1.
Virtual reality
–
VR also simulates a users physical presence in this environment. A person using virtual reality equipment is able to look around the world, and with high quality VR move about in it. Virtual reality is displayed with a virtual reality headset, VR headsets are head-mounted goggles with a screen in front of the eyes. Programs may include audio and sounds through speakers or headphones, advanced haptic systems may include tactile information, generally known as force feedback in medical, video gaming and military training applications. Some VR systems used in games can transmit vibrations and other sensations to the user through the game controller. Virtual reality also refers to remote communication environments which provide a presence of users with through telepresence and telexistence or the use of a virtual artifact. The immersive environment can be similar to the world in order to create a life-like experience grounded in reality or sci-fi. In 1938, Antonin Artaud described the nature of characters and objects in the theatre as la réalité virtuelle in a collection of essays. The English translation of book, published in 1958 as The Theater. The term artificial reality, coined by Myron Krueger, has been in use since the 1970s, the term virtual reality was used in The Judas Mandala, a 1982 science fiction novel by Damien Broderick. Virtual has had the meaning being something in essence or effect, the term virtual has been used in the computer sense of not physically existing but made to appear by software since 1959. A dictionary definition for cyberspace states that word is a synonym for virtual reality. Virtual reality shares some elements with augmented reality, AR is a type of virtual reality technology that blends what the user sees in their real surroundings with digital content generated by computer software. The additional software-generated images with the virtual scene typically enhance way the real look in some way. Some AR systems use a camera to capture the surroundings or some type of display screen which the user looks at. The Virtual Reality Modelling Language, first introduced in 1994, was intended for the development of worlds without dependency on headsets. The Web3D consortium was founded in 1997 for the development of industry standards for web-based 3D graphics. The consortium subsequently developed X3D from the VRML framework as an archival and these components led to relative affordability for independent VR developers, and lead to the 2012 Oculus Rift kickstarter offering the first independently developed VR headset
Virtual reality
–
View-Master, a stereoscopic visual simulator, was introduced in 1939.
Virtual reality
–
Battlezone, an arcade video game from 1980, used 3D vector graphics to immerse the player in a VR world.(Atari).
Virtual reality
–
A 2013 developer version of
Oculus Rift from
Oculus VR, a company
Facebook acquired in 2014 for $2 billion
Virtual reality
–
Another upcoming VR headset called
HTC Vive, developed in co-production between
HTC and
Valve Corporation.
2.
Hypothesis
–
A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the method requires that one can test it. Scientists generally base scientific hypotheses on previous observations that cannot satisfactorily be explained with the scientific theories. Even though the hypothesis and theory are often used synonymously. A working hypothesis is a provisionally accepted hypothesis proposed for further research, P is the assumption in a What If question. Remember, the way that you prove an implication is by assuming the hypothesis, --Philip Wadler In its ancient usage, hypothesis referred to a summary of the plot of a classical drama. The English word hypothesis comes from the ancient Greek ὑπόθεσις word hupothesis, in Platos Meno, Socrates dissects virtue with a method used by mathematicians, that of investigating from a hypothesis. In this sense, hypothesis refers to an idea or to a convenient mathematical approach that simplifies cumbersome calculations. In common usage in the 21st century, a hypothesis refers to an idea whose merit requires evaluation. For proper evaluation, the framer of a hypothesis needs to define specifics in operational terms, a hypothesis requires more work by the researcher in order to either confirm or disprove it. In due course, a hypothesis may become part of a theory or occasionally may grow to become a theory itself. Normally, scientific hypotheses have the form of a mathematical model, in entrepreneurial science, a hypothesis is used to formulate provisional ideas within a business setting. The formulated hypothesis is then evaluated where either the hypothesis is proven to be true or false through a verifiability- or falsifiability-oriented Experiment, any useful hypothesis will enable predictions by reasoning. It might predict the outcome of an experiment in a setting or the observation of a phenomenon in nature. The prediction may also invoke statistics and only talk about probabilities, other philosophers of science have rejected the criterion of falsifiability or supplemented it with other criteria, such as verifiability or coherence. The scientific method involves experimentation, to test the ability of some hypothesis to adequately answer the question under investigation. In contrast, unfettered observation is not as likely to raise unexplained issues or open questions in science, a thought experiment might also be used to test the hypothesis as well. In framing a hypothesis, the investigator must not currently know the outcome of a test or that it remains reasonably under continuing investigation, only in such cases does the experiment, test or study potentially increase the probability of showing the truth of a hypothesis
Hypothesis
–
Andreas Cellarius hypothesis, demonstrating the planetary motions in eccentric and epicyclical
orbits
3.
Reality
–
Reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. Reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible, a still broader definition includes that which has existed, exists, or will exist. By contrast existence is restricted solely to that which has physical existence or has a direct basis in it in the way that thoughts do in the brain. Reality is often contrasted with what is imaginary, illusory, delusional, in the mind, dreams, what is false, what is fictional, at the same time, what is abstract plays a role both in everyday life and in academic research. For instance, causality, virtue, life, and distributive justice are abstract concepts that can be difficult to define, but they are only rarely equated with pure delusions. Both the existence and reality of abstractions are in dispute, one extreme position regards them as mere words and this disagreement is the basis of the philosophical problem of universals. The truth refers to what is real, while falsity refers to what is not, a common colloquial usage would have reality mean perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes toward reality, as in My reality is not your reality. This is often used just as a colloquialism indicating that the parties to a conversation agree, or should agree, for example, in a religious discussion between friends, one might say, You might disagree, but in my reality, everyone goes to heaven. Reality can be defined in a way that links it to world views or parts of them, Reality is the totality of all things, structures, events and phenomena and it is what a world view ultimately attempts to describe or map. Certain ideas from physics, philosophy, sociology, literary criticism, one such belief is that there simply and literally is no reality beyond the perceptions or beliefs we each have about reality. Many of the concepts of science and philosophy are often defined culturally and socially and this idea was elaborated by Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The Social Construction of Reality, a book about the sociology of knowledge written by Peter L. Berger and it explained how knowledge is acquired and used for the comprehension of reality. Out of all the realities, the reality of life is the most important one since our consciousness requires us to be completely aware. Philosophy addresses two different aspects of the topic of reality, the nature of reality itself, and the relationship between the mind and reality. On the one hand, ontology is the study of being, and the topic of the field is couched, variously, in terms of being, existence, what is. The task in ontology is to describe the most general categories of reality, if a philosopher wanted to proffer a positive definition of the concept reality, it would be done under this heading. As explained above, some philosophers draw a distinction between reality and existence, in fact, many analytic philosophers today tend to avoid the term real and reality in discussing ontological issues. But for those who would treat is real the same way they treat exists and it has been widely held by analytic philosophers that it is not a property at all, though this view has lost some ground in recent decades
Reality
–
Reality-Virtuality Continuum.
4.
Computer simulation
–
Computer simulations reproduce the behavior of a system using a model. Simulation of a system is represented as the running of the systems model and it can be used to explore and gain new insights into new technology and to estimate the performance of systems too complex for analytical solutions. The scale of events being simulated by computer simulations has far exceeded anything possible using traditional paper-and-pencil mathematical modeling, other examples include a 1-billion-atom model of material deformation, a 2. Because of the computational cost of simulation, computer experiments are used to perform such as uncertainty quantification. A computer model is the algorithms and equations used to capture the behavior of the system being modeled, by contrast, computer simulation is the actual running of the program that contains these equations or algorithms. Simulation, therefore, is the process of running a model, thus one would not build a simulation, instead, one would build a model, and then either run the model or equivalently run a simulation. It was a simulation of 12 hard spheres using a Monte Carlo algorithm, Computer simulation is often used as an adjunct to, or substitute for, modeling systems for which simple closed form analytic solutions are not possible. The external data requirements of simulations and models vary widely, for some, the input might be just a few numbers, while others might require terabytes of information. Because of this variety, and because diverse simulation systems have common elements. Systems that accept data from external sources must be careful in knowing what they are receiving. While it is easy for computers to read in values from text or binary files, often they are expressed as error bars, a minimum and maximum deviation from the value range within which the true value lie. Even small errors in the data can accumulate into substantial error later in the simulation. While all computer analysis is subject to the GIGO restriction, this is true of digital simulation. Indeed, observation of this inherent, cumulative error in digital systems was the main catalyst for the development of chaos theory, another way of categorizing models is to look at the underlying data structures. For time-stepped simulations, there are two classes, Simulations which store their data in regular grids and require only next-neighbor access are called stencil codes. Many CFD applications belong to this category, if the underlying graph is not a regular grid, the model may belong to the meshfree method class. Equations define the relationships between elements of the system and attempt to find a state in which the system is in equilibrium. Such models are used in simulating physical systems, as a simpler modeling case before dynamic simulation is attempted
Computer simulation
–
Computer simulation of the process of
osmosis
Computer simulation
–
A 48-hour computer simulation of
Typhoon Mawar using the
Weather Research and Forecasting model
5.
Transhumanism
–
Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers of emerging technologies that could overcome fundamental human limitations, as well as the ethics of using such technologies. The transhumanist philosophies of Max More and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner have been influenced strongly by Nietzschean thinking, by way of contrast, The Transhumanist Declaration. advocates the well-being of all sentience. Fundamental ideas of transhumanism were first advanced in 1923 by the British geneticist J. B. S, in particular, he was interested in the development of the science of eugenics, ectogenesis, and the application of genetics to improve human characteristics, such as health and intelligence. His article inspired academic and popular interest and these ideas have been common transhumanist themes ever since. The biologist Julian Huxley is generally regarded as the founder of transhumanism, the term itself, however, derives from an earlier 1940 paper by the Canadian philosopher W. D. Lighthall. Huxleys definition differs, albeit not substantially, from the one commonly in use since the 1980s, the ideas raised by these thinkers were explored in the science fiction of the 1960s, notably in Arthur C. Clarkes 2001, A Space Odyssey, in which an alien artifact grants transcendent power to its wielder, japanese Metabolist architects produced a manifesto in 1960 which outlined goals to encourage active metabolic development of our society through design and technology. What I think will be known by all the people, there is no more individual consciousness, only the will of mankind as a whole. The concept of the singularity, or the ultra-rapid advent of superhuman intelligence, was first proposed by the British cryptologist I. J. Good in 1965, Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the activities of any man however clever. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, computer scientist Marvin Minsky wrote on relationships between human and artificial intelligence beginning in the 1960s. The coalescence of an identifiable transhumanist movement began in the last decades of the 20th century, in 1972, Robert Ettinger contributed to the conceptualization of transhumanity in his book Man into Superman. FM-2030 published the Upwingers Manifesto in 1973, the first self-described transhumanists met formally in the early 1980s at the University of California, Los Angeles, which became the main center of transhumanist thought. Here, FM-2030 lectured on his Third Way futurist ideology, FM-2030 and Vita-More soon began holding gatherings for transhumanists in Los Angeles, which included students from FM-2030s courses and audiences from Vita-Mores artistic productions. In 1982, Vita-More authored the Transhumanist Arts Statement and, six years later, produced the cable TV show TransCentury Update on transhumanity, a program which reached over 100,000 viewers. In 1986, Eric Drexler published Engines of Creation, The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, which discussed the prospects for nanotechnology and molecular assemblers, and founded the Foresight Institute. As the first non-profit organization to research, advocate for, and perform cryonics, in 1988, the first issue of Extropy Magazine was published by Max More and Tom Morrow. Transhumanism shares many elements of humanism, including a respect for reason and science, a commitment to progress, Transhumanism differs from humanism in recognizing and anticipating the radical alterations in the nature and possibilities of our lives resulting from various sciences and technologies
Transhumanism
–
Julian Huxley, the biologist who popularised the term transhumanism in an influential 1957 essay.
Transhumanism
–
Cover of the first issue of
H+ Magazine, a web-based quarterly publication that focuses on transhumanism.
Transhumanism
–
Raymond Kurzweil believes that a countdown to when "human life will be irreversibly transformed" can be made through plotting major world events on a graph.
6.
Disjunction
–
In logic and mathematics, or is the truth-functional operator of disjunction, also known as alternation, the or of a set of operands is true if and only if one or more of its operands is true. The logical connective that represents this operator is written as ∨ or +. A or B is true if A is true, or if B is true, or if both A and B are true. In logic, or by means the inclusive or, distinguished from an exclusive or. An operand of a disjunction is called a disjunct, related concepts in other fields are, In natural language, the coordinating conjunction or. In programming languages, the short-circuit or control structure, or is usually expressed with an infix operator, in mathematics and logic, ∨, in electronics, +, and in most programming languages, |, ||, or or. In Jan Łukasiewiczs prefix notation for logic, the operator is A, logical disjunction is an operation on two logical values, typically the values of two propositions, that has a value of false if and only if both of its operands are false. More generally, a disjunction is a formula that can have one or more literals separated only by ors. A single literal is often considered to be a degenerate disjunction, the disjunctive identity is false, which is to say that the or of an expression with false has the same value as the original expression. In keeping with the concept of truth, when disjunction is defined as an operator or function of arbitrary arity. Falsehood-preserving, The interpretation under which all variables are assigned a value of false produces a truth value of false as a result of disjunction. The mathematical symbol for logical disjunction varies in the literature, in addition to the word or, and the formula Apq, the symbol ∨, deriving from the Latin word vel is commonly used for disjunction. For example, A ∨ B is read as A or B, such a disjunction is false if both A and B are false. In all other cases it is true, all of the following are disjunctions, A ∨ B ¬ A ∨ B A ∨ ¬ B ∨ ¬ C ∨ D ∨ ¬ E. The corresponding operation in set theory is the set-theoretic union, operators corresponding to logical disjunction exist in most programming languages. Disjunction is often used for bitwise operations, for example, x = x | 0b00000001 will force the final bit to 1 while leaving other bits unchanged. Logical disjunction is usually short-circuited, that is, if the first operand evaluates to true then the second operand is not evaluated, the logical disjunction operator thus usually constitutes a sequence point. In a parallel language, it is possible to both sides, they are evaluated in parallel, and if one terminates with value true
Disjunction
–
Venn diagram of
7.
Qualia
–
In philosophy and certain models of psychology, qualia are individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. Examples of qualia include the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, as qualitative characters of sensation, qualia stand in contrast to propositional attitudes. Much of the debate over their importance hinges on the definition of the term, There are many definitions of qualia, which have changed over time. One of the simpler, broader definitions is, The what it is character of mental states. There are recognizable qualitative characters of the given, which may be repeated in different experiences, but although such qualia are universals, in the sense of being recognized from one to another experience, they must be distinguished from the properties of objects. Confusion of these two is characteristic of many historical conceptions, as well as of current essence-theories, the quale is directly intuited, given, and is not the subject of any possible error because it is purely subjective. Frank Jackson later defined qualia as. certain features of the bodily sensations especially, but also of certain perceptual experiences, Daniel Dennett identifies four properties that are commonly ascribed to qualia. According to these, qualia are, ineffable, that is, they cannot be communicated, intrinsic, that is, they are non-relational properties, which do not change depending on the experiences relation to other things. Private, that is, all comparisons of qualia are systematically impossible. Directly or immediately apprehensible in consciousness, that is, to experience a quale is to know one experiences a quale, another way of defining qualia is as raw feels. A raw feel is a perception in and of itself, considered entirely in isolation from any effect it might have on behavior, in contrast, a cooked feel is that perception seen as existing in terms of its effects. For example, the perception of the taste of wine is an ineffable, raw feel, a cooked feel is not qualia. While very few ever claim that such an entity, called a zombie, actually exists. Since it is by definition impossible to convey qualia verbally, it is impossible to demonstrate them directly in an argument. Arguments for qualia generally come in the form of thought experiments designed to lead one to the conclusion that qualia exist, although it does not actually mention the word qualia, Thomas Nagels paper What Is it Like to Be a Bat. is often cited in debates over qualia. Nagel argues that consciousness has a subjective character, a what-it-is-like aspect. He states that an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism. Nagel also suggests that the aspect of the mind may not ever be sufficiently accounted for by the objective methods of reductionistic science
Qualia
–
Inverted qualia
Qualia
–
Saturated colors are a commonly used example of a quale.
Qualia
–
Daniel Dennett
Qualia
–
Marvin Minsky
8.
Epistemology
–
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of knowledge. Epistemology studies the nature of knowledge, justification, and the rationality of belief, the term Epistemology was first used by Scottish philosopher James Frederick Ferrier in 1854. However, according to Brett Warren, King James VI of Scotland had previously personified this philosophical concept as the character Epistemon in 1591 and this philosophical approach signified a Philomath seeking to obtain greater knowledge through epistemology with the use of theology. The dialogue was used by King James to educate society on various concepts including the history, the word epistemology is derived from the ancient Greek epistēmē meaning knowledge and the suffix -logy, meaning a logical discourse to. J. F. Ferrier coined epistemology on the model of ontology, to designate that branch of philosophy which aims to discover the meaning of knowledge, and called it the true beginning of philosophy. The word is equivalent to the concept Wissenschaftslehre, which was used by German philosophers Johann Fichte, French philosophers then gave the term épistémologie a narrower meaning as theory of knowledge. Émile Meyerson opened his Identity and Reality, written in 1908, in mathematics, it is known that 2 +2 =4, but there is also knowing how to add two numbers, and knowing a person, place, thing, or activity. Some philosophers think there is an important distinction between knowing that, knowing how, and acquaintance-knowledge, with epistemology being primarily concerned with the first of these, while these distinctions are not explicit in English, they are defined explicitly in other languages. In French, Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch to know is translated using connaître, conhecer, conocer, modern Greek has the verbs γνωρίζω and ξέρω. Italian has the verbs conoscere and sapere and the nouns for knowledge are conoscenza and sapienza, German has the verbs wissen and kennen. The verb itself implies a process, you have to go from one state to another and this verb seems to be the most appropriate in terms of describing the episteme in one of the modern European languages, hence the German name Erkenntnistheorie. The theoretical interpretation and significance of linguistic issues remains controversial. In his paper On Denoting and his later book Problems of Philosophy Bertrand Russell stressed the distinction between knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance, gilbert Ryle is also credited with stressing the distinction between knowing how and knowing that in The Concept of Mind. This position is essentially Ryles, who argued that a failure to acknowledge the distinction between knowledge that and knowledge how leads to infinite regress and this includes the truth, and everything else we accept as true for ourselves from a cognitive point of view. Whether someones belief is true is not a prerequisite for belief, on the other hand, if something is actually known, then it categorically cannot be false. It would not be accurate to say that he knew that the bridge was safe, because plainly it was not. By contrast, if the bridge actually supported his weight, then he might say that he had believed that the bridge was safe, whereas now, after proving it to himself, epistemologists argue over whether belief is the proper truth-bearer. Some would rather describe knowledge as a system of justified true propositions, plato, in his Gorgias, argues that belief is the most commonly invoked truth-bearer
Epistemology
–
Plato –
Kant –
Nietzsche
9.
Philosophy of mind
–
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind. The mind–body problem is an issue in philosophy of mind, although other issues are addressed, such as the hard problem of consciousness. Dualism and monism are the two schools of thought on the mind–body problem, although nuanced views have arisen that do not fit one or the other category neatly. Dualism is seen even in the Eastern tradition, in the Sankhya and Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy, and Plato, monism is the position that mind and body are not ontologically distinct kinds of entities. This view was first advocated in Western philosophy by Parmenides in the 5th century BC and was later espoused by the 17th century rationalist Baruch Spinoza. Physicalists argue that only entities postulated by physical theory exist, physicalists maintain various positions on the prospects of reducing mental properties to physical properties, and the ontological status of such mental properties remains unclear. Idealists maintain that the mind is all that exists and that the world is either mental itself. The most common monisms in the 20th and 21st centuries have all been variations of physicalism, these positions include behaviorism, most modern philosophers of mind adopt either a reductive or non-reductive physicalist position, maintaining in their different ways that the mind is not something separate from the body. These approaches have been influential in the sciences, especially in the fields of sociobiology, computer science, evolutionary psychology. Reductive physicalists assert that all states and properties will eventually be explained by scientific accounts of physiological processes and states. Continued neuroscientific progress has helped to some of these issues, however. Modern philosophers of mind continue to ask how the subjective qualities, the mind–body problem concerns the explanation of the relationship that exists between minds, or mental processes, and bodily states or processes. The main aim of working in this area is to determine the nature of the mind and mental states/processes. Someones desire for a slice of pizza, for example, will tend to cause that person to move his or her body in a specific manner and in a specific direction to obtain what he or she wants. The question, then, is how it can be possible for conscious experiences to arise out of a lump of gray matter endowed with nothing, a related problem is how someones propositional attitudes cause that individuals neurons to fire and his muscles to contract. These comprise some of the puzzles that have confronted epistemologists and philosophers of mind from at least the time of René Descartes, Dualism is a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter. It begins with the claim that mental phenomena are, in some respects, One of the earliest known formulations of mind–body dualism was expressed in the eastern Sankhya and Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy, which divided the world into purusha and prakriti. Specifically, the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali presents an approach to the nature of the mind
Philosophy of mind
–
A phrenological
mapping of the
brain –
phrenology was among the first attempts to correlate mental functions with specific parts of the brain
Philosophy of mind
–
Portrait of
René Descartes by
Frans Hals (1648)
Philosophy of mind
–
John Searle —one of the most influential philosophers of mind, proponent of
biological naturalism (Berkeley 2002)
Philosophy of mind
–
Since the 1980s, sophisticated
neuroimaging procedures, such as
fMRI (above), have furnished increasing knowledge about the workings of the human brain, shedding light on ancient philosophical problems.
10.
Cognition
–
Cognition is the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses. Human cognition is conscious and unconscious, concrete or abstract, as well as intuitive, cognitive processes use existing knowledge and generate new knowledge. These and other different approaches to the analysis of cognition are synthesised in the field of cognitive science. Within psychology and philosophy, the concept of cognition is closely related to concepts such as mind. It encompasses the functions, mental processes, and states of intelligent entities. It is also used in a branch of psychology called social cognition to explain attitudes, attribution. In cognitive psychology and cognitive engineering, cognition is typically assumed to be processing in a participant’s or operator’s mind or brain. Cognition can in specific and abstract sense also be artificial. The term cognition is often used to mean cognitive abilities or cognitive skills. The word cognition comes from the Latin verb cognosco meaning to conceptualize or to recognize, Cognition is a word that dates back to the 15th century, when it meant thinking and awareness. Attention to the process came about more than eighteen centuries ago, beginning with Aristotle and his interest in the inner workings of the mind. Aristotle focused on cognitive areas pertaining to memory, perception, wilhelm Wundt heavily emphasized the notion of what he called introspection, examining the inner feelings of an individual. With introspection, the subject had to be careful to describe his or her feelings in the most objective manner possible in order for Wundt to find the information scientific, Hermann Ebbinghaus conducted cognitive studies that mainly examined the function and capacity of human memory. Ebbinghaus developed his own experiment in which he constructed over 2,000 syllables made out of nonexistent words and he then examined his own personal ability to learn these non-words. He purposely chose non-words as opposed to words to control for the influence of pre-existing experience on what the words might symbolize. Ebbinghaus observed and hypothesized a number of variables that may have affected his ability to learn, one of the reasons, he concluded, was the amount of time between the presentation of the list of stimuli and the recitation or recall of same. Ebbinghaus was the first to record and plot a curve. His work heavily influenced the study of serial position and its effect on memory, mary Whiton Calkins was an influential American pioneer in the realm of psychology
Cognition
–
When the mind makes a generalization such as the
concept of tree, it extracts similarities from numerous examples; the simplification enables higher-level thinking.
11.
Simulated reality
–
Simulated reality is the hypothesis that reality could be simulated—for example by computer simulation—to a degree indistinguishable from true reality. It could contain conscious minds which may or may not be aware that they are living inside a simulation. This is quite different from the current, technologically achievable concept of virtual reality, virtual reality is easily distinguished from the experience of actuality, participants are never in doubt about the nature of what they experience. Simulated reality, by contrast, would be hard or impossible to separate from true reality, there has been much debate over this topic, ranging from philosophical discourse to practical applications in computing. The simulation hypothesis was first published by Hans Moravec, later, the philosopher Nick Bostrom developed an expanded argument examining the probability of our reality being a simulation. His argument states that at least one of the statements is very likely to be true,1. Human civilization is unlikely to reach a level of technological maturity capable of producing simulated realities, any entities with our general set of experiences are almost certainly living in a simulation. In greater detail, Bostrom is attempting to prove a tripartite disjunction, epistemologically, it is not impossible to tell whether we are living in a simulation. For example, Bostrom suggests that a window could pop up saying, nonetheless, should any evidence come to light, either for or against the skeptical hypothesis, it would radically alter the aforementioned probability. Computationalism is a philosophy of mind theory stating that cognition is a form of computation and it is relevant to the Simulation hypothesis in that it illustrates how a simulation could contain conscious subjects, as required by a virtual people simulation. For example, it is known that physical systems can be simulated to some degree of accuracy. If computationalism is correct, and if there is no problem in generating artificial consciousness or cognition, however, the relationship between cognition and phenomenal qualia of consciousness is disputed. It is possible that consciousness requires a vital substrate that a computer cannot provide, and this would undermine Nick Bostroms simulation argument, we cannot be a simulated consciousness, if consciousness, as we know it, cannot be simulated. However, the hypothesis remains intact, we could still be envatted brains, existing as conscious beings within a simulated environment. This argument states that a Platonic realm or ultimate ensemble would contain every algorithm, Hans Moravec has explored the simulation hypothesis and has argued for a kind of mathematical Platonism according to which every object can be regarded as implementing every possible computation. A dream could be considered a type of simulation capable of fooling someone who is asleep, as a result, the dream hypothesis cannot be ruled out, although it has been argued that common sense and considerations of simplicity rule against it. One of the first philosophers to question the distinction between reality and dreams was Zhuangzi, a Chinese philosopher from the 4th century BC and he didnt know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi, but he didnt know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi
Simulated reality
–
Technologies
12.
Chinese room
–
The Chinese room argument holds that a program cannot give a computer a mind, understanding or consciousness, regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave. The argument was first presented by philosopher John Searle in his paper, Minds, Brains and it has been widely discussed in the years since. The centerpiece of the argument is an experiment known as the Chinese room. The argument applies only to digital computers running programs and does not apply to machines in general, Searles thought experiment begins with this hypothetical premise, suppose that artificial intelligence research has succeeded in constructing a computer that behaves as if it understands Chinese. It takes Chinese characters as input and, by following the instructions of a program, produces other Chinese characters. To all of the questions that the person asks, it makes appropriate responses, the question Searle wants to answer is this, does the machine literally understand Chinese. Or is it merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese, Searle could receive Chinese characters through a slot in the door, process them according to the programs instructions, and produce Chinese characters as output. If the computer had passed the Turing test this way, it follows, says Searle, Searle asserts that there is no essential difference between the roles of the computer and himself in the experiment. Each simply follows a program, step-by-step, producing a behavior which is interpreted as demonstrating intelligent conversation. However, Searle would not be able to understand the conversation, therefore, he argues, it follows that the computer would not be able to understand the conversation either. Therefore, he concludes that strong AI is false, gottfried Leibniz made a similar argument in 1714 against mechanism. Leibniz used the experiment of expanding the brain until it was the size of a mill. Leibniz found it difficult to imagine that a capable of perception could be constructed using only mechanical processes. This thought experiment is called the China brain, also the Chinese Nation or the Chinese Gym, the Chinese Room Argument was introduced in Searles 1980 paper Minds, Brains, and Programs, published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. David Cole writes that the Chinese Room argument has probably been the most widely discussed philosophical argument in cognitive science to appear in the past 25 years, most of the discussion consists of attempts to refute it. The overwhelming majority, notes BBS editor Stevan Harnad, still think that the Chinese Room Argument is dead wrong, Searles argument has become something of a classic in cognitive science, according to Harnad. Varol Akman agrees, and has described the paper as an exemplar of philosophical clarity and purity. Although the Chinese Room argument was presented in reaction to the statements of AI researchers, philosophers have come to view it as an important part of the philosophy of mind
Chinese room
–
In this thought experiment, a person in the "Chinese room" is passed questions from outside the room, and consults a library of books to formulate an answer
Chinese room
–
John Searle
13.
Consciousness
–
Consciousness is the state or quality of awareness, or, of being aware of an external object or something within oneself. Despite the difficulty in definition, many believe that there is a broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness is. Western philosophers, since the time of Descartes and Locke, have struggled to comprehend the nature of consciousness, the majority of experimental studies assess consciousness in humans by asking subjects for a verbal report of their experiences. The origin of the concept of consciousness is often attributed to John Lockes Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke defined consciousness as the perception of what passes in a mans own mind and his essay influenced the 18th-century view of consciousness, and his definition appeared in Samuel Johnsons celebrated Dictionary. Consciousness is also defined in the 1753 volume of Diderot and dAlemberts Encyclopédie, the earliest English language uses of conscious and consciousness date back, however, to the 1500s. This phrase had the meaning of knowing that one knows. In its earliest uses in the 1500s, the English word conscious retained the meaning of the Latin conscius. For example, Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan wrote, Where two, or more men, know of one and the fact, they are said to be Conscious of it one to another. The Latin phrase conscius sibi, whose meaning was more related to the current concept of consciousness, was rendered in English as conscious to oneself or conscious unto oneself. For example, Archbishop Ussher wrote in 1613 of being so conscious unto myself of my great weakness, Lockes definition from 1690 illustrates that a gradual shift in meaning had taken place. A related word was conscientia, which primarily means moral conscience, in the literal sense, conscientia means knowledge-with, that is, shared knowledge. The word first appears in Latin juridical texts by such as Cicero. Here, conscientia is the knowledge that a witness has of the deed of someone else, rené Descartes is generally taken to be the first philosopher to use conscientia in a way that does not fit this traditional meaning. Descartes used conscientia the way modern speakers would use conscience, in Search after Truth he says conscience or internal testimony. The dictionary meaning of the word consciousness extends through several centuries, B. inward awareness of an external object, state, or fact. The philosophy of mind has given rise to many stances regarding consciousness, something within ones mind is introspectively conscious just in case one introspects it. Introspection is often thought to deliver ones primary knowledge of ones mental life, an experience or other mental entity is phenomenally conscious just in case there is something it is like for one to have it
Consciousness
–
Schema of the neural processes underlying consciousness, from
Christof Koch
Consciousness
–
Representation of consciousness from the seventeenth century
Consciousness
–
A Buddhist monk meditating
14.
Vitalism
–
A Where vitalism explicitly invokes a vital principle, that element is often referred to as the vital spark, energy or élan vital, which some equate with the soul. Vitalism has a history in medical philosophies, most traditional healing practices posited that disease results from some imbalance in vital forces. In the Western tradition founded by Hippocrates, these forces were associated with the four temperaments and humours. One example of a notion in Africa is the Yoruba concept of ase. Today forms of vitalism continue to exist as philosophical positions or a tenet in many religious traditions, the notion that bodily functions are due to a vitalistic principle existing in all living creatures has roots going back at least to ancient Egypt. In Greek philosophy, the Milesian school proposed natural explanations deduced from materialism and mechanism, however, by the time of Lucretius, this account was supplemented, and in stoic physics, the pneuma assumed the role of logos. Galen believed the lungs draw pneuma from the air, which the blood communicates throughout the body and this debate was to persist throughout the ancient world. Atomistic mechanism got a shot in the arm from Epicurus, while the Stoics adopted a divine teleology. The choice seems simple, either show how a structured, regular world could arise out of undirected processes, in Europe, medieval physics was influenced by the idea of pneuma, helping to shape later aether theories. Jöns Jakob Berzelius, one of the early 19th century fathers of modern chemistry, vitalist chemists predicted that organic materials could not be synthesized from inorganic components, but Friedrich Wöhler synthesised urea from inorganic components in 1828. However, contemporary accounts do not support the belief that vitalism died when Wöhler made urea. Vitalism has long been regarded in the community as a corrupting pseudoscientific influence. Vitalism today is no longer philosophically and scientifically viable, and is used as a pejorative epithet. Ernst Mayr wrote, It would be ahistorical to ridicule vitalists, the logic of the critique of the vitalists was impeccable. Vitalism has become so disreputable a belief in the last fifty years that no biologist alive today would want to be classified as a vitalist. Still, the remnants of vitalist thinking can be found in the work of Alistair Hardy, Sewall Wright, and Charles Birch, louis Pasteur after his famous rebuttal of spontaneous generation, performed several experiments that he felt supported vitalism. According to Bechtel, Pasteur fitted fermentation into a general programme describing special reactions that only occur in living organisms. Rejecting the claims of Berzelius, Liebig, Traube and others that fermentation resulted from chemical agents or catalysts within cells, other vitalists included English anatomist Francis Glisson and the Italian doctor Marcello Malpighi
Vitalism
–
The synthesis of
urea (and other organic substances) from inorganic compounds was counterevidence for the vitalist hypothesis that only organisms could make such compounds.
Vitalism
–
Louis Pasteur argued that only life could catalyse fermentation. (Painting by
A. Edelfeldt in 1885.)
15.
Brain in a vat
–
It is an updated version of René Descartes Evil Demon thought experiment originated by Gilbert Harman. The simplest use of scenarios is as an argument for philosophical skepticism and solipsism. Yet in the first case most of the persons beliefs may be true, since the argument says one cannot know whether one is a brain in a vat, then one cannot know whether most of ones beliefs might be completely false. However, if one accepts a utilitarian or some logical positivist ethical philosophy, if one believes the external world is not real, it follows that other humans and beings do not exist, and therefore cannot be helped or harmed by ones actions. Thus, if one behaves as though the world is real and it is not, however, if one behaves as though the world is not real and it is, ones selfish decisions can cause serious harm to the happiness of large numbers of people. Therefore, for the analysis of belief in the existence of the external world to support disbelief. Though the world does not appear wholly logical or consistent, enough of it is logical, so, the cost–benefit analysis favors belief in the external worlds existence. While the disembodied brain can be seen as a thought experiment. One argument against the BIV thought experiment derives from the idea that the BIV is not and cannot be biologically similar to that of an embodied brain, since the BIV is disembodied, it follows that it does not have a similar biology to that of an embodied brain. That is, the BIV lacks the connections from the body to the brain, if this is the case, we cannot say that it is even possible for the BIV to have similar experiences to the embodied brain, since the brains are not equal. A second argument deals directly with the coming into the brain. This is often referred to as the account from externalism or ultra-externalism, in the BIV, the brain receives stimuli from a machine. In an embodied brain, however, the brain receives the stimuli from the found in the body which receive their input from the external environment. This argument oftentimes leads to the conclusion there is a difference between what the BIV is representing and what the embodied brain is representing. This debate has been hashed out, but remains unresolved, by philosophers including Uriah Kriegel, Colin McGinn. This debate has ramifications for philosophy of mind discussions on representation, consciousness, content, cognition, welt am Draht The Whisperer in Darkness Where am I. Putnams discussion of the brains in a vat in chapter one of Reason, Truth, and History
Brain in a vat
–
A brain in a vat that believes it is walking
16.
Mathematical realism
–
The philosophy of mathematics is the branch of philosophy that studies the philosophical assumptions, foundations, and implications of mathematics. The aim of the philosophy of mathematics is to provide an account of the nature and methodology of mathematics, the logical and structural nature of mathematics itself makes this study both broad and unique among its philosophical counterparts. The terms philosophy of mathematics and mathematical philosophy are frequently used interchangeably, the latter, however, may be used to refer to several other areas of study. Another refers to the philosophy of an individual practitioner or a like-minded community of practicing mathematicians. Recurrent themes include, What is the role of Mankind in developing mathematics, what are the sources of mathematical subject matter. What is the status of mathematical entities. What does it mean to refer to a mathematical object, what is the character of a mathematical proposition. What is the relation between logic and mathematics, what is the role of hermeneutics in mathematics. What kinds of play a role in mathematics. What are the objectives of mathematical inquiry, what gives mathematics its hold on experience. What are the human traits behind mathematics, what is the source and nature of mathematical truth. What is the relationship between the world of mathematics and the material universe. The origin of mathematics is subject to argument, whether the birth of mathematics was a random happening or induced by necessity duly contingent upon other subjects, say for example physics, is still a matter of prolific debates. Many thinkers have contributed their ideas concerning the nature of mathematics, there are traditions of mathematical philosophy in both Western philosophy and Eastern philosophy. Greek philosophy on mathematics was strongly influenced by their study of geometry, for example, at one time, the Greeks held the opinion that 1 was not a number, but rather a unit of arbitrary length. A number was defined as a multitude, therefore,3, for example, represented a certain multitude of units, and was thus not truly a number. At another point, an argument was made that 2 was not a number. These earlier Greek ideas of numbers were later upended by the discovery of the irrationality of the root of two
Mathematical realism
–
David Hilbert
17.
Mathematical Platonism
–
The philosophy of mathematics is the branch of philosophy that studies the philosophical assumptions, foundations, and implications of mathematics. The aim of the philosophy of mathematics is to provide an account of the nature and methodology of mathematics, the logical and structural nature of mathematics itself makes this study both broad and unique among its philosophical counterparts. The terms philosophy of mathematics and mathematical philosophy are frequently used interchangeably, the latter, however, may be used to refer to several other areas of study. Another refers to the philosophy of an individual practitioner or a like-minded community of practicing mathematicians. Recurrent themes include, What is the role of Mankind in developing mathematics, what are the sources of mathematical subject matter. What is the status of mathematical entities. What does it mean to refer to a mathematical object, what is the character of a mathematical proposition. What is the relation between logic and mathematics, what is the role of hermeneutics in mathematics. What kinds of play a role in mathematics. What are the objectives of mathematical inquiry, what gives mathematics its hold on experience. What are the human traits behind mathematics, what is the source and nature of mathematical truth. What is the relationship between the world of mathematics and the material universe. The origin of mathematics is subject to argument, whether the birth of mathematics was a random happening or induced by necessity duly contingent upon other subjects, say for example physics, is still a matter of prolific debates. Many thinkers have contributed their ideas concerning the nature of mathematics, there are traditions of mathematical philosophy in both Western philosophy and Eastern philosophy. Greek philosophy on mathematics was strongly influenced by their study of geometry, for example, at one time, the Greeks held the opinion that 1 was not a number, but rather a unit of arbitrary length. A number was defined as a multitude, therefore,3, for example, represented a certain multitude of units, and was thus not truly a number. At another point, an argument was made that 2 was not a number. These earlier Greek ideas of numbers were later upended by the discovery of the irrationality of the root of two
Mathematical Platonism
–
David Hilbert
18.
Universal Turing machine
–
In computer science, a universal Turing machine is a Turing machine that can simulate an arbitrary Turing machine on arbitrary input. The universal machine essentially achieves this by reading both the description of the machine to be simulated as well as the input thereof from its own tape, Alan Turing introduced this machine in 1936–1937. It is also known as universal computing machine, universal machine, machine U, U, in terms of computational complexity, a multi-tape universal Turing machine need only be slower by logarithmic factor compared to the machines it simulates. Every Turing machine computes a certain fixed partial computable function from the strings over its alphabet. In that sense it behaves like a computer with a fixed program, however, we can encode the action table of any Turing machine in a string. Turing described such a construction in complete detail in his 1936 paper, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine, and that John von Neumann on the work of Alan Turing. Davis makes a case that Turings Automatic Computing Engine computer anticipated the notions of microprogramming, Knuth cites Turings work on the ACE computer as designing hardware to facilitate subroutine linkage, Davis also references this work as Turings use of a hardware stack. As the Turing Machine was encouraging the construction of computers, the UTM was encouraging the development of the computer sciences. An early, if not the very first, assembler was proposed by a young hot-shot programmer for the EDVAC, Knuth observes that the subroutine return embedded in the program itself rather than in special registers is attributable to von Neumann and Goldstine. Knuth furthermore states that The first interpretive routine may be said to be the Universal Turing Machine, interpretive routines in the conventional sense were mentioned by John Mauchly in his lectures at the Moore School in 1946. Turing took part in development also, interpretive systems for the Pilot ACE computer were written under his direction. Davis briefly mentions operating systems and compilers as outcomes of the notion of program-as-data, some, however, might raise issues with this assessment. At the time a small cadre of researchers were intimately involved with the architecture of the new digital computers. These two aspects of theory and practice have been developed almost entirely independently of each other, the main reason is undoubtedly that logicians are interested in questions radically different from those with which the applied mathematicians and electrical engineers are primarily concerned. It cannot, however, fail to strike one as rather strange that often the same concepts are expressed by different terms in the two developments. Wang hoped that his paper would connect the two approaches, indeed, Minsky confirms this, that the first formulation of Turing-machine theory in computer-like models appears in Wang. Minsky goes on to demonstrate Turing equivalence of a counter machine, with respect to the reduction of computers to simple Turing equivalent models, Minskys designation of Wang as having made the first formulation is open to debate. The names of mathematicians Hermes and Kaphenst appear in the bibliographies of both Sheperdson-Sturgis and Elgot-Robinson, Two other names of importance are Canadian researchers Melzak and Lambek
Universal Turing machine
–
Turing machines
19.
Common sense
–
Common Sense is a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–76 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. Written in clear and persuasive prose, Paine marshaled moral and political arguments to encourage people in the Colonies to fight for egalitarian government. It was published anonymously on January 10,1776, at the beginning of the American Revolution and it was sold and distributed widely and read aloud at taverns and meeting places. In proportion to the population of the colonies at that time, it had the largest sale, as of 2006, it remains the all-time best selling American title, and is still in print today. Common Sense made public a persuasive and impassioned case for independence and he connected independence with common dissenting Protestant beliefs as a means to present a distinctly American political identity, structuring Common Sense as if it were a sermon. Historian Gordon S. Wood described Common Sense as the most incendiary, the text was translated into French by Antoine Gilbert Griffet de Labaume in 1790. Thomas Paine arrived in the American colonies in November 1774, shortly before the Battles of Lexington, though the colonies and Great Britain had commenced hostilities against one another, the thought of independence was not initially entertained. Writing of his experiences in the colonies in 1778, Paine found the disposition of the people such. Their attachment to Britain was obstinate, and it was, at that time and their ideas of grievance operated without resentment, and their single object was reconciliation. Paine quickly engrained himself in the Philadelphia newspaper business, and began writing Common Sense in late 1775 under the title of Plain Truth. Though it began as a series of letters to be published in various Philadelphia papers, it too long and unwieldy to publish as letters. Benjamin Rush recommended the publisher Robert Bell, promising Paine that, Bell zealously promoted the pamphlet in Philadelphias papers, and demand grew so high as to require a second printing. Paine, overjoyed with its success, endeavored to collect his share of the profits and donate them to purchase mittens for General Montgomerys troops, however, when Paines chosen intermediaries audited Bells accounts, they found that the pamphlet actually had made zero profits. Incensed, Paine ordered Bell not to proceed on a second edition, Bell ignored this and began advertising a new edition. While Bell believed this advertisement would convince Paine to retain his services, Paine secured the assistance of the Bradford brothers, publishers of the Pennsylvania Evening Post, and released his new edition, featuring several appendices and additional writings. Bell began working on a second edition, both Paine and Bell published several more editions through the end of their public squabble. The publicity generated by the success and compounded by the publishing disagreements no doubt propelled the pamphlet to incredible sales. Common Sense sold almost 100,000 copies in 1776, one biographer estimates that 500,000 copies sold in the first year, and another writes that Paines pamphlet went through twenty-five published editions in the first year alone
Common sense
–
Aristotle, the first person known to have discussed "common sense", described it as the ability with which animals (including humans) process sense-perceptions, memories and imagination (phronein) in order to reach many types of basic judgments. In his scheme, only humans have real reasoned thinking (noein), which takes them beyond their common sense.
Common sense
–
Avicenna became one of the greatest medieval authorities concerning Aristotelian common sense, both in Islamic and Christian lands.
Common sense
–
Marcus Aurelius, emperor and stoic philosopher, and an important influence upon the concept of "humanist" common sense.
Common sense
–
René Descartes is the source of the most common way of understanding the "common sense" as a widely spread type of judgement.
20.
Dream
–
A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Dream interpretation is the attempt at drawing meaning from dreams and searching for an underlying message, the scientific study of dreams is called oneirology. Dreams mainly occur in the rapid-eye movement stage of brain activity is high. REM sleep is revealed by continuous movements of the eyes during sleep, at times, dreams may occur during other stages of sleep. However, these tend to be much less vivid or memorable. The length of a dream can vary, they may last for a few seconds, people are more likely to remember the dream if they are awakened during the REM phase. The average person has three to five dreams per night, and some may have up to seven, however, Dreams tend to last longer as the night progresses. During a full eight-hour night sleep, most dreams occur in the two hours of REM. Opinions about the meaning of dreams have varied and shifted through time, most people today appear to endorse the Freudian theory of dreams – that dreams reveal insight into hidden desires and emotions. Other prominent theories include those suggesting that dreams assist in memory formation, problem solving, the earliest recorded dreams were acquired from materials dating back approximately 5000 years, in Mesopotamia, where they were documented on clay tablets. In the Greek and Roman periods, the believed that dreams were direct messages from one and/or multiple deities, from deceased persons. Some cultures practiced dream incubation with the intention of cultivating dreams that are of prophecy, Sigmund Freud, who developed the psychological discipline of psychoanalysis, wrote extensively about dream theories and their interpretations in the early 1900s. He explained dreams as manifestations of ones deepest desires and anxieties, furthermore, he believed that virtually every dream topic, regardless of its content, represented the release of sexual tension. In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud developed a technique to interpret dreams and devised a series of guidelines to understand the symbols. In modern times, dreams have been seen as a connection to the unconscious mind and they range from normal and ordinary to overly surreal and bizarre. Dreams can have varying natures, such as being frightening, exciting, magical, melancholic, adventurous, the events in dreams are generally outside the control of the dreamer, with the exception of lucid dreaming, where the dreamer is self-aware. Dreams can at times make a creative thought occur to the person or give a sense of inspiration, the Sumerians in Mesopotamia left evidence of dreams dating back to 3100 BC. According to these early recorded stories, gods and kings, like the 7th century BC scholar-king Assurbanipal, in his archive of clay tablets, some accounts of the story of the legendary king Gilgamesh were found
Dream
–
The Knight's Dream, 1655, by
Antonio de Pereda
Dream
–
Dreaming of the Tiger Spring (虎跑夢泉)
Dream
–
Jacob's dream of a
ladder of angels, c. 1690, by
Michael Willmann
21.
Zhuang Zhou
–
He is credited with writing—in part or in whole—a work known by his name, the Zhuangzi, which expresses a philosophy of skepticism. In Simas biography, he is described as an official from the town of Meng in the state of Song, living in the time of King Hui of Liang and King Xuan of Qi. He made The Old Fisherman, The Robber Chih, and The Cutting open Satchels, to satirize and expose the disciples of Confucius, and clearly exhibit the sentiments of Lao. Such names and characters as Wei-lei Hsu and Khang-sang Tze are fictitious, but Chuang was an admirable writer and skillful composer, and by his instances and truthful descriptions hit and exposed the Mohists and Literati. King Wei of Chu, having heard of the ability of Chuang Chau, sent messengers with large gifts to bring him to his court, and promising also that he would make him his chief minister. Chuang-Tze, however, only laughed and said to them, A thousand ounces of silver are a great gain to me, but have you not seen the victim-ox for the border sacrifice. It is carefully fed for several years, and robed with rich embroidery that it may be fit to enter the Grand Temple, when the time comes for it to do so, it would prefer to be a little pig, but it can not get to be so. Go away quickly, and do not soil me with your presence, I had rather amuse and enjoy myself in the midst of a filthy ditch than be subject to the rules and restrictions in the court of a sovereign. I have determined never to take office, but prefer the enjoyment of my own free will, in reality, it was nothing of the sort. The Chuang-tzu known to us today was the production of a thinker of the third century CE named Kuo Hsiang, though Kuo was long called merely a commentator, he was in reality much more, he arranged the texts and compiled the present 33-chapter edition. Regarding the identity of the person named Chuang Chou/Zhuangzi, there is no reliable historical data at all. However, Sima Qians biography of Zhuangzi pre-dates Guo Xiang by centuries, furthermore, the Han Shu Yiwenzhi lists a text Zhuangzi, showing that a text with this title existed no later than the early 1st century CE, again pre-dating Guo Xiang by centuries. Zhuangzi is traditionally credited as the author of at least part of the work bearing his name, further study of the text does not provide a clear choice between these alternatives. On the other hand, chapter 33 has been considered as intrusive. In this spirit, Martin Palmer wrote that trying to read Chuang Tzu sequentially is a mistake, the text is a collection, not a developing argument. Zhuangzi was renowned for his brilliant wordplay and use of parables to convey messages and his critiques of Confucian society and historical figures are humorous and at times ironic. Dream argument Liezi Tao Te Ching Ames, Roger T, ‘The Mencian Concept of Ren Xing, Does it Mean Human Nature. ’ in Chinese Texts and Philosophical Contexts, ed. Henry Rosemont, Jr. LaSalle, Ill. Ames, Roger T. ed. Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi, albany, State University of New York Press
Zhuang Zhou
–
Zhuangzi (莊子) Zhuang Zhou (莊周)
22.
China
–
China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
China
–
Yinxu, ruins of an ancient
palace dating from the
Shang Dynasty (14th century BCE)
China
–
Flag
China
–
Some of the thousands of life-size
Terracotta Warriors of the
Qin Dynasty, c. 210 BCE
China
–
The
Great Wall of China was built by several dynasties over two thousand years to protect the sedentary agricultural regions of the
Chinese interior from incursions by
nomadic pastoralists of the northern
steppes.
23.
Descartes
–
René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. Dubbed the father of western philosophy, much of subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings. A native of the Kingdom of France, he spent about 20 years of his life in the Dutch Republic, descartess Meditations on First Philosophy continues to be a standard text at most university philosophy departments. He is credited as the father of geometry, the bridge between algebra and geometry, used in the discovery of infinitesimal calculus and analysis. Descartes was also one of the key figures in the scientific revolution, Descartes refused to accept the authority of previous philosophers. He frequently set his views apart from those of his predecessors and his best known philosophical statement is Cogito ergo sum, found in part IV of Discourse on the Method and §7 of part I of Principles of Philosophy. Many elements of his philosophy have precedents in late Aristotelianism, the revived Stoicism of the 16th century, in his theology, he insists on the absolute freedom of Gods act of creation. Leibniz, Spinoza and Descartes were all well-versed in mathematics as well as philosophy, Descartes was born in La Haye en Touraine, France, on 31 March 1596. When he was one old, his mother Jeanne Brochard died after trying to give birth to another child who also died. His father Joachim was a member of the Parlement of Brittany at Rennes, rené lived with his grandmother and with his great-uncle. Although the Descartes family was Roman Catholic, the Poitou region was controlled by the Protestant Huguenots, in 1607, late because of his fragile health, he entered the Jesuit Collège Royal Henry-Le-Grand at La Flèche where he was introduced to mathematics and physics, including Galileos work. From there he moved to Paris, in his book Discourse on the Method, Descartes recalls, I entirely abandoned the study of letters. Descartes, therefore, received encouragement in Breda to advance his knowledge of mathematics. In this way, he acquainted with Isaac Beeckman, principal of a Dordrecht school. Together they worked on free fall, catenary, conic section, both believed that it was necessary to create a method that thoroughly linked mathematics and physics. While in the service of Duke Maximilian of Bavaria since 1619, Descartes was present at the Battle of the White Mountain outside Prague and he visited the labs of Tycho Brahe in Prague and Johannes Kepler in Regensburg. According to Adrien Baillet, on the night of 10–11 November 1619, while stationed in Neuburg an der Donau, while within, he had three visions and believed that a divine spirit revealed to him a new philosophy. Upon exiting, he had formulated analytical geometry and the idea of applying the method to philosophy
Descartes
–
Portrait after
Frans Hals, 1648
Descartes
–
The house where he was born in
La Haye en Touraine
Descartes
–
Graduation registry for Descartes at the
Collège Royal Henry-Le-Grand,
La Flèche, 1616
24.
Western World
–
The Western world or the West is a term usually referring to different nations, depending on the context, most often including at least part of Europe. There are many accepted definitions about what they all have in common, the Western world is also known as the Occident. The concept of the Western part of the earth has its roots in Greco-Roman civilization in Europe, before the Cold War era, the traditional Western viewpoint identified Western Civilization with the Western Christian countries and culture. Its political usage was changed by the antagonism during the Cold War in the mid-to-late 20th Century. The term originally had a literal geographic meaning, Western culture was influenced by many older great civilizations of the ancient Near East, such as Phoenicia, Minoan Crete, Sumer, Babylonia, and also Ancient Egypt. It originated in the Mediterranean basin and its vicinity, Greece, over time, their associated empires grew first to the east and west to include the rest of Mediterranean and Black Sea coastal areas, conquering and absorbing. Later, they expanded to the north of the Mediterranean Sea to include Western, Central, numerous times, this expansion was accompanied by Christian missionaries, who attempted to proselytize Christianity. There is debate among some as to whether Latin America is in a category of its own, specifically, Western culture may imply, a Biblical Christian cultural influence in spiritual thinking, customs and either ethic or moral traditions, around the Post-Classical Era and after. European cultural influences concerning artistic, musical, folkloric, ethic and oral traditions, the concept of Western culture is generally linked to the classical definition of the Western world. In this definition, Western culture is the set of literary, scientific, political, artistic, much of this set of traditions and knowledge is collected in the Western canon. The term has come to apply to countries whose history is marked by European immigration or settlement, such as the Americas, and Oceania. The geopolitical divisions in Europe that created a concept of East and West originated in the Roman Empire, Roman Catholic Western and Central Europe, as such, maintained a distinct identity particularly as it began to redevelop during the Renaissance. Even following the Protestant Reformation, Protestant Europe continued to see itself as more tied to Roman Catholic Europe than other parts of the civilized world. Use of the term West as a cultural and geopolitical term developed over the course of the Age of Exploration as Europe spread its culture to other parts of the world. Additionally, closer contacts between the West and Asia and other parts of the world in recent times have continued to cloud the use, herodotus considered the Persian Wars of the early 5th century BC a conflict of Europa versus Asia. The terms West and East were not used by any Greek author to describe that conflict, the Great Schism and the Fourth Crusade confirmed this deviation. The Renaissance in the West emerged partly from currents within the Roman Empire, Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew from a city-state founded on the Italian Peninsula about the 9th century BC to a massive empire straddling the Mediterranean Sea. In its 12-century existence, Roman civilization shifted from a monarchy, to a republic, nonetheless, despite its great legacy, a number of factors led to the eventual decline of the Roman Empire
Western World
–
The
Parthenon (
Athens).
Western World
–
Division of the
Roman Empire after 395 into western and eastern part. The geopolitical divisions in Europe that created a concept of East and West originated in the Roman Empire.
Western World
–
The
Roman Forum (
Rome).
Western World
–
The
Supreme Court of the United States (
Washington, D.C.).
25.
Infinite regress
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An infinite regress in a series of propositions arises if the truth of proposition P1 requires the support of proposition P2, the truth of proposition P2 requires the support of proposition P3. The truth of proposition Pn−1 requires the support of proposition Pn, distinction is made between infinite regresses that are vicious and those that are not. Others think there is, but that all truths are demonstrable, neither doctrine is either true or a necessary deduction from the premises. Our own doctrine is not all knowledge is demonstrative, on the contrary. Such, then, is our doctrine, and in addition we maintain that besides scientific knowledge there is its original source which enables us to recognize the definitions. Infinite regress is akin to the phenomenon wherein an infinite sequence of receding images is formed between two parallel facing mirrors. A similar process occurs in optical feedback
Infinite regress
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Aristotle
Infinite regress
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Infinite regress
26.
Anarchy, State and Utopia
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Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a 1974 book by the American political philosopher Robert Nozick. It won the 1975 U. S. National Book Award in category Philosophy and Religion, has translated into 11 languages. When a state takes on more responsibilities than these, Nozick argues, Nozicks entitlement theory, which sees humans as ends in themselves and justifies redistribution of goods only on condition of consent, is a key aspect of Anarchy, State, and Utopia. It is influenced by John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and Friedrich Hayek, the book also contains a vigorous defense of minarchist libertarianism against more extreme views, such as anarcho-capitalism. Therefore, he felt that, even to the extent that the anarcho-capitalist theory is correct, it results in a single, private, thus anarcho-capitalism may only exist for a limited period before a minimalist state emerges. The preface of Anarchy, State, and Utopia contains a passage about the manner of presenting philosophical work—i. e. Its presentation as though it were the final word on its subject. Nozick believes that philosophers are really more modest than that and aware of their works weaknesses, yet a form of philosophical activity persists which feels like pushing and shoving things to fit into some fixed perimeter of specified shape. The bulges are masked or the cause of the bulge is thrown far away so that no one will notice. Then Quickly, you find an angle from which everything appears to fit perfectly and take a snapshot, at a fast shutter speed before something else bulges out too noticeably. After a trip to the darkroom for touching up, ll that remains is to publish the photograph as a representation of exactly how things are, so how does Nozicks work differ from this form of activity. He believed that what he said was correct, but he doesnt mask the bulges, the doubts and worries and uncertainties as well as the beliefs, convictions, the genealogy will give Nozick an explanation of what is only assumed in ASU, the fundamental status of individual rights. Creativity was not a factor in his interpretation, a rational response to the troubles of a Lockean state of nature is formation of groups of individuals into mutual-protection associations, in which all will answer the call of any member. It is inconvenient that everyone is always on call, and that the associates can be called out by members who may be cantankerous or paranoid. The logic of the situation dictates that entrepreneurs will go into the business of selling protective services, and this is something very much resembling a minimal state. Nozick judges that Locke was wrong to imagine a contract as necessary to establish civil society, proponents of an ultraminimal state, which would not enforce this procedure, hold that its members rights are a side-constraint on what can be done to them. So no utilitarianism of rights can justify the procedure on the grounds that protecting the rights of non-members through the procedure minimizes rights violations in the long run. The side-constraint view, which reflects the underlying Kantian principle that individuals are ends and not merely means, Nozick supports the side-constraint view against classical utilitarianism and the idea that only felt experience matters by introducing the famous Experience Machine thought experiment
Anarchy, State and Utopia
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Cover of the first edition
27.
Robert Nozick
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Robert Nozick was an American philosopher. He held the Joseph Pellegrino University Professorship at Harvard University, and was president of the American Philosophical Association and he is best known for his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, a libertarian answer to John Rawls A Theory of Justice. His other work involved decision theory and epistemology and his mother was born Sophie Cohen, and his father was a Jew from the Russian shtetl who had been born with the name of Cohen and who ran a small business. He attended the schools in Brooklyn. At one point he joined the branch of Norman Thomass Socialist Party. In addition, at Columbia he founded the chapter of the Student League for Industrial Democracy. That same year, after receiving his bachelor of degree in 1959. They had two children, Emily and David, the Nozicks eventually divorced and he remarried, to the poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg. He died in 2002 after a struggle with stomach cancer. He was interred at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Nozick was educated at Columbia, where he studied with Sidney Morgenbesser, and later at Princeton under Carl Hempel, and at Oxford as a Fulbright Scholar. For Anarchy, State, and Utopia Nozick received a National Book Award in category Philosophy, for Nozick, a distribution of goods is just if brought about by free exchange among consenting adults from a just starting position, even if large inequalities subsequently emerge from the process. Nozick appealed to the Kantian idea that people should be treated as ends, most controversially, Nozick argued that a consistent upholding of the non-aggression principle would allow and regard as valid consensual or non-coercive enslavement contracts between adults. He also put forward a system which attempted to deal with both the Gettier problem and those posed by skepticism. This highly influential argument eschewed justification as a requirement for knowledge. He called this the theory of knowledge. In this way, Nozicks theory is similar to reliabilism, if P were the case and S were to use M to arrive at a belief whether or not P, then S would believe, via M, that P. Where M stands for the method by which S came to arrive at a belief whether or not P, a major criticism of Nozicks theory of knowledge is his rejection of the principle of deductive closure. This principle states that if S knows X and S knows that X implies Y, Nozicks truth tracking conditions do not allow for the principle of deductive closure
Robert Nozick
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Robert Nozick
28.
Hedonism
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Hedonism is a school of thought that argues that pleasure and happiness are the primary or most important intrinsic goods and the proper aim of human life. A hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure, but when finally gained of that pleasure, either through intrinsic or extrinsic goods, ethical hedonism is the idea that all people have the right to do everything in their power to achieve the greatest amount of pleasure possible to them. It is also the idea that every persons pleasure should far surpass their amount of pain, ethical hedonism is said to have been started by Aristippus of Cyrene, a student of Socrates. He held the idea that pleasure is the highest good, Hedonism is a sub philosophy of utilitarianism, which says to act in a way that maximizes utility. Hedonists equate pleasure with utility and believe that pleasure is the master of all humankind, the name derives from the Greek word for delight. An extremely strong aversion to hedonism is hedonophobia, in the original Old Babylonian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh, which was written soon after the invention of writing, Siduri gave the following advice Fill your belly. Dance and make music day and night These things alone are the concern of men, the following is a song attributed to the reign of one of the Pharoahs around the time of the 12th dynasty, and the text was used in the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties. The school was so called after Cyrene, the birthplace of Aristippus and it was one of the earliest Socratic schools. The Cyrenaics taught that the only good is pleasure, which meant not just the absence of pain. Of these, momentary pleasures, especially physical ones, are stronger than those of anticipation or memory and they did, however, recognize the value of social obligation, and that pleasure could be gained from altruism. Theodorus the Atheist was an exponent of hedonism who was a disciple of younger Aristippus. The school died out within a century, and was replaced by Epicureanism, the Cyrenaics were known for their skeptical theory of knowledge. They reduced logic to a doctrine concerning the criterion of truth. They thought that we can know with certainty our immediate sense-experiences and they also denied that we can have knowledge of what the experiences of other people are like. These sensations are motions which are subjective, and are painful, indifferent or pleasant, according as they are violent. Further they are individual, and can in no way be described as constituting absolute objective knowledge. Feeling, therefore, is the only criterion of knowledge. Our ways of being affected are alone knowable, thus the sole aim for everyone should be pleasure
Hedonism
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Aristippus of Cyrene
Hedonism
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Epicurus
Hedonism
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Michel Onfray, contemporary hedonist philosopher
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