unconˈditioned, ppl. a.
[un-1 8.]
1. Not subject to, or dependent upon, conditions or stipulations.
| a 1631 Donne Serm. xxxix. (1640) 391 Thou must stay out that time,..and by no practice, no not so much as by a deliberate wish, or unconditioned prayer, seeke to be delivered of it. 1692 Beverley Disc. Dr. Crisp 10 Therein it must needs be, as unconditioned, as Election is. 1712 Berkeley Pass. Obed. Wks. 1871 III. 139, I speak of non⁓resistance as an absolute, unconditioned, unlimited duty. 1776 Gibbon Decl. & F. xi. I. 301 With the choice only of submitting to his unconditioned mercy, or waiting the utmost severity of his resentment. 1852 Bailey Festus (ed. 5) 491 Who thus pour forth Unmeasured, unconditioned, your divine Riches of works and words. 1864 R. A. Arnold Cotton Famine 477 They had grown used to ‘th' relief’, and regarded it as their unconditioned right. |
2. a. Not dependent upon, or determined by, an antecedent condition.
| 1796 F. A. Nitsch Gen. View Kant's Princ. concerning Man 127 Reason..produces the idea of an unconditioned Limitation. 1829 Sir W. Hamilton in Edin. Rev. L. 204 We are..inspired with a belief in the existence of something unconditioned beyond the sphere of all comprehensible reality. 1846 Lewes Hist. Philos. IV. 205 An entirely unconditioned Thought. 1862 H. Spencer First Princ. i. iii. §15 (1875) 50 If Space and Time are the conditions under which we think, then when we think of Space and Time themselves, our thoughts must be unconditioned. |
b. unconditioned reflex, an inborn, instinctual reflex or reflex action (cf. conditioned ppl. a. 7 b). So unconditioned stimulus.
| 1906, 1927 [see conditioned ppl. a. 7 b]. 1937 Discovery Jan. 17/2 Its instincts, or, to use Pavlov's expression, its unconditioned reflexes. 1972 New Yorker 26 Aug. 32/3 In the vocabulary that Pavlov adopted to describe his findings, the meat powder was labelled an ‘unconditioned stimulus’. |
3. absol. That which is not subject to the conditions of finite existence and cognition.
| 1829 Sir W. Hamilton in Edin. Rev. L. 198 The first of these ideas..is variously expressed, under the terms unity, identity, substance, absolute cause, the infinite, pure thought, &c.; we would briefly call it the unconditioned. 1836 ― Metaph. xxxviii. (1859) II. 373 The Conditioned is that which is alone conceivable or cogitable; the Unconditioned, that which is inconceivable or incogitable. 1877 E. Caird Philos. Kant iii. 45 The form of time, in which we always find condition beyond condition, cause beyond cause, and never reach the unconditioned, the causa sui. |
Hence unconˈditionedness.
| 1854 Geo. Eliot tr. Feuerbach's Essence Christianity iv. 54 The metaphysical attributes of eternity, unconditionedness,..and the like abstractions. 1860 J. Young Prov. Reason 47 Only through and on account of this undefinedness (unconditionedness) is Being Non-Being. 1903 Edin. Rev. July 71 Nor is the test of this unconditionedness arbitrary. |