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Further Facts
In philosophy, further facts are facts that do not logical consequence, follow logically from the physical facts of the world. Reductionism, Reductionists who argue that at bottom there is nothing more than the physical facts thus argue against the existence of further facts. The concept of further facts plays a key role in some of the major works in analytic philosophy of the late 20th century, including in Derek Parfit's ''Reasons and Persons'', and David Chalmers's ''The Conscious Mind''. One context in which the existence of further facts is debated is that of personal identity across time: in what sense is Alice today the ''same'' person as Alice yesterday, given that across the two days the state of her brain is different and the atoms that constitute her are different? On the one hand, we may believe that at bottom, there is nothing more than the atoms and their arrangement at different points in time; while we may for practical purposes come up with some notion of sameness ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophy
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its methods and assumptions. Historically, many of the individual sciences, such as physics and psychology, formed part of philosophy. However, they are considered separate academic disciplines in the modern sense of the term. Influential traditions in the history of philosophy include Western philosophy, Western, Islamic philosophy, Arabic–Persian, Indian philosophy, Indian, and Chinese philosophy. Western philosophy originated in Ancient Greece and covers a wide area of philosophical subfields. A central topic in Arabic–Persian philosophy is the relation between reason and revelation. Indian philosophy combines the Spirituality, spiritual problem of how to reach Enlightenment in Buddhism, enlighten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inverted Spectrum
The inverted spectrum is the hypothetical concept, pertaining to the philosophy of color, of two people sharing their color vocabulary and discriminations, although the colors one sees—that person's qualia—are systematically different from the colors the other person sees. Overview The concept dates back to John Locke. It invites us to imagine two individuals who perceive colors differently: where one person sees red, the other sees green, and vice versa. Despite this difference in their subjective experiences, they behave and communicate as if their perceptions are the same, and no physical or behavioral test can reveal the inversion. Critics of functionalism, and of physicalism more broadly, argue that if we can imagine this happening without contradiction, it follows that we are imagining a change in a property that determines the way things look to us, but that has no physical basis. In more detail: #Metaphysical identity holds of necessity # If something is possibly f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
Angel
An angel is a spiritual (without a physical body), heavenly, or supernatural being, usually humanoid with bird-like wings, often depicted as a messenger or intermediary between God (the transcendent) and humanity (the profane) in various traditions like the Abrahamic religions. Other roles include protectors and guides for humans, such as guardian angels and servants of God. In Western belief-systems the term is often used to distinguish benevolent from malevolent intermediary beings. Emphasizing the distance between God and mankind, revelation-based belief-systems require angels to bridge the gap between the earthly and the transcendent realm. Angels play a lesser role in monistic belief-systems, since the gap is non-existent. However, angelic beings might be conceived as aid to achieve a proper relationship with the divine. Abrahamic religions describe angelic hierarchies, which vary by religion and sect. Some angels have specific names (such as Gabriel or Mich ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spacetime
In physics, spacetime, also called the space-time continuum, is a mathematical model that fuses the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional continuum. Spacetime diagrams are useful in visualizing and understanding relativistic effects, such as how different observers perceive ''where'' and ''when'' events occur. Until the turn of the 20th century, the assumption had been that the three-dimensional geometry of the universe (its description in terms of locations, shapes, distances, and directions) was distinct from time (the measurement of when events occur within the universe). However, space and time took on new meanings with the Lorentz transformation and special theory of relativity. In 1908, Hermann Minkowski presented a geometric interpretation of special relativity that fused time and the three spatial dimensions into a single four-dimensional continuum now known as Minkowski space. This interpretation proved vital t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophy Of Space And Time
Philosophy of space and time is a branch of philosophy concerned with ideas about knowledge and understanding within space and time. Such ideas have been central to philosophy from its inception. The philosophy of space and time was both an inspiration for and a central aspect of early analytic philosophy. The subject focuses on a number of basic issues, including whether time and space exist independently of the mind, whether they exist independently of one another, what accounts for time's apparently unidirectional flow, whether times other than the present moment exist, and questions about the nature of identity (particularly the nature of identity over time). Ancient and medieval views The earliest recorded philosophy of time was expounded by the ancient Egyptian thinker Ptahhotep (c. 2650–2600 BC), who said: The Vedas, the earliest texts on Indian philosophy and Hindu philosophy, dating back to the late 2nd millennium BC, describe ancient Hindu cosmology, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
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] |
Tautology (logic)
In mathematical logic, a tautology (from ) is a formula that is true regardless of the interpretation of its component terms, with only the logical constants having a fixed meaning. For example, a formula that states, "the ball is green or the ball is not green," is always true, regardless of what a ball is and regardless of its colour. Tautology is usually, though not always, used to refer to valid formulas of propositional logic. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein first applied the term to redundancies of propositional logic in 1921, borrowing from rhetoric, where a tautology is a repetitive statement. In logic, a formula is satisfiable if it is true under at least one interpretation, and thus a tautology is a formula whose negation is unsatisfiable. In other words, it cannot be false. Unsatisfiable statements, both through negation and affirmation, are known formally as contradictions. A formula that is neither a tautology nor a contradiction is said to be logically c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indexicality
In semiotics, linguistics, anthropology, and philosophy of language, indexicality is the phenomenon of a ''Sign (semiotics), sign'' pointing to (or ''indexing'') some element in the context (language use), context in which it occurs. A sign that signifies indexically is called an index or, in philosophy, an indexical. The modern concept originates in the semiotic theory of Charles Sanders Peirce, in which indexicality is one of the three fundamental sign modalities by which a sign relates to its referent (the others being iconicity and Symbolic anthropology, symbolism).Charles Sanders Peirce, Peirce, C.S., "Division of Signs" in ''Collected Papers'', 1932 [1897]. Peirce's concept has been adopted and extended by several twentieth-century academic traditions, including those of linguistic pragmatics, linguistic anthropology, and Anglo-American philosophy of language. Words and expressions in language often derive some part of their referential meaning from indexicality. For example ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logical Possibility
Logical possibility refers to a logical proposition that cannot be disproved, using the axioms and rules of a given system of logic. The logical possibility of a proposition will depend upon the system of logic being considered, rather than on the violation of any single rule. Some systems of logic restrict inferences from inconsistent propositions or even allow for true contradictions. Other logical systems have more than two truth-values instead of a binary of such values. Some assume the system in question is classical propositional logic. Similarly, the criterion for logical possibility is often based on whether or not a proposition is contradictory and as such, is often thought of as the broadest type of possibility. In modal logic, a logical proposition is possible if it is true in some possible world. The universe of "possible worlds" depends upon the axioms and rules of the logical system in which one is working, but given some logical system, any logically consist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
