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David Malet Armstrong AO FAHA (8 July 1926 – 13 May 2014), [4] often D. M. Armstrong, was an Australian philosopher.He is well known for his work on metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, and for his defence of a factualist ontology, a functionalist theory of the mind, an externalist epistemology, and a necessitarian conception of the laws of nature.
The instantiation principle or principle of instantiation or principle of exemplification is the concept in metaphysics and logic (first put forward by David Malet Armstrong) that there can be no uninstantiated or unexemplified properties (or universals). In other words, it is impossible for a property to exist which is not had by some object.
Existential nihilism is the philosophical theory that life has no objective meaning or purpose. [1] The inherent meaninglessness of life is largely explored in the philosophical school of existentialism, where one can potentially create their own subjective "meaning" or "purpose".
Realms of Being (1942) is the last major work by Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana.Along with Scepticism and Animal Faith and The Life of Reason, it is his most notable work; the first two works concentrate primarily on epistemology and ethics respectively, whereas Realms of Being is mainly a work in the field of ontology.
An example is the love-relation: if Dave loves Sara then it is possible but not necessary that Sara loves Dave. A special case of non-symmetric relations is asymmetric relations, which only go one way. An example is the relation being heavier than: if Ben is heavier than Nia then it is not possible at the same time that Nia is heavier than Ben ...
The first English use of the expression "meaning of life" appears in Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus (1833–1834), book II chapter IX, "The Everlasting Yea". [1]Our Life is compassed round with Necessity; yet is the meaning of Life itself no other than Freedom, than Voluntary Force: thus have we a warfare; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought battle.
Mereological nihilism entails the denial of what is called classical mereology, which is succinctly defined by philosopher Achille Varzi: [2]. Mereology (from the Greek μερος, 'part') is the theory of parthood relations: of the relations of part to whole and the relations of part to part within a whole.
For example, in contrast to the abstract meaning of the universal "dog", the referent "this dog" may mean a particular real life chihuahua. In both cases, the word is about something, but in the former it is about the class of dogs as generally understood, while in the latter it is about a very real and particular dog in the real world.