The Norwegianization of the Sámi ( Norwegian : fornorsking av samer ) was an official policy carried out by the Norwegian government directed at the Sámi people and later the Kven people of northern Norway, in which the goal was to assimilate non-Norwegian-speaking native populations into an ethnically and culturally uniform Norwegian population.
163-572: The assimilation process began in the 1700s, and was at that point motivated by a clear religious agenda. Over the course of the 1800s it became increasingly influenced by Social Darwinism and nationalism , in which the Sámi people and their culture were regarded as primitive and uncivilised . As such, it was argued that they needed to succumb to the Norwegian nation state . After the Second World War ,
326-509: A belief in an ideal may involve the belief that this ideal is something good, but it additionally involves a positive evaluative attitude toward this ideal that goes beyond a mere propositional attitude. Applied to the belief in God, opponents of the reductive approach may hold that a belief that God exists may be a necessary pre-condition for belief in God, but that it is not sufficient. The difference between de dicto and de re beliefs or
489-707: A belief in marriage could be translated as a belief that marriage is good. Belief-in is used in a similar sense when expressing self-confidence or faith in one's self or one's abilities. Defenders of a reductive account of belief-in have used this line of thought to argue that belief in God can be analyzed in a similar way: e.g. that it amounts to a belief that God exists with his characteristic attributes, like omniscience and omnipotence . Opponents of this account often concede that belief-in may entail various forms of belief-that, but that there are additional aspects to belief-in that are not reducible to belief-that. For example,
652-504: A chattel . It has appeared necessary to devote some space to this subject, inasmuch as that usually acute writer Sir Henry Maine has accepted the word "tenure" in its modern interpretation and has built up a theory under which the Irish chief "developed" into a feudal baron . I can find nothing in the Brehon laws to warrant this theory of social Darwinism, and believe the further study will show that
815-663: A de re sense, Lois does believe that Clark Kent is strong, while in a de dicto sense she does not. The contexts corresponding to de dicto ascriptions are known as referentially opaque contexts while de re ascriptions are referentially transparent. A collective belief is referred to when people speak of what "we" believe when this is not simply elliptical for what "we all" believe. Sociologist Émile Durkheim wrote of collective beliefs and proposed that they, like all " social facts ", "inhered in" social groups as opposed to individual persons. Jonathan Dancy states that "Durkheim's discussion of collective belief, though suggestive,
978-400: A dispositive belief ( doxa ) from knowledge ( episteme ) when the opinion is regarded correct (n.b., orthé not alethia ), in terms of right, and juristically so (according to the premises of the dialogue), which was the task of the rhetors to prove. Plato dismisses this possibility of an affirmative relation between opinion and knowledge even when the one who opines grounds his belief on
1141-515: A belief in a proposition or one does not. This conception is sufficient to understand many belief ascriptions found in everyday language: for example, Pedro's belief that the Earth is bigger than the Moon. But some cases involving comparisons between beliefs are not easily captured through full beliefs alone: for example, that Pedro's belief that the Earth is bigger than the Moon is more certain than his belief that
1304-404: A belief or we don't have a belief") with the more permissive, probabilistic notion of credence ("there is an entire spectrum of degrees of belief, not a simple dichotomy between belief and non-belief"). Beliefs are the subject of various important philosophical debates. Notable examples include: "What is the rational way to revise one's beliefs when presented with various sorts of evidence?", "Is
1467-412: A belief system, and that tenanted belief systems are difficult for the tenants to completely revise or reject. He suggests that beliefs have to be considered holistically , and that no belief exists in isolation in the mind of the believer. Each belief always implicates and relates to other beliefs. Glover provides the example of a patient with an illness who returns to a doctor, but the doctor says that
1630-447: A central role in many religious traditions in which belief in God is one of the central virtues of their followers. The difference between belief-in and belief-that is sometimes blurry since various expressions using the term "belief in" seem to be translatable into corresponding expressions using the term "belief that" instead. For example, a belief in fairies may be said to be a belief that fairies exist. In this sense, belief-in
1793-548: A certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them. The Committee of Union and Progress in the Ottoman Empire adopted Social Darwinist ideology. Belief that there was a life-or-death conflict between Turks and other ethnicities motivated them to carry out genocides and ethnic cleansing campaigns against the Armenians . Social Darwinism enabled them to view extermination of entire population groups and
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#17328453498171956-461: A certain way is called a belief. This is not just true for humans but may include animals, hypothetical aliens or even computers. From this perspective, it would make sense to ascribe the belief that a traffic light is red to a self-driving car behaving just like a human driver. Dispositionalism is sometimes seen as a specific form of functionalism. It defines beliefs only concerning their role as causes of behavior or as dispositions to behave in
2119-446: A certain way. For example, a belief that there is a pie in the pantry is associated with the disposition to affirm this when asked and to go to the pantry when hungry. While it is uncontroversial that beliefs shape our behavior, the thesis that beliefs can be defined exclusively through their role in producing behavior has been contested. The problem arises because the mechanisms shaping our behavior seem to be too complex to single out
2282-444: A chess computer will behave. The entity has the belief in question if this belief can be used to predict its behavior. Having a belief is relative to an interpretation since there may be different equally good ways of ascribing beliefs to predict behavior. So there may be another interpretation that predicts the move of the queen to f7 that does not involve the belief that this move will win the game. Another version of interpretationism
2445-409: A few closely related beliefs while holists hold that they may obtain between any two beliefs, however unrelated they seem. For example, assume that Mei and Benjamin both affirm that Jupiter is a planet. The most straightforward explanation, given by the atomists, would be that they have the same belief, i.e. that they hold the same content to be true. But now assume that Mei also believes that Pluto
2608-410: A high degree probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man. For, firstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel
2771-452: A language-like structure, sometimes referred to as "mentalese". Just like regular language, this involves simple elements that are combined in various ways according to syntactic rules to form more complex elements that act as bearers of meaning. On this conception, holding a belief would involve storing such a complex element in one's mind. Different beliefs are separated from each other in that they correspond to different elements stored in
2934-601: A large business is merely a survival of the fittest ... the working out of a law of nature and a law of God." Robert Bork (1927–2012) backed this notion of inherent characteristics as the sole determinant of survival in the business-operations context when he said: "In America, the rich are overwhelmingly people—entrepreneurs, small-business men, corporate executives, doctors, lawyers, etc.—who have gained their higher incomes through intelligence, imagination, and hard work." Moreover, William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) lauded this same cohort of magnates, and further extended
3097-465: A man or of a race. Ernst Haeckel 's recapitulation theory was not Darwinism, but rather attempted to combine the ideas of Goethe , Lamarck and Darwin. It was adopted by emerging social sciences to support the concept that non-European societies were "primitive", in an early stage of development towards the European ideal, but since then it has been heavily refuted on many fronts. Haeckel's works led to
3260-402: A mental attitude towards the proposition "It will be sunny today" which affirms that this proposition is true. This is different from Sofía's desire that it will be sunny today, despite the fact that both Rahul and Sofía have attitudes toward the same proposition. The mind-to-world direction of fit of beliefs is sometimes expressed by saying that beliefs aim at truth. This aim is also reflected in
3423-493: A moral guide in human society. While there are historical links between the popularization of Darwin's theory and forms of social Darwinism, social Darwinism is not a necessary consequence of the principles of biological evolution. While the term has been applied to the claim that Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection can be used to understand the social endurance of a nation or country, social Darwinism commonly refers to ideas that predate Darwin's publication of On
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#17328453498173586-404: A more realistic sense: that entities really have the beliefs ascribed to them and that these beliefs participate in the causal network. But, for this to be possible, it may be necessary to define interpretationism as a methodology and not as an ontological outlook on beliefs. Biologist Lewis Wolpert discusses the importance of causal beliefs and associates the making and use of tools with
3749-661: A particular culture. People with syncretic views blend the views of a variety of different religions or traditional beliefs into a unique fusion which suits their particular experiences and contexts ( eclecticism ). Unitarian Universalism exemplifies a syncretic faith. Typical reasons for adherence to religion include the following: Psychologist James Alcock also summarizes a number of apparent benefits which reinforce religious belief. These include prayer appearing to account for successful resolution of problems, "a bulwark against existential anxiety and fear of annihilation," an increased sense of control, companionship with one's deity,
3912-400: A particular function ( Hilary Putnam ). Some have also attempted to offer significant revisions to our notion of belief, including eliminativists about belief who argue that there is no phenomenon in the natural world which corresponds to our folk psychological concept of belief ( Paul Churchland ) and formal epistemologists who aim to replace our bivalent notion of belief ("either we have
4075-455: A person who if asked about the color of snow would assert "snow is white"). There are various ways that contemporary philosophers have tried to describe beliefs, including as representations of ways that the world could be ( Jerry Fodor ), as dispositions to act as if certain things are true ( Roderick Chisholm ), as interpretive schemes for making sense of someone's actions ( Daniel Dennett and Donald Davidson ), or as mental states that fill
4238-674: A scientific and medical conference held in Munich in 1877. He noted how socialists, although opponents of Darwin's theory, used it to add force to their political arguments. Schmidt's essay first appeared in English in Popular Science in March 1879. There followed an anarchist tract published in Paris in 1880 entitled "Le darwinisme social" by Émile Gautier . However, the use of the term was very rare—at least in
4401-429: A sentence and in a map through its internal geometrical relations. Functionalism contrasts with representationalism in that it defines beliefs not in terms of the internal constitution of the mind but in terms of the function or the causal role played by them. This view is often combined with the idea that the same belief can be realized in various ways and that it does not matter how it is realized as long as it plays
4564-402: A source of self-significance, and group identity. Typical reasons for rejection of religion include: Mainstream psychology and related disciplines have traditionally treated belief as if it were the simplest form of mental representation and therefore one of the building blocks of conscious thought. Philosophers have tended to be more abstract in their analysis, and much of the work examining
4727-450: A special class of mental representations since they do not involve sensory qualities in order to represent something, unlike perceptions or episodic memories. Because of this, it seems natural to construe beliefs as attitudes towards propositions, which also constitute non-sensory representations, i.e. as propositional attitudes . As mental attitudes , beliefs are characterized by both their content and their mode. The content of an attitude
4890-800: A specific element of proselytization . This is a strongly-held belief in the Christian tradition which follows the doctrine of the Great Commission , and is less emphasized by the Islamic faith where the Quranic edict "There shall be no compulsion in religion" (2:256) is often quoted as a justification for toleration of alternative beliefs. The Jewish tradition does not actively seek out converts. Exclusivism correlates with conservative, fundamentalist, and orthodox approaches of many religions, while pluralistic and syncretist approaches either explicitly downplay or reject
5053-399: A twin Earth in another part of the universe that is exactly like ours, except that their water has a different chemical composition despite behaving just like ours. According to Putnam, the reader's thought that water is wet is about our water while the reader's twin's thought on twin Earth that water is wet is about their water . This is the case despite the fact that the two readers have
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5216-414: A warlike and restless clan, for example, the sicklier man may have occasion to be alone, and may therefore become quieter and wiser; the one-eyed man will have one eye the stronger; the blind man will see deeper inwardly, and certainly hear better. To this extent, the famous theory of the survival of the fittest does not seem to me to be the only viewpoint from which to explain the progress of strengthening of
5379-608: Is Struggle ). Hitler often refused to intervene in the promotion of officers and staff members, preferring instead to have them fight amongst themselves to force the "stronger" person to prevail—"strength" referring to those social forces void of virtue or principle. One key proponent was Alfred Rosenberg , who was hanged later at Nuremberg. Such ideas also helped to advance mass murder by involuntary euthanasia in Germany, especially Aktion T4 , which targeted mentally ill and disabled people in Germany. The argument that Nazi ideology
5542-711: Is a fallacy of appeal to nature . While most scholars recognize historical links between the popularisation of Darwin's theory and forms of social Darwinism, they maintain that social Darwinism is not a necessary consequence of the principles of biological evolution . Social Darwinism is generally accepted to be a pseudoscience . Scholars debate the extent to which the various social Darwinist ideologies reflect Charles Darwin 's own views on human social and economic issues. His writings have passages that can be interpreted as opposing aggressive individualism, while other passages appear to promote it. Darwin's early evolutionary views and his opposition to slavery ran counter to many of
5705-422: Is a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices; the service or worship of God or the supernatural. Religious belief is distinct from religious practice and from religious behaviours —with some believers not practicing religion and some practitioners not believing religion. Belief is no less of a theoretical term than is religion . Religious beliefs often relate to
5868-694: Is a planet, which is denied by Benjamin. This indicates that they have different concepts of planet , which would mean that they were affirming different contents when they both agreed that Jupiter is a planet. This reasoning leads to molecularism or holism because the content of the Jupiter-belief depends on the Pluto-belief in this example. An important motivation for this position comes from W. V. Quine 's confirmational holism , which holds that, because of this interconnectedness, we cannot confirm or disconfirm individual hypotheses, that confirmation happens on
6031-605: Is a struggle between one social group and another. The weak invariably become the prey of the strong, the stupid invariably become subservient to the clever. By the 1920s, social Darwinism found expression in the promotion of eugenics by the Chinese sociologist Pan Guangdan . When Chiang Kai-shek started the New Life movement in 1934, he "... harked back to theories of Social Darwinism", writing that "only those who readapt themselves to new conditions, day by day, can live properly. When
6194-410: Is a subjective attitude that a proposition is true or a state of affairs is the case. A subjective attitude is a mental state of having some stance , take, or opinion about something. In epistemology , philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false . To believe something is to take it to be true; for instance, to believe that snow
6357-488: Is called the Lockean thesis . It states that partial beliefs are basic and that full beliefs are to be conceived as partial beliefs above a certain threshold: for example, every belief above 0.9 is a full belief. Defenders of a primitive notion of full belief, on the other hand, have tried to explain partial beliefs as full beliefs about probabilities. On this view, having a partial belief of degree 0.9 that it will rain tomorrow
6520-595: Is concerned with delineating the boundary between justified belief and opinion , and involved generally with a theoretical philosophical study of knowledge . The primary problem in epistemology is to understand what is needed to have knowledge. In a notion derived from Plato 's dialogue Theaetetus , where the epistemology of Socrates most clearly departs from that of the sophists , who appear to have defined knowledge as " justified true belief ". The tendency to base knowledge ( episteme ) on common opinion ( doxa ) Socrates dismisses, results from failing to distinguish
6683-845: Is due to Donald Davidson , who uses the thought experiment of radical interpretation , in which the goal is to make sense of the behavior and language of another person from scratch without any knowledge of this person's language. This process involves ascribing beliefs and desires to the speaker. The speaker really has these beliefs if this project can be successful in principle. Interpretationism can be combined with eliminativism and instrumentalism about beliefs. Eliminativists hold that, strictly speaking, there are no beliefs. Instrumentalists agree with eliminativists but add that belief-ascriptions are useful nonetheless. This usefulness can be explained in terms of interpretationism: belief-ascriptions help us in predicting how entities will behave. It has been argued that interpretationism can also be understood in
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6846-474: Is internal to that person and are determined entirely by things going on inside this person's head. Externalism, on the other hand, holds that the relations to one's environment also have a role to play in this. The disagreement between atomism, molecularism and holism concerns the question of how the content of one belief depends on the contents of other beliefs held by the same subject. Atomists deny such dependence relations, molecularists restrict them to only
7009-521: Is often used when the entity is not real, or its existence is in doubt. Typical examples would include: "he believes in witches and ghosts" or "many children believe in Santa Claus " or "I believe in a deity". Not all usages of belief-in concern the existence of something: some are commendatory in that they express a positive attitude towards their object. It has been suggested that these cases can also be accounted for in terms of belief-that. For example,
7172-412: Is relatively obscure". Margaret Gilbert has offered a related account in terms of the joint commitment of a number of persons as a body to accept a certain belief. According to this account, individuals who together collectively believe something need not personally believe it individually. Gilbert's work on the topic has stimulated a developing literature among philosophers. One question that has arisen
7335-454: Is the same as having a full belief that the probability of rain tomorrow is 90%. Another approach circumvents the notion of probability altogether and replaces degrees of belief with degrees of disposition to revise one's full belief. From this perspective, both a belief of degree 0.6 and a belief of degree 0.9 may be seen as full beliefs. The difference between them is that the former belief can readily be changed upon receiving new evidence while
7498-407: Is the study and implementation of various pseudoscientific theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics. Social Darwinists believe that the strong should see their wealth and power increase, while the weak should see their wealth and power decrease. Social Darwinist definitions of
7661-428: Is their relation to perceptions and to actions: perceptions usually cause beliefs and beliefs cause actions. For example, seeing that a traffic light has switched to red is usually associated with a belief that the light is red, which in turn causes the driver to bring the car to a halt. Functionalists use such characteristics to define beliefs: whatever is caused by perceptions in a certain way and also causes behavior in
7824-400: Is true, one must not only believe the relevant true proposition but also have justification for doing so. In more formal terms, an agent S {\displaystyle S} knows that a proposition P {\displaystyle P} is true if and only if : That theory of knowledge suffered a significant setback with the discovery of Gettier problems , situations in which
7987-502: Is what this attitude is directed at: its object. Propositional attitudes are directed at propositions. Beliefs are usually distinguished from other propositional attitudes, like desires, by their mode or the way in which they are directed at propositions. The mode of beliefs has a mind-to-world direction of fit : beliefs try to represent the world as it is; they do not, unlike desires, involve an intention to change it. For example, if Rahul believes that it will be sunny today, then he has
8150-456: Is whether and how philosophical accounts of belief in general need to be sensitive to the possibility of collective belief. Collective belief can play a role in social control and serve as a touchstone for identifying and purging heresies , deviancy or political deviationism . As mental representations , beliefs have contents, which is what the belief is about or what it represents. Within philosophy, there are various disputes about how
8313-405: Is white is comparable to accepting the truth of the proposition "snow is white". However, holding a belief does not require active introspection . For example, few individuals carefully consider whether or not the sun will rise tomorrow, simply assuming that it will. Moreover, beliefs need not be occurrent (e.g. a person actively thinking "snow is white"), but can instead be dispositional (e.g.
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#17328453498178476-510: The Cáin Saerrath and the Cáin Aigillne relate solely to what we now call chattels, and did not in any way affect what we now call the freehold , the possession of the land. Despite the fact that social Darwinism bears Charles Darwin's name, it is primarily linked today with others, notably Herbert Spencer , Thomas Malthus , and Francis Galton , the founder of eugenics. In fact, Spencer
8639-524: The Transactions of the Royal Historical Society . Fisher was commenting on how a system for borrowing livestock called "tenure" had led to the false impression that the early Irish had already evolved or developed land tenure ; These arrangements did not in any way affect that which we understand by the word "tenure", that is, a man's farm, but they related solely to cattle, which we consider
8802-629: The Catholic Church each consider themselves to be the true heir to Early Christian belief and practice. The antonym of "orthodox" is " heterodox ", and those adhering to orthodoxy often accuse the heterodox of apostasy , schism , or heresy . The Renaissance and later the Enlightenment in Europe exhibited varying degrees of religious tolerance and intolerance towards new and old religious ideas. The philosophes took particular exception to many of
8965-537: The Gilded Age . Some argue that the rationale of the late 19th-century " captains of industry " such as John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) and Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) owed much to social Darwinism, and that monopolists of this type applied Darwin's concept of natural selection to explain corporate dominance in their respective fields and thus to justify their exorbitant accumulations of success and social advancement. Rockefeller, for example, proclaimed: "The growth of
9128-507: The Grand Canyon is in Arizona involves entertaining the representation associated with this belief—for example, by actively thinking about it. But the great majority of our beliefs are not active most of the time: they are merely dispositional. They usually become activated or occurrent when needed or relevant in some way and then fall back into their dispositional state afterwards. For example,
9291-573: The Middle Ages , the Church conducted missionary work in Sámi areas, initially prioritizing areas at the coast or around the fjords , where an increasing amount of the Norwegian population was settling. The Church and the missionaries decided early on that they should preach to the Sámi in their mother tongue . As such, starting in the 1630s, religious materials were translated into Sámi languages to be used in
9454-700: The Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler. Scholars opposed to this interpretation, however, have pointed out that the Monists were freethinkers who opposed all forms of mysticism , and that their organizations were immediately banned following the Nazi takeover in 1933 because of their association with a wide variety of causes including feminism , pacifism , human rights, and early gay rights movements . Within American society, ideas of social Darwinism reached their greatest prominence during
9617-641: The Roman Catholic Church ) still hold to exclusivist dogma while participating in inter-religious organizations. Explicitly inclusivist religions include many that are associated with the New Age movement, as well as modern reinterpretations of Hinduism and Buddhism . The Baháʼí Faith considers it doctrine that there is truth in all faith-systems. Pluralism and syncretism are two closely related concepts. People with pluralist beliefs make no distinction between faith systems, viewing each one as valid within
9780-432: The Sámi parliament in 1987 as the end of the policy. Minde divides the Norwegian assimilation policy into four phases. In this period, two different belief systems and ideologies influenced the debate concerning assimilation policies. One branch argued for the active use of Sámi languages in educational and religious environments, while the other argued that all education should be conducted in Norwegian, in order to make
9943-452: The founders or leaders , and considers it a matter of faith that the "correct" religion has a monopoly on truth. All three major Abrahamic monotheistic religions have passages in their holy scriptures that attest to the primacy of the scriptural testimony, and indeed monotheism itself is often vouched as an innovation characterized specifically by its explicit rejection of earlier polytheistic faiths. Some exclusivist faiths incorporate
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#173284534981710106-433: The social classes owe each other nothing, synthesizing Darwin's findings with free-enterprise capitalism for his justification. According to Sumner, those who feel an obligation to provide assistance to those unequipped or under-equipped to compete for resources, will lead to a country in which the weak and inferior are encouraged to breed more like themselves, eventually dragging the country down. Sumner also believed that
10269-479: The state of nature seems analogous to the competition for natural resources described by Darwin. Social Darwinism is distinct from other theories of social change because of the way it draws Darwin's distinctive ideas from the field of biology into social studies. Darwin, unlike Hobbes, believed that this struggle for natural resources allowed individuals with certain physical and mental traits to succeed more frequently than others, and that these traits accumulated in
10432-513: The "Norwegian Race". In 1923, he wrote that "the Lapps", a slur used on the Sámi population, lacked both the ability and the motivation to use their language in written form. Furthermore, he described them as the most underdeveloped and loathsome of groups in Finnmark, claiming that they made up a disproportionate portion of the people in need of psychiatric care or special education . The introduction of
10595-512: The "justified true belief" definition. Justified true belief is a definition of knowledge that gained approval during the Enlightenment , "justified" standing in contrast to "revealed". There have been attempts to trace it back to Plato and his dialogues, more specifically in the Theaetetus , and the Meno . The concept of justified true belief states that in order to know that a given proposition
10758-446: The "physical stance" and the "design stance". These stances are contrasted with the intentional stance , which is applied to entities with a more complex behavior by ascribing beliefs and desires to these entities. For example, we can predict that a chess player will move her queen to f7 if we ascribe to her the desire to win the game and the belief that this move will achieve that. The same procedure can also be applied to predicting how
10921-492: The 1800s to be a result of the increased nationalism that arose during the establishment of the Norwegian nation state following the Norwegian Constituent Assembly election in 1814. Others highlight the links between the theology behind the missionary work of the 1600s and 1700s, and the ideology that was used to justify the later assimilation policies. It has been concluded that the narrative that portrayed
11084-610: The 1860s and crossed the Atlantic in the early twentieth century. But before he wrote, it was used only on rare occasions; he made it a standard shorthand for a complex of late-nineteenth-century ideas, a familiar part of the lexicon of social thought." Social Darwinism has many definitions, not all of which are compatible with one another. As such, social Darwinism has been criticized for being an inconsistent philosophy, which does not lead to any clear political conclusions. For example, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics states: Part of
11247-477: The 7-year school in 1936 represented a further tightening of the assimilation policy, as it resulted in the Finnish language being banned in educational settings. Wexelsenplakaten of 1898, which forbade the use of Sámi languages in school settings, continued to be enforced throughout the 1950s, and, in some parts of the country, into the 1960s. On 1 January 1956, during Einar Gerhardsen's third Cabinet , "Samekomiteen"
11410-519: The Church and for educational purposes. The most intensive period of missionary work took place between 1650 and 1750. It was organized by the Danish-Norwegian state , and was led by the Norwegian priest Thomas von Westen . In 1714, he became involved in the Danish-Norwegian " Lapplandsmisjonen ", which conducted missionary work in Sámi areas. In 1717, he was involved in the establishment of
11573-441: The Earth is bigger than Venus. Such cases are most naturally analyzed in terms of partial beliefs involving degrees of belief, so-called credences . The higher the degree of a belief, the more certain the believer is that the believed proposition is true. This is usually formalized by numbers between 0 and 1: a degree of 1 represents an absolutely certain belief, a belief of 0 corresponds to an absolutely certain disbelief and all
11736-658: The English-speaking world (Hodgson, 2004) —until the American historian Richard Hofstadter published his influential Social Darwinism in American Thought (1944) during World War II . Hypotheses of social evolution and cultural evolution were common in Europe. The Enlightenment thinkers who preceded Darwin, such as Hegel , often argued that societies progressed through stages of increasing development. Earlier thinkers also emphasized conflict as an inherent feature of social life. Thomas Hobbes 's 17th-century portrayal of
11899-507: The Gilded Age in fact displayed little support for the ideas of social Darwinism. The Englishman H. G. Wells (1866–1946) was heavily influenced by Darwinist thought, but reacted against social Darwinism. American novelist Jack London (1876–1916) wrote stories of survival that incorporated his views on social Darwinism. American film-director Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) has been described as "just an old-fashioned social Darwinist". On
12062-571: The Norwegianization as effective as possible. They were, however, united in their goal of fully assimilating the Sámi population into Norwegian culture and society. A fund was established by the Storting in 1851, with the express purpose of financing the Norwegianization of Sámi people. The money was used for a number of purposes, among which were the education of teachers, pay rises for teachers with particularly effective Norwegianization methods, and
12225-744: The Origin of Species . Others whose ideas are given the label include the 18th-century clergyman Thomas Malthus , and Darwin's cousin Francis Galton who founded eugenics towards the end of the 19th century. The massive expansion in Western colonialism during the New Imperialism era fitted in with the broader notion of social Darwinism used from the 1870s onwards to account for the phenomenon of "the Anglo-Saxon and Latin overflowing his boundaries", as phrased by
12388-509: The Principle of Population , was incredibly popular and widely read by social Darwinists. In that book, for example, the author argued that as an increasing population would normally outgrow its food supply, this would result in the starvation of the weakest and a Malthusian catastrophe . According to Michael Ruse , Darwin read Malthus' famous Essay on a Principle of Population in 1838, four years after Malthus' death. Malthus himself anticipated
12551-524: The Sámi people as underdeveloped and uncivilized had its origins in theological convictions, and that these informed the subsequent sense of Norwegian Nationalism. Historian Henry Minde and psychologist Stephen James Minton argue that the assimilation of the Sámi population at the hands of the Norwegian government began in earnest in 1851, with Minde identifying the Alta Controversy and establishment of
12714-456: The Sámi people was still not considered to be an ethnic minority, but rather referred to as Sámi-speaking Norwegians. This was because the government thought that a person's relationship to their Sámi culture and identity should be determined by themselves. However, the right to use Sámi languages in education, including as a primary language, was instated in 1967. Simultaneously, an increased sense of identity sprang forth in Sámi communities. From
12877-414: The above conditions were seemingly met but where many philosophers deny that anything is known. Robert Nozick suggested a clarification of "justification" which he believed eliminates the problem: the justification has to be such that were the justification false, the knowledge would be false. Bernecker and Dretske (2000) argue that "no epistemologist since Gettier has seriously and successfully defended
13040-559: The anti-philanthropic implications of Sumner's theory. Instead they gave millions to build schools, colleges, hospitals, art institutes, parks and many other institutions. Andrew Carnegie , who admired Spencer, was the leading philanthropist in the world in the period from 1890 to 1920, and a major leader against imperialism and warfare. For these and other reasons (such as the general lack of interest in academic pursuits most Gilded Age barons displayed) other writers, such as Irvin G. Wyllie and Thomas C. Leonard , argue that businessmen in
13203-533: The attitude. This view contrasts with functionalism , which defines beliefs not in terms of the internal constitution of the mind but in terms of the function or the causal role played by beliefs. According to dispositionalism , beliefs are identified with dispositions to behave in certain ways. This view can be seen as a form of functionalism, defining beliefs in terms of the behavior they tend to cause. Interpretationism constitutes another conception, which has gained popularity in contemporary philosophy. It holds that
13366-531: The basis of U.S. theory and practice, commercial Darwinism operates in markets worldwide, pitting corporation against corporation in struggles for survival. Social Darwinism has influenced political, public health and social movements in Japan since the late 19th and early 20th century. Social Darwinism was originally brought to Japan through the works of Francis Galton and Ernst Haeckel as well as United States, British and French Lamarckian eugenic written studies of
13529-442: The basis of his Lamarckian belief that struggle for survival spurred self-improvement which could be inherited. A proponent in Germany was Ernst Haeckel , who popularized Darwin's thought and his personal interpretation of it, and used to contribute to a new creed, the monist movement. Sociobiology has replaced social Darwinism in attempts to explain human social behavior in terms of evolutionary biology. The term Darwinism
13692-417: The belief that 57 is greater than 14 was probably dispositional to the reader before reading this sentence, has become occurrent while reading it and may soon become dispositional again as the mind focuses elsewhere. The distinction between occurrent and dispositional beliefs is sometimes identified with the distinction between conscious and unconscious beliefs. But it has been argued that, despite overlapping,
13855-545: The beliefs of an entity are in some sense dependent on or relative to someone's interpretation of this entity. Representationalism tends to be associated with mind-body-dualism. Naturalist considerations against this dualism are among the motivations for choosing one of the alternative conceptions. Representationalism characterizes beliefs in terms of mental representations . Representations are usually defined as objects with semantic properties —like having content, referring to something, or being true or false. Beliefs form
14018-421: The beliefs of an entity are in some sense dependent on, or relative to, someone's interpretation of this entity. Daniel Dennett is an important defender of such a position. He holds that we ascribe beliefs to entities in order to predict how they will behave. Entities with simple behavioral patterns can be described using physical laws or in terms of their function. Dennett refers to these forms of explanation as
14181-658: The best equipped to win the struggle for existence was the American businessman , and concluded that taxes and regulations serve as dangers to his survival. This pamphlet makes no mention of Darwinism, and only refers to Darwin in a statement on the meaning of liberty, that "There never has been any man, from the primitive barbarian up to a Humboldt or a Darwin, who could do as he had a mind to." Sumner never fully embraced Darwinian ideas, and some contemporary historians do not believe that Sumner ever actually believed in social Darwinism. The great majority of American businessmen rejected
14344-420: The causal role characteristic to it. As an analogy, a hard drive is defined in a functionalist manner: it performs the function of storing and retrieving digital data. This function can be realized in many different ways: being made of plastic or steel, or using magnetism or laser. Functionalists hold that something similar is true for beliefs (or mental states in general). Among the roles relevant to beliefs
14507-738: The claims that social Darwinists would eventually make about the mental capabilities of the poor and indigenous peoples in the European colonies. After publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859, one strand of Darwin's followers argued natural selection ceased to have any noticeable effect on humans once organised societies had been formed. However, some scholars argue Darwin's view gradually changed and came to incorporate views from other theorists such as Herbert Spencer . Spencer published his Lamarckian evolutionary ideas about society before Darwin first published his hypothesis in 1859, and Spencer and Darwin promoted their own conceptions of moral values. Spencer supported laissez-faire capitalism on
14670-453: The content of our beliefs entirely determined by our mental states, or do the relevant facts have any bearing on our beliefs (e.g. if I believe that I'm holding a glass of water, is the non-mental fact that water is H 2 O part of the content of that belief)?", "How fine-grained or coarse-grained are our beliefs?", and "Must it be possible for a belief to be expressible in language, or are there non-linguistic beliefs?" Various conceptions of
14833-411: The contents of beliefs are to be understood. Holists and molecularists hold that the content of one particular belief depends on or is determined by other beliefs belonging to the same subject, which is denied by atomists. The question of dependence or determination also plays a central role in the internalism-externalism- debate. Internalism states that the contents of someone's beliefs depend only on what
14996-544: The context of Early Christianity , the term "orthodoxy" relates to religious belief that closely follows the edicts, apologies , and hermeneutics of a prevailing religious authority. In the case of Early Christianity, this authority was the communion of bishops, and is often referred to by the term " Magisterium ". The term orthodox was applied almost as an epithet to a group of Jewish believers who held to pre-Enlightenment understanding of Judaism—now known as Orthodox Judaism . The Eastern Orthodox Church of Christianity and
15159-410: The corresponding ascriptions concerns the contributions singular terms like names and other referential devices make to the semantic properties of the belief or its ascription. In regular contexts, the truth-value of a sentence does not change upon substitution of co-referring terms. For example, since the names "Superman" and "Clark Kent" refer to the same person, we can replace one with the other in
15322-619: The course of an extensive series of translations of influential Western thought. Yan's translation strongly impacted Chinese scholars because he added national elements not found in the original. Yan Fu criticized Huxley from the perspective of Spencerian social Darwinism in his own annotations to the translation. He understood Spencer's sociology as "not merely analytical and descriptive, but prescriptive as well", and saw Spencer building on Darwin, whom Yan summarized thus: Peoples and living things struggle for survival. At first, species struggle with species; they as [people] gradually progress, there
15485-404: The course of the 1700s and 1800s, during which Sámi language and culture came to be regarded as "feral" and "devilish". As a result, the government's and Church's perception of Sámi languages shifted as well. After this, the languages were regarded as instruments for Sámi spirituality and culture, and thus something that needed to be suppressed. Some historians consider the assimilation policy of
15648-416: The differing doctrines and practices espoused by other religions or by other religious denominations in a variety of ways. People with exclusivist beliefs typically explain other beliefs either as in error, or as corruptions or counterfeits of the true faith . This approach is a fairly consistent feature among smaller new religious movements that often rely on doctrine that claims a unique revelation by
15811-455: The difficulty in establishing sensible and consistent usage is that commitment to the biology of natural selection and to 'survival of the fittest' entailed nothing uniform either for sociological method or for political doctrine. A 'social Darwinist' could just as well be a defender of laissez-faire as a defender of state socialism, just as much an imperialist as a domestic eugenist. The term social Darwinism has rarely been used by advocates of
15974-477: The early 20th century actually supported better working conditions and salaries. Such measures would grant the poor a better chance to provide for themselves yet still distinguish those who are capable of succeeding from those who are poor out of laziness, weakness, or inferiority. One of the earliest uses of the term "social Darwinism" was by Eduard Oscar Schmidt of the University of Strasbourg , when reporting at
16137-431: The end of World War II—partially due to its association with Nazism and due to a growing scientific consensus that eugenics and scientific racism were groundless. References to social Darwinism since have usually been pejorative. Some groups, including creationists such as William Jennings Bryan , argued social Darwinism is a logical consequence of Darwinism . Academics such as Steven Pinker have argued this
16300-415: The essential features of beliefs have been proposed, but there is no consensus as to which is the right one. Representationalism is the traditionally dominant position. Its most popular version maintains that attitudes toward representations, which are typically associated with propositions, are mental attitudes that constitute beliefs. These attitudes are part of the internal constitution of the mind holding
16463-484: The exclusivist tendencies within a religion. People with inclusivist beliefs recognize some truth in all faith systems , highlighting agreements and minimizing differences. This attitude is sometimes associated with Interfaith dialogue or with the Christian Ecumenical movement, though in principle such attempts at pluralism are not necessarily inclusivist and many actors in such interactions (for example,
16626-528: The existence, characteristics and worship of a deity or deities, to the idea of divine intervention in the universe and in human life , or to the deontological explanations for the values and practices centered on the teachings of a spiritual leader or community . In contrast to other belief systems , religious beliefs are usually codified . A popular view holds that different religions each have identifiable and exclusive sets of beliefs or creeds , but surveys of religious belief have often found that
16789-450: The first boarding schools for Sámi and Kven pupils were established. These were also used as chapels , and the priests acted as de facto members of the school boards . The purpose of the boarding schools was to isolate the pupils from their roots and communities, thus making the assimilation process more effective. At the same time, the Norwegian government conducted a systematic Norwegianization of place names in Finnmark, replacing
16952-548: The formation of the Monist League in 1904 with many prominent citizens among its members, including the Nobel Prize winner Wilhelm Ostwald . The simpler aspects of social Darwinism followed the earlier Malthusian ideas that humans, especially males, require competition in their lives to survive. Further, the poor should have to provide for themselves and not be given any aid. However, amidst this climate, most social Darwinists of
17115-495: The general contribution of one particular belief for any possible situation. For example, one may decide not to affirm that there is a pie in the pantry when asked because one wants to keep it secret. Or one might not eat the pie despite being hungry, because one also believes that it is poisoned. Due to this complexity, we are unable to define even a belief as simple as this one in terms of the behavioral dispositions for which it could be responsible. According to interpretationism,
17278-463: The government to the Sámi and Kven people , becoming the first representative to do so: "The state of Norway was founded on the territory of two peoples - the Sámi people and the Norwegians. Sámi history is closely intertwined with Norwegian history. Today, we express our regret on behalf of the state for the injustice committed against the Sámi people through its harsh policy of Norwegianization." In
17441-407: The hands of the Norwegian government. In the same vein, Norwegian authorities have avoided taking responsibility for the consequences the assimilation policies had on both private individuals and the Sámi population as a group. The purpose of the assimilation policy was undoubtedly to eradicate the culture, language, and history that contributed to the formation of Sámi and Kven/Finnish identity. This
17604-704: The human rights lawyer Láilá Susanne Vars and psychologist Stephen James Minton. In 1923, the Norwegian philologist Torleiv Hannaas referred to the " folkemord " caused by the Norwegian school and language policy on the Sami. " Folkemord " was accepted later as the official Norwegian translation of the term genocide. Similar policies occurred in other European countries during the same period, including Swedification in Sweden, Danification in Denmark, and Germanization in Germany. Social darwinism Social Darwinism
17767-493: The idea of progressive change and evolution of society as a whole. Ernst Haeckel propagated both Darwinism as a part of natural history and as a suitable base for a modern Weltanschauung , a world view based on scientific reasoning in his Monist League. Friedrich von Hellwald had a strong role in popularizing it in Austria. Darwin's work served as a catalyst to popularize evolutionary thinking. Belief systems A belief
17930-421: The ideological reasoning behind the assimilation policy continued to evolve, influenced in part by the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden in 1905. Around this time, it became legal to deny Sámi and Kven people the right to lease or buy land in Finnmark. The scope of the Norwegianization process is clearly illustrated in the ethnic identities reported in censuses from this period. In 1930, 61% of
18093-438: The ideological war effort against fascism to denote a reactionary creed that promoted competitive strife, racism, and chauvinism. Hofstadter later also recognized (what he saw as) the influence of Darwinist and other evolutionary ideas upon those with collectivist views, enough to devise a term for the phenomenon, Darwinist collectivism . Before Hofstadter's work the use of the term "social Darwinism" in English academic journals
18256-412: The increased resistance from the Sámi people, the Norwegian government continued to enforce their assimilation policy well into the 1900s. The influence of social darwinism on Norwegian politics continued to be evident. Christen Andreas Brygfjeld (1863-1952), who had a central role in the country's assimilation policy, was clearly influenced by racist ideology, claiming that the "Sámi race" was inferior to
18419-499: The late 19th and early 20th centuries. Eugenism as a science was hotly debated at the beginning of the 20th century, in Jinsei-Der Mensch , the first eugenics journal in the empire. As Japan sought to close ranks with the west, this practice was adopted wholesale along with colonialism and its justifications. Social Darwinism was formally introduced to China through the translation by Yan Fu of Huxley's Evolution and Ethics , in
18582-860: The late-Victorian sociologist Benjamin Kidd in Social Evolution , published in 1894. The concept also proved useful to justify what was seen by some as the inevitable "disappearance" of "the weaker races ... before the stronger" not so much "through the effects of ... our vices upon them" as "what may be called the virtues of our civilisation." Winston Churchill , a political proponent of eugenics, maintained that if fewer "feebleminded" individuals were born, less crime would take place. Herbert Spencer's ideas, like those of evolutionary progressivism, stemmed from his reading of Thomas Malthus, and his later theories were influenced by those of Darwin. However, Spencer's major work, Progress: Its Law and Cause (1857),
18745-411: The latter is more stable. Traditionally, philosophers have mainly focused in their inquiries concerning belief on the notion of belief-that . Belief-that can be characterized as a propositional attitude to a claim which is either true or false. Belief-in , on the other hand, is more closely related to notions like trust or faith in that it refers usually to an attitude to persons. Belief-in plays
18908-410: The laws of probability. This includes both synchronic laws about what one should believe at any moment and diachronic laws about how one should revise one's beliefs upon receiving new evidence. The central question in the dispute between full and partial beliefs is whether these two types are really distinct types or whether one type can be explained in terms of the other. One answer to this question
19071-486: The level of the theory as a whole. Another motivation is due to considerations of the nature of learning: it is often not possible to understand one concept, like force in Newtonian physics , without understanding other concepts, like mass or kinetic energy . One problem for holism is that genuine disagreements seem to be impossible or very rare: disputants would usually talk past each other since they never share exactly
19234-398: The life of a people is going through this process of readaptation, it has to remedy its own defects, and get rid of those elements which become useless. Then we call it new life." In the 1860s and 1870s, social Darwinism began to take shape in the interaction between Charles Darwin and his German advocates, namely August Schleicher , Max Müller and Ernst Haeckel. Evolutionary linguistics
19397-405: The mid-1970s, the Sámi people begun to be thought of as an indigenous population , and the fight for Sámi rights was reframed as part of an international movement . " Samerettsutvalget " was established in the 1980s, with a mandate to assess the political and cultural rights of the Sámi people. Despite this, there has never been a public investigation into the treatment of Sámi or Kven people at
19560-472: The mind. A more holistic alternative to the "language of thought hypothesis" is the map-conception , which uses an analogy of maps to elucidate the nature of beliefs. According to this view, the belief system of a mind should be conceived of not as a set of many individual sentences but as a map encoding the information contained in these sentences. For example, the fact that Brussels is halfway between Paris and Amsterdam can be expressed both linguistically as
19723-556: The more fantastical claims of religions and directly challenged religious authority and the prevailing beliefs associated with the established churches. In response to the liberalizing political and social movements, some religious groups attempted to integrate Enlightenment ideals of rationality, equality, and individual liberty into their belief systems, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Reform Judaism and Liberal Christianity offer two examples of such religious associations. Adherents of particular religions deal with
19886-510: The murder of women and children as a necessary and justified course of action. Final solution Parties Nazi Germany's justification for its aggression was regularly promoted in Nazi propaganda films depicting scenes such as beetles fighting in a lab setting to demonstrate the principles of "survival of the fittest" as depicted in Alles Leben ist Kampf (English translation: All Life
20049-451: The numbers in between correspond to intermediate degrees of certainty. In the Bayesian approach , these degrees are interpreted as subjective probabilities : e.g. a belief of degree 0.9 that it will rain tomorrow means that the agent thinks that the probability of rain tomorrow is 90%. Bayesianism uses this relation between beliefs and probability to define the norms of rationality in terms of
20212-651: The official doctrine and descriptions of the beliefs offered by religious authorities do not always agree with the privately held beliefs of those who identify as members of a particular religion. For a broad classification of the kinds of religious belief, see below. First self-applied as a term to the conservative doctrine outlined by anti-modernist Protestants in the United States, "fundamentalism" in religious terms denotes strict adherence to an interpretation of scriptures that are generally associated with theologically conservative positions or traditional understandings of
20375-574: The origin of human beliefs. In the context of Ancient Greek thought , three related concepts were identified regarding the concept of belief: pistis , doxa , and dogma . Simplified, Pistis refers to " trust " and "confidence," doxa refers to " opinion " and "acceptance," and dogma refers to the positions of a philosopher or of a philosophical school such as Stoicism . Beliefs can be categorized into various types depending on their ontological status, their degree, their object or their semantic properties. Having an occurrent belief that
20538-544: The original Sámi names with Norwegian ones. This was done in order to normalize and historicize Norwegian settlement in Sámi areas. This phase of the Norwegianization was ideologically grounded in nationalism and social darwinism. Not all communities were affected during this period. Local government correspondences in the Sami and Kven languages were found in the archives of Kistrand between 1860 and 1910, indicating that some communities avoided or did not implement as strong of assimilatory processes as others. In this period,
20701-457: The phrase " survival of the fittest ", a term coined by sociologist Herbert Spencer . Creationists have often maintained that social Darwinism—leading to policies designed to reward the most competitive—is a logical consequence of "Darwinism" (the theory of natural selection in biology). Biologists and historians have stated that this is a fallacy of appeal to nature and should not be taken to imply that this phenomenon ought to be used as
20864-571: The population in Kvænangen Municipality reported that they were Sámi (44%) or Kven (17%), while 39% described themselves as ethnically Norwegian. In the census from 1950, 0% of the people in the same area reported that they were of Sámi or Kven ethnicity. In the time leading up to the First World War , the Sámi opposition to the assimilation policy grew stronger. During the 1906 Norwegian parliamentary election , Sámi politician Isak Saba
21027-512: The population over time, which under certain conditions could lead to the descendants being so different that they would be defined as a new species. However, Darwin felt that "social instincts " such as "sympathy" and " moral sentiments " also evolved through natural selection, and that these resulted in the strengthening of societies in which they occurred, so much so that he wrote about it in Descent of Man : The following proposition seems to me in
21190-915: The prescribed medicine is not working. At that point, the patient has a great deal of flexibility in choosing what beliefs to keep or reject: the patient could believe that the doctor is incompetent, that the doctor's assistants made a mistake, that the patient's own body is unique in some unexpected way, that Western medicine is ineffective, or even that Western science is entirely unable to discover truths about ailments. This insight has relevance for inquisitors , missionaries , agitprop groups and thought-police . The British philosopher Stephen Law has described some belief systems (including belief in homeopathy , psychic powers , and alien abduction ) as "claptrap" and says that such belief-systems can "draw people in and hold them captive so they become willing slaves of claptrap ... if you get sucked in, it can be extremely difficult to think your way clear again". Religion
21353-407: The question of artificial selection, yet Nietzsche's principles did not concur with Darwinian theories of natural selection. Nietzsche's point of view on sickness and health, in particular, opposed him to the concept of biological adaptation as forged by Spencer's "fitness". Nietzsche criticized Haeckel, Spencer, and Darwin, sometimes under the same banner by maintaining that in specific cases, sickness
21516-510: The race based argument for assimilation lost significant ideological pull. This was also the period in time in which Norway's welfare system was cemented. As such, the continued assimilation policy was framed as part of the social development of Sámi areas. In 1997, the King of Norway, HM King Harald V acknowledged the actions of the Norwegian State, and made an official apology on behalf of
21679-643: The rewarding of schoolchildren who were quick to learn Norwegian. The regulations for schools with Sámi and Kven pupils in Finnmark county and northern Troms county became increasingly strict throughout the later half of the 1800s. The opportunity to use Sámi language as part of the education became more and more limited. Around 1870, the Sámi became the subject of negative scientific attention. The teachings of phrenology were used in order to determine their race and intelligence. To this end, Sámi graves were opened and their skeletons removed. In 1899, Wexelsenplakaten
21842-542: The right perceptions; for example, to believe that it is raining given a perception of rain. Without this perception, there is still a disposition to believe but no actual dispositional belief. On a dispositionalist conception of belief, there are no occurrent beliefs, since all beliefs are defined in terms of dispositions. An important dispute in formal epistemology concerns the question of whether beliefs should be conceptualized as full beliefs or as partial beliefs. Full beliefs are all-or-nothing attitudes: either one has
22005-519: The rule and is able to add justification ( logos : reasonable and necessarily plausible assertions/evidence/guidance) to it. A belief can be based fully or partially on intuition . Plato has been credited for the justified true belief theory of knowledge, even though Plato in the Theaetetus elegantly dismisses it, and even posits this argument of Socrates as a cause for his death penalty. The epistemologists, Gettier and Goldman , have questioned
22168-424: The same molecular composition. So it seems necessary to include external factors in order to explain the difference. One problem with this position is that this difference in content does not bring any causal difference with it: the two readers act in exactly the same way. This casts doubt on the thesis that there is any genuine difference in need of explanation between the contents of the two beliefs. Epistemology
22331-507: The same web of beliefs needed to determine the content of the source of the disagreement. Internalism and externalism disagree about whether the contents of our beliefs are determined only by what's happening in our head or also by other factors. Internalists deny such a dependence on external factors. They hold that a person and a molecule-by-molecule copy would have exactly the same beliefs. Hilary Putnam objects to this position by way of his twin Earth thought experiment . He imagines
22494-501: The school Seminarium Lapponicum in Trondheim , in which teachers, priests and missionaries were educated in order to conduct Sámi missionary work. Westen contributed with education in Sámi language and literature, and additionally developed the first Sámi textbooks. In the beginning, the missionary work and Christian education was carried out in Sámi languages. However, a more nationalistic and civilizational mindset developed over
22657-474: The sentence "Superman is strong" without changing its truth-value; this issue is more complicated in case of belief ascriptions. For example, Lois believes that Superman is strong but she does not believe that Clark Kent is strong. This difficulty arises due to the fact that she does not know that the two names refer to the same entity. Beliefs or belief ascriptions for which this substitution does not generally work are de dicto , otherwise, they are de re . In
22820-474: The social Darwinists in suggesting that charity could exacerbate social problems. Another of these social interpretations of Darwin's biological views, later known as eugenics, was put forth by Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, in 1865 and 1869. Galton argued that just as physical traits were clearly inherited among generations of people, the same could be said for mental qualities (genius and talent). Galton argued that social morals needed to change so that heredity
22983-465: The strong and the weak vary, and differ on the precise mechanisms that reward strength and punish weakness. Many such views stress competition between individuals in laissez-faire capitalism , while others, emphasizing struggle between national or racial groups, support eugenics , racism , imperialism and/or fascism . Social Darwinism declined in popularity following World War I, and its purportedly scientific claims were largely discredited by
23146-451: The study of the history and spread of nations. Some of their ideas, including the concept of living space were adopted to the Nazi ideology after their deaths. Social evolution theories in Germany gained large popularity in the 1860s and had a strong antiestablishment connotation first. Social Darwinism allowed people to counter the connection of Thron und Altar , the intertwined establishment of clergy and nobility, and provided as well
23309-500: The supposed ideologies or ideas; instead it has almost always been used pejoratively by its opponents. The term draws upon the common meaning of Darwinism , which includes a range of evolutionary views , but in the late 19th century was applied more specifically to natural selection as first advanced by Charles Darwin to explain speciation in populations of organisms . The process includes competition between individuals for limited resources, popularly but inaccurately described by
23472-404: The tendency to revise one's belief upon receiving new evidence that an existing belief is false. Upon hearing a forecast of bad weather, Rahul is likely to change his mental attitude but Sofía is not. There are different ways of conceiving how mental representations are realized in the mind. One form of this is the language of thought hypothesis , which claims that mental representations have
23635-407: The text and are distrustful of innovative readings, new revelation, or alternative interpretations. Religious fundamentalism has been identified in the media as being associated with fanatical or zealous political movements around the world that have used a strict adherence to a particular religious doctrine as a means to establish political identity and to enforce societal norms. First used in
23798-496: The theory of "corporate Darwinism". Sumner argued that societal progress depended on the "fittest families" passing down wealth and genetic traits to their offspring, thus allegedly creating a lineage of superior citizens. However, contemporary social scientists reject such claims and have understood that economic status is largely a result of other factors. In 1883 Sumner published a highly-influential pamphlet entitled "What Social Classes Owe to Each Other", in which he insisted that
23961-468: The traditional view." On the other hand, Paul Boghossian argues that the justified true belief account is the "standard, widely accepted" definition of knowledge. A belief system comprises a set of mutually supportive beliefs. The beliefs of any such system can be religious , philosophical , political , ideological , or a combination of these. The British philosopher Jonathan Glover , following Meadows (2008), says that beliefs are always part of
24124-455: The two distinctions do not match. The reason for this is that beliefs can shape one's behaviour and be involved in one's reasoning even if the subject is not conscious of them. Such beliefs are cases of unconscious occurrent mental states. On this view, being occurrent corresponds to being active, either consciously or unconsciously. A dispositional belief is not the same as a disposition to believe. We have various dispositions to believe given
24287-494: The works of Lamarck and Auguste Comte 's positivism than with Darwin's. Jeff Riggenbach argues that Spencer's view was that culture and education made a sort of Lamarckism possible and notes that Herbert Spencer was a proponent of private charity. However, the legacy of his social Darwinism was less than charitable. Spencer's work also served to renew interest in the work of Malthus. While Malthus's work does not itself qualify as social Darwinism, his 1798 work An Essay on
24450-452: The world was interpreted by Haeckel as supporting the idea that nations, despite having rather similar physiology, represented such distinct lines of 'evolution' that mankind should be divided into nine different species. Haeckel constructed an evolutionary and intellectual hierarchy of such species. In a similar vein, Schleicher regarded languages as different species and sub-species, adopting Darwin's concept of selection through competition to
24613-729: Was a conscious decision, to avoid both the over-breeding by less fit members of society and the under-breeding of the more fit ones. In Galton's view, social institutions such as welfare and insane asylums were allowing inferior humans to survive and reproduce at levels faster than the more "superior" humans in respectable society, and if corrections were not soon taken, society would be awash with "inferiors". Darwin read his cousin's work with interest, and devoted sections of Descent of Man to discussion of Galton's theories. Neither Galton nor Darwin, though, advocated any eugenic policies restricting reproduction, due to their Whiggish distrust of government. Friedrich Nietzsche 's philosophy addressed
24776-518: Was coined by Thomas Henry Huxley in his March 1861 review of On the Origin of Species , and by the 1870s it was used to describe a range of concepts of evolution or development, without any specific commitment to Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. The phrase social Darwinism first appeared in Joseph Fisher's 1877 article on The History of Landholding in Ireland , which was published in
24939-469: Was elected as a representative for Arbeiderpartiet . In 1907, Just Quigstad published a book that documented the Norwegianization process up until that point. He was also one of the first people to argue for the Sámi people as an ethnic group with claim to their own rights. The opposition against the Norwegianization culminated in 1917, when the first Sámi Assembly took place in Trondheim. However, despite
25102-405: Was established. The committee 's attitude signaled an important break with the politics and perspectives of the Norwegian government's assimilation policy. It argued that the government's policy concerning the Sámi population should focus on strengthening the position of Sámi people as a group, and proposed a number of measures aimed at achieving equal rights between the Sámi and Norwegians. However,
25265-455: Was grouped together with the blind, deaf, and mentally deranged in public censuses until 1920. As such, they were thought of as " abnormal ", an idea that had its roots in the concept of ethnic cleansing . The process of Norwegianization resulted in the near elimination of Sámi languages in Norway. Scholars have referred to the Norwegianization of the Sámi as a cultural genocide . These include
25428-452: Was necessary and even helpful. Thus, he wrote: Wherever progress is to ensue, deviating natures are of greatest importance. Every progress of the whole must be preceded by a partial weakening. The strongest natures retain the type, the weaker ones help to advance it. Something similar also happens in the individual. There is rarely a degeneration, a truncation, or even a vice or any physical or moral loss without an advantage somewhere else. In
25591-483: Was not described as a social Darwinist until the 1930s, long after his death. The term "social Darwinism" first appeared in Europe in 1880, and journalist Emilie Gautier had coined the term with reference to a health conference in Berlin 1877. Around 1900 it was used by sociologists, some being opposed to the concept. The American historian Richard Hofstadter popularized the term in the United States in 1944. He used it in
25754-491: Was passed, an official instruction which forbade Sámi people and Kvens from acting as educators in multilingual schools. This was the beginning of a full-blown assimilation policy, in which the government stated that the goal was to reduce the sense of identity and community within minority groups , and to utilize public institutions in order to foster stronger feelings of Norwegian nationalism in Kven and Sámi communities. In 1901,
25917-418: Was quite rare. In fact, ... there is considerable evidence that the entire concept of "social Darwinism" as we know it today was virtually invented by Richard Hofstadter. Eric Foner , in an introduction to a then-new edition of Hofstadter's book published in the early 1990s, declines to go quite that far. "Hofstadter did not invent the term Social Darwinism", Foner writes, "which originated in Europe in
26080-446: Was released two years before the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species , and First Principles was printed in 1860. In The Social Organism (1860), Spencer compares society to a living organism and argues that, just as biological organisms evolve through natural selection, society evolves and increases in complexity through analogous processes. In many ways, Spencer's theory of cosmic evolution has much more in common with
26243-460: Was strongly influenced by social Darwinist ideas is often found in historical and social science literature. For example, the philosopher and historian Hannah Arendt analysed the historical development via social Darwinist ethics to racist ideology. Another example is recent scholarship that portrays Ernst Haeckel's Monist League as a mystical progenitor of the Völkisch movement and, ultimately, of
26406-461: Was taken as a platform to construe a Darwinian theory of mankind. Since it was thought at the time that the orangutan and human brain were roughly the same size, Darwin and his colleagues suspected that only the invention of language could account for differentiation between humans and other Great Apes . It was suggested that the evolution of language and the mind must go hand in hand. From this perspective, empirical evidence from languages from around
26569-459: Was true both on the level of the individual, and for the groups as entities. One of the results of the Norwegianization was that the number of Sámi people who stated that they were of Norwegian ethnicity steadily increased over the span of the late 1800s and 1900s. The Norwegianization is also considered to be one of the reasons as to why many people with ethnically Sámi backgrounds developed a negative view of Sámi language and culture. Sámi ethnicity
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