Terminology Tuesday: Anthropomorphism
The human tendency to see other things as analogous to ourselves. Thus people sometimes see their pets in overly anthropomorphic terms. In philosophy of religion, the term anthropo
Terminology Tuesday: Chain of being
A key element in the worldview of many ancient, medieval and early modern philosophers, who assumed a principle of plenitude in which beings of every possible type must be actualiz
Terminology Tuesday: Ontology
The study of being. Ontology is often considered to be equivalent to metaphysics, but some thinkers, such as Martin Heidegger, have viewed ontology as a quest to understand the mea
Terminology Tuesday: Functionalism
The view that mental states are not defined by their intrinsic qualities but by their relations to other states, particularly causal relations. A functionalist would not thereby de
Terminology Tuesday: Model
A representation—which may consist of a physical structure or collection of objects, a picture, or a collection of abstract entities—that has a systematic relation to that whic