|
Presentism (philosophy Of Time)
Presentism (sometimes 'philosophical presentism') is the view of time which states that only present entities exist (or, equivalently, that everything which is exists presently) and what is present (i.e., what exists) changes as time passes. According to presentism, there are no past or future entities at all, though some entities have existed and other entities will exist. In a sense, the past and the future do not exist for presentists—past events have happened (have existed, or have been present) and future events will happen (will exist, or will be present), but neither exist at all since they do not exist now. Presentism is a view about temporal ontology, i.e., a view about what exists in time, that contrasts with eternalism—the view that past, present and future entities exist (that is, the ontological thesis of the 'block universe')—and with no-futurism—the view that only past and present entities exist (that is, the ontological thesis of the ' growing block unive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Eternalism (philosophy Of Time)
In the philosophy of space and time, eternalism is an approach to the ontological nature of time, which takes the view that all existence in time is equally ''real'', as opposed to presentism or the growing block universe theory of time, in which at least the future is not the same as any other time. Some forms of eternalism give time a similar ontology to that of space, as a dimension, with different times being as real as different places, and future events are "already there" in the same sense other places are already there, and that there is no objective flow of time. It is sometimes referred to as the "block time" or "block universe" theory due to its description of space-time as an unchanging four-dimensional "block", as opposed to the view of the world as a three-dimensional space modulated by the passage of time. The present In classical philosophy, time is divided into three distinct regions: the "past", the "present", and the "future". Using that representational m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Modal Realism
Modal realism is the view propounded by the philosopher David Lewis that all possible worlds are real in the same way as is the actual world: they are "of a kind with this world of ours." It states that possible worlds exist, possible worlds are not different in kind from the actual world, possible worlds are irreducible entities, and the term ''actual'' in ''actual world'' is indexical, i.e. any subject can declare their world to be the actual one, much as they label the place they are "here" and the time they are "now". ''Extended modal realism'' is a form of modal realism that involves ontological commitments not just to ''possible worlds'' but also to ''impossible worlds''. Objects are conceived as being spread out in the modal dimension, i.e., as having not just spatial and temporal parts but also modal parts. This contrasts with Lewis' modal realism, according to which each object only inhabits one possible world. Common arguments for modal realism refer to their ''the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Alyssa Ney
Alyssa Ney is an American philosopher of science, and a professor and chair of metaphysics in the Faculty of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, and Religious Studies at LMU Munich. Her interests include metaphysics, the philosophy of physics, and the philosophy of mind. Education and career Ney majored in physics and philosophy at Tulane University, graduating in 1999. She then went to Brown University for graduate study in philosophy, earning a master's degree in 2003 and completing her Ph.D. in 2005. Her dissertation, ''The Metaphysics of Unified Science'', was supervised by Jaegwon Kim. Later, as a philosophy professor, she earned a second master's degree in physics from the University of California, Davis in 2020. She worked at the University of Rochester The University of Rochester is a private university, private research university in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded in 1850 and moved into its current campus, next to the Genesee River in 1930. Wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
German Language
German (, ) is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, mainly spoken in Western Europe, Western and Central Europe. It is the majority and Official language, official (or co-official) language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. It is also an official language of Luxembourg, German-speaking Community of Belgium, Belgium and the Italian autonomous province of South Tyrol, as well as a recognized national language in Namibia. There are also notable German-speaking communities in other parts of Europe, including: Poland (Upper Silesia), the Czech Republic (North Bohemia), Denmark (South Jutland County, North Schleswig), Slovakia (Krahule), Germans of Romania, Romania, Hungary (Sopron), and France (European Collectivity of Alsace, Alsace). Overseas, sizeable communities of German-speakers are found in the Americas. German is one of the global language system, major languages of the world, with nearly 80 million native speakers and over 130 mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Temporality
In philosophy, temporality refers to the idea of a linear progression of past, present, and future. The term is frequently used, however, in the context of critiques of commonly held ideas of linear time. In social sciences, temporality is studied with respect to the human perception of time and the social organization of time. The perception of time in Western thought underwent significant changes in the three hundred years between the Middle Ages and modernity. Examples in continental philosophy of philosophers raising questions of temporality include Edmund Husserl's analysis of internal time consciousness, Martin Heidegger's ''Being and Time'', J. M. E. McTaggart's article " The Unreality of Time", George Herbert Mead's ''Philosophy of the Present'', and Jacques Derrida's criticisms of Husserl's analysis. Temporality is "deeply intertwined with the rhetorical act of harnessing and subverting power in the unfolding struggle for justice." Temporalities, particularly in Europ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Polonium
Polonium is a chemical element; it has symbol Po and atomic number 84. A rare and highly radioactive metal (although sometimes classified as a metalloid) with no stable isotopes, polonium is a chalcogen and chemically similar to selenium and tellurium, though its metallic character resembles that of its horizontal neighbors in the periodic table: thallium, lead, and bismuth. Due to the short half-life of all its isotopes, its natural occurrence is limited to tiny traces of the fleeting polonium-210 (with a half-life of 138 days) in uranium ores, as it is the penultimate daughter of natural uranium-238. Though two longer-lived isotopes exist (polonium-209 with a half-life of 124 years and polonium-208 with a half-life of 2.898 years), they are much more difficult to produce. Today, polonium is usually produced in milligram quantities by the neutron irradiation of bismuth. Due to its intense radioactivity, which results in the radiolysis of chemical bonds and radioactive self-he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Marie Curie
Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie (; ; 7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934), known simply as Marie Curie ( ; ), was a Polish and naturalised-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was List of female Nobel laureates, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person Nobel Prize#Multiple laureates, to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. Her husband, Pierre Curie, was a co-winner of her first Nobel Prize, making them the Nobel Prize#Statistics, first married couple to win the Nobel Prize and launching the Nobel Prize#Family laureates, Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was, in 1906, the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris. She was born in Warsaw, in what was then the Congress Poland, Kingdom of Poland, part of the Russian Empire. She studied at Warsaw's clandestine Flying University and began her practical scientific training in Warsaw. In 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Fatalism
Fatalism is a belief and philosophical doctrine which considers the entire universe as a deterministic system and stresses the subjugation of all events, actions, and behaviors to fate or destiny, which is commonly associated with the consequent attitude of resignation in the face of future events which are thought to be inevitable and outside of human control. Definition The term "fatalism" can refer to any of the following ideas: * Broadly, any view according to which human beings are powerless to do anything other than what they actually do. Included in this is the belief that all events are decided by fate and are outside human control, hence humans have no power to influence the future or indeed the outcome of their own thoughts and actions. More specifically: * Theological fatalism, according to which free will is incompatible with the existence of an omniscient God who has foreknowledge of all future events. This is very similar to theological determinism. * Logic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Truthmaker Theory
Truthmaker theory is "the branch of metaphysics that explores the relationships between what is true and what exists". The basic intuition behind truthmaker theory is that truth depends on being. For example, a perceptual experience of a green tree may be said to be true because there actually is a green tree. But if there were no tree there, it would be false. So the experience by itself does not ensure its truth or falsehood, it depends on something else. Expressed more generally, truthmaker theory is the thesis that "the truth of truthbearers depends on the existence of truthmakers". A perceptual experience is the ''truthbearer'' in the example above. Various representational entities, like beliefs, thoughts or assertions can act as truthbearers. Truthmaker theorists are divided about what type of entity plays the role of ''truthmaker''; popular candidates include states of affairs and tropes. ''Truthmaker maximalism'' is the thesis that every truth has a truthmaker. An alterna ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Supervenience
In philosophy, supervenience refers to a relation between sets of properties or sets of facts. X is said to ''supervene'' on Y if and only if some difference in Y is necessary for any difference in X to be possible. Examples of supervenience, in which case the truth values of some propositions cannot vary unless the truth values of some other propositions vary, include: * Whether there is a table in the living room supervenes on the positions of molecules in the living room. * The truth value of (A) supervenes on the truth value of its negation, (¬A), and vice versa. Supervenience is of interest to philosophers because it differs from other nearby relations, for example ''entailment''. Some philosophers believe it possible for some A to supervene on some B without being entailed by B. In such cases it may seem puzzling why A should supervene on B and equivalently why changes in A should require changes in B. Two important applications of supervenience involve cases like this. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Vertiginous Question
Benj Hellie's vertiginous question asks why, of all the subjects of experience out there, ''this'' one—the one corresponding to the human being referred to as Benj Hellie—is the one whose experiences are ''lived''? (The reader is supposed to substitute their own case for Hellie's.) In other words: Why am I me and not someone else? A simple response is that this question reduces to "Why are Hellie's experiences lived from Hellie's perspective," which is trivial to answer. However, Hellie argues, through a parable, that this response leaves something out. His parable describes two situations, one reflecting a broad global ''constellation'' view of the world and everyone's phenomenal features, and one describing an ''embedded'' view from the perspective of a single subject. The former seems to align better with the simple response above, but the latter seems to be a better description of consciousness. Overview Philosophers have used various different terminology to describe the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
