Constructive realism is a branch of philosophy , specifically the philosophy of science . It was developed in the late 1980s by Friedrich Wallner also Fritz Wallner in Vienna. In his paper abstract on constructive realism, Wallner describes it as follows Traditional convictions regarding science such as universalism, necessity and eternal validity are currently in doubt. Relativism seems to destroy scientific claims to rationality. This paper shows a way to keep the traditional convictions of scientific knowledge while acknowledging relativism. With reference to the practicing scientist, we replace descriptivism with constructivism we modify relative validity with the claim to understanding and, we offer methodological strategies for acquiring understanding. These strategies we call strangification, which means taking a scientific proposition system out of its context and putting it in another context. We can thus see the implicit presuppositions of the given proposition system by means of the problems arising out of the application of this procedure. Such a change in the understanding of science holds important consequences. External links http www.bu.edu wcp Papers Scie ScieWall.htm top A complete description of constructive realism http homepage.univie.ac.at friedrich.wallner Home page of Friedrich Wallner philosophy stub Category Constructivism Category Realism Category Philosophy of science de Konstruktiver Realismus fi Konstruktiivinen realismi ... more details
, Nebraska stands next to a table. etc ... A type of simple descriptivism was originally formulated ... the sentence. Notwithstanding these differences however, descriptivism and the descriptive theory ... descriptivism. Consider the name Aristotle and the descriptions the greatest student of Plato , the founder ... of language to abandon descriptive theories of proper names. Revival of descriptivism and two ... that all of this is false. Since, under traditional descriptivism, these descriptions are what .... But under Katz s version of descriptivism, the sense of Jonah contains no information derived from ... for this approach are rather different from those that inspired other forms of descriptivism, however ... more details
Language Log is a collaborative language blog maintained by University of Pennsylvania phonetics phonetician Mark Liberman . The site is updated daily at the whims of the contributors, and most of the posts are on language use in the media and popular culture. Google search engine Google search results are frequently used as a Text corpus corpus to test hypotheses about language. Other popular topics are the linguistic descriptivism descriptivism linguistic prescriptivism prescriptivism debate and linguistics related news items. The site has also occasionally held contests in which visitors attempt to identify an obscure language. Language Log is now one of the most popular linguistics blogs. Citation needed date October 2009 As of 2007 8 , it receives an average of about 9,500 visits per day. ref http www.sitemeter.com ?a stats&s sm7languagelog Language Log s Sitemeter stats ref In May 2006, a compilation of posts by Liberman and Geoffrey Pullum was published in book form under the title Far from the Madding Gerund and Other Dispatches from Language Log . Specialties Language Log was started on July 28, 2003 by Liberman and Pullum, a linguist then at the University of California, Santa Cruz Pullum has since moved to the University of Edinburgh . One early post about a woman who wrote egg corns instead of acorn s led to the coinage of the word eggcorn to refer to a type of sporadic or idiosyncratic re analysis. Another post about commonly recycled phrases in newspaper articles, e.g. If Eskimo s have N words for snow, X surely have Y words for Z , resulted in the coinage of the word snowclone . Both phenomena are common topics at the blog, as is linguification , or the use of metaphors that turn factual observations into claims about language many of which are blatantly false . The blog has a number of recurring themes, including the difficulty of transcribing spoken utterances accurately, misuse or misunderstanding of linguistic science in the media, criticism of th ... more details
of descriptions that an object uniquely satisfies. Kripke rejects both these kinds of descriptivism. He gives several examples purporting to render descriptivism implausible as a theory of how names ... more details
Other uses Philosophy sidebar Ethics, also known as moral philosophy , is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality that is, concepts such as good and evil , right and wrong, virtue and vice , justice , etc. Major branches of ethics include Meta ethics , about the theoretical meaning and reference of moral propositions and how their truth value s if any may be determined Normative ethics , about the practical means of determining a moral course of action Applied ethics , about how moral outcomes can be achieved in specific situations Moral psychology , about how moral capacity or moral agency develops and what its nature is Descriptive ethics , about what moral values people actually abide by. Within each of these branches are many different schools of thought and still further sub fields of study. Meta ethics Main Meta ethics Meta ethics is the branch of ethics that seeks to understand the nature of ethical properties, and ethical statements, attitudes, and judgments. Meta ethics as a discipline gained attention with George Edward Moore G.E. Moore s famous work Principia Ethica from 1903 in which Moore first addressed what he referred to as the naturalistic fallacy . Moore s rebuttal of naturalistic ethics, his Open Question Argument sparked an interest within the analytic branch of western philosophy to concern oneself with second order questions about ethics specifically the semantics , epistemology and ontology of ethics. The semantics of ethics divides naturally into descriptivism and non descriptivism. Descriptivism holds that ethical language including ethical commands and duties is a subdivision of descriptive language and has meaning in virtue of the same kind of properties as descriptive propositions. Non descriptivism contends that ethical propositions are irreducible in the sense that their meaning cannot be explicated sufficiently in terms of descriptive truth conditions. Correspondingly, the epistemology of ethics divides into Cogn ... more details
In modal logic and the philosophy of language , a term is said to be a rigid designator when it designates picks out, denotes, refers to the same thing in all possible worlds in which that thing exists and does not designate anything else in those possible worlds in which that thing does not exist. A designator is persistently rigid if it designates the same thing in every possible world in which that thing exists and designates nothing in all other possible worlds. A designator is obstinately rigid if it designates the same thing in every possible world, period, whether or not that thing exists in that world. Rigid designators are contrasted with non rigid or flaccid designator s , which may designate different things in different possible worlds. Proper Names and Definite Descriptions The notion of rigid designation was first introduced by Saul Kripke in the lectures that became Naming and Necessity , in the course of his argument against descriptivism descriptivist theories of reference, building on the work of Ruth Barcan Marcus . At the time of Kripke s lectures, the dominant theories of reference in Analytic philosophy associated with the theories of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell held that the meaning of sentences involving proper names could be given by substituting a contextually appropriate description for the name. Russell, for example, famously held ref Russell, Bertrand, Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description, The Problems of Philosophy , chapter 5 http www.ditext.com russell rus5.html online text . ref that someone who had never met Otto von Bismarck might know of him as the first Chancellor of the German Empire , and if so, his statement that say Bismarck was a ruthless politician should be understood to mean The first Chancellor of the German Empire was a ruthless politician which could in turn be analysed into a series of more basic statements according to the method Russell introduced in his theory of definite descriptions . Kri ... more details
RAS syndrome short for redundant acronym syndrome syndrome sic is the redundant use of one or more of the words that make up an acronym or initialism with the abbreviation itself, thus in effect repeating one or more words. Usage commentators consider such redundant acronyms poor style and an error to be avoided in writing, though they are common in speech. ref name Garner Bryan A. Garner Garner, Bryan A . 2000 The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style. Oxford and New York Oxford University Press. ref The degree to which there is a need to avoid them depends on one s balance point of linguistic prescription prescriptivism ideas about how language should be used, and how much particular prescriptions matter in life versus linguistic description descriptivism the realities of how natural language is used . In writing intended to persuade, impress, or avoid criticism, the writer is wise to avoid them. The term RAS syndrome is itself intentionally redundant, ref Cite news last Clothier first Gary date 8 November 2006 title Ask Mr. Know It All newspaper The York Dispatch ref ref name Newman Cite news last Newman first Stanley date December 20, 2008 url http www2.canada.com windsorstar news readersatplay story.html?id ea936740 3787 49be 813d 937b3a63eb74 title Sushi by any other name newspaper Windsor Star page G4 ref and thus is an example of self referential humor . Origin The term RAS syndrome was coined in 2001 by the New Scientist magazine. ref name Newman ref cite news title Feedback newspaper New Scientist issue 2285 date 2001 04 07 page 108 url http www.newscientist.com article mg17022858.000 format fee required accessdate 2006 12 08 ref The similar term PNS syndrome which expands to P IN n umber s yndrome syndrome, and further to p ersonal i dentification n umber number syndrome syndrome was coined by Usenet users ref Usenet alt.possessive.its.has.no.apostrophe ref before the coining of RAS Syndrome . ref cite web url http groups.google.com group uk.net.n ... more details
in their rejection of descriptivism. But I was never an emotivist, though I have often been called one. But unlike most of their opponents I saw that it was their irrationalism, not their non descriptivism, which was mistaken. So my main task was to find a rationalist kind of non descriptivism, and this led ... more details
A number of English language English words derived from Latin ending in us preserve their Latin plural form, replacing the us suffix with i. Within the context of English plural s, this morphology is irregular, although common. Many words that end in us do not habitually pluralize with i. Sometimes this is due to etymology i.e. despite their us ending, they are not Latin words, or in Latin would have pluralized differently and sometimes due simply to habit e.g. campus , plural campuses , anus , plural anuses . The tendency to regularize does not always go in this direction, however. The us i inflection is sufficiently common in English that words that historically have not been pluralized that way but seem to fit the pattern are sometimes given an i ending. Sometimes this pattern becomes widely accepted e.g. Cactus cactus , ubiquitously pluralized as cacti , and in other instances would sound unambiguously incorrect to a native speaker e.g. ani versus anuses . In between these two extremes are words that, despite not supporting a latin plural on etymological grounds, are nonetheless widely pluralized with i and as such are not immediately heard as incorrect by a substantial number of native speakers e.g. octopi . The question of whether or not these alternative plural forms can be considered incorrect or not touches on the on going Linguistic prescription prescriptivism vs Linguistic description descriptivism debate in linguistics and language education . History The us singular form with an i plural comes from Latin. However, the morphology of Latin nouns is complex and not every Latin word ending in us pluralized in i. The ones that did largely were from the Latin declension Second declension o second declension grammatical gender masculine . Briefly, a declension is the way a word changes to reflect its grammatical relationship with the verb. Remenants of the Old English declension system can be seen in words like I , me , we and us in modern English, as well as ... more details
On Denoting , written by Bertrand Russell , is one of the most significant and influential philosophy philosophical essays of the 20th century. It was published in the philosophy journal Mind journal Mind in 1905 then reprinted, in both a special 2005 anniversary issue of the same journal and in Russell s Logic and Knowledge , 1956. In it, Russell introduces definite and indefinite descriptions, formulates descriptivist theory of names descriptivism with regard to proper names, and characterizes proper names as disguised or abbreviated definite descriptions . In the 1920s, Frank P. Ramsey referred to the essay as that paradigm of philosophy. ref citation title The foundations of mathematics and other logical essays author Frank Plumpton Ramsey, Richard Bevan Braithwaite editor Richard Bevan Braithwaite publisher Routledge year 2001 isbn 9780415225465 page 263 accessdate 2010 08 28 url http books.google.co.uk books?id 1st 3kYOEPQC&pg PA263&dq 22that paradigm of philosophy 22 ramsey&hl en&ei 82R4TOCcMsySswa88rCyDQ&sa X&oi book result&ct result&resnum 1&ved 0CCcQ6AEwAA v onepage&q&f false ref ref Citaton title Talking philosophy a wordbook author A. W. Sparkes publisher Taylor & Francis year 1991 isbn 9780415042239 page 199 accessdate 2010 08 28 url http books.google.co.uk books?id 2NkOAAAAQAAJ&pg PA119&dq 22that paradigm of philosophy 22 ramsey&hl en&ei 82R4TOCcMsySswa88rCyDQ&sa X&oi book result&ct result&resnum 3&ved 0CDUQ6AEwAg v onepage&q 22that 20paradigm 20of 20philosophy 22 20ramsey&f false ref More recently, a contributor to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy singled it out as the paradigm of philosophy , and called it a work of tremendous insight that has provoked discussion and debate among philosophers of language and linguists for over a century. ref Ludlow, Peter, Descriptions , The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Summer 2005 Edition , Edward N. Zalta ed. , URL http plato.stanford.edu archives sum2005 entries descriptions ref The denoting phrase R ... more details
uniquely satisfies. Kripke rejects both these kinds of descriptivism. He gives several examples purporting to render Descriptivist theory of names descriptivism implausible as a theory of how names ... more details
names. Such descriptivism was criticized in Saul Kripke s Naming and Necessity . Kripke put forth ... against Frege Russell descriptivism. ref name SK Mind and language Innateness and learning Some ... more details
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