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Centered World
A centered world, according to David Kellogg Lewis, consists of (1) a possible world, (2) an agent in that world, and (3) a time in that world. The concept of centered worlds has epistemic as well as metaphysical uses; for the latter, the three components of a centered world have connections to theories such as actualism, solipsism (especially egocentric presentism and perspectival realism In Caspar Hare's theory of perspectival realism, there is a defining ''intrinsic'' property that the things that are in perceptual awareness have. Consider seeing object A but not object B. Of course, we can say that the visual experience of A i ...), and presentism, respectively. References Concepts in epistemology Concepts in metaphysics Metaphysics of mind Philosophy of time Possible world Solipsism Theory of mind {{Philosophy-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Kellogg Lewis
David (; , "beloved one") was a king of ancient Israel and Judah and the third king of the United Monarchy, according to the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament. The Tel Dan stele, an Aramaic-inscribed stone erected by a king of Aram-Damascus in the late 9th/early 8th centuries BCE to commemorate a victory over two enemy kings, contains the phrase (), which is translated as " House of David" by most scholars. The Mesha Stele, erected by King Mesha of Moab in the 9th century BCE, may also refer to the "House of David", although this is disputed. According to Jewish works such as the '' Seder Olam Rabbah'', '' Seder Olam Zutta'', and ''Sefer ha-Qabbalah'' (all written over a thousand years later), David ascended the throne as the king of Judah in 885 BCE. Apart from this, all that is known of David comes from biblical literature, the historicity of which has been extensively challenged,Writing and Rewriting the Story of Solomon in Ancient Israel; by Isaac Kalimi; page 32; ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Possible World
A possible world is a complete and consistent way the world is or could have been. Possible worlds are widely used as a formal device in logic, philosophy, and linguistics in order to provide a semantics for intensional and modal logic. Their metaphysical status has been a subject of controversy in philosophy, with modal realists such as David Lewis arguing that they are literally existing alternate realities, and others such as Robert Stalnaker arguing that they are not. Logic Possible worlds are one of the foundational concepts in modal and intensional logics. Formulas in these logics are used to represent statements about what ''might'' be true, what ''should'' be true, what one ''believes'' to be true and so forth. To give these statements a formal interpretation, logicians use structures containing possible worlds. For instance, in the relational semantics for classical propositional modal logic, the formula \Diamond P (read as "possibly P") is actually true if and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agency (philosophy)
Agency is the capacity of an actor to act in a given environment. It is independent of the moral dimension, which is called moral agency. In sociology, an agent is an individual engaging with the social structure. Notably, though, the primacy of social structure vs. individual capacity with regard to persons' actions is debated within sociology. This debate concerns, at least partly, the level of reflexivity an agent may possess. Agency may either be classified as unconscious, involuntary behavior, or purposeful, goal directed activity (intentional action). An agent typically has some sort of immediate awareness of their physical activity and the goals that the activity is aimed at realizing. In 'goal directed action' an agent implements a kind of direct control or guidance over their own behavior. Human agency Agency is contrasted to objects reacting to natural forces involving only unthinking deterministic processes. In this respect, agency is subtly distinct from the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epistemology
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowledge in the form of skills, and knowledge by acquaintance as a familiarity through experience. Epistemologists study the concepts of belief, truth, and justification to understand the nature of knowledge. To discover how knowledge arises, they investigate sources of justification, such as perception, introspection, memory, reason, and testimony. The school of skepticism questions the human ability to attain knowledge while fallibilism says that knowledge is never certain. Empiricists hold that all knowledge comes from sense experience, whereas rationalists believe that some knowledge does not depend on it. Coherentists argue that a belief is justified if it coheres with other beliefs. Foundationalists, by contrast, maintain th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of human understanding. Some philosophers, including Aristotle, designate metaphysics as first philosophy to suggest that it is more fundamental than other forms of philosophical inquiry. Metaphysics encompasses a wide range of general and abstract topics. It investigates the nature of existence, the features all entities have in common, and their division into categories of being. An influential division is between particulars and universals. Particulars are individual unique entities, like a specific apple. Universals are general features that different particulars have in common, like the color . Modal metaphysics examines what it means for something to be possible or necessary. Metaphysicians also explore the concepts of space, time, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Actualism
In analytic philosophy, actualism is the view that everything there ''is'' (i.e., everything that has ''being'', in the broadest sense) is actual. Another phrasing of the thesis is that the domain of unrestricted quantification ranges over all and only actual existents. The denial of actualism is possibilism, the thesis that there are some entities that are ''merely possible'': these entities have being but are not actual and, hence, enjoy a "less robust" sort of being than do actually existing things. An important, but significantly different notion of possibilism known as '' modal realism'' was developed by the philosopher David Lewis. On Lewis's account, the actual world is identified with the physical universe of which we are all a part. Other possible worlds exist in exactly the same sense as the actual world; they are simply spatio-temporally unrelated to our world, and to each other. Hence, for Lewis, "merely possible" entities—entities that exist in other possible wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solipsism
Solipsism ( ; ) is the philosophical idea that only one's mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind. Varieties There are varying degrees of solipsism that parallel the varying degrees of skepticism: Metaphysical Metaphysical solipsism is a variety of solipsism based on a philosophy of subjective idealism. Metaphysical solipsists maintain that the self is the only existing reality and that all other realities, including the external world and other persons, are representations of that self, having no independent existence. There are several versions of metaphysical solipsism, such as Caspar Hare's egocentric presentism (or perspectival realism), in which other people are conscious, but their experiences are simply not ''present''. Epistemological Epistemological solipsism is the variety of id ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Egocentric Presentism
Egocentric presentism is a form of solipsism introduced by Caspar Hare in which other persons can be conscious, but their experiences are simply not . Similarly, in related work, Hare argues for a theory of perspectival realism in which other perspectives do exist, but the present perspective has a defining intrinsic property. In one example that Hare uses to illustrate his theory (starting on page 354 of the official version of his paper), you learn that you are one of two people, named A and B, who have just been in a train crash; and that A is about to have incredibly painful surgery. You cannot remember your name. According to Hare, naturally, you hope to be B. The point of the example is that you know everything relevant that there is to know about the objective world; all that is missing is position in it, that is, whose experiences are , A's or B's. This example is easily handled by egocentric presentism because under this theory, the case where the present experiences ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Perspectival Realism
In Caspar Hare's theory of perspectival realism, there is a defining ''intrinsic'' property that the things that are in perceptual awareness have. Consider seeing object A but not object B. Of course, we can say that the visual experience of A is present ''to you'', and no visual experience of B is present ''to you''. But, it can be argued, this misses the fact that the visual experience of A is ''simply'' present, not relative to anything. This is what Hare's perspectival realism attempts to capture, resulting in a weak version of metaphysical solipsism. As Hare points out, the same type of argument is often used in the philosophy of time to support theories such as presentism. Of course, we can say that A is happening on nsert today's date But, it can be argued, this misses the fact that A is ''simply'' happening (right now), not relative to anything. Hare's theory of perspectival realism is closely related to his theory of egocentric presentism. Several other philosophe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
Concepts In Epistemology
A concept is an abstract idea that serves as a foundation for more concrete principles, thoughts, and beliefs. Concepts play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied within such disciplines as linguistics, psychology, and philosophy, and these disciplines are interested in the logical and psychological structure of concepts, and how they are put together to form thoughts and sentences. The study of concepts has served as an important flagship of an emerging interdisciplinary approach, cognitive science. In contemporary philosophy, three understandings of a concept prevail: * mental representations, such that a concept is an entity that exists in the mind (a mental object) * abilities peculiar to cognitive agents (mental states) * Fregean senses, abstract objects rather than a mental object or a mental state Concepts are classified into a hierarchy, higher levels of which are termed "superordinate" and lower levels termed "subordinate". A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Concepts In Metaphysics
A concept is an abstract idea that serves as a foundation for more concrete principles, thoughts, and beliefs. Concepts play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied within such disciplines as linguistics, psychology, and philosophy, and these disciplines are interested in the logical and psychological structure of concepts, and how they are put together to form thoughts and sentences. The study of concepts has served as an important flagship of an emerging interdisciplinary approach, cognitive science. In contemporary philosophy, three understandings of a concept prevail: * mental representations, such that a concept is an entity that exists in the mind (a mental object) * abilities peculiar to cognitive agents (mental states) * Fregean senses, abstract objects rather than a mental object or a mental state Concepts are classified into a hierarchy, higher levels of which are termed "superordinate" and lower levels termed "subordinate". Add ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
