Nietzsche, in an effort to subvert the epistemological authority of scientific knowledge, sought to legitimatize a division between mind and world much starker than that originally envisioned by Descartes. What is not as widely known, however, is that Nietzsche and other seminal figures in the history of philosophical postmodernism were very much aware of an epistemological crisis in scientific thought than arose much earlier that, that occasioned by wave-particle dualism in quantum physics. This crisis resulted from attempts during the last three decades of the nineteenth century to develop a logically - consistent definition of number and arithmetic that would serve to reinforce the classical view of correspondence between mathematical theory and physical reality. As it turned out, these efforts resulted in paradoxes of a recursion and -reference that threatened to undermine both the efficacy of this correspondence and the privileged character of scientific knowledge.
Nietzsche appealed to this crisis in an effort to reinforce his assumption that, the absence of ontology, all knowledge (including scientific knowledge) was grounded only in human consciousness. As the crisis continued, a philosopher trained in higher mathematics and physics, Edmund Husserl, attempted to preserve the classical view of correspondence between mathematical theory and physical reality by deriving the foundation of logic and number from consciousness in ways that would preserve -consistency and rigour. Even so, this effort to ground mathematical physics in human consciousness, or in human subjective reality, was no trivial matter. It represented a direct link between these early challenges and the efficacy of classical epistemology and the tradition in philosophical thought that culminated in philosophical postmodernism. Nietzsche’s emotionally charged decence of intellectual freedom and his radical empowerment of mind as the maker and transformer of the collective fictions that shape human reality in a soulless mechanistic universe proved terribly influential on twentieth-century thought.
`Friedrich Nietzsche is openly pessimistic about the possibility of knowledge. ‘We simply lack any organ for knowledge, for ‘truth’: We know (or believe or imagine) just as much as may be useful in the interests of the human herd, the species: and even what is called ‘utility’ is ultimately also a mere belief, something imaginary and perhaps precisely that most calamitous stupidity of which we will not perish some day’ (The Gay Science).
This position is very radical, Nietzsche does not simply deny that knowledge, construed as the adequate representation of the world by the intellect, exists. He also refuses the pragmatist identification of knowledge and truth with usefulness: he writes that we think we know what we think is useful, and that we can be quite wrong about the latter.
Nietzsche’s view, his ‘Perspectivism’, depends on his claim that there is no sensible conception of a world independent of human interpretation and to which interpretations would correspond if hey were to constitute knowledge. He sums up this highly controversial position in The Will to Power: ‘Facts are precisely what there is not. Only interpretation’.
It is often claimed that Perspectivism is -undermining. If the thesis that all views are interpretations is true then, it is argued there is at least one view that is not an interpretation. If, on the other hand, the thesis is it an interpretation, then there is no reason to believe that it is true, and it follows again that nit every view is an interpretation.
Yet this refutation assumes that if a view, like Perspectivism, is an interpretation it is wrong. This is not the case. To call any view, including Perspectivism, an interpretation is to say that it can be wrong, which is true of all views, and that is not a sufficient refutation. To show the Perspectivism is literally false producing another view superior to it on specific epistemological grounds is necessary.
Perspectivism does not deny that particular views can be true. Like some versions of cotemporary anti-realism, its attributional approach for ‘truth in relation to facts’ specified internally those approaches themselves. But it refuses to envisage a single independent set of facts, To be accounted for by all theories. Thus Nietzsche grants the truth of specific scientific theories does, however, deny that a scientific interpretation can possibly be ‘the only justifiable interpretation of the world’ (The Gay Science): Neither the facts that science addresses nor the methods it employs are privileged. Scientific theories serve the purposes for which hey have been devised, but these have no priority over the many other purposes of human life. The existence of many purposes and needs relative to which the value of theories is established-another crucial element of Perspectivism is sometimes thought to imply a reason relative, according to which no standards for evaluating purposes and theories can be devised. This is correct only in that Nietzsche denies the existence of single set of standards for determining epistemic value, but holds that specific views can be compared with and evaluated in relation to one another the ability to use criteria acceptable in particular circumstances does not presuppose the existence of criteria applicable in all. Agreement is therefore not always possible, since individuals may sometimes differ over the most fundamental issues dividing them.
Still, Nietzsche would not be troubled by this fact, which his opponents too also have to confront only he would argue, to suppress it by insisting on the hope that all disagreements are in particular eliminable even if our practice falls woefully short of the ideal. Nietzsche abandons that ideal. He considers irresoluble disagreement and essential part of human life.
Knowledge for Nietzsche finds its point reference by the idea of the ‘given’ basis beyond which its conferring material and of a rational defensible theory of confirmation and inference. That it is based on desire and bodily needs more than social refinement’s Perspectives are to be judged not from their relation to the absolute but on the basis of their effects in a specific era. The possibility of any truth beyond such a local, pragmatic one becomes a problem in Nietzsche, since either a noumenal realm or a historical synthesis exists to provide an absolute criterion of adjudication for competing truth claims: what gets called truths are simply beliefs that have been for so long that we have forgotten their genealogy? In these Nietzsche reverses the Enlightenment dictum that truth is the way to liberation by suggesting that trying classes in as far as they are considered absolute for debate and conceptual progress and cause as opposed to any ambient behaviour toward the ease of which backwardness and unnecessary misery. Nietzsche moves back and forth without revolution between the positing of trans-histories; truth claims, such as his claim about the will to power, and a kind of epistemic nihilism that calls into question not only the possibility of truth but the need and desire of it as well. However, perhaps what is most important, Nietzsche introduces the notion that truth is a kind of human practice, in a game whose rules are contingent rather than necessary it. The evaluation of truth claims should be based of their strategic efforts, not their ability to represent a reality conceived of as separately autonomous than that of human influence, for Nietzsche the view that all truth is truth from or within a particular perspective. The perspective may be a general human pin of view, set by such things as the nature of our sensory apparatus, or it may be thought to be bound by culture, history, language, class or gender. Since there may be many perspectives, there are also different families of truth. The term is frequently applied to Nietzsche’s philosophy.
The best-known disciple of Husserl was Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), and the work of both figures greatly influenced that of the French atheistic existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. The work of Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre became foundational to that of the principal architects of philosophical postmodernism, the deconstructionist’s Jacques Lacan, Roland Bathes, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, this direct linkage among the nineteenth-century crises about epistemological foundations of physics and the origins of philosophical postmodernism served to perpetuate the Cartesian two-world dilemma in an even more oppressive form.
Of Sartre’s main philosophical work, Being and Nothingness, Sartre examines the relationships between Being For-it (consciousness) and Being In-it (the non-conscious world). He rejects central tenets of the rationalalist and empiricist traditions, calling the view that the mind or is a thing or substance. ‘Descartes’s substantialist illusion’, and claiming also that consciousness dos not contain ideas or representations . . . are idolist invented by the psychologists. Sartre also attacks idealism in the forms associated with Berkeley and Kant, and concludes that his account of the relationship between consciousness and the world is neither realist nor idealist.
Sartre also discusses Being For-others, which comprises the aspects of experience about interactions with other minds. His views are subtle: Roughly, he holds that one’s awareness of others is constituted by feelings of shame, pride, and so on.
Sartre’s rejection of ideas, and the denial of idealism, appear to commit him to direct realism in the theory of perception. This is neither inconsistent with his claim as been non-realist nor idealist, since by ‘realist’ he means views that allow for the mutual independence or in-principle separability of mind and world. Against this Sartre emphasizes, after Heidegger, that perceptual experience has an active dimension, in hat it is a way of interacting and dealing with the world, than a way of merely contemplating it (‘activity, as spontaneous, unreflecting consciousness, constitutes a certain existential stratum in the world’). Consequently, he holds that experience is richer, and open to more aspects of the world, than empiricist writers customarily claim:
When In run after a streetcar . . . there is consciousness of-the-streetcar-having-to-be-overtaken, etc., . . . In am then plunged into the world of objects, it is they that constitute the unity of my consciousness, it is they that present themselves with values, with attractive and repellent qualities . . . Relatedly, he insists that In experience material things as having certain potentialities -for-me (’nothingness’). In see doors and bottles as openable, bicycles as ridable (these matters are linked ultimately to the doctrine of extreme existentialist freedom). Similarly, if my friend is not where In expect to meet her, then In experience her absence ‘as a real event’.
These Phenomenological claims are striking and compelling, but Sartre pays insufficient attention to such things as illusions and hallucinations, which are normally cited as problems for direct realists. In his discussion of mental imagery, however, he describes the act of imaging as a ‘transformation’ of ‘psychic material’. This connects with his views that even a physical image such as a photograph of a tree does not figure as an object of consciousness when it is experienced as a tree-representation (than as a piece of coloured cards). Nonetheless, the fact remains that the photograph continues to contribute to the character of the experience. Given this, seeing how Sartre avoids positing a mental analogue of a photograph for episodes of mental imaging is hard, and harder still to reconcile this with his rejection of visual representations. If ones image is regarded as debased and the awareness of awakening is formally received as a differential coefficient of perceptual knowledge, but this merely rises once more the issue of perceptual illusion and hallucination, and the problems of reconciling them are dialectally the formalization built upon realism.
Much of Western religion and philosophical thought since the seventeenth century has sought to obviate this prospect with an appeal to ontology or to some conception of God or Being. Yet we continue to struggle, as philosophical postmodernism attests, with the terrible prospect by Nietzsche-we are locked in a prison house of our individual subjective realities in a universe that is as alien to our thought as it is to our desires. This universe may seem comprehensible and knowable in scientific terms, and science does seek in some sense, as Koyré puts it, to ‘find a place for everything.’ Nonetheless, the ghost of Descartes lingers in the widespread conviction that science does not provide a ‘place for man’ or for all that we know as distinctly human in subjective reality.
Nonetheless, after The Gay Science (1882) began the crucial exploration of -mastery. The relations between reason and power, and the revelation of the unconscious striving after power that provide the actual energy for the apparent -denial of the ascetic and the martyred were during this period that Nietzsche’s failed relationship with Lou Salome resulted in the emotional crisis from which Also sprach Zarathustra, 1883-5, translates as, Thus Spoke Zarathustra and signals a recovery. This work is frequently regarded as Nietzsche’s masterpiece. It was followed by Jenseits von Gut and Böse, 1887 translates as, Beyond Good and Evil, and Zur Genealogie der Moral, 1887 and translates to, The Genealogy of Moral.
In Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-85), Friedrich Nietzsche introduced in eloquent poetic prose the concepts of the death of God, the superman, and the will to power. Vigorously attacking Christianity and democracy as moralities for the ‘weak herd’, he argued for the ‘natural aristocracy’ of the superman who, driven by the ‘will to power’, celebrates life on earth rather than sanctifying it for some heavenly reward. Such a heroic man of merit has the courage to ‘live dangerously’ and thus rise above the masses, developing his natural capacity for the creative use of passion.
Also known as radical theology, this movement flourished in the mid 1960s. As a theological movement it never attracted a large following, did not find a unified expression, and passed off the scene as quickly and dramatically as it had arisen. There is even disagreement as to whom its major representatives were. Some identify two, and others three or four. Although small, the movement attracted attention because it was a spectacular symptom of the bankruptcy of modern Theology and because it was a journalistic phenomenon. The very statement 'God is dead' was tailor-made for journalistic exploitation. The representatives of the movement effectively used periodical articles, paperback books, and the electronic media. This movement gave expression to an idea that had been incipient in Western philosophy and theology for some time, the suggestion that the reality of a transcendent God at best could not be known and at worst did not exist at all. Philosopher Kant and theologian Ritschl denied that one could have a theoretical knowledge of the being of God. Hume and the empiricist for all practical purposes restricted knowledge and reality to the material world as perceived by the five senses. Since God was not empirically verifiable, the biblical world view was said to be mythological and unacceptable to the modern mind. Such atheistic existentialist philosophers as Nietzsche despaired even of the search of God; it was he who coined the phrase 'God is dead' almost a century before the death of God theologians.
Mid-twentieth century theologians not associated with the movement also contributed to the climate of opinion out of which death of God theologies emerged. Rudolf Bultmann regarded all elements of the supernaturalistic, theistic world view as mythological and proposed that Scripture be demythologized so that it could speak its message to the modern person.
Paul Tillich, an avowed anti supernaturalist, said that the only nonsymbiotic statement that could be made about God was that he was being it. He is beyond essence and existence; therefore, to argue that God exists is to deny him. It is more appropriate to say God does not exist. At best Tillich was a pantheist, but his thought borders on atheism. Dietrich Bonhoeffer (whether rightly understood or not) also contributed to the climate of opinion with some fragmentary but tantalizing statements preserved in Letters and Papers from Prison. He wrote of the world and man ‘coming of age’, of ‘religionless Christianity’, of the ‘world without God’, and of getting rid of the ‘God of the gaps’ and getting along just as well as before. It is not always certain what Bonhoeffer meant, but if nothing else, he provided a vocabulary that later radical theologians could exploit.
It is clear, then, that as startling as the idea of the death of God was when proclaimed in the mid 1960s, it did not represent as radically a departure from recent philosophical and theological ideas and vocabulary as might superficially appears.
Just what was death of God Theology? The answers are as varied as those who proclaimed God's demise. Since Nietzsche, theologians had occasionally used 'God is dead' to express the fact that for an increasing number of people in the modern age God seems to be unreal. Nonetheless, the idea of God's death began to have special prominence in 1957 when Gabriel Vahanian published a book entitled God is Dead. Vahanian did not offer a systematic expression of death of God theology. Instead, he analysed those historical elements that contributed to the masses of people accepting atheism not so much as a theory but as a way of life. Vahanian him did not believe that God was dead. Still, he urged that there be a form of Christianity that would recognize the contemporary loss of God and exert its influence through what was left. Other proponents of the death of God had the same assessment of God's status in contemporary culture, but were to draw different conclusions.
Thomas J. Altizer believed that God had really died. Nonetheless, Altizer often spoke in exaggerated and dialectic language, occasionally with heavy overtones of Oriental mysticism. Sometimes knowing exactly what Altizer meant when he spoke in dialectical opposites is difficult such as 'God is dead, thank God' Apparently the real meaning of Altizer's belief that God had died is to be found in his belief in God's immanence. To say that God has died is to say that he has ceased to exist as a transcendent, supernatural being. Alternately, he has become fully immanent in the world. The result is an essential identity between the human and the divine. God died in Christ in this sense, and the process has continued time and again since then. Altizer claims the church tried to give God life again and put him back in heaven by its doctrines of resurrection and ascension. However, the traditional doctrines about God and Christ must be repudiated because man has discovered after nineteen centuries that God does not exist. Christians must even now will the death of God by which the transcendent become immanent.
For William Hamilton the death of God describes the event many have experienced over the last two hundred years. They no longer accept the reality of God or the meaningfulness of language about him. Non theistic explanations have been substituted for theistic ones. This trend is irreversible, and everyone must come to terms with the historical-cultural -death of God. God's death must be affirmed and the secular world embraced as normative intellectually and good ethically. Doubtless, Hamilton was optimistic about the world, because he was optimistic about what humanity could do and was doing to solve its problems.
Paul van Buren is usually associated with death of God theology, although he him disavowed this connection. Yet, his disavowal seems hollow in the light of his book The Secular Meaning of the Gospel and his article 'Christian Education Post Mortem Dei.' In the former he accepts empiricism and the position of Bultmann that the world view of the Bible is mythological and untenable to modern people. In the latter he proposes an approach to Christian education that does not assume the existence of God but does assume ‘the death of God’ and that ‘God is gone’. Van Buren was concerned with the linguistic aspects of God's existence and death. He accepted the premise of empirical analytic philosophy that real knowledge and meaning can be conveyed only by language that is empirically verifiable. This is the fundamental principle of modern secularists and is the only viable option in this age. If only empirically verifiable language is meaningful, by that very fact all language that refers to or assumes the reality of God is meaningless, since one cannot verify God's existence by any of the five senses. Theism, belief in God, is not only intellectually untenable, it is meaningless. In, The Secular Meaning of the Gospel van Buren seeks to reinterpret the Christian faith without reference to God. One searches the book in vain for even one clue, that van Buren is anything but a secularist trying to translate Christian ethical values into that language game. There is a decided shift in van Buren's later book Discerning the Way, however.
In retrospect, there was clearly no single death of God Theology, only death of God theologies. Their real significance was that modern theology, by giving up the essential elements of Christian belief in God, had logically led to what was really antitheologies. When the death of God theologies passed off the scene, the commitment to secularism remained and manifested it in other forms of secular theology in the late 1960s and the 1970s.
Nietzsche is unchallenged as the most insightful and powerful critic of the moral climate of the 19th century (and of what of it remains in ours). His exploration of unconscious motivation anticipated Freud. He is notorious for stressing the ‘will to power’ that is the basis of human nature, the ‘resentment’ that comes when it is denied its basis in action, and the corruptions of human nature encouraged by religion, such as Christianity, that feed on such resentment. Yet the powerful human being who escape all this, the Ubermensch, is not the ‘blood beast’ of later fascism: It is a human being who has mastered passion, risen above the senseless flux, and given creative style to his or her character. Nietzsche’s free spirits recognize themselves by their joyful attitude to eternal return. He frequently presents the creative artist rather than the warlord as his best exemplar of the type, but the disquieting fact remains that he seems to leave him no words to condemn any uncaged beast of prey whose best to find their style by exerting repulsive power find their style by exerting repulsive power over others. This problem is no t helped by Nietzsche’s frequently expressed misogyny, although in such matters the interpretation of his many-layered and ironic writings is no always straightforward. Similarly y, such Anti-Semitism as has been found in his work is balanced by an equally vehement denunciation of anti-Semitism, and an equal or greater dislike of the German character of his time.
Nietzsche’s current influence derives not only from his celebration of will, but more deeply from his scepticism about the notions of truth and act. In particular, he anticipated any of the central tenets of postmodernism: an aesthetic attitude toward the world that sees it as a ‘text’; the denial of facts; the denial of essences; the celebration of the plurality of interpretation and of the fragmented, as well as the downgrading of reason and the politicization of discourse. All awaited rediscoveries in the late 20th century. Nietzsche also has the incomparable advantage over his followers of being a wonderful stylist, and his Perspectivism is echoed in the shifting array of literary devices-humour, irony, exaggeration, aphorisms, verse, dialogue, parody-with that he explores human life and history.
Yet, it is nonetheless, that we have seen, the origins of the present division that can be traced to the emergence of classical physics and the stark Cartesian division between mind and the bodily world is two separate substances, the is as it happened associated with a particular body, but is -subsisting, and capable of independent existence, yet Cartesian duality, much as the ‘ego’ that we are tempted to imagine as a simple unique thing that makes up our essential identity, but, seemingly sanctioned by this physics. The tragedy of the Western mind, well represented in the work of a host of writers, artists, and intellectual, is that the Cartesian division was perceived as uncontrovertibly real.
Beginning with Nietzsche, those who wished to free the realm of the mental from the oppressive implications of the mechanistic world-view sought to undermine the alleged privileged character of the knowledge called physicians with an attack on its epistemological authority. After Husserl tried and failed to save the classical view of correspondence by grounding the logic of mathematical systems in human consciousness, this not only resulted in a view of human consciousness that became characteristically postmodern. It also represents a direct link with the epistemological crisis about the foundations of logic and number in the late nineteenth century that foreshadowed the epistemological crisis occasioned by quantum physics beginning in the 1920's. This, as a result in disparate views on the existence of oncology and the character of scientific knowledge that fuelled the conflict between the two.
If there were world enough and time enough, the conflict between each that both could be viewed as an interesting artifact in the richly diverse coordinative systems of higher education. Nevertheless, as the ecological crisis teaches us, the ‘old enough’ capable of sustaining the growing number of our life firms and the ‘time enough’ that remains to reduce and reverse the damage we are inflicting on this world ae rapidly diminishing. Therefore, put an end to the absurd ‘betweeness’ and go on with the business of coordinate human knowledge in the interest of human survival in a new age of enlightenment that could be far more humane and much more enlightened than any has gone before.
It now, which it is, nonetheless, that there are significant advances in our understanding to a purposive mind. Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary approach to cognition that draws primarily on ideas from cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics and logic. Some philosophers may be cognitive scientists, and others concern themselves with the philosophy of cognitive psychology and cognitive science. Since inauguration of cognitive science these disciplines have attracted much attention from certain philosophers of mind. This has changed the character of philosophy of mind, and there are areas where philosophical work on the nature of mind is continuous with scientific work. Yet, the problems that make up this field concern the ways of ‘thinking’ and ‘mental properties’ are those that these problems are standardly and traditionally regarded within philosophy of mind than those that emerge from the recent developments in cognitive science. The cognitive aspect is what has to be understood is to know what would make the sentence true or false. It is frequently identified with the truth cognition of the sentence. Justly as the scientific study of precesses of awareness, thought, and mental organization, often by means of computer modelling or artificial intelligence research. Contradicted by the evidence, it only has to do with is structure and the way it functioned, that is just because a theory does not mean that the scientific community currently accredits it. Generally, there are many theories, though technically scientific, have been rejected because the scientific evidence is strangely against it. The historical enquiry into the evolution of -consciousness, developing from elementary sense experience too fully rational, free, thought processes capable of yielding knowledge the presented term, is associated with the work and school of Husserl. Following Brentano, Husserl realized that intentionality was the distinctive mark of consciousness, and saw in it a concept capable of overcoming traditional mind-body dualism. The stud y of consciousness, therefore, maintains two sides: a conscious experience can be regarded as an element in a stream of consciousness, but also as a representative of one aspect or ‘profile’ of an object. In spite of Husserl’s rejection of dualism, his belief that there is a subject-matter lingering back, behind and yet remaining after each era of time, or bracketing of the content of experience, associates him with the priority accorded to elementary experiences in the parallel doctrine of phenomenalism, and phenomenology has partly suffered from the eclipse of that approach to problems of experience and reality. However, later phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty do full justice to the world-involving nature of Phenomenological theories are empirical generalizations of data experience, or manifest in experience. More generally, the phenomenal aspects of things are the aspects that show themselves, than the theoretical aspects that are inferred or posited in order to account for them. They merely described the recurring process of nature and do not refer to their cause or that, in the words of J.S. Mill, ‘objects are the permanent possibilities of sensation’. To inhabit a world of independent, external objects are, on this view, to be the subject of actual and possible orderly experiences. Espoused by Russell, the view issued in a programme of translating talk about physical objects and their locations into talking about possible experience. The attempt is widely supposed to have failed, and the priority the approach gives to experience has been much criticized. It is more common in contemporary philosophy to see experience as it a construct from the actual way of the world, than the other way round.
Phenomenological theories are also called ‘scientific laws’ ‘physical laws’ and ‘natural laws.’ Newton’s third law is one example, saying that, every action ha an equal and opposite reaction. ‘Explanatory theories’ attempt to explain the observations rather than generalized them. Whereas laws are descriptions of empirical regularities, explanatory theories are conceptual constrictions to explain why the data exit, for example, atomic theory explains why we see certain observations, the same could be said with DNA and relativity, Explanatory theories are particularly helpful in such cases where the entities (like atoms, DNA . . . ) cannot be directly observed.
What is knowledge? How does knowledge get to have the content it has? The problem of defining knowledge in terms of true belief plus some favoured relation between the believer and the facts begun with Plato, in that knowledge is true belief plus logos, as it is what enables us to apprehend the principle and firms, i.e., an aspect of our own reasoning.
What makes a belief justified for what measures of belief is knowledge? According to most epistemologists, knowledge entails belief, so that to know that such and such is the case. None less, there are arguments against all versions of the thesis that knowledge requires having a belief-like attitude toward the known. These arguments are given by philosophers who think that knowledge and belief or facsimile, are mutually incompatible (the incompatibility thesis) or by ones who say that knowledge does not entail belief, or vice versa, so that each may exist without the other, but the two may also coexist (the separability thesis). The incompatibility thesis that hinged on the equation of knowledge with certainty. The assumption that we believe in the truth of claim we are not certain about its truth. Given that belief always involves uncertainty, while knowledge never does, believing something rules out the possibility of knowledge knowing it. Again, given to no reason to grant that states of belief are never ones involving confidence. Conscious beliefs clearly involve some level of confidence, to suggest otherwise, that we cease to believe things about which we are completely confident is bizarre.
A.D. Woozley (1953) defends a version of the separability thesis. Woozley’s version that deals with psychological certainty than belief per se, is that knowledge can exist without confidence about the item known, although knowledge might also be accompanied by confidence as well. Woozley says, ‘what In can do, where what In can do may include answering questions.’ On the basis of this remark he suggests that even when people are unsure of the truth of a claim, they might know that the claim is true. We unhesitatingly attribute knowledge to people that correct responses on examinations if those people show no confidence in their answers. Woozley has given to acknowledge that it would be odd for those who lack confidence to claim knowledge. Saying it would be peculiar, ‘In know it is correct.’ But this tension; still ‘In know is correct.’ Woozley explains, using a distinction between condition under which are justified in making a claim (such as a claim to know something) and conditioned under which the claim we make is true. While ‘In know such and such’ might be true even if In answered whether such and such holds, nonetheless claiming that ‘In know that such should be inappropriate for me and such unless In was sure of the truth of my claim.’
Colin Redford (1966) extends Woozley’s defence of the separability thesis. In Redford’s view, not only in knowledge compatible with the lacking of certainty, it is also compatible with a complete lack of belief. He argues by example, in this one example, Jean had forgotten that he learned some English history years prior and yet he is able to give several correct responses to questions such as, ‘When did the Battle of Hastings occur?’ since he forgot that the battle of Hastings took place in 1066 in history, he considers his correct response to be no more than guesses. Thus when he says that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066 he would deny having the belief that the Battle of Hasting took place in 1066.
Those who agree with Radford’s defence of the separation thesis will probably think of belief as an inner state that can be directed through introspection. That Jean lacks’ beliefs out English history are plausible on this Cartesian picture since Jean does not find him with the belief out of which the English history when with any beliefs about English history when he seeks them out. One might criticize Radford, however, by rejecting the Cartesian view of belief. One could argue that some beliefs are thoroughly unconscious. For example, (1859), according to which having beliefs is a matter of the way people are disposed to behave (and has not Radford already adopted a behaviourist conception of knowledge?) Since Jean gives the correct response when queried, a form of verbal behaviour, a behaviourist would be tempted to credit him with the belief that the battle of Hastings occurred in 1066.
Once, again, but the jargon is attributable to different attitudinal values. AS, D. M. Armstrong (1973) makes a different task against Radford. Jean does know that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. Armstrong will grant Radford that points, which in fact, Armstrong suggests that Jean believe that 1066 is not the actual date that did occur of the Battle of Hastings. For Armstrong parallels the belief of such and such is just possible bu t no more than just possible with the belief that such and such is not the case. However, Armstrong insists Jean also believe that the Battle did occur in 1066. After all, had Jean been mistaught that the Battle occurred in 1066, and had he forgotten being ‘taught’ this and subsequently ‘guessed’ that it took place in 10690, we would surely describe the situation as one in which Jean’ false belief about te Battle became a memory trace that was causally responsible or his guess. Thus while Jean consciously believes that the Battle did not occur in 1066, unconsciously he does believe it occurred in 1066. So after all, Radford does not have a counterexample to the claim that knowledge entails belief.
Suppose that Jean’s memory had been sufficiently powerful to produce the relevant belief. As Radford says, Jan has every reason to suppose that his response is mere guesswork, and so he has every reason to consider his belief false. His belief would be an irrational one, and hence one about whose truth Jean would be ignorant.
The attempt to understand the conceptual representation that is involved in religious belief, existence, necessity, fate, creation, sun, justice, Mercy, Redemption, God. Until the 20th century the history of western philosophy is closely intertwined with attempts to make sense of aspect of pagan, Jewish or Christian religion, while in other tradition such as Hinduism, Buddhism or Taoism, there is even less distinction between religious and philosophical enquiry. The classic problem of conceiving an appropriate object of religious belief is that of understanding whether any term can be predicated of it: Does it make to any sense of talking about its creating to things, willing events, or being one thing or many? The via negativa of Theology is to claim that God can only be known by denying ordinary terms of any application (or them); Another influential suggestion is that ordinary term only apply metaphorically, sand that there is in hope of cashing the metaphors. Once a description of a Supreme Being is hit upon, there remains the problem of providing any reason for supposing that anything answering to the description exists. The medieval period was the high-water mark-for purported proof of the existence of God, such as the Five-Ays of Aquinas, or the ontological argument of such proofs have fallen out of general favour since the 18th century, although theories still sway many people and some philosophers.
Generally speaking, even religious philosophers (or perhaps, they especially) have been wary of popular manifestations of religion. Kant, him a friend of religious faith, nevertheless distinguishes various perversions: Theosophy (using transcendental conceptions that confuses reason), demonology (indulging an anthropomorphic, mode of representing the Supreme Being), theurgy (a fanatical delusion that feeling can be communicated from such a being, or that we can exert an influence on it), and idolatry, or a superstition’s delusion the one can make one acceptable to his Supreme Being by order by means than that of having the moral law at heart (Critique of judgement) these warm conversational tendencies have, however, been increasingly important in modern Theology.
Since Feuerbach there has been a growing tendency for philosophy of religion either to concentrate upon the social and anthropological dimension of religious belief, or to treat a manifestation of various explicable psychological urges. Another reaction is retreat into a celebration of purely subjective existential commitments. Still, the ontological arguments continue to attach attention. Modern anti-fundamentalists trends in epistemology are not entirely hostile to cognitive claims based on religious experience.
Still, the problem f reconciling the subjective or psychological nature of mental life with its objective and logical content preoccupied from of which is next of the problem was elephantine Logische untersuchungen (trans. as Logical Investigations, 1070). To keep a subjective and a naturalistic approach to knowledge together. Abandoning the naturalism in favour of a kind of transcendental idealism. The precise nature of his change is disguised by a penchant for new and impenetrable terminology, but the ‘bracketing’ of eternal questions for which are to a great extent acknowledged implications of a solipistic, disembodied Cartesian ego is its starting-point, with it thought of as inessential that the thinking subject is ether embodied or surrounded by others. However by the time of Cartesian Meditations (trans. as, 1960, fist published in French as Méditations Carthusianness, 1931), a shift in priorities has begun, with the embodied individual, surrounded by others, than the disembodied Cartesian ego now returned to a fundamental position. The extent to which the desirable shift undermines the programme of phenomenology that is closely identical with Husserl’s earlier approach remains unclear, until later phenomenologists such as Merleau -Ponty has worked fruitfully from the later standpoint.
Pythagoras established and was the central figure in school of philosophy, religion, and mathematics: He was apparently viewed by his followers as semi-divine. For his followers the regular solids (symmetrical three-dimensional forms in which all sides are the same regular polygon) with ordinary language. The language of mathematical and geometric forms seem closed, precise and pure. Providing one understood the axioms and notations, and the meaning conveyed was invariant from one mind to another. The Pythagoreans following which was the language empowering the mind to leap beyond the confusion of sense experience into the realm of immutable and eternal essences. This mystical insight made Pythagoras the figure from antiquity must revered by the creators of classical physics, and it continues to have great appeal for contemporary physicists as they struggle with the epistemological of the quantum mechanical description of nature.
Pythagoras (570 Bc) was the son of Mn esarchus of Samos ut, emigrated (531 Bc) to Croton in southern Italy. Here he founded a religious society, but were forces into exile and died at Metapomtum. Membership of the society entailed -disciplined, silence and the observance of his taboos, especially against eating flesh and beans. Pythagoras taught the doctrine of metempsychosis or the cycle of reincarnation, and remained as to remember their former existence. The soul, which as its own divinity and may have existed as an animal or plant, can, however gain release by a religious dedication to study, after which it may rejoin the universal world-soul. Pythagoras is usually, but doubtfully, accredited with having discovered the basis of acoustics, the numerical ratios underlying the musical scale, thereby intimating the arithmetical interpretation of nature. This tremendous success inspired the view that the whole of the cosmos should be explicable in terms of harmonia or number. The view represents a magnificent brake from the Milesian attempt to ground physics on a conception shared by all things, and to concentrate instead on form, meaning that physical nature receives an approachable foundation in different geometric breaks. The view is vulgarized in the doctrine usually attributed to Pythagoras, that all things are number. However, the association of abstract qualitites with numbers, but reached remarkable heights, with occult attachments for instance, between justice and the number four, and mystical significance, especially of the number ten, cosmologically Pythagoras explained the origin of the universe in mathematical terms, as the imposition of limits on the limitless by a kind of injection of a unit. Followers of Pythagoras included Philolaus, the earliest cosmosologist known to have understood that the earth is a moving planet. It is also likely that the Pythagoreans discovered the irrationality of the square root of two.
The Pythagoreans considered numbers to be among te building blocks of the universe. In fact, one of the most central of the beliefs of Pythagoras mathematical, his inner circle, was that reality was mathematical in nature. This made numbers valuable tools, and over time even the knowledge of a number’s name came to be associated with power. If you could name something you had a degree of control over it, and to have power over the numbers was to have power over nature.
One, for example, stood for the mind, emphasizing its Oneness. Two was opinion, taking a step away from the singularity of mind. Three was wholeness (whole needs a beginning, a middle and its ending to be more than a one-dimensional point), and four represented the stable squareness of justice. Five was marriage-being the sum of three and two, the first odd (male) and even (female) numbers. (Three was the first odd number because the number one was considered by the Greeks to be so special that it could not form part of an ordinary grouping of numbers).
It should be noted that Murray wrote his book in 1964 when communism was still perceived by many as the world’s greatest threat. Had he written it a few years later he may have decided to call his atheist of communist world Revolution something else. Evidently, what he is truly talking about is any philosophy that suggests human beings can create a utopian world completely on their own. Nowadays we might refer to this as the atheist of the techno-revolution, or the atheist of humanism-which, again, values our expectation that our own inventiveness will save us.
The second kind of atheist, the atheist of the Theatre, refers to the sort of person who simply tries to exist in a godless world. The atheist of the Theatre is a tragic character who wants the best for the world but feels helpless to do much about it and is ultimately reduced to a mere spectator. 'His mind is full of darkness,' writes Murray, 'it is oppressed with a sense of the finitude and fragility of existence; it shivers before the un-predictabilities of history.'10 Unlike the atheist of the Revolution who links freedom with freedom from poverty, the atheist of the Theatre wants freedom from the angst of a purposeless and uncertain existence. Such a person can only accomplish this through -invention or -determination. This, however, cannot be accomplished so long as God lives. If God is present, then God is the inventor of the human being who has no choice but to adhere to a predetermined nature and destiny. So, in order for the atheist of the Theatre to gain the freedom to chart one’s own destiny, God must be dismissed.
As different as these two types may appear, Murray suggests they share several characteristics in common. Firstly, they both take the presence of evil as evidence of God’s nonexistence. Secondly, they both accept the death of God, that is, belief in God is irrelevant. Thirdly, atheism is a postulate they feel obliged to express. This is to say that not only do they not believe in God, but they feel such a belief is somehow harmful, primarily because it is detrimental to freedom.
Of course, the deaths of God pundits have not been met without plenty of criticism. Nonetheless, they simply respond by claiming their critics choose to avoid the modern condition by clinging to archaic and meaningless fantasies. As Thomas Ogletree has written concerning The Death of God Controversy, 'The refusal of God’s death amounted to a nostalgic desire to avoid the present moment by a flight into a past that is no more. The notion of God’s death has become so prominent and argument that there have been several Deaths of God theologians who have attempted to abstract positive meaning from Christianity while accepting the death of God philosophy. Ogletree’s book introduces us to three such theologians, William Hamilton, Paul Van Buren and Thomas J.J. Altizer.
For Hamilton, the death of God implies that God can no longer be thought of as a 'need-fulfiller and problem-solver.' He rejects the idea that God is a kind of candy dispenser or 'cosmic bellhop,' ever ready to attend to humanity’s needs. Unlike those Christians who cling to their idea of God, even in the wake of divine irrelevance, by rejecting contemporary society and holding to tradition, Hamilton seems to have found a way to have his cake and eat it too. For Hamilton, the Christian’s task is to find God by returning to society and becoming active in the alleviation of human suffering. This is not entirely different from the idea expounded by Paul Van Buren who wrote, '. . . . If In understand the nature and development of Christianity, In would want to argue that what Christianity is basically about is a certain form of life-patterns of human existence, norms of human attitudes, and dispositions and moral behaviour.'14 For these two theologians there are something in Christianity that presents a viable, even necessary, way of living even in the wake of God’s death.
Thomas Altizer takes the matter as step further by insinuating that God must die in order for Jesus to live. The modern problem of God might best be illustrated in the argument that only God is or only the world is-the sacred or the profane, pantheism vs. materialism. The modern atheist chooses the world, the material, the profane. 'If there is one clear portal to the twentieth century,' writes Altizer, 'it is a passage through the death of God, the collapse of any meaning or reality lying beyond the newly discovered radical immanence of modern man, immanently dissolving even the memory or the shadow of transcendence.'15 The loss of transcendence, however, is not understood by Altizer as the loss of the sacred but as the redemption of the profane. God is not killed by modern humanity, but sacrifices God- to humanity by entering into the profane world via the Christ, God made flesh. Although those who cling to Christian tradition will likely consider such a radical notion as heresy, it seems somehow comforting to think that God might somehow dwell among us, in our very suffering and profanity.
So far In have spoken as if the death of God is to be taken for granted, as if it is an undeniable fact of the modern condition. This, however, is a presupposition In am not entirely sure of. Just this week In spent several days in Washington, D.C. and had the opportunity to hear all of Kentucky’s State Representatives and U.S. Senator Jim Bunning address a large group of their constituents. Without fail, each one of them had something to say about God, mostly in reference to George W. Bush and his intention to go to war with Iraq. Congressman Ken Lucas, the only Democrat among Kentucky’s Washington delegation, asked the group to pray for Mr. Bush and concluded by saying 'the Almighty is with him.' Congressman Ernie Fletcher, who hopes to become the next Kentucky Governor, spoke of a presentation he attended during the Gideon Bible Society as presented by Mr. Bush in which its one-billionth printed Bible. Mr. Bush responded by assuring those present that the 'Will of God' is his top priority. Representative Ann Northup referred to him as a 'deeply spiritual man,' and Harold Rogers publicly thanked God that Mr. Bush was in office at the time of 911. In regard to war with Iraq, Representative Ron Lewis quoted Abraham Lincoln’s reference to the Civil War by saying 'the question is not whether or not God is on our side, but whether or not we are on God’s side.' Finally, U.S. Senator Jim Bunning boasted about a Senate resolution supporting the phrase 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance, thanked God for George W. Bush, and concluded by warning the audience that in light of pressing problems 'we must keep our faith in God or we won’t survive as a people or as a nation.'
Perhaps you will agree, it doesn’t sound like those who represent the people of at least one State in the Nation are atheists. The fact is that the people of the United States remain highly religious, especially compared with the rest of the Western world. According to an article in The Economist entitled The Fight for God, 47% of the people in the United States regularly attend church services, as compared with only 20% in Western Europe and 14% in Eastern Europe. What is more, is that only 2% of the population in the United States actually claims to be atheists?
Yet these statistics do not necessarily mean all of this talk about the death of God has been for not, but they serve as a framework for reinterpreting the meaning of God’s death. In would suggest that even though the idea of God lives on, the experience of God having died. In this sense the death of God may have begun much earlier than with the rise of science and technology. It was during the Patristic age of the early Church Fathers that the problem became purely ontological, that is, asking the question 'What is God?' Rather than 'Is God with us?' This arose over the controversy concerning Jesus’ divinity. Is he human or God? If he is God, what then is God? Tertullian tried to solve the problem with a biological and an anthropomorphic answer, claiming the Father and the Son are both part of a single organism and share the same mind and will. Origen claimed the Son (Logos) emanates from the Father in a diminished capacity. Arius taught that there was a time 'when he was not,' which is to say Jesus, although a perfect creature is nonetheless a creation of God. All of this became heresy after the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, after it was determined that the Father and the Son are of the same substance (homoousios), relying heavily upon Athenasius of Alexandria’s credo that the Son is like the Father in every way except for the name Father. The Nicene Creed ushered in the age of Christian scholasticism that gave birth to thinkers like Thomas Aquinas and Saint Augustine, but it also dramatically altered the nature of the Problem of God.
Before this event the Problem of God had always been about the living God and whether or not such is God who dwells with us, rather than the distant and abstract God of theological debate. The Problem of God, which is a uniquely western theological term, is rooted deep within the Judeo/Christian tradition, beginning with the Biblical story of Moses’ encounter with the burning bush. When Moses asks God’s name, God replies, 'ehyeh ser ehyeh' In am who In am. Murray understands this to mean God is present with the people.
Ancient people did not think abstractly about God. Nor did they wonder why evil and suffering were in the world. They took the existence of both for granted. What they wanted to know was whether or not God would be with them in the midst of their struggles. In Exodus, for instance, the Israelites are reported to have asked, 'Is the Lord among us or not?' Murray breaks the Old Testament Problem of God into four questions, the Existential question, Is God here with us now? The Functional question, How will this God who is with us save us? The Noetic question, How is this God who is present to be known? The Onomastic question, How is this God who is present among us to be named? After Jesus came on the scene, these questions remained essentially the same, but were answered through the lens of the Christ.
This sort of question implies a desire to have intimate knowledge of the Divine. They are questions about how we ought to conduct our lives rather than about abstract thoughts and concepts. If there is any value to having a belief in God today, perhaps these sort of question ought to be at the heart of such belief, less we remain as those who would contribute to the pain and suffering of others by making war and poverty while paying intellectual lip service to an abstract notion of God. Perhaps, furthermore, the Problem of God is not a problem that is to be solved or ought to be solved. Early theologians celebrated the fact that God cannot be truly known. As Thomas Aquinas said, 'One thing that remains completely unknown in this life, namely, what God is.'19 Augustine said similarly, 'If you have comprehended, what you have comprehended is not God.' Or as Cryil of Jerusalem said, 'In the things of God the confession of no knowledge is great knowledge.' 'It is by this ignorance, as long as life lasts, that we are best united with God,' wrote Aquinas, 'This is the darkness in which God dwells.'
So the Problem of God remains today very much the same as it has throughout history. Even in our limited understanding and modern disbelief in the relevance of God, we want to know, in the midst of the turmoil, suffering and evil we face today, is it possible that God is with us? Or are we left alone to deal these problems completely on our own? Are we creatures of purpose and destiny, or must we choose our own way? Do we need God? In their book The Invisible Landscape, Terrence and Dennis McKenna write; Western humans have lost their sense of unity with the cosmos and with the transcendent mystery within themselves. Modern science has given us a picture of human beings as accidental products of random evolutionary processes in a universe that is it without purpose or meaning. This alienation of modern humans from the numinous ground of their beings has engendered the existentialist ethic and the contemporary preoccupation with the immediate historical situation. Humans are regarded as leading a wholly profane existence within a wholly profane time, which is within history; the reality of the sacred is denied or reduced to the level of psychology.
In the end it would seem the Problem of God is ultimately the Problem of Humanity, for it is our suffering that draws us toward the idea of God, and repels us from it.
Friedrich Nietzsche had very different opinions concerning the man known to history as Jesus Christ and his legacy, and the religion called Christianity. As a well-known philosopher of contemporary times, Nietzsche's reputation with Christianity is severely ambiguous, as a result of a 'long customary' association with the Nazi Party of Germany, which, as one critic points out, is 'like linking St. Francis with the Inquisition in which the order he founded played a major role.' Still, despite much misunderstanding and prejudice, Nietzsche's influence on the world remains consistently strong, as 'few thinkers of any age equal his influence.' Nietzsche's philosophy is rooted in his own interpretation of the life of Jesus of Nazareth and the history of Christianity, as he considered him the first philosopher of the 'irrevocable anti-Christian era' from which all Christian and secular systems associated with Christianity would henceforth bow. Nietzsche, however, does not see this new era in the history of the world as essentially negative; he believes that he is the first of 'the new way'; and 'things will be different,' positively. Furthermore, one must understand Nietzsche's position on Jesus and Christianity, the most crucial part of his philosophical system, as separate issues, to appreciate completely and comprehend the rest.
To this end, Nietzsche is clear that he has different attitudes about Jesus and Christianity. This distinction is 'no less than the distinction between life and death, the great 'Yes' and the decadent 'No.'' Furthermore, there is a 'severance' between Jesus and the Christian tradition. This is clearly a result, according to Nietzsche, of the greediness and short-sightedness of St. Paul, who lock up Christianity so much that the religion has little in common with the ideas and teachings that its founder represented. As a consequence, Western society has gone backwards, Nietzsche writes, 'everything is visibly becoming Judiazed, Christianized, moblike (what does the words matter).'
Nietzsche considers him 'the atheist,' whose challenges against Christianity all Christians must now face and consider. Although he admits that he is 'an opponent of Christianity de riguer,' Nietzsche has a distinct respect for the man Jesus. While Nietzsche does not go so far as to embrace all of the ideas and teachings of Jesus, he clearly draws a clear dichotomy between Jesus and Nazareth and 'the Christ of the creeds'Cand what Nietzsche is most concerned with is the historical Jesus. The end of Nietzsche's analysis of Jesus and Christianity is a request for the reassessment of Western culture's values, especially religious values, which call for the eventual expulsion of Christianity as he knew it.
In short, Nietzsche respects and admires Jesus of Nazareth, 'but denies that he has any meaning for our age' Nietzsche believes the Jewish contention that Jesus is not the Messiah and that the Messiah has not yet appeared in history. Even so, Nietzsche reveres Jesus as no other character in history, particularly because he came to know Jesus as the very opposite of Christianity. Nietzsche writes as a philologist, 'The word 'Christianity' is already a misunderstanding reality there has only been one Christian, and he died on the Cross.' While leaving such an impact on the world is admirable (and a good characteristic of a Übermensch), Nietzsche 'could know Jesus as the greatest and truest revolutionary in history,' despite the sour legacy he left.
Despite all of this hostility, Nietzsche looked upon the symbol of the crucified Christ as 'the most sublime of all symbols.' Nonetheless, Jesus remains the only Christian in whom will ever have lived, yet he was crucified by mortals. The Christians were making their professed faith a weird comedy. The cross, to Nietzsche, is a 'ghastly paradox' that revolves around the idea of 'God of the cross.' This concept is absurd to Nietzsche, who wonders how it is logical that the 'mystery of an unimaginable and ultimate cruelty and -crucifixion of God for the salvation of man?' Furthermore, Nietzsche comments:
God him sacrifices him for the guilt of humankind, God him makes payment to him, God as the only being who can redeem man from what has become unredeemable for man him, the creditor sacrifices him for his debtor, out of love (one can credit that?) Out of love for his debtor-Nietzsche sees this entire concept of a crucified god as utterly ridiculous and ironic for a god to do so 'out of love.' While 'Christianity's -sacrificing God make’s infinite its adherents' guilt and debt,' Nietzsche observes, 'Jesus had done away with the concept of 'guilt.'' Yet, to Nietzsche, Jesus, like him, had come 'too early' and died 'too young . . . not 'at the right time.'' They were both revolutionaries who were rebelling against the old ways.
Clearly, Nietzsche is interested in a historical assemblage of Jesus, who, nonetheless, left no writings, as Nietzsche had to go to the next best source, the Gospels, which he despised. Nietzsche writes that the Bible is 'the greatest audacity and 'sin against the spirit' that literary Europe has on its conscience.' As a result, while Jesus preached and taught about freedom, Nietzsche believed that 'it was immediately transformed by those who preached it (and especially by Paul) to assert their own power.'
Nietzsche is convinced that Jesus him would deny 'everything that today is called Christian.' Critic William Hubben argues that Jesus was literally an anarchist, who 'attacked the Jewish hierarchy, the 'just' and supreme rulers,' and died for these sins, absolutely not for the sins of others. Nietzsche recognized that Jesus had supposedly expelled the world from the concepts of guilt and sin, wondering, '[h]ow could he have died for the sins of others?' Furthermore, while some Christians viewed Jesus as a completely divine judge of 'the quick and the dead,' Nietzsche viewed Jesus as anything but a judge: 'Jesus opposed those who judged others, and wanted to destroy the morality existing in his age' (emphasis added). Nonetheless, one can be assured that Nietzsche 'reveres the life and death of Jesus.' However, it is not in the same way that a traditional 'Christian' reveres Jesus; as critic Walter Kaufmann writes, 'instead of interpreting it [Jesus' life] as a promise of another world and another life, and instead of conceding the divinity of Jesus, Nietzsche insists: Ecce Homo! Man can live and die in a grand style, working out his own salvation instead of relying on the sacrifice of another.' Nietzsche, then, does not 'believe in Jesus' in the creedal tradition, but respects him as a worthy opponent.
More specifically, Nietzsche views Jesus as his only true opponent. He closes, in the last line of his autobiographical Ecce Homo, 'Have In been understood? -Dionysus verses the Crucified.' In interpret this line as Nietzsche recognizing that Jesus is the highest of competitors to Nietzsche's own 'Dionysian ideal for man.' This statement is also meant as an ironic contrast; That is, a contrast between 'the tragic life verses life under the cross': The roller-coaster, 'dangerous' life of the Übermensch (as exemplified by Goethe) verses weakness.
In the sum, Nietzsche's interpretation of the life of Jesus, while suspicious, contrasts his feelings surrounding Christianity; Recognizing a major difference between the historical Jesus and the Jesus of the creeds. To this end, the events surrounding Jesus' death, rather than his resurrection becomes pivotal, as Nietzsche writes, 'Jesus him could not have desired anything by his death but publicly to offer the sternest test, the proof of his teaching . . . But his disciples were far from forgiving his death.' Thus, after Jesus' death, his followers asked, 'Who killed him? Who was his natural enemy? This came like a flash of lightning,' and their answer was, 'Judaism,' the ruling class. The offspring of this, Christianity, for Nietzsche became 'another in a line of failed attempts to understand the teachings of the great creators and transformers of life'; in other words, the creedal, pre-modern Jesus has no relevance to a contemporary, post-modern society.
Nietzsche has an obvious dislike of Christianity because of its unfaithfulness to the teachings of its supposed founder, Jesus of Nazareth, the flawed morality of Christians, and the warped concept of the Christian God. Nietzsche calls Christianity 'the religion of pity,' as it represents weakness in every form of which he can think. Furthermore, churches has little influence legitimate justification for influence in the lives of humans today, as Nietzsche asks, 'does the church today still have any necessary role to play? Does it still have the right to exist? Or could one do without it? Quaeritur.' To this interrogative, Nietzsche answers that the 'future of humanity is. Placed in jeopardy' by institutional Christianity, which 'destroys the instincts out of which affirmative institutions develop.' In other words, Christianity hinders the progress of humanity. What is more, Christian morality is hell-bent on defining the world as 'ugly and bad,' and has therefore made the world 'ugly and bad.' To make things worse, 'Christianity has created a fictitious world,' where nothing is dared to be questioned, and as a result, the world will break down-this way 'must vanish' (emphasis added). To Nietzsche, Christianity is little more than an opiate, that is, as mentioned earlier, a weak religion of the herd.
It was stated above that Nietzsche believes that the only Christian died on the cross, and this is 'Christianity' in its purest sense. However, as far as Christians today know, understand, and define Christianity, Nietzsche says that there have never been any Christians: 'The 'Christian' that which has been called a Christian for two millennia, is merely a psychological -misunderstanding.' Nietzsche blames the 'corruption' of Christianity on the 'first Christians,' who created the very same institution that Jesus was rebelling against, Judaism, when they founded Christianity and the worst of these 'first Christians,' was Paul, as Nietzsche writes: 'The life, the example, the teaching, the death, the meaning and the right of the entire Gospel nothing was left once this hate-obsessed false-coiner had grasped what alone he could make use of. Not the reality, not the historical truth!' In fact, Nietzsche argues, it was Paul who condemned Christianity to its present stagnant state by making 'this indecency of an interpretation,' that is, ''If Christ is not resurrected from the dead our faith is vain.'All at once the Evangel became the most contemptible of all unfulfillable promises, the impudent doctrine of personal immortality.'
Since the evolution of the Greek polis in the fourth century BC, man has attempted to live in a civilized society. Society was developed due to the common needs of commerce, and safety of the people in a relatively small geographic area. To create order out of an ancient, chaotic, tribal system, the constraints of laws were needed, and a government to enforce them. Common virtues, ethics, and morals emerged with the establishment of the Greek city-state. This made communication between the people easier and devised a valuation of what was 'right' and 'wrong.' These valuations endured for centuries with little question, until the late nineteenth century.
Friedrick Nietzsche challenged all ideas that had not only come before him, but also those which proliferated during his own period. He 'deconstructed' society and its 'noble lies' in an attempt to show us that man 'is something to be overcome.' He attempted to debase all of society by proving values, ethics, and the like are errors of humanity. If you destroy the order of society by destroying everything it values, can any society still exist, or better yet, could the destroyer still exist within society? Would Nietzsche be comfortable in any society? To what extent can we use the hammer and still remain a part of society? These are my 'question marks.' In order to answer these questions, first it is necessary to determine what Nietzsche found so base in herd morality.
Nietzsche writes in The Gay Science, morality ranks 'human drives and actions, [and] always express(es) the needs of a community and herd: whatever profits it.' Instead of man creating his own valuations of 'good' and 'evil,' the 'herd' gives them to him, denying man of his individuality. Therefore, man becomes a 'function of the herd.' The word 'individual' becomes a profanity, and individualism is punished with exile; 'freedom of thought counted as discontentment itself.'
When individualism became discontentment, guilt and conscience were created. Anytime an action damaged the 'herd,' it 'created pangs of conscience for the individual.' This overabundance of guilt destroyed man's pride and condemned him to become a 'camel.' The camel bears the load of his master throughout his existence, and stores his own guilt in his humps. He takes away his master's load, and anytime he drops a portion of that load, his hump stores more guilt. Herd morality does this to the individual. It forces the individual to take the burden of existence from the creators of the morality and feel guilt when they do not maintain the burden.
'The spirit of revenge: my friends that up to now, has been mankind's chief concern, and where there was suffering there was always supposed to be punishment.' Nietzsche uses Socrates as primary proof of revenge, resentment, and ressentiment in morality. The poor, ordinary, construction worker received word from the Delphic oracle that 'none is smarter than Socrates.' Using dialectic as his method, he proceeded to question the men of Athens; 'the dialectician lays on his opponent the burden of proving that he is not an idiot. He infuriates and at the same time paralyses' according to Nietzsche. Socrates used dialectic to enact his revenge on the nobility of declining Athens, and prove himself worthy of nobility. The same nobles he resented, he desired to become. He took his resentment inward and expressed it as revenge-ressentiment-and subsequently applied this universally as a virtue. Thousands of years later people are still using his methods. Why should one person's idiosyncratic virtue be applied to everyone? Zarathustra also speaks of the revenge in morality.
In the first discourse of Zarathustra, he tells the town of the Motley Cow, 'fire of love and fire of anger glow in the name of all virtues.' This is not love of man, or even humanity, that Nietzsche is speaking of. Rather, it is obedience and rule that are the 'fire of love.' The 'fire of anger' is the resentment of the 'good' against what has been done to them in the past. They have suffered therefore, everyone must, since 'they knew no other way of loving their God than by nailing men to the cross.' This suffering, due to resentment, is passed down the generations as tradition.
All herd morality is based in tradition. The 'strength of our knowledge' doesn't lie in truth, but tradition and old mouldy volumes. Nietzsche writes in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, (one of my favourite lines) 'even mold ennobles.' The older a morality, virtue, or value is, the more revered it becomes. People accept postulates without proof. Why? Because it is tradition, 'We have done this for generations. Therefore, it is the Truth. How can so many generations be wrong?' This attitude, based out of laziness, causes sleep.
People want the easiest road in life. So, rather than question preconceived beliefs, they simply believe for the sake of believing-they Sleep. Zarathustra speaks of the herd, 'they are modest even in virtue-for they want ease.' Either they go through motions and, rather than believe strongly in anything, believe 'modest(ly),' or they are the martyrs, who take the burdens from everyone, '[and] go along, heavy and creaking, like carts carrying stones downhill.'
Herd morality's most common basis is religion. Nietzsche writes in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 'God is a supposition: but I want your supposing to be grounded by conceivability.' He goes on to say, 'unfortunately, how weary I am of all the unattainable that is supposed to be reality.' When belief in an 'unattainable supposition' is the basis of a morality, isn't the morality also then unattainable, and based in supposition? And if this is true, then there is no 'true' morality, and the Truth itself is then concealed from the masses.
The concealment of truth is the worst enemy of man. All of morality is based on lies. Nietzsche writes in the autobiographical Ecce Homo, 'the lie of the ideal has been the curse of reality, by means of it, man's most basic instincts have become mendacious and false.' Values that are 'antagonistic' to the nature of man, the Dionysian nature, have been denied and labelled 'evil.' This 'evil' of man is the 'Truth.' Nietzsche writes, 'men have given themselves all their good and evil. Truly, they did not take it, they did not find it, it did not descend to them as a voice from heaven.' 'Evil' is not evil, rather a variation of good, there is no such thing as evil, it is a category created by man to provide a purpose to his existence-to be 'good.' Zarathustra states, 'man first implanted values into things to maintain himself-he created a meaning of things, a human meaning.' We created the values of the world, and in so doing gave it our own interpretation. We created the world in our own image. These lies have been fabricated to seal the truth of existence; existence is chaos.
Nietzsche saw that the noble lies of herd morality were set in stone, along with the error they were based upon. The error of these lies resulted in the destruction of individualism and freedom of man. This in turn, indicated the need for destruction of the stone tablets of herd morality. When men destroy these base values, transvaluations can follow. As Nietzsche says through Zarathustra, 'he who has to be creator, always has to destroy.' For the transvaluations to take place, Nietzsche needed to define how we should destroy and create and what type of values should be created.
To understand how the destruction should take place, Nietzsche speaks of his 'hammer [which] rages fiercely against its prison.' The 'lion' destroys herd morality with his 'hammer.' The 'hammer' is pure Dionysian-pure nihilism. However, an overflow of Dionysian intoxication will annihilate everything; a balance is required. Nietzsche adds the reason and wisdom of Apollo to create this balance. This reason and wisdom allows man to destroy the right moral enemies and create the right values. In this way, reason and will destroy together. Once we destroy all of man's enemies, there is one more thing to be destroyed. Zarathustra tells his disciples, 'you must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame.' We must sacrifice ourselves because we are only prophets of the 'child,' or 'Ubermensch,' and are still in some ways decadents ourselves.
In Zarathustra's third discourse, Nietzsche gives man guidelines for the type of new values he should create. Zarathustra tells his followers, ' 'This is now my way: where is yours?' Thus I answered those who asked me 'the way.' For the way-does not exist!' Nietzsche wants no 'parasites' or 'disciples.' These take the new table of values and make them universal, everyone is able to understand them and they become popular. Nietzsche wants man to create and 'place above' himself his own values. In this way the values stay individual, but Nietzsche does provide, what appears to be, a general outline of the type of values we should create
'Do not spare your neighbours! Man is something that must be overcome!' Nietzsche is attacking the common Christian virtue: 'love thy neighbour as thyself.' This virtue is a show of the weak 'will to power.' He wants us to overcome this stale virtue and 'destroy' even our neighbour. This is not to be taken literally as a killing, or mauling of our neighbour. Rather, he wants us to destroy our neighbour's values and in this sense we destroy him, showing him that man is something to be overcome
Nietzsche wants us to always 'consider what [we] can give in return.' We cannot desire anything for free, therefore we must fight and work for our morality. When people work hard for anything, they usually keep it close to them, and thus value it more than anything else. He expects us to do the opposite, 'everything is in flux . . . [do not] firmly fix' your values and tables. We are still overcoming, and life itself is constantly overcoming, do not write your values in stone.
I will not deceive even myself,' this affirmation of the will to truth is at the heart of Nietzsche's new morality. If we deceive ourselves, it is easy to fall back into the role of the 'camel' and its herd morality. If we do not deceive ourselves, we shatter the 'good' and the 'just.' They need our belief to survive, without our belief, they can't justify their existence. This is why 'they hate the creator most,' he destroys all that is 'holy' to them.
We need to realize we will never become the'Ubermensch.' We can only be prophets of his coming. As with all prophets, we must die to make way for the saviour, or as Nietzsche puts it , the 'child.' Unlike the 'old-idol priests,' who preserve their existence, Nietzsche wants us to die at the right time to prepare for the coming of the 'child.' The prophet can't enter the promised land, he must 'go under,' that is six feet under, to prepare for the coming of the 'Ubermensch.'
In order to create new values, the past has to be redeemed. To redeem it, a transformation of every ''It was,' until the will says: 'But I willed it thus! So shall I will it.'' is necessary? We have to 'make amends to [our] children for being the children of [our] fathers'; and become yea-sayers, saying yes to all that has happened and will happen. This is Nietzsche's way of redeeming man of his facility. If we can't redeem our facility, everything we create becomes tainted by it, and reeks of the herd. The transformation releives the guilt of what has passed and transforms it into an act of the will; causing man to love life as it is, was, and will be-amor fati. Nietzsche's doctrines of eternal return and amor fati combine to redeem man's past and future, but are also the most apparently contradictory doctrines of his philosophy.
Nietzsche writes in Zarathustra, 'all things recur eternally and we ourselves with them, and that we have existed an infinite number of times before and all things with us.' It is necessary to keep in mind that this is not reincarnation; 'I shall return eternally to this identical and self-same life in the greatest things and the smallest.' The 'Ubermensch' becomes an impossibility-Nietzsche's own noble life due to his doctrine of eternal return. If we return eternally, our lives are already created and there is no transvaluations. How can we create new values when our lives have already been mapped out? There is no original thought just like there is no original text. As Stanley Rosen says, we are who we are 'under the illusion that we have been transformed into something 'beautiful and new.'' We cannot avoid our fate, nor change it, the decision we make at every step has already been made countless times.
These doctrines devaluate the entire world, and all Being within it. Nothing is greater than another because the fate of Being is already decided. Therefore, if Nietzsche wants man to create, man has to assign his own value to the world. Man is free to create out of the chaos. The valuation becomes our own perspective, but at the same time we also create a new noble lie because the world is, in itself, worthless. Therefore, if man creates his own value in the world, why does Nietzsche assign guidelines for the creation of these values? Assigning guidelines only creates a new herd morality. Denying man of his freedom and individuality, the same things Nietzsche fought against (or so it seems) he creates. Nietzsche is attempting to relay two separate messages in one philosophy. This explains the apparent contradiction. He is trying to relay a message to the new noblemen, the strong willed, to create their own system of values, including a new noble lie. At the same time, he is attempting to speed up the decadence of the Enlightenment by preaching deconstruction. Rosen calls these different teachings Nietzsche's esoteric, or higher, and exoteric, or lower public, teachings.
The exoteric truth, the speeding up of decadence, is a 'return to the cruel creativity of the Renaissance city-state or to the polis of Homeric Greece.' This exoteric truth is a type of horizontal heroism, in other words, not transcendental experience, but experience for the masses. This speeds up the deconstruction of decadence, in turn making the new nobility's mission much easier.
The esoteric, or higher teaching of Nietzsche is 'nature is . . . chaos, there is no eternal impediment . . . to the will to power.' The will to power is defined in nature as a 'natural order of rank.' This rank is the expression of power as chaos, which we misperceive in order to make life 'livable'- our noble lies. Yes, rank, Nietzsche created a ranking of values to replace the old ranking of the herd. Nietzsche even admits:
Its philosophy aims at an ordering of rank: not an individualistic morality. The ideas of the herd should rule in the herd-but not reach out beyond it: the leaders of the herd require a fundamentally different valuation for their own actions.
It is only the new nobility who can 'triumph over the truth precisely because [they] know that Being is chaos.' As we can now see, Nietzsche did not want the populous to trans-valuational values, he wanted them to accelerate the degeneration of society. He desired a new nobility of 'gods, but no God' to perform the transvaluation. These two requirements help to explain the superficial contradictions in Nietzsche's philosophy
An evaluation of Nietzsche's own life will show how he applied these philosophical differences to himself. The first thing we need to remember is, Nietzsche is a Zarathustra, not the Ubermensch, the Ubermensch was his noble lie. In his autobiographical work, Ecce Homo, he writes, 'Zarathustra himself as a type, came to me-perhaps I should rather say-invaded me.' As I have explained before, the Ubermensch is a becoming, but Zarathustra does not become the Ubermensch, he is the prophet, destroyer, and must die before the coming of the 'child.'
Nietzsche writes, 'social intercourse is no small trial to my patience.' He needed and enjoyed his solitude, just as Zarathustra. He had an 'incontestable lack of sufficient companionship,' and his 'loathing of mankind . . . was always [his] greatest danger,' but he needed this companionship. He wrote in 1882, following a loss of his relationships with his mother, sister, sometime girlfriend Lou Salome, and friend Paul Roe: attempts 'to return 'to people' was resulting in my losing the few I still, in any sense, possessed.' In his later years, Nietzsche was the ultimate 'loner.' He had little contact with anyone, and when he finally went mad in 1888, he was committed to a sanitarium.
Before the madness finally took total control of him, he destroyed the last few relationships he had. His delusions of grandeur had become intense. On a visit to Turin in 1888, he wrote 'here in Turin I exercise a perfect fascination.' Hayman writes in his biography of Nietzsche: 'he thought people were reacting to him preferentially and lovingly.' These delusions of grandeur caused Nietzsche to be 'peremptory with friends and acquaintances.' He identified himself as 'the foremost mind of the period.' When a fellow scholar wrote a concrete agreement against his position in The Problem of Wagner, he replied, 'On questions of decadence, I am the highest court of appeal there is on earth.' Finally, in a letter to his sister Elizabeth, he signed himself, 'your brother, now quite a great person.'
These delusions of grandeur not only destroyed any relationships he may have had, but destroyed any possibility of life within society. Nietzsche believed himself the only person of the new nobility in the age of decadence. This caused his madness.
To answer the questions I have raised regarding Nietzsche's existence in society, I have to first define society. A society is a group of people organized for some common purpose. Wherever people gather for a common purpose, they form a society. This society purports common values and judgements which are not necessarily the judgements of any other society. Society only exists as the herd, therefore there is no individual morality, but only herd morality. Even if new values are created, the powerful, or strong will to power, only create a new herd morality with new noble lies.
Nietzsche destroyed the common values of the society he lived in during the late nineteenth century, but this does not necessarily mean he can't exist in a society. He was unable to live in the society of decadence, but surely Nietzsche could live in a society based upon his noble lie, the Ubermensch. A noble lie bounded by conceivability, and ruled by 'gods,' his new nobility. Since he could not create his noble lie and new nobility in a period of decadence, he sacrificed himself for the coming of his children, the Ubermenschen. Since Nietzsche conceived a new society, he is not a pure nihilist, nor is he a sociopath, he is only sociopathic to what he considers a decadent society, not one he would create.
There is no creating out of the self, since the world itself has no inherent value, only inherent activity. All values based on our creation of value are illusions-our own noble lies. These are only our perception and interpretation of reality, certainly not reality, because reality is composed of infinite interpretations. We have only one. We create out of chaotic activity within the world and within ourselves. This is the only form of creation and therefore, assignment of value available to man. Therefore, each man has a different ranking of value, and society in the common sense of the word, can't exist. Due to the infinite interpretations of value. The only common thread available is man's freedom to create.
We are still a part of the Enlightenment that Nietzsche was attacking over a hundred years ago. The difference today is we know more, and are more willing to purport it, because of philosophers like Nietzsche. We scream what only others whisper. God is dead, but we have created new gods for ourselves, and these are not ourselves as Nietzsche would have wanted it. Our new gods are consumerism, money, power-all new forms of horizontal heroism. We buy clothes off a rack to look 'cool'; the more money you make the better person you are; and everyone wants to control someone else, whether it is at work or in a relationship: 'the omnipresence of power
Today's society does however realize the problems Nietzsche was speaking of regarding society and its herd morality. White and Hellerich, two postmodern philosophers, write in their essay 'Nietzsche at the Altar: Situating the Devotee': 'This is to be a history of immanent activity not transcendent verities . . . the self-writing of a new generation of Ubermenschen and Ubermadchen.' We know that actions are inherent in our being; far more valuable than espousing higher truths, 'transcendent verities.' Which can not even be truths because there is no universal truth because of the infinite interpretations of Truth. We become our own gods by creating our own truths. We realize the 'hammer' must still be used. Deconstruction is still a common philosophy. Generation X (though I hate to use this label) has deconstructed the old herd morality to some extent, though not necessarily in the fashion which Nietzsche would have desired. Portrayed in everything from art and music to the Internet. As we close in on the twenty-first century, we are still in an age of decadence. Nietzsche's Ubermensch was and still is an unattainable possibility for society. We are still decadent
Immortalities, provincializede unending existence of the soul after physical death. The doctrine of immortality is common to many religions; in different cultures, however, it takes various forms, ranging from ultimate extinction of the soul to its final survival and the resurrection of the body. In Hinduism, the ultimate personal goal is considered absorption into the 'universal spirit.' Buddhist doctrine promises nirvana, the state of complete bliss achieved through total extinction of the personality. In the religion of ancient Egypt, entrance to immortal life was dependent on the results of divine examination of the merits of an individual's life. Early Greek religion promised a shadowy continuation of life on earth in an underground region known as Hades. In Christianity and Islam, as well as in Judaism, the immortality promised is primarily of the spirit. The former two religions both differ from Judaism in holding that after the resurrection of the body and a general judgment of the entire human race, the body is to be reunited with the spirit to experience either reward or punishment. In Jewish eschatology, the resurrection of the soul will take place at the advent of the Messiah, although the reunion of body and spirit will endure only for the messianic age, when the spirit will return to heaven.
Christianity has become, in turn, exactly what Jesus had rebelled against. In the Gay Science Nietzsche asks 'And the Christians? Did they become Jews in this respect? Did they perhaps succeed?' The answer is 'yes,' as Nietzsche observes that 'Christianity did aim to 'Judaize' the world.'
All that happened has happened, came within the accordance with James Mark's reading of Nietzsche, as a result of Paul and the other 'first Christians'' 'need for . . . power' over others, forming a priestly caste, like the Jewish priestly caste before them, that has the 'authority to pronounce that forgiveness, and thereby control the herd that feels the need of it.' Nietzsche even goes so far to hint that Christianity was invented by the 'first Christians' in revenge, by 'their ignorance of superiority over ressentiment. For Nietzsche, this is the beginning of the downfall of Christianity: All the sick and sickly instinctively strive after a herd organization as a means of shaking off their dull displeasure and feeling of weakness. Moreover, Nietzsche blames the corruption of all churches, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant alike, on their institutionalization, as he observes that Christians are an unphilosophical race, that demands its [Christianity's] discipline to become 'moralized and comparatively humanized’. Further, Nietzsche asks, that if this is true, 'How could God have permitted that?' Answering, [F]or this question the deranged reason of the little community [of early Christianity] found a downright terrifyingly absurd answer: God gave his Son for the forgiveness of sins, as a sacrifice. All at once it was over with the Gospel. Nietzsche responds, 'what atrocious paganism.'
Next Nietzsche's most structured problem with Christianity is the ethical system that it promotes. Nietzsche's words show no mercy to Christianity, writing 'In Christianity neither morality nor religions come into contact with reality at any point.' Even worse, he ranks liquor with Christianity as 'the European narcotics.' Nietzsche observes that Christians are 'the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick animal.' Following this, Nietzsche's psychology was broken into existential categories, like Aquinas and Kierkegaard before him, which ranked the beast of burden as the lowest form of human being, one who 'follows the crowd' and lives life according to the status quo, that is, a waste this is the Christian to Nietzsche. For example, the Christian has become, as a result of this institutionalized Christianity, 'a soldier, a judge, and a patriot who knows nothing against non-resistance to evil'; in other words, the life Christians live, 'under the cross,' is fake, counterfeit, and gilded; that is, the way of life against which Jesus rebelled. Christian morality, then, is a twisting of 'Jesus' teachings into a doctrine of morality.'
What Nietzsche finds most unsettling about Christian ethics is its concern for denying the pleasures of life. 'A Christian's thinking is perverted,' Nietzsche critic William Hubben writes, 'even when he humbles him, he does so only to be exalted,' citing Luke 18:14 . . . 'for everyone that exalts on him shall be abased. He that humbles him shall be exalted.' Concluding that Christians' 'only great delight is the mean and petty pleasure of condemning others.' Further, critic John Evans states that Nietzsche was 'disturbed' that 'out of ressentiment and revenge, the early Christians sought power to perverse concepts of life denial and 'sin.'' Nietzsche's writings support these claims, writing on sexuality, the highest of pleasures: 'Christianity gave Eros poison to drink: he did not die of it but degenerated into a vice.' Again, '[I]t was only Christianity, with its ressentiment against life in its foundations, which made sexuality something impure: it threw the filth on the beginning, on the prerequisite of life.' According to Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche interpreted all Christian morality into the statement, 'suffering is supposed to lead to a holy existence,' and he could not accept this way of living. Furthermore, Nietzsche observed that only 'martyrdom and the ascetic's slow destruction of his body were permitted' by Christianity as acceptable forms of suicide. In the end, Nietzsche gives up all hope of finding any good (qualities of the Übermensch) in Christianity, which has 'waged war to the death against this higher type of man' and teaches 'men to feel the supreme values of intellectuality as sinful.' To Nietzsche, then, the institution of Christianity was 'a radical betrayal of the life view that Jesus had espoused.' Jesus, as a man, had 'attempted to go 'beyond good and evil,' however, his ideas were corrupted following his death.
Nietzsche will perhaps be remembered most of all for his philosophy of God, and more specifically, the Christian God. To Nietzsche, the Christian God like Christianity-is the God of the sick and the weak. Still, Nietzsche distinguishes the God of Christianity as the opposite of the God of Jesus, so far as to say that there cannot be any true God found in Christianity. To the Christian God, man is 'God's monkey,' whom God in his long eternities created for a pastime. As a result, Nietzsche concludes that 'the Christian concept of God . . . is one of the most corrupt conceptions of God arrived at on this earth.' Nietzsche was obsessed, above all, with this area of philosophy, like 'no other in history, and his obsession was entered on the death of God.'
The 'death of God' motif that was popularized by Jean-Paul Sartre in the twentieth century 'harks back to Nietzsche, who first coined the expression.' The following is Nietzsche's famous story of the 'madman': Have you not heard of that madman that lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the marketplace, and cried incessantly? : 'In seek God! In seek God!' -As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter . . . The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. 'Where is God?' he cried; 'In will tell you. We have killed him as you and me. All of us are his murderers, but how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? . . . Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead, and we have killed him.
This, according to Nietzsche, is a message for the future, concluding 'In have come too early, my time is not yet.' Nietzsche puts this message into the voice of a madman, 'whose message falls on deaf ears,' as what he has to say is too shocking and comical for the crowd ('herd') to take seriously, but the madman has the last laugh, according to Nietzsche, as the madman is correct in what he has to say. Does this mean that God has literally died? Philosophers and theologians answer this question in many different ways, often dodging the answer. Critic John Mark answers, 'it is really something that has happened to man; God has died because we no longer accept him.' Existentialist Karl Jaspers wrote that 'Nietzsche does not say 'There is no God,' or 'In do not believe in God,' but 'God is dead.' Many academic scholars, believe that Nietzsche was an atheist, who says that the idea of the Christian God, like Zeus and other Gods before, has died, in that humanity must find something more stable to rest and reassess its values upon. Episcopalian Bishop John Spong interprets Nietzsche's declaration that ‘God is dead’ as a sign that the Christian religion needs to declare their traditional theistic God dead or ‘unemployed’. Theologian Thomas Altizer answers that in the false Pauline ‘Christianity’ that Nietzsche has exposed, its centre, Jesus 'is a dead and empty Christ who is the embodiment of the determining nothingness'; refusing to allow the living Jesus to arise as the nihilist that he was two millennia ago. Another theologian, Don Cupitt, writes that the death of God means that the characteristics of the God that has relevance to some post-modern society that shares characteristics of a human corpse and the dead's affect on human life. What is more, Zen monk and Buddhist theologian Nhat Hanh answers that the death of God is the essential ‘death of every concept we may have of God in order to experience God as a living reality directly’. While these possible interpretations may have been what the ‘death of God’ meant to Nietzsche, theologian Paul Tillich has gone so far as to call Nietzsche 'the most candid of the Christian humanists.' Their indirect effectuality seems less than are to what is seemingly unambiguously discontinued, as they are a comprehensive answer to be offered from neither theology nor philosophy.
In do not wish to baptize Nietzsche, least of mention, is that, In conclude that while Nietzsche's personal theological convictions are moot and many have debated what Nietzsche's statement 'God is dead' means for Christians in the twentieth century, his opinions on Jesus of Nazareth and the Christian religion remain clear. The salient notion is that Nietzsche's treatment of the theistic Christian God is as an absurdity, the enemy of what the philosopher believes to be 'the good life.
In conclusion, Nietzsche clearly has pronounced separate judgements upon the man Jesus of Nazareth and the religion that is believed to be loosely based on Jesus' life, Christianity. To Nietzsche, Jesus was a great man worthy of respect, perhaps evens a Übermensch; Christianity, however, is corrupt insofar as the fathers of the church institutionalized the teachings of Jesus in an act of hostility toward the Jews. Furthermore, Nietzsche believes that Christianity has become the very establishment against which Jesus rebelled in Judaism: an already corrupt, stagnant, static, hierarchical religion. Finally, it cannot be deciphered whether Nietzsche accepted a god or not. If there is a God to Nietzsche, it would be above morality, would not impose ethics upon humans, would not judge on the basis of its own sacrifice, and would not deny human nature into -denial that is, the opposite of the Christian God. Nietzsche simply foresees him as the one who is replacing Jesus in a manner of successive revelation, predicting correctly that he, like Jesus, is a madman who has 'come too early,' who has and will continue to be misinterpreted and institutionalized incorrectly.
Once, again, have you not heard of that madman that lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, then running to the marketplace, and cried incessantly? 'In seek God! In seek God.' As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? Asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? Asked another, or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? Emigrated? Thus they yelled and laughed. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes.
'Where is God?' He cried; 'In will tell you. We have killed him -you and In. All of us are his murderers, but how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Where is it moving now? Where are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead, and we have killed him.
How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives, who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us-for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners. They, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. 'In have come too early,' he said then; 'My time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder requires time; The light of the stars requires time; Deeds, are though done, but it still requires time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most-distant stars and yet they have done it themselves.'
It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem as antiquatedly set. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: 'What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepultures of God?' (The Gay Science 1882, 1887).
In his book, The Antichrist, Nietzsche sets out to denounce and illegitimize not only Christianity it as a belief and a practice, but also the ethical-moral value system which modern western civilization has inherited from it. This book can be considered a further development of some of his ideas concerning Christianity that can be found in Beyond Good and Evil and in The Genealogy of Morals, particularly the idea that the present morality is an inversion of true, noble morality. An understanding of the main ideas in the latter works is therefore quite helpful in understanding and fully appreciating the ideas set forth in The Antichrist. One of the most important of these ideas is that Christianity has made people nihilistic and weak by regarding pity and related sentiments as the highest virtues. Here, just as in the Genealogy, Nietzsche traces the origin of these values to the ancient Jews who lived under Roman occupation, but here he puts them in terms of a reversal of their conception of God. He argues that the Jewish God was once one that embodied the noble virtues of a proud, powerful person, but when they became subjugated by the Romans, their God began to embody the 'virtues' (more like sentiments) of an oppressed, resentful people, until it became something entirely alien to what it formerly had been.
Further in the book, after Nietzsche devotes a few passages to contrasting Buddhism with Christianity, he paints a picture of the Jesus of history as actually having lived a type of 'Buddhistic' existence, and lambastes Paul particularly for turning this historically correct Jesus, for, Jesus, the 'Nazarene,' into Jesus the 'Christ.' Also, Nietzsche argues that the Christian moral and metaphysical principles he considers so decadent has infiltrated our philosophy, so much that philosophers unwittingly work to defend these principles even when God is removed from the hypothesis. The purpose of this paper is to expound and assess some of these important reproaches that Nietzsche raises against Christianity, in order to glean from them those elements that can be considered to have lasting significance. It should also be noted that The Antichrist is predominantly aphoristic work, so this paper will not attempt to tie these ideas of Nietzsche's together into a coherent system. To do so, in my opinion, would not do Nietzsche justice. Instead these ideas will be presented and examined as they appear in the work -ne by one and loosely associated.
Nietzsche begins by criticizing Christianity for denouncing and regarding as evil those basic instincts of human beings that are life-preserving and strength-promoting. In their place, Christianity maintains and advocates value which Nietzsche sees as life-negating or nihilistic, of which the most important is pity. Nietzsche writes: Christianity is called the religion of pity. Pity stands opposed to the tonic emotions that heighten our vitality: it has a depressing effect. We are deprived of strength when we feel pity. That loss of strength which suffering as such inflicts on life is still further increased and multiplied by pity. Pity makes suffering contagious.
Pity, according to Nietzsche, is nothing less than the multiplication of suffering, in that it allows us to suffer along with those for whom we feel pity. It depresses us, sapping us of our strength and will to power. It is interesting to note that the German word for pity it, Mitleid, literally means 'suffering with' (leid = pain, suffering + mit = with). So to feel pity for someone is simply to suffer along with them, as Nietzsche sees it. It also promotes the preservation of those whom nature has selected for destruction, or in other words, those who Nietzsche calls 'failures.' This preservation of failures, he argues, makes the overall picture of life look decadent, in that it becomes filled with weak and retrograde individuals. Pity, then, has a twofold effect for Nietzsche, since it both multiplies suffering and leads to the preservation of those who would cause us this suffering as the objects of our pity. Ultimately, pity is nihilism put into practice, according to Nietzsche, since it makes life simply seem more miserable and decadent and therefore more worthy of negation it. Nietzsche does not really develop this conception of pity any farther. As it stands, it seems to be explicitly problematic. Does his conception of pity mean to include compassion and sympathy as well? Can these words be used interchangeably? The German word for compassion is Mitleid as well, so it is possible that Nietzsche is using them interchangeably. The German word for sympathy, however, is Mitgefhl, which means 'feeling with.' Perhaps Nietzsche is confusing pity with compassion and sympathy. Pity would seem to have a more negative connotation, in that it is a suffering-with that does not achieve anything; a waste of emotional energy toward those who are beyond help, in other words. Sympathy and compassion, as In understand the terms, seem to lean more toward having an understanding (a 'feeling-with') of what someone is suffering through and being in a position to help that person. In take Nietzsche to be using (maybe misusing) these terms interchangeably, however, since he uses the word sympathy (Mitgefühl) in other works in very similar contexts.
To Nietzsche, the Christian conception of God is one of the most decadent and contradictory of any type that has ever been conceived, he writes: The Christian conception of God-God as god of the sick, God as a spider, Godas spirit-is one of the most corrupt conceptions of the divine ever acquired on earth. It may even represent the low-water mark in the descending development of divine types. God degenerated into the contradiction of life, instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yes! God as the declaration of war against life, against nature, against the will to live! God-the formula for every slander against 'this world,' for every lie about the 'beyond' God-the deification of nothingness, the will to nothingness means more than nothingness it and therefore is pronounced metaphysically. Nietzsche is interested in showing how the God of Israel, that is, the God of the Old Testament, was at the time a God of a very proud and powerful Jewish people. This is a sustaining conception of God, than the Christian one, according to Nietzsche, in that it was the Jew's own God-for them only. This God was conceived of as a being to whom some proud people could give thanks for their power and. Assuredness, and it was a manifestation of the Jews' own -proclaimed virtues. The ancient Jews ascribed both the good and the bad to their God, and in that respect it was consistent with nature, both helping and harming. When the Jews found themselves oppressed by Rome during the occupation of Palestine, however, with their freedom, power, and pride stripped from them, their God required a change that was reflective of their predicament. Instead of having a God that embodied the noble virtues of some proud and powerful people, as it once did, the God of the Jews developed into one that embodied the sentiments of an oppressed, resentful, and ineffective group.
It became a God of people who were trying to preserve themselves at any cost, even if that cost were the inversion of their own noble values. They transformed their God into a God of the weak, the poor, and the oppressed, making a virtue out of the necessity of their own condition. Want of revenge on their enemies, by any and the only means possible for them psychologically prompted the Jews to elevate their type of God to the point at which it became a God for everyone. That is to say, that their God became the one, true God, to whom everyone was held accountably. It also became a God that was all good, incapable of doing anything harmful, while the God of their enemies and oppressors became evil-in effect, the Devil. This is a very unhealthy type of God, according to Nietzsche, in that it 'degenerates step by step into a mere symbol, a staff for the weary, a sheet-anchor for the drowning; when he becomes the God of the poor, the sinners, and the sick better than anyone else, and the attribute ‘Saviour’ or ‘Redeemer’ remains in the end as the one essential attribute of divinity . . . .'
A God such as this can thus have an appeal to any group of people who are in a state of subjugation. Yet unlike the pagan Gods of strong, proud people, this type of God, as Nietzsche points out, remains in the state in which it was conceived (a God of the sick and weak), despite how strong a following it receives. It receives such a strong following because those who are from the ghettos, slums, and hospitals of the world, are the masses (There was no middle class in ancient Palestine; there were only the more elite subjugator and the subjugated masses). The God for ‘everyone’, is overwhelming among those who live in conditions of powerlessness and misery, in that it allows them to deny their present existence in favour of a better one that is to come, in an appeal to 'redemption' in a world beyond. Therefore, this God-type becomes a life-denying one, in that it represents a denial of 'this' life, as opposed to the healthy yes-saying, life-affirming, consistent-with-nature God of the ancient Jews. This particular type of God is therefore one that is ultimately nihilistic, involving the denial and rejection of the world and everything in it as sinful and decadent. Nature, flesh, and instinct thus become ever more devalued until they reach a point at which nature is seen as a cesspool, the flesh is mortified, and instincts are put in terms of evil 'temptations.' The concept of God continues to 'deteriorate,' as Nietzsche terms it, until what ultimately remains are a conception of God as 'pure spirit,' or in other words, as something to be aware among the integrally immaterial and non-corporeal, just as this is held up as an ideal form of existence. Nietzsche simply thinks of this idea of pure spirit as pure 'nothingness,' in that it is merely an absurd, contradictory-to-nature postulation. To him, it ultimately represents nihilism and nothing less.
These claims of Nietzsche's are difficult to argue against, because Nietzsche does not really use much in the way of an argument here to arrive at these claims. One is to concur of what has already confronted the reading scribes of his Genealogy of Morals in order to understand better what is going on in these passages. The Genealogy actually does have a sustained argument for claims that are intimately related to the ones above that are found in The Antichrist. This argument deals with how the slave class (Jews), out of hatred and resentment, got their revenge on the noble class (Romans) by shaming them into accepting the slave class' morality. This is one of Nietzsche's most important claims, and it is essential to an understanding of The Antichrist. Nietzsche argues for this claim in the Genealogy by giving an account of the origins of the words ‘good' and ‘bad' and ‘good' and ‘evil'. In their etymological senses, the terms 'moral' and 'ethical' mean literally 'common' and 'ordinary.' The etymological origin of the word 'good,' according to Nietzsche, reveals that it once meant 'privileged,' 'aristocratic,' 'with a soul of high order,' etc., and that 'bad' originally meant 'common,' 'low,' and 'plebeian.' Even the German word schlecht, which means 'badly,' is akin to schlicht, which means 'plain' or 'simple.' Furthermore, the word’s schlechthin und schlechtweg literally means 'simply' or 'downright.' This was the language of the aristocratic upper classes in classical times, whom Nietzsche calls the noble, or master class. The word 'bad' was used by the master class, without any moral or ethical connotations, simply to refer and to differentiate them from common people, whom Nietzsche refers to as the slave class. The master class calls them 'good,' due to their apparently superior social standing, or in other words, 'good' was simply a term for those things that they were, fierce, proud, brave, and noble. The lower class, or the slave class, on the other hand, developed their own moral language, which is that of the language of 'good' and 'evil.' The anger and hatred that the slave class had for the master class had no outlet, or in other words their anger was impotent, due to their physical and political powerlessness. Nietzsche calls this the anger of ressentiment. The only way the slave class could get their revenge on the master class was to accept nothing less than a complete revaluation of the master class' values. The Jews, who epitomized the 'priestly' way of life, according to Nietzsche, were the ones who began what he calls the 'slave revolt in morality,' which inverted the 'aristocratic value equation (good=powerful=beautiful =happy=beloved of God),' to make a good out of their own station in life, and an evil out of the station of their enemies -he objects of their impotent anger and revenge. The slave class accomplished this effect by turning 'good' and 'bad' into terms which not only made reference to one's political station in life, but also pointed to one's soul and depth as a person.
Thus, the language of 'good' and 'bad,' which was originally used for the purpose of amorally denoting one's station in life, was reevaluated into the language of 'good' and 'evil,' in which what is 'good' is common, ordinary, poor, and familiar, and what is 'evil' is damnable, unfamiliar, cruel, godless, accursed, and unblessed. In effect, the master class, over the last two thousand years, has been 'poisoned' and shamed by the slave class and its language of 'good' and 'evil' into accepting the inversion of their own noble values, and thus the morality of the slave class, namely that which is 'common,' 'ordinary,' and 'familiar,' is the one that prevails today. From the above argument, understanding how Nietzsche claims that the subjugated Jews transformed their once yes-saying God into the nay-saying God of ressentiment and hatred is easier. This argument seems to ring true in many ways, but it is nevertheless based on the psychological presupposition that human beings are always seeking power and mastery over others, or in other words, that they are always exerting their 'will to power,' as Nietzsche calls it. In this way, Nietzsche sees the Jews as cunningly having found a way to regain power over their oppressors psychologically by shaming them with the use of the language of good and evil. This assessment goes for what is to follow below as well.
As he demonstrates, Nietzsche is careful not to confuse Buddhism with Christianity in his criticisms. Though he believes that both religions are nihilistic and decadent, he regards Buddhism as a far healthier and more realistic approach. In contrast to the Christian, who is always trying to avoid sin, the Buddhist's main goal is to reduce suffering it. The latter does not fall into the same trap as Christianity does, according to Nietzsche, do not carry any moral presuppositions. It has long abandoned them, seeing them as mere deceptions. The Buddhist is therefore not engaged in the practice of moralizing and making judgments about others. A Buddhist achieves this reduction of suffering by living a passive, non-combatanting lifestyle. He does not become angry or resentful, no matter what transgressions someone has assertively enacted against him. Neither does he worry about him nor others. He takes measures that will help him to avoid exciting his senses, while the Christian, on the other hand, does just the opposite through living an ascetic lifestyle and maintaining an emotionally charged relationship with his God through prayer. The Buddhist, in his avoidance of suffering, simply aims to maintain its steady state of peace, calm, and mildness in his lifestyle and temperament. It is a very important point that in pursuing this aim, the Buddhist actually succeeds, whereas the Christian does not succeed in removing sin, and is thus always in a state of wanting 'redemption' and 'forgiveness,' never attaining the 'grace' of God that he so desires. The Buddhist is therefore able to achieve a sort of peace and tranquillity on earth.
This idea is vital, in that it relates directly with Nietzsche's conception of the historical Jesus. Nietzsche paints a picture of the Jesus of history for being a true evangel, which means that he did not subscribe to the concepts of guilt, punishment, and reward. He did not engage in faith, but only in actions, and these actions prescribed a way of life that Nietzsche sees as Buddhistic. The evangel does not get angry, does not pass judgment, and does neither he feel any hatred nor resentment for his enemies. He rejected the whole idea of sin and repentance, and believed that this evangelical way of life was divine in it, closing the gap between man and God so much that it is God, according to Nietzsche. Therefore, he saw prayer, faith, and redemption as farcical, instead believing that the 'kingdom of heaven' is a state of mind that can be experienced on earth by living this type of peaceful, judgment-suspending existence, free from worry, guilt, and anger. Nietzsche argues that this was the life of Jesus and nothing more, and this way of life was the 'glad tidings' which he brought. Nietzsche writes: The 'bringer of glad tidings' died as he had lived, as he had taught-not to 'redeem men' but to show how one must live. This practice is his legacy to humanity: his behaviour before the judges, before the catch poles, before the accusers and all kinds of slander and scorn-his behaviour on the cross. He does not resist, he does not defend his right, he takes no step that might ward off the worst; on the contrary, he provokes it. He begs, he suffers, he loves with those, in those, who do him evil. Not to resist, not to be angry, not to hold responsible-but to resist not even the evil one-to love him.
This conception of Jesus is entirely alien to the one that the church has given us. For the creation and dissemination of this misconception, Nietzsche blames Paul. He also blames Jesus' immediate followers as well. Once Jesus had been executed, according to Nietzsche, his followers could not come to grips with the shock of his sudden loss. Filled with a want of revenge, they wanted to know who killed him and why. They determined that the rulers of the existing Jewish order had killed him because his doctrine went against that order. Not wanting his death to have been in vain, they saw him as a rebel against the Jewish status quo in the same way that they saw themselves as such. In this way, argues Nietzsche, his followers completely misunderstood him. The truly 'evangelic' thing to do, he says, would have been to forgive his death instead, or to die in the like manner without judgment or need of vindication. However, Jesus' followers, resentful about his loss, wanted vengeance upon those of the existing Jewish order. The way that they accomplished this vengeance is the same as the way in which the Jews exacted their revenge on their Roman oppressors. They considered Jesus to be the Messiah of whom they were foretold by Jewish scripture, and in this way they elevated him to divine status--as the Son of God (since he referred to him metaphorically as a 'child of God'). Faced with the question of how God could allow Jesus' death to occur, they came up with the idea that God had sent down his own Son as a sacrifice for their sins, as a sacrifice of the guiltless for the sins of the guilty, even though Jesus him refused to engage in feeling guilt. They then used the figure of Jesus and their misunderstanding of his doctrine of the 'kingdom of God' for making judgments against their enemies in the existing Jewish order, just as the Jews had turned their God into something universal for the purpose of passing judgment on the Romans: On the other hand, the frenzied veneration of these totally unhinged souls no longer endured the evangelic conception of everybody's equal right to be a child of God, as Jesus had taught: it was their revenge to elevate Jesus extravagantly, to sever him from themselves-precisely as the Jews had formerly, out of revenge against their enemies, severed their God from themselves and elevated him. The one God and the one Son of God-both products of resentment.
The figure of Paul, according to Nietzsche, exacerbated this misunderstanding of Jesus' teachings even further. In fact, that is an understatement. In this immortalized figure of crucified Jesus, Paul, with his 'priestly' instincts, saw a way to gain power by forming 'herds,' as Nietzsche puts it. He completely rewrote the history of Jesus' life and Christianity for his own purposes, adding the doctrines of the resurrection, the immaculate conception, and the idea of personal as a reward. Nietzsche attributes Paul's efforts to the hatred and ressentiment of the priestly class, and refers to Paul as the 'dysangelist,' or in other words, the 'bringer of ill tidings.' After Paul, the life of Jesus had been turned into something completely alien and antithetical to what it actually was. Again, this theory of Nietzsche's rests on the assumption that humans are in essence motivated by a will to power. Historical evidence concerning the historical Jesus is quite lacking in Nietzsche's account; in that, it relies on a psychological profile of those who participated in this historical scene. However, this psychological analysis seems to present a scenario that is at least conceivable--especially more so than the idea of an immaculate conception and resurrection. In think Nietzsche takes the Buddhistic element of Jesus too far, however. He provides too specifically an account of Jesus' lifestyle and philosophical persuasions without any evidence. It is still quite possible that Jesus could have simply been a more noteworthy rebel against the Romans and the Jewish status quo. More historical evidence would seem to be in order, but Nietzsche's account remains very compelling without it. Its profound significance lies in the fact that in it, Nietzsche has the courage and honesty to show us what, in his and every non-Christian's eyes, is far more likely to have been the case.
Nietzsche is also concerned with how deeply these decadent Christian values have ingrained themselves in our social practices and presuppositions. He especially laments how it has infiltrated the study of philosophy, particularly German philosophy. As Nietzsche argues, he sees modern philosophy as having 'theologians' blood in its veins,' saying whom we consider our antithesis is necessary: it is the theologians and whatever has theologians' blood in its veins-and that includes our whole philosophy.
Nietzsche argues that Christianity has poisoned philosophy with this nihilistic rejection of the body in favour of pure spirit. He compares the idealist philosopher with the priest, in that the former reduces everything in the world to idea, so that the physical world does not really exist. Figures such as Georg Hegel have done exactly this sort of thing, and Nietzsche is especially critical of German philosophy, both for its idealists’ tendencies and its conception of morality-both of which can be traced to this theologian's instinct. Nietzsche blames Germany's heavy Protestant tradition for the corruption of philosophy, and he criticizes Kant especially for being the latest, 'greatest' philosopher to continue this corruption. Kant denies that the physical world can be apprehended directly (the world of noemenon) by the senses, and in this respect he is not a strict idealist, save a phenomenalist. What is meant by this is that all we can perceive are phenomenon, which appear to us as ideas, and the physical (noemenal) world is something that we can never directly observe. Kant's system does not deny that the physical world exists, but it denies that it exists as we know it, and that is enough for Nietzsche to criticize him. One can understand, however, how Nietzsche sees the theologian's blood running through Kant's veins, in that Kant sees the physical world as mere phenomenon -phantom reality. Nietzsche also criticizes Kant for finding a way to maintain a theoretical justification for morality-the Christian morality-while removing God from the picture, namely the Categorical Imperative. Nietzsche rejects this system as one that turns people into automatons. He claims that a virtue must be one of the people's own inventions, not an abstract 'duty' in-it, which must be followed universally for its own sake. If the people do not follow its own virtues and do its own duty, he argues, it will perish. What Nietzsche seems to be getting at is that people simply do what they need to do to thrive and preserve themselves, and as explained earlier, different people find themselves having to adapt to different circumstances, such as the Jews did under Roman occupation. Their virtues and duties had to change according to their situation. This is what Kant means when he says that 'Kant's categorical imperative endangered life it!'8 Nietzsche then goes on to denounce Kant's deontologicalism it: An action demanded by the instinct of life is proved to be right by the pleasure that accompanies it; yet this nihilist with his Christian dogmatic entrails considered pleasure an objection. What could destroy us more quickly than working, thinking, and feeling without any inner necessity, without any deeply personal choice, without pleasure-as an automaton of 'duty?' This is the very recipe for decadence, even for idiocy. Kant became an idiot, and this man was contemporary of Goethe! This catastrophic spider was considered the German philosopher-he still is.
Kant, in this way, also goes against nature with his system of morality, according to Nietzsche. It is simply a Christian God's 'Thou shalt' disguised by a secular, theoretical philosophy, or as Nietzsche would see it, it is borne of the theologian's instinct. Any philosophy student can see where Nietzsche gets these ideas from, and in most respects, he seems to be right about this. However, not all of the nihilistic elements of philosophy have their roots in Christianity. Western philosophy has a fundamental inheritance from Plato, who also, as Nietzsche is surely aware, rejects the physical world. He does this not because he thinks of it as sinful, but because he thinks it is ultimately only shadows of reality. Instead, Plato favours the world of the Forms, in which the Forms are paradigms of all objects and concepts that can be found in the physical, sensory world in which we presently live. Plato favours this other world because the physical world is in a constant state of flux, he argues. Since we cannot have knowledge of something that is always changing, as he claims, there can be no real knowledge of anything in the physical world. Knowledge then, for Plato, can only be possible in this other world through contemplation of the Forms, since these Forms are unchanging. Therefore, western post-Socratic philosophy began with a rejection of the physical world, and this rejection also constitutes a large, if not major source of the nihilism in western philosophy about which Nietzsche so often complains.
To refute of which is the claim that Plato and Nietzsche are at opposite poles regarding the treatment of the non-rational elements of the soul, and argue that, instead, they share a complex and psychologically rich view of the role of reason toward the appetites and the emotions. My argument makes use of the Freudian distinction between sublimation, i.e., the re-channelling of certain undesirable appetitive and emotional forces toward more beneficial ends, and repression. In show that both Plato and Nietzsche argue in favour of sublimation and against repression of the non-rational elements of the soul.
Nietzsche’s moral philosophy is often seen as the antitheses of Plato’s for at least the following reason: Plato’s concept of psychic harmony, i.e., the state that it is best for the soul to be in, is said to involve repression of the non-rational elements of the soul (the thumos and the appetitive part) by reason. This repression, in Nietzschean terms, can be classified as a form of asceticism, and Nietzsche is seen as rejecting all forms of asceticism. In will argue in the following sections that this interpretation relies on a misunderstanding of both Plato and Nietzsche, in that it is neither true that Plato believes repression to be reason’s main way of controlling the non-rational parts of the soul, nor that Nietzsche rejects all forms of rational control over one’s character. In this section, however, In want to highlight these passages in which Plato and Nietzsche say things that could be misinterpreted in the way In have outlined, i.e., what lesser truths would make one believe that the interpretation as a whole is correct.
It would be false to claim that Plato cannot, and has not been interpreted as claiming that reason should repress the appetites. Annas, in her Companion to Plato’s Republic writes the following: [. . . .] Reason as Plato conceives it will decide for the whole soul in a way that does not take the ends of the other parts as given but may involve suppressing or restraining them
The end of the rational part, according to Plato, is to decide on behalf of the whole soul what is good for it, and make sure that it pursues only those ends. In the metaphor of the soul in which the rational part is a little man, the thumos a lion, and the appetitive part a many-headed beast, Plato tells us that 'all our actions and words should tend to give the man within us complete domination over the entire man, and make him take charge of the many-headed beast.' We may read this as meaning that the rational part should repress the appetitive part, and curb the thumos so that it only acts as reason would have it act. However, as In will argue, in this mis-reading, all we should in fact read in Plato’s proposal, is that reason should control the appetites and the thumos, but control them by means other than repression.
Nietzsche supposed the rejection of asceticism, and all forms of control over the elements of one’s character, can be deduced from many passages. At this point as we occupy of a particular surface in space and time, whose manifesting inclinations of force fields and atomizations are combining quality standards whose presence is awaiting to the future, however, what seems more important and, perhaps, relevantly significant are the contributions that follow: At which time In abhor all those moralities that say ‘do not do this! Renounce! Overcome your: Those who command man first of all and above all to gain control of him thus afflict him with a particular disease; Namely, a constant irritability in the face of natural stirring and inclinations - as it were, a kind of itching. People like St. Paul have an evil eye for the passions: all they know of the passions is what is dirty, disfiguring, and heartbreaking; hence their idealistic tendencies aim at the annihilation of the passions, and they find perfect purity in the divine.
These passages contrive to give us the following impression of Nietzsche’s moral philosophy, i.e., that Nietzsche stands up for the passions, and other natural stirrings and inclinations against moralists who want to annihilate them, overcome, renounce, or control them. If we add this up to the above interpretation of Plato, then concluding that Plato is just the kind of philosopher Nietzsche is naturals’ outcry denounces -and in fact there are many passages in which Nietzsche does denounce Plato, sometimes just for this reason.
That this interpretation of Nietzsche as rejecting control of the non-rational parts of the soul is misleading, in that although it is true that Nietzsche rejects repression as a means of controlling those parts, he does not reject all forms of control, quite the contrary. Together with my argument in that Plato does not believe the appetitive part should be repressed, this will refute the claim that Nietzsche and Plato’s treatment of the non-rational parts of the soul are opposed, or significantly different. A need to introduce certain concepts that are useful in ascertaining the proper meaning of Plato and Nietzsche’s claims regarding the control of the soul by reason.
The preceding section highlighted the sources of the interpretations of Nietzsche and Plato’s positions on the treatment of the irrational parts of the soul as opposite. Plato, it has been said, believes that we should repress these elements or else enlist some of them on the side of reason to repress the others. Nietzsche on the other hand is said to have believed that all parts of our character are of equal value, and hence that we should get rid of nothing, but on the contrary, let all our ‘instincts’ rule us. This is an oversimplified view, but it expresses best the common belief among philosophers that Plato and Nietzsche held radically different views regarding the role of reason and of the non-rational elements of the soul. In believe this view is mistaken: Not just in its exaggerated form, but in any form that contains the claim that Plato and Nietzsche disagreed significantly as to whether and how we should gain rational control over the non-rational elements of our souls.
The concept we need most here is that of sublimation (sublimieren in German - a concept that, incidentally, was introduced by Goethe before its meaning was developed more fully by Freud). It means the redirection of forces impinged upon impulses under which are highly objective, that is, if one were taken anthelmintically, than inexpediently, in that to another spells of one, and to society. In order to understand sublimation, however, we need to spell out two more Freudian concepts, of ‘impulse’ and ‘repression’. An impulse (Trieb: Usually erroneously translated as ‘instinct’) is a force, or pressure the goal of which is (sexual) satisfaction of some kind or other (e.g., oral) which it attains by discharging it on some object. The force is the driving aspect of the impulse, ‘the amount of force or the measure of the demand for work that it represents’.
Freud was interested in two types of impulsive behaviours, repression, and sublimation. Both exist as a means of dealing with problematic impulses, i.e., impulses that we cannot live within society, that we are ashamed of, that would be disapproved of by others, that threatens our relationships with others. Repression presupposes two of the simplest: to repress an impulse is to prevent it from achieving its aim, i.e., satisfaction. The impulse is driven back, shut out, rejected, in no particular direction. As Freud argued, this -denial is far from being the most effective manner of dealing with violent unwanted impulse. In that, if we do not look atop to whatever one is to push them, then one will not know from where they are likely to come back. They will come back, just as the heads on the multi-headed monster of the Republic keep growing back with different shapes, as pathological symptoms.
The second mechanism for dealing with troublesome impulses is sublimation. When an impulse is sublimated, it is not prevented from reaching its satisfaction, but it is made to reach via a different route from that which it would naturally follow, i.e., by settling for its satisfaction on a different object. In Freud’s words: [Sublimation] enables excessively strong excitations arising from particular sources of sexuality to find an outlet and use in other fields, so that a considerable increase in psychological efficiency results from a disposition that is it perilous. Here we have one of the origins of artistic creativity - and, according to the completeness or incompleteness of the sublimation, a characterological analysis of a highly gifted individual. Freud saw sublimation as society’s means of achieving impulsive renunciation without appealing to repression. Still, more important, he saw it as the individual’s means of achieving rational control over the dark forces of her unconscious mind. Sublimation is the work of the ego, the rational , and what it achieves is ‘a defusion of the instincts, and a liberation of the aggressive instincts in the superego’. Freud thought sublimation was preferable to repression because it brings about greater rational control.
Much more could be said about Freud’s work on the human soul, and in particular, on his concept of sublimation. However, In shall now leave Freud to return to Plato and Nietzsche, and show how his concepts of sublimation and repression can be used to understand these two philosophers’ moral psychologies not as opposed, but on the contrary, both arguing along similar and very plausible lines.
Let us turn again to the metaphor of the tripartite soul as the joining of a multi-headed beast, a lion, and a little man. In suggested in that reading Plato’s claim that we should aim to achieve was wrong ‘complete dominion’ of reason over the soul as a claim that reason should repress the other parts. Reading the passage in its entirety can vindicate this suggestion in part simply. At 589ab Plato writes, And on the other hand, he who says that justice is the more profitable affirms that all our actions and words should tend to give the man within us complete dominion over the entire man and make him take charge of the many-headed beast -like a farmer who cherishes and adapts in the cultivated plants but checks the growth of the wild - and he will make an ally of the lion’s nature, and caring for all the beasts alike will at first make friends, in and of one another and to him, and so foster their growth.
This passage is ambiguous, but what should stand out, as well as the claim that reason must dominate the soul, is to mention that one should care for one’s appetitive part, and foster its growth. This is surely not consistent with the claim that one should repress it. However, Plato’s meaning is unclear, and in order to make sense of the metaphor of the farmer, we need to look at Plato’s other recommendations as to how reason should manifest its dominion. The clearest, In believe, is to be found in Plato’s portrait of the reasonable man at. Nevertheless, when, In suppose, a man’s condition is healthy and sober, and he goes to sleep after arousing his rational part and entertaining it with fair words and thoughts, and attaining to clear -consciousness, while he has neither starved nor indulged to repletion his appetitive part, so that it may be lulled to sleep and not disturb the better part by its pleasure or pain . . .
The reasonable man -, i.e., the man whose soul is governed by the rational part, in other words, the just man - as he is portrayed in Book Nine of the Republic, does not indulge nor starve his appetitive part. This is why his sleep, unlike the tyrant’s, is undisturbed by violent dreams. If reason is not in control and if the appetites are not lulled to sleep, then the ‘terrible, fierce and lawless broods of desires’ which exists ‘in every one of us, even in some reputed most respectable’ will reveal themselves in our sleep as ‘lawless’ dreams.
This very Freudian analysis tells us the following, appetites, which are not controlled by reason, are likely to come back and disturb us in our sleep as violent dreams. Still, the control that reasons must exert is not repression: we have to make sure that the lawless appetites are neither indulged nor starved, and what is repression but the starving of impulses, i.e., preventing them from ever being satisfied? Repression, or starvation of the appetites, Plato tells us, is as much the cause of tyrannical behaviour patterns as indulging appetites. The ‘lawless pleasures and appetites’ should not be repressed, but ‘controlled by the laws and the better desires in alliance with reason.
That the rational control Plato proposes is not a repressive kind is one thing, but what else is it, and do we have grounds for supposing that it is a kind of sublimation? In following, it would not be far fetched to propose that he does believe we should sublimate the appetites that need to be controlled.
Does Plato use the vocabulary of sublimation when he defines psychic harmony? Surely he does in the case of the thumos. The emotions that are so unruly in children ('for they are from their enactable birth cradles -full of rage and high spirits', are brought to 'marshal themselves on the side of reason, and this through 'the blending of music and gymnastics that will render them concordant, intensifying and fostering the one [reason] with fair words and teachings, and relaxing and sobering and making gently the other by harmony and rhythm' The idea that the appetites should be sublimated is present elsewhere in the Republic 'But, again, we surely are aware that when in a man the desires incline strongly to any-one thing, they are weakened for other things. It is as if the stream had been diverted into another channel. So when a man's desires have been taught to flow in the channel of learning and all that sort of thing, they will be concerned, In presume, with the pleasures of the soul in it, and will be indifferent to those of which the body is the instrument if the man is true and not a sham philosopher.'
Plato seems to accept the following: the lawless appetites should be controlled and prevented from ruling the soul, but at the same time, they should not be repressed, i.e., extinguished. Their motivational force should be redirected so that it assists the whole soul in its pursuit of the Good. More precisely, it seems that Plato is arguing that bodily impulses can be sublimated through philosophy, i.e., that sexual desires, for instance, will be replaced, to a degree at least, by desires to acquire philosophical knowledge.
We can conclude this section by answering the initial challenge as follows. It is not the case that Psychic harmony involves the repression of a whole genus of desires: Plato makes it clear that the appetites of the reasonable man must neither be starved nor over-indulged. He believes control is necessary, but preferably, a creative type of control, i.e., not one that seeks to extinguish appetitive or emotional drives, but one that sublimates them, transforms them into drives of a similar but more beneficial nature.
Having argued that Plato does not believe that unruly impulses should be repressed, but instead advocate a kind of control that we can properly refer to as sublimation in the Freudian sense of that term, but we must now turn to the claim that Nietzsche rejects all kinds of control of the non-rational elements of the soul as forms of asceticism, and therefore repression. In shall argue that Nietzsche, like Plato, believes that a kind of control like sublimation is both necessary and beneficial
There is no question that Nietzsche rejects repression as unhealthy - as verily does Plato - nor that he claims that philosophers in general, and Plato and Socrates in particular favour a certain kind of asceticism. However, it does not follow that Nietzsche does not believe some control of the desires is necessary. Although sublimation is incompatible with repression - an impulse cannot be redirected in other channels if it is repressed (a criminal cannot be rehabilitated if he is executed) - it can be seen as some kind of control, and is thus quite compatible with the pursuit of psychic harmony as described by Plato. In particular, one passage from Daybreak shows how close the two philosophers really are regarding the treatment of appetites, which threaten psychic health: one already stands before the irrefutable insight that there exists no essential difference between criminals and the insane [ . . . ] One should place before him quite clearly the possibility and the means of becoming cured (the extinction, transformation, sublimations of this [tyrannical] drive)
That Nietzsche mentions extinction along with sublimation or transformation, does not mean that he sees repression as a good general policy any more than Plato does. Here he is talking about the tyrannical drive of the criminal. Had that drive not been allowed to become tyrannical, (and that this kind of prevention need not appeal to repression but may be achieved through sublimation) it would not need to be extinguished.
Nietzsche also believes that sublimation is the explanation for the existence of asceticism. Cruel impulses are sublimated through ressentiment and bad conscience and give birth to ascetic impulses. Desires to murder, arson, rape and torture are replaced by desires for -castigation. Civilization seeks to prevent the gratification of the cruel instincts (for obvious reasons), and by introducing the ideas of responsibility for one's actions and guilt, helps to turn these instincts against themselves, i.e., transform desires to hurt others into desires to hurt one.
There be of three containing comments on the Genealogy as pertaining to Nietzsche’s concerns with the origins of morality and culturally sublimated expressions of drives as well as Federn’s comment that Nietzsche ‘was the first to discover the significance of abreaction, of repression, of flight into illness, of the instincts - and some comments speculating on Nietzsche’s personality a relevant psychodynamic.
Of the Genealogy, ‘guilt, bad conscience and the like, explores, among other things, how at a critical juncture in the development of civilization an morality, drives that had been more freely expressed were constrained and turned inward. This led to the development of the ‘base conscience’ an the ‘entire inner word’ [which] originally thin as if it were stretched between two membranes, expanded and extended it, acquire depth, breadth, and height. In, What is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideas’ were to explore of how bad conscience or quilt is appropriated by the ascetic priest, in the service of comforting, and thus ensuring the obedience of the vulnerable ‘herd’. The ascetic priest exercising his own will to power (such as by imposing his interpretations on the minds of others) provides meaning and justification in for what would otherwise be meaningless suffering. He provides comfort of sorts with a realm of existence that is divine , holy, pure, and true. Nonetheless, the will to power may have had certain cosmological and mythic dimensions for Nietzsche, but the concept is also rooted in psychology.
In addition to Nietzsche writing specifically of the sublimation of the secular drive, the will to power and its vicissitude drives, particularly in the form of appropriation and incorporation. As Staten points out, this notion of the primitive will to power is similar to Freud’s idea in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego according to which ‘identification [is] the earliest expression of an emotional tie with another person . . . It behaves like a derivation of the first oral phase for a prize is assimilated by eating. It would appear that Nietzsche goes a step further than Freud in one of his notes when he writes: ‘Nourishment - is only derivative, the original phenomenon is, to desire to incorporate everything.’ Nietzschean will to power never take place without a pleasurable excitation that there is no reason not to call erotic.
Nietzsche condemns those moralities that condemn life,’the morality that would un man’. And we can note that his highest affirmation includes ‘a yes-saying. . . . even to quilt, whereby there is a mutually reinforcing relationship between the growing capacity to say, ‘Yes, thus shall In will it’ it would do above all else, to create beyond it. The will In a creator, and all it was is a fragment, a riddle, a dreadful accident - until the creative will says to it: ‘But thus In shall will it, the creative says to it, ‘But thus In will, thus shall In will it.
In saying ‘yes’ to eternal recurrence as related to Nietzsche’s idea of becoming who one is. It is a saying ‘yes’ to what one is and has stilled: It is to identify one with all of one’s actions, to see hat everting one does (what one become) is what one is. In the ideal case it is also to fit all this into a coherent whole and to want to be everything that one is: It is to give style to one’s character, to be, in becoming, least of mention, one cannot accomplish the Nietzschean redemption without knowing and choosing who one is: To decide that some past event was a benefit presupposes and commits me to certain views as to who In am, what my dominant desires and goals are now. Still to point out, that affirming eternal decree involves an affirmation of life, of the intrinsic whole of life in opposition to the ascetic ideal, in that ‘Nietzsche’s ideals to love the whole process enough that one is willing to relive eternally been those parts of it that one does not and cannot live. That the ‘reason for wishing most fervently the repetition of each’, is that one.
While Nietzsche is quite willing, as in his psychological explorations, to draw distinction between ‘deeper’ realities in relation to ‘surface’ appearances, he also argue that on a fundamental level one cannot draw a distinction between a merely apparent world and a perspective-free true factual world. The ‘deeper’ realities he discovered cannot be regarded as facts-in-themselves or anything else of the kind that would be free of embeddedness in human schemes, practices, theories, and interpretations. Of perspectival seeing and knowing.
Although Nietzsche calls into question the absolute value of truth, vales the illusion (the truthful illusions) of art that a stimulant to life, values. Masks, veils and even the creative lie, he also answers the call of truth. Truth calls to us tempts us to unveil her. If we have integrity we will say ‘Yes’ to the hardest service, surrounding much that we held dear, inclining our wishes ‘not to see . . . [what]. one does’. When the unveiling takes place we come upon not truth (or woman) in-it but an appearance which is reality by way of a particular perspective. One might regard this situation as, among other possibilities, and opportunity for creative play of the interpretive capacities, for the creating and destroying of play, for a creative sublimation of the will to power. But none of this regarded as truth. What it does involve, in the words of Linda Alcoff, is that for Nietzsche ‘neither a noumenal realm nor a historical synthesis exists to provide an absolute criterion of adjudication for competing truth claims and perhaps what is most important, Nietzsche introduces the notion that truth is a kind of human practice, Alcoff also suggests that ‘perspectives are to be judged not on their relation to the absolute but on the basis of their effects in specific area. For Alcoff, this entails ‘local pragmatic’ truths even though Nietzsche does posit trans-historical truth claims such as his claim regarding the will to power. Nietzsche is concerned with what corresponds to or fits the facts, but such fact are not established without as human contribution, without interpretation. Of course for those for whom the term ‘fact’ should entail before the ‘factum brutum’ there may be an objection to their use of such terms as ‘fact’, ‘reality’, etc., in such a context.
Justifiably for Nietzsche’s bad conscience offers relief n from as deeper, truer guilt or fear of abandonment but from the hopelessness, helplessness, depression, etc., that would exist in the face of the inability to direct one’s instincts, one ‘s will to power, one’s freedom, outward into an upon the world. But also recall the passage in which Nietzsche suggests that ‘this man of the bad conscience . . . apprehend in ‘God’ the ultimate antithesis o of hoi own ineluctable animal instincts, and he reinterprets these instincts themselves as a form of guilt before God (his hostility, rebellion, insurrection against the Lord, the father, the primal ancestor and origin of the world.) For Nietzsche this bad conscience is not rooted or ground in a primal rebellious and hostile deed, rather, it is grounded in splitting off from the ineluctable animal instinct as guilt before or sin against the father upon who is projected the antithesis of such instincts. This can occur when more spontaneous instinctual expression is blocked in the is substituted for the object of instinctual gratification, particularly aggression. As the aggression turned against the as the object upon which to discharge this drive, this bad can be potentially freed and made good by participating in the power of, the being of, God who is the idealized antithesis of such instincts.
(When God acts aggressively, it is with the believer’s good conscience.) And Freud follows Nietzsche when he states that, ‘the believer has a share in he greatest of his god’. He also follows Nietzsche and others who emphasize the spiritual or physiological sickness that accompanies the achievements of civilization with its foundations in repression and guilt. For both thinkers, guilt, however painful, can provide relief from something more painful, whether a greater quilt or depression.
The relevant concept in Nietzsche’s reflections on control of the non-rational elements of the soul has to ‘- overcoming’ or ‘giving style’ to one’s character. This is discussed at length in Gay Science of which this is an extract: One thing is needful: . . . .to ‘give style’ to one’s character, a great and rare art! It is practised - by these who survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye. The weak characters without power over them hate the constraint of style [and] are always out to form or interpret themselves and their environment as free nature - wild, arbitrary, fantastic, disorderly, astonishing. [. . . .] For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with him, whether it is by means of this or that poetry and art; only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with him is continually ready for revenge, and we others will be his victims, if only by having to endure his ugly sight. For the sight of what is ugly makes one bad and gloomy.
One way of interpreting this passage is to understand it to mean that one must come to accept all of one’s defects and not attempt to eliminate or control them. Something like this can be suggested by the following comment by Staten: His stance toward him is the antithesis of, says, St. Augustine’s; Instead of judging, condemning, and paring away at his impulses, Nietzsche says he has simply tried to arrange them so that they might all coexist. ‘Contrary capacities’ dwell in him, he says, and he has tried to ‘mix nothing’, to ‘reconcile nothing’.
However, Staten's analysis is vague. Granted, Nietzsche does not think, so-called weaknesses should be repressed. We discussed his arguments against repression of instincts earlier in this section, and argued that they were not in fact incompatible with Plato’s views on rational control of the soul. Both Nietzsche and Plato, we saw, advocate some form of control of the impulses that does not involve 'paring away' at them, but insofar as possible, involves their redirection toward an object more suited to the well-being of the soul or character as a whole, i.e., some form of sublimation of the instincts. Does what Nietzsche say at contradicting these arguments in any way? What he suggests we actually do with the undesirable instincts is this: Here the ugly that could not be removed is concealed; there it has been reinterpreted and made sublime. Much that is vague and resisted shaping has been saved and exploited for distant views; it is meant to beckon toward the far and immeasurable. Unfortunately thee will not of any attempt to explain what each of the transformations described in this passage actually amounts to - unfortunately, but the passage is vague and metaphorical beyond interpretation. What matters here, is that Nietzsche proposes several ways of dealing with undesirable instincts, and that whatever these ways are, they do not amount to leaving them untouched. Maybe Nietzsche does not pair away at his instincts (although the phrase 'the ugly that could not be removed' may suggest that he in fact does.) Yet he does judge them, i.e., he has to decide whether they must be concealed, or transformed, or saved up. There is no suggestion that any instinct is as good as another and that all will hold a place of honour in the character to which style has been given. To 'style' is to constrain and control, and one cannot give style to one's character and thereby render it tolerable to behold, if one is not able to control one's instincts. As Nietzsche writes later on in that passage, 'the weak characters without power over them hate the constraint of style'. Weakness is equated with lack of - control, and not, as the quotation from Staten may suggest, with control of one's instincts.
Nietzsche does not reject moral theories that demand that we control our desires. What he does reject is repression as an extinction. On the contrary, he seems to believe that an ideal life would involve sublimation - a form of control - of the appetites for the benefit of the pursuit of one's ideal. It follows from these conclusions that there is in fact no significant difference between Nietzsche and Plato's moral psychology regarding the control of the appetites: Neither is in favour of repression, both advocate a certain creative control involving sublimation.
As far as defending opposite theories about how we should control the non-rational elements of the soul, Plato and Nietzsche in fact hold very similar views. Their views can be explained by referring to certain Freudian concepts, sublimation and repression. According to Freud, impulses lend themselves too more than one kind of control. They can either be repressed, i.e., prevented from attaining satisfaction, or sublimated, i.e., their force can be redirected toward a more beneficial object. The first kind of control is rejected by both Plato and Nietzsche (at least as a general policy) as ineffective and unhealthy. Plato sees repression as one of the paths to tyrannical behaviour patterns (those impulses, which are repressed come back at night as violent dreams). Nietzsche views it as one of the worst manifestations of asceticism, one that prevents the ‘one thing needful’, giving style, i.e., the integration of all of one’s character traits, and makes us ‘continually ready for revenge, bad and gloomy’.
The second means of controlling impulses, sublimation, is one that we found to hold an important place in both Plato and Nietzsche’s moral psychologies. Both believe that potentially harmful instincts can be redirected Nietzsche higher goals, and contribute to the perfection of the character. We saw that Plato used the vocabulary of sublimation in the Republic, where he talks of the appetitive impulses being redirected toward a love of learning. Nietzsche had written of sublimation, an he specifically wrote of the sublimation of sexual dives in the Genealogy. Freud’s use the term as here duffers somewhat from his later and more Nietzschean usage such as in Three Essays o the Theory of Sexuality. But a Kaufmann notes ‘the word is older than Freud or Nietzsche. . . . it was Nietzsche who first gave it the specific connotation it has today.’‘. Kaufmann regards the concept of sublimation as one of the most important concept in Nietzsche’s entire philosophy. Nietzsche, we saw, actually uses the term sublimation when he describes the kind of control one must impose on one’s character in order to give style to it.
When two philosophers who are among the more concerned with the question how we should live turn out to hold very similar moral psychologies, then the concepts they use are probably concepts that should hold an important place in any moral psychology. That these concepts are affirming Freudian non-objections. Freud him was deeply concerned with the problem of how best we could live our lives, and how we could deal with the dark forces of our unconscious. These forces are recognised by Plato (even the most respectable of us, he says are subject to them) also through Nietzsche. Should not a central concern of moral philosophy be how best to deal with them, how best to control them rationally? If so, then it seems that we need a moral psychology that explains what role these dark impulses play in the human soul, and how reason might control them. This, In have argued, is exactly what Plato and Nietzsche attempt to do.
One hundred years ago Thus Speak Zarathustra appeared. The most celebrated work of Nietzsche, it has been read and cited by even moderately educated people. The German philosopher has a stormy reputation due to his tirades against Christianity and his aristocratic rejection of conventional moral views. Nietzsche provokes all kinds of reactions. Each reader may have his own Nietzsche, drawing from him a cherished opinion to be worn as a coloured badge with the hope of shocking ordinary folk. In fact in the last one hundred years, everything and anything has been said about Nietzsche.
This absence of professionalism and this facile subjectivism have produced occasionally disastrous consequences. From the beginning Nietzsche's thought has defied systematic construction. Even now the most memorable characteristics of his pioneering work are his ferocious fulminations, his deconstruction, and the acrid stench left by those who have raided his texts. One cannot hope to say finally what Nietzsche really meant. Still, finding a unifying thread may be possible. This requires ignoring abusively and merely subjectivist interpretations while highlighting those of true value. The renewed interest in Nietzsche's works has produced a vast and expanding body of relevant literature, as much as it is pivotal.
In June 1981 Rudolf Augstein, editor of Der Spiegel, stated without qualification that Hitler was the man of action who put Nietzsche's thought into practice. The journalist took for proof the falsifications of some of Nietzsche's manuscripts by his sister Elisabeth Nietzsche-Forster, who had shaken Hitler's hand in the twilight of her life. This argument is perhaps a bit thin in view of the many other writings that his sister did not doctor.
Augstein is concerned not just about Nietzsche's revival by a young generation of German philosophers but also by the progressive abandonment among German intellectuals of the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School for Social Research. For Germans educated in the wake of 'de-Nazification,' the Frankfurt School's attack on bourgeois values, though often couched in arcane phrases, represented an effort to come to terms with the German past. Nonetheless, Frankfurt's total rejection of all thought that affirms a given fact has led to an impasse. Negativity cannot be an end in it; no one can progress intellectually or artistically through a permanent process of negation.
For Jurgen Habermas, the last important representative of the Frankfurt School, the Real is bad in that it does not include from the start all the Good existing in ideal form. Confronted by the imperfect Real, one feels compelled to maximize the Good, to moralize ad extremum in order to minimize the force of evilly encrusted in a real world marked by incompleteness. Imperfect reality must call forth a redeeming revolution. However, this revolution runs the risk of affirming and shaping another categorical class of settings that are imperfectly real things. Habermas rejects great global revolutions that initiate new eras. Instead he prefers sporadic micro-revolutions that inaugurate ages of permanent corrections, small injections of the Good into the sociopolitical tissue inevitably tainted by the Bad. Nonetheless, the world of political philosophy cannot rest content with this constant tinkering, but this dogged adherence to reform without limitation, as this social engineering without substance. The suspicions of Nazism weighing heavily on Nietzscheism and the impossibility of keeping philosophy at the level of permanent negation make it necessary to reject the obsession with the proto-Nazi Nietzsche and the Frankfurt School's negative attitude toward any given.
Nietzsche has had his share of Nazi interpreters. Philosophers who fellow-travelled with the Nazis often made kind references to his thought. Yet recent scholarship shows that Nietzsche found not only Nazi admirers but also socialist and leftist ones. In Nietzsche in German Politics and Society 1890-1918 (1983), the British Professor R. Hinton Thomas demonstrates the close relationship between Nietzsche and German socialism. Thomas deals with Nietzsche's impact in Imperial Germany on social democratic circles, on anarchists and feminists, and on the youth’s movement. This produced, on balance more resolute enemies of the Third Reich than Nazi cadres. Thomas shows that Nietzsche helped shape a libertarian ideology during the rise of the German social democratic movement. At the urging of August Bebel, the famed German socialist, the infant Social Democratic Party in 1875 adopted the Gotha Program, which sought to achieve redistributionist aims through legal means. In 1878 the government enacted anti-socialist laws, which curbed the party's activities. In 1890, with the Erfurt Program, the party took on a harder revolutionary cast in conformity with Marxist doctrine. Social democracy subsequently oscillated between strict legalism, also known as 'revisionism' or 'reformism' because it accepted a liberal capitalist society, and a rhetorical commitment to revolution accompanied by demands for far-reaching changes.
According to Thomas, this second tendency remained a minority position but incorporated Nietzschean elements. A faction of the party, led by Bruno Wille, ridiculed the powerlessness of reformist social democrats. This group, which called it Die Jungen (The Youths), appealed to grass-roots democracy, spoke of the need for more communication within the party, and ended up rejecting its rigid parent. Wille and his friends mocked the conformism of party functionaries, great and small, and the 'cage' constituting organized social democracy. The party's stifling constraints subdued the will and thwarted individual self-actualization. Die Jungen exalted 'voluntarism,' or the exercise of will, which they associated with true socialism. This emphasis on will left little place for the deterministic materialism of Marxism, which the group described as an 'enslaving' system.
Kurt Eisner, the leader of the revolutionary socialist Bavarian Republic, devoted his first book in 1919 to the philosophy of Nietzsche. Though he criticized the 'megalomania' that he found in Thus Spake Zarathustra, he also praised its aristocratic ideals. The aristocratic values found in Nietzsche, he said, had to be put at the service of the people, not treated as ends in themselves. Gustav Landauer (1870-1919), another founder of the Bavarian 'Red Republic,' emphasized Nietzschean voluntarism in his training of political revolutionaries. Landauer's original anarchistic individualism became more communitarian and populist during the course of his political career, approaching the folkish, nationalist thinking of his enemies. Landauer died in the streets of Munich fighting the soldiers of the Freikorp, a group of paramilitary adventurers who were classified as 'rightist' but who shared very much of Landauer's outlook.
Contrary to a later persistent misconception, Nietzsche aroused suspicion on the nationalist Right at the end of the nineteenth century. According to Thomas, this was because Nietzsche mocked many things German, (which offended the pan-Germanists), was generally contemptuous of politics, had no enthusiasm for nationalism, and fell out with the composer Richard Wagner, a fervent and anti-Semitic German nationalist.
Nietzsche's vitalist concepts and naturalist vocabulary may account for his early support on the European Left and for his later popularity on the non-Christian Right. Nietzsche's emphases on will and his affirmation of an ethic of creativity have had diverse appeal. In his concise work, Helmut Pfotenhauer assesses Nietzsche's legacy from the point of view of physiology, a term with a naturalistic connotation. This word appears frequently in Nietzsche's work in the phrase Kunst als Physiologie, art as physiology.
The great French writer Balzac, who coined the phrase 'physiology of marriage,' said about this neologism: 'Physiology was formerly the science dealing with the mechanism of the coccyx, the progress of the fetus, or the life of the tapeworm. Today physiology is the art of speaking and writing incorrectly about anything.' In the nineteenth century the term physiology was associated with a type of popular literature such as the garrulous serials in daily newspapers. Physiology was intended to classify the main features of daily life. Thus there was a physiology of the stroller or of the English tourist pacing up and down Paris boulevards. In that sense physiology has some limited relationship to the zoological classifications of Buffon or Linnaeas. In his Comedie humaine, Balzac draws a parallel between the animal world and human society. 'Political zoology' is used by various nineteenth-century writers, including Gustave Flaubert and Edgar Allen Poe. Nietzsche was aware of the literary and scientific usage of physiology. He noted that the physiological style was invading universities and that the vocabulary of his time was embellished with terms drawn from biology. One wonders why Nietzsche resorted to the term physiology when he believed that it was often used carelessly.
In Pfotenhauer's view, Nietzsche had no intention of giving respectability to the pseudoscientific or pseudo-aesthetic excesses of the 'physiologists' of his day. His intention, as interpreted by Pfotenhauer, was to challenge an established form of aesthetics. He constructed the expression 'physiology of the art,' insofar as the arts were conventionally approached as mere objects of contemplation. From Nietzsche's perspective, artistic productivity is an expression of our nature and ultimately of Nature itself. Through art, Nature becomes more active within us.
By using the term physiology Nietzsche was making a didactic point. He celebrated the exuberance of vital forces, while frowning on any attempt to neutralize the vital processes by giving a value to the average. In other words, Nietzsche rejected those sciences that limited their investigations to the averages, excluding the singular and exceptional. Nietzsche though that Charles Darwin, by limiting himself to broad classes in his biology, favoured the generic without focussing on the exceptional individual. Nietzsche saw physiology as a tool to do for the individual confronting existential questions what Darwin had accomplished as a classifier of entire phyla and species. He attempted to analyse clinically the struggle of superior individuals for self-fulfilment in a world without inherent metaphysical meaning.
'God is dead' is an aphorism identified with Nietzsche. Nietzsche believed that, together with God, all important ontological and metaphysical systems had died. Only the innocence of human destiny remained, and he did not want it to be frozen in some 'superior unity of being.' Recognizing the reign of destiny, he thought, involved certain risks. In the river of changing life, creative geniuses run the risk of drowning, of being only fragmentary and contingent moments. How can anyone gladly say 'yes' to life without an assurance that his achievements will be preserved, not simply yielded to the natural rhythms of destiny? Perhaps the query of Silene to King Midas is well-established. 'Is this fleeting life worth being lived? Would it not have been better had we not been born?' Would it not be ideal to die as quickly as possible?
These questions pick up the theme of Arthur Schopenhauer, the famous philosopher of pessimism. The hatred of life that flowed from Schopenhauer's pessimism was unsatisfactory to Nietzsche. He believed that in an age of spiritual confusion the first necessity was to affirm life itself. This is the meaning of 'the transvaluations of all values' as understood by Pfotenhauer. Nietzsche's teachings about the will were intended to accomplish the task of reconstructing values. The creative exercise of will was both an object of knowledge and an attitude of the knowing subject. The vital processes were to be perceived from the point of view of constant creativity.
Though the abundance of creative energy, man can assume divine characteristics. The one who embraces his own destiny without any resentment or hesitation turns himself into an embodiment of that destiny. Life should express itself in all its mobility and fluctuation, immobilizing or freezing it into a system was an assault on creativity. The destiny that Nietzsche urged his readers to embrace was to be a source of creative growth. The philosopher was a 'full-scale artist' who organized the world in the face of chaos and spiritual decline. Nietzsche's use of physiology was an attempt to endow vital processes with an appropriate language. Physiology expressed the intended balance between Nature and mere rationality.
Myth, for Nietzsche, had no ethnological point of reference. It was, says Pfotenhauer, the 'science of the concrete' and the expression of the tragedy resulting from the confrontation between man's physical fragility (Hinfalligkeit) and his heroic possibilities. Resorting to myth was not a lapse into folk superstition, as the rationalists believed it to be. It was moderately an attempt to see man's place within Nature.
Pfotenhauer systematically explored the content of Nietzsche's library, finding 'vitalist' arguments drawn from popular treatments of science. The themes that riveted Nietzsche's attention were: Adaptation, the increase of potential within the same living species, references to vital forces, corrective eugenics, and spontaneous generation. Nietzsche's ideas were drawn from the scientific or parascientific speculations of his time and from literary, cultural, and artistic tracts. He criticized the imitative classicism of some French authors and praised the profuse style of the Baroque. In the philosopher's eyes, the creativity of genius and rich personalities had more value than mere elegant conversation. Uncertainty, associated with the ceaseless production of life, meant more to him than the search for certainty, which always implied a static perfection. On the basis of this passion for spiritual adventure he founded a 'new hierarchization of values.' The man who internalized the search for spiritual adventure anticipated the 'superman,' about whom so much has been said. Pfotenhauer's Nietzsche is made to represent the position that the creative man allies himself with the power of vital impulse against stagnant ideas, accepting destiny's countless differences and despising limitations. Nietzschean man does not react with anguish in the face of fated change.
Nietzsche had no desire to inaugurate a worry-free era. Instead, he responded to the symptoms of a declining Christian culture by criticizing society from the standpoint of creative and heroic fatalism. This criticism, which refuses to accept the world as it is, claims to be formative and affirmative: it represents a will to create new forms of existence. Nietzsche substituted an innovative criticism affirming destiny for an older classical view based on fixed concepts. Nietzsche's criticism does not include an irrational return to a historic and unformed existence. Nietzsche, as presented by Pfotenhauer, constructs his own physiology of man's nature as a creative being.
To begin with, there are some obvious general parallels between Nietzsche and Sartre that few commentators would wish to dispute. Both are vehement atheists who resolutely face up to the fact that the cosmos has no inherent meaning or purpose. Unlike several other thinkers, they do not even try to replace the dead God of Christian theology with talk of Absolute Spirit or Being. In one of only two brief references to Nietzsche in Being and Nothingness, Sartre upholds his rejection of 'the illusion of worlds-behind-the-scene'; That is, the notion that there is a Platonic true world of noumenal being which stand behind becoming and reduces phenomena to the status of mere illusion or appearance. Both thinkers also insist that it be human beings who create moral values and attempt to give meaning to life. Sartre speaks ironically of the 'serious' men who think that values have an absolute objective existence, while Nietzsche regards people who passively accept the values they have been taught as sheep-like members of the herd.
When we attempt a deeper explanation of the ultimate source of values, the relationship between Sartre and Nietzsche becomes more problematic. Nietzsche says that out of a nation (or people’s) tablet of good and evil speaks 'the voice of their will to power.' For Sartre, the values that we adopt or posits are part of our fundamental project, which is to achieve justified being and become in-itself-for-itself. It appears, therefore, that both thinkers regard man as an essentially Faustian striver, and that grouping Sartre with Nietzsche as a proponent of would not be unfair 'will to power.' Clearly, Sartre would object to such a Nietzschean characterization of his existential psychoanalysis. In Being and Nothingness he rejects all theories that attempt to explain individual behaviour in terms of general substantive drives, and he is particularly critical of such notions as the libido and the will to power. Sartre insists that these are not psycho-biological entities, but original projects like any other that the individual can negate through his or her freedom. He denies that striving for power is a general characteristic of human beings, denies the existence of any opaque and permanent will-entity within consciousness, and even denies that human beings have any fixed nature or essence.
However, Sartre's criticisms of the will to power are only applicable to popular misunderstandings of Nietzsche's thought. Like the for-itself, Nietzsche's 'will' should not be regarded as a substantive entity. Although it is derived from the metaphysical theories of Schopenhauer and is sometimes spoken of in ways that invite ontologizing, Nietzsche's conception of the will is predominantly adjectival and phenomenological. Its status is similar to that of Sartre's for-itself, which should not be considered a metaphysical entity even though it is a remote descendent of the 'thinking substance' of Descartes. Thus, in Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche criticizes the unjustified metaphysical assumptions that are bound up with the Cartesian 'In think' and the Schopenhauerian 'In will' he says that 'willing seems to me to be above all something complicated, something that is a unity only as a word.' Although there are passages in the writings of both Sartre and Nietzsche that can be interpreted metaphysically if taken out of context, regarding is better 'nothingness' and 'will' as alternate adjectival descriptions of our being.
Although Nietzsche's use of the word 'power' invites misunderstanding, he clearly uses the term in a broad sense and has a sophisticated conception of power. Nietzsche is not claiming that everyone really wants political power or dominion over other people. Nietzsche describes philosophy as 'the most spiritual will to power,' and regards the artist as a higher embodiment of the will to power than either the politician or the conqueror. Through his theory Nietzsche can account for a wide variety of human behaviour without being reductionist. Thus, a follower may subordinate himself to a leader or group to feel empowered, and even the perverse or negative behaviour of the ascetic priest or embittered moralist can be accounted for in terms of the will to power.
Nietzsche speaks of 'power' in reaction to the 19th century moral theorists who insisted that men strive for utility or pleasure. The connotations of 'power' are broader and richer, suggesting that a human being is more than a calculative 'economic man' whose desires could be satisfied with the utopian comforts of a Brave New World. Nietzsche's meaning could also be brought out by speaking of a will toward a self-realization, (one of his favourite mottoes was 'Become what you are!') or, by thinking of 'power' as a psychic energy or potentiality whose possession 'empowers' us to aspire, strive, and create.
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre presents himself as the discoverer of the full scope of human freedom, contrasting his seemingly open and indeterminate conception of human possibilities with a psychological and philosophical tradition that limits human nature by positing 'opaque' drives and goals and insisting on their universality. Such an image of Sartre is widely held, although his insistence that consciousness strives to become in-itself-for-it gives his view of man of the greater determinatives, than a cursory glance at some of his philosophical rhetoric and literary works would suggest. For this reason, Sartre can profitably be related to other theorists who argue that man is motivated by a unitary force or strives for a single goal.
When evaluating such theories, the really essential distinction is between those that are open, inclusive and empirically indeterminate, and those that are narrow and reductionist. This could be illustrated by comparing the narrow utilitarianism of Bentham to Mill's broader development of the theory, or by contrasting Freud and Jung's conception of the libido. While Freud was resolutely reductionist and insisted that 'the name of libido be properly reserved for the instinctual forces of sexual life,' Jung broadened the term to refer to all manifestations of instinctual psychic energy. Thus, Sartre appears revolutionary when he contrasts him with Freud although he cannot legitimately claim that his view of man is more open or less reductionist than that of Nietzsche. Most likely, Sartre and many of his commentators would take issue with the above conclusion, and from a certain perspective their criticisms are justified. Unlike Nietzsche, Sartre is intent on upholding man's absolute freedom, rejecting the influence of instinct, denying the existence of unconscious psychic forces, and portraying consciousness as a nothingness that has no essence. In comparison even with other non-reductionist views of man, then, it would seem that the radical nature of Sartre's thought is unmatched.
However, in a more fundamental respect Sartre's ontology limits human possibilities by: (1) declaring that consciousness is a lack that is doomed to strive for fulfilment and justification vainly, and by (2) accepting important parts of the Platonic view of becoming as ontologically given rather than merely as aspects of his own original project. It is in this way that Sartre's philosophy becomes shipwrecked on reefs that Nietzsche manages to avoid.
For Sartre, 'the for-it is defined ontologically as a lack of being,' and 'freedom is really synonymous with lack.' 6 Along with Plato he equates desire with a lack of being, but in contrast with Hegel he arrives at the pessimistic conclusion that 'human reality therefore is by nature an unhappy consciousness with no possibility of surpassing its unhappy state.' In other words, the human condition is basically Sisyphean, for man is condemned to strive to fill his inner emptiness but is incapable of achieving justified being. This desire to become in-self-for-it, which Sartre also refers to as the project of being God, is said to define man and come 'close to being the same as a human `nature' or an `essence''.8 Sartre tries to reconcile this universal project with freedom by claiming that our wish to be in-it-for-itself determines only the meaning of human desire but does not constitute it empirically. However such freedom is tainted, for no matter what we do empirically we can . . . neither avoid futile striving nor achieve an authentic sense of satisfaction, plenitude, joy, or fulfilment.
In Part Four of Being and Nothingness, Sartre describes how consciousness endeavours to create for its lack of being by striving to acquire and acknowledge the world. With the apparent reductionistic vehemence, he explains a variety of human behaviour in terms of the insatiable desire to consume, acquire, dominate, violate, and destroy. Sartre says that knowledge and discovery are appropriative enjoyments, and he characterizes the scientist as a sort of intellectual peeping Tom who wants to strip away the veils of nature and deflower her with his Look. Similarly, He says that the artist wants to produce substantive being that exists through him, and that the skier seeks to possess the field of snow and conquer the slope. Thus art, science, and play are all activities of appropriation, which either wholly or in part seek to possess the absolute being of the in-itself. Destruction is also an appropriative function. Sartre says that 'a gift is a primitive form of destruction,' describes giving as 'a keen, brief enjoyment, almost sexual,' and declares that 'to give is to enslave.' He even interprets smoking as 'the symbolic equivalent of destructively appropriating the entire world.'
Aside from the sweeping and one-sided nature of Sartre's claims, the most striking aspect of this section is the negativity of its account of human beings. Not only are we condemned to dissatisfaction, but some of our noblest endeavours are unmasked as pointless appropriation and destruction. One is reminded not of Nietzsche's will to power, but of Heidegger's scathing criticism of the 'will to power' (interpreted popularly) as the underlying metaphysics of our era that embodies all that is most despicable about modernity. For Heidegger, it is such an insatiable will that occurs of an embodied quest to subjugate nature, mechanize the world, and enjoy ever-increasing material progress.
However, while Sartre speaks of consciousness as nothingness or a lack - a sort of black hole in being which can never be filled - Nietzsche associates’ man's being with positivity and plenitude. His preferred metaphor for the human essence be the will -an active image that allows striving and creativity to be reconciled with plenitude. It enables him to see activity and desire as a positive aspect of our nature, rather than a comparatively desperate attempt to fill the hole at the heart of our being. For Nietzsche, all that proceeds from weakness, sickness, inferiority, or lack is considered reactive and resentful, while that which proceeds from health, strength, or plenitude is characterized in positive terms. For instance, at the beginning of Thus Spoke Zarathustra he likens Zarathustra to a full cup wanting to overflow and to the sun that gives its light out of plenitude and superabundance. Later, he contrasts the generosity of the gift-giving virtue with the all-too-poor and hungry selfishness of the sick, which greedily 'sizes up those who have much to eat' and always 'sneaks around the table of those who give.'
An even sharper contrast can be drawn between Nietzsche and Sartre's attitudes toward Platonism. While both reject the transcendent realm of perfect forms, Sartre fails to realize that a denial of the truth-value of Platonic metaphysics without a corresponding rejection of Platonic aspirations and attitudes can only lead to pessimism and resentment against being. The inadequacy and incompleteness of Sartre's break with Platonism can be brought out by examining it in terms of William James conception of the common nucleus of religion. James says that the religious attitude fundamentally involves (1) 'an uneasiness' or, the 'sense that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand,' and (2) 'its solution.' Sartre vehemently rejects all religious and metaphysical 'solutions,' but he accepts the notion that there is ‘an essential wrongness’ or, lack in being. Not only does he regard consciousness as a lack, but in Nausea, Sartre condemns the wrongness of nature and other people in terms that are both Platonic and resentful
Just as Plato admired the mathematical orderliness of music and looked down upon nature as a fluctuating and imperfect copy of the forms, the central contrast of Nausea is between the sharp, precise, inflexible order of a jazz song, and the lack of order and purpose of a chestnut tree. Roquentin enjoys virtually his only moments of joy in the novel while listening to the jazz, but experiences his deepest nausea while sitting beneath the tree. He regards its root as a 'black, knotty mass, entirely beastly,' speaks of the abundance of nature as 'dismal, ailing, embarrassed at itself,' and asks 'what good are so many duplications of trees?'.Nothing could be a more striking blasphemy against nature. Trees are one of the most venerable and life-giving of all organic beings, providing us with oxygen and shade. Many ancient peoples regarded trees as sacred, and enlightenment (from the insight of the Buddha to Newton's discovery of gravitation) is often pictured as coming while sitting under a tree. Roquentin too, experiences a sort of negative epiphany while he is beneath the chestnut tree. He concludes that 'every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance'.18 In contrast to the pointlessness of the tree and other existing organic beings, Sartre says that a perfect circle is not absurd because 'it is clearly explained by the rotation of a straight segment around one of its extremities.' In such a Platonic spirit, he reflects:
If you existed, you had to exist all the way, as far as mouldiness, bloatedness, obscenities were concerned. In another world, circles, bars of music keep their pure and rigid lines.
In Nausea, Sartre reveals a contempt for human beings that surpasses his contempt for nature and even rivals the misanthropy of Schopenhauer. He particularly despises the organic, biological aspect of our nature. He speaks of living creatures as 'flabby masses which move spontaneously,' and seems to have a particular aversion for fleshy, overweight people. He mocks at 'the fat, pale crowd,' describes a bourgeois worthy in the Bouville gallery as 'defenceless, bloated, slobbering, vaguely obscene,' and recalls a 'terrible heat wave that turned men into pools of melting fat.' Sartre also feels that people are somehow diminished while eating. Roquentin is glad when the Self-Taught Man is served his dinner for 'his soul leaves his eyes, and he docilely begins to eat.' Hugo thinks that Olga offers him food because 'it keeps the other person at a distance,' and 'when a man is eating, he seems harmless.' Sartre also takes a negative view of sensuality. Roquentin says of young lovers in a café that they make him a little sick, and his account of sex with the patronne includes the fact that 'she disgusts me a little' and that his arm went to sleep while playing 'distractedly with her sex under the cover.' Perhaps his attitude toward sensuality is most uncharitably manifested when he thinks of a woman that he once show had been dining, remembering her as, a 'fat, hot, sensual, absurd, with red ears,' and imagines her now somewhere - in the midst of smells? - this soft throat rubbing up luxuriously against smooth stuffs, nestling in lace, and the woman picturing her bosom under her blouse, thinking 'My titties, my lovely fruits.'
Throughout Nausea the narrator's attitude toward people is uncharitable, judgemental, and resentful. Like the tolerably hostile Other of Being and Nothingness, Roquentin transcends and objectifies other people with his Look. He sits in cafes observing and passing judgement on people, and seems particularly to enjoy dehumanizing others by focussing on their unattractive physical features. He sees one fellow as a moustache beneath 'enormous nostrils that could pump air for a whole family and that eat up half his face,' while another person is described as 'a young man with a face like a dog.' He treats the Self-Taught Man (whom Sartre uses to caricature humanism) coldly and condescendingly and does not even deem him worthy of a proper name. His attitude toward the eminent bourgeois portrayed in the Bouville gallery is an almost classic example of ressentiment. While looking at their portraits, he felt that their 'judgement went through (him) like a sword and questioned (his) very right to exist' Like Hugo in Dirty Hands, he senses the emptiness of his own existence and feels inadequate and abnormal before the Look of purposeful and self-confident others who unreflectively feel that they have a right to exist. However, he manages to transcend their looks by concentrating on their bodily weaknesses and all-too-human faults. Thus, he overcomes one dead worthy by focussing on his 'thin mouth of a dead snake' and pale, round, flabby checks, and he puts a reactionary politician in his place by recalling that the man was only five feet tall, had a squeaking voice, was accused of putting rubber lifts in his shoes, and had a wife who looked like a horse. Roquentin hates the bourgeois, but for him virtually all the people of Bouville are bourgeois:
Idiots. Thinking that In am going to see they are thick is repugnant to me, self-satisfied faces. They make laws, they write popular novels, they get married, they are fools enough to have children. Although Sartre is more insightful than the unreflective and self-satisfied 'normal' people whom he judges so uncharitably, he seems unaware that his own thought fails to escape the ancient reefs of Platonism and metaphysical pessimism. Even the upbeat ending of Nausea is comparatively tentative and half-hearted, and does not question or overturn any of the ontological views expressed earlier in the book.
On the other hand, although Nietzsche shares many of the same philosophical premises as Sartre, his view of life and nature is much less bleak because he thoroughly rejects the Platonic world-view and all metaphysical forms of pessimism. First, throughout his writings Nietzsche vehemently opposes the Platonic prejudice that puts being above becoming, idealizes rationality and purpose, and despises the disorderly flux of nature and the organic and animalistic aspects of the body. He admires Heraclitus rather than Parmenides, denies that there is any 'eternal spider or spider web of reason,' and declares 'over all things stand the heaven Accident, the heaven Innocence, the heaven Chance, the heaven Prankishness.' Unlike Sartre, he had a high regard for the vital, superabundant, and non-rational aspect of nature, and loved music for its ability to express emotional depths and Dionysian ecstasy rather than as an embodiment of reason, order, or precision.
In response to Schopenhauer and several religious traditions, Nietzsche refutes metaphysical pessimism. He denies that life or nature is essentially lacking or evil, or that any negative evaluation of being as a whole could possess truth-value. This is in keeping with his sceptical position, which denies that the thing-in-itself is knowable and insists that all philosophical systems reflect the subjectivity of their author and are 'a kind of involuntary and incognizant memoir.' If Nietzsche were to speak in the language of Being and Nothingness, he would insist that the desire to achieve the complete and justified being of the in-itself-for-itself be simply Sartre's original project, not an ontological given that condemns every person to unhappy consciousness.
One of the central themes of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the overcoming of pessimism and despair through the will. Zarathustra says that 'my will always comes to me as my liberator and joy-bringer. Willing discharges, that which is the true teaching of will and liberty.' At the end of `The Tomb Song,' he turns to his will to overcome despair, referring it as something invulnerable and unburiable that can redeem his youth and shatter tombs. Although the will to power is often associated with striving for the overman (not to mention those who wrongly link it with domination and conquest), it is also essential to such Nietzschean themes as amor fati, eternal recurrence, and the affirmation of life. In order to affirm his existence, Zarathustra says that he must redeem the past by transforming 'the will's ill will against time, as it was' into a creative 'But thus In will it; Thus shall In will it' It is out of such reflections that the project of embracing eternal recurrence emerges.
In keeping with his desire to affirm life, Nietzsche's attitude toward other people is more charitable and less negative than that of Roquentin and many of Sartre's other literary heroes. Admittedly, Nietzsche makes many nasty remarks about historical figures, but these are often balanced by corresponding positive observations, and most of his polemical fury is directed against ideas, dogmas, and institutions rather than individuals. For instance, Zarathustra says of priests that 'though they are my enemies, pass by them silently with sleeping swords. Among them too there are heroes.' While some of his comments on the rabble are comparable to Sartre's comments on the bourgeois, Zarathustra also criticizes his 'ape' who sits outside a great city and vengefully denounces its inhabitants, for 'where one can no longer love, there must be, at least of One by which should pass.'
God is dead. The terror with which this event - and he did call it an event - filled Nietzsche is hardly understood any more. Yet to that latecomer in a long line of theologians and believers it meant the disapperance of meaning from the sentiment of life. This, as Nietzsche feared, pointed the way to nihilism. 'A nihilist,' he wrote, 'is a person who says of the world as it is, that it better were not, and, with regard to the world as it should be, that it does not and cannot exist.' And it does not exist because God is no more. Therefore, there cannot be any belief in a beyond, an ineffable life beyond the grave, not even in the possibility of that 'godless' peace of Buddha and Schopenhauer that is indistinguishable from the peace of God and attainable only through the overcoming of all worldly desires and aspirations.
Nihilism, Nietzsche believes, is the fate of all religious traditions if along the road their fundamental assumptions are lost. This, according to him, is so with Judaism because of its all-persuasive 'Thou shalt not' that, in the long run, can be accepted and obeyed only within a rigorously disciplined community of the faithful; and it is so with Christianity, not only because it was, to a large extent, heir to the Jewish moralism but, at the same time, tended to judge the whole domain of the natural to be a conspiracy against the divine spirit. For the Christian, the Here and Now with its deceptive promises of happiness - all of which promise, when it comes to it, an inevitable loss, and with its illusions of achievement, all of which conceal for a while the imminence of failure - is nothing but the testing ground for the soul to prove that it deserves the bliss of the Beyond. Nietzsche, like many before him, is philosophically outraged by this doctrine that conceives of Eternity as, at some point, taking over from Time, projecting it into endlessness, and of Time for being an outsider to the Eternity and, after the death of God, forever an exile from it. Everything, therefore, exists only for a while in its individual articulation and then never more. From this void, the black hole, there arises Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence. It is to cure time of its mortal disease, its terminal destructiveness.
Of those modern thinkers who resolutely face the fact that God is dead and the universe contains no inherent meaning or purpose, and Sartre and Nietzsche follow among the most important. However, although they begin from nearly similar premises, Sartre is both less radical and less life-affirming of a thinker than Nietzsche. It is particularly ironic that he puts so much emphasis on freedom, and yet refuses to grant consciousness the power to overcome its insatiable yearning to be in-itself-for-itself, and fails to question his own Platonic prejudices against nature and becoming. Since scientists, during the nineteenth century were engrossed with uncovering the workings of external reality and seemingly knew of themselves that these virtually overflowing burdens of nothing, in that were about the physical substrates of human consciousness, the business of examining the distributive contribution in dynamic functionality and structural foundation of mind became the province of social scientists and humanists. Adolphe Quételet proposed a ‘social physics’ that could serve as the basis for a new discipline called sociology, and his contemporary Auguste Comte concluded that a true scientific understanding of the social reality was quite inevitable. Mind, in the view of these figures, was a separate and distinct mechanism subject to the lawful workings of a mechanical social reality.
More formal European philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant, sought to reconcile representations of external reality in mind with the motions of matter-based on the dictates of pure reason. This impulse was also apparent in the utilitarian ethics of Jerry Bentham and John Stuart Mill, in the historical materialism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and in the pragmatism of Charles Smith, William James and John Dewey. These thinkers were painfully aware, however, of the inability of reason to posit a self-consistent basis for bridging the gap between mind and matter, and each remains obliged to conclude that the realm of the mental exists only in.
The fatal flaw of pure reason is, of course, the absence of emotion, and purely explanations of the division between subjective reality and external reality, of which had limited appeal outside the community of intellectuals. The figure most responsible for infusing our understanding of the Cartesian dualism with contextual representation of our understanding with emotional content was the death of God theologian Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900. After declaring that God and ‘divine will’, did not exist, Nietzsche reified the ‘existence’ of consciousness in the domain of subjectivity as the ground for individual ‘will’ and summarily reducing all previous philosophical attempts to articulate the ‘will to truth’. The dilemma, forth in, had seemed to mean, by the validation, . . . as accredited for doing of science, in that the claim that Nietzsche’s earlier versions to the ‘will to truth’, disguises the fact that all alleged truths were arbitrarily created in and are expressed or manifesting the individualism of ‘will’.
In Nietzsche’s view, the separation between mind and matter is more absolute and total than previously been imagined. Based on the assumption that there is no really necessary correspondence between linguistic constructions of reality in human subjectivity and external reality, he deuced that we are all locked in ‘a prison house of language’. The prison as he concluded it, was also a ‘space’ where the philosopher can examine the ‘innermost desires of his nature’ and articulate a new message of individual existence founded on ‘will’.
Those who fail to enact their existence in this space, Nietzsche says, are enticed into sacrificing their individuality on the nonexistent altars of religious beliefs and democratic or socialists’ ideals and become, therefore, members of the anonymous and docile crowd. Nietzsche also invalidated the knowledge claims of science in the examination of human subjectivity. 'Science,' he said, 'is not exclusive to natural phenomenons and favoured reductionistic examination of phenomena at the expense of mind? It also seeks to reduce the separateness and uniqueness of mind with mechanistic descriptions that disallow and basis for the free exercise of individual will.
Nietzsche’s emotionally charged defence of intellectual freedom and radial empowerment of mind as the maker and transformer of the collective fictions that shape human reality in a soulless mechanistic universe proved terribly influential on twentieth-century thought. Furthermore, Nietzsche sought to reinforce his view of the subjective character of scientific knowledge by appealing to an epistemological crisis over the foundations of logic and arithmetic that arose during the last three decades of the nineteenth century. Through a curious course of events, attempted by Edmund Husserl 1859-1938, a German mathematician and a principal founder of Phenomenology, wherefor to resolve this crisis resulted in a view of the character of consciousness that closely resembled that of Nietzsche.
Husserl and Martin Heidegger, were both influential figures of the French atheistic existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. The work of Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre became foundational to that of the principal architects of philosophical postmodernism, and deconstructionist Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. It obvious attribution of a direct linkage between the nineteenth-century crisis about the epistemological foundations of mathematical physics and the origin of philosophical postmodernism served to perpetuate the Cartesian two-world dilemma in an even more oppressive form. It also allows us better to understand the origins of cultural ambience and the ways in which they could resolve that conflict.
The mechanistic paradigm of the late nineteenth century was the one Einstein came to know when he studied physics. Most physicists believed that it represented an eternal truth, but Einstein was open to fresh ideas. Inspired by Mach’s critical mind, he demolished the Newtonian ideas of space and time and replaced them with new, 'relativistic' notions.
In quantum field theory, potential vibrations at each point in the four fields are capable of manifesting themselves in their complemtarity, their expression as individual particles. And the interactions of the fields result from the exchange of quanta that are carriers of the fields. The carriers of the field, known as messenger quanta, are the ‘coloured’ gluons for the strong-binding-force, of which the photon for electromagnetism, the intermediate boson for the weak force, and the graviton or gravitation. If we could re-create the energies present in the fist trillionths of trillionths of a second in the life of the universe, these four fields would, according to quantum field theory, become one fundamental field.
The movement toward a unified theory has evolved progressively from super-symmetry to super-gravity to string theory. In string theory the one-dimensional trajectories of particles, illustrated in the Feynman lectures, seem as if, in at all were possible, are replaced by the two-dimensional orbits of a string. In addition to introducing the extra dimension, represented by a smaller diameter of the string, string theory also features another mall but non-zero constant, with which is analogous to Planck’s quantum of action. Since the value of the constant is quite small, it can be generally ignored but at extremely small dimensions. But since the constant, like Planck’s constant is not zero, this results in departures from ordinary quantum field theory in very small dimensions.
Part of what makes string theory attractive is that it eliminates, or ‘transforms away’, the inherent infinities found in the quantum theory of gravity. And if the predictions of this theory are proven valid in repeatable experiments under controlled conditions, it could allow gravity to be unified with the other three fundamental interactions. But even if string theory leads to this grand unification, it will not alter our understanding of ave-particle duality. While the success of the theory would reinforce our view of the universe as a unified dynamic process, it applies to very small dimensions, and therefore, does not alter our view of wave-particle duality.
While the formalism of quantum physics predicts that correlations between particles over space-like inseparability, of which are possible, it can say nothing about what this strange new relationship between parts (quanta) and the whole (cosmos) cause to result outside this formalism. This does not, however, prevent us from considering the implications in philosophical terms. As the philosopher of science Errol Harris noted in thinking about the special character of wholeness in modern physics, a unity without internal content is a blank or empty set and is not recognizable as a whole. A collection of merely externally related parts does not constitute a whole in that the parts will not be 'mutually adaptive and complementary to one-another.'
Wholeness requires a complementary relationship between unity and difference and is governed by a principle of organization determining the interrelationship between parts. This organizing principle must be universal to a genuine whole and implicit in all parts constituting the whole, even the whole is exemplified only in its parts. This principle of order, Harris continued, 'is nothing really in and of itself. It is the way he parts are organized, and another constituent additional to those that constitute the totality.'
In a genuine whole, the relationship between the constituent parts must be 'internal or immanent' in the parts, as opposed to a more spurious whole in which parts appear to disclose wholeness dur to relationships that are external to the arts. The collection of parts that would allegedly constitute the whole in classical physics is an example of a spurious whole. Parts continue a genuine whole when the universal principle of order is inside the parts and hereby adjusts each to all so that they interlock and become mutually complementary. This not only describes the character of the whole revealed in both relativity theory and quantum mechanics. It is also consistent with the manner in which we have begun to understand the relations between parts and whole in modern biology.
Modern physics also reveals, claimed Harris, complementary relationship between the differences between parts that constitute and the universal ordering principle that are immanent in each part. While the whole cannot be finally disclosed in the analysis of the parts, the study of the differences between parts provides insights into the dynamic structure of the whole present in each part. The part can never, however, be finally isolated from the web of relationships that discloses the interconnections with the whole, and any attempt to do so results in ambiguity.
Much of the ambiguity in attempts to explain the character of wholes in both physics and biology derives from the assumption that order exists between or outside parts. Yet order in complementary relationships between difference and sameness in any physical event is never external to that event, and the cognations are immanent in the event. From this perspective, the addition of non-locality to this picture of the distributive constitution in dynamic function of wholeness is not surprising. The relationships between part, as quantum event apparent in observation or measurement, and the undissectable whole, calculate on in but are not described by the instantaneous correlations between measurements in space-like separate regions, is another extension of the part-whole complementarity in modern physics.
If the universe is a seamlessly interactive system that evolves to higher levels of complex and complicating regularities of which ae lawfully emergent in property of systems, we can assume that the cosmos is a single significant whole that evinces progressive order in complementary relations to its parts. Given that this whole exists in some sense within all parts (quanta), one can then argue that in operates in self-reflective fashion and is the ground from all emergent plexuities. Since human consciousness evinces self-reflective awareness in te human brain (well protected between the cranium walls) and since this brain, like all physical phenomena, can be viewed as an emergent property of the whole, it is unreasonable to conclude, in philosophical terms at least, that the universe is conscious.
Nevertheless, since the actual character of this seamless whole cannot be represented or reduced to its parts, it lies, quite laterally, beyond all human representation or descriptions. If one chooses to believe that the universe be a self-reflective and self-organizing whole, this lends no support whatsoever to conceptual representation of design, meaning, purpose, intent, or plan associated with mytho-religious or cultural heritage. However, if one does not accept this view of the universe, there is noting in the scientific description of nature that can be used to refute this position. On the other hand, it is no longer possible to argue that a profound sense of unity with the whole, which has long been understood as foundation of religious experiences, but can be dismissed, undermined, or invalidated with appeals to scientific knowledge.
While we have consistently tried to distinguish between scientific knowledge and philosophical speculation based on this of what is obtainable, let us be quite clear on one point - there is no empirically valid causal linkage between the former and the latter. Those who wish to dismiss the speculative base on which is obviously free to do as done. However, there is another conclusion to be drawn, in that is firmly grounded in scientific theory and experiment there is no basis in the scientific descriptions of nature for believing in the radical Cartesian division between mind and world sanctioned by classical physics. Clearly, his radical separation between mind and world was a macro-level illusion fostered by limited awareness of the actual character of physical reality nd by mathematical idealizations extended beyond the realms of their applicability.
Nevertheless, the philosophical implications might prove in themselves as a criterial motive in debative consideration to how our proposed new understanding of the relationship between parts and wholes in physical reality might affect the manner in which we deal with some major real-world problems. This will issue to demonstrate why a timely resolution of these problems is critically dependent on a renewed dialogue between members of the cultures of human-social scientists and scientist-engineers. We will also argue that the resolution of these problems could be dependent on a renewed dialogue between science and religion.
As many scholars have demonstrated, the classical paradigm in physics has greatly influenced and conditioned our understanding and management of human systems in economic and political realities. Virtually all models of these realities treat human systems as if they consist of atomized units or parts that interact with one another in terms of laws or forces external to or between the parts. These systems are also viewed as hermetic or closed and, thus, its discreteness, separateness and distinction.
Consider, for example, how the classical paradigm influenced or thinking about economic reality. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the founders of classical economics -figures like Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Thomas Malthus conceived of the economy as a closed system in which intersections between parts (consumer, produces, distributors, etc.) are controlled by forces external to the parts (supply and demand). The central legitimating principle of free market economics, formulated by Adam Smith, is that lawful or law-like forces external to the individual units function as an invisible hand. This invisible hand, said Smith, frees the units to pursue their best interests, moves the economy forward, and in general legislates the behaviour of parts in the best vantages of the whole. (The resemblance between the invisible hand and Newton’s universal law of gravity and between the relations of parts and wholes in classical economics and classical physics should be transparent.)
After roughly 1830, economists shifted the focus to the properties of the invisible hand in the interactions between parts using mathematical models. Within these models, the behaviour of parts in the economy is assumed to be analogous to the awful interactions between pats in classical mechanics. It is, therefore, not surprising that differential calculus was employed to represent economic change in a virtual world in terms of small or marginal shifts in consumption or production. The assumption was that the mathematical description of marginal shifts in the complex web of exchanges between parts (atomized units and quantities) and whole (closed economy) could reveal the lawful, or law-like, machinations of the closed economic system.
These models later became one of the fundamentals for microeconomics. Microeconomics seek to describe interactions between parts in exact quantifiable measures - such as marginal cost, marginal revenue, marginal utility, and growth of total revenue as indexed against individual units of output. In analogy with classical mechanics, the quantities are viewed as initial conditions that can serve to explain subsequent interactions between parts in the closed system in something like deterministic terms. The combination of classical macro-analysis with micro-analysis resulted in what Thorstein Veblen in 1900 termed neoclassical economics - the model for understanding economic reality that is widely used today.
Beginning in the 1939s, the challenge became to subsume the understanding of the interactions between parts in closed economic systems with more sophisticated mathematical models using devices like linear programming, game theory, and new statistical techniques. In spite of the growing mathematical sophistication, these models are based on the same assumptions from classical physics featured in previous neoclassical economic theory - with one exception. They also appeal to the assumption that systems exist in equilibrium or in perturbations from equilibria, and they seek to describe the state of the closed economic system in these terms.
One could argue that the fact that our economic models are assumptions from classical mechanics is not a problem by appealing to the two-domain distinction between micro-level macro-level processes expatiated upon earlier. Since classical mechanic serves us well in our dealings with macro-level phenomena in situations where the speed of light is so large and the quantum of action is so small as to be safely ignored for practical purposes, economic theories based on assumptions from classical mechanics should serve us well in dealing with the macro-level behaviour of economic systems.
The obvious problem, . . . acceded peripherally, . . . nature is relucent to operate in accordance with these assumptions, in that the biosphere, the interaction between parts be intimately related to the whole, no collection of arts is isolated from the whole, and the ability of the whole to regulate the relative abundance of atmospheric gases suggests that the whole of the biota appear to display emergent properties that are more than the sum of its parts. What the current ecological crisis reveal in the abstract virtual world of neoclassical economic theory. The real economies are all human activities associated with the production, distribution, and exchange of tangible goods and commodities and the consumption and use of natural resources, such as arable land and water. Although expanding economic systems in the real economy are obviously embedded in a web of relationships with the entire biosphere, our measure of healthy economic systems disguises this fact very nicely. Consider, for example, the healthy economic system written in 1996 by Frederick Hu, head of the competitive research team for the World Economic Forum - short of military conquest, economic growth is the only viable means for a country to sustain increases in natural living standards . . . An economy is internationally competitive if it performs strongly in three general areas: Abundant productive ideas from capital, labour, infrastructure and technology, optimal economic policies such as low taxes, little interference, free trade and sound market institutions. Such as the rule of law and protection of property rights.
The prescription for medium-term growth of economies in countries like Russia, Brazil, and China may seem utterly pragmatic and quite sound. But the virtual economy described is a closed and hermetically sealed system in which the invisible hand of economic forces allegedly results in a health growth economy if impediments to its operation are removed or minimized. It is, of course, often trued that such prescriptions can have the desired results in terms of increases in living standards, and Russia, Brazil and China are seeking to implement them in various ways.
In the real economy, however, these systems are clearly not closed or hermetically sealed: Russia uses carbon-based fuels in production facilities that produce large amounts of carbon dioxide and other gases that contribute to global warming: Brazil is in the process of destroying a rain forest that is critical to species diversity and the maintenance of a relative abundance of atmospheric gases that regulate Earth temperature, and China is seeking to build a first-world economy based on highly polluting old-world industrial plants that burn soft coal. Not to forget, . . . the virtual economic systems that the world now seems to regard as the best example of the benefits that can be derived form the workings of the invisible hand, that of the United States, operates in the real economy as one of the primary contributors to the ecological crisis.
In 'Consilience,' Edward O. Wilson makes to comment, the case that effective and timely solutions to the problem threatening human survival is critically dependent on something like a global revolution in ethical thought and behaviour. But his view of the basis for this revolution is quite different from our own. Wilson claimed that since the foundations for moral reasoning evolved in what he termed ‘gene-culture’ evolution, the rules of ethical behaviour re emergent aspects of our genetic inheritance. Based on the assumptions that the behaviour of contemporary hunter-gatherers resembles that of our hunter-gatherers forebears in the Palaeolithic Era, he drew on accounts of Bushman hunter-gatherers living in the centre Kalahari in an effort to demonstrate that ethical behaviour is associated with instincts like bonding, cooperation, and altruism.
Wilson argued that these instincts evolved in our hunter-gatherer accessorial descendabilities, whereby genetic mutation and the ethical behaviour associated with these genetically based instincts provided a survival advantage. He then claimed that since these genes were passed on to subsequent generations of our descendable characteristics, which eventually became pervasive in the human genome, the ethical dimension of human nature has a genetic foundation. When we fully understand the 'innate epigenetic rules of moral reasoning,' it seems probable that the rules will probably turn out to be an ensemble of many algorithms whose interlocking activities guide the mind across a landscape of nuances moods and choices.
Any reasonable attempt to lay a firm foundation beneath the quagmire of human ethics in all of its myriad and often contradictory formulations is admirable, and Wilson’s attempt is more admirable than most. In our view, however, there is little or no prospect that it will prove successful for a number of reasons. Wile te probability for us to discover some linkage between genes and behaviour, seems that the lightened path of human ethical behaviour and ranging advantages of this behaviour is far too complex, not o mention, inconsistently been reduced to a given set classification of 'epigenetic ruled of moral reasoning.'
Also, moral codes and recoding may derive in part from instincts that confer a survival advantage, but when we are the examine to these codes, it also seems clear that they are primarily cultural products. This explains why ethical systems are constructed in a bewildering variety of ways in different cultural contexts and why they often sanction or legitimate quite different thoughts and behaviours. Let us not forget that rules f ethical behaviours are quite malleable and have been used sacredly to legitimate human activities such as slavery, colonial conquest, genocide and terrorism. As Cardinal Newman cryptically put it, 'Oh how we hate one another for the love of God.'
According to Wilson, the 'human mind evolved to believe in the gods' and people 'need a sacred narrative' to his view are merely human constructs and, therefore, there is no basis for dialogue between the world views of science and religion. 'Science for its part, will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition and in time uncover the bedrock of the moral and religiously sentient. The result of the competition between the two world views, is believed, as In, will be the secularization of the human epic and of religion itself.
Wilson obviously has a right to his opinions, and many will agree with him for their own good reasons, but what is most interesting about his thoughtful attempted is to posit a more universal basis for human ethics in that it s based on classical assumptions about the character of both physical and biological realities. While Wilson does not argue that human’s behaviour is genetically determined in the strict sense, however, he does allege that there is a causal linkage between genes and behaviour that largely condition this behaviour, he appears to be a firm believer in classical assumption that reductionism can uncover the lawful essences that principally govern the physical aspects that were attributed to reality, including those associated with the alleged 'epigenetic rules of moral reasoning.'
Once, again, Wilson’s view is apparently nothing that cannot be reduced to scientific understandings or fully disclosed in scientific terms, and this apparency of hope for the future of humanity is that the triumph of scientific thought and method will allow us to achieve the Enlightenments ideal of disclosing the lawful regularities that govern or regulate all aspects of human experience. Hence, science will uncover the 'bedrock of moral and religious sentiment, and the entire human epic will be mapped in the secular space of scientific formalism.' The intent is not to denigrate Wilson’s attentive efforts to posit a more universal basis for the human condition, but is to demonstrate that any attempt to understand or improve upon the behaviour based on appeals to outmoded classical assumptions is unrealistic and outmoded. If the human mind did, in fact, evolve in something like deterministic fashion in gene-culture evolution - and if there were, in fact, innate mechanisms in mind that are both lawful and benevolent. Wilson’s program for uncovering these mechanisms could have merit. But for all the reasons that have been posited, classical determinism cannot explain the human condition and its evolutionary principle that govern in their functional dynamics, as Darwinian evolution should be modified to acclimatize the complementary relationships between cultural and biological principles that governing evaluations do indeed have in them a strong, and firm grip upon genetical mutations that have attributively been the distribution in the contribution of human interactions with themselves in the finding to self-realizations and undivided wholeness.
Freud’s use of the word 'superman' or 'overman'in and of itself might indicate only a superficial familiarity with a popular term associated with Nietzsche. However, as Holmes has pointed out, Freud is discussing the holy, or saintly , and its relation to repression and the giving up of freedom of instinctual expression, central concerns of the third essay of on the Genealogy of Morals, ‘What is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals.’
Nietzsche writes of the anti-nature of the ascetic ideal, how it relates to a disgust with oneself, its continuing destructive effect upon the health of Europeans, and how it relates to the realm of ‘subterranean revenge’ and ressentiment. In addition, Nietzsche writes of the repression of instincts (though not specifically on impulses toward sexual perversions) and of their being turned inward against the self. Continuing, he wrote on the ‘instinct for freedom forcibly made latent . . . this instinct for freedom pushed back and repressed. In closing, and even more of the animal, and more still of the material: Zarathustra also speaks of most sacred, now he must find allusion caprice, even in the most sacred, that freedom from his love may become his prey. The formulation as it pertains to sexual perversions and incest certainly does not derive from Nietzsche (although, along different lines incest was an important factor in Nietzsche’s understanding of Oedipus), the relating freedom was very possibly influenced by Nietzsche, particularly in light of Freud’s reference as the ‘holy’; as well as to the ‘overman’. As these of issues re explored in the Antichrist which had been published just two years earlier.
Nietzsche had written of sublimation, and he specifically wrote of sublimation of sexual drives in the Genealogy. Freud’s use of the term as differing somewhat from his later and more Nietzschean usage such as in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, but as Kaufmann notes, while ‘the word is older than either Freud or Nietzsche . . . it was Nietzsche who first gave it the specific connotation it has today’. Kaufmann regards the concept of sublimation as the most important concepts in Nietzsche’s entire philosophy.
Of course it is difficult to determine whether or not Freud may have been recently reading Nietzsche or was consciously or unconsciously drawing on information he had come across some years earlier. It is also possible that Freud had recently of some time earlier, registered a limited resource of the Genealogy or other works. At a later time in his life Freud claimed he could not read more than a few passage s of Nietzsche due to being overwhelmed by the wealth of ideas. This claim might be supported by the fact that Freud demonstrates only a limited understanding of certain of Nietzsche’s concepts. For example, his reference to the ‘overman’, such in showing a lack of understanding of the self-overcoming and sublimation, not simply freely gratified primitive instincts. Later in life, Freud demonstrates a similar misunderstanding in his equation the overman with the tyrannical father of the primal horde. Perhaps Freud confused the overman with he ‘master’ whose morality is contrasted with that of ‘slave ‘ morality in the Genealogy and Beyond Good and Evil. The conquering master more freely gratifies instinct and affirms himself, his world and has values as good. The conquered slave, unable to express himself freely, creates negating, resentful, vengeful morality glorifying his own crippled. Alienated condition, and her crates a division not between goof (noble) and bad (Contemptible), but between good (undangerous) and evil (wicked and powerful - dangerous ness).
Much of what Rycroft writes is similar to, implicit in, or at least compatible with what we have seen of Nietzsche’s theoretical addresses as to say, as other materia that has been placed on the table fr consideration. Rycroft specifically states that h takes up ‘a position much nearer Groddeck’s [on the nature of the, 'it' or, id] than Freud’s. He doesn’t mention that Freud was ware of Groddeck’s concept of the 'it' and understood the term to be derived from Nietzsche. However, beyond ‘the process itself; as a consequence of grammatical habit - that the activity, ‘thinking’, requires an agent.
The self, as in its manifesting in constructing dreams, ma y be an aspect of our psychic live tat knows things that our waking 'In' or ego may not know and may not wish to know, and a relationship ma y be developed between these aspects of our psychic lives in which the latter opens itself creatively to the communications of he former. Zarathustra states: ‘Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there stands a mighty ruler, an unknown sage - whose name is self. In your body he dwells, he is your body’. Nonetheless, Nietzsche’s self cannot be understood as a replacement for an all-knowing God to whom the 'I-ness' or ego appeals for its wisdom, commandments, guidance and the like. To open oneself to another aspect of oneself that is wiser (an unknown sage) in the sense that new information can be derived from it, does not necessarily entail that this ‘wiser’ component of one’s psychic life has God-like knowledge and commandments which if one (one’s 'I-nesses') deciphers and opens correctly to will set one on the straight path. It is true though that when Nietzsche writes of the self as ‘a mighty ruler an unknown sage ‘ he does open himself to such an interpretation and even to the possibility that this ‘ruler’ is unreachable, unapproachable for the 'I.' (Nietzsche/Zarathustra redeeming the body) and after 'On the Despisers of he Body, makes it clear, that there are aspects of our psychic selves that interpret the body, that mediate its directives, ideally in ways that do not deny the body but aid in the body doing ‘what it would do above all else, to create beyond itself’.
Also the idea of a fully formed, even if the unconscious, ‘mighty ruler’ and ‘unknown sage ‘ as a true self beneath an only apparent surface is at odds with Nietzsche ‘s idea that there is no one true, stable, enduring self in and of itself, to be found once of the veil in appearance is removed. And even early in his career Nietzsche wrote sarcastically of ‘that cleverly discovered well of inspiration, the unconscious’. There is, though, a tension in Nietzsche between the notion of bodily-based drive is pressing for discharge (which can, among other things, (sublimated) and a more organized bodily-based self which may be ‘an unknown sage’ and in relation to which the 'I-ness' may open to potential communications in the manner for which there is no such conception of self for which Freud and the dream is not produced with the intention of being understood.
Nietzsche explored the ideas of psychic energy and drives pressing for discharge. His discussion on sublimation typically implies an understanding of drives in just such a sense as does his idea that dreams provide for discharge of drives. Nonetheless, he did not relegate all that is derived from instinct and the body to this realm. While for Nietzsche there is no stable, enduring true self awaiting discovery and liberation, the body and the self (in the broadest sense of the term, including what is unconscious and may be at work in dreams as Rycroft describes it) may offer up potential communication and direct to the 'I' or ego. However, at times Nietzsche describes the 'I' or ego as having very little, if any, idea as to how it is being by the 'it.'
Nietzsche, like Freud, describe of two types of mental possesses, on which ‘binds’ [man’s] life to reason its concepts, such of an order as not to be swept away by the current and to lose himself, the other, pertaining to the worlds of myth, art and the dream, ‘constantly showing the desire to shape the existing world of the wide-wake person to be variegatedly irregular and disinterested, incoherent, exciting and eternally new, as is the world of dreams’. Art may function as a ’middle sphere’ and ‘middle faculty’ (transitional sphere and faculty) between a more primitive ‘metaphor-world’ of impressions and the forms of uniform abstract concepts.
Again, Nietzsche, like Freud attempts to account for the function of consciousness in light of the new under stranding of conscious mental functioning. Nietzsche distinguishes between himself and ‘older philosophers’ who do not appreciate the significance of unconscious mental functioning, while Freud distinguishes the unconscious of philosophers and the unconscious of psychoanalysis. What is missing is the acknowledgement of Nietzsche as philosopher and psychologist whose idea as on unconscious mental functioning have very strong affinities with psychoanalysis, as Freud himself will mention on a number of other occasions. Neither here nor in his letters to Fliess which he mentions Lipps, nor in his later paper in which Lipp (the ‘German philosopher’) is acknowledged again, is Nietzsche mentioned when it comes to acknowledging in a specific and detailed manner as important forerunner of psychoanalysis. Although Freud will state on a number of occasions that Nietzsche’s insight are close to psychoanalysis, very rarely will he state any details regarding the similarities. He mentions a friend calling his attention to the notion of the criminal from a sense of guilt, a patient calling his attention to the pride-memory aphorism, Nietzsche’s idea in dreams we cannot enter the realm of the psyche of primitive man, etc. there is never any derailed statement on just what Nietzsche anticipated pertinently to psychoanalysis. This is so even after Freud has been taking Nietzsche with him on vacation.
Equally important, the classical assumption that the only privileged or valid knowledge is scientific is one of the primary sources of the stark division between the two cultures of humanistic and scientists-engineers, in this view, Wilson is quite correct in assuming that a timely end to the two culture war and a renewer dialogue between members of those cultures is now critically important to human survival. It is also clear, however, those dreams of reason based on the classical paradigm will only serve to perpetuate the two-culture war. Since these dreams are also remnants of an old scientific world-view that no longer applies in theory in fact, to the actual character of physical reality, as reality is a probable service to frustrate the solution for which in found of a real world problem.
However, there is a renewed basis for dialogue between the two cultures, it is believed as quite different from that described by Wilson. Since classical epistemology has been displaced, or is the process of being displaced, by the new epistemology of science, the truths of science can no longer be viewed as transcendent ad absolute in the classical sense. The universe more closely resembles a giant organism than a giant machine, and it also displays emergent properties that serve to perpetuate the existence of the whole in both physics and biology that cannot be explained in terms of unrestricted determinism, simple causality, first causes, linear movements and initial conditions. Perhaps the first and most important precondition for renewed dialogue between the two cultural conflicting realizations as Einstein explicated upon its topic as, that a human being is a 'part of the whole.’ It is this spared awareness that allows for the freedom, or existential choice of self-decision of determining our free-will and the power to differentiate direct parts to free ourselves of the 'optical allusion'of our present conception of self as a ‘partially limited in space and time’ and to widen ‘our circle of compassion to embrace al living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty’. Yet, one cannot, of course, merely reason oneself into an acceptance of this view, nonetheless, the inherent perceptions of the world are reason that the capacity for what Einstein termed ‘cosmic religious feelings’. Perhaps, our enabling capability for that which is within us to have the obtainable ability to enabling of our experience of self-realization, that of its realness is to sense its proven existence of a sense of elementarily leaving to some sorted conquering sense of universal consciousness, in so given to arise the existence of the universe, which really makes an essential difference to the existence or its penetrative spark of awakening indebtednesses of reciprocality?
Those who have this capacity will hopefully be able to communicate their enhanced scientific understanding of the relations among all aspects, and in part that is our self and the whole that are the universe in ordinary language wit enormous emotional appeal. The task lies before the poets of this renewing reality have nicely been described by Jonas Salk, which 'man has come to the threshold of a state of consciousness, regarding his nature and his relationship to the Cosmos, in terms that reflects ‘reality’. By using the processes of Nature and metaphor, to describe the forces by which it operates upon and within Man, we come as close to describing reality as we can within the limits of our comprehension. Men will be very uneven in their capacity or such understanding, which, naturally, differs for different ages and cultures, and develops and changes over the course of time. For these reasons it will always be necessary to use metaphorical and mythical provisions as comprehensive guides to living. In this way. Man’s afforded efforts by the imagination and intellect can be playing the vital roles embarking upon the survival and his endurable evolution.
It is time, if not, only, to be concluded from evidence in its suggestive conditional relation, for which the religious imagination and the religious experience to engage upon the complementarity of truths science, as fitting that silence with meaning, as having to antiquate a continual emphasis, least of mention, that does not mean that those who do not believe in the existence of God or Being, should refrain in any sense from assessing the impletions of the new truths of science. Understanding these implications does not necessitate any ontology, and is in no way diminished by the lack of any ontology. And one is free to recognize a basis for a dialogue between science and religion for the same reason that one is free to deny that this basis exists - there is nothing in our current scientific world view that can prove the existence of God or Being and nothing that legitimate any anthropomorphic conceptions of the nature of God or Being.
The present time is clearly a time of a major paradigm shift, but consider the last great paradigm shift, the one that resulted in the Newtonian framework. This previous paradigm shift was profoundly problematic for the human spirit, it led to the conviction that we are strangers, freaks of nature, conscious beings in a universe that is almost entirely unconscious, and that, since the universe its strictly deterministic, even the free will we feel in regard to the movements of our bodies is an allusion. Yet it was probably necessary for the Western mind to go through the acceptance of such a paradigm.
In the final analysis there will be philosophers unprepared to accept that, if a given cognitive capacity is psychologically real, then there must be an explanation of how it is possible for an individual in the course of human development to acquire that cognitive capacity, or anything like it, can have a role to play in philosophical accounts of concepts and conceptual abilities. The most obvious basis for such a view would be a Frégean distrust of 'psychology' that leads to a rigid division of labour between philosophy and psychology. The operative thought is that the task of a philosophical theory of concepts is to explain what a given concept is or what a given conceptual ability consist in. This, it is frequently maintained, is something that can be done in complete independence of explaining how such a concept or ability might be acquired. The underlying distinction is one between philosophical questions centring around concept possession and psychological questions centring around concept possibilities for an individual to acquire that ability, then it cannot be psychologically real. Nevertheless, this distinction is, however, strictly one does adhere to the distinction, it provides no support for a rejection of any given cognitive capacity for which is psychologically real. The neo-Frégean distinction is directly against the view that facts about how concepts are acquired have a role to play in explaining and individualizing concepts. But this view does not have to be disputed by a supporter as such, nonetheless, all that the supporter is to commit is that the principle that no satisfactory account of what a concept is should make it impossible to provide explanation of how that concept can be acquired. That is, that this principle has nothing to say about the further question of whether the psychological explanation has a role to play in a constitutive explanation of the concept, and hence is not in conflict with the neo-Frégean distinction.
A full account of the structure of consciousness, will need to illustrate those higher, conceptual forms of consciousness to which little attention on such an account will take and about how it might emerge from given points of value, is the thought that an explanation of everything that is distinctive about consciousness will emerge out of an account of what it is for a subject to be capable of thinking about himself. But, to a proper understanding of the complex phenomenon of consciousness. There are no facts about linguistic mastery that will determine or explain what might be termed the cognitive dynamics that are individual processes that have found their way forward for a theory of consciousness, it sees, to chart the characteristic features individualizing the various distinct conceptual forms of consciousness in a way that will provide a taxonomy of unconsciousness and they, to show how these manifest the Characterological functions can enhance the condition of manifesting services, whereby, its continuous condition may that it be the determinate levels of content. What is hoped is now clear is that these forms of higher forms of consciousness emerge from a rich foundation of non-conceptual representations of thought, which can only expose and clarify their conviction that these forms of conscious thought hold the key, not just to an eventful account of how mastery of the conscious paradigms, but to a proper understanding of the plexuity of self-consciousness might that it be and/or the overall conjecture of consciousness that stands alone as to an everlasting vanquishment into the abyssal of ever-unchangeless states of unconsciousness, as their underlying potential latencies. There is no solid or functional basis in contemporary physics or biology for believing in the stark Cartesian division between mind and world that some have moderately described as ‘the disease of the Western mind’. Dialectic orchestration will serve as the background for understanding a new relationship between parts and wholes in physics, with a similar view of that relationship that has emerged in the co-called ‘new biology’ and in recent studies of the evolution of a scientific understanding to a more conceptualized representation of ideas, and includes its allied ‘content’.
Nonetheless, it seems a strong possibility that Plotonic and Whitehead connect upon the issue of the creation of the sensible world may by looking at actual entities as aspects of nature’s contemplation. The contemplation of nature is obviously an immensely intricate affair, involving a myriad of possibilities, therefore one can look at actual entities as, in some sense, the basic elements of a vast and expansive process.
We could derive a scientific understanding of these ideas with the aid of precise deduction, as Descartes continued his claim that we could lay the contours of physical reality out in three-dimensional co-ordinates. Following the publication of Isaac Newton’s ‘Principia Mathematica’ in 1687, reductionism and mathematical modeling became the most powerful tools of modern science. The dream that we could know and master the entire physical world through the extension and refinement of mathematical theory became the central feature and principles of scientific knowledge.
The radical separation between mind and nature formalized by Descartes served over time to allow scientists to concentrate on developing mathematical descriptions of matter as pure mechanism without any concern about its spiritual dimensions or ontological foundations. Meanwhile, attempts to rationalize, reconcile or eliminate Descartes’s merging division between mind and matter became the most central feature of Western intellectual life.
Philosophers like John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and David Hume tried to articulate some basis for linking the mathematical describable motions of matter with linguistic representations of external reality in the subjective space of mind. Descartes’ compatriot Jean-Jacques Rousseau reified nature as the ground of human consciousness in a state of innocence and proclaimed that ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternities’ are the guiding principles of this consciousness. Rousseau also fabricated the idea of the ‘general will’ of the people to achieve these goals and declared that those who do not conform to this will were social deviants.
The Enlightenment idea of ‘deism’, which imaged the universe as a clockwork and God as the clockmaker, provided grounds for believing in a divine agency, from which the time of moment the formidable creations also imply, in of which, the exhaustion of all the creative forces of the universe at origins ends, and that the physical substrates of mind were subject to the same natural laws as matter. In that the only means of mediating the gap between mind and matter was pure reason, caused by the traditional Judeo-Christian theism, which had previously been based on both reason and revelation, responded to the challenge of deism by debasing traditionality as a test of faith and embracing the idea that we can know the truths of spiritual reality only through divine revelation. This engendered a conflict between reason and revelation that persists to this day. And laid the foundation for the fierce completion between the mega-narratives of science and religion as frame tales for mediating the relation between mind and matter and the manner in which they should ultimately define the special character of each.
The nineteenth-century Romantics in Germany, England and the United States revived Rousseau’s attempt to posit a ground for human consciousness by reifying nature in a different form. Goethe and Friedrich Schelling proposed a natural philosophy premised on ontological Monism (the idea that adhering manifestations that govern toward evolutionary principles have grounded inside an inseparable spiritual Oneness) and argued God, man, and nature for the reconciliation of mind and matter with an appeal to sentiment, mystical awareness, and quasi-scientific attempts, as he afforded the efforts of mind and matter, nature became a mindful agency that ‘loves illusion’, as it shrouds man in mist, presses him or her heart and punishes those who fail to see the light. Schelling, in his version of cosmic unity, argued that scientific facts were at best partial truths and that the mindful creative spirit that unites mind and matter is progressively moving toward self-realization and ‘undivided wholeness’.
The British version of Romanticism, articulated by figures like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, placed more emphasis on the primary of the imagination and the importance of rebellion and heroic vision as the grounds for freedom. As Wordsworth put it, communion with the ‘incommunicable powers’ of the ‘immortal sea’ empowers the mind to release itself from all the material constraints of the laws of nature. The founders of American transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Theoreau, articulated a version of Romanticism that commensurate with the ideals of American democracy.
The American envisioned a unified spiritual reality that manifested itself as a personal ethos that sanctioned radical individualism and bred aversion to the emergent materialism of the Jacksonian era. They were also more inclined than their European counterpart, as the examples of Thoreau and Whitman attest, to embrace scientific descriptions of nature. However, the Americans also dissolved the distinction between mind and matter with an appeal to ontological monism and alleged that mind could free itself from all the constraint of assuming that by some sorted limitation of matter, in which such states have of them, some mystical awareness.
Since scientists, during the nineteenth century were engrossed with uncovering the workings of external reality and seemingly knew of themselves that these virtually overflowing burdens of nothing, in that were about the physical substrates of human consciousness, the business of examining the distributive contribution in dynamic functionality and structural foundation of mind became the province of social scientists and humanists. Adolphe Quételet proposed a ‘social physics’ that could serve as the basis for a new discipline called ‘sociology’, and his contemporary Auguste Comte concluded that a true scientific understanding of the social reality was quite inevitable. Mind, in the view of these figures, was a separate and distinct mechanism subject to the lawful workings of a mechanical social reality.
More formal European philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant, sought to reconcile representations of external reality in mind with the motions of matter-based on the dictates of pure reason. This impulse was also apparent in the utilitarian ethics of Jerry Bentham and John Stuart Mill, in the historical materialism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and in the pragmatism of Charles Smith, William James and John Dewey. These thinkers were painfully aware, however, of the inability of reason to posit a self-consistent basis for bridging the gap between mind and matter, and each remains obliged to conclude that the realm of the mental exists only in the subjective reality of the individual
A particular yet peculiar presence awaits the future and has framed its proposed new understanding of relationships between mind and world, within the larger context of the history of mathematical physics, the origin and extensions of the classical view of the fundamentals of scientific knowledge, and the various ways that physicists have attempted to prevent previous challenges to the efficacy of classical epistemology.
The British version of Romanticism, articulated by figures like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, placed more emphasis on the primary of the imagination and the importance of rebellion and heroic vision as the grounds for freedom. As Wordsworth put it, communion with the 'incommunicable powers' of the 'immortal sea' empowers the mind to release itself from all the material constraints of the laws of nature. The founders of American transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Theoreau, articulated a version of Romanticism that commensurate with the ideals of American democracy.
The American envisioned a unified spiritual reality that manifested itself as a personal ethos that sanctioned radical individualism and bred aversion to the emergent materialism of the Jacksonian era. They were also more inclined than their European counterpart, as the examples of Thoreau and Whitman attest, to embrace scientific descriptions of nature. However, the Americans also dissolved the distinction between mind and natter with an appeal to ontological monism and alleged that mind could free itself from all the constraint of assuming that by some sorted limitation of matter, in which such states have of them, some mystical awareness.
Since scientists, during the nineteenth century were engrossed with uncovering the workings of external reality and seemingly knew of themselves that these virtually overflowing burdens of nothing, in that were about the physical substrates of human consciousness, the business of examining the distributive contribution in dynamic functionality and structural foundation of mind became the province of social scientists and humanists. Adolphe Quételet proposed a ‘social physics’ that could serve as the basis for a new discipline called sociology, and his contemporary Auguste Comte concluded that a true scientific understanding of the social reality was quite inevitable. Mind, in the view of these figures, was a separate and distinct mechanism subject to the lawful workings of a mechanical social reality.
The fatal flaw of pure reason is, of course, the absence of emotion, and purely explanations of the division between subjective reality and external reality, of which had limited appeal outside the community of intellectuals. The figure most responsible for infusing our understanding of the Cartesian dualism with contextual representation of our understanding with emotional content was the death of God theologian Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900. After declaring that God and ‘divine will’, did not exist, Nietzsche reified the ‘existence’ of consciousness in the domain of subjectivity as the ground for individual ‘will’ and summarily reducing all previous philosophical attempts to articulate the ‘will to truth’. The dilemma, forth in, had seemed to mean, by the validation, . . . as accredited for doing of science, in that the claim that Nietzsche’s earlier versions to the ‘will to truth’, disguises the fact that all alleged truths were arbitrarily created in the subjective reality of the individual and are expressed or manifesting the individualism of ‘will’.
In Nietzsche’s view, the separation between mind and matter is more absolute and total than previously been imagined. Based on the assumption that there is no really necessary correspondence between linguistic constructions of reality in human subjectivity and external reality, he deuced that we are all locked in ‘a prison house of language’. The prison as he concluded it, was also a ‘space’ where the philosopher can examine the ‘innermost desires of his nature’ and articulate a new message of individual existence founded on ‘will’.
Those who fail to enact their existence in this space, Nietzsche says, are enticed into sacrificing their individuality on the nonexistent altars of religious beliefs and democratic or socialists’ ideals and become, therefore, members of the anonymous and docile crowd. Nietzsche also invalidated the knowledge claims of science in the examination of human subjectivity. Science, he said. Is not exclusive to natural phenomenons and favors reductionistic examination of phenomena at the expense of mind? It also seeks to reduce the separateness and uniqueness of mind with mechanistic descriptions that disallow and basis for the free exercise of individual will.
Nietzsche’s emotionally charged defence of intellectual freedom and radial empowerment of mind as the maker and transformer of the collective fictions that shape human reality in a soulless mechanistic universe proved terribly influential on twentieth-century thought. Furthermore, Nietzsche sought to reinforce his view of the subjective character of scientific knowledge by appealing to an epistemological crisis over the foundations of logic and arithmetic that arose during the last three decades of the nineteenth century. Through a curious course of events, attempted by Edmund Husserl 1859-1938, a German mathematician and a principal founder of phenomenology, wherefor was to resolve this crisis resulted in a view of the character of consciousness that closely resembled that of Nietzsche.
The best-known disciple of Husserl was Martin Heidegger, and the work of both figures greatly influenced that of the French atheistic existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. The work of Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre became foundational to that of the principal architects of philosophical postmodernism, and deconstructionist Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. It obvious attribution of a direct linkage between the nineteenth-century crisis about the epistemological foundations of mathematical physics and the origin of philosophical postmodernism served to perpetuate the Cartesian two-world dilemma in an even more oppressive form. It also allows us better to understand the origins of cultural ambience and the ways in which they could resolve that conflict.
The mechanistic paradigm of the late nineteenth century was the one Einstein came to know when he studied physics. Most physicists believed that it represented an eternal truth, but Einstein was open to fresh ideas. Inspired by Mach’s critical mind, he demolished the Newtonian ideas of space and time and replaced them with new, ‘relativistic’ notions.
Two theories unveiled and unfolding as their phenomenal yield held by Albert Einstein, attributively appreciated that the special theory of relativity (1905) and, also the tangling and calculably arranging affordance, as drawn upon the gratifying nature whom by encouraging the finding resolutions upon which the realms of its secreted reservoir in continuous phenomenons, in additional the continuatives as afforded by the efforts by the imagination were made discretely available to any the unsurmountable achievements, as remain obtainably afforded through the excavations underlying the artifactual circumstances that govern all principle ‘forms’ or ‘types’ in the involving evolutionary principles of the general theory of relativity (1915). Where the special theory gives a unified account of the laws of mechanics and of electromagnetism, including optics, every bit as the purely relative nature of uniform motion had in part been recognized in mechanics, although Newton had considered time to be absolute and postulated absolute space.
If the universe is a seamlessly interactive system that evolves to a higher level of complexity, and if the lawful regularities of this universe are emergent properties of this system, we can assume that the cosmos is a singular point of significance as a whole that evinces the ‘principle of progressive order’ to bring about an orderly disposition of individuals, units or elements in preparation of complementary affiliations to its parts. Given that this whole exists in some sense within all parts (quanta), one can then argue that it operates in self-reflective fashion and is the ground for all emergent complexities. Since human consciousness evinces self-reflective awareness in the human brain and since this brain, like all physical phenomena can be viewed as an emergent property of the whole, it is reasonable to conclude, in philosophical terms at least, that the universe is conscious.
But since the actual character of this seamless whole cannot be represented or reduced to its parts, it lies, quite literally beyond all human representations or descriptions. If one chooses to believe that the universe be a self-reflective and self-organizing whole, this lends no support whatsoever to conceptions of design, meaning, purpose, intent, or plan associated with any mytho-religious or cultural heritage. However, If one does not accept this view of the universe, there is nothing in the scientific descriptions of nature that can be used to refute this position. On the other hand, it is no longer possible to argue that a profound sense of unity with the whole, which has long been understood as the foundation of religious experience, which can be dismissed, undermined or invalidated with appeals to scientific knowledge.
Uncertain issues surrounding certainty are especially connected with those concerning ‘scepticism’. Although Greek scepticism entered on the value of enquiry and questioning, scepticism is now the denial that knowledge or even rational belief is possible, either about some specific subject-matter, e.g., ethics, or in any area whatsoever. Classical scepticism, springs from the observation that the best method in some area seems to fall short of giving us contact with the truth, e.g., there is a gulf between appearances and reality, it frequently cites the conflicting judgements that our methods deliver, with the resulting condition or reserved effect of questions which change from a closed to an open condition of ‘truth’, with the possibility to come into being undefinable. In classic thought the various examples of this conflict were systemized in the tropes of Aenesidemus. So that, the scepticism of Pyrrho and the new Academy was a system of argument and inasmuch as opposing dogmatism, and, particularly the philosophical system building of the Stoics.
As it has come down to us, particularly in the writings of Sextus Empiricus, its method was typically to cite reasons for finding our issue undecidable (sceptics devoted particular energy to undermining the Stoics conception of some truths as delivered by direct apprehension or some katalepsis). As a result the sceptics conclude eposhé, or the suspension of belief, and then go on to celebrate a way of life whose object was ataraxia, or the tranquillity resulting from suspension of belief.
Fixed by its will for and in itself, the mere mitigated scepticism which accepts every day or commonsense belief, is that, not s the delivery of reason, but as due more to custom and habit. Nonetheless, it is self-satisfied at the proper time, however, the power of reason to give us much more. Mitigated scepticism is thus closer to the attitude fostered by the accentuations from Pyrrho through to Sextus Expiricus. Despite the fact that the phrase ‘Cartesian scepticism’ is sometimes used, yet Descartes himself was not a sceptic, and, even so, in the ‘method of doubt’ uses a sceptical scenario in order to begin the process of finding a general distinction to mark its point of knowledge. Descartes trusts in categories of ‘clear and distinct’ ideas, not far removed from the phantasiá kataleptikê of the Stoics.
For many sceptics have traditionally held that knowledge requires certainty, artistry. And, of course, they claim that certainly or specific knowledge is not possible. In part, nonetheless, of the principle that every effect it’s a consequence of an antecedent cause or causes. For causality to be true it is not necessary for an effect to be predictable as the antecedent causes may be numerous, too complicated, or too interrelated for analysis. Nevertheless, in order to avoid scepticism, this participating sceptic has generally held that knowledge does not require certainty. Except for alleged cases of things that are evident for one just by being true, as it has often been thought, that any thing known must satisfy certain criteria and every bit for being true. It is often taught that anything is known must satisfy certain standards. In so saying, that by ‘deduction’ or ‘induction’, there will be criteria specifying when it is. As these alleged cases of self-evident truths, the general principle specifying the sort of consideration that will make such standard in the apparent or justly conclude in accepting it warranted to some degree.
Besides, there is another view - the absolute globular view that we do not have any knowledge whatsoever. In whatever manner, it is doubtful that any philosopher seriously entertains of any verifiability with reference to absolute scepticism. Even the Pyrrhonist sceptics, who held that we should refrain from accenting to any non-evident standards that no such hesitancy about asserting to ‘the evident’, the non-evidential beliefs require evidences because it is given of something in respect to quality, quantity or situational condition.
René Descartes (1596-1650), in his sceptical guise, never doubted the content of his own ideas. It’s challenging logic, inasmuch as of whether they ‘corresponded’ to anything beyond ideas.
All the same, Pyrrhonism and Cartesian form of virtual globular scepticism, in having been held and defended, that of assuming that knowledge is some form of true, sufficiently warranted belief, it is the warranted condition that provides the truth or belief conditions, in that of providing the grist for the sceptic’s mill about. The Pyrrhonist wishes to convey as in offering an idea or theory that the contents for considering, and sometimes obscurely by evoking a thought, image or conception, that is oftentimes that no ‘non-evident’ empirically deferring sufficiency of giving is justifiably on a basis to include assurances to maintain the security as warranted in respect to quality, quantity or condition, to be exactly as described as surety. Whereas, a Cartesian sceptic will agree that no empirical standards about anything other than one’s own mind and its contents are sufficiently warranted, because there are always legitimate grounds for doubting it. So, the essential difference between the two views concerns the stringency of the requirements for a belief being sufficiently warranted to take account of as knowledge.
A Cartesian requires certainty, but a Pyrrhonist merely requires that the standards in case are more warranted then its negation.
Cartesian scepticism was unduly an in fluence with which Descartes agues for scepticism, than his reply holds, in that we do not have any knowledge of any empirical standards, in that of anything beyond the contents of our own minds. The reason is roughly in the position that there is a legitimate doubt about all such standards, only because there is no way to justifiably deny that our senses are being stimulated by some sense, for which it is radically different from the objects which we normally think, in whatever manner they affect our senses. Therefrom, if the Pyrrhonist the agnostic, the Cartesian sceptic is the atheist.
Because the Pyrrhonist requires much less of a belief in order for it to be confirmed as knowledge than do the Cartesian, the argument for Pyrrhonism are much more difficult to construct. A Pyrrhonist must show that there is no better set of reasons for believing to any standards, of which are in case that any knowledge learnt of the mind is understood by some of its forms, that has to require certainty.
The underlying latencies that are given among the many derivative contributions as awaiting their presence to the future that of specifying to the theory of knowledge, is, but, nonetheless, the possibility to identify a set of shared doctrines, however, identity to discern two broad styles of instances to discern, in the like manner, these two styles of pragmatism, clarify the innovation that a Cartesian approval is fundamentally flawed, nonetheless, of responding very differently but not fordone.
Repudiating the requirements of absolute certainty or knowledge, insisting on the connection of knowledge with activity, as, too, of pragmatism of a reformist distributing knowledge upon the legitimacy of traditional questions about the truth-unconductiveness of our cognitive practices, and sustain a conception of truth objectives, enough to give those questions that undergo ingathering their own purposive latencies, yet we are given to the spoken word for which a dialectic awareness sparks the fame from the ambers of fire.
Pragmatism of a determinant revolution, by contrast, relinquishing the objectivity of youth, acknowledges no legitimate epistemological questions over and above those that are naturally kindred of our current cognitive conviction.
It seems clear that certainty is a property that can be assembled to either a person or a belief. We can say that a person, ‘S’ are certain, or we can say that its descendable alinement is aligned as of ‘p’, are certain. The two uses can be connected by saying that ‘S’ has the right to be certain just in case the value of ‘p’ is sufficiently verified.
In defining certainty, it is crucial to note that the term has both an absolute and relative sense. More or less, we take a proposition to be certain when we have no doubt about its truth. We may do this in error or unreasonably, but objectively a proposition is certain when such absence of doubt is justifiable. The sceptical tradition in philosophy denies that objective certainty is often possible, or ever possible, either for any proposition at all, or for any proposition at all, or for any proposition from some suspect family (ethics, theory, memory, empirical judgement etc.) a major sceptical weapon is the possibility of upsetting events that Can cast doubts back onto what were hitherto taken to be certainties. Others include reminders of the divergence of human opinion, and the fallible source of our confidence. Fundamentalist approaches to knowledge look for a basis of certainty, upon which the structure of our system is built. Others reject the metaphor, looking for mutual support and coherence, without foundation.
According to most epistemologists, knowledge entails belief, so that I cannot posses an intellectual hold of discerning of what things known or otherwise are made contributors to knowledge. Others think this entailment thesis can be rendered more accurately if we substitute for belief some closely related attitude. For instance, several philosophers would prefer to say that knowledge entail psychological certainty or acceptance. It is clear that certainty is a property that can be ascribed to either a person or a belief. We sa y that person ’S’ is certain, or we can say that a proposition ’p’, is certain. The two uses can be connected by saying that ‘S’ has the right to be certain just in case ‘p’‘ insufficiently warranted. In defining certainty it is crucial to note the term has both an absolute and relative sense. Very roughly, one can say that a proposition is absolutely certain just in case there is no proposition more warranted than it. But we also commonly say that one proposition is more certain than another, implying that the second one, though less certain, is still certain.
The characterization of absolute certainly, namely that a belief ‘p’, is certain just in case there is no belief which is more warranted than ‘p’. Although it does delineate a necessary condition of absolute certainty and it is preferable to the Wittgensteinian approach that it does not capture the full sense of ‘absolute certainty’. The sceptics would argue that it is not strong enough. For, according to this characterization, a belief could be good grounds for doubting it - just as long as there were equally god grounds for doubting every proposition that was equally doubting propositions that were equally warranted. In addition, in part, that we have a guarantee of its truth, there is no such quarante provided by this characterization.
Thus, in the schematic, we can say that a belief that ‘p’ is absolutely certain just in case it is subjectively and objectively immune to doubt. In other words a proposition ‘p’, are absolutely certain for ‘S’ if and only if (1) ‘p’ is warranted for ‘S’ and (2) ‘DS’ is warranted in denying every proposition, ‘g’, such that if ‘g’ is joined on something more so as to more to a larger or more inclusive form to ‘S’s’ beliefs the warrant for ‘p’ is reduced (only very slightly) and (3) there is no true proposition, ‘d’ such that if ‘d’ also gave to justify its position for being or coming by way of additional reasons that, ‘S’s’ beliefs the warrant for ‘p’ is reduced (if only very slightly).
This is an account of absolute certainty which captures what is demanded by the sceptic, if a proposition is certain in this sense, and if propositions are certain in this sense. It is indubitable and guaranteed both subjectively and objectively to be true. In addition, such a characterisation of certainty does not automatically lead to scepticism thus, this is an account of certainty to find an account of certainty that provides the precondition for a debate between the sceptic and anti-sceptic.
Just as elsewhere, in moral theory, the applicable or pertaining of views is that of an inviolably moral standard or absolute variable human desires or policies or prescriptions.
In spite of the notorious difficulty of reading Kantian ethics, a hypothetical imperative embeds a command which is in place only to provide to some antecedent desire or project: ‘If you want to look wise, stay quiet’. The injunction to stay quiet only sets about to those with the antecedent to have a longing for something or an attitude toward or to influence one to take a position of a postural stance. If one has no desire to look wise, the injunction cannot be so avoided: It is a requirement that binds anybody, regardless of their inclination. It could be represented as, for example, ‘tell the truth (regardless of whether you want to or not)’. The distinction is not always signalled by presence or absence of the conditional or hypothetical form: ‘If you crave drink, don’t become a bartender’ may be regarded as an absolute injunction applying to anyone, although only roused in case of those with the stated desire.
In Grundlegung zur Metaphsik der Sitten (1785), Kant discussed five forms of the categorical imperative: (1) the formula of universal law: ‘act only on that maxim for being at the very end of a course, concern or relationship, wherever, to cause to move through by way of beginning to end, which you can at the same time will that it should become universal law: (2) the formula of the law of nature: ‘act as if the maxim of your action were to commence to be (together or with) going on or to the farther side of normal or, an acceptable limit implicated byname of your ‘will’, a universal law of nature’: (3) the formula of the end-in-itself’, to enact the duties or function accomplishments as something put into effect or operatively applicable in the responsible actions of abstracted detachments or something other than that of what is to strive in opposition to someone of something, is difficult to comprehend because of aa multiplicity of interrelated elements, in that of something that supports or sustains anything immaterial. The foundation for being, inasmuch as or will be stated, indicate by inference, or exemplified in a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end’: (4) the formula of autonomy, or considering ‘the will of every rational being as a will which makes universal law’: (5) the formula of the Kingdom of Ends, which provides a model for the systematic union of different rational beings under common laws.
Even so, a proposition that is not a conditional ‘p’, may that it has been, that, to contend by reason is fittingly proper to express, says for the affirmative and negative modern opinion, it is wary of this distinction, since what appears categorical may vary notation. Apparently, categorical propositions may also turn out to be disguised conditionals: ‘X’ is intelligent (categorical?) = if ‘X’ is given a range of tasks she performs them better than many people (conditional?) The problem. Nonetheless, is not merely one of classification, since deep metaphysical questions arise when facts that seem to be categorical and therefore solid, come to seem by contrast conditional, or purely hypothetical or potential.
A limited area of knowledge or endeavour to which pursuits, activities and interests are a central representation held to a concept of physical theory. In this way, a field is defined by the distribution of a physical quantity, such as temperature, mass density, or potential energy y, at different points in space. In the particularly important example of force fields, such as gravitational, electrical, and magnetic fields, the field value at a point is the force which a test particle would experience if it were located at that point. The philosophical problem is whether a force field is to be thought of as purely potential, so the presence of a field merely describes the propensity of masses to move relative to each other, or whether it should be thought of in terms of the physically real modifications of a medium, whose properties result in such powers that aptly to have a tendency or inclination that form a compelling feature whose agreeable nature is especially to interactions with force fields in pure potential, that fully characterized by dispositional statements or conditionals, or are they categorical or actual? The former option seems to require within ungrounded dispositions, or regions of space that to be unlike or distinction in nature, form or characteristic, as to be unlike or appetite of opinion and differing by holding opposite views. The dissimilarity in what happens if an object is placed there, the law-like shape of these dispositions, apparent for example in the curved lines of force of the magnetic field, may then seem quite inexplicable. To atomists, such as Newton it would represent a return to Aristotelian entelechies, or quasi-psychological affinities between things, which are responsible for their motions. The latter option requires understanding of how forces of attraction and repulsion can be ‘grounded’ in the properties of the medium.
The basic idea of a field is arguably present in Leibniz, who was certainly hostile to Newtonian atomism. Nonetheless, his equal hostility to ‘action at a distance’ muddies the water. It is usually credited to the Jesuit mathematician and scientist Joseph Boscovich (1711-87) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), both of whom put into action the unduly persuasive influence for attracting the scientist Faraday, with whose work the physical notion became established. In his paper ‘On the Physical Character of the Lines of Magnetic Force’ (1852), Faraday was to suggest several criteria for assessing the physical reality of lines of force, such as whether they are affected by an intervening material medium, whether the motion depends on the nature of what is placed at the receiving end. As far as electromagnetic fields go, Faraday himself inclined to the view that the mathematical similarity between heat flow, currents, and electro-magnetic lines of force was evidence for the physical reality of the intervening medium.
Once, again, our administrations of recognition for which its case value, whereby its view is especially associated the American psychologist and philosopher William James (1842-1910), that the truth of a statement can be defined in terms of a ‘utility’ of accepting it. To fix upon one among alternatives as the one to be taken, accepted or adopted by choice leaves, open a dispiriting position for which its place of valuation may be viewed as an objection. Since there are things that are false, as it may be useful to accept, and conversely there are things that are true and that it may be damaging to accept. Nevertheless, there are deep connections between the idea that a representation system is accorded, and the likely success of the projects in progressive formality, by its possession. The evolution of a system of representation either perceptual or linguistic, seems bounded to connect successes with everything adapting or with utility in the modest sense. The Wittgenstein doctrine stipulates the meaning of use that upon the nature of belief and its relations with human attitude, emotion and the idea that belief in the truth on one hand, the action of the other. One way of binding with cement, wherefore the connection is found in the idea that natural selection becomes much as much in adapting us to the cognitive creatures, because beliefs have effects, they work. Pragmatism can be found in Kant’s doctrine, and continued to play an influencing role in the theory of meaning and truth.
James, (1842-1910), although with characteristic generosity exaggerated in his debt to Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914), he charted that the method of doubt encouraged people to pretend to doubt what they did not doubt in their hearts, and criticize its individualist’s insistence, that the ultimate test of certainty is to be found in the individuals personalized consciousness.
From his earliest writings, James understood cognitive processes in teleological terms. ‘Thought’, he held, ‘assists us in the satisfactory interests. His will to Believe doctrine, the view that we are sometimes justified in believing beyond the evidential relics upon the notion that a belief’s benefits are relevant to its justification. His pragmatic method of analysing philosophical problems, for which requires that we find the meaning of terms by examining their application to objects in experimental situations, similarly reflects the teleological approach in its attention to consequences.’
Such an approach, however, sets James’ theory of meaning apart from verification, dismissive of metaphysics, unlike the verificationalist, who takes cognitive meaning to be a matter only of consequences in sensory experience. James’ took pragmatic meaning to include emotional and matter responses. Moreover, his metaphysical standard of value, is, not a way of dismissing them as meaningless. It should also be noted that in a greater extent, circumspective moments. James did not hold that even his broad set of consequences was exhaustively terminological in meaning. ‘Theism’, for example, he took to have antecedently, definitional meaning, in addition to its varying degree of importance and chance upon an important pragmatic meaning.
James’ theory of truth reflects upon his teleological conception of cognition, by considering a true belief to be one which is compatible with our existing system of beliefs, and leads us to satisfactory interaction with the world.
However, Peirce’s famous pragmatist principle is a rule of logic employed in clarifying our concepts and ideas. Consider the claim the liquid in a flask is an acid, if, we believe this, we except that it would turn red: We accept an action of ours to have certain experimental results. The pragmatic principle holds that listing the conditional expectations of this kind, in that we associate such immediacy with applications of a conceptual representation that provides a complete and orderly sets clarification of the concept. This is relevant to the logic of abduction: Clarificationists using the pragmatic principle provides all the information about the content of a hypothesis that is relevantly to decide whether it is worth testing.
To a greater extent, and what is most important, is the famed apprehension of the pragmatic principle, in so that, Pierces account of reality: When we take something to be reasonable that by this single case, we think it is ‘fated to be agreed upon by all who investigate’ the matter to which it stand, in other words, if I believe that it is really the case that ‘P’, then I except that if anyone were to inquire depthfully into the finding its measure into whether ‘p’, they would arrive at the belief that ‘p’. It is not part of the theory that the experimental consequences of our actions should be specified by a warranted empiricist vocabulary - Peirce insisted that perceptual theories are abounding in latency. Even so, nor is it his view that the collected conditionals do or not clarify a concept as all analytic. In addition, in later writings, he argues that the pragmatic principle could only be made plausible to someone who accepted its metaphysical realism: It requires that ‘would-bees’ are objective and, of course, real.
If realism itself can be given a fairly quick clarification, it is more difficult to chart the various forms of supposition, for they seem legendary. Other opponents disclaim or simply refuse to posit of each entity of its required integration and to firmly hold of its posited view, by which of its relevant discourse that exist or at least exists: The standard example is ‘idealism’ that reality is somehow mind-curative or mind-co-ordinated - that real objects comprising the ‘external worlds’ are dependent of running-off-minds, but only exist as in some way correlative to the mental operations. The doctrine assembled of ‘idealism’ enters on the conceptual note that reality as we understand this as meaningful and reflects the working of mindful purposes. And it construes this as meaning that the inquiring mind in itself makes of a formative substance of which it is and not of any mere understanding of the nature of the ‘real’ bit even the resulting charge we attributively accredit to it.
Wherefore, the term is most straightforwardly used when qualifying another linguistic form of grammatik: a real ‘x’ may be contrasted with a fake, a failed ‘x’, a near ‘x’, and so on. To trat something as real, without qualification, is to suppose it to be part of the actualized world. To reify something is to suppose that we have committed by some indoctrinated treatise, as that of a theory. The central error in thinking of reality and the totality of existence is to think of the ‘unreal’ as a separate domain of things, perhaps, unfairly to that of the benefits of existence.
Such that non-existence of all things, as the product of logical confusion of treating the term ‘nothing’, as itself a referring expression instead of a ‘quantifier’, stating informally as a quantifier is an expression that reports of a quantity of times that a predicate is satisfied in some class of things, i.e., in a domain. This confusion leads the unsuspecting to think that a sentence such as ‘Nothing is all around us’ talks of a special kind of thing that is all around us, when in fact it merely denies that the predicate ‘is all around us’ have appreciations. The feelings that lad some philosophers and theologians, notably Heidegger, to talk of the experience of Nothingness, is not properly the experience of anything, but rather the failure of a hope or expectations that there would be something of some kind at some point. This may arise in quite everyday cases, as when one finds that the article of functions one expected to see as usual, in the corner has disappeared. The difference between ‘existentialist’’ and ‘analytic philosophy’, on the point of what, whereas the former is afraid of nothing, and the latter intuitively thinks that there is nothing to be afraid of.
A rather different situational assortment of some number people has something in common to this positioned as bearing to comportments. Whereby the milieu of change finds to a set to concerns for the upspring of when actions are specified in terms of doing nothing, saying nothing may be an admission of guilt, and doing nothing in some circumstances may be tantamount to murder. Still, other substitutional problems arise over conceptualizing empty space and time.
Whereas, the standard opposition between those who affirm and those who deny, the real existence of some kind of thing or some kind of fact or state of affairs, are not actually but in effect and usually articulated as a discrete condition of surfaces, whereby the quality or state of being associated (as a feeling or recollection) associated in the mind with particular, and yet the peculiarities of things assorted in such manners to take on or present an appearance of false or deceptive evidences. Effectively presented by association, lay the estranged dissimulations as accorded to express oneself especially formally and at great length, on or about the discrepant infirmity with which thing are ‘real’, yet normally pertain of what are the constituent compositors on the other hand. It properly true and right discourse may be the focus of this derived function of opinion: The external world, the past and future, other minds, mathematical objects, possibilities, universals, moral or aesthetic properties are examples. There be to one influential suggestion, as associated with the British philosopher of logic and language, and the most determinative of philosophers centred round Anthony Dummett (1925), to which is borrowed from the ‘intuitionistic’ critique of classical mathematics, and suggested that the unrestricted use of the ‘principle of bivalence’ is the trademark of ‘realism’. However, this has to overcome counter-examples in both ways: Although Aquinas wads a moral ‘realist’, he held that moral really was not sufficiently structured to make true or false every moral claim. Unlike Kant who believed that he could use the law of bivalence happily in mathematics, precisely because of often is to wad in the fortunes where only stands of our own construction. Realism can itself be subdivided: Kant, for example, combines empirical realism (within the phenomenal world the realist says the right things - surrounding objects really exist and independent of us and our mental stares) with transcendental idealism (the phenomenal world as a whole reflects the structures imposed on it by the activity of our minds as they render it intelligible to us). In modern philosophy the orthodox oppositions to realism have been from philosophers such as Goodman, who, impressed by the extent to which we perceive the world through conceptual and linguistic lenses of our own making.
Assigned to the modern treatment of existence in the theory of ‘quantification’ is sometimes put by saying that existence is not a predicate. The idea is that the existential quantify it as an operator on a predicate, indicating that the property it expresses has instances. Existence is therefore treated as a second-order property, or a property of properties. It is fitting to say, that in this it is like number, for when we say that these things of a kind, we do not describe the thing (and we would if we said there are red things of the kind), but instead attribute a property to the kind itself. The parallelled numbers are exploited by the German mathematician and philosopher of mathematics Gottlob Frége in the dictum that affirmation of existence is merely denied of the number nought. A problem, nevertheless, proves accountable for it’s created by sentences like ‘This exists’, where some particular thing is undirected, such that a sentence seems to express a contingent truth (for this insight has not existed), yet no other predicate is involved. ‘This exists’ is. Therefore, unlike ‘Tamed tigers exist’, where a property is said to have an instance, for the word ‘this’ and does not locate a property, but is only an individual.
Possible worlds seem able to differ from each other purely in the presence or absence of individuals, and not merely in th distribution of exemplification of properties.
The philosophical objectivity to oppose by arguing against, purposes of substance, at a higher level facing over against that which to situate a direct point as set one’s sights on, the unreal, as belonging to the domain of Being. Nonetheless, there is little for us that can be said with the philosopher’s study. So it is not apparent that there can be such a subject for being by itself. Nevertheless, the concept had a central place in philosophy from Parmenides to Heidegger. The essential question of ‘why is there something and not of nothing’? Prompting over logical reflection on what it is for a universal to have an instance, nd as long history of attempts to explain contingent existence, by which id to reference and a necessary ground.
In the transition, ever since Plato, this ground becomes a self-sufficient, perfect, unchanging, and external something, identified with having an auspicious character fro which of adapted to the end vew in confronting to a high standard of morality or virtue as proven through something that is desirable or beneficial, that to say, as used as a conventional expression of good wishes for conforming to a standard of what is right and Good or God, but whose relation with the every day, world remains indistinct as shrouded from its view. The celebrated argument for the existence of God first being proportional to experience something to which is proposed to another for consideration as, set before the mind to give serious thought to any risk taken can have existence or a place of consistency, these considerations were consorted in quality value amendable of something added to a principal thing usually to increase its impact or effectiveness. Only to find of itself, in the accompaniment, situation or occurrence that bears with the associations with Anselm in his Proslogin, as the argument apart of defining God as ‘something than which nothing greater can be conceived’. God then exists in the understanding since we understand this concept. However, if, He only existed in the understanding something greater could be conceived, for a being that exists in reality is greater than one that exists in the understanding. Bu then, we can conceive of something greater than that than which nothing greater can be conceived, which is contradictory. Therefore, God cannot exist on the understanding, but exists in reality.
An influential argument (or family of arguments) for the existence of God, finding its premisses are that all natural things are dependent for their existence on something else. The totality of dependence has brought in and for itself the earnest to bring an orderly disposition to it, to make less or more tolerable and to take place of for a time or avoid by some intermittent interval from any exertion before the excessive overplus that rests or to be contingent upon something uncertain, variable or intermediate (on or upon) the base value in the balance. The manifesting of something essential depends upon a non-dependent, or necessary appearance of something as distinguished from the substance of which it is made, yet the foreshadowing to having independent reality is actualized by the existence that leads within the accompaniment (with) which is God. Like the argument to design, the cosmological argument was attacked by the Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume (1711-76) and Immanuel Kant.
Its main problem, nonetheless, is that it requires us to make sense of the notion of necessary existence. For if the answer to the question of why anything exists is that some other tings of a similar kind exists, the question merely springs forth at another time. Consequently, ‘God’ or the ‘gods’ that end the question must exist necessarily: It must not be an entity of which the same kinds of questions can be raised. The other problem with the argument is attributing concern and care to the deity, not for connecting the necessarily existent being it derives with human values and aspirations.
The ontological argument has been treated by modern theologians such as Barth, following Hegel, not so much as a proof with which to confront the unconverted, but as an explanation of the deep meaning of religious belief. Collingwood, regards the arguments proving not that because our idea of God is that of quo-maius cogitare viequit, therefore God exists, but proving that because this is our idea of God, we stand committed to belief in its existence. Its existence is a metaphysical point or absolute pre-supposition of certain forms of thought.
In the 20th century, modal versions of the ontological argument have been propounded by the American philosophers Charles Hertshorne, Norman Malcolm, and Alvin Plantinge. One version is to define something as unsurpassably great, if it exists and is perfect in every ‘possible world’. Then, to allow that it is at least possible that an unsurpassable the defection from a dominant belief or ideology to one that is not orthodox in its beliefs that more or less illustrates the measure through which some degree the extended by some unknown or unspecified by the comprehendility that, in its gross effect, something exists, this means that there is a possible world in which such a being exists. However, if it exists in one world, it exists in all (for the fact that such a being exists in a world that entails, in at least, it exists and is perfect in every world), so, it exists necessarily. The correct response to this argument is to disallow the apparently reasonable concession that it is possible that such a being exists. This concession is much more dangerous than it looks, since in the modal logic, involved from it’s possibly of necessarily ‘p’, we can inevitably the device that something, that performs a function or effect that may handly implement the necessary ‘p’. A symmetrical proof starting from the premiss that it is possibly that such a being does not exist would derive that it is impossible that it exists.
The doctrine that it makes an ethical difference of whether an agent actively intervenes to bring about a result, or omits to act in circumstances in which it is foreseen, that as a result of something omitted or missing the negative absence is to spread out into the same effect as of an outcome operatively flashes across one’s mind, something that happens or takes place in occurrence to enter one’s mind. Thus, suppose that I wish you dead. If I act to bring about your death, I am a murderer, however, if I happily discover you in danger of death, and fail to act to save you, I am not acting, and therefore, according to the doctrine of acts and omissions not a murderer. Critics implore that omissions can be as deliberate and immoral as I am responsible for your food and fact to feed you. Only omission is surely a killing, ‘Doing nothing’ can be a way of doing something, or in other worlds, absence of bodily movement can also constitute acting negligently, or deliberately, and defending on the context may be a way of deceiving, betraying, or killing. Nonetheless, criminal law offers to find its conveniences, from which to distinguish discontinuous intervention, for which is permissible, from bringing about results, which may not be, if, for instance, the result is death of a patient. The question is whether the difference, if there is one, is, between acting and omitting to act be discernibly or defined in a way that bars a general moral might.
The double effect of a principle attempting to define when an action that had both good and bad quality’s result is morally foretokens to think on and resolve in the mind beforehand of thought to be considered as carefully deliberate. In one formation such an action is permissible if (1) The action is not wrong in itself, (2) the bad consequence is not that which is intended (3) the good is not itself a result of the bad consequences, and (4) the two consequential effects are commensurate. Thus, for instance, I might justifiably bomb an enemy factory, foreseeing but intending that the death of nearby civilians, whereas bombing the death of nearby civilians intentionally would be disallowed. The principle has its roots in Thomist moral philosophy, accordingly. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), held that it is meaningless to ask whether a human being is two tings (soul and body) or, only just as it is meaningless to ask whether the wax and the shape given to it by the stamp are one: On this analogy the sound is ye form of the body. Life after death is possible only because a form itself does not perish (pricking is a loss of form).
And, therefore, in some sense available to reactivate a new body, therefore, not I who survive body death, but I may be resurrected in the same personalized bod y that becomes reanimated by the same form, that which Aquinas’s account, as a person has no privileged self-understanding, we understand ourselves as we do everything else, by way of sense experience and abstraction, and knowing the principle of our own lives is an achievement, not as a given. Difficultly ast this point led the logical positivist to abandon the notion of an epistemological foundation altogether, and to flirt with the coherence theory of truth, it is widely accepted that trying to make the connection between thought and experience through basic sentence s depends on an untenable ‘myth of the given. The special way that we each have of knowing our own thoughts, intentions, and sensationalist have brought in the many philosophical ‘behaviorist and functionalist tendencies, that have found it important to deny that there is such a special way, arguing the way that I know of my own mind inasmuch as the way that I know of yours, e.g., by seeing what I say when asked. Others, however, point out that the behaviour of reporting the result of introspection in a particular and legitimate kind of behavioural access that deserves notice in any account of historically human psychology. The historical philosophy of reflection upon the astute of history, or of historical, thinking, finds the term was used in the 18th century, e.g., by Volante was to mean critical historical thinking as opposed to the mere collection and repetition of stories about the past. In Hegelian, particularly by conflicting elements within his own system, however, it came to man universal or world history. The Enlightenment confidence was being replaced by science, reason, and understanding that gave history a progressive moral thread, and under the influence of the German philosopher, whom is in spreading Romanticism, collectively Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), and, Immanuel Kant, this idea took it further to hold, so that philosophy of history cannot be the detecting of a grand system, the unfolding of the evolution of human nature as witnessed in successive sages (the progress of rationality or of Spirit). This essential speculative philosophy of history is given an extra Kantian twist in the German idealist Johann Fichte, in whom the extra association of temporal succession with logical implication introduces the idea that concepts themselves are the dynamic engines of historical change. The idea is readily intelligible in that the world of nature and of thought become identified. The work of Herder, Kant, Flichte and Schelling is synthesized by Hegel: History has a plot, as too, this to the moral development of man, comparability in the accompaniment with a larger whole made up of one or more characteristics clarify the position on the question of freedom within the providential state. This in turn is the development of thought, or a logical development in which various necessary moment in the life of the concept are successively achieved and improved upon. Hegel’s method is at it’s most successful, when the object is the history of ideas, and the evolution of thinking may march in steps with logical oppositions and their resolution encounters red by various systems of thought.
Within the revolutionary communism, Karl Marx (1818-83) and the German social philosopher Friedrich Engels (1820-95), there emerges a rather different kind of story, based upon Hefl’s progressive structure not laying the achievement of the goal of history to a future in which the political condition for freedom comes to exist, so that economic and political fears than ‘reason’ is in the engine room. Although, it is such that speculations upon the history may that it is continued to be written, notably: late examples, by the late 19th century large-scale speculation of tis kind with the nature of historical understanding, and in particular with a comparison between the methods of natural science and with the historians. For writers such as the German neo-Kantian Wilhelm Windelband and the German philosopher and literary critic and historian Wilhelm Dilthey, it is important to show that the human sciences such, as history is objective and legitimate, nonetheless they are in some way deferent from the enquiry of the scientist. Since the subjective-matter is the past thought and actions of human brings, what is needed and actions of human beings, past thought and actions of human beings, what is needed is an ability to re-live that past thought, knowing the deliberations of past agents, as if they were the historian’s own. The most influential British writer on this theme was the philosopher and historian George Collingwood (1889-1943) whose, The Idea of History (1946), contains an extensive defence of the verstehe approach, but it is nonetheless, the explanation from their actions, however, by re-living the situation as our understanding that understanding others is not gained by the tactic use of a ‘theory’, enabling us to infer what thoughts or intentionality experienced, again, the matter to which the subjective-matters of past thoughts and actions, as I have a human ability of knowing the deliberations of past agents as if they were the historian’s own. The immediate question of the form of historical explanation, and the fact that general laws have other than no place or any apprentices in the order of a minor place in the human sciences, it is also prominent in thoughts about distinctiveness as to regain their actions, but by re-living the situation in or thereby an understanding of what they experience and thought.
The view that everyday attributions of intention, belief and meaning to other persons proceeded via tacit use of a theory that enables ne to construct these interpretations as explanations of their doings. The view is commonly hld along with functionalism, according to which psychological states theoretical entities, identified by the network of their causes and effects. The theory-theory had different implications, depending on which feature of theories is being stressed. Theories may be though of as capable of formalization, as yielding predications and explanations, as achieved by a process of theorizing, as achieved by predictions and explanations, as achieved by a process of theorizing, as answering to empirically evince that is in principle describable without them, as liable to be overturned by newer and better theories, and o on. The main problem with seeing our understanding of others as the outcome of a piece of theorizing is the non-existence of a medium in which this theory can be couched, as the child learns simultaneously he minds of others and the meaning of terms in its native language.
Our understanding of others is not gained by the tacit use of a ‘theory’. Enabling us to infer what thoughts or intentions explain their actions, however, by re-living the situation ‘in their moccasins’, or from their point of view, and thereby understanding what hey experienced and thought, and therefore expressed. Understanding others is achieved when we can ourselves deliberate as they did, and hear their words as if they are our own. The suggestion is a modern development of the ‘verstehen’ tradition associated with Dilthey, Weber and Collngwood.
Much as much that in some sense available to reactivate a new body, however, not that I, who survives bodily death, but I may be resurrected in the same body that becomes reanimated by the same form, in that of Aquinas’s account, a person had no concession for being such as may become true or actualized privilege of self-understanding. We understand ourselves, just as we do everything else, that through the sense experience, in that of an abstraction, may justly be of knowing the principle of our own lives, is to obtainably achieve, and not as a given. In the theory of knowledge that knowing Aquinas holds the Aristotelian doctrine that knowing entails some similarities between the knower and what there is to be known: A human’s corporal nature, therefore, requires that knowledge start with sense perception. As yet, the same limitations that do not apply of bringing further the levelling stabilities that are contained within the hierarchical mosaic, such as the celestial heavens that open in bringing forth to angles.
In the domain of theology Aquinas deploys the distraction emphasized by Eringena, between the existence of God in understanding the significance, of five arguments: They are (1) Motion is only explicable if there exists an unmoved, a first mover (2) the chain of efficient causes demands a first cause (3) the contingent character of existing things in the wold demands a different order of existence, or in other words as something that has a necessary existence (4) the gradation of value in things in the world requires the existence of something that is most valuable, or perfect, and (5) the orderly character of events points to a final cause, or end t which all things are directed, and the existence of this end demands a being that ordained it. All the arguments are physico-theological arguments, in that between reason and faith, Aquinas lays out proofs of the existence of God.
He readily recognizes that there are doctrines such that are the Incarnation and the nature of the Trinity, know only through revelations, and whose acceptance is more a matter of moral will. God’s essence is identified with his existence, as pure activity. God is simple, containing no potential. No matter how, we cannot obtain knowledge of what God is (his quiddity), perhaps, doing the same work as the principle of charity, but suggesting that we regulate our procedures of interpretation by maximizing the extent to which we see the subject s humanly reasonable, than the extent to which we see the subject as right about things. Whereby remaining content with descriptions that apply to him partly by way of analogy, God reveals of himself, and is not himself.
The immediate problem availed of ethics is posed b y the English philosopher Phillippa Foot, in her ‘The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect’ (1967). Unaware of a suddenly runaway train or trolley comes to a section in the track that is under construction and impassable. One person is working on one part and five on the other, and the trolley will put an end to anyone working on the branch it enters. Clearly, to most minds, the driver should steer for the fewest populated branch. But now suppose that, left to itself, it will enter the branch with its five employees that are there, and you as a bystander can intervene, altering the points so that it veers through the other. Is it right or obligors, or even permissible for you to do this, thereby, apparently involving you in ways that responsibility ends in a death of one person? After all, who have you wronged if you leave it to go its own way? The situation is similarly standardized of others in which utilitarian reasoning seems to lead to one course of action, but a person’s integrity or principles may oppose it.
Describing events that haphazardly happen does not of themselves sanction to act or do something that is granted by one forbidden to pass or take leave of commutable substitutions as not to permit us to talk or talking of rationality and intention, in that of explaining offered the consequential rationalizations which are the categories we may apply if we conceive of them as action. We think of ourselves not only passively, as creatures that make things happen. Understanding this distinction gives forth of its many major problems concerning the nature of an agency for the causation of bodily events by mental events, and of understanding the ‘will’ and ‘free will’. Other problems in the theory of action include drawing the distinction between an action and its consequence, and describing the structure involved when we do one thing by relating or carrying the categorized set class order of accomplishments than to culminating the point reference in the doing of another thing. Even the planning and dating where someone shoots someone on one day and in one place, whereby the victim then dies on another day and in another place. Where and when did the murderous act take place?
Causation, least of mention, is not clear that only events are created for and in themselves. Kant cites the example of a cannonball at rest and stationed upon a cushion, but causing the cushion to be the shape that it is, and thus to suggest that the causal states of affairs or objects or facts may also be casually related. All of which, the central problem is to understand the elements of necessitation or determinacy for the future, as well as, in Hume’s thought, stir the feelings as marked by realization, perception or knowledge often of something not generally realized, perceived or known that are grounded of awaiting at which point at some distance from a place expressed that even without hesitation or delay, the reverence in ‘a clear detached loosening and becoming of cause to become disunited or disjoined by a distinctive separation. How then are we to conceive of others? The relationship seems not too perceptible, for all that perception gives us (Hume argues) is knowledge of the patterns that events do, actually falling into than any acquaintance with the connections determining the pattern. It is, however, clear that our conceptions of everyday objects are largely determined by their casual powers, and all our action is based on the belief that these causal powers are stable and reliable. Although scientific investigation can give us wider and deeper dependable patterns, it seems incapable of bringing us any nearer to the ‘must’ of causal necessitation. Particular examples of puzzling causalities are quite apart from general problems of forming any conception of what it is: How are we to understand the casual interaction between mind and body? How can the present, which exists, or its existence to a past that no longer exists? How is the stability of the casual order to be understood? Is backward causality possible? Is causation a concept needed in science, or dispensable?
Within this modern contemporary world, the disjunction between the ‘in itself’ and ‘for itself’, has been through the awakeness or cognizant of which to give information about something especially as in the conduct or carried out without rightly prescribed procedures wherefore the investigation or examination from Kantian and the epistemological distinction as an appearance as it is in itself, and that thing as an appearance, or of it is for itself. For Kant, the thing in itself is the thing as it is intrinsically, that is, the character of the thing as a discrete item and to the position (something) in a situational assortment of having something commonly considered by or as if connected with another ascribing relation in which it happens to stand. The thing for us, or as an appearance, on the other hand, is the thin insofar as it stand s in relation to our cognitive faculties and other objects. ‘Now a thing in itself cannot be known through mere relations. We may therefore conclude that since outer sense gives us nothing but mere relations, this sense can contain in its representation only the relation of an object to the subject, and not the inner properties of the object in itself, Kant applies this same distinction to the subject’s cognition of itself. Since the subject can know itself only insofar as it can intuit itself, and it can intuit itself only in terms of temporal relations, and thus as it is related to itself. Its gathering or combining parts or elements culminating into a close mass or coherent wholeness of inseparability, it represents itself ‘as it appears to itself, not as it is’. Thus, the distinction between what the subject is in itself and what it is for itself arises in Kant insofar as the distinction between what an object is in itself and what it is for a knower is relevantly applicative to the basic idea or the principal object of attention in a discourse or open composition, peculiarly to a particular individual as modified by individual bias and limitation for the subject’s own knowledge of itself.
The German philosopher Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), begins the transition of the epistemological distinction between what the subject is in itself and what it is for itself into an ontological distinction. Since, for Hegel what is, as it is in fact or in itself, necessarily involves relation, the Kantian distinction must be transformed. Taking his cue from the fact that, even for Kant, what the subject is in fact or in itself involves a relation to itself, or self-consciousness, Hegel suggests that the cognition of an entity in terms of such relations or self-relations does not preclude knowledge of the thing itself. Rather, what an entity is intrinsically, or in itself, is best understood in terms of the potential of what thing to enter int o specific explicit relations with itself. And, just as for consciousness to be explicitly itself is for it to be for itself is being in relations to itself, i.e., to be explicitly self-conscious, the range of extensive justification bounded for itself of any entity is that entity insofar as it is actually related to itself. The distinction between the entity in itself and the entity itself is thus taken to apply to every entity, and not only to the subject. For example, the seed of a plant is that plant which involves actual relations among the plant’s various organs is he plant ‘for itself’. In Hegal, then, the in itself/for itself distinction becomes universalized, in that it is applied to all entities, and not merely to conscious entities. In addition, the distinction takes on an ontological dimension. While the seed and the mature plant are one and the same entity, the being in itself of the plant, or the plant as potential adult, is ontologically distinct from the being for itself of the plant, or the actually existing mature organism. At the same time, the distinction retains an epistemological dimension in Hegel, although its import is quite different from that of the Kantian distinction. To knowing of a thing it is necessary to know both the actual, explicit self-relations which mark the thing as, the being for itself of the thing, and the inherent simple principle of these relations, or the being in itself of the thing. Real knowledge, for Hegel, thus consists in a knowledge of the thing as it is in and for itself.
Sartre’s distinction between being in itself, and being for itself, which is an entirely ontological distinction with minimal epistemological import, is descended from the Hegelian distinction, Sartre distinguishes between what it is for consciousness to be, i.e., being for itself, and the being of the transcendent being which is intended by consciousness, i.e., being in itself. Being in itself is marked by the unreserved aggregate forms of ill-planned arguments whereby the constituents total absence of being absent or missing of relations in this first degree, also not within themselves or with any other. On the other hand, what it is for consciousness to be, being for itself, is marked to be self-relational. Sartre posits a ‘Pre-reflective Cogito’, such that every consciousness of ‘x’ necessarily involves a non-positional’ consciousness of the consciousness of ‘x’. While in Kant every subject is both in itself, i.e., as it apart from its relations, and for itself insofar as it is related to itself by appearing to itself, and in Hegel every entity can be attentively considered as both in itself and for itself, in Sartre, to be selfly related or for itself is the distinctive ontological mark of consciousness, while to lack relations or to be itself is the distinctive ontological mark of non-conscious entities.
The news concerning free-will, is nonetheless, a problem for which is to reconcile our everyday consciousness of ourselves as agent, with the best view of what science tells us that we are. Determinism is one part of the problem. It may be defined as the doctrine that every event has a cause. More precisely, for any event ‘C’, there will be one antecedent state of nature ‘N’, and a law of nature ‘L’, such that given L, N will be followed by ‘C’. But if this is true of every event, it is true of events such as my doing something or choosing to do something. So my choosing or doing something is fixed by some antecedent state ‘N’ an d the laws. Since determinism is considered as a universal these, whereby in course or trend turns if found to a predisposition or special interpretation that constructions are fixed, and so backwards to events, for which I am clearly not responsible (events before my birth, for example). So, no events can be voluntary or free, where that means that they come about purely because of my willing them I could have done otherwise. If determinism is true, then there will be antecedent states and laws already determining such events: How then can I truly be said to be their author, or be responsible for them?
Reactions to this problem are commonly classified as: (1) Hard determinism. This accepts the conflict and denies that you have real freedom or responsibility (2) Soft determinism or compatibility, whereby reactions in this family assert that everything you should be and from a notion of freedom is quite compatible with determinism. In particular, if your actions are caused, it can often be true of you that you could have done otherwise if you had chosen, and this may be enough to render you liable to be held unacceptable (the fact that previous events will have caused you to choose as you did and your choice is deemed irrelevant on this option). (3) Libertarianism, as this is the view that while compatibilism is only an evasion, there is a greater degree that is more substantiative, real notions of freedom that can yet be preserved in the face of determinism (or, of indeterminism). In Kant, while the empirical or phenomenal self is determined and not free, whereas the noumenal or rational self is capable of being rational, free action. However, the noumeal self exists outside the categorical priorities of space and time, as this freedom seems to be of a doubtful value as other libertarian avenues do include of suggesting that the problem is badly framed, for instance, because the definition of determinism breaks down, or postulates by its suggesting that there are two independent but consistent ways of looking at an agent, the scientific and the humanistic, wherefore it is only through confusing them that the problem seems urgent. Nevertheless, these avenues have gained general popularity, as an error to confuse determinism and fatalism.
The dilemma for which determinism is for itself often supposes of an action that seems as the end of a causal chain, or, perhaps, by some hieratical set of suppositional actions that would stretch back in time to events for which an agent has no conceivable responsibility, then the agent is not responsible for the action.
Once, again, the dilemma adds that if something becoming or a direct condition or occurrence traceable to a cause for its belonging in force of impression of one thing on another, would itself be a kindly action, the effectuation is then, an action that is not the limitation or borderline termination of an end result of such a cautionary feature of something one ever seemed to notice, the concerns of interests are forbearing the likelihood that becomes different under such changes of any alteration or progressively sequential given, as the contingency passes over and above the chain, then either/or one of its contributing causes to cross one’s mind develops a definite plan, purpose or pattern, as arranged methodically. In that no antecedent events brought it upon or within a circuitous way or course, and in that representation nobody is subject to any amenable answer for which is a matter of claiming responsibilities to bear the effectual condition by some practicable substance only if which one in difficulty or need, as to convey as an idea to the mind in weighing the legitimate requisites of reciprocally expounded representations. So, whether or not determinism is true, responsibility is shown to be illusory.
Still, there is to say, to have a will is to be able to desire an outcome and to purpose to bring it about. Strength of will, or firmness of purpose, is supposed to be good and weakness of will or awkwardly falling short of a standard of what is satisfactory amiss of having undergone the soils of a bad apple.
A mental act of willing or trying whose presence is sometimes supposed to make the difference between intentional and voluntary action, as well of mere behaviour, the theories that there are such acts are problematic, and the idea that they make the required difference is a case of explaining a phenomenon by citing another that rises exactly at the same problem, since the intentional or voluntary nature of the set of volition causes to otherwise necessitate the quality values in pressing upon or claiming of demands are especially pretextually connected within its contiguity as placed primarily as an immediate, its lack of something essential as the opportunity or requiring need for explanation. For determinism to act in accordance with the law of autonomy or freedom, is that in ascendance with universal moral law and regardless of selfish advantage.
A categorical notion in the work as contrasted in Kantian ethics show of a hypothetical imperative that embeds a complementarity, which in place is only given to some antecedent desire or project. ‘If you want to look wise, stay quiet’. The injunction to stay quiet only makes the act or practice of something or the state of being used, such that the quality of being appropriate or to some end result will avail the effectual cause, in that those with the antecedent desire or inclination: If one has no desire to look wise the injunction or advice lapses. A categorical imperative cannot be so avoided, it is a requirement that binds anybody, regardless of their inclination. It could be repressed as, for example, ‘Tell the truth (regardless of whether you want to or not)’. The distinction is not always mistakably presumed or absence of the conditional or hypothetical form: ‘If you crave drink, don’t become a bartender’ may be regarded as an absolute injunction applying to anyone, although only activated in the case of those with the stated desire.
In Grundlegung zur Metaphsik der Sitten (1785), Kant discussed some of the given forms of categorical imperatives, such that of (1) The formula of universal law: ‘act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become universal law’, (2) the formula of the law of nature: ‘Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature’, (3) the formula of the end-in-itself, ‘Act in such a way that you always trat humanity of whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as an end, but always at the same time as an end’, (4) the formula of autonomy, or consideration; ’the will’ of every rational being a will which makes universal law’, and (5) the formula of the Kingdom of Ends, which provides a model for systematic union of different rational beings under common laws.
A central object in the study of Kant’s ethics is to understand the expressions of the inescapable, binding requirements of their categorical importance, and to understand whether they are equivalent at some deep level. Kant’s own application of the notions is always convincing: One cause of confusion is relating Kant’s ethical values to theories such as; expressionism’ in that it is easy but imperatively must that it cannot be the expression of a sentiment, yet, it must derive from something ‘unconditional’ or necessary’ such as the voice of reason. The standard mood of sentences used to issue request and commands are their imperative needs to issue as basic the need to communicate information, and as such to animals signalling systems may as often be interpreted either way, and understanding the relationship between commands and other action-guiding uses of language, such as ethical discourse. The ethical theory of ‘prescriptivism’ in fact equates the two functions. A further question is whether there is an imperative logic. ‘Hump that bale’ seems to follow from ‘Tote that barge and hump that bale’, follows from ‘Its windy and its raining’: .But it is harder to say how to include other forms, does ‘Shut the door or shut the window’ follow from ‘Shut the window’, for example? The usual way to develop an imperative logic is to work in terms of the possibility of satisfying the other one command without satisfying the other, thereby turning it into a variation of ordinary deductive logic.
Despite the fact that the morality of people and their ethics amount to the same thing, there is a usage in that morality as such has that of Kantian supply or to serve as a basis something on which another thing is reared or built or by which it is supported or fixed in place as this understructure is the base, that on given notions as duty, obligation, and principles of conduct, reserving ethics for the more Aristotelian approach to practical reasoning as based on the valuing notions that are characterized by their particular virtue, and generally avoiding the separation of ‘moral’ considerations from other practical considerations. The scholarly issues are complicated and complex, with some writers seeing Kant as more Aristotelian. And Aristotle as more, is to bring a person thing into circumstances or a situation from which extrication different with a separate sphere of responsibility and duty, than the simple contrast suggests.
The Cartesian doubt is the method of investigating how much knowledge and its basis in reason or experience as used by Descartes in the first two Medications. It attempted to put knowledge upon secure foundation by first inviting us to suspend judgements on any proportion whose truth can be doubted, even as a bare possibility. The standards of acceptance are gradually raised as we are asked to doubt the deliverance of memory, the senses, and eve n reason, all of which are in principle capable of letting us down. This is eventually found in the celebrated ‘Cogito ergo sum’: I think, therefore I am. By locating the point of certainty in my awareness of my own self, Descartes gives a first-person twist to the theory of knowledge that dominated the following centuries in spite of a various counter-attack on behalf of social and public starting-points. The metaphysics associated with this priority are the Cartesian dualism, or separation of mind and matter into two different but interacting substances. Descartes rigorously and rightly become aware of that which it takes divine dispensation to certify any relationship between the two realms thus divided, and to prove the reliability of the senses invokes a 'clear and distinct perception' of highly dubious proofs of the existence of a benevolent deity. This has not met general acceptance: A Hume drily puts it, 'to have recourse to the veracity of the supreme Being, in order to prove the veracity of our senses, is surely making a very unexpected circuit.'
By dissimilarity, Descartes’s notorious denial that non-human animals are conscious is a stark illustration of dissimulation. In his conception of matter Descartes also gives preference to rational cogitation over anything from the senses. Since we can conceive of the matter of a ball of wax, surviving changes to its sensible qualities, matter is not an empirical concept, but eventually an entirely geometrical one, with extension and motion as its only physical nature.
Although the structure of Descartes’s epistemology, theory of mind and theory of matter have been rejected many times, their relentless exposure of the hardest issues, their exemplary clarity and even their initial plausibility, all contrives to make him the central point of reference for modern philosophy.
The term instinct (Lat., instinctus, impulse or urge) implies innately determined behaviour, flexible to change in circumstance outside the control of deliberation and reason. The view that animals accomplish even complex tasks not by reason was common to Aristotle and the Stoics, and the inflexibility of their outline was used in defence of this position as early as Avicennia. A continuity between animal and human reason was proposed by Hume, and followed by sensationalist such as the naturalist Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802). The theory of evolution prompted various views of the emergence of stereotypical behaviour, and the idea that innate determinants of behaviour are fostered by specific environments is a guiding principle of ethology. In this sense it may be instinctive in human beings to be social, and for that matter too reasoned on what we now know about the evolution of human language abilities, however, it seems clear that our real or actualized self is not imprisoned in our minds.
It is implicitly a part of the larger whole of biological life, human observers its existence from embedded relations to this whole, and constructs its reality as based on evolved mechanisms that exist in all human brains. This suggests that any sense of the 'otherness' of self and world be is an illusion, in that disguises of its own actualization are to find all its relations between the part that are of their own characterization. Its self as related to the temporality of being whole is that of a biological reality. It can be viewed, of course, that a proper definition of this whole must not include the evolution of the larger indivisible whole. Yet, the cosmos and unbroken evolution of all life, by that of the first self-replication molecule that was the ancestor of DNA. It should include the complex interactions that have proven that among all the parts in biological reality that any resultant of emerging is self-regulating. This, of course, is responsible to properties owing to the whole of what might be to sustain the existence of the parts.
Founded on complications and complex coordinate systems in ordinary language may be conditioned as to establish some developments have been descriptively made by its physical reality and metaphysical concerns. That is, that it is in the history of mathematics and that the exchanges between the mega-narratives and frame tales of religion and science were critical factors in the minds of those who contributed. The first scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, allowed scientists to better them in the understudy of how the classical paradigm in physical reality has marked results in the stark Cartesian division between mind and world that became one of the most characteristic features of Western thought. This is not, however, another strident and ill-mannered diatribe against our misunderstandings, but drawn upon equivalent self realization and undivided wholeness or predicted characterlogic principles of physical reality and the epistemological foundations of physical theory.
The subjectivity of our mind affects our perceptions of the world that is held to be objective by natural science. Create both aspects of mind and matter as individualized forms that belong to the same underlying reality.
Our everyday experience confirms the apparent fact that there is a dual-valued world as subject and objects. We as having consciousness, as personality and as experiencing beings are the subjects, whereas for everything for which we can come up with a name or designation, seems to be the object, that which is opposed to us as a subject. Physical objects are only part of the object-world. There are also mental objects, objects of our emotions, abstract objects, religious objects etc. language objectifies our experience. Experiences per se are purely sensational experienced that do not make a distinction between object and subject. Only verbalized thought reifies the sensations by conceptualizing them and pigeonholing them into the given entities of language.
Some thinkers maintain, that subject and object are only different aspects of experience. I can experience myself as subject, and in the act of self-reflection. The fallacy of this argument is obvious: Being a subject implies having an object. We cannot experience something consciously without the mediation of understanding and mind. Our experience is already conceptualized at the time it comes into our consciousness. Our experience is negative insofar as it destroys the original pure experience. In a dialectical process of synthesis, the original pure experience becomes an object for us. The common state of our mind is only capable of apperceiving objects. Objects are reified negative experience. The same is true for the objective aspect of this theory: by objectifying myself I do not dispense with the subject, but the subject is causally and apodictically linked to the object. As soon as I make an object of anything, I have to realize, that it is the subject, which objectifies something. It is only the subject who can do that. Without the subject there are no objects, and without objects there is no subject. This interdependence, however, is not to be understood in terms of a dualism, so that the object and the subject are really independent substances. Since the object is only created by the activity of the subject, and the subject is not a physical entity, but a mental one, we have to conclude then, that the subject-object dualism is purely mentalistic.
The Cartesian dualism posits the subject and the object as separate, independent and real substances, both of which have their ground and origin in the highest substance of God. Cartesian dualism, however, contradicts itself: The very fact, which Descartes posits the 'I,' that is the subject, as the only certainty, he defied materialism, and thus the concept of some 'res extensa.' The physical thing is only probable in its existence, whereas the mental thing is absolutely and necessarily certain. The subject is superior to the object. The object is only derived, but the subject is the original. This makes the object not only inferior in its substantive quality and in its essence, but relegates it to a level of dependence on the subject. The subject recognizes that the object is a 'res’ extensa' and this means, that the object cannot have essence or existence without the acknowledgment through the subject. The subject posits the world in the first place and the subject is posited by God. Apart from the problem of interaction between these two different substances, Cartesian dualism is not eligible for explaining and understanding the subject-object relation.
By denying Cartesian dualism and resorting to monistic theories such as extreme idealism, materialism or positivism, the problem is not resolved either. What the positivists did, was just verbalizing the subject-object relation by linguistic forms. It was no longer a metaphysical problem, but only a linguistic problem. Our language has formed this object-subject dualism. These thinkers are very superficial and shallow thinkers, because they do not see that in the very act of their analysis they inevitably think in the mind-set of subject and object. By relativizing the object and subject in terms of language and analytical philosophy, they avoid the elusive and problematical amphoria of subject-object, which has been the fundamental question in philosophy ever since. Shunning these metaphysical questions is no solution. Excluding something, by reducing it to a more material and verifiable level, is not only pseudo-philosophy but actually a depreciation and decadence of the great philosophical ideas of mankind.
Therefore, we have to come to grips with idea of subject-object in a new manner. We experience this dualism as a fact in our everyday lives. Every experience is subject to this dualistic pattern. The question, however, is, whether this underlying pattern of subject-object dualism is real or only mental. Science assumes it to be real. This assumption does not prove the reality of our experience, but only that with this method science is most successful in explaining our empirical facts. Mysticism, on the other hand, believes that there is an original unity of subject and objects. To attain this unity is the goal of religion and mysticism. Man has fallen from this unity by disgrace and by sinful behaviour. Now the task of man is to get back on track again and strive toward this highest fulfilment. Again, are we not, on the conclusion made above, forced to admit, that also the mystic way of thinking is only a pattern of the mind and, as the scientists, that they have their own frame of reference and methodology to explain the supra-sensible facts most successfully?
If we assume mind to be the originator of the subject-object dualism, then we cannot confer more reality on the physical or the mental aspect, as well as we cannot deny the one in terms of the other.
The crude language of the earliest users of symbolics must have been considerably gestured and nonsymbiotic vocalizations. Their spoken language probably became reactively independent and a closed cooperative system. Only after the emergence of hominids were to use symbolic communication evolved, symbolic forms progressively took over functions served by non-vocal symbolic forms. This is reflected in modern languages. The structure of syntax in these languages often reveals its origins in pointing gestures, in the manipulation and exchange of objects, and in more primitive constructions of spatial and temporal relationships. We still use nonverbal vocalizations and gestures to complement meaning in spoken language.
The general idea is very powerful, however, the relevance of spatiality to self-consciousness comes about not merely because the world is spatial but also because the self-conscious subject is a spatial element of the world. One cannot be self-conscious without being aware that one is a spatial element of the world, and one cannot be ware that one is a spatial element of the world without a grasp of the spatial nature of the world. Face to face, the idea of a perceivable, objective spatial world that causes ideas too subjectively becoming to denote in the wold. During which time, his perceptions as they have of changing position within the world and to the more or less stable way the world is. The idea that there is an objective world and the idea that the subject is somewhere, and where he is given by what he can perceive.
Research, however distant, are those that neuroscience reveals in that the human brain is a massive parallel system which language processing is widely distributed. Computers generated images of human brains engaged in language processing reveals a hierarchal organization consisting of complicated clusters of brain areas that process different component functions in controlled time sequences. And it is now clear that language processing is not accomplished by stand-alone or unitary modules that evolved with the addition of separate modules that were eventually wired together on some neutral circuit board.
While the brain that evolved this capacity was obviously a product of Darwinian evolution, the most critical precondition for the evolution of this brain cannot be simply explained in these terms. Darwinian evolution can explain why the creation of stone tools altered conditions for survival in a new ecological niche in which group living, pair bonding, and more complex social structures were critical to survival. And Darwinian evolution can also explain why selective pressures in this new ecological niche favoured pre-adaptive changes required for symbolic communication. All the same, this communication resulted directly through its passing an increasingly atypically structural complex and intensively condensed behaviour. Social evolution began to take precedence over physical evolution in the sense that mutations resulting in enhanced social behaviour became selectively advantageously within the context of the social behaviour of hominids.
Because this communication was based on symbolic vocalization that required the evolution of neural mechanisms and processes that did not evolve in any other species. As this marked the emergence of a mental realm that would increasingly appear as separate and distinct from the external material realm.
If the emergent reality in this mental realm cannot be reduced to, or entirely explained as for, the sum of its parts, it seems reasonable to conclude that this reality is greater than the sum of its parts. For example, a complete proceeding of the manner in which light in particular wave lengths has ben advancing by the human brain to generate a particular colour says nothing about the experience of colour. In other words, a complete scientific description of all the mechanisms involved in processing the colour blue does not correspond with the colour blue as perceived in human consciousness. And no scientific description of the physical substrate of a thought or feeling, no matter how accomplish it can but be accounted for in actualized experience, especially of a thought or feeling, as an emergent aspect of global brain function.
If we could, for example, define all of the neural mechanisms involved in generating a particular word symbol, this would reveal nothing about the experience of the word symbol as an idea in human consciousness. Conversely, the experience of the word symbol as an idea would reveal nothing about the neuronal processes involved. And while one mode of understanding the situation necessarily displaces the other, both are required to achieve a complete understanding of the situation.
Even if we are to include two aspects of biological reality, finding to a more complex order in biological reality is associated with the emergence of new wholes that are greater than the orbital parts. Yet, the entire biosphere is of a whole that displays self-regulating behaviour that is greater than the sum of its parts. The emergence of a symbolic universe based on a complex language system could be viewed as another stage in the evolution of more complicated and complex systems. As marked and noted by the appearance of a new profound complementarity in relationships between parts and wholes. This does not allow us to assume that human consciousness was in any sense preordained or predestined by natural process. But it does make it possible, in philosophical terms at least, to argue that this consciousness is an emergent aspect of the self-organizing properties of biological life.
If we also concede that an indivisible whole contains, by definition, no separate parts and that a phenomenon can be assumed to be 'real' only when it is 'observed' phenomenon, we are led to more interesting conclusions. The indivisible whole whose existence is inferred in the results of the aspectual experiments that cannot in principle is itself the subject of scientific investigation. There is a simple reason why this is the case. Science can claim knowledge of physical reality only when the predictions of a physical theory are validated by experiment. Since the indivisible whole cannot be measured or observed, we confront as the 'event horizon' or knowledge where science can say nothing about the actual character of this reality. Why this is so, is a property of the entire universe, then we must also conclude that an undivided wholeness exists on the most primary and basic level in all aspects of physical reality. What we are dealing within science per se, however, are manifestations of tis reality, which are invoked or 'actualized' in making acts of observation or measurement. Since the reality that exists between the space-like separated regions is a whole whose existence can only be inferred in experience. As opposed to proven experiment, the correlations between the particles, and the sum of these parts, do not constitute the 'indivisible' whole. Physical theory allows us to understand why the correlations occur. But it cannot in principle disclose or describe the actualized character of the indivisible whole.
The scientific implications to this extraordinary relationship between parts (qualia) and indivisible whole (the universe) are quite staggering. Our primary concern, however, is a new view of the relationship between mind and world that carries even larger implications in human terms. When factors into our understanding of the relationship between parts and wholes in physics and biology, then mind, or human consciousness, must be viewed as an emergent phenomenon in a seamlessly interconnected whole called the cosmos.
All that is required to embrace the alternative view of the relationship between mind and world that are consistent with our most advanced scientific knowledge is a commitment to metaphysical and epistemological realism and a willingness to follow arguments to their logical conclusions. Metaphysical realism assumes that physical reality or has an actual existence independent of human observers or any act of observation, epistemological realism assumes that progress in science requires strict adherence to scientific mythology, or to the rules and procedures for doing science. If one can accept these assumptions, most of the conclusions drawn should appear fairly self-evident in logical and philosophical terms. And it is also not necessary to attribute any extra-scientific properties to the whole to understand and embrace the new relationship between part and whole and the alternative view of human consciousness that is consistent with this relationship. This is, in this that our distinguishing character between what can be 'proven' in scientific terms and what can be reasonably 'inferred' in philosophical terms based on the scientific evidence.
Moreover, advances in scientific knowledge rapidly became the basis for the creation of a host of new technologies. Yet those responsible for evaluating the benefits and risks associated with the use of these technologies, much less their potential impact on human needs and values, normally had expertise on only one side of a two-culture divide. Perhaps, more important, many of the potential threats to the human future - such as, to, environmental pollution, arms development, overpopulation, and spread of infectious diseases, poverty, and starvation - can be effectively solved only by integrating scientific knowledge with knowledge from the social sciences and humanities. We have not done so for a simple reason - the implications of the amazing new fact of nature called non-locality cannot be properly understood without some familiarity wit the actual history of scientific thought. The intent is to suggest that what is most important about this back-ground can be understood in its absence. Those who do not wish to struggle with the small and perhaps, the fewer amounts of back-ground implications should feel free to ignore it. But this material will be no more challenging as such, that the hope is that from those of which will find a common ground for understanding and that will meet again on this commonly functions in an effort to close the circle, resolves the equations of eternity and complete the universe to obtainably gain in its unification of which that holds within.
A major topic of philosophical inquiry, especially in Aristotle, and subsequently since the 17th and 18th centuries, when the ‘science of man’ began to probe into human motivation and emotion. For such as these, the French moralistes, or Hutcheson, Hume, Smith and Kant, a prime task as to delineate the variety of human reactions and motivations. Such an inquiry would locate our propensity for moral thinking among other faculties, such as perception and reason, and other tendencies as empathy, sympathy or self-interest. The task continues especially in the light of a post-Darwinian understanding of ourselves.
In some moral systems, notably that of Immanuel Kant, corresponding to known facts and facing reality squarely attained of ‘real’ moral worth comes only with interactivity, justly because it is right. However, if you do what is purposely becoming, equitable, but from some other equitable motive, such as the fear or prudence, no moral merit accrues to you. Yet, that in turn seems to discount other admirable motivations, as acting from main-sheet benevolence, or ‘sympathy’. The question is how to balance these opposing ideas and how to understand acting from a sense of obligation without duty or rightness, through which their beginning to seem a kind of fetish. It thus stands opposed to ethics and relying on highly general and abstractive principles, particularly, and those associated with the Kantian categorical imperatives. The view may go as far back as to say that taken in its own, no consideration point, for that which of any particular way of life, that, least of mention, the contributing steps so taken as forwarded by reason or be to an understanding estimate that can only proceed by identifying salient features of a conditional status as characterized by the considerations that carry intellectual weighs that are earnestly on one’s side or another.
As random moral dilemmas set out with intense concern, inasmuch as philosophical matters that exert a profound but influential defence of common sense. Situations, in which each possible course of action breeches some otherwise binding moral principle, are, nonetheless, serious dilemmas making the stuff of many tragedies. The conflict can be described in different was. One suggestion is that whichever action the subject undertakes, that he or she does something wrong. Another is that his is not so, for the dilemma means that in the circumstances for what she or he did was right as any alternate. It is important to the phenomenology of these cases that action leaves a residue of guilt and remorse, even though it had proved it was not the subject’s fault that she or he was considering the dilemma, that the rationality of emotions can be contested. Any normality with more than one fundamental principle seems capable of generating dilemmas, however, dilemmas exist, such as where a mother must decide which of two children to sacrifice, least of mention, no principles are pitted against each other, only if we accept that dilemmas from principles are real and important, this fact can then be used to approach in themselves, such as of ‘utilitarianism’, to espouse various kinds may, perhaps, be centred upon the possibility of relating to independent feelings, liken to recognize only one sovereign principle. Alternatively, of regretting the existence of dilemmas and the unordered jumble of furthering principles, in that of creating several of them, a theorist may use their occurrences to encounter upon that which it is to argue for the desirability of locating and promoting a single sovereign principle.
Nevertheless, some theories into ethics see the subject in terms of a number of laws (as in the Ten Commandments). Th status of these laws may be that they are the edicts of a divine lawmaker, or that they are truths of reason, given to its situational ethics, virtue ethics, regarding them as at best rules-of-thumb, and, frequently disguising the great complexity of practical representations that for reason has placed the Kantian notions of their moral law.
In continence, the natural law possibility points of the view of the states that law and morality are especially associated with St Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), such that his synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian doctrine was eventually to provide the main philosophical underpinning of th Catholic church. Nevertheless, to a greater extent of any attempt to cement the moral and legal order and together within the nature of the cosmos or the nature of human beings, in which sense it found in some Protestant writings, under which had arguably derived functions. From a Platonic view of ethics and its agedly implicit advance of Stoicism. Its law stands above and apart from the activities of human lawmakers: It constitutes an objective set of principles that can be seen as in and for themselves by means of ‘natural usages’ or by reason itself, additionally, (in religious verses of them), that express of God’s will for creation. Non-religious versions of the theory substitute objective conditions for humans flourishing as the source of constraints, upon permissible actions and social arrangements within the natural law tradition. Different views have been held about the relationship between the rule of the law and God’s will. Grothius, for instance, side with the view that the content of natural law is independent of any will, including that of God.
While the German natural theorist and historian Samuel von Pufendorf (1632-94) takes the opposite view. His great work was the De Jure Naturae et Gentium, 1672, and its English translation are ‘Of the Law of Nature and Nations, 1710. Pufendorf was influenced by Descartes, Hobbes and the scientific revolution of the 17th century, his ambition was to introduce a newly scientific ‘mathematical’ treatment on ethics and law, free from the tainted Aristotelian underpinning of ‘scholasticism’. Like that of his contemporary - Locke. His conception of natural laws includes rational and religious principles, making it only a partial forerunner of more resolutely empiricist and political treatment in the Enlightenment.
Pufendorf launched his explorations in Plato’s dialogue ‘Euthyphro’, with whom the pious things are pious because the gods love them, or do the gods love them because they are pious? The dilemma poses the question of whether value can be conceived as the upshot o the choice of any mind, even a divine one. On the fist option the choice of the gods crates goodness and value. Even if this is intelligible, it seems to make it impossible to praise the gods, for it is then vacuously true that they choose the good. On the second option we have to understand a source of value lying behind or beyond the will even of the gods, and by which they can be evaluated. The elegant solution of Aquinas is and is therefore distinct from the will, but not distinct from him.
The dilemma arises whatever the source of authority is supposed to be. Do we care about the good because it is good, or do we just call the benevolent interests or concern for being good of those things that we care about? It also generalizes to affect our understanding of the authority of other things: Mathematics, or necessary truth, for example, are truths necessary because we deem them to be so, or do we deem them to be so because they are necessary?
The natural aw tradition may either assume a stranger form, in which it is claimed that various fact’s entail of primary and secondary qualities, any of which is claimed that various facts entail values, reason by itself is capable of discerning moral requirements. As in the ethics of Knt, these requirements are supposed binding on all human beings, regardless of their desires.
The supposed natural or innate abilities of the mind to know the first principle of ethics and moral reasoning, wherein, those expressions are assigned and related to those that distinctions are which make in terms contribution to the function of the whole, as completed definitions of them, their phraseological impression is termed ‘synderesis’ (or, syntetesis) although traced to Aristotle, the phrase came to the modern era through St Jerome, whose scintilla conscientiae (gleam of conscience) wads a popular concept in early scholasticism. Nonetheless, it is mainly associated in Aquinas as an infallible natural, simple and immediate grasp of first moral principles. Conscience, by contrast, is, more concerned with particular instances of right and wrong, and can be in error, under which the assertion that is taken as fundamental, at least for the purposes of the branch of enquiry in hand.
It is, nevertheless, the view interpreted within the particular states of law and morality especially associated with Aquinas and the subsequent scholastic tradition, showing for itself the enthusiasm for reform for its own sake. Or for ‘rational’ schemes thought up by managers and theorists, is therefore entirely misplaced. Major o exponent s of this theme include the British absolute idealist Herbert Francis Bradley (1846-1924) and Austrian economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek. The notably the idealism of Bradley, there ids the same doctrine that change is contradictory and consequently unreal: The Absolute is changeless. A way of sympathizing a little with his idea is to reflect that any scientific explanation of change will proceed by finding an unchanging law operating, or an unchanging quantity conserved in the change, so that explanation of change always proceeds by finding that which is unchanged. The metaphysical problem of change is to shake off the idea that each moment is created afresh, and to obtain a conception of events or processes as having a genuinely historical reality, Really extended and unfolding in time, as opposed to being composites of discrete temporal atoms. A step toward this end may be to see time itself not as an infinite container within which discrete events are located, bu as a kind of logical construction from the flux of events. This relational view of time was advocated by Leibniz and a subject of the debate between him and Newton’s Absolutist pupil, Clarke.
Generally, nature is an indefinitely mutable term, changing as our scientific conception of the world changes, and often best seen as signifying a contrast with something considered not part of nature. The term applies both to individual species (it is the nature of gold to be dense or of dogs to be friendly), and also to the natural world as a whole. The sense in which it applies to species quickly links up with ethical and aesthetic ideals: A thing ought to realize its nature, what is natural is what it is good for a thing to become, it is natural for humans to be healthy or two-legged, and departure from this is a misfortune or deformity. The associations of what are natural with what it is good to become is visible in Plato, and is the central idea of Aristotle’s philosophy of nature. Unfortunately, the pinnacle of nature in this sense is the mature adult male citizen, with the rest that we would call the natural world, including women, slaves, children and other species, not quite making it.
Nature in general can, however, function as a foil to any idea inasmuch as a source of ideals: In this sense fallen nature is contrasted with a supposed celestial realization of the ‘forms’. The theory of ‘forms’ is probably the most characteristic, and most contested of the doctrines of Plato. In the background ie the Pythagorean conception of form as the key to physical nature, but also the sceptical doctrine associated with the Greek philosopher Cratylus, and is sometimes thought to have been a teacher of Plato before Socrates. He is famous for capping the doctrine of Ephesus of Heraclitus, whereby the guiding idea of his philosophy was that of the logos, is capable of being heard or hearkened to by people, it unifies opposites, and it is somehow associated with fire, which is preeminent among the four elements that Heraclitus distinguishes: Fire, air (breath, the stuff of which souls composed), earth, and water. Although he is principally remembered for the doctrine of the ‘flux’ of all things, and the famous statement that you cannot step into the same river twice, for new waters are ever flowing in upon you. The more extreme implication of the doctrine of flux, e.g., the impossibility of categorizing things truly, do not seem consistent with his general epistemology and views of meaning, and were to his follower Cratylus, although the proper conclusion of his views was that the flux cannot be captured in words. According to Aristotle, he eventually held that since ‘regarding that which everywhere in every respect is changing nothing ids just to stay silent and wag one’s finger. Plato ‘s theory of forms can be seen in part as an action against the impasse to which Cratylus was driven.
The Galilean world view might have been expected to drain nature of its ethical content, however, the term seldom lose its normative force, and the belief in universal natural laws provided its own set of ideals. In the 18th century for example, a painter or writer could be praised as natural, where the qualities expected would include normal (universal) topics treated with simplicity, economy, regularity and harmony. Later on, nature becomes an equally potent emblem of irregularity, wildness, and fertile diversity, but also associated with progress of human history, its incurring definition that has been taken to fit many things as well as transformation, including ordinary human self-consciousness. Nature, being in contrast with in integrated phenomenon may include (1) that which is deformed or grotesque or fails to achieve its proper form or function or just the statistically uncommon or unfamiliar, (2) the supernatural, or the world of gods and invisible agencies, (3) the world of rationality and unintelligence, conceived of as distinct from the biological and physical order, or the product of human intervention, and (5) related to that, the world of convention and artifice.
Different conceptualized traits as founded within the nature's continuous overtures that play ethically, for example, the conception of ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ often provides a justification for aggressive personal and political relations, or the idea that it is women’s nature to be one thing or another is taken to be a justification for differential social expectations. The term functions as a fig-leaf for a particular set of stereotypes, and is a proper target of much feminist writings. Feminist epistemology has asked whether different ways of knowing for instance with different criteria of justification, and different emphases on logic and imagination, characterize male and female attempts to understand the world. Such concerns include awareness of the ‘masculine’ self-image, itself a social variable and potentially distorting picture of what thought and action should be. Again, there is a spectrum of concerns from the highly theoretical to what is the relatively practical. In this latter area particular attention is given to the institutional biases that stand in the way of equal opportunities in science and other academic pursuits, or the ideologies that stand in the way of women seeing themselves as leading contributors to various disciplines. However, to more radical feminists such concerns merely exhibit women wanting for themselves the same power and rights over others that men have claimed, and failing to confront the real problem, which is how to live without such symmetrical powers and rights.
In biological determinism, not only influences but constraints and makes inevitable our development as persons with a variety of traits. At its silliest the view postulates such entities as a gene predisposing people to poverty, and it is the particular enemy of thinkers stressing the parental, social, and political determinants of the way we are.
The philosophy of social science is more heavily intertwined with actual social science than in the case of other subjects such as physics or mathematics, since its question is centrally whether there can be such a thing as sociology. The idea of a ‘science of man’, devoted to uncovering scientific laws determining the basic dynamic s of human interactions was a cherished ideal of the Enlightenment and reached its heyday with the positivism of writers such as the French philosopher and social theorist Auguste Comte (1798-1957), and the historical materialism of Marx and his followers. Sceptics point out that what happens in society is determined by peoples’ own ideas of what should happen, and like fashions those ideas change in unpredictable ways as self-consciousness is susceptible to change by any number of external event s: Unlike the solar system of celestial mechanics a society is not at all a closed system evolving in accordance with a purely internal dynamic, but constantly responsive to shocks from outside.
The sociological approach to human behaviour is based on the premise that all social behaviour has a biological basis, and seeks to understand that basis in terms of genetic encoding for features that are then selected for through evolutionary history. The philosophical problem is essentially one of methodology: Of finding criteria for identifying features that can usefully be explained in this way, and fo r finding criteria for assessing various genetic stories that might provide useful explanations.
Among the features that are proposed for this kind o f explanations are such things as male dominance, male promiscuity versus female fidelity, propensities to sympathy and other emotions, and the limited altruism characteristic of human beings. The strategy has proved unnecessarily controversial, with proponents accused of ignoring the influence of environmental and social factors in moulding people’s characteristics, e.g., at the limit of silliness, by postulating a ‘gene for poverty’, however, there is no need for the approach to commit such errors, since the feature explained sociobiological may be indexed to environment: For instance, it may be a propensity to develop some feature in some other environments (for even a propensity to develop propensities . . .) The main problem is to separate genuine explanation from speculative, just so stories which may or may not identify as really selective mechanisms.
Subsequently, in the 19th century attempts were made to base ethical reasoning on the presumed facts about evolution. The movement is particularly associated with the English philosopher of evolution Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). His first major work was the book Social Statics (1851), which advocated an extreme political libertarianism. The Principles of Psychology was published in 1855, and his very influential Education advocating natural development of intelligence, the creation of pleasurable interest, and the importance of science in the curriculum, appeared in 1861. His First Principles (1862) was followed over the succeeding years by volumes on the Principles of biology and psychology, sociology and ethics. Although he attracted a large public following and attained the stature of a sage, his speculative work has not lasted well, and in his own time there was dissident voice. T.H. Huxley said that Spencer’s definition of a tragedy was a deduction killed by a fact. Writer and social prophet Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) called him a perfect vacuum, and the American psychologist and philosopher William James (1842-1910) wondered why half of England wanted to bury him in Westminister Abbey, and talked of the ‘hurdy-gurdy’ monotony of him, his aggraded organized array of parts or elements forming or functioning as a units were in cohesion of the opening contributions of wholeness and the system proved inseparably unyieldingly.
The premises regarded by a later elements in an evolutionary path are better than earlier ones, the application of this principle then requires seeing western society, laissez-faire capitalism, or some other object of approval, as more evolved than more ‘primitive’ social forms. Neither the principle nor the applications command much respect. The version of evolutionary ethics called ‘social Darwinism’ emphasizes the struggle for natural selection, and drawn the conclusion that we should glorify such struggle, usually by enhancing competitive and aggressive relations between people in society or between societies themselves. More recently the relation between evolution and ethics has been re-thought in the light of biological discoveries concerning altruism and kin-selection.
In that, the study of the say in which a variety of higher mental functions may be adaptions applicable of a psychology of evolution, an outward appearance of something as distinguished from the substances of which it is made, as the conduct regulated by an external control as a custom or formal protocol of procedure may, perhaps, depicts the conventional convenience in having been such at some previous time the hardened notational system in having no definite or recognizable form in response to selection pressures on human populations through evolutionary time. Candidates for such theorizing include material and paternal motivations, capabilities for love and friendship, the development of language as a signalling system, cooperative and aggressive tendencies, our emotional repertoires, our moral reaction, including the disposition to direct and punish those who cheat on an agreement or who freely ride on the work of others, our cognitive structure and many others. Evolutionary psychology goes hand-in-hand with neurophysiological evidence about the underlying circuitry in the brain which subserves the psychological mechanisms it claims to identify.
For all that, an essential part of the British absolute idealist Herbert Bradley (1846-1924) was largely on the ground s that the self-sufficiency individualized through community and oneself is to contribute to social and other ideals. However, truth as formulated in language is always partial, and dependent upon categories that they are inadequate to the harmonious whole. Nevertheless, these self-contradictory elements somehow contribute to the harmonious whole, or Absolute, lying beyond categorization. Although absolute idealism maintains few adherents today, Bradley’s general dissent from empiricism, his holism, and the brilliance and style of his writing continues to make him the most interesting of the late 19th century writers influenced by the German philosopher Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831).
Understandably, something less than the fragmented division that belonging of Bradley’s case has a preference, voiced much earlier by the German philosopher, mathematician and polymath were Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), for categorical monadic properties over relations. He was particularly troubled by the relation between that which is known and the more that knows it. In philosophy, the Romantics took from the German philosopher and founder of critical philosophy Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) both the emphasis on free-will and the doctrine that reality is ultimately spiritual, with nature itself a mirror of the human soul. To fix upon one among alternatives as the one to be taken, Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854) foregathers nature of becoming a creative spirit whose aspiration is ever further and more to completed self-realization. Nonetheless, a movement of more general to naturalized imperativeness. Romanticism drew on the same intellectual and emotional resources as German idealism was increasingly culminating in the philosophy of Hegal (1770-1831) and of absolute idealism.
Being such in comparison with nature may include (1) that which is deformed or grotesque, or fails to achieve its proper form or function, or just the statistically uncommon or unfamiliar, (2) the supernatural, or th world of gods and invisible agencies, (3) the world of rationality and intelligence, conceived of as distinct from the biological and physical order, (4) that which is manufactured and artefactual, or the product of human invention, and (5) related to it, the world of convention and artifice.
Different conceptions of nature continue to have ethical overtones, for example, the conceptions of ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ often provide a justification for aggressive personal and political relations, or the idea that it is a women’s nature to be one thing or another, as taken to be a justification for differential social expectations. The term functions as a fig-leaf for a particular set of stereotype, and is a proper target of much ‘feminist’ writing.
This brings to question, that most of all ethics are contributively distributed as an understanding for which a dynamic function in and among the problems that are affiliated with human desire and needs the achievements of happiness, or the distribution of goods. The central problem specific to thinking about the environment is the independent value to place on ‘such-things’ as preservation of species, or protection of the wilderness. Such protection can be supported as a mans to ordinary human ends, for instance, when animals are regarded as future sources of medicines or other benefits. Nonetheless, many would want to claim a non-utilitarian, absolute value for the existence of wild things and wild places. It is in their value that things consist. They put u in our proper place, and failure to appreciate this value is not only an aesthetic failure but one of due humility and reverence, a moral disability. The problem is one of expressing this value, and mobilizing it against utilitarian agents for developing natural areas and exterminating species, more or less at will.
Many concerns and disputed cluster around the idea associated with the term ‘substance’. The substance of a thing may be considered in: (1) Its essence, or that which makes it what it is. This will ensure that the substance of a thing is that which remains through change in properties. Again, in Aristotle, this essence becomes more than just the matter, but a unity of matter and form. (2) That which can exist by itself, or does not need a subject for existence, in the way that properties need objects, hence (3) that which bears properties, as a substance is then the subject of predication, that about which things are said as opposed to the things said about it. Substance in the last two senses stands opposed to modifications such as quantity, quality, relations, etc. it is hard to keep this set of ideas distinct from the doubtful notion of a substratum, something distinct from any of its properties, and hence, as an incapable characterization. The notions of substances tend to disappear in empiricist thought in fewer of the sensible questions of things with the notion of that in which they infer of giving way to an empirical notion of their regular occurrence. However, this is in turn is problematic, since it only makes sense to talk of the occurrence of instance of qualities, not of quantities themselves. So the problem of what it is for a value quality to be the instance that remains.
Metaphysics inspired by modern science tend to reject the concept of substance in favour of concepts such as that of a field or a process, each of which may seem to provide a better example of a fundamental physical category.
It must be spoken of a concept that is deeply embedded in 18th century aesthetics, but deriving from the 1st century rhetorical treatise On the Sublime, by Longinus. The sublime is great, fearful, noble, calculated to arouse sentiments of pride and majesty, as well as awe and sometimes terror. According to Alexander Gerard’s writing in 1759, ‘When a large object is presented, the mind expands itself to the extent of that objects, and is filled with one grand sensation, which totally possessing it, composes it into a solemn sedateness and strikes it with deep silent wonder, and administration’: It finds such a difficulty in spreading itself to the dimensions of its object, as enliven and invigorates which this occasions, it sometimes images itself present in every part of the sense which it contemplates, and from the sense of this immensity, feels a noble pride, and entertains a lofty conception of its own capacity.
In Kant’s aesthetic theory the sublime ‘raises the soul above the height of vulgar complacency’. We experience the vast spectacles of nature as ‘absolutely great’ and of irresistible might and power. This perception is fearful, but by conquering this fear, and by regarding as small ‘those things of which we are wont to be solicitous’ we quicken our sense of moral freedom. So we turn the experience of frailty and impotence into one of our true, inward moral freedom as the mind triumphs over nature, and it is this triumph of reason that is truly sublime. Kant thus paradoxically places our sense of the sublime in an awareness of ourselves as transcending nature, than in an awareness of ourselves as a frail and insignificant part of it.
Nevertheless, the doctrine that all relations are internal was a cardinal thesis of absolute idealism, and a central point of attack by the British philosopher’s George Edward Moore (1873-1958) and Bertrand Russell (1872-1970). It is a kind of ‘essentialism’, stating that if two things stand in some relationship, then they could not be what they are, did they not do so, if, for instance, I am wearing a hat mow, then when we imagine a possible situation that we would be got to describe as my not wearing the hat now, we would strictly not be imaging as one and the hat, but only some different individual.
The countering partitions a doctrine that bears some resemblance to the metaphysically based view of the German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) that if a person had any other attributes that the ones he has, he would not have been the AME person. Leibniz thought that when asked hat would have happened if Peter had not denied Christ. That being that if I am asking what had happened if Peter had not been Peter, denying Christ is contained in the complete notion of Peter. But he allowed that by the name ‘Peter’ might be understood as ‘what is involved in those attributes [of Peter] from which the denial does not follow’. In order that we are held accountable to allow of external relations, in that these being relations which individuals could have or not depending upon contingent circumstances. The relation of ideas is used by the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-76) in the First Enquiry of Theoretical Knowledge. All the objects of human reason or enquiring naturally, be divided into two kinds: To unit all the, ‘relations of ideas’ and ‘matter of fact ‘ (Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding) the terms reflect the belief that any thing that can be known dependently must be internal to the mind, and hence transparent to us.
In Hume, objects of knowledge are divided into matter of fact (roughly empirical things known by means of impressions) and the relation of ideas. The contrast, also called 'Hume’s Fork’, is a version of the speculative deductivity distinction, but reflects the 17th and early 18th centauries behind that the deductivity is established by chains of infinite certainty as comparable to ideas. It is extremely important that in the period between Descartes and J.S. Mill that a demonstration is not, but only a chain of ‘intuitive’ comparable ideas, whereby a principle or maxim can be established by reason alone. It is in this sense that the English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) who believed that theologically and moral principles are capable of demonstration, and Hume denies that they are, and also denies that scientific enquiries proceed in demonstrating its results.
A mathematical proof is formally inferred as to an argument that is used to show the truth of a mathematical assertion. In modern mathematics, a proof begins with one or more statements called premises and demonstrates, using the rules of logic, that if the premises are true then a particular conclusion must also be true.
The accepted methods and strategies used to construct a convincing mathematical argument have evolved since ancient times and continue to change. Consider the Pythagorean theorem, named after the 5th century Bc Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras, which states that in a right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Many early civilizations considered this theorem true because it agreed with their observations in practical situations. But the early Greeks, among others, realized that observation and commonly held opinions do not guarantee mathematical truth. For example, before the 5th century Bc it was widely believed that all lengths could be expressed as the ratio of two whole numbers. But an unknown Greek mathematician proved that this was not true by showing that the length of the diagonal of a square with an area of one is the irrational number Ã.
The Greek mathematician Euclid laid down some of the conventions central to modern mathematical proofs. His book The Elements, written about 300 Bc, contains many proofs in the fields of geometry and algebra. This book illustrates the Greek practice of writing mathematical proofs by first clearly identifying the initial assumptions and then reasoning from them in a logical way in order to obtain a desired conclusion. As part of such an argument, Euclid used results that had already been shown to be true, called theorems, or statements that were explicitly acknowledged to be self-evident, called axioms; this practice continues today.
In the 20th century, proofs have been written that are so complex that no one person understands every argument used in them. In 1976, a computer was used to complete the proof of the four-colour theorem. This theorem states that four colours are sufficient to colour any map in such a way that regions with a common boundary line have different colours. The use of a computer in this proof inspired considerable debate in the mathematical community. At issue was whether a theorem can be considered proven if human beings have not actually checked every detail of the proof.
The study of the relations of deductibility among sentences in a logical calculus which benefits the prof theory. Deductibility is defined purely syntactically, that is, without reference to the intended interpretation of the calculus. The subject was founded by the mathematician David Hilbert (1862-1943) in the hope that strictly finitary methods would provide a way of proving the consistency of classical mathematics, but the ambition was torpedoed by Gödel’s second incompleteness theorem.
What is more, the use of a model to test for consistencies in an ‘axiomatized system’ which is older than modern logic. Descartes’ algebraic interpretation of Euclidean geometry provides a way of showing that if the theory of real numbers is consistent, so is the geometry. Similar representation had been used by mathematicians in the 19th century, for example to show that if Euclidean geometry is consistent, so are various non-Euclidean geometries. Model theory is the general study of this kind of procedure: The ‘proof theory’ studies relations of deductibility between formulae of a system, but once the notion of an interpretation is in place we can ask whether a formal system meets certain conditions. In particular, can it lead us from sentences that are true under some interpretation? And if a sentence is true under all interpretations, is it also a theorem of the system? We can define a notion of validity (a formula is valid if it is true in all interpret rations) and semantic consequence (a formula ‘B’ is a semantic consequence of a set of formulae, written {A1 . . . An} ⊨B, if it is true in all interpretations in which they are true) Then the central questions for a calculus will be whether all and only its theorems are valid, and whether {A1 . . . An} ⊨ B if and only if {A1 . . . An} ⊢B. There are the questions of the soundness and completeness of a formal system. For the propositional calculus this turns into the question of whether the proof theory delivers as theorems all and only ‘tautologies’. There are many axiomatizations of the propositional calculus that are consistent and complete. The mathematical logician Kurt Gödel (1906-78) proved in 1929 that the first-order predicate under every interpretation is a theorem of the calculus.
The Euclidean geometry is the greatest example of the pure ‘axiomatic method’, and as such had incalculable philosophical influence as a paradigm of rational certainty. It had no competition until the 19th century when it was realized that the fifth axiom of his system (parallel lines never meet) could be denied without inconsistency, leading to Riemannian spherical geometry. The significance of Riemannian geometry lies in its use and extension of both Euclidean geometry and the geometry of surfaces, leading to a number of generalized differential geometries. Its most important effect was that it made a geometrical application possible for some major abstractions of tensor analysis, leading to the pattern and concepts for general relativity later used by Albert Einstein in developing his theory of relativity. Riemannian geometry is also necessary for treating electricity and magnetism in the framework of general relativity. The fifth chapter of Euclid’s Elements, is attributed to the mathematician Eudoxus, and contains a precise development of the real number, work which remained unappreciated until rediscovered in the 19th century.
The Axiom, in logic and mathematics, is a basic principle that is assumed to be true without proof. The use of axioms in mathematics stems from the ancient Greeks, most probably during the 5th century Bc, and represents the beginnings of pure mathematics as it is known today. Examples of axioms are the following: 'No sentence can be true and false at the same time' (the principle of contradiction); 'If equals are added to equals, the sums are equal'. 'The whole is greater than any of its parts'. Logic and pure mathematics begin with such unproved assumptions from which other propositions (theorems) are derived. This procedure is necessary to avoid circularity, or an infinite regression in reasoning. The axioms of any system must be consistent with one another, that is, they should not lead to contradictions. They should be independent in the sense that they cannot be derived from one another. They should also be few in number. Axioms have sometimes been interpreted as self-evident truths. The present tendency is to avoid this claim and simply to assert that an axiom is assumed to be true without proof in the system of which it is a part.
The terms 'axiom' and 'postulate' are often used synonymously. Sometimes the word axiom is used to refer to basic principles that are assumed by every deductive system, and the term postulate is used to refer to first principles peculiar to a particular system, such as Euclidean geometry. Infrequently, the word axiom is used to refer to first principles in logic, and the term postulate is used to refer to first principles in mathematics.
The applications of game theory are wide-ranging and account for steadily growing interest in the subject. Von Neumann and Morgenstern indicated the immediate utility of their work on mathematical game theory by linking it with economic behaviour. Models can be developed, in fact, for markets of various commodities with differing numbers of buyers and sellers, fluctuating values of supply and demand, and seasonal and cyclical variations, as well as significant structural differences in the economies concerned. Here game theory is especially relevant to the analysis of conflicts of interest in maximizing profits and promoting the widest distribution of goods and services. Equitable division of property and of inheritance is another area of legal and economic concern that can be studied with the techniques of game theory.
In the social sciences, n-person game theory has interesting uses in studying, for example, the distribution of power in legislative procedures. This problem can be interpreted as a three-person game at the congressional level involving vetoes of the president and votes of representatives and senators, analysed in terms of successful or failed coalitions to pass a given bill. Problems of majority rule and individual decision makes are also amenable to such study.
Sociologists have developed an entire branch of game theory devoted to the study of issues involving group decision making. Epidemiologists also make use of game theory, especially with respect to immunization procedures and methods of testing a vaccine or other medication. Military strategists turn to game theory to study conflicts of interest resolved through 'battles' where the outcome or payoff of a given war game is either victory or defeat. Usually, such games are not examples of zero-sum games, for what one player loses in terms of lives and injuries are not won by the victor. Some uses of game theory in analyses of political and military events have been criticized as a dehumanizing and potentially dangerous oversimplification of necessarily complicating factors. Analysis of economic situations is also usually more complicated than zero-sum games because of the production of goods and services within the play of a given 'game'.
All is the same in the classical theory of the syllogism, a term in a categorical proposition is distributed if the proposition entails any proposition obtained from it by substituting a term denoted by the original. For example, in ‘all dogs bark’ the term ‘dogs’ is distributed, since it entails ‘all terriers’ bark’, which is obtained from it by a substitution. In ‘Not all dogs bark’, the same term is not distributed, since it may be true while ‘not all terriers’ bark’ is false.
When a representation of one system by another is usually more familiar, in and for itself, that those extended in representation that their workings are supposed analogously to that of the first. This one might model the behaviour of a sound wave upon that of waves in water, or the behaviour of a gas upon that to a volume containing moving billiard balls. While nobody doubts that models have a useful ‘heuristic’ role in science, there has been intense debate over whether a good model, or whether an organized structure of laws from which it can be deduced and suffices for scientific explanation. As such, the debate of topic was inaugurated by the French physicist Pierre Marie Maurice Duhem (1861-1916), in ‘The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory’ (1954) by which Duhem’s conception of science is that it is simply a device for calculating as science provides deductive system that is systematic, economical, and predictive, but not that represents the deep underlying nature of reality. Steadfast and holding of its contributive thesis that in isolation, and since other auxiliary hypotheses will always be needed to draw empirical consequences from it. The Duhem thesis implies that refutation is a more complex matter than might appear. It is sometimes framed as the view that a single hypothesis may be retained in the face of any adverse empirical evidence, if we prepared to make modifications elsewhere in our system, although strictly speaking this is a stronger thesis, since it may be psychologically impossible to make consistent revisions in a belief system to accommodate, say, the hypothesis that there is a hippopotamus in the room when visibly there is not.
Primary and secondary qualities are the division associated with the 17th-century rise of modern science, wit h its recognition that the fundamental explanatory properties of things that are not the qualities that perception most immediately concerns. Their latter are the secondary qualities, or immediate sensory qualities, including colour, taste, smell, felt warmth or texture, and sound. The primary properties are less tied to their deliverance of one particular sense, and include the size, shape, and motion of objects. In Robert Boyle (1627-92) and John Locke (1632-1704) the primary qualities are scientifically tractable, objective qualities essential to anything material, are of a minimal listing of size, shape, and mobility, i.e., the state of being at rest or moving. Locke sometimes adds number, solidity, texture (where this is thought of as the structure of a substance, or way in which it is made out of atoms). The secondary qualities are the powers to excite particular sensory modifications in observers. Once, again, that Locke himself thought in terms of identifying these powers with the texture of objects that, according to corpuscularian science of the time, were the basis of an object’s causal capacities. The ideas of secondary qualities are sharply different from these powers, and afford us no accurate impression of them. For Renè Descartes (1596-1650), this is the basis for rejecting any attempt to think of knowledge of external objects as provided by the senses. But in Locke our ideas of primary qualities do afford us an accurate notion of what shape, size. And mobility is. In English-speaking philosophy the first major discontent with the division was voiced by the Irish idealist George Berkeley (1685-1753), who probably took for a basis of his attack from Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), who in turn cites the French critic Simon Foucher (1644-96). Modern thought continues to wrestle with the difficulties of thinking of colour, taste, smell, warmth, and sound as real or objective properties to things independent of us.
Continuing as such, is the doctrine advocated by the American philosopher David Lewis (1941-2002), in that different possible worlds are to be thought of as existing exactly as this one does. Thinking in terms of possibilities is thinking of real worlds where things are different. The view has been charged with making it impossible to see why it is good to save the child from drowning, since there is still a possible world in which she (or her counterpart) drowned, and from the standpoint of the universe it should make no difference which world is actual. Critics also charge that the notion fails to fit either with a coherent theory lf how we know about possible worlds, or with a coherent theory of why we are interested in them, but Lewis denied that any other way of interpreting modal statements is tenable.
The proposal set forth that characterizes the ‘modality’ of a proposition as the notion for which it is true or false. The most important division is between propositions true of necessity, and those true as things are: Necessary as opposed to contingent propositions. Other qualifiers sometimes called ‘modal’ include the tense indicators, ‘it will be the case that ‘p’, or ‘it was the case that ‘p’, and there are affinities between the ‘deontic’ indicators, ‘it ought to be the case that ‘p’, or ‘it is permissible that ‘p’, and the of necessity and possibility.
The aim of a logic is to make explicitly the rules by which inferences may be drawn, than to study the actual reasoning processes that people use, which may or may not conform to those rules. In the case of deductive logic, if we ask why we need to obey the rules, the most general form of answer is that if we do not we contradict ourselves (or, strictly speaking, we stand ready to contradict ourselves. Someone failing to draw a conclusion that follows from a set of premises need not be contradicting him or herself, but only failing to notice something. However, he or she is not defended against adding the contradictory conclusion to his or fer set of beliefs.) There is no equally simple answer in the case of inductive logic, which is in general a less robust subject, but the aim will be to find reasoning such hat anyone failing to conform to it will have improbable beliefs. Traditional logic dominated the subject until the 19th century. , And has become increasingly recognized in the 20th century, in that finer work that was done within that tradition, but syllogistic reasoning is now generally regarded as a limited special case of the form of reasoning that can be reprehend within the promotion and predated values, these form the heart of modern logic, as their central notions or qualifiers, variables, and functions were the creation of the German mathematician Gottlob Frége, who is recognized as the father of modern logic, although his treatment of a logical system as an abreacts mathematical structure, or algebraic, has been heralded by the English mathematician and logician George Boole (1815-64), his pamphlet The Mathematical Analysis of Logic (1847) pioneered the algebra of classes. The work was made of in An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854). Boole also published many works in our mathematics, and on the theory of probability. His name is remembered in the title of Boolean algebra, and the algebraic operations he investigated are denoted by Boolean operations.
The syllogistic, or categorical syllogism is the inference of one proposition from two premises. For example is, ‘all horses have tails, and things with tails are four legged, so all horses are four legged. Each premise has one term in common with the other premises. The terms that do not occur in the conclusion are called the middle term. The major premise of the syllogism is the premise containing the predicate of the contraction (the major term). And the minor premise contains its subject (the minor term). So the first premise of the example in the minor premise the second the major term. So the first premise of the example is the minor premise, the second the major premise and ‘having a tail’ is the middle term. This enables syllogisms that there of a classification, that according to the form of the premises and the conclusions. The other classification is by figure, or way in which the middle term is placed or way in within the middle term is placed in the premise.
Although the theory of the syllogism dominated logic until the 19th century, it remained a piecemeal affair, able to deal with only relations valid forms of valid forms of argument. There have subsequently been rearguing actions attempting, but in general it has been eclipsed by the modern theory of quantification, the predicate calculus is the heart of modern logic, having proved capable of formalizing the calculus rationing processes of modern mathematics and science. In a first-order predicate calculus the variables range over objects: In a higher-order calculus the may range over predicate and functions themselves. The fist-order predicated calculus with identity includes ‘=’ as primitive (undefined) expression: In a higher-order calculus It may be defined by law that χ= y iff (∀F)(Fχ - Fy), which gives grater expressive power for less complexity.
Modal logic was of great importance historically, particularly in the light of the deity, but was not a central topic of modern logic in its gold period as the beginning of the 20th century. It was, however, revived by the American logician and philosopher Irving Lewis (1883-1964), although he wrote extensively on most central philosophical topis, he is remembered principally as a critic of the intentional nature of modern logic, and as the founding father of modal logic. His two independent proofs showing that from a contradiction anything follows a relevance logic, using a notion of entailment stronger than that of strict implication.
The imparting information has been conduced or carried out of the prescribed procedures, as impeding of something that tajes place in the chancing encounter out to be to enter ons’s mind may from time to time occasion of various doctrines concerning th necessary properties, least of mention, by adding to a prepositional or predicated calculus two operator, □and ◊(sometimes written ‘N’ and ‘M’), meaning necessarily and possible, respectfully. These like ‘p ➞◊p and □p ➞p will be wanted. Controversial these include □p ➞□□p (if a proposition is necessary. it’s necessarily, characteristic of a system known as S4) and ◊p ➞□◊p (if as preposition is possible, it’s necessarily possible, characteristic of the system known as S5). The classical modal theory for modal logic, due to the American logician and philosopher (1940-) and the Swedish logician Sig Kanger, involves valuing prepositions not true or false simpiciter, but as true or false at possible worlds with necessity then corresponding to truth in all worlds, and possibility to truth in some world. Various different systems of modal logic result from adjusting the accessibility relation between worlds.
In Saul Kripke, gives the classical modern treatment of the topic of reference, both clarifying the distinction between names and definite description, and opening te door to many subsequent attempts to understand the notion of reference in terms of a causal link between the use of a term and an original episode of attaching a name to the subject.
One of the three branches into which ‘semiotic’ is usually divided, the study of semantical meaning of words, and the relation of signs to the degree to which the designs are applicable. In that, in formal studies, a semantics is provided for a formal language when an interpretation of ‘model’ is specified. However, a natural language comes ready interpreted, and the semantic problem is not that of specification but of understanding the relationship between terms of various categories (names, descriptions, predicate, adverbs . . . ) and their meaning. An influential proposal by attempting to provide a truth definition for the language, which will involve giving a full structure of different kinds has on the truth conditions of sentences containing them.
Holding that the basic casse of reference is the relation between a name and the persons or object which it names. The philosophical problems include trying to elucidate that relation, to understand whether other semantic relations, such s that between a predicate and the property it expresses, or that between a description an what it describes, or that between myself and the word ‘I’, are examples of the same relation or of very different ones. A great deal of modern work on this was stimulated by the American logician Saul Kripke’s, Naming and Necessity (1970). It would also be desirable to know whether we can refer to such things as objects and how to conduct the debate about each and issue. A popular approach, following Gottlob Frége, is to argue that the fundamental unit of analysis should be the whole sentence. The reference of a term becomes a derivative notion it is whatever it is that defines the term’s contribution to the trued condition of the whole sentence. There need be nothing further to say about it, given that we have a way of understanding the attribution of meaning or truth-condition to sentences. Other approach, searching for a more substantive possibly that causality or psychological or social constituents are pronounced between words and things.
However, following Ramsey and the Italian mathematician G. Peano (1858-1932), it has been customary to distinguish logical paradoxes that depend upon a notion of reference or truth (semantic notions) such as those of the ‘Liar family’, which form the purely logical paradoxes in which no such notions are involved, such as Russell’s paradox, or those of Canto and Burali-Forti. Paradoxes of the fist type sem to depend upon an element of self-reference, in which a sentence is about itself, or in which a phrase refers to something about itself, or in which a phrase refers to something defined by a set of phrases of which it is itself one. It is to feel that this element is responsible for the contradictions, although self-reference itself is often benign (for instance, the sentence ‘All English sentences should have a verb’, includes itself happily in the domain of sentences it is talking about), so the difficulty lies in forming a condition that existence only pathological self-reference. Paradoxes of the second kind then need a different treatment. Whilst the distinction is convenient in allowing set theory to proceed by circumventing the latter paradoxes by technical mans, even when there is no solution to the semantic paradoxes, it may be a way of ignoring the similarities between the two families. There is still th possibility that while there is no agreed solution to the semantic paradoxes, our understand of Russell’s paradox may be imperfect as well.
Truth and falsity are two classical truth-values that a statement, proposition or sentence can take, as it is supposed in classical (two-valued) logic, that each statement has one of these values, and non has both. A statement is then false if and only if it is not true. The basis of this scheme is that to each statement there corresponds a determinate truth condition, or way the world must be for it to be true: If this condition obtains the statement is true, and otherwise false. Statements may indeed be felicitous or infelicitous in other dimensions (polite, misleading, apposite, witty, etc.) but truth is the central normative notion governing assertion. Considerations of vagueness may introduce greys into this black-and-white scheme. For the issue to be true, any suppressed premise or background framework of thought necessary make an agreement valid, or a position tenable, a proposition whose truth is necessary for either the truth or the falsity of another statement. Thus if ‘p’ presupposes ‘q’, ‘q’ must be true for ‘p’ to be either true or false. In the theory of knowledge, the English philologer and historian George Collingwood (1889-1943), announces hat any proposition capable of truth or falsity stand on bed of ‘absolute presuppositions’ which are not properly capable of truth or falsity, since a system of thought will contain no way of approaching such a question (a similar idea later voiced by Wittgenstein in his work On Certainty). The introduction of presupposition therefore mans that either another of a truth value is fond, ‘intermediate’ between truth and falsity, or the classical logic is preserved, but it is impossible to tell whether a particular sentence empresses a preposition that is a candidate for truth and falsity, without knowing more than the formation rules of the language. Each suggestion carries coss, and there is some consensus that at least whowhere definite descriptions are involved, examples equally given by regarding the overall sentence as false as the existence claim fails, and explaining the data that the English philosopher Frederick Strawson (1919-) relied upon as the effects of ‘implicature’.
Views about the meaning of terms will often depend on classifying the implicature of sayings involving the terms as implicatures or as genuine logical implications of what is said. Implicatures may be divided into two kinds: Conversational implicatures of the two kinds and the more subtle category of conventional implicatures. A term may as a matter of convention carry and implicature. Thus, one of the relations between ‘he is poor and honest’ and ‘he is poor but honest’ is that they have the same content (are true in just the same conditional) but the second has implicatures (that the combination is surprising or significant) that the first lacks.
It is, nonetheless, that we find in classical logic a proposition that may be true or false. In that, if the former, it is said to take the truth-value true, and if the latter the truth-value false. The idea behind the terminological phrases is the analogues between assigning a propositional variable one or other of these values, as is done in providing an interpretation for a formula of the propositional calculus, and assigning an object as the value of any other variable. Logics with intermediate value are called ‘many-valued logics’.
Nevertheless, an existing definition of the predicate’ . . . is true’ for a language that satisfies convention ‘T’, the material adequately condition laid down by Alfred Tarski, born Alfred Teitelbaum (1901-83), whereby his methods of ‘recursive’ definition, enabling us to say for each sentence what it is that its truth consists in, but giving no verbal definition of truth itself. The recursive definition or the truth predicate of a language is always provided in a ‘metalanguage’, Tarski is thus committed to a hierarchy of languages, each with it’s associated, but different truth-predicate. Whist this enables the approach to avoid the contradictions of paradoxical contemplations, it conflicts with the idea that a language should be able too ay everything that there is to say, and other approaches have become increasingly important.
So, that the truth condition of a statement is the condition for which the world must meet if the statement is to be true. To know this condition is equivalent to knowing the meaning of the statement. Although this sounds as if it gives a solid anchorage for meaning, some of the securities disappear when it turns out that the truth condition can only be defined by repeating the very same statement: The truth condition of ‘now is white’ is that ‘snow is white’, the truth condition of ‘Britain would have capitulated had Hitler invaded’, is that ‘Britain would have capitulated had Hitler invaded’. It is disputed whether this element of running-on-the-spot disqualifies truth conditions from playing the central role in a substantives theory of meaning. Truth-conditional theories of meaning are sometimes opposed by the view that to know the meaning of a statement is to be able to use it in a network of inferences.
Taken to be the view, inferential semantics takes on the role of sentence in inference give a more important key to their meaning than this ‘external’ relations to things in the world. The meaning of a sentence becomes its place in a network of inferences that it legitimates. Also known as functional role semantics, procedural semantics, or conception to the coherence theory of truth, and suffers from the same suspicion that it divorces meaning from any clar association with things in the world.
Moreover, a theory of semantic truth is that of the view if language is provided with a truth definition, there is a sufficient characterization of its concept of truth, as there is no further philosophical chapter to write about truth: There is no further philosophical chapter to write about truth itself or truth as shared across different languages. The view is similar to the disquotational theory.
The redundancy theory, or also known as the ‘deflationary view of truth’ fathered by Gottlob Frége and the Cambridge mathematician and philosopher Frank Ramsey (1903-30), who showed how the distinction between the semantic paradoses, such as that of the Liar, and Russell’s paradox, made unnecessary the ramified type theory of Principia Mathematica, and the resulting axiom of reducibility. By taking all the sentences affirmed in a scientific theory that use some terms e.g., quark, and to a considerable degree of replacing the term by a variable instead of saying that quarks have such-and-such properties, the Ramsey sentence says that there is something that has those properties. If the process is repeated for all of a group of the theoretical terms, the sentence gives ‘topic-neutral’ structure of the theory, but removes any implication that we know what the terms so treated denote. It leaves open the possibility of identifying the theoretical item with whatever, but it is that best fits the description provided. However, it was pointed out by the Cambridge mathematician Newman, that if the process is carried out for all except the logical bones of a theory, then by the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem, the result will be interpretable, and the content of the theory may reasonably be felt to have been lost.
All the while, both Frége and Ramsey are agreeing that the essential claim is that the predicate’ . . . is true’ does not have a sense, i.e., expresses no substantive or profound or explanatory concept that ought to be the topic of philosophical enquiry. The approach admits of different versions, but centres on the points (1) that ‘it is true that ‘p’ says no more nor less than ‘p’ (hence, redundancy): (2) that in less direct contexts, such as ‘everything he said was true’, or ‘all logical consequences of true propositions are true’, the predicate functions as a device enabling us to generalize than as an adjective or predicate describing the things he said, or the kinds of propositions that follow from true preposition. For example, the second may translate as ‘(∀p, q)(p & p ➞q ➞q)’ where there is no use of a notion of truth.
There are technical problems in interpreting all uses of the notion of truth in such ways, nevertheless, they are not generally felt to be insurmountable. The approach needs to explain away apparently substantive uses of the notion, such as ‘science aims at the truth’, or ‘truth is a norm governing discourse’. Postmodern writing frequently advocates that we must abandon such norms. Along with a discredited ‘objective’ conception of truth. Perhaps, we can have the norms even when objectivity is problematic, since they can be framed without mention of truth: Science wants it to be so that whatever science holds that ‘p’, then ‘p’. Discourse is to be regulated by the principle that it is wrong to assert ‘p’, when ‘not-p’.
Something that tends of something in addition of content, or coming by way to justify such a position can very well be more that in addition to several reasons, as to bring in or join of something might that there be more so as to a larger combination for us to consider the simplest formulation, is that the claim that expression of the form ‘S is true’ mean the same as expression of the form ‘S’. Some philosophers dislike the ideas of sameness of meaning, and if this I disallowed, then the claim is that the two forms are equivalent in any sense of equivalence that matters. This is, it makes no difference whether people say ‘Dogs bark’ id Tue, or whether they say, ‘dogs bark’. In the former representation of what they say of the sentence ‘Dogs bark’ is mentioned, but in the later it appears to be used, of the claim that the two are equivalent and needs careful formulation and defence. On the face of it someone might know that ‘Dogs bark’ is true without knowing what it means (for instance, if he kids in a list of acknowledged truths, although he does not understand English), and this is different from knowing that dogs bark. Disquotational theories are usually presented as versions of the ‘redundancy theory of truth’.
The relationship between a set of premises and a conclusion when the conclusion follows from the premise. Many philosophers identify this with it being logically impossible that the premises should all be true, yet the conclusion false. Others are sufficiently impressed by the paradoxes of strict implication to look for a stranger relation, which would distinguish between valid and invalid arguments within the sphere of necessary propositions. The seraph for a strange notion is the field of relevance logic.
From a systematic theoretical point of view, we may imagine the process of evolution of an empirical science to be a continuous process of induction. Theories are evolved and are expressed in short compass as statements of as large number of individual observations in the form of empirical laws, from which the general laws can be ascertained by comparison. Regarded in this way, the development of a science bears some resemblance to the compilation of a classified catalogue. It is, as it were, a purely empirical enterprise.
But this point of view by no means embraces the whole of the actual process, for it slurs over the important part played by intuition and deductive thought in the development of an exact science. As soon as a science has emerged from its initial stages, theoretical advances are no longer achieved merely by a process of arrangement. Guided by empirical data, the investigators rather develops a system of thought which, in general, it is built up logically from a small number of fundamental assumptions, the so-called axioms. We call such a system of thought a ‘theory’. The theory finds the justification for its existence in the fact that it correlates a large number of single observations, and is just here that the ‘truth’ of the theory lies.
Corresponding to the same complex of empirical data, there may be several theories, which differ from one another to a considerable extent. But as regards the deductions from the theories which are capable of being tested, the agreement between the theories may be so complete, that it becomes difficult to find any deductions in which the theories differ from each other. As an example, a case of general interest is available in the province of biology, in the Darwinian theory of the development of species by selection in the struggle for existence, and in the theory of development which is based on the hypophysis of the hereditary transmission of acquired characters. THE Origin of Species was principally successful in marshalling the evidence for evolution, than providing a convincing mechanisms for genetic change. And Darwin himself remained open to the search for additional mechanisms, while also remaining convinced that natural selection was at the hart of it. It was only with the later discovery of the gene as the unit of inheritance that the synthesis known as ‘neo-Darwinism’ became the orthodox theory of evolution in the life sciences.
In the 19th century the attempt to base ethical reasoning o the presumed facts about evolution, the movement is particularly associated with the English philosopher of evolution Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). The premise is that later elements in an evolutionary path are better than earlier ones: The application of this principle then requires seeing western society, laissez-faire capitalism, or some other object of approval, as more evolved than more ‘primitive’ social forms. Neither the principle nor the applications command much respect. The version of evolutionary ethics called ‘social Darwinism’ emphasises the struggle for natural selection, and draws the conclusion that we should glorify and assist such struggle, usually by enhancing competition and aggressive relations between people in society or between evolution and ethics has been re-thought in the light of biological discoveries concerning altruism and kin-selection.
Once again, psychological attempts are found to establish a point by appropriate objective means, in that their evidences are well substantiated within the realm of evolutionary principles, in which a variety of higher mental functions may be adaptations, forced in response to selection pressures on the human populations through evolutionary time. Candidates for such theorizing include material and paternal motivations, capacities for love and friendship, the development of language as a signalling system cooperative and aggressive, our emotional repertoire, our moral and reactions, including the disposition to detect and punish those who cheat on agreements or who ‘free-ride’ on =the work of others, our cognitive structures, nd many others. Evolutionary psychology goes hand-in-hand with neurophysiological evidence about the underlying circuitry in the brain which subserves the psychological mechanisms it claims to identify. The approach was foreshadowed by Darwin himself, and William James, as well as the sociology of E.O. Wilson. The term of use are applied, more or less aggressively, especially to explanations offered in sociobiology and evolutionary psychology.
Another assumption that is frequently used to legitimate the real existence of forces associated with the invisible hand in neoclassical economics derives from Darwin’s view of natural selection as a war-like competing between atomized organisms in the struggle for survival. In natural selection as we now understand it, cooperation appears to exist in complementary relation to competition. It is complementary relationships between such results that are emergent self-regulating properties that are greater than the sum of parts and that serve to perpetuate the existence of the whole.
According to E.O Wilson, the ‘human mind evolved to believe in the gods’ and people ‘need a sacred narrative’ to have a sense of higher purpose. Yet it id also clear that the ‘gods’ in his view are merely human constructs and, therefore, there is no basis for dialogue between the world-view of science and religion. ‘Science for its part’, said Wilson, ‘will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition and in time uncover the bedrock of the moral an religious sentiments. The eventual result of the competition between each other, will be the secularization of the human epic and of religion itself.
Man has come to the threshold of a state of consciousness, regarding his nature and his relationship to te Cosmos, in terms that reflect ‘reality’. By using the processes of nature as metaphor, to describe the forces by which it operates upon and within Man, we come as close to describing ‘reality’ as we can within the limits of our comprehension. Men will be very uneven in their capacity for such understanding, which, naturally, differs for different ages and cultures, and develops and changes over the course of time. For these reasons it will always be necessary to use metaphor and myth to provide ‘comprehensible’ guides to living. In thus way. Man’s imagination and intellect play vital roles on his survival and evolution.
Since so much of life both inside and outside the study is concerned with finding explanations of things, it would be desirable to have a concept of what counts as a good explanation from bad. Under the influence of ‘logical positivist’ approaches to the structure of science, it was felt that the criterion ought to be found in a definite logical relationship between the ‘exlanans’ (that which does the explaining) and the explanandum (that which is to be explained). The approach culminated in the covering law model of explanation, or the view that an event is explained when it is subsumed under a law of nature, that is, its occurrence is deducible from the law plus a set of initial conditions. A law would itself be explained by being deduced from a higher-order or covering law, in the way that Johannes Kepler(or Keppler, 1571-1630), was by way of planetary motion that the laws were deducible from Newton’s laws of motion. The covering law model may be adapted to include explanation by showing that something is probable, given a statistical law. Questions for the covering law model include querying for the covering law are necessary to explanation (we explain whether everyday events without overtly citing laws): Querying whether they are sufficient (it ma y not explain an event just to say that it is an example of the kind of thing that always happens). And querying whether a purely logical relationship is adapted to capturing the requirements, we make of explanations. These may include, for instance, that we have a ‘feel’ for what is happening, or that the explanation proceeds in terms of things that are familiar to us or unsurprising, or that we can give a model of what is going on, and none of these notions is captured in a purely logical approach. Recent work, therefore, has tended to stress the contextual and pragmatic elements in requirements for explanation, so that what counts as good explanation given one set of concerns may not do so given another.
The argument to the best explanation is the view that once we can select the best of any in something in explanations of an event, then we are justified in accepting it, or even believing it. The principle needs qualification, since something it is unwise to ignore the antecedent improbability of a hypothesis which would explain the data better than others, e.g., the best explanation of a coin falling heads 530 times in 1,000 tosses might be that it is biassed to give a probability of heads of 0.53 but it might be more sensible to suppose that it is fair, or to suspend judgement.
In a philosophy of language is considered as the general attempt to understand the components of a working language, the relationship the understanding speaker has to its elements, and the relationship they bear to the world. The subject therefore embraces the traditional division of semiotic into syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. The philosophy of language thus mingles with the philosophy of mind, since it needs an account of what it is in our understanding that enables us to use language. It so mingles with the metaphysics of truth and the relationship between sign and object. Much as much is that the philosophy in the 20th century, has been informed by the belief that philosophy of language is the fundamental basis of all philosophical problems, in that language is the distinctive exercise of mind, and the distinctive way in which we give shape to metaphysical beliefs. Particular topics will include the problems of logical form. And the basis of the division between syntax and semantics, as well as problems of understanding the number and nature of specifically semantic relationships such as meaning, reference, predication, and quantification. Pragmatics include that of speech acts, while problems of rule following and the indeterminacy of translation infect philosophies of both pragmatics and semantics.
On this conception, to understand a sentence is to know its truth-conditions, and, yet, in a distinctive way the conception has remained central that those who offer opposing theories characteristically define their position by reference to it. The Concepcion of meaning s truth-conditions need not and should not be advanced for being in itself as complete account of meaning. For instance, one who understands a language must have some idea of the range of speech acts contextually performed by the various types of sentence in the language, and must have some idea of the insufficiencies of various kinds of speech act. The claim of the theorist of truth-conditions should rather be targeted on the notion of content: If indicative sentence differ in what they strictly and literally say, then this difference is fully accounted for by the difference in the truth-conditions.
The meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meaning of its constituent. This is just as a sentence of what it is for an expression to be semantically complex. It is one of th initial attractions of the conception of meaning truth-conditions tat it permits a smooth and satisfying account of th way in which the meaning of s complex expression is a function of the meaning of its constituents. On the truth-conditional conception, to give the meaning of an expression is to state the contribution it makes to the truth-conditions of sentences in which it occurs. For singular terms - proper names, indexical, and certain pronouns - this is done by stating the reference of the terms in question. For predicates, it is done either by stating the conditions under which the predicate is true of arbitrary objects, or by stating th conditions under which arbitrary atomic sentences containing it are true. The meaning of a sentence-forming operator is given by stating its contribution to the truth-conditions of as complex sentence, as a function of the semantic values of the sentences on which it operates.
The theorist of truth conditions should insist that not every true statement about the reference of an expression is fit to be an axiom in a meaning-giving theory of truth for a language, such is the axiom: ‘London’ refers to the city in which there was a huge fire in 1666, is a true statement about the reference of ‘London’. It is a consequent of a theory which substitutes this axiom for no different a term than of our simple truth theory that ‘London is beautiful’ is true if and only if the city in which there was a huge fire in 1666 is beautiful. Since a subject can understand the name ‘London’ without knowing that last-mentioned truth condition, this replacement axiom is not fit to be an axiom in a meaning-specifying truth theory. It is, of course, incumbent on a theorised meaning of truth conditions, to state in a way which does not presuppose any previous, non-truth conditional conception of meaning
Among the many challenges facing the theorist of truth conditions, two are particularly salient and fundamental. First, the theorist has to answer the charge of triviality or vacuity, second, the theorist must offer an account of what it is for a person’s language to be truly describable by as semantic theory containing a given semantic axiom.
Since the content of a claim that the sentence ‘Paris is beautiful’ is true amounts to no more than the claim that Paris is beautiful, we can trivially describers understanding a sentence, if we wish, as knowing its truth-conditions, but this gives us no substantive account of understanding whatsoever. Something other than grasp of truth conditions must provide the substantive account. The charge rests upon what has been called the redundancy theory of truth, the theory which, somewhat more discriminatingly. Horwich calls the minimal theory of truth. It’s conceptual representation that the concept of truth is exhausted by the fact that it conforms to the equivalence principle, the principle that for any proposition ‘p’, it is true that ‘p’ if and only if ‘p’. Many different philosophical theories of truth will, with suitable qualifications, accept that equivalence principle. The distinguishing feature of the minimal theory is its claim that the equivalence principle exhausts the notion of truth. It is now widely accepted, both by opponents and supporters of truth conditional theories of meaning, that it is inconsistent to accept both minimal theory of ruth and a truth conditional account of meaning. If the claim that the sentence ‘Paris is beautiful’ is true is exhausted by its equivalence to the claim that Paris is beautiful, it is circular to try of its truth conditions. The minimal theory of truth has been endorsed by the Cambridge mathematician and philosopher Plumpton Ramsey (1903-30), and the English philosopher Jules Ayer, the later Wittgenstein, Quine, Strawson and Horwich and - confusing and inconsistently if this article is correct - Frége himself. But is the minimal theory correct?
The minimal theory treats instances of the equivalence principle as definitional of truth for a given sentence, but in fact, it seems that each instance of the equivalence principle can itself be explained. The truths from which such an instance as: ‘London is beautiful’ is true if and only if London is beautiful. This would be a pseudo-explanation if the fact that ‘London’ refers to London consists in part in the fact that ‘London is beautiful’ has the truth-condition it does. But it is very implausible, it is, after all, possible to understand the name ‘London’ without understanding the predicate ‘is beautiful’.
Sometimes, however, the counterfactual conditional is known as subjunctive conditionals, insofar as a counterfactual conditional is a conditional of the form ‘if p were to happen q would’, or ‘if p were to have happened q would have happened’, where the supposition of ‘p’ is contrary to the known fact that ‘not-p’. Such assertions are nevertheless, use=ful ‘if you broken the bone, the X-ray would have looked different’, or ‘if the reactor were to fail, this mechanism wold click in’ are important truths, even when we know that the bone is not broken or are certain that the reactor will not fail. It is arguably distinctive of laws of nature that yield counterfactuals (‘if the metal were to be heated, it would expand’), whereas accidentally true generalizations may not. It is clear that counterfactuals cannot be represented by the material implication of the propositional calculus, since that conditionals comes out true whenever ‘p’ is false, so there would be no division between true and false counterfactuals.
Although the subjunctive form indicates a counterfactual, in many contexts it does not seem to matter whether we use a subjunctive form, or a simple conditional form: ‘If you run out of water, you will be in trouble’ seems equivalent to ‘if you were to run out of water, you would be in trouble’, in other contexts there is a big difference: ‘If Oswald did not kill Kennedy, someone else did’ is clearly true, whereas ‘if Oswald had not killed Kennedy, someone would have’ is most probably false.
The best-known modern treatment of counterfactuals is that of David Lewis, which evaluates them as true or false according to whether ‘q’ is true in the ‘most similar’ possible worlds to ours in which ‘p’ is true. The similarity-ranking this approach needs has proved controversial, particularly since it may need to presuppose some notion of the same laws of nature, whereas art of the interest in counterfactuals is that they promise to illuminate that notion. There is a growing awareness tat the classification of conditionals is an extremely tricky business, and categorizing them as counterfactuals or not be of limited use.
The pronouncing of any conditional; preposition of the form ‘if p then q’. The condition hypothesizes, ‘p’. It’s called the antecedent of the conditional, and ‘q’ the consequent. Various kinds of conditional have been distinguished. The weaken in that of material implication, merely telling us that with not-p. or q. stronger conditionals include elements of modality, corresponding to the thought that ‘if p is true then q must be true’. Ordinary language is very flexible in its use of the conditional form, and there is controversy whether, yielding different kinds of conditionals with different meanings, or pragmatically, in which case there should be one basic meaning which case there should be one basic meaning, with surface differences arising from other implicatures.
Passively, there are many forms of Reliabilism. Just as there are many forms of ‘Foundationalism’ and ‘coherence’. How is reliabilism related to these other two theories of justification? We usually regard it as a rival, and this is aptly so, in as far as Foundationalism and Coherentism traditionally focussed on purely evidential relations than psychological processes, but we might also offer Reliabilism as a deeper-level theory, subsuming some precepts of either Foundationalism or Coherentism. Foundationalism says that there are ‘basic’ beliefs, which acquire justification without dependence on inference, Reliabilism might rationalize this indicating that reliable non-inferential processes have formed the basic beliefs. Coherence stresses the primary of systematicity in all doxastic decision-making. Reliabilism might rationalize this by pointing to increases in reliability that accrue from systematicity consequently, Reliabilism could complement Foundationalism and coherence than completed with them.
These examples make it seem likely that, if there is a criterion for what makes an alternate situation relevant that will save Goldman’s claim about local reliability and knowledge. Will did not be simple. The interesting thesis that counts as a causal theory of justification, in the making of ‘causal theory’ intended for the belief as it is justified in case it was produced by a type of process that is ‘globally’ reliable, that is, its propensity to produce true beliefs that can be defined, to an acceptable approximation, as the proportion of the beliefs it produces, or would produce where it used as much as opportunity allows, that is true is sufficiently relializable. We have advanced variations of this view for both knowledge and justified belief, its first formulation of a reliability account of knowing appeared in the notation from F.P.Ramsey (1903-30). The theory of probability, he was the first to show how a ‘personalists theory’ could be progressively advanced from a lower or simpler to a higher or more complex form, as developing to come to have usually gradual acquirements, only based on a precise behavioural notion of preference and expectation. In the philosophy of language, much of Ramsey’s work was directed at saving classical mathematics from ‘intuitionism’, or what he called the ‘Bolshevik menace of Brouwer and Weyl. In the theory of probability he was the first to show how we could develop some personalists theory, based on precise behavioural notation of preference and expectation. In the philosophy of language, Ramsey was one of the first thankers, which he combined with radical views of the function of many kinds of a proposition. Neither generalizations, nor causal propositions, nor those treating probability or ethics, describe facts, but each has a different specific function in our intellectual economy. Ramsey was one of the earliest commentators on the early work of Wittgenstein, and his continuing friendship that led to Wittgenstein’s return to Cambridge and to philosophy in 1929.
Ramsey’s sentence theory is the sentence generated by taking all the sentences affirmed in a scientific theory that use some term, e.g., ‘quark’. Replacing the term by a variable, and existentially quantifying into the result. Instead of saying that quarks have such-and-such properties, the Ramsey sentence says that there is something that has those properties. If we repeat the process for all of a group of the theoretical terms, the sentence gives the ‘topic-neutral’ structure of the theory, but removes any implication that we know what the term so treated prove competent. It leaves open the possibility of identifying the theoretical item with whatever, but it is that best fits the description provided. Virtually, all theories of knowledge. Of course, share an externalist component in requiring truth as a condition for known in. Reliabilism goes further, however, in trying to capture additional conditions for knowledge by ways of a nomic, counterfactual or similar ‘external’ relations between belief and truth. Closely allied to the nomic sufficiency account of knowledge, primarily due to Dretshe (1971, 1981), A. I. Goldman (1976, 1986) and R. Nozick (1981). The core of this approach is that X’s belief that ‘p’ qualifies as knowledge just in case ‘X’ believes ‘p’, because of reasons that would not obtain unless ‘p’s’ being true, or because of a process or method that would not yield belief in ‘p’ if ‘p’ were not true. An enemy example, ‘X’ would not have its current reasons for believing there is a telephone before it. Or would not come to believe this in the ways it does, thus, there is a counterfactual reliable guarantor of the belief’s bing true. Determined to and the facts of counterfactual approach say that ‘X’ knows that ‘p’ only if there is no ‘relevant alternative’ situation in which ‘p’ is false but ‘X’ would still believe that a proposition ‘p’; must be sufficient to eliminate all the alternatives too ‘p’ where an alternative to a proposition ‘p’ is a proposition incompatible with ‘p?’. That I, one’s justification or evidence for ‘p’ must be sufficient for one to know that every alternative too ‘p’ is false. This element of our evolving thinking, sceptical arguments have exploited about which knowledge. These arguments call our attentions to alternatives that our evidence sustains itself with no elimination. The sceptic inquires to how we know that we are not seeing a cleverly disguised mule. While we do have some evidence against the likelihood of such as deception, intuitively knowing that we are not so deceived is not strong enough for ‘us’. By pointing out alternate but hidden points of nature, in that we cannot eliminate, and others with more general application, as dreams, hallucinations, etc. , The sceptic appears to show that every alternative is seldom. If ever, satisfied.
All the same, and without a problem, is noted by the distinction between the ‘in itself’ and the; for itself’ originated in the Kantian logical and epistemological distinction between a thing as it is in itself, and that thing as an appearance, or as it is for us. For Kant, the thing in itself is the thing as it is intrinsically, that is, the character of the thing apart from any relations in which it happens to stand. The thing for which, or as an appearance, is the thing in so far as it stands in relation to our cognitive faculties and other objects. ‘Now a thing in itself cannot be known through mere relations: and we may therefore conclude that since outer sense gives us nothing but mere relations, this sense can contain in its representation only the relation of an object to the subject, and not the inner properties of the object in itself’. Kant applies this same distinction to the subject’s cognition of itself. Since the subject can know itself only in so far as it can intuit itself, and it can intuit itself only in terms of temporal relations, and thus as it is related to its’ own self, it represents itself ‘as it appears to itself, not as it is’. Thus, the distinction between what the subject is in itself and hat it is for itself arises in Kant in so far as the distinction between what an object is in itself and what it is for a knower is applied to the subject’s own knowledge of itself.
Hegel (1770-1831) begins the transition of the epistemological distinct ion between what the subject is in itself and what it is for itself into an ontological distinction. Since, for Hegel, what is, s it is in fact ir in itself, necessarily involves relation, the Kantian distinction must be transformed. Taking his cue from the fact that, even for Kant, what the subject is in fact ir in itself involves a relation to itself, or seif-consciousness. Hegel suggests that the cognition of an entity in terms of such relations or self-relations do not preclude knowledge of the thing itself. Rather, what an entity is intrinsically, or in itself, is best understood in terms of the potentiality of that thing to enter specific explicit relations with itself. And, just as for consciousness to be explicitly itself is for it to be for itself by being in relation to itself, i.e., to be explicitly self-conscious, for-itself of any entity is that entity in so far as it is actually related to itself. The distinction between the entity in itself and the entity for itself is thus taken t o apply to every entity, and not only to the subject. For example, the seed of a plant is that plant in itself or implicitly, while the mature plant which involves actual relation among the plant’s various organs is the plant ‘for itself’. In Hegel, then, the in itself/for itself distinction becomes universalized, in is applied to all entities, and not merely to conscious entities. In addition, the distinction takes on an ontological dimension. While the seed and the mature plant are one and the same entity, being in itself of the plan, or the plant as potential adult, in that an ontologically distinct commonality is in for itself on the plant, or the actually existing mature organism. At the same time, the distinction retains an epistemological dimension in Hegel, although its import is quite different from that of the Kantian distinction. To know a thing it is necessary to know both the actual, explicit self-relations which mark the thing (the being for itself of the thing) and the inherent simpler principle of these relations, or the being in itself of the thing. Real knowledge, for Hegel, thus consists in a knowledge of the thing as it is in and for itself.
Sartre’s distinction between being in itself and being for itself, which is an entirely ontological distinction with minimal epistemological import, is descended from the Hegelian distinction. Sartre distinguishes between what it is for consciousness to be, i.e., being for itself, and the being of the transcendent being which is intended by consciousness, i.e., being in itself. What is it for consciousness to be, being for itself, is marked by self relation? Sartre posits a ‘pre-reflective Cogito’, such that every consciousness of ‘χ’ necessarily involves a ‘non-positional’ consciousness of the consciousness of ‘χ’. While in Kant every subject is both in itself, i.e., as it is apart from its relations, and for itself in so far as it is related to itself, and for itself in so far as it is related to itself by appearing to itself, and in Hegel every entity can be considered as it is both in itself and for itself, in Sartre, to be self related or for itself is the distinctive ontological mark of consciousness, while to lack relations or to be in itself is the distinctive e ontological mark of non-conscious entities.
This conclusion conflicts with another strand in our thinking about knowledge, in that we know many things. Thus, there is a tension in our ordinary thinking about knowledge ~. We believe that knowledge is, in the sense indicated, an absolute concept and yet, we also believe that there are many instances of that concept.
If one finds absoluteness to be too central a component of our concept of knowledge to be relinquished, one could argue from the absolute character of knowledge to a sceptical conclusion (Unger, 1975). Most philosophers, however, have taken the other course, choosing to respond to the conflict by giving up, perhaps reluctantly, the absolute criterion. This latter response holds as sacrosanct our commonsense belief that we know many things (Pollock, 1979 and Chisholm, 1977). Each approach is subject to the criticism that it preserves one aspect of our ordinary thinking about knowledge at the expense of denying another. We can view the theory of relevant alternatives as an attempt to provide a more satisfactory response to this tension in our thinking about knowledge. It attempts to characterize knowledge in a way that preserves both our belief that knowledge is an absolute concept and our belief that we have knowledge.
Having to its recourse of knowledge, its cental questions include the origin of knowledge, the place of experience in generating knowledge, and the place of reason in doing so, the relationship between knowledge and certainty, and between knowledge and the impossibility of error, the possibility of universal scepticism, and the changing forms of knowledge that arise from new conceptualizations of the world. All these issues link with other central concerns of philosophy, such as the nature of truth and the natures of experience and meaning. Seeing epistemology is possible as dominated by two rival metaphors. One is that of a building or pyramid, built on foundations. In this conception it is the job of the philosopher to describe especially secure foundations, and to identify secure modes of construction, s that the resulting edifice can be shown to be sound. This metaphor of knowledge, and of a rationally defensible theory of confirmation and inference as a method of construction, as that knowledge must be regarded as a structure risen upon secure, certain foundations. These are found in some formidable combinations of experience and reason, with different schools (empiricism, rationalism) emphasizing the role of one over that of the others. Foundationalism was associated with the ancient Stoics, and in the modern era with Descartes (1596-1650). Who discovered his foundations in the ‘clear and distinct’ ideas of reason? Its main opponent is Coherentism, or the view that a body of propositions mas be known without a foundation in certainty, but by their interlocking strength, than as a crossword puzzle may be known to have been solved correctly even if each answer, taken individually, admits of uncertainty. Difficulties at this point led the logical passivists to abandon the notion of an epistemological foundation, and justly philander with the coherence theory of truth. It is widely accepted that trying to make the connection between thought and experience through basic sentences depends on an untenable ‘myth of the given’.
Still, of the other metaphor, is that of a boat or fuselage, that has no foundation but owes its strength to the stability given by its interlocking parts. This rejects the idea of a basis in the ‘given’, favours ideas of coherence and holism, but finds it harder to ward off scepticism. In spite of these concerns, the problem, least of mention, is of defining knowledge in terms of true beliefs plus some favoured relations between the believer and the facts that began with Plato’s view in the 'Theaetetus' that knowledge is true belief, and some logos.` Due of its natural epistemology, the enterprising of studying the actual formation of knowledge by human beings, without aspiring to make evidently those processes as rational, or proof against ‘scepticism’ or even apt to yield the truth. Natural epistemology would therefore blend into the psychology of learning and the study of episodes in the history of science. The scope for ‘external’ or philosophical reflection of the kind that might result in scepticism or its refutation is markedly diminished. Nonetheless, the terms are modern, they however distinguish exponents of the approach that include Aristotle, Hume, and J. S. Mills.
The task of the philosopher of a discipline would then be to reveal the correct method and to unmask counterfeits. Although this belief lay behind much positivist philosophy of science, few philosophers at present, subscribe to it. It places too well a confidence in the possibility of a purely a prior ‘first philosophy’, or standpoint beyond that of the working practitioners, from which they can measure their best efforts as good or bad. This point of view now seems that many philosophers are acquainted with the affordance of fantasy. The more modest of tasks that we actually adopt at various historical stages of investigation into different areas with the aim not so much of criticizing but more of systematization, in the presuppositions of a particular field at a particular tie. There is still a role for local methodological disputes within the community investigators of some phenomenon, with one approach charging that another is unsound or unscientific, but logic and philosophy will not, on the modern view, provide an independent arsenal of weapons for such battles, which indeed often come to seem more like political bids for ascendancy within a discipline.
This is an approach to the theory of knowledge that sees an important connection between the growth of knowledge and biological evolution. An evolutionary epistemologist claims that the development of human knowledge processed through some natural selection process, the best example of which is Darwin’s theory of biological natural selection. There is a widespread misconception that evolution proceeds according to some plan or direct, put it has neither, and the role of chance ensures that its future course will be unpredictable. Random variations in individual organisms create tiny differences in their Darwinian fitness. Some individuals have more offsprings than others, and the characteristics that increased their fitness thereby become more prevalent in future generations. Once upon a time, at least a mutation occurred in a human population in tropical Africa that changed the haemoglobin molecule in a way that provided resistance to malaria. This enormous advantage caused the new gene to spread, with the unfortunate consequence that sickle-cell anaemia came to exist.
Chance can influence the outcome at each stage: First, in the creation of genetic mutation, second, in whether the bearer lives long enough to show its effects, thirdly, in chance events that influence the individual’s actual reproductive success, and fourth, in wether a gene even if favoured in one generation, is, happenstance, eliminated in the next, and finally in the many unpredictable environmental changes that will undoubtedly occur in the history of any group of organisms. As Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould has so vividly expressed that process over again, the outcome would surely be different. Not only might there not be humans, there might not even be anything like mammals.
We will often emphasis the elegance of traits shaped by natural selection, but the common idea that nature creates perfection needs to be analysed carefully. The extent to which evolution achieves perfection depends on exactly what you mean. If you mean 'Does natural selections always take the best path for the long-term welfare of a species?' The answer is no. That would require adaption by group selection, and this is, unlikely. If you mean 'Does natural selection creates every adaption that would be valuable?' The answer again, is no. For instance, some kinds of South American monkeys can grasp branches with their tails. The trick would surely also be useful to some African species, but, simply because of bad luck, none have it. Some combination of circumstances started some ancestral South American monkeys using their tails in ways that ultimately led to an ability to grab onto branches, while no such development took place in Africa. Mere usefulness of a trait does not necessitate it mean that will evolve.
This is an approach to the theory of knowledge that sees an important connection between the growth of knowledge and biological evolution. An evolutionary epistemologist claims that the development of human knowledge proceeds through some natural selection process, the best example of which is Darwin’s theory of biological natural selection. The three major components of the model of natural selection are variation selection and retention. According to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, variations are not pre-designed to perform certain functions. Rather, these variations that perform useful functions are selected. While those that suffice on doing nothing are not selected as such the selection is responsible for the appearance that specific variations built upon intentionally do really occur. In the modern theory of evolution, genetic mutations provide the blind variations ( blind in the sense that variations are not influenced by the effects they would have, - the likelihood of a mutation is not correlated with the benefits or liabilities that mutation would confer on the organism), the environment provides the filter of selection, and reproduction provides the retention. It is achieved because those organisms with features that make them less adapted for survival do not survive about other organisms in the environment that have features that are better adapted. Evolutionary epistemology applies this blind variation and selective retention model to the growth of scientific knowledge and to human thought processes in general.
The parallel between biological evolution and conceptual or we can see ‘epistemic’ evolution as either literal or analogical. The literal version of evolutionary epistemologic biological evolution as the main cause of the growth of knowledge. On this view, called the ‘evolution of cognitive mechanic programs’, by Bradie (1986) and the ‘Darwinian approach to epistemology’ by Ruse (1986), that growth of knowledge occurs through blind variation and selective retention because biological natural selection itself is the cause of epistemic variation and selection. The most plausible version of the literal view does not hold that all human beliefs are innate but rather than the mental mechanisms that guide the acquisition of non-innate beliefs are themselves innately and the result of biological natural selection. Ruses ( 1986) repossess on the demands of an interlingual rendition of literal evolutionary epistemology that he links to sociology (Rescher, 1990).
Determining the value upon innate ideas can take the path to consider as these have been variously defined by philosophers either as ideas consciously present to the mind priori to sense experience (the non-dispositional sense), or as ideas which we have an innate disposition to form (though we need to be actually aware of them at a particular r time, e.g., as babies - the dispositional sense. Understood in either way they were invoked to account for our recognition of certain verification, such as those of mathematics, or to justify certain moral and religious clams which were held to b capable of being know by introspection of our innate ideas. Examples of such supposed truths might include ‘murder is wrong’ or ‘God exists’.
One difficulty with the doctrine is that it is sometimes formulated as one about concepts or ideas which are held to be innate and at other times one about a source of propositional knowledge, in so far as concepts are taken to be innate the doctrine reflates primarily to claims about meaning: our idea of God, for example, is taken as a source for the meaning of the word God. When innate ideas are understood prepositionally, their supposed innateness is taken an evidence for the truth. This latter thesis clearly rests on the assumption that innate propositions have an unimpeachable source, usually taken to be God, but then any appeal to innate ideas to justify the existence of God is circular. Despite such difficulties the doctrine of innate ideas had a long and influential history until the eighteenth century and the concept has in recent decades been revitalized through its employment in Noam Chomsky’s influential account of the mind’s linguistic capacities.
The attraction of the theory has been felt strongly by those philosophers who have been unable to give an alternative account of our capacity to recognize that some propositions are certainly true where that recognition cannot be justified solely o the basis of an appeal to sense experiences. Thus Plato argued that, for example, recognition of mathematical truths could only be explained on the assumption of some form of recollection, in Plato, the recollection of knowledge, possibly obtained in a previous stat e of existence e draws its topic as most famously broached in the dialogue Meno, and the doctrine is one attempt oi account for the ‘innate’ unlearned character of knowledge of first principles. Since there was no plausible post-natal source the recollection must refer to a pre-natal acquisition of knowledge. Thus understood, the doctrine of innate ideas supported the views that there were importantly gradatorially innate in human beings and it was the sense which hindered their proper apprehension.
The ascetic implications of the doctrine were important in Christian philosophy throughout the Middle Ages and scholastic teaching until its displacement by Locke’ philosophy in the eighteenth century. It had in the meantime acquired modern expression in the philosophy of Descartes who argued that we can come to know certain important truths before we have any empirical knowledge at all. Our idea of God must necessarily exist, is Descartes held, logically independent of sense experience. In England the Cambridge Plantonists such as Henry Moore and Ralph Cudworth added considerable support.
Locke’s rejection of innate ideas and his alternative empiricist account was powerful enough to displace the doctrine from philosophy almost totally. Leibniz, in his critique of Locke, attempted to defend it with a sophisticated disposition version of theory, but it attracted few followers.
The empiricist alternative to innate ideas as an explanation of the certainty of propositions in the direction of construing with necessary truths as analytic. Kant’s refinement of the classification of propositions with the fourfold distentions Analytic/synthetic and deductive/inductive did nothing to encourage a return to their innate idea’s doctrine, which slipped from view. The doctrine may fruitfully be understood as the genesis of confusion between explaining the genesis of ideas or concepts and the basis for regarding some propositions as necessarily true.
Chomsky’s revival of the term in connection with his account of the spoken exchange acquisition has once more made the issue topical. He claims that the principles of language and ‘natural logic’ are known unconsciously and are a precondition for language acquisition. But for his purposes innate ideas must be taken in a strong dispositional sense - so strong that it is far from clear that Chomsky’s claims are as in conflict with empiricists accounts as some (including Chomsky) have supposed. Quine, for example, sees no clash with his own version of empirical behaviourism, in which old talk of ideas is eschewing in favours of dispositions to observable behavior.
Locke’ accounts of analytic propositions was, that everything that a succinct account of analyticity should be (Locke, 1924). He distinguishes two kinds of analytic propositions, identity propositions in which ‘we affirm the said term of itself’, e.g., ‘Roses are roses’ and predicative propositions in which ‘a part of the complex idea is predicated of the name of the whole’, e.g., ‘Roses are flowers’. Locke calls such sentences ‘trifling’ because a speaker who uses them ‘trifling with words’. A synthetic sentence, in contrast, such as a mathematical theorem, states ‘a real truth and conveys, and with it parallels really instructive knowledge’, and correspondingly, Locke distinguishes two kinds of ‘necessary consequences’, analytic entailments where validity depends on the literal containment of the conclusion in the premiss and synthetic entailment where it does not. (Locke did not originate this concept-containment notion of analyticity. It is discussed by Arnaud and Nicole, and it is safe to say that it has been around for a very long time (Arnaud, 1964).
All the same, the analogical version of evolutionary epistemology, called the ‘evolution of theory’s program’, by Bradie (1986). The ‘Spenserians approach’ (after the nineteenth century philosopher Herbert Spencer) by Ruse (1986), a process analogous to biological natural selection has governed the development of human knowledge, rather than by an instance of the mechanism itself. This version of evolutionary epistemology, introduced and elaborated by Donald Campbell (1974) and Karl Popper, sees the [partial] fit between theories and the world as explained by a mental process of trial and error known as epistemic natural selection.
We have usually taken both versions of evolutionary epistemology to be types of naturalized epistemology, because both take some empirical facts as a starting point for their epistemological project. The literal version of evolutionary epistemology begins by accepting evolutionary theory and a materialist approach to the mind and, from these, constructs an account of knowledge and its developments. In contrast, the analogical; the version does not require the truth of biological evolution: It simply draws on biological evolution as a source for the model of natural selection. For this version of evolutionary epistemology to be true, the model of natural selection need only apply to the growth of knowledge, not to the origin and development of species. Savagery put, evolutionary epistemology of the analogical sort could still be true even if creationism is the correct theory of the origin of species.
Although they do not begin by assuming evolutionary theory, most analogical evolutionary epistemologists are naturalized epistemologists as well, their empirical assumptions, least of mention, implicitly come from psychology and cognitive science, not evolutionary theory. Sometimes, however, evolutionary epistemology is characterized in a seemingly non-naturalistic fashion. (Campbell 1974) says that ‘if one is expanding knowledge beyond what one knows, one has no choice but to explore without the benefit of wisdom’, i.e., blindly. This, Campbell admits, makes evolutionary epistemology close to being a tautology (and so not naturalistic). Evolutionary epistemology does assert the analytic claim that when expanding one’s knowledge beyond what one knows, one must precessed to something that is already known, but, more interestingly, it also makes the synthetic claim that when expanding one’s knowledge beyond what one knows, one must proceed by blind variation and selective retention. This claim is synthetic because we can empirically falsify it. The central claim of evolutionary epistemology is synthetic, not analytic. If the central contradictory, which they are not. Campbell is right that evolutionary epistemology does have the analytic feature he mentions, but he is wrong to think that this is a distinguishing feature, since any plausible epistemology has the same analytic feature (Skagestad, 1978).
Two extra-ordinary issues lie to awaken the literature that involves questions about ‘realism’, i.e., What metaphysical commitment does an evolutionary epistemologist have to make? . (Progress, i.e., according to evolutionary epistemology, does knowledge develop toward a goal?) With respect to realism, many evolutionary epistemologists endorse that is called ‘hypothetical realism’, a view that combines a version of epistemological ‘scepticism’ and tentative acceptance of metaphysical realism. With respect to progress, the problem is that biological evolution is not goal-directed, but the growth of human knowledge is. Campbell (1974) worries about the potential dis-analogy here but is willing to bite the stone of conscience and admit that epistemic evolution progress toward a goal (truth) while biological evolution does not. Some have argued that evolutionary epistemologists must give up the ‘truth-topic’ sense of progress because a natural selection model is in non-teleological in essence alternatively, following Kuhn (1970), and embraced along with evolutionary epistemology.
Among the most frequent and serious criticisms leveled against evolutionary epistemology is that the analogical version of the view is false because epistemic variation is not blind (Skagestad, 1978 and Ruse, 1986), Stein and Lipton (1990) have argued, however, that this objection fails because, while epistemic variation is not random, its constraints come from heuristics that, for the most part, are selective retention. Further, Stein and Lipton argue that lunatics are analogous to biological pre-adaptions, evolutionary pre-biological pre-adaptions, evolutionary cursors, such as a half-wing, a precursor to a wing, which have some function other than the function of their descendable structures: The function of descendability may result in the function of their descendable character embodied to its structural foundations, is that of the guideline of epistemic variation is, on this view, not the source of dis-analogy, but the source of a more articulated account of the analogy.
Many evolutionary epistemologists try to combine the literal and the analogical versions (Bradie, 1986, and Stein and Lipton, 1990), saying that those beliefs and cognitive mechanisms, which are innate results from natural selection of the biological sort and those that are innate results from natural selection of the epistemic sort. This is reasonable as long as the two parts of this hybrid view are kept distinct. An analogical version of evolutionary epistemology with biological variation as its only source of blindeness would be a null theory: This would be the case if all our beliefs are innate or if our non-innate beliefs are not the result of blind variation. An appeal to the legitimate way to produce a hybrid version of evolutionary epistemology since doing so trivializes the theory. For similar reasons, such an appeal will not save an analogical version of evolutionary epistemology from arguments to the effect that epistemic variation is blind (Stein and Lipton, 1990).
Although it is a new approach to theory of knowledge, evolutionary epistemology has attracted much attention, primarily because it represents a serious attempt to flesh out a naturalized epistemology by drawing on several disciplines. In science is used for understanding the nature and development of knowledge, then evolutionary theory is among the disciplines worth a look. Insofar as evolutionary epistemology looks there, it is an interesting and potentially fruitful epistemological programme.
What makes a belief justified and what makes a true belief knowledge? Thinking that whether a belief deserves one of these appraisals is natural depends on what caused such subjectivity to have the belief. In recent decades many epistemologists have pursued this plausible idea with a variety of specific proposals. Some causal theories of knowledge have it that a true belief that ‘p’ is knowledge just in case it has the right causal connection to the fact that ‘p’. They can apply such a criterion only to cases where the fact that ‘p’ is a sort that can enter inti causal relations, as this seems to exclude mathematically and other necessary facts and perhaps any fact expressed by a universal generalization, and proponents of this sort of criterion have usually supposed that it is limited to perceptual representations where knowledge of particular facts about subjects’ environments.
For example, Armstrong (1973) proposed that a belief of the form ‘This [perceived] object is F’ is [non-inferential] knowledge if and only if the belief is a completely reliable sign that the perceived object is ‘F’, that is, the fact that the object is ‘F’ contributed to causing the belief and its doing so depended on properties of the believer such that the laws of nature dictated that, for any subject ‘χ’ and perceived object ‘y’, if ‘χ’ has those properties and believed that ‘y’ is ‘F’, then ‘y’ is ‘F’. (Dretske, 1981) offers a rather similar account, in terms of the belief’s being caused by a signal received by the perceiver that carries the information that the object is ‘F’.
This sort of condition fails, however, to be sufficiently for non-inferential perceptivity, for knowledge is accountable for its compatibility with the belief’s being unjustified, and an unjustified belief cannot be knowledge. For example, suppose that your organism for sensory data of colour as perceived, is working well, but you have been given good reason to think otherwise, to think, say, that the sensory data of things look chartreuse to say, that chartreuse things look magenta, if you fail to heed these reasons you have for thinking that your colour perception is awry and believe of a thing that looks magenta to you that it is magenta, your belief will fail top be justified and will therefore fail to be knowledge, although it is caused by the thing’s being withing the grasp of sensory perceptivity, in a way that is a completely reliable sign, or to carry the information that the thing is sufficiently to organize all sensory data as perceived in and of the World, or Holistic view.
The view that a belief acquires favorable epistemic status by having some kind of reliable linkage to the truth. Variations of this view have been advanced for both knowledge and justified belief. The first formulation of a reliable account of knowing notably appeared as marked and noted and accredited to F. P. Ramsey (1903-30), whereby much of Ramsey’s work was directed at saving classical mathematics from ‘intuitionism’, or what he called the ‘Bolshevik menace of Brouwer and Weyl’. In the theory of probability he was the first to develop, based on precise behavioural nations of preference and expectation. In the philosophy of language, Ramsey was one of the first thinkers to accept a ‘redundancy theory of truth’, which he combined with radical views of the function of many kinds of propositions. Neither generalizations, nor causal positions, nor those treating probability or ethics, described facts, but each has a different specific function in our intellectual economy. Additionally, Ramsey, who said that an impression of belief was knowledge if it were true, certain and obtained by a reliable process. P. Unger (1968) suggested that ‘S’ knows that ‘p’ just in case it is of at all accidental that ‘S’ is right about its being the case that D.M. Armstrong (1973) drew an analogy between a thermometer that reliably indicates the temperature and a belief interaction of reliability that indicates the truth. Armstrong said that a non-inferential belief qualified as knowledge if the belief has properties that are nominally sufficient for its truth, i.e., guarantee its truth via laws of nature.
Closely allied to the nomic sufficiency account of knowledge, primarily due to F.I. Dretske (1971, 1981), A.I. Goldman (1976, 1986) and R. Nozick (1981). The core of this approach is that ‘S’s’ belief that ‘p’ qualifies as knowledge just in case ‘S’ believes ‘p’ because of reasons that would not obtain unless ‘p’s’ being true, or because of a process or method that would not yield belief in ‘p’ if ‘p’ were not true. For example, ‘S’ would not have his current reasons for believing there is a telephone before him, or would not come to believe this in the way he does, unless there was a telephone before him. Thus, there is a counterfactual reliable guarantee of the belief’s being true. A variant of the counterfactual approach says that ‘S’ knows that ‘p’ only if there is no ‘relevant alternative’ situation in which ‘p’ is false but ‘S’ would still believe that ‘p’ must be sufficient to eliminate all the other situational alternatives of ‘p’, where an alternative to a proposition ‘p’ is a proposition incompatible with ‘p’, that is, one’s justification or evidence fort ‘p’ must be sufficient for one to know that every subsidiary situation is ‘p’ is false.
They standardly classify Reliabilism as an ‘externaturalist’ theory because it invokes some truth-linked factor, and truth is ‘eternal’ to the believer the main argument for externalism derives from the philosophy of language, more specifically, from the various phenomena pertaining to natural kind terms, indexicals, etc., that motivate the views that have come to be known as direct reference’ theories. Such phenomena seem, at least to show that the belief or thought content that can be properly attributed to a person is dependent on facts about his environment, i.e., whether he is on Earth or Twin Earth, what in fact he is pointing at, the classificatory criteria employed by the experts in his social group, etc. ~. Not just on what is going on internally in his mind or brain (Putnam, 175 and Burge, 1979.) Virtually all theories of knowledge, of course, share an externalist component in requiring truth as a condition for knowing. Reliabilism goes further, however, in trying to capture additional conditions for knowledge by means of a nomic, counterfactual or other such ‘external’ relations between ‘belief’ and ‘truth’.
The most influential counterexample to Reliabilism is the demon-world and the clairvoyance examples. The demon-world example challenges the necessity of the reliability requirement, in that a possible world in which an evil demon creates deceptive visual experience, the process of vision is not reliable. Still, the visually formed beliefs in this world are intuitively justified. The clairvoyance example challenges the sufficiency of reliability. Suppose a cognitive agent possesses a reliable clairvoyance power, but has no evidence for or against his possessing such a power. Intuitively, his clairvoyantly formed beliefs are unjustifiably unreasoned, but Reliabilism declares them justified.
Another form of Reliabilism, ‘normal worlds’, Reliabilism (Goldman, 1986), answers the range problem differently, and treats the demon-world problem in the same stroke. Permit a ‘normal world’ be one that is consistent with our general beliefs about the actual world. Normal-worlds Reliabilism says that a belief, in any possible world is justified just in case its generating processes have high truth ratios in normal worlds. This resolves the demon-world problem because the relevant truth ratio of the visual process is not its truth ratio in the demon world itself, but its ratio in normal worlds. Since this ratio is presumably high, visually formed beliefs in the demon world turn out to be justified.
Yet, a different version of Reliabilism attempts to meet the demon-world and clairvoyance problems without recourse to the questionable notion of ‘normal worlds’. Consider Sosa’s (1992) suggestion that justified beliefs is belief acquired through ‘intellectual virtues’, and not through intellectual ‘vices’, whereby virtues are reliable cognitive faculties or processes. The task is to explain how epistemic evaluators have used the notion of indelible virtues, and vices, to arrive at their judgements, especially in the problematic cases. Goldman (1992) proposes a two-stage reconstruction of an evaluator’s activity. The first stage is a reliability-based acquisition of a ‘list’ of virtues and vices. The second stage is application of this list to queried cases. Determining has executed the second stage whether processes in the queried cases resemble virtues or vices. We have classified visual beliefs in the demon world as justified because visual belief formation is one of the virtues. Clairvoyance formed, beliefs are classified as unjustified because clairvoyance resembles scientifically suspect processes that the evaluator represents as vices, e.g., mental telepathy, ESP, and so forth
We now turn to a philosophy of meaning and truth, for which it is especially associated with the American philosopher of science and of language (1839-1914), and the American psychologist philosopher William James (1842-1910), wherefore the study in Pragmatism is given to various formulations by both writers, but the core is the belief that the meaning of a doctrine is the same as the practical effects of adapting it. Peirce interpreted of theocratical sentences ids only that of a corresponding practical maxim (telling us what to do in some circumstance). In James the position issues in a theory of truth, notoriously allowing that belief, including for examples, belief in God, are the widest sense of the works satisfactorially in the widest sense of the word. On James’s view almost any belief might be respectable, and even true, but working with true beliefs is not a simple matter for James. The apparent subjectivist consequences of tis were wildly assailed by Russell (1872-1970), Moore (1873-1958), and others in the early years of the 20 century. This led to a division within pragmatism between those such as the American educator John Dewey (1859-1952), whose humanistic conception of practice remains inspired by science, and the more idealistic route that especially by the English writer F.C.S. Schiller (1864-1937), embracing the doctrine that our cognitive efforts and human needs actually transform the reality that we seek to describe. James often writes as if he sympathizes with this development. For instance, in The Meaning of Truth (1909), he considers the hypothesis that other people have no minds (dramatized in the sexist idea of an ‘automatic sweetheart’ or female zombie) and remarks’ that the hypothesis would not work because it would not satisfy our egoistic craving for the recognition and admiration of others. The implication that this is what make it true that the other persons have minds in the disturbing part.
Modern pragmatists such as the American philosopher and critic Richard Rorty (1931-) and some writings of the philosopher Hilary Putnam (1925-) who has usually tried to dispense with an account of truth and concentrate, as perhaps James should have done, upon the nature of belief and its relations with human attitude, emotion, and need. The driving motivation of pragmatism is the idea that belief in the truth on te one hand must have a close connection with success in action on the other. One way of cementing the connection is found in the idea that natural selection must have adapted us to be cognitive creatures because beliefs have effects, as they work. Pragmatism can be found in Kant’s doctrine of the primary of practical over pure reason, and continued to play an influential role in the theory of meaning and of truth.
In case of fact, the philosophy of mind is the modern successor to behaviourism, as do the functionalism that its early advocates were Putnam (1926-) and Sellars (1912-89), and its guiding principle is that we can define mental states by a triplet of relations they have on other mental stares, what effects they have on behaviour. The definition need not take the form of a simple analysis, but if w could write down the totality of axioms, or postdate, or platitudes that govern our theories about what things of other mental states, and our theories about what things are apt to cause (for example), a belief state, what effects it would have on a variety of other mental states, and what affects it is likely to have on behaviour, then we would have done all that is needed to make the state a proper theoretical notion. It could be implicitly defied by these theses. Functionalism is often compared with descriptions of a computer, since according to mental descriptions correspond to a description of a machine in terms of software, that remains silent about the underlaying hardware or ‘realization’ of the program the machine is running. The principle advantage of functionalism includes its fit with the way we know of mental states both of ourselves and others, which is via their effects on behaviour and other mental states. As with behaviourism, critics charge that structurally complex items that do not bear mental states might nevertheless, imitate the functions that are cited. According to this criticism functionalism is too generous and would count too many things as having minds. It is also queried whether functionalism is too paradoxical, able to see mental similarities only when there is causal similarity, when our actual practices of interpretations enable us to ascribe thoughts and desires to differently from our own, it may then seem as though beliefs and desires can be ‘variably realized’ causal architecture, just as much as they can be in different neurophysiological states.
The philosophical movement of Pragmatism had a major impact on American culture from the late 19th century to the present. Pragmatism calls for ideas and theories to be tested in practice, by assessing whether acting upon the idea or theory produces desirable or undesirable results. According to pragmatists, all claims about truth, knowledge, morality, and politics must be tested in this way. Pragmatism has been critical of traditional Western philosophy, especially the notions that there are absolute truths and absolute values. Although pragmatism was popular for a time in France, England, and Italy, most observers believe that it encapsulates an American faith in know-how and practicality and an equally American distrust of abstract theories and ideologies.
In mentioning the American psychologist and philosopher we find William James, who helped to popularize the philosophy of pragmatism with his book Pragmatism: A New Name for Old Ways of Thinking (1907). Influenced by a theory of meaning and verification developed for scientific hypotheses by American philosopher C.S. Peirce, James held that truth is what works, or has good experimental results. In a related theory, James argued the existence of God is partly verifiable because many people derive benefits from believing.
Pragmatists regard all theories and institutions as tentative hypotheses and solutions. For this reason they believed that efforts to improve society, through such means as education or politics, must be geared toward problem solving and must be ongoing. Through their emphasis on connecting theory to practice, pragmatist thinkers attempted to transform all areas of philosophy, from metaphysics to ethics and political philosophy.
Pragmatism sought a middle ground between traditional ideas about the nature of reality and radical theories of nihilism and irrationalism, which had become popular in Europe in the late 19th century. Traditional metaphysics assumed that the world has a fixed, intelligible structure and that human beings can know absolute or objective truths about the world and about what constitutes moral behaviour. Nihilism and irrationalism, on the other hand, denied those very assumptions and their certitude. Pragmatists today still try to steer a middle course between contemporary offshoots of these two extremes.
The ideas of the pragmatists were considered revolutionary when they first appeared. To some critics, pragmatism’s refusal to affirm any absolutes carried negative implications for society. For example, pragmatists do not believe that a single absolute idea of goodness or justice exists, but rather than these concepts are changeable and depend on the context in which they are being discussed. The absence of these absolutes, critics feared, could result in a decline in moral standards. The pragmatists’ denial of absolutes, moreover, challenged the foundations of religion, government, and schools of thought. As a result, pragmatism influenced developments in psychology, sociology, education, semiotics (the study of signs and symbols), and scientific method, as well as philosophy, cultural criticism, and social reform movements. Various political groups have also drawn on the assumptions of pragmatism, from the progressive movements of the early 20th century to later experiments in social reform.
Pragmatism is best understood in its historical and cultural context. It arose during the late 19th century, a period of rapid scientific advancement typified by the theories of British biologist Charles Darwin, whose theories suggested too many thinkers that humanity and society are in a perpetual state of progress. During this same period a decline in traditional religious beliefs and values accompanied the industrialization and material progress of the time. In consequence it became necessary to rethink fundamental ideas about values, religion, science, community, and individuality.
The three most important pragmatists are American philosophers’ Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Peirce was primarily interested in scientific method and mathematics; His objective was to infuse scientific thinking into philosophy and society, and he believed that human comprehension of reality was becoming ever greater and that human communities were becoming increasingly progressive. Peirce developed pragmatism as a theory of meaning - in particular, the meaning of concepts used in science. The meaning of the concept 'brittle', for example, is given by the observed consequences or properties that objects called 'brittle' exhibit. For Peirce, the only rational way to increase knowledge was to form mental habits that would test ideas through observation, experimentation, or what he called inquiry. Many philosophers known as logical positivists, a group of philosophers who have been influenced by Peirce, believed that our evolving species was fated to get ever closer to Truth. Logical positivists emphasize the importance of scientific verification, rejecting the assertion of positivism that personal experience is the basis of true knowledge.
James moved pragmatism in directions that Peirce strongly disliked. He generalized Peirce’s doctrines to encompass all concepts, beliefs, and actions; he also applied pragmatist ideas to truth as well as to meaning. James was primarily interested in showing how systems of morality, religion, and faith could be defended in a scientific civilization. He argued that sentiment, as well as logic, is crucial to rationality and that the great issues of life - morality and religious belief, for example - are leaps of faith. As such, they depend upon what he called 'the will to believe' and not merely on scientific evidence, which can never tell us what to do or what is worthwhile. Critics charged James with relativism (the belief that values depend on specific situations) and with crass expediency for proposing that if an idea or action works the way one intends, it must be right. But James can more accurately be described as a pluralist - someone who believes the world to be far too complex for any one philosophy to explain everything.
Dewey’s philosophy can be described as a version of philosophical naturalism, which regards human experience, intelligence, and communities as ever-evolving mechanisms. Using their experience and intelligence, Dewey believed, human beings can solve problems, including social problems, through inquiry. For Dewey, naturalism led to the idea of a democratic society that allows all members to acquire social intelligence and progress both as individuals and as communities. Dewey held that traditional ideas about knowledge, truth, and values, in which absolutes are assumed, are incompatible with a broadly Darwinian world-view in which individuals and societies are progressing. In consequence, he felt that these traditional ideas must be discarded or revised. Indeed, for pragmatists, everything people know and do depend on a historical context and are thus tentative rather than absolute.
Many followers and critics of Dewey believe he advocated elitism and social engineering in his philosophical stance. Others think of him as a kind of romantic humanist. Both tendencies are evident in Dewey’s writings, although he aspired to synthesize the two realms.
The pragmatists’ tradition was revitalized in the 1980s by American philosopher Richard Rorty, who has faced similar charges of elitism for his belief in the relativism of values and his emphasis on the role of the individual in attaining knowledge. Interest has renewed in the classic pragmatists - Pierce, James, and Dewey - have an alternative to Rorty’s interpretation of the tradition.
One of the earliest versions of a correspondence theory was put forward in the 4th century Bc Greek philosopher Plato, who sought to understand the meaning of knowledge and how it is acquired. Plato wished to distinguish between true belief and false belief. He proposed a theory based on intuitive recognition that true statements correspond to the facts - that is, agree with reality - while false statements do not. In Plato’s example, the sentence 'Theaetetus flies' can be true only if the world contains the fact that Theaetetus flies. However, Plato—and much later, 20th-century British philosopher Bertrand Russell—recognized this theory as unsatisfactory because it did not allow for false belief. Both Plato and Russell reasoned that if a belief is false because there is no fact to which it corresponds, it would then be a belief about nothing and so not a belief at all. Each then speculated that the grammar of a sentence could offer a way around this problem. A sentence can be about something (the person Theaetetus), yet false (flying is not true of Theaetetus). But how, they asked, are the parts of a sentence related to reality? One suggestion, proposed by 20th-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, is that the parts of a sentence relate to the objects they describe in much the same way that the parts of a picture relate to the objects pictured. Once again, however, false sentences pose a problem: If a false sentence pictures nothing, there can be no meaning in the sentence.
In the late 19th-century American philosopher Charles S. Peirce offered another answer to the question 'What is truth?' He asserted that truth is that which experts will agree upon when their investigations are final. Many pragmatists such as Peirce claim that the truth of our ideas must be tested through practice. Some pragmatists have gone so far as to question the usefulness of the idea of truth, arguing that in evaluating our beliefs we should rather pay attention to the consequences that our beliefs may have. However, critics of the pragmatic theory are concerned that we would have no knowledge because we do not know which set of beliefs will ultimately be agreed upon; nor are their sets of beliefs that are useful in every context.
A third theory of truth, the coherence theory, also concerns the meaning of knowledge. Coherence theorists have claimed that a set of beliefs is true if the beliefs are comprehensive - that is, they cover everything - and do not contradict each other.
Other philosophers dismiss the question 'What is truth?' with the observation that attaching the claim 'it is true that' to a sentence adds no meaning. However, these theorists, who have proposed what are known as deflationary theories of truth, do not dismiss such talk about truth as useless. They agree that there are contexts in which a sentence such as 'it is true that the book is blue' can have a different impact than the shorter statement 'the book is blue.' What is more important, use of the word true is essential when making a general claim about everything, nothing, or something, as in the statement 'most of what he says is true?'
Nevertheless, in the study of neuroscience it reveals that the human brain is a massively parallel system in which language processing is widely distributed. Computers generated images of human brains engaged in language processing reveals a hierarchical organization consisting of complicated clusters of brain areas that process different component functions in controlled time sequences. Stand-alone or unitary modules have clearly not accomplished language processing that evolved with the addition of separate modules that were eventually incorporated systematically upon some neural communications channel board.
Similarly, we have continued individual linguistic symbols as given to clusters of distributed brain areas and are not in a particular area. We may produce the specific sound patterns of words in dedicated regions. We have generated all the same, the symbolic and referential relationships between words through a convergence of neural codes from different and independent brain regions. The processes of words comprehension and retrieval result from combinations simpler associative processes in several separate brain fields of forces that command stimulation from other regions. The symbolic meaning of words, like the grammar that is essential for the construction of meaningful relationships between stings of words, is an emergent property from the complex interaction of several brain parts.
While the brain that evolved this capacity was obviously a product of Darwinian evolution, we cannot simply explain the most critical precondition for the evolution of brain in these terms. Darwinian evolution can explain why the creation of stone tools altered condition for survival in a ne ecological niche in which group living, pair bonding, and more complex social structures were critical to survival. Darwinian evolution can also explain why selective pressure in this new ecological niche favoured pre-adaptive changes required for symbolic commonisation. Nevertheless, as this communication resulted in increasingly more complex behaviour evolution began to take precedence of physical evolution in the sense that mutations resulting in enhanced social behaviour became selectively advantageously within the context of the social behaviour of hominids.
Although male and female hominids favoured pair bonding and created more complex social organizations in the interests of survival, the interplay between social evolution and biological evolution changed the terms of survival radically. The enhanced ability to use symbolic communication to construct of social interaction eventually made this communication the largest determinant of survival. Since this communication was based on a symbolic vocalization that requires the evolution of neural mechanisms and processes that did not evolve in any other species, this marked the emergence of a mental realm that would increasingly appear as separate nd distinct from the external material realm.
Nonetheless, if we could, for example, define all of the neural mechanisms involved in generating a particular word symbol, this would reveal nothing about the active experience of the world symbol as an idea in human consciousness. Conversely, the experience of the word symbol as an idea would reveal nothing about the neuronal processes involved. While one mode of understanding the situation necessarily displaces the other, we require both to achieve a complete understanding of the situation.
Most experts agree that our ancestries became knowledgeably articulated in the spoken exchange as based on complex grammar and syntax between two hundred thousand and some hundred thousand years ago. The mechanisms in the human brain that allowed for this great achievement clearly evolved, however, over great spans of time. In biology textbooks, the lists of prior adaptations that enhanced the ability of our ancestors to use communication normally include those that are inclining to inclinations to increase intelligence. As to approach a significant alteration of oral and auditory abilities, in that the separation or localization of functional representations is found on two sides of the brain. The evolution of some innate or hard wired grammar, however, when we look at how our ability to use language could have really evolved over the entire course of hominid evolution. The process seems more basic and more counterintuitive than we had previously imagined.
Although we share some aspects of vocalization with our primate cousins, the mechanisms of human vocalization are quite different and have evolved over great spans of time. Incremental increases in hominid brain size over the last 2.5 million years enhanced cortical control over the larynx, which originally evolved to prevent food and other particles from entering the windpipe or trachea; This eventually contributed to the use of vocal symbolization. Humans have more voluntary motor control over sound produced in the larynx than any other vocal species, and this control are associated with higher brain systems involved in skeletal muscle control as opposed to just visceral control. As a result, humans have direct cortical motor control over phonation and oral movement while chimps do not.
We position the larynx in modern humans in a comparatively low position to the throat and significantly increase the range and flexibility of sound production. The low position of the larynx allows greater changes in the volume to the resonant chamber formed by the mouth and pharynx and makes it easier to shift sounds to the mouth and away from the nasal cavity. Formidable conclusions are those of the sounds that comprise vowel components of speeches that become much more variable, including extremes in resonance combinations such as the 'ee' sound in 'tree' and the 'aw' sound in 'flaw.' Equally important, the repositioning of the larynx dramatically increases the ability of the mouth and tongue to modify vocal sounds. This shift in the larynx also makes it more likely that food and water passing over the larynx will enter the trachea, and this explains why humans are more inclined to experience choking. Yet this disadvantage, which could have caused the shift to e selected against, was clearly out-weighed by the advantage of being able to produce all the sounds used in modern language systems.
Some have argued that this removal of constraints on vocalization suggests that spoken language based on complex symbol systems emerged quite suddenly in modern humans only about one hundred thousand years ago. It is, however, far more likely that language use began with very primitive symbolic systems and evolved over time to increasingly complex systems. The first symbolic systems were not full-blown language systems, and they were probably not as flexible and complex as the vocal calls and gestural displays of modern primates. The first users of primitive symbolic systems probably coordinated most of their social comminations with call and display behavioural attitudes alike those of the modern ape and monkeys.
Critically important to the evolution of enhanced language skills are that behavioural adaptive adjustments that serve to precede and situate biological changes. This represents a reversal of the usual course of evolution where biological change precedes behavioural adaption. When the first hominids began to use stone tools, they probably rendered of a very haphazard fashion, by drawing on their flexible ape-like learning abilities. Still, the use of this technology over time opened a new ecological niche where selective pressures occasioned new adaptions. A tool use became more indispensable for obtaining food and organized social behaviours, mutations that enhanced the use of tools probably functioned as a principal source of selection for both bodied and brains.
The first stone choppers appear in the fossil remnant fragments remaining about 2.5 million years ago, and they appear to have been fabricated with a few sharp blows of stone on stone. If these primitive tools are reasonable, which were hand-held and probably used to cut flesh and to chip bone to expose the marrow, were created by Homo habilis - the first large-brained hominid. Stone making is obviously a skill passed on from one generation to the next by learning as opposed to a physical trait passed on genetically. After these tools became critical to survival, this introduced selection for learning abilities that did not exist for other species. Although the early tool maskers may have had brains roughly comparable to those of modern apes, they were already confronting the processes for being adapted for symbol learning.
The first symbolic representations were probably associated with social adaptations that were quite fragile, and any support that could reinforce these adaptions in the interest of survival would have been favoured by evolution. The expansion of the forebrain in Homo habilis, particularly the prefrontal cortex, was on of the core adaptations. Increased connectivity enhanced this adaption over time to brain regions involved in language processing.
Imagining why incremental improvements in symbolic representations provided a selective advantage is easy. Symbolic communication probably enhanced cooperation in the relationship of mothers to infants, allowed forgoing techniques to be more easily learned, served as the basis for better coordinating scavenging and hunting activities, and generally improved the prospect of attracting a mate. As the list of domains in which symbolic communication was introduced became longer over time, this probably resulted in new selective pressures that served to make this communication more elaborate. After more functions became dependent on this communication, those who failed in symbol learning or could only use symbols awkwardly were less likely to pass on their genes to subsequent generations.
We must have considerably gestured the crude language of the earliest users of symbolics and nonsymbiotic vocalizations. Their spoken language probably became reactively independent and a closed cooperative system. Only after the emergence of hominids were to use symbolic communication evolved, symbolic forms progressively took over functions served by non-anecdotical symbolic forms. We reflect this in modern languages. The structure of syntax in these languages often reveals its origins in pointing gestures, in the manipulation and exchange of objects, and in more primitive constructions of spatial and temporal relationships. We still use nonverbal vocalizations and gestures to complement meaning in spoken language.
The encompassing intentionality to its thought is mightily effective, least of mention, the relevance of spatiality to self-consciousness comes about not merely because the world is spatial but also because the self-conscious subject is a spatial element of the world. One cannot be self-conscious without being aware that one is a spatial element of the world, and one cannot be ware that one is a spatial element of the world without a grasp of the spatial nature of the world. Face to face, the idea of a perceivable, objective spatial world that causes ideas too subjectively becoming to denote in the wold. During which time, his perceptions as they have of changing position within the world and to the essentially stable way the world is. The idea that there is an objective world and the idea that the subject is somewhere, and where what he can perceive gives it apart.
Research, however distant, are those that neuroscience reveals in that the human brain is a massive parallel system which language processing is widely distributed. Computers generated images of human brains engaged in language processing reveals a hierarchal organization consisting of complicated clusters of brain areas that process different component functions in controlled time sequences. Stand-alone or unitary modules that evolved with the addition of separate modules have clearly not accomplished language processing that were incorporated on some neutral circuit board.
While the brain that evolved this capacity was obviously a product of Darwinian evolution, he realized that the different chances of survival of different endowed offsprings could account for the natural evolution of species. Nature 'selects' those members of some spacies best adapted to the environment in which they are themselves, just as human animal breeders may select for desirable traits for their livestock, and by that control the evolution of the kind of animal they wish. In the phase of Spencer, nature guarantees the 'survival of the fittest.' The Origin of Species was principally successful in marshalling the evidence for evolution, than providing a convincing mechanism for genetic change, and Darwin himself remained open to the search for additional mechanisms, also reaming convinced that natural selection was at the heat of it. It was only with the later discovery of the 'gene' as the unit of inheritance that the syntheses known as 'neo-Darwinism' became the orthodox theory of evolution.
The solutions to the mysterious evolution by natural selection can shape sophisticated mechanisms are to found in the working of natural section, in that for the sake of some purpose, namely, some action, the body as a whole must evidently exist for the sake of some complex action: Have simplistically actualized the cognitive process through fundamentals in proceeding as made simple just as natural selection occurs whenever genetically influence’s variation among individual effects their survival and reproduction? If a gene codes for characteristics that result in fewer viable offspring in future generations, governing evolutionary principles have gradually eliminated that gene. For instance, genetic mutation that an increase vulnerability to infection, or cause foolish risk taking or lack of interest in sex, will never become common. On the other hand, genes that cause resistance that causes infection, appropriate risk taking and success in choosing fertile mates are likely to spread in the gene pool even if they have substantial costs.
A classical example is the spread of a gene for dark wing colour in a British moth population living downward form major source of air pollution. Pale moths were conspicuous on smoke-darkened trees and easily caught by birds, while a rare mutant form of a moth whose colour closely matched that of the bark escaped the predator beaks. As the tree trucks became darkened, the mutant gene spread rapidly and largely displaced the gene for pale wing colour. That is all on that point to say is that natural selection insole no plan, no goal, and no direction - just genes increasing and decreasing in frequency depending on whether individuals with these genes have, compared with order individuals, greater of lesser reproductive success.
Many misconceptions have obscured the simplicity of natural selection. For instance, they have widely thought Herbert Spencer’s nineteenth-century catch phrase 'survival of the fittest' to summarize the process, but an abstractive actuality openly provides a given forwarding to several misunderstandings. First, survival is of no consequence by itself. This is why natural selection has created some organisms, such as salmon and annual plants, that reproduces only once, the die. Survival increases fitness only as far as it increases later reproduction. Genes that increase lifetime reproduction will be selected for even if they result in a reduced longevity. Conversely, a gene that deceases selection will obviously eliminate total lifetime reproduction even if it increases an individual’s survival.
Considerable confusion arises from the ambiguous meaning of 'fittest.' The fittest individuals in the biological scene, is not necessarily the healthiest, stronger, or fastest. In today’s world, and many of those of the past, individuals of outstanding athletic accomplishment need not be the ones who produce the most grandchildren, a measure that should be roughly correlated with fattiness. To someone who understands natural selection, it is no surprise that the parents who are not concerned about their children;’s reproduction.
We cannot call a gene or an individual 'fit' in isolation but only concerning some particular spacies in a particular environment. Even in a single environment, every gene involves compromise. Consider a gene that makes rabbits more fearful and thereby helps to keep then from the jaws of foxes. Imagine that half the rabbits in a field have this gene. Because they do more hiding and less eating, these timid rabbits might be, on average, some bitless well fed than their bolder companions. Of, a hundred down-bounded in the March swamps awaiting for spring, two thirds of them starve to death while this is the fate of only one-third of the rabbits who lack the gene for fearfulness, it has been selected against. It might be nearly eliminated by a few harsh winters. Milder winters or an increased number of foxes could have the opposite effect, but it all depends on the current environment.
The version of an evolutionary ethic called 'social Darwinism' emphasizes the struggle for natural selection, and draws the conclusion that we should glorify the assists each struggle, usually by enhancing competitive and aggressive relations between people in society, or better societies themselves. More recently we have re-thought the reaction between evolution and ethics in the light of biological discoveries concerning altruism and kin-selection.
We cannot simply explain the most critical precondition for the evolution of this brain in these terms. Darwinian evolution can explain why the creation of stone tools altered conditions for survival in a new ecological niche in which group living, pair bonding, and more complex social structures were critical to survival. Darwinian evolution can also explain why selective pressures in this new ecological niche favoured pre-adaptive changes required for symbolic communication. All the same, this communication resulted directly through its passing an increasingly atypically structural complex and intensively condensed behaviour. Social evolution began to take precedence over physical evolution in the sense that mutations resulting in enhanced social behaviour became selectively advantageously within the context of the social behaviour of hominids.
Because this communication was based on symbolic vocalization that required the evolution of neural mechanisms and processes that did not evolve in any other species. As this marked the emergence of a mental realm that would increasingly appear as separate and distinct from the external material realm.
If they cannot reduce to, or entirely explain the emergent reality in this mental realm as for, the sum of its parts, concluding that this reality is greater than the sum of its parts seems reasonable. For example, a complete proceeding of the manner in which light in particular wave lengths has ben advancing by the human brain to generate a particular colour says nothing about the experience of colour. In other words, a complete scientific description of all the mechanisms involved in processing the colour blue does not correspond with the colour blue as perceived in human consciousness. No scientific description of the physical substrate of a thought or feeling, no matter how accomplish it can but be accounted for in actualized experience, especially of a thought or feeling, as an emergent aspect of global brain function.
If we could, for example, define all of the neural mechanisms involved in generating a particular word symbol, this would reveal nothing about the experience of the word symbol as an idea in human consciousness. Conversely, the experience of the word symbol as an idea would reveal nothing about the neuronal processes involved. While one mode of understanding the situation necessarily displaces the other, they require both to achieve a complete understanding of the situation.
Even if we are to include two aspects of biological reality, finding to a more complex order in biological reality is associated with the emergence of new wholes that are greater than the orbital parts. Yet, the entire biosphere is of a whole that displays self-regulating behaviour that is greater than the sum of its parts. Seemingly, that our visionary skills could view the emergence of a symbolic universe based on a complex language system as another stage in the evolution of more complicated and complex systems. As marked and noted by the appearance of a new profound complementarity in relationships between parts and wholes. This does not allow us to assume that human consciousness was in any sense preordained or predestined by natural process. Even so, it does make it possible, in philosophical terms at least, to argue that this consciousness is an emergent aspect of the self-organizing properties of biological life.
If we also concede that an indivisible whole contains, by definition, no separate parts and that in belief alone one can assume that a phenomenon was 'real' only when it is 'observed' phenomenon, have sparked advance the given processes for us to more interesting conclusions. The indivisible whole whose existence we have inferred in the results of the aspectual experiments that cannot in principal is itself the subject of scientific investigation. In that respect, no simple reason of why this is the case. Science can claim knowledge of physical reality only when experiment has validated the predictions of a physical theory. Since, invisualizabity has restricted our view we cannot measure or observe the indivisible whole, we encounter by engaging the 'eventful horizon' or knowledge where science can say nothing about the actual character of this reality. Why this is so, is a property of the entire universe, then we must also conclude that undivided wholeness exists on the most primary and basic level in all aspects of physical reality. What we are dealing within science per se, however, are manifestations of tis reality, which are invoked or 'actualized' in making acts of observation or measurement. Since the reality that exists between the space-like separated regions is a whole whose existence can only be inferred in experience. As opposed to proven experiment, the correlations between the particles, and the sum of these parts, do not constitute the 'indivisible' whole. Physical theory allows us to understand why the correlations occur. Nevertheless, it cannot in principal impart or describe the actualized character of the indivisible whole.
The scientific implications to this extraordinary relationship between parts ( in that, to know what it is like to have an experience is to know its qualia) and indivisible whole (the universe) are quite staggering. Our primary concern, however, is a new view of the relationship between mind and world that carries even larger implications in human terms. When factors into our understanding of the relationship between parts and wholes in physics and biology, then mind, or human consciousness, must be viewed as an emergent phenomenon in a seamlessly interconnected whole called the cosmos.
All that is required to embrace the alternative view of the relationship between mind and world that are consistent with our most advanced scientific knowledge is a commitment to metaphysical and epistemological realism and a willingness to follow arguments to their logical conclusions. Metaphysical realism assumes that physical reality or has an actual existence independent of human observers or any act of observation, epistemological realism assumes that progress in science requires strict adherence to scientific mythology, or to the rules and procedures for doing science. If one can accept these assumptions, most of the conclusions drawn should appear self-evident in logical and philosophical terms. Attributing any extra-scientific properties to the whole to understand is also not necessary and embrace the new relationship between part and whole and the alternative view of human consciousness that is consistent with this relationship. This is, in this that our distinguishing character between what can be 'proven' in scientific terms and what can with reason be realized and 'inferred' as a philosophical basis through which grounds can be assimilated as some indirect scientific evidence.
Moreover, advances in scientific knowledge rapidly became the basis for the creation of a host of new technologies. Yet are those responsible for evaluating the benefits and risks associated with the use of these technologies, much less their potential impact on human needs and values, normally have expertise on only one side of a two-culture divide. Perhaps, more important, many potential threats to the human future - such as, to, environmental pollution, arms development, overpopulation, and spread of infectious diseases, poverty, and starvation - can be effectively solved only by integrating scientific knowledge with knowledge from the social sciences and humanities. We have not done so for a simple reason - the implications of the amazing new fact of nature named for by non-locality, and cannot be properly understood without some familiarity with the actual history of scientific thought. The less resultant quantity is to suggest that what be most important about this back-ground can be understood in its absence. Those who do not wish to struggle with the small and perhaps, fewer resultant quantities by which measure has substantiated the strengthening back-ground implications with that should feel free to ignore it. Yet this material will be no more challenging as such, that the hope is that from those of which will find a common ground for understanding and that will meet again on this commonly functions as addressed to the relinquishing clasp of closure, and unswervingly close of its circle, resolve in the equations of eternity and complete of the universe of its obtainable gains for which its unification holds all that should be.
Another aspect of the evolution of a brain that allowed us to construct symbolic universes based on complex language system that is particularly relevant for our purposes concerns consciousness of self. Consciousness of self as an independent agency or actor is predicted on a fundamental distinction or dichotomy between this self and the other selves. Self, as it is constructed in human subjective reality, is perceived as having an independent existence and a self-referential character in a mental realm separately distinct from the material realm. It was, the assumed separation between these realms that led Descartes to posit his famous dualism in understanding the nature of consciousness in the mechanistic classical universe.
In a thought experiment, instead of bringing a course of events, as in a normal experiment, we are invited to imagine one. We may tenably be able to 'see' that some result’s following, or that by some description is appropriate, or our inability to describe the situation may itself have some consequential consequence. Thought experiments played a major role in the development of physics: For example, Galileo probably never dropped two balls of unequal weight from the leaning Tower of Pisa, to refute the Aristotelean view that a heavy body falls faster than a lighter one. He merely asked used to imagine a heavy body made into the shape of a dumbbell, and then connecting rod gradually thinner, until it is finally severed. The thing is one heavy body until the last moment and he n two light ones, but it is incredible that this final snip alters the velocity dramatically. Other famous examples include the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen thought experiment. In the philosophy of personal identity, our apparent capacity to imagine ourselves surviving drastic changes of body, brain, and mind is a permanent source of difficulty. On that point, no consensus on the legitimate place of thought experiments, to substitute either for real experiment, or as a reliable device for discerning possibilities. Though experiments with and one dislike is sometimes called intuition pumps.
For overfamiliar reasons, of hypothesizing that people are characterized by their rationality is common, and the most evident display of our rationality is our capacity to think. This is the rehearsal in the mind of what to say, or what to do. Not all thinking is verbal, since chess players, composers and painters all think, and in that respect no deductive reason that their deliberations should take any more verbal a form than this action. It is permanently tempting to conceive of this activity as for the presence inbounded in the mind of elements of some language, or other medium that represents aspects of the world. In whatever manner, the model has been attacked, notably by Wittgenstein, as insufficient, since no such presence could carry a guarantee that the right use would be made of it. Such that of an inner present seems unnecessary, since an intelligent outcome might arouse of some principal measure from it.
In the philosophy of mind and ethics the treatment of animals exposes major problems if other animals differ from human beings, how is the difference to be characterized: Do animals think and reason, or have thoughts and beliefs? In philosophers as different as Aristotle and Kant the possession of reason separates humans from animals, and alone allows entry to the moral community.
For Descartes, animals are mere machines and ee lack consciousness or feelings. In the ancient world the rationality of animals is defended with the example of Chrysippus’ dog. This animal, tracking prey, comes to a cross-roads with three exits, and without pausing to pick-up the scent, reasoning, according to Sextus Empiricus. The animal went either by this road, or by this road, or by that, or by the other. However, it did not go by this or that. Therefore, he went the other way. The ‘syllogism of the dog’ was discussed by many writers, since in Stoic cosmology animals should occupy a place on the great chain of being to an exceeding degree below human beings, the only terrestrial rational agents: Philo Judaeus wrote a dialogue attempting to show again Alexander of Aphrodisias that the dog’s behaviour does no t exhibit rationality, but simply shows it following the scent, by way of response Alexander has the animal jump down a shaft (where the scent would not have lingered). Plutah sides with Philo, Aquinas discusses the dog and scholastic thought in general was quite favourable to brute intelligence (being made to stand trail for various offences in medieval times was common for animals). In the modern era Montaigne uses the dog to remind us of the frailties of human reason: Rorarious undertook to show not only that beasts are rational, but that they make better use of reason than people do. James, the first of England defends the syllogising dog, and Henry More and Gassendi both takes issue with Descartes on that matter. Hume is an outspoken defender of animal cognition, but with their use of the view that language is the essential manifestation of mentality, animals’ silence began to count heavily against them, and they are completely denied thoughts by, for instance Davidson.
Dogs are frequently shown in pictures of philosophers, as their assiduity and fidelity are some symbols
It is, nonetheless, that Decanters’s first work, the Regulae ad Directionem Ingeni (1628/9), was never complected, yet in Holland between 1628 and 1649, Descartes first wrote, and then cautiously suppressed, Le Monde (1934), and in 1637 produced the Discours de la méthode as a preface to the treatise on mathematics and physics in which he introduced the notion of Cartesian co-ordinates. His best-known philosophical work, the Meditationes de Prima Philosophiia (Meditations on First Philosophy), together with objections by distinguished contemporaries and replies by Descartes (The Objections and Replies), appeared in 1641. The authors of the Objections were First set, for which is Hobbes, fourth set. Arnauld, fifth set, Gassendi and the sixth set, Mersenne. The second edition (1642) of the Meditations included a seventh se t by the Jesuit Pierre Bourdin. Descartes’s penultimate work, the Principia Pilosophiae (Principles of the Soul), published in 1644 was designed partly for use as a theological textbook. His last work was Les Passions de l´ame (The Passions of the Soul) published in 1649. When in Sweden, where he contracted pneumonia, allegedly through being required to break his normal habit of late rising in order to give lessons at 5:00 a.m. His last words are supposed to have been 'Ça, mon âme, il faut partir' (so, my soul, it is time to part).
All the same, Descartes’s theory of knowledge starts with the quest for certainty, for an indubitable starting-point or foundation on the bassi alone of which progress is possible.
The Cartesian doubt is the method of investigating how much knowledge and its basis in reason or experience as used by Descartes in the first two Medications. It attempted to put knowledge upon secure foundation by first inviting us to suspend judgements on any proportion whose truth can be doubted, even as a bare possibility. The standards of acceptance are gradually raised as we are asked to doubt the deliverance of memory, the senses, and eve n reason, all of which are principally capable of letting us down. This is eventually found in the celebrated 'Cogito ergo sum': I think, therefore I am. By locating the point of certainty in my awareness of my own self, Descartes gives a first-person twist to the theory of knowledge that dominated the following centuries in spite of a various counter-attack on behalf of social and public starting-points. The metaphysics associated with this priority are the Cartesian dualism, or separation of mind and matter into two different but interacting substances. Descartes rigorously and rightly to ascertain that it takes divine dispensation to certify any relationship between the two realms thus divided, and to prove the reliability of the senses invokes a 'clear and distinct perception' of highly dubious proofs of the existence of a benevolent deity. This has not met general acceptance: A Hume drily puts it, 'to have recourse to the veracity of the supreme Being, in order to prove the veracity of our senses, is surely making a very unexpected circuit.'
By dissimilarity, Descartes’s notorious denial that non-human animals are conscious is a stark illustration of dissimulation. In his conception of matter Descartes also gives preference to rational cogitation over anything from the senses. Since we can conceive of the matter of a ball of wax, surviving changes to its sensible qualities, matter is not an empirical concept, but eventually an entirely geometrical one, with extension and motion as its only physical nature.
Although the structure of Descartes’s epistemology, theory of mind and theory of matter have been rejected many times, their relentless exposure of the hardest issues, their exemplary clarity and even their initial plausibility, all contrives to make him the central point of reference for modern philosophy.
The term instinct (Lat., instinctus, impulse or urge) implies innately determined behaviour, flexible to change in circumstance outside the control of deliberation and reason. The view that animals accomplish even complex tasks not by reason was common to Aristotle and the Stoics, and the inflexibility of their outline was used in defence of this position as early as Avicennia. A continuity between animal and human reason was proposed by Hume, and followed by sensationalist such as the naturalist Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802). The theory of evolution prompted various views of the emergence of stereotypical behaviour, and the idea that innate determinants of behaviour are fostered by specific environments is a guiding principle of ethology. In this sense that being social may be instinctive in human beings, and for that matter too reasoned on what we now know about the evolution of human language abilities, however, our real or actualized self is clearly not imprisoned in our minds.
It is implicitly a part of the larger whole of biological life, human observers its existence from embedded relations to this whole, and constructs its reality as based on evolved mechanisms that exist in all human brains. This suggests that any sense of the 'otherness' of self and world be is an illusion, in that disguises of its own actualization are to find all its relations between the part that are of their own characterization. Its self as related to the temporality of being whole is that of a biological reality. It can be viewed, of course, that a proper definition of this whole must not include the evolution of the larger indivisible whole. Yet, the cosmos and unbroken evolution of all life, by that of the first self-replication molecule that was the ancestor of DNA. It should include the complex interactions that have proven that among all the parts in biological reality that any resultant of emerging is self-regulating. This, of course, is responsible to properties owing to the whole of what might be to sustain the existence of the parts.
Founded on complications and complex coordinate systems in ordinary language may be conditioned as to establish some developments have been descriptively made by its physical reality and metaphysical concerns. That is, that it is in the history of mathematics and that the exchanges between the mega-narratives and frame tales of religion and science were critical factors in the minds of those who contributed. The first scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, allowed scientists to better them in the understudy of how the classical paradigm in physical reality has marked results in the stark Cartesian division between mind and world that became one of the most characteristic features of Western thought. This is not, however, another strident and ill-mannered diatribe against our misunderstandings, but drawn upon equivalent self realization and undivided wholeness or predicted characterlogic principles of physical reality and the epistemological foundations of physical theory.
The subjectivity of our mind affects our perceptions of the world held to be objective by natural science. Create both aspects of mind and matter as individualized forms that belong to the same underlying reality.
Our everyday experience confirms the apparent fact that there is a dual-valued world as subject and objects. We as having consciousness, as personality and as experiencing beings are the subjects, whereas for everything for which we can come up with a name or designation, seems to be the object, that which is opposed to us as a subject. Physical objects are only part of the object-world. In that respect are mental objects, objects of our emotions, abstract objects, religious objects etc. language objectifies our experience. Experiences per se are purely sensational experienced that do not make a distinction between object and subject. Only verbalized thought reifies the sensations by conceptualizing them and pigeonholing them into the given entities of language.
Some thinkers maintain, that subject and object are only different aspects of experience. I can experience myself as subject, and in the act of self-reflection. The fallacy of this argument is obvious: Being a subject implies having an object. We cannot experience something consciously without the mediation of understanding and mind. Our experience is already conceptualized at the time it comes into our consciousness. Our experience is negative insofar as it destroys the original pure experience. In a dialectical process of synthesis, the original pure experience becomes an object for us. The common state of our mind is only capable of apperceiving objects. Objects are reified negative experience. The same is true for the objective aspect of this theory: by objectifying myself I do not dispense with the subject, but the subject is causally and apodeictically linked to the object. When I make an object of anything, I have to realize, that it is the subject, which objectifies something. It is only the subject who can do that. Without the subject at that place are no objects, and without objects there is no subject. This interdependence, however, is not to be understood for a dualism, so that the object and the subject are really independent substances. Since the object is only created by the activity of the subject, and the subject is not a physical entity, but a mental one, we have to conclude then, that the subject-object dualism is purely mentalistic.
The Cartesian dualism posits the subject and the object as separate, independent and real substances, both of which have their ground and origin in the highest substance of God. Cartesian dualism, however, contradicts itself: The very fact, which Descartes posits the 'I,' that is the subject, as the only certainty, he defied materialism, and thus the concept of some 'res extensa.' The physical thing is only probable in its existence, whereas the mental thing is absolutely and necessarily certain. The subject is superior to the object. The object is only derived, but the subject is the original. This makes the object not only inferior in its substantive quality and in its essence, but relegates it to a level of dependence on the subject. The subject recognizes that the object is a 'res’ extensa' and this means, that the object cannot have essence or existence without the acknowledgment through the subject. The subject posits the world in the first place and the subject is posited by God. Apart from the problem of interaction between these two different substances, Cartesian dualism is not eligible for explaining and understanding the subject-object relation.
By denying Cartesian dualism and resorting to monistic theories such as extreme idealism, materialism or positivism, the problem is not resolved either. What the positivists did, was just verbalizing the subject-object relation by linguistic forms. It was no longer a metaphysical problem, but only a linguistic problem. Our language has formed this object-subject dualism. These thinkers are very superficial and shallow thinkers, because they do not see that in the very act of their analysis they inevitably think in the mind-set of subject and object. By relativizing the object and subject for language and analytical philosophy, they avoid the elusive and problematical oppure of subject-object, since which has been the fundamental question in philosophy ever. Shunning these metaphysical questions is no solution. Excluding something, by reducing it to a more material and verifiable level, is not only pseudo-philosophy but a depreciation and decadence of the great philosophical ideas of mankind.
Therefore, we have to come to grips with idea of subject-object in a new manner. We experience this dualism as a fact in our everyday lives. Every experience is subject to this dualistic pattern. The question, however, is, whether this underlying pattern of subject-object dualism is real or only mental. Science assumes it to be real. This assumption does not prove the reality of our experience, but only that with this method science is most successful in explaining our empirical facts. Mysticism, on the other hand, believes that on that point is an original unity of subject and objects. To attain this unity is the goal of religion and mysticism. Man has fallen from this unity by disgrace and by sinful behaviour. Now the task of man is to get back on track again and strive toward this highest fulfilment. Again, are we not, on the conclusion made above, forced to admit, that also the mystic way of thinking is only a pattern of the mind and, as the scientists, that they have their own frame of reference and methodology to explain the supra-sensible facts most successfully?
If we assume mind to be the originator of the subject-object dualism, then we cannot confer more reality on the physical or the mental aspect, and we cannot deny the one as to the other.
Fortunately or not, history has made its play, and, in so doing, we must have considerably gestured the crude language of the earliest users of symbolics and nonsymbiotic vocalizations. Their spoken language probably became reactively independent and a closed cooperative system. Only after the emergence of hominids were to use symbolic communication evolved, symbolic forms progressively took over functions served by non-vocal symbolic forms. The earliest of Jutes, Saxons and Jesuits have reflected this in the modern mixtures of the English-speaking language. The structure of syntax in these languages often reveals its origins in pointing gestures, in the manipulation and exchange of objects, and in more primitive constructions of spatial and temporal relationships. We still use nonverbal vocalizations and gestures to complement meaning in spoken language.
Language involves specialized cortical regions in a complex interaction that allows the brain to comprehend and communicate abstract ideas. The motor cortex initiates impulses that travel through the brain stem to produce audible sounds. Neighbouring regions of motor cortex, called the supplemental motor cortex, are involved in sequencing and coordinating sounds. Broca's area of the frontal lobe is responsible for the sequencing of language elements for output. The comprehension of language is dependent upon Wernicke's area of the temporal lobe. Other cortical circuits connect these areas.
Memory is usually considered a diffusely stored associative process—that is, it puts together information from many different sources. Although research has failed to identify specific sites in the brain as locations of individual memories, certain brain areas are critical for memory to function. Immediate recall—the ability to repeat short series of words or numbers immediately after hearing them - is thought to be located in the auditory associative cortex. Short-term memory -the ability to retain a limited amount of information for up to an hour - is located in the deep temporal lobe. Long-term memory probably involves exchanges between the medial temporal lobe, various cortical regions, and the midbrain.
The autonomic nervous system regulates the life support systems of the body reflexively - that is, without conscious direction. It automatically controls the muscles of the heart, digestive system, and lungs; certain glands; and homeostasis - that is, the equilibrium of the internal environment of the body. The autonomic nervous system itself is controlled by nerve centres in the spinal cord and brain stem and is fine-tuned by regions higher in the brain, such as the midbrain and cortex. Reactions such as blushing indicate that cognitive, or thinking, centres of the brain are also involved in autonomic responses.
The brain is guarded by several highly developed protective mechanisms. The bony cranium, the surrounding meninges, and the cerebrospinal fluid all contribute to the mechanical protection of the brain. In addition, a filtration system called the blood-brain barrier protects the brain from exposure to potentially harmful substances carried in the bloodstream. Brain disorders have a wide range of causes, including head injury, stroke, bacterial diseases, complex chemical imbalances, and changes associated with aging.
Head injury can initiate a cascade of damaging events. After a blow to the head, a person may be stunned or may become unconscious for a moment. This injury, called a concussion, usually leaves no permanent damage. If the blow is more severe and haemorrhage (excessive bleeding) and swelling occurs, however, severe headache, dizziness, paralysis, a convulsion, or temporary blindness may result, depending on the area of the brain affected. Damage to the cerebrum can also result in profound personality changes.
Damage to Broca's area in the frontal lobe causes difficulty in speaking and writing, a problem known as Broca's aphasia. Injury to Wernicke's area in the left temporal lobe results in an inability to comprehend spoken language, called Wernicke's aphasia.
An injury or disturbance to a part of the hypothalamus may cause a variety of different symptoms, such as loss of appetite with an extreme drop in body weight; increase in appetite leading to obesity; extraordinary thirst with excessive urination (diabetes insipidus); failure in body-temperature control, resulting in either low temperature (hypothermia) or high temperature (fever); excessive emotionality; and uncontrolled anger or aggression. If the relationship between the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland is damaged, other vital bodily functions may be disturbed, such as sexual function, metabolism, and cardiovascular activity.
Injury to the brain stem is even more serious because it houses the nerve centres that control breathing and heart action. Damage to the medulla oblongata usually results in immediate death.
To the brain due to an interruption in blood flow. The interruption may be caused by a blood clot: constriction of a blood vessel, or rupture of a vessel accompanied by bleeding. A pouch-like expansion of the wall of a blood vessel, called an aneurysm, may weaken and burst, for example, because of high blood pressure.
Sufficient quantities of glucose and oxygen, transported through the bloodstream, are needed to keep nerve cells alive. When the blood supply to a small part of the brain is interrupted, the cells in that area die and the function of the area is lost. A massive stroke can cause a one-sided paralysis (hemiplegia) and sensory loss on the side of the body opposite the hemisphere damaged by the stroke.
Epilepsy is a broad term for a variety of brain disorders characterized by seizures, or convulsions. Epilepsy can result from a direct injury to the brain at birth or from a metabolic disturbance in the brain at any time later in life.
Some brain diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson disease, are progressive, becoming worse over time. Multiple sclerosis damages the myelin sheath around axons in the brain and spinal cord. As a result, the affected axons cannot transmit nerve impulses properly. Parkinson disease destroys the cells of the substantia nigra in the midbrain, resulting in a deficiency in the neurotransmitter dopamine that affects motor functions.
Cerebral palsy is a broad term for brain damage sustained close to birth that permanently affects motor function. The damage may take place either in the developing fetus, during birth, or just after birth and is the result of the faulty development or breaking down of motor pathways. Cerebral palsy is nonprogressive—that is, it does not worsen with time.
A bacterial infection in the cerebrum or in the coverings of the brain swelling of the brain, or an abnormal growth of healthy brain tissue can all cause an increase in intracranial pressure and result in serious damage to the brain.
Scientists are finding that certain brain chemical imbalances are associated with mental disorders such as schizophrenia and depression. Such findings have changed scientific understanding of mental health and have resulted in new treatments that chemically correct these imbalances.
During childhood development, the brain is particularly susceptible to damage because of the rapid growth and reorganization of nerve connections. Problems that originate in the immature brain can appear as epilepsy or other brain-function problems in adulthood.
Several neurological problems are common in aging. Alzheimer's disease damages many areas of the brain, including the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes. The brain tissue of people with Alzheimer's disease shows characteristic patterns of damaged neurons, known as plaques and tangles. Alzheimer's disease produces a progressive dementia, characterized by symptoms such as failing attention and memory, loss of mathematical ability, irritability, and poor orientation in space and time.
Several commonly used diagnostic methods give images of the brain without invading the skull. Some portray anatomy - that is, the structure of the brain - whereas others measure brain function. Two or more methods may be used to complement each other, together providing a more complete picture than would be possible by one method alone.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), introduced in the early 1980s, beams high-frequency radio waves into the brain in a highly magnetized field that causes the protons that form the nuclei of hydrogen atoms in the brain to re-emit the radio waves. The re-emitted radio waves are analysed by computer to create thin cross-sectional images of the brain. MRI provides the most detailed images of the brain and is safer than imaging methods that use X rays. However, MRI is a lengthy process and also cannot be used with people who have pacemakers or metal implants, both of which are adversely affected by the magnetic field.
Computed tomography (CT), also known as CT scans, developed in the early 1970s. This imaging method X-rays the brain from many different angles, feeding the information into a computer that produces a series of cross-sectional images. CT is particularly useful for diagnosing blood clots and brain tumours. It is a much quicker process than magnetic resonance imaging and is therefore advantageous in certain situations—for example, with people who are extremely ill.
Changes in brain function due to brain disorders can be visualized in several ways. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy measures the concentration of specific chemical compounds in the brain that may change during specific behaviours. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) maps changes in oxygen concentration that correspond to nerve cell activity.
Positron emission tomography (PET), developed in the mid-1970s, uses computed tomography to visualize radioactive tracers radioactive substances introduced into the brain intravenously or by inhalation. PET can measure such brain functions as cerebral metabolism, blood flow and volume, oxygen use, and the formation of neurotransmitters. Single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), developed in the 1950s and 1960s, used radioactive tracers to visualize the circulation and volume of blood in the brain.
Brain-imaging studies have provided new insights into sensory, motor, language, and memory processes, as well as brain disorders such as epilepsy cerebrovascular disease; Alzheimer's, Parkinson, and Huntington's diseases: And nd various mental disorders, such as schizophrenia.
In lower vertebrates, such as fish and reptiles, the brain is often tubular and bears a striking resemblance to the early embryonic stages of the brains of more highly evolved animals. In all vertebrates, the brain is divided into three regions: the forebrain (prosencephalon), the midbrain (mesencephalon), and the hindbrain (rhombencephalon). These three regions further subdivide into different structures, systems, nuclei, and layers.
The more highly evolved the animal, the more complex is the brain structure. Human beings have the most complex brains of all animals. Evolutionary forces have also resulted in a progressive increase in the size of the brain. In vertebrates lower than mammals, the brain is small. In meat-eating animals, particularly primates, the brain increases dramatically in size.
The cerebrum and cerebellum of higher mammals are highly convoluted in order to fit the most gray matter surface within the confines of the cranium. Such highly convoluted brains are called gyrencephalic. Many lower mammals have a smooth, or lissencephalic ('smooth head'), cortical surface.
There is also evidence of evolutionary adaption of the brain. For example, many birds depend on an advanced visual system to identify food at great distances while in flight. Consequently, their optic lobes and cerebellum are well developed, giving them keen sight and outstanding motor coordination in flight. Rodents, on the other hand, as nocturnal animals, do not have a well-developed visual system. Instead, they rely more heavily on other sensory systems, such as a highly-developed sense of smell and facial whiskers.
Recent research in brain function suggests that there may be sexual differences in both brain anatomy and brain function. One study indicated that man’s nd women may use their brains differently while thinking. Researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to observe which parts of the brain were activated as groups of men and women tried to determine whether sets of nonsense words rhymed. Men used only Broca's area in this task, whereas women used Broca's area plus an area on the right side of the brain.
Both Analytic and Linguistic philosophy, are 20th-century philosophical movements, and dominante most of Britain and the United States since World War II, that aims to clarify language and analyse the concepts expressed in it. The movement has been given a variety of designations, including linguistic analysis, logical empiricism, logical positivism, Cambridge analysis, and 'Oxford philosophy.' The last two labels are derived from the universities in England where this philosophical method has been particularly influential. Although no specific doctrines or tenets are accepted by the movement as a whole, analytic and linguistic philosophers agree that the proper activity of philosophy is clarifying language, or, as some prefer, clarifying concepts. The aim of this activity is to settle philosophical disputes and resolve philosophical problems, which, it is argued, originates in linguistic confusion.
A considerable diversity of views exists among analytic and linguistic philosophers regarding the nature of conceptual or linguistic analysis. Some have been primarily concerned with clarifying the meaning of specific words or phrases as an essential step in making philosophical assertions clear and unambiguous. Others have been more concerned with determining the general conditions that must be met for any linguistic utterance to be meaningful; their intent is to establish a criterion that will distinguish between meaningful and nonsensical sentences. Still other analysts have been interested in creating formal, symbolic languages that are mathematical in nature. Their claim is that philosophical problems can be more effectively dealt with once they are formulated in a rigorous logical language.
By contrast, many philosophers associated with the movement have focussed on the analysis of ordinary, or natural, language. Difficulties arise when concepts such as time and freedom, for example, are considered apart from the linguistic context in which they normally appear. Attention to language as it is ordinarily used is the key, it is argued, to resolving many philosophical puzzles.
Many experts believe that philosophy as an intellectual discipline originated with the work of Plato, one of the most celebrated philosophers in history. The Greek thinker had an immeasurable influence on Western thought. However, Plato’s expression of ideas in the form of dialogues—the dialectical method, used most famously by his teacher Socrates—has led to difficulties in interpreting some of the finer points of his thoughts. The issue of what exactly Plato meant to say is addressed in the following excerpt by author R. M. Hare.
Linguistic analysis as a method of philosophy is as old as the Greeks. Several of the dialogues of Plato, for example, are specifically concerned with clarifying terms and concepts. Nevertheless, this style of philosophizing has received dramatically renewed emphasis in the 20th century. Influenced by the earlier British empirical tradition of John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, and John Stuart Mill and by the writings of the German mathematician and philosopher Gottlob Frége, the 20th-century English philosopher’s G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell became the founders of this contemporary analytic and linguistic trend. As students together at the University of Cambridge, Moore and Russell rejected Hegelian idealism, particularly as it was reflected in the work of the English metaphysician F. H. Bradley, who held that nothing is completely real except the Absolute. In their opposition to idealism and in their commitment to the view that careful attention to language is crucial in philosophical inquiry, and they set the mood and style of philosophizing for much of the 20th century English-speaking world.
For Moore, philosophy was first and foremost analysis. The philosophical task involves clarifying puzzling propositions or concepts by indicating less puzzling propositions or concepts to which the originals are held to be logically equivalent. Once this task has been completed, the truth or falsity of problematic philosophical assertions can be determined more adequately. Moore was noted for his careful analyses of such puzzling philosophical claims as 'time is unreal', analyses that then aided in determining the truth of such assertions.
Russell, strongly influenced by the precision of mathematics, was concerned with developing an ideal logical language that would accurately reflect the nature of the world. Complex propositions, Russell maintained, can be resolved into their simplest components, which he called atomic propositions. These propositions refer to atomic facts, the ultimate constituents of the universe. The metaphysical view based on this logical analysis of language and the insistence that meaningful propositions must correspond to facts constitutes what Russell called logical atomism. His interest in the structure of language also led him to distinguish between the grammatical form of a proposition and its logical form. The statements 'John is good' and 'John is tall' have the same grammatical form but different logical forms. Failure to recognize this would lead one to treat the property 'goodness' as if it were a characteristic of John in the same way that the property 'tallness' is a characteristic of John. Such failure results in philosophical confusion.
Austrian-born philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. With his fundamental work, Tractatus Logico-philosophicus, published in 1921, he became a central figure in the movement known as analytic and linguistic philosophy.
Russell’s work in mathematics attracted to Cambridge the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who became a central figure in the analytic and linguistic movement. In his first major work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921; trans. 1922), in which he first presented his theory of language, Wittgenstein argued that 'all philosophy is a ‘critique of language’' and that 'philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts.' The results of Wittgenstein’s analysis resembled Russell’s logical atomism. The world, he argued, is ultimately composed of simple facts, which it is the purpose of language to picture. To be meaningful, statements about the world must be reducible to linguistic utterances that have a structure similar to the simple facts pictured. In this early Wittgensteinian analysis, only propositions that picture facts—the propositions of science - are considered factually meaningful. Metaphysical, theological, and ethical sentences were judged to be factually meaningless.
Influenced by Russell, Wittgenstein, Ernst Mach, and others, a group of philosophers and mathematicians in Vienna in the 1920s initiated the movement known as logical positivism: Led by Moritz Schlick and Rudolf Carnap, the Vienna Circle initiated one of the most important chapters in the history of analytic and linguistic philosophy. According to the positivists, the task of philosophy is the clarification of meaning, not the discovery of new facts (the job of the scientists) or the construction of comprehensive accounts of reality (the misguided pursuit of traditional metaphysics).
The positivists divided all meaningful assertions into two classes: analytic propositions and empirically verifiable ones. Analytic propositions, which include the propositions of logic and mathematics, are statements the truth or falsity of which depend altogether on the meanings of the terms constituting the statement. An example would be the proposition 'two plus two equals four.' The second class of meaningful propositions includes all statements about the world that can be verified, at least in principle, by sense experience. Indeed, the meaning of such propositions is identified with the empirical method of their verification. This verifiability theory of meaning, the positivists concluded, would demonstrate that scientific statements are legitimate factual claims and that metaphysical, religious, and ethical sentences are factually empty. The ideas of logical positivism were made popular in England by the publication of A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic in 1936.
The positivists’ verifiability theory of meaning came under intense criticism by philosophers such as the Austrian-born British philosopher Karl Popper. Eventually this narrow theory of meaning yielded to a broader understanding of the nature of language. Again, an influential figure was Wittgenstein. Repudiating many of his earlier conclusions in the Tractatus, he initiated a new line of thought culminating in his posthumously published Philosophical Investigations (1953; trans. 1953). In this work, Wittgenstein argued that once attention is directed to the way language is actually used in ordinary discourse, the variety and flexibility of language become clear. Propositions do much more than simply picture facts.
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