to him, but for
utilitarianism each person is fundamentally morally equal
to every other, and any favouritism must be justified by
overall good consequences for people generally. This
ends up making direct (or act-) utilitarianism a rather
demanding moral doctrine, and opponents of such utili-
tarianism often criticize it for being too demanding. But
this charge can be evaded or rendered less damaging if one
adopts a form of direct utilitarianism that doesn’t require
the production of as much good/pleasure as possible as a
condition of right action. Utilitarians must hold that pro-
ducing more good is always better, but Bentham (in his ear-
lier years), Karl Popper, and (more recently) Judith
Lichtenberg, Michael Slote, and Michael Stocker have all
formulated versions of act-utilitarianism allowing for an
act to count as morally (all) right if it produces enough on-
balance good/pleasure, even if the agent could have pro-
duced more on-balance good/pleasure. Such *‘satisficing’
utilitarianism allows for moral *supererogation and is
therefore less demanding than more standard optimiz-
ing/maximizing versions of act-utilitarianism. But recent
theorists such as Peter Railton, Samuel Scheffler, and

Shelly Kagan have questioned whether the charge of over-
demandingness really can be made to stick against standard
forms of act-utilitarianism (and act-consequentialism).
Ordinary morality is also agent-relative in a way not
mentioned above: it allows us to do to and against our-
selves what we are not morally permitted to do to and
against others. We are allowed to throw away our own
possessions, but not those of others, and negligent self-
damage is not criticized the way the negligent damaging
of others is. Utilitarianism allows of no such moral distinc-
tions. And, furthermore, in keeping with the justification
of means by ends, act-utilitarianism treats it as morally
permissible and even obligatory to kill or injure people in
order to prevent other people from killing or injuring
some greater number of people (or in order simply to pre-
vent a greater number of deaths overall). Common sense,
again, balks at such an instrumental view of morality, but
although utilitarians have been much criticized for this
aspect of their doctrine, defenders of common-sense (or of
Kantian prohibitions on using people as means) have not
found it easy to pinpoint what is morally indefensible in
utilitarian instrumentalism. The utilitarian can say, for
example, that although she sometimes recommends
using people as means to the general or overall (greatest)
welfare of human beings, such ‘using’ is not morally
objectionable because (unlike most ways people use other
people) it acknowledges the value of each individual
human and her happiness. The topic is a subject of continu-
ing philosophical debate.
The great strength of utilitarianism as an ethical theory

lies in its ability to replace the hodgepodge (and, arguably,
inconsistency) of our common-sense moral intuitions with
a unified system of thought that treats all moral questions
938 utilitarianism
in uniform fashion and in relation to an ideal, human
happiness or desire-satisfaction, that is both less obscure
and more attractive than most alternatives. m.s.
J. Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
(London, 1982).
S. Kagan, The Limits of Morality (Oxford, 1989).
J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism (1863).
H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th edn. (Chicago, 1962).
J. J. C. Smart and B. A. O. Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against
(Cambridge, 1973).
utility refers in philosophy to what is of use to human
beings (or sometimes, more generally, to all sentient crea-
tures). It therefore denotes what is good for humans, most
frequently welfare. Argued to be of fundamental import-
ance for ethics by Cicero and Hume, it was promoted by
Bentham as the sole end of right action; hence the doctrine
known as *utilitarianism. For Bentham utility meant
*happiness or *pleasure; a more particular sense which
has sometimes been preserved by later philosophers.
r.h.
R. D. Collison Black, ‘Utility’, in John Eatwell et al. (eds.), The New
Palgrave, iv (London, 1987).
utility, principle of: see greatest happiness principle;
utilitarianism.
utopianism. Critical and creative thinking projecting
alternative social worlds that would realize the best pos-

sible way of being, based on rational and moral principles,
accounts of human nature and history, or imagined tech-
nological possibilities. Utopian thinking invariably con-
tains criticism of the status quo. It aims to overcome social
*inequality, economic *exploitation, sexual repression,
and other possible forms of domination that make well-
being and happiness in this life impossible; death is thus
often seen as its critical limit. Utopian thought like Plato’s
Republic, Thomas More’s classic Utopia (1515–16),
Tommaso Campanella’s La Città del Sole (1623), and the
social utopianism of Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen,
concentrates on conceptions of an ideal commonwealth.
While both criticizing social life and aiming at new
forms of it, utopianism nevertheless attempts to transcend
the boundaries of so-called realistic and pragmatic consid-
erations. The tension thereby created between utopian
thought and social reality has led to harsh criticisms of its
fantastic character. The derivation of ‘utopia’ is Greek
words meaning ‘not-place’, and utopianism is generally
identified with unrealistic speculation, providing the
adjective ‘utopian’ with its everyday pejorative meaning.
While Marx and Engels, for example, emphasized uto-
pianism’s positive function of relativizing existing social
reality, they nevertheless criticized its lack of a thorough
comprehension and analysis of current society that alone
would make concrete political action possible. Thus
utopianism is rejected by Marxism not because of its
potential in alternative imaginative thinking but rather
because of its theoretical unconnectedness with the social
status quo.

Thinkers like Bloch and Marcuse, however, distinguish
between ‘abstract’ and ‘concrete’ utopias. The former are
mere dreams and fantasies, while the latter are based on
insights derived from critical social theory. Utopian
thought is seen as springing from the unconscious, whose
imaginative capacity confronts, challenges, surpasses, and
overrides conscious reality by means of projected
counter-pictures containing hopes, desires, and wishful
thinking. This utopian faculty, however, is only critical if
disconnected from existing *ideologies, and based on an
understanding of social totality and the means of realizing
better conditions of existence. As Mannheim points out,
utopian thought is directed toward change of existing
social structures while the function of ideologies is the
preservation of the status quo. Of course, utopias as pri-
vate or unrealizable fantasies may take on an ideological
function of preserving what is, while religious or ‘bour-
geois’ ideologies contain a utopian core by confronting
existing suffering and injustice with the ideal of paradisaic
or just forms of being.
Accordingly, utopianism is limited neither to a literary
genre nor to specific conceptions of the good life. It rather
plays a genuine role in relation to possible or intended
change in existing social conditions. To be sure, the iden-
tification of utopian thinking with socialism has often led
to an over-hasty dismissal of utopianism as such. Today,
for instance, post-Marxist social theory tries to use ‘the
utopia of an ideal communication community’ (Haber-
mas) merely as a ‘counterfactual’ standard to judge exist-
ing reality, while post-structuralist philosophers like

Foucault criticize even this ideal as ‘utopian’, describing
modern society as a dystopia of all-pervasive power rela-
tions. Social movements like *feminism, the civil rights
movement, and multiculturalism, however, seem to
require—and allow!—more concrete alternatives to the
existing state of affairs.
Concrete and responsible utopian thinking may thus be
an indispensable part of social criticism. First, the projec-
tion of alternative worlds helps to relativize the present; it
creates distance and estrangement from the realm of
assumed necessities of social life. Second, it explores con-
crete alternatives and realizable possibilities that could
lead to practicable changes and improvements. And third,
utopias seem indispensable for motivation. The sense of a
better, realizable state of affairs not only gives meaning
and significance to critical engagement, but also encour-
ages interest in and hope of achieving real change in polit-
ical action. h.h.k.
E. Bloch, The Principle of Hope (Oxford, 1986).
R. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia (Syracuse, NY, 1990).
K. Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (London, 1979).
utopianism 939