David Malet Armstrong

David Malet Armstrong

David M. Armstrong receiving his doctor of letters (h.c.) at Nottingham University, UK on 13th December 2007
Full name David Malet Armstrong
Born 8 July 1926
Melbourne
Era 20th-century philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
School Australian Realism, Analytic philosophy
Main interests metaphysics, philosophy of mind

David Malet Armstrong (born 8 July 1926), often D. M. Armstrong, is 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.[1] He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008.[2]

Contents

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Philosophy

Armstrong's philosophy is broadly naturalistic. Armstrong's view of knowledge is that the conditions of knowledge are satisfied when you have a justified true belief that you arrived at through a reliable process: that is, the belief was caused by some factor in the external world (hence the label of externalism). Armstrong uses the analogy of a thermometer: as a thermometer changes to reflect the temperature of the environment it is in, so must one's belief if they are reliably formed. The connection between knowledge and the external world, for Armstrong, is a nomological relationship (that is, a law of nature relationship).[3] Here, Armstrong's view is broadly similar to that of Alvin Goldman and Robert Nozick.[4] The intuitions that lead to this kind of externalism led Alvin Plantinga towards an account of knowledge that added the requirement for 'properly-functioning' cognitive systems operating according to a design plan.[5]

In metaphysics, Armstrong defends the view that universals exist (although Platonic uninstantiated universals do not exist). Those universals match up with the fundamental particles that science tells us about.[6] Armstrong declares himself to be a scientific realist.[7]

Armstrong's philosophical development has been heavily influenced by John Anderson.

Bibliography

Books

Selected Articles

Miscellaneous

See also

Further reading

References

  1. ^ Biographical Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Philosophers. London: Routledge. 1996. pp. 31–32. ISBN 0415060435. 
  2. ^ "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter A". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterA.pdf. Retrieved 25 April 2011. 
  3. ^ Lehrer, Keith. (2000), Theory of knowledge, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, p. 178, ISBN 0813390532, 0813390532, http://openlibrary.org/books/OL6787085M/Theory_of_knowledge 
  4. ^ John L. Pollock (1999), Contemporary theories of knowledge, Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, pp. 13, ISBN 0847689360, 0847689360, http://openlibrary.org/books/OL31726M/Contemporary_theories_of_knowledge 
  5. ^ Alvin Plantinga (1993), Warrant and proper function, New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195078632, 0195078632, http://openlibrary.org/books/OL1700198M/Warrant_and_proper_function 
  6. ^ D. M. Armstrong (1989), Universals, Boulder: Westview Press, ISBN 0813307635, 0813307635, http://openlibrary.org/books/OL2211958M/Universals 
  7. ^ D. M. Armstrong (November 28, 1980), A Theory of Universals, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521280327, 052128032X, http://openlibrary.org/books/OL7735301M/A_Theory_of_Universals 
  8. ^ Cambridge Catalogue -- Ontology, Causality, and Mind

External links