Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

GLOSSARY 393
deductivism:
definition, stipulative:
deism:
denomination, extrinsic:
determinism:
case: e.g. ‘if p, then q; therefore if not q, then not p’
is a deductive argument.
the thesis that the methods of science are deductive,
not inductive (see ‘induction’).
to be contrasted with a ‘descriptive’ definition, which
states how a term is actually used, and as such can be
true or false. Such definitions are to be found in
dictionaries; hence the alternative term ‘lexical
definitions’. A stipulative (or ‘prescriptive’)
definition, on the other hand, declares the utterer’s
intention to use words in a certain way, as when
Humpty Dumpty, in Lewis Carroll’s Through the
Looking Glass, uses the word ‘glory’ to mean ‘a nice
knock-down argument’. Although a stipulative
definition cannot be true or false, it can be assessed
in other ways: e.g. it can be enlightening, or merely
perverse.
the deist, unlike the atheist, believes in the existence
of one supreme being, creator of the world. So, too,
does the theist; but the deist differs from the theist in
that the theist accepts the idea of revelation. Many
deists also rejected the idea that God intervenes in the
workings of the created universe by means of
miracles.
a term of medieval logic used by Leibniz. Roughly
speaking, an extrinsic denomination is a relational
property of a thing, as opposed to an intrinsic
denomination which is a non-relational property. So,
for example, to say that Aristotle is learned is to state
an intrinsic denomination of Aristotle; to say that he
is more learned than Alexander the Great is to state
an extrinsic denomination of Aristotle.
a term covering a wide variety of views, which have
in common the thesis that every event or every state
of affairs belonging to a certain class is determined
by certain factors, in the sense that given these factors
the event must occur or the state of affairs must hold.
In the past (and particularly in the seventeenth
century) philosophers readily accepted the idea that
determinism held in the natural world; but many of
them were reluctant to believe that it also held in the
sphere of human actions. They believed that
(whatever might be the case in the natural world) the
will was free, in the sense that, whenever a human