...developments in technology and knowledge brought about significant changes in the way man viewed time and space. The necessity of clear train schedules led to the development of World Standard Time and the plurality of private time. In regards to space, with which this paper deals, man moved into other subjective realms beyond the two and three dimensions described by Euclid. In fact, with Einstein's theory of relativity, the number of spaces inherent in life increased beyond calculation to equal the number of moving reference systems of all the matter in the universe. This theory echoes Nietzche's contemporary philosophical theory of perspectivism, where space only consists of points of view and interpretations, not objective facts. Thus, these two doctrines signaled a breakdown of the old notion that there is a single reality, a single, absolute space. Space became subjective and relative, man could not be sure of what it was that actually surrounded him and made up his physical world. Creative artists, painters and novelists, attempted to deal with this new concept. Attacks were made on traditional notions that there is only one space and that a single point of view is equal to an understanding. Writers, specifically, responded with multiple perspectives depicting different views of the same objects in space in order to demonstrate that the world is always different as it is perceived by various observers...
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...(i.e., the problem of the interaction between the mind and the body) is a challenge (or an objection) to Descartes’ philosophy of mind. In other words, explain how we can make an argument from the mind-body problem against Descartes’ theory of the mind. Descartes’ philosophy of mind has several aspects, but not all of them are related to the mind-body problem. Please first explain the relevant parts of his philosophy of mind, and then explain the challenge from the mind-body problem. Ziyao Wang Phil105 Prof. Chong Yuan Feb.1st Descartes was the first to formulate the mind–body problem in the form in which it exists today. He identified the mind with consciousness and thoughts are distinguished from the brain as the position of hardware. There are several parts of Descartes’ philosophy of mind. To begin with, your brain is totally independent of your body, you can exist without a body. Secondly, you know your mind and thoughts most much more than anything else. Furthermore, body must have space and mind must has thoughts and no space. Take animal for example, animals do not have thoughts because they cannot think. Last but not least, the certain things cannot be doubted. The most important, Descartes is a dualist, in his view, the mind and the body are not the same thing. Minds, thoughts and consciousness are not in the space, however, body must in space. Moreover, the brain just serves as a connection between the mind and the body. Human’s mind and thoughts are indivisible...
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...[2] the state of nonexistence of anything, or the property of having nothing. Contents[hide] * 1 Philosophy * 1.1 Western philosophy * 1.1.1 Parmenides * 1.1.2 Leucippus * 1.1.3 Aristotle * 1.1.4 John the Scot * 1.1.5 G. W. F. Hegel * 1.1.6 Existentialists * 1.2 Eastern philosophy * 2 Language and logic * 3 Mathematics * 4 Computing * 5 Physics * 6 See also * 7 Notes * 8 References * 9 External links | [edit] Philosophy [edit] Western philosophy Some would consider the study of "nothing" to be foolish, a typical response of this type is voiced by Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) in conversation with his landlord, one Dr. Gozzi, who also happens to be a priest, “ | As everything, for him, was an article of faith, nothing, to his mind, was difficult to understand: the Great Flood had covered the entire world; before, men had the misfortune of living a thousand years; God conversed with them; Noah had taken one hundred years to build the ark; while the earth, suspended in air, stood firmly at the center of the universe that God had created out of nothingness. When I said to him, and proved to him, that the existence of nothingness was absurd, he cut me short, calling me silly.[3] | ” | However, "nothingness" has been treated as a serious subject worthy of research for a very long time. In philosophy, to avoid linguistic traps over the meaning of "nothing", a phrase such as not-being is often employed...
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...------------------------------------------------- Philosophy Western philosophy Some would consider the study of "nothing" to be foolish, a typical response of this type is voiced by Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) in conversation with his landlord, one Dr. Gozzi, who also happens to be a priest, “ | As everything, for him, was an article of faith, nothing, to his mind, was difficult to understand: the Great Flood had covered the entire world; before, men had the misfortune of living a thousand years; God conversed with them; Noah had taken one hundred years to build the ark; while the earth, suspended in air, stood firmly at the center of the universe that God had created out of nothingness. When I said to him, and proved to him, that the existence of nothingness was absurd, he cut me short, calling me silly.[3] | ” | However, "nothingness" has been treated as a serious subject worthy of research for a very long time. In philosophy, to avoid linguistic traps over the meaning of "nothing", a phrase such as not-being is oftenemployed to unambiguously make clear what is being discussed. Parmenides One of the earliest western philosophers to consider nothing as a concept was Parmenides (5th century BC) who was a Greek philosopher of the monist school. He argued that "nothing" cannot exist by the following line of reasoning: To speak of a thing, one has to speak of a thing that exists. Since we can speak of a thing in the past, it must still exist (in some sense) now and from...
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...immortality. 2.Well,according to my understanding,the most important key terms are immortality,continuer and spatial-temporal continuity. Immortality is something can be existed after people's physical body died.With the help of god,something like soul or spirit can be preserved and exist forever is immortality. Continuer is not the same person as the original deceased person , it is just a fissioned one,which lives in another space,is the continue existence of the deceased. Spatial-temporal continuity is the necessary condition of personal identity. Also,it provides the possibility for the immortality. 3.(1)From wikipedia,Peter van Inwagen (born September 21, 1942, United States) is an American analytic philosopher and the John Cardinal O'Hara Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He previously taught at Syracuse University and earned his PhD from the University of Rochester under the direction of Richard Taylor and Keith Lehrer. Van Inwagen is one of the leading figures in contemporary metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of action. (2)In this article,Peter van Inwagen introduced the readers the causal relevant matter of immortality.he refers to it as the “naked kernel”,the seed that continues to exist until God "clothes it in a festal garment of new flesh".He also...
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...Wyatt Garrett Professor Schiller World Philosophies 2 February 2013 Material on Morality Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 and grew up in the town of Konigsberg, from which he hardly stirred. Growing up in a family that emphasized the importance of education, discipline and religious devotion. He enrolled in the University of Konigsberg at age sixteen, and would spend his entire life working there. In his life, Kant pioneered philosophy by severing philosophies rootedness to the doctrines of radical enlightenment: materialism determinism, and atheism. He felt a great tension between the humanists’ emphasis on ‘the dignity of man’ and sciences reduction of human beings to ‘specks of dust’. His rejection of many Enlightenment philosophies and work to reconcile others resulted in the philosophies that rocketed philosophy far beyond the debate between rationalists and empiricists. I will explore Kant’s views on what knowledge is and what is possible to know, which I will then compare these views to those held by sceptics and dogmatists. Similarly, I will discuss how Kant’s deviating epistemology led to the formation of his categorical imperative and views on morality, contrasting this moral code to the ones of the Hellenistic schools of thought. Lastly, I will deliberate on how Kant’s categorical imperative is nonoperational with the 20th and 21st century’s understanding of psychology and quantum physics. Kant believed that our understanding of the external world was two-part...
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...schedule, and to rabidly engage potential customers. MARKETING ASPECTS IN RESTAURANTS (CAFÉS) DESIGN: H2 Banan teams deliver this marketability by designing, flexible buildings architectural and structural module that provide efficient use in all diverse functions of space in the restaurants, starting from dining halls which is need efficient design to maximize no. of dining tables, also utilization of natural...
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...things as being either material or immaterial. It seems fairly easy to distinguish between the two. If we cannot touch, feel or see something, then it becomes the notion of the immaterial world. The rest belongs to the material things, which we can own, trade, purchase, possess, lose or give away. When Rene Descartes, one of the founders of the modern-day western philosophical science, laid the groundwork for his epistemological perspective called Cartesian Dualism, he was coming exactly from the same universal idea. The thoughts and hypotheses that Descartes tried so hard, throughout his lifetime’s work, to develop into axioms and prove to be fundamentally true, surprisingly remain highly debatable and are still largely in question. Philosophy is very much about the question of certainty. To a great extent, from the epistemological perspective, knowledge is certainty (Harris, 2009). Just as the case is with Plato, whose quest for certainty has driven his metaphysics to take it, as a prerequisite, that if something is known, then it cannot change (Frank et al., 2011), Descartes too attempted to deduce the formula that would be true for all cases. However, while for Plato, it was the Form that was the thing we could consider to be unchanging and constant forever; the form as immutable, timeless, indivisible, indestructible, transcendent object of pure thought, Descartes...
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...Charles Hnein Ms. Wilson Philosophy 4/14/2013 Metaphysics paper Metaphysics has become the study of the fundamental nature of all reality; what is it, why is it, and how are we can understand it. Finding out if there is reality or not is a subject that has been debated by philosophers and scientists for hundreds of years. The search to understanding the nature of reality is still a mystery. We can know if something is real or not by using our senses, however, it’s much deeper than that. Reality can also be explained through theories of quantum mechanics, physics, and mathematics. Our knowledge comes primarily from our sense and our sensory experiences which make reality possible. We all know what a chair is, so we assume that it is real. What makes a real chair different from a chair that we imagine in our brain? By using our senses we can conclude that the chair is real. We can touch the chair, smell the chair, and see the chair. This brings up the question: what makes reality real? To me, a set of things that we know for sure is real. We know a chair is solid and we’ve experienced it over and over again, thus making it real. But what is real? The chair feels pretty solid, but it’s made out of atoms. Atoms are made up of empty space. Does that mean the chair doesn’t exist? Reality is much weirder than it seems. If atoms are mostly empty space, how come the world around us is solid? We feel like we’re standing still, however, we’re rotating around the sun at 67,000 miles...
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...idealist space with that if one of the philosophers (Newton/Clarke) that Kant claims have a transcendental realist conception of space. Which conception if space is more true and why? The ontological nature of space is one of the fundamental questions in Kant’s metaphysics and is the foundation around which he constructs his notion of transcendental idealism laid out in his Critique of Pure Reason. Written in response to the previous ‘realist’ conceptions of space Kant challenged strongly the view of its ultimate reality and served to shift the scope of the ontological argument from one of ‘absolutism’ versus ‘relationalism’ to a more developed debate of ‘realism’ against ‘idealism’ as he brought the relationship between space and time, and the mind strongly to the fore. In this essay I am going to contrast this Kantian notion of space as being ‘transcendentally ideal’ against the branded ‘transcendental realism’ of Newton and Clarke. Starting with the latter I’ll go on to bring in the former then proceed to analyse the developments Kant forges past his predecessors. I will then conclude by assessing how and why his view holds more metaphysical depth than that put forward in the Newtonian model by looking at how he accounts for the scope and perspective of human consciousness and the epistemological limits inherent within it. To begin however I will now go to the absolutist models put forward by Newton and Clarke. Prior to Kant, the arguments with regards to spaces ontology...
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...Steven Weinberg: “Against Philosophy” (from “Dreams of a Final Theory”). Physicists get so much help from subjective and often vague aesthetic judgments that it might be expected that we would be helped also by philosophy, out of which after all our science evolved. Can philosophy give us any guidance toward a final theory? The value today of philosophy to physics seems to me to be something like the value of early nation-states to their peoples. It is only a small exaggeration to say that, until the introduction of the post office, the chief service of nation-states was to protect their peoples from other nation-states. The insights of philosophers have occasionally benefited physicists, but generally in a negative fashion—by protecting them from the preconceptions of other philosophers. I do not want to draw the lesson here that physics is best done without preconceptions. At any one moment there are so many things that might be done, so many accepted principles that might be challenged, that without some guidance from our preconceptions one could do nothing at all. It is just that philosophical principles have not generally provided us with the right preconceptions. In our hunt for the final theory, physicists are more like hounds than hawks; we have become good at sniffing around on the ground for traces of the beauty we expect in the laws of nature, but we do not seem to be able to see the path to the truth from the heights of philosophy. Physicists do of course...
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...Rene Descartes When the term modern philosophy is mentioned, it is usually to make a distinction from ancient and medieval philosophy therefore it does not only mean the philosophy of the 21st century, it means, the philosopher Rene Descartes. Therefore in practice what the term, modern philosophy means is, philosophy from Descartes onwards. He was best known for his quote, ‘Cogito ergo sum’ (I think, therefore I am). Descartes was born on March 31st 1596, in La Haye, a small town in France. He was educated in classics, logic and the philosophy of Aristotle at the Jesuit college of Henri IV in La Fleche. After he graduated he studied at the University of Poitiers, obtaining his law license in 1616. He then joined the army and during his spare time he studied mathematics (Gaukroger and Hall, 1995). In 1619, he experienced the series of powerful dreams, which influenced him greatly in his pursuit of science and knowledge, and he acknowledged this ass his focal point of his life (Gaukroger and Hall, 1995). Descartes spent time in various parts of Europe before he settled in Dutch Republic. He maintained his studies and lived in various places throughout the Republic. During this time, he began his writing career, and he started to publish his new works that would revolutionize mathematics and philosophy, these works included the world, meditation of first philosophy, principles of philosophy and passions of the soul. His mathematical theories provided the basis for the...
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...contribution to philosophy is known as pragmatism or, sometimes, American pragmatism. Pragmatism is the philosophy where practical consequences and real effects are vital components of meaning and truth. Pragmatists rejected the idea that there is such a thing as fixed, absolute truth. Instead, they held that truth is relative to a time and place and purpose and is thus ever changing in light of new data. philosophical analysis resolves complex propositions or concepts into simpler ones. An elementary example is the proposition square circles are nonexistent things might be resolved by analysis into the simpler proposition no squares are circular. Pragmatism is an American theoretical movement that was developed by Charles Sanders Peirce in the 1870s. Pragmatism argues that the truth and meaning of an idea is directly related to its practical outcome. Analytic philosophy was developed by philosophers Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore in the early 1900s and received widespread attention in English-speaking countries during the 20th century. Analytic philosophy emphasizes the use of logical argument, language analysis and scientific methods in approaching ideas. Pragmatism and analytic philosophy are uniquely American movements in that they drastically differ from the philosophy found in Europe during the same period. Pragmatism and analytic philosophy are centered on a scientific approach to argument and analysis, whereas 19th and 20th century European philosophy, called continental...
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...Hawking contra Philosophy Christopher Norris presents a case for the defence. Stephen Hawking recently fluttered the academic dovecotes by writing in his new book The Grand Design – and repeating to an eager company of interviewers and journalists – that philosophy as practised nowadays is a waste of time and philosophers a waste of space. More precisely, he wrote that philosophy is ‘dead’ since it hasn’t kept up with the latest developments in science, especially theoretical physics. In earlier times – Hawking conceded – philosophers not only tried to keep up but sometimes made significant scientific contributions of their own. However they were now, in so far as they had any influence at all, just an obstacle to progress through their endless going-on about the same old issues of truth, knowledge, the problem of induction, and so forth. Had philosophers just paid a bit more attention to the scientific literature they would have gathered that these were no longer live issues for anyone remotely au fait with the latest thinking. Then their options would be either to shut up shop and cease the charade called ‘philosophy of science’ or else to carry on and invite further ridicule for their head-in-the-sand attitude. Predictably enough the journalists went off to find themselves media-friendly philosophers – not hard to do nowadays – who would argue the contrary case in a suitably vigorous way. On the whole the responses, or those that I came across, seemed overly anxious to strike...
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...German Philosophy: Kant’s concept of reason Critique of Pure Reason Prateek S Kolhar (EE10B109) 29th April 2014 1. Introduction During the period of enlightenment in Europe, there were 2 schools of thought that talked about the way we acquire knowledge: Rationalism and Empiricism. Rationalists like Leibniz claimed that knowledge is innate, that is, we are born with all the knowledge and the experiences that we have in this world just help us in uncovering/ remembering this knowledge. Empiricist believed that all knowledge is got only through experience in other words we are born with our minds/souls like a clean slate and the experiences write on them. With this struggle between the two schools of thought enlightenment Europe was striving to find ways to arrive at a consensus about some of these aforementioned central issues of theory of knowledge. And the champion of a philosopher who accomplished with task was Immanuel Kant. Kant borrowed many concepts from both empiricism and rationalism. But he felt that the many of the rationalist ideas were too simplistic and dogmatic and some of the empiricist ideas we too skeptic about the ability of humans to acquire true knowledge. As a part of his critical philosophy, with an aim to resolve this problem of theory of knowledge he wrote 3 critiques: Critique of pure reason, Critique of practical reason and Critique of judgment. Critique of Pure Reason talks about the process of knowledge acquisition in natural sciences, the way...
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