phenomenalism
/fəˈnɒmɪn(ə)lɪz(ə)m/noun [mass noun] Philosophy
The doctrine that human knowledge is confined to or founded on the realities or appearances presented to the senses.Edwards' occasionalism, idealism, and mental phenomenalism provide a philosophical interpretation of God's absolute sovereignty: God is the only real cause and the only true substance....
- The movement of Ayer's own thought has been from phenomenalism to what he describes in his latest treatment of the topic as ‘a sophisticated form of realism’.
- This book, together with a paper entitled The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics published in the same year, represents an excursus by Russell into something like phenomenalism.
Derivatives
phenomenalist
- But these experiential regularities are object-dependent, whereas the phenomenalist needs object-independent regularities concerning experiences alone.
- In the next passages, she also reveals a phenomenalist view about the individuality of physical objects: their ‘being’ is based on appearances, and not anything intrinsic.
- Having made this return journey from a version of phenomenalism or something close to it, Russell reconsidered problems which he now felt had not been properly dealt with under his phenomenalist assumptions.
phenomenalistic
- The ontology is phenomenalistic in its leanings, though open to a more physicalistic interpretation.
- A few years later, Carnap realized that this thesis was untenable because a phenomenalistic language is insufficient to define physical concepts.