1.
Belief
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Belief is the state of mind in which a person thinks something to be the case, with or without there being empirical evidence to prove that something is the case with factual certainty. Another way of defining belief sees it as a representation of an attitude positively oriented towards the likelihood of something being true. In the context of Ancient Greek thought, two related concepts were identified with regards to the concept of belief, pistis and doxa, simplified, we may say that pistis refers to trust and confidence, while doxa refers to opinion and acceptance. The English word orthodoxy derives from doxa, Jonathan Leicester suggests that belief has the purpose of guiding action rather than indicating truth. In epistemology, philosophers use the belief to refer to personal attitudes associated with true or false ideas. However, belief does not require active introspection and circumspection, for example, we never ponder whether or not the sun will rise. We simply assume the sun will rise, since belief is an important aspect of mundane life, according to Eric Schwitzgebel in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a related question asks, how a physical organism can have beliefs. Epistemology is concerned with delineating the boundary between justified belief and opinion, and involved generally with a philosophical study of knowledge. The primary problem in epistemology is to exactly what is needed in order for us to have knowledge. Plato dismisses this possibility of a relation between belief and knowledge even when the one who opines grounds his belief on the rule. Among American epistemologists, Gettier and Goldman, have questioned the true belief definition. Mainstream psychology and related disciplines have traditionally treated belief as if it were the simplest form of mental representation, philosophers have tended to be more abstract in their analysis, and much of the work examining the viability of the belief concept stems from philosophical analysis. The concept of belief presumes a subject and an object of belief, Beliefs are sometimes divided into core beliefs and dispositional beliefs. For example, if asked do you believe tigers wear pink pajamas, a person might answer that they do not, despite the fact they may never have thought about this situation before. This has important implications for understanding the neuropsychology and neuroscience of belief, if the concept of belief is incoherent, then any attempt to find the underlying neural processes that support it will fail. Jerry Fodor is one of the defenders of this point of view. Most notably, philosopher Stephen Stich has argued for this understanding of belief. In these cases science hasnt provided us with a detailed account of these theories
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Doubt
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Doubt characterises a status in which the mind remains suspended between two contradictory propositions and unable to assent to either of them. Doubt on a level is indecision between belief and disbelief. Doubt involves uncertainty, distrust or lack of sureness of a fact, an action. Doubt questions a notion of a reality, and may involve delaying or rejecting relevant action out of concerns for mistakes or faults or appropriateness. Doubt sometimes tends to call on reason, Doubt may encourage people to hesitate before acting, and/or to apply more rigorous methods. Doubt may have particular importance as leading towards disbelief or non-acceptance, societally, doubt creates an atmosphere of distrust, being accusatory in nature and de facto alleging either foolishness or deceit on the part of another. Such a stance has been fostered in Western European society since the Enlightenment, in opposition to tradition, psychoanalytic theory attributes doubt to childhood, when the ego develops. Childhood experiences, these theories maintain, can plant doubt about ones abilities, cognitive mental as well as more spiritual approaches abound in response to the wide variety of potential causes for doubt. Behavioral therapy — in which a person systematically asks his own if the doubt has any real basis — uses rational. This method contrasts to those of say, the Buddhist faith, buddhism sees doubt as a negative attachment to ones perceived past and future. To let go of the history of ones life plays a central role in releasing the doubts — developed in. Partial or intermittent negative reinforcement can create a climate of fear. Descartes employed Cartesian doubt as a pre-eminent methodological tool in his fundamental philosophical investigations, branches of philosophy like logic devote much effort to distinguish the dubious, the probable and the certain. Much of illogic rests on assumptions, dubious data or dubious conclusions, with rhetoric, whitewashing. Doubt that god exist may form the basis of agnosticism — the belief that one cannot determine the existence or non-existence of god. It may also form other brands of skepticism, such as Pyrrhonism, which do not take a stance in regard to the existence of god. Alternatively, doubt over the existence of god may lead to acceptance of a particular religion, Doubt of a specific theology, scriptural or deistic, may bring into question the truth of that theologys set of beliefs. On the other hand, doubt as to some doctrines but acceptance of others may lead to the growth of heresy and/or the splitting off of sects or groups of thought, thus proto-Protestants doubted papal authority, and substituted alternative methods of governance in their new churches
3.
Determinism
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Determinism is the philosophical position that for every event there exist conditions that could cause no other event. There are many determinisms, depending on what pre-conditions are considered to be determinative of an event or action, deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have sprung from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and considerations. Some forms of determinism can be tested with ideas from physics. The opposite of determinism is some kind of indeterminism, Determinism is often contrasted with free will. Determinism often is taken to mean causal determinism, which in physics is known as cause-and-effect and it is the concept that events within a given paradigm are bound by causality in such a way that any state is completely determined by prior states. This meaning can be distinguished from varieties of determinism mentioned below. Numerous historical debates involve many philosophical positions and varieties of determinism and they include debates concerning determinism and free will, technically denoted as compatibilistic and incompatibilistic. Determinism should not be confused with self-determination of human actions by reasons, motives, Determinism rarely requires that perfect prediction be practically possible. However, causal determinism is a broad term to consider that ones deliberations, choices. Causal determinism proposes that there is a chain of prior occurrences stretching back to the origin of the universe. The relation between events may not be specified, nor the origin of that universe, causal determinists believe that there is nothing in the universe that is uncaused or self-caused. Historical determinism can also be synonymous with causal determinism, causal determinism has also been considered more generally as the idea that everything that happens or exists is caused by antecedent conditions. Yet they can also be considered metaphysical of origin. Nomological determinism is the most common form of causal determinism and it is the notion that the past and the present dictate the future entirely and necessarily by rigid natural laws, that every occurrence results inevitably from prior events. Quantum mechanics and various interpretations thereof pose a challenge to this view. Nomological determinism is sometimes illustrated by the experiment of Laplaces demon. Nomological determinism is sometimes called scientific determinism, although that is a misnomer, physical determinism is generally used synonymously with nomological determinism. Necessitarianism is closely related to the causal determinism described above and it is a metaphysical principle that denies all mere possibility, there is exactly one way for the world to be. Leucippus claimed there were no uncaused events, and that occurs for a reason
4.
Fatalism
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Fatalism is a philosophical doctrine that stresses the subjugation of all events or actions to fate. Fatalism generally refers to any of the ideas, The view that we are powerless to do anything other than what we actually do. Included in this is that man has no power to influence the future, or indeed and this belief is very similar to predeterminism. An attitude of resignation in the face of some event or events which are thought to be inevitable. Friedrich Nietzsche named this idea with Turkish fatalism in his book The Wanderer and that acceptance is appropriate, rather than resistance against inevitability. This belief is similar to defeatism. Ājīvika was a system of ancient Indian philosophy and a movement of the Mahajanapada period in the Indian subcontinent. The same sources therefore make them out to be strict fatalists, If all future occurrences are rigidly determined. Coming events may in some sense be said to exist already, the future exists in the present, and both exist in the past. Time is thus on ultimate analysis illusory, every phase of a process is always present. In a soul which has attained salvation its earthly births are still present, nothing is destroyed and nothing is produced. Not only are all things determined, but their change and development is a cosmic illusion, makkhali Gosala was an ascetic teacher of ancient India. He is regarded to have born in 484 BCE and was a contemporary of Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, and of Mahavira. While the terms are used interchangeably, fatalism, determinism. However, all these doctrines share common ground, determinists generally agree that human actions affect the future but that human action is itself determined by a causal chain of prior events. Their view does not accentuate a submission to fate or destiny, fatalism is a looser term than determinism. The presence of historical indeterminisms or chances, i. e. events that could not be predicted by sole knowledge of events, is an idea still compatible with fatalism. Necessity will happen just as inevitably as a chance—both can be imagined as sovereign, likewise, determinism is a broader term than predeterminism
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Hypothesis
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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
6.
Nihilism
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Nihilism is a philosophical doctrine that suggests the lack of belief in one or more reputedly meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism, moral nihilists assert that there is no inherent morality, and that accepted moral values are abstractly contrived. Nihilism may also take epistemological, ontological, or metaphysical forms, meaning respectively that, in some aspect, knowledge is not possible, movements such as Futurism and deconstruction, among others, have been identified by commentators as nihilistic. Nihilism has many definitions, and thus can describe multiple arguably independent philosophical positions, extreme metaphysical nihilism is commonly defined as the belief that nothing exists as a correspondent component of the self-efficient world. The American Heritage Medical Dictionary defines one form of nihilism as a form of skepticism that denies all existence. A similar skepticism concerning the world can be found in solipsism. However, despite the fact that both deny the certainty of objects true existence, the nihilist would deny the existence of self whereas the solipsist would affirm it, both these positions are considered forms of anti-realism. Epistemological nihilism is a form of skepticism in which all knowledge is accepted as being possibly untrue or as being unable to be confirmed true and this interpretation of existence must be based on resolution. Therefore, there is no way to surmise or measure the validity of mereological nihilism. Thus, the resolution with which the ant views the world it exists within is an important determining factor in how the ant experiences this within the world feeling. Existential nihilism is the belief that life has no meaning or value. With respect to the universe, existential nihilism posits that a human or even the entire human species is insignificant, without purpose. The meaninglessness of life is explored in the philosophical school of existentialism. For example, a moral nihilist would say that killing someone, in this way a moral nihilist believes that all moral claims are void of any truth value. An alternative scholarly perspective is that moral nihilism is a morality in itself, cooper writes, In the widest sense of the word morality, moral nihilism is a morality. An influential analysis of political nihilism is presented by Leo Strauss, the Russian Nihilist movement was a Russian trend in the 1860s that rejected all authority. Their name derives from the Latin nihil, meaning nothing, after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, the Nihilists gained a reputation throughout Europe as proponents of the use of violence for political change. The Nihilists expressed anger at what they described as the nature of the Eastern Orthodox Church and of the tsarist monarchy
7.
Scientific theory
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Established scientific theories have withstood rigorous scrutiny and are a comprehensive form of scientific knowledge. It is important to note that the definition of a theory as used in the disciplines of science is significantly different from the common vernacular usage of the word theory. These different usages are comparable to the differing, and often opposing, usages of the prediction in science versus prediction in vernacular speech. The strength of a theory is related to the diversity of phenomena it can explain. In certain cases, the less-accurate unmodified scientific theory can still be treated as an if it is useful as an approximation under specific conditions. Scientific theories are testable and make falsifiable predictions and they describe the causal elements responsible for a particular natural phenomenon, and are used to explain and predict aspects of the physical universe or specific areas of inquiry. Scientists use theories as a foundation to further scientific knowledge. As with other forms of knowledge, scientific theories are both deductive and inductive in nature and aim for predictive power and explanatory capability. Paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and science historian Stephen Jay Gould said, “. facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. ”The defining characteristic of all scientific knowledge, the relevance and specificity of those predictions determine how potentially useful the theory is. A would-be theory that makes no observable predictions is not a theory at all. Predictions not sufficiently specific to be tested are similarly not useful, in both cases, the term theory is not applicable. A body of descriptions of knowledge can be called a theory if it fulfills the following criteria and it is well-supported by many independent strands of evidence, rather than a single foundation. It is consistent with preexisting experimental results and at least as accurate in its predictions as are any preexisting theories and these qualities are certainly true of such established theories as special and general relativity, quantum mechanics, plate tectonics, the modern evolutionary synthesis, etc. It is among the most parsimonious explanations, economical in the use of proposed entities or explanatory steps as per Occams razor. The United States National Academy of Sciences defines scientific theories as follows and it refers to a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence. Such fact-supported theories are not guesses but reliable accounts of the real world, the theory of biological evolution is more than just a theory. It is as factual an explanation of the universe as the theory of matter or the germ theory of disease
8.
Truth
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Truth is most often used to mean being in accord with fact or reality, or fidelity to an original or standard. Truth may also often be used in modern contexts to refer to an idea of truth to self, the commonly understood opposite of truth is falsehood, which, correspondingly, can also take on a logical, factual, or ethical meaning. The concept of truth is discussed and debated in several contexts, including philosophy, art, Some philosophers view the concept of truth as basic, and unable to be explained in any terms that are more easily understood than the concept of truth itself. Commonly, truth is viewed as the correspondence of language or thought to an independent reality, other philosophers take this common meaning to be secondary and derivative. On this view, the conception of truth as correctness is a derivation from the concepts original essence. Various theories and views of truth continue to be debated among scholars, philosophers, language and words are a means by which humans convey information to one another and the method used to determine what is a truth is termed a criterion of truth. The English word truth is derived from Old English tríewþ, tréowþ, trýwþ, Middle English trewþe, cognate to Old High German triuwida, like troth, it is a -th nominalisation of the adjective true. Old Norse trú, faith, word of honour, religious faith, thus, truth involves both the quality of faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty, sincerity, veracity, and that of agreement with fact or reality, in Anglo-Saxon expressed by sōþ. All Germanic languages besides English have introduced a distinction between truth fidelity and truth factuality. To express factuality, North Germanic opted for nouns derived from sanna to assert, affirm, while continental West Germanic opted for continuations of wâra faith, trust, pact. Romance languages use terms following the Latin veritas, while the Greek aletheia, Russian pravda, each presents perspectives that are widely shared by published scholars. However, the theories are not universally accepted. More recently developed deflationary or minimalist theories of truth have emerged as competitors to the substantive theories. Minimalist reasoning centres around the notion that the application of a term like true to a statement does not assert anything significant about it, for instance, anything about its nature. Minimalist reasoning realises truth as a label utilised in general discourse to express agreement, to stress claims, correspondence theories emphasise that true beliefs and true statements correspond to the actual state of affairs. This type of theory stresses a relationship between thoughts or statements on one hand, and things or objects on the other and it is a traditional model tracing its origins to ancient Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. This class of theories holds that the truth or the falsity of a representation is determined in principle entirely by how it relates to things, Aquinas also restated the theory as, A judgment is said to be true when it conforms to the external reality. Many modern theorists have stated that this ideal cannot be achieved without analysing additional factors, for example, language plays a role in that all languages have words to represent concepts that are virtually undefined in other languages
9.
Uncertainty
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Uncertainty is a situation which involves imperfect and/or unknown information. However, uncertainty is an expression without a straightforward description. It applies to predictions of events, to physical measurements that are already made. Uncertainty arises in partially observable and/or stochastic environments, as well as due to ignorance and/or indolence, a state of having limited knowledge where it is impossible to exactly describe the existing state, a future outcome, or more than one possible outcome. Risk A state of uncertainty where some possible outcomes have an effect or significant loss. Measurement of risk A set of measured uncertainties where some possible outcomes are losses, and the magnitudes of those losses – this also includes loss functions over continuous variables. It will appear that a measurable uncertainty, or risk proper, if probabilities are applied to the possible outcomes using weather forecasts or even just a calibrated probability assessment, the uncertainty has been quantified. Suppose it is quantified as a 90% chance of sunshine, if there is a major, costly, outdoor event planned for tomorrow then there is a risk since there is a 10% chance of rain, and rain would be undesirable. Furthermore, if this is an event and $100,000 would be lost if it rains. These situations can be even more realistic by quantifying light rain vs. heavy rain. Some may represent the risk in this example as the expected opportunity loss or the chance of the loss multiplied by the amount of the loss and that is useful if the organizer of the event is risk neutral, which most people are not. Most would be willing to pay a premium to avoid the loss, an insurance company, for example, would compute an EOL as a minimum for any insurance coverage, then add onto that other operating costs and profit. Since many people are willing to buy insurance for many reasons, quantitative uses of the terms uncertainty and risk are fairly consistent from fields such as probability theory, actuarial science, and information theory. Some also create new terms without substantially changing the definitions of uncertainty or risk, for example, surprisal is a variation on uncertainty sometimes used in information theory. But outside of the more mathematical uses of the term, usage may vary widely, in cognitive psychology, uncertainty can be real, or just a matter of perception, such as expectations, threats, etc. Vagueness or ambiguity are sometimes described as second order uncertainty, where there is uncertainty even about the definitions of uncertain states or outcomes, the difference here is that this uncertainty is about the human definitions and concepts, not an objective fact of nature. It is usually modelled by some variation on Zadehs fuzzy logic and it has been argued that ambiguity, however, is always avoidable while uncertainty is not necessarily avoidable. Uncertainty may be purely a consequence of a lack of knowledge of obtainable facts and that is, there may be uncertainty about whether a new rocket design will work, but this uncertainty can be removed with further analysis and experimentation
10.
Agnosticism
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Agnosticism is the philosophical view that the existence of God or the supernatural are unknown and unknowable. Agnosticism is a doctrine or set of rather than a religion. English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley coined the word agnostic in 1869, the Nasadiya Sukta in the Rigveda is agnostic about the origin of the universe. Agnosticism is of the essence of science, whether ancient or modern and it simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or believe. Consequently, agnosticism puts aside not only the part of popular theology. On the whole, the bosh of heterodoxy is more offensive to me than that of orthodoxy, because heterodoxy professes to be guided by reason and science, and orthodoxy does not. Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, positively the principle may be expressed, In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively, In matters of the intellect do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable, being a scientist, above all else, Huxley presented agnosticism as a form of demarcation. A hypothesis with no supporting objective, testable evidence is not an objective, as such, there would be no way to test said hypotheses, leaving the results inconclusive. His agnosticism was not compatible with forming a belief as to the truth, or falsehood, karl Popper would also describe himself as an agnostic. Others have redefined this concept, making it compatible with forming a belief, george H. Smith rejects agnosticism as a third alternative to theism and atheism and promotes terms such as agnostic atheism and agnostic theism. Agnostic was used by Thomas Henry Huxley in a speech at a meeting of the Metaphysical Society in 1869 to describe his philosophy, early Christian church leaders used the Greek word gnosis to describe spiritual knowledge. Agnosticism is not to be confused with religious views opposing the ancient religious movement of Gnosticism in particular, Huxley used the term in a broader, Huxley identified agnosticism not as a creed but rather as a method of skeptical, evidence-based inquiry. In recent years, scientific literature dealing with neuroscience and psychology has used the word to mean not knowable, in technical and marketing literature, agnostic can also mean independence from some parameters—for example, platform agnostic or hardware agnostic. Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume contended that meaningful statements about the universe are always qualified by some degree of doubt and he asserted that the fallibility of human beings means that they cannot obtain absolute certainty except in trivial cases where a statement is true by definition. A strong agnostic would say, I cannot know whether a deity exists or not, a weak agnostic would say, I dont know whether any deities exist or not, but maybe one day, if there is evidence, we can find something out. Therefore, their existence has little to no impact on human affairs. Agnostic thought, in the form of skepticism, emerged as a philosophical position in ancient Greece
11.
Epistemology
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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
12.
Probability
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Probability is the measure of the likelihood that an event will occur. Probability is quantified as a number between 0 and 1, the higher the probability of an event, the more certain that the event will occur. A simple example is the tossing of a fair coin, since the coin is unbiased, the two outcomes are both equally probable, the probability of head equals the probability of tail. Since no other outcomes are possible, the probability is 1/2 and this type of probability is also called a priori probability. Probability theory is used to describe the underlying mechanics and regularities of complex systems. For example, tossing a coin twice will yield head-head, head-tail, tail-head. The probability of getting an outcome of head-head is 1 out of 4 outcomes or 1/4 or 0.25 and this interpretation considers probability to be the relative frequency in the long run of outcomes. A modification of this is propensity probability, which interprets probability as the tendency of some experiment to yield a certain outcome, subjectivists assign numbers per subjective probability, i. e. as a degree of belief. The degree of belief has been interpreted as, the price at which you would buy or sell a bet that pays 1 unit of utility if E,0 if not E. The most popular version of subjective probability is Bayesian probability, which includes expert knowledge as well as data to produce probabilities. The expert knowledge is represented by some prior probability distribution and these data are incorporated in a likelihood function. The product of the prior and the likelihood, normalized, results in a probability distribution that incorporates all the information known to date. The scientific study of probability is a development of mathematics. Gambling shows that there has been an interest in quantifying the ideas of probability for millennia, there are reasons of course, for the slow development of the mathematics of probability. Whereas games of chance provided the impetus for the study of probability. According to Richard Jeffrey, Before the middle of the century, the term probable meant approvable. A probable action or opinion was one such as people would undertake or hold. However, in legal contexts especially, probable could also apply to propositions for which there was good evidence, the sixteenth century Italian polymath Gerolamo Cardano demonstrated the efficacy of defining odds as the ratio of favourable to unfavourable outcomes
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Philosophy
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Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. The term was coined by Pythagoras. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument and systematic presentation, classic philosophical questions include, Is it possible to know anything and to prove it. However, philosophers might also pose more practical and concrete questions such as, is it better to be just or unjust. Historically, philosophy encompassed any body of knowledge, from the time of Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle to the 19th century, natural philosophy encompassed astronomy, medicine and physics. For example, Newtons 1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy later became classified as a book of physics, in the 19th century, the growth of modern research universities led academic philosophy and other disciplines to professionalize and specialize. In the modern era, some investigations that were part of philosophy became separate academic disciplines, including psychology, sociology. Other investigations closely related to art, science, politics, or other pursuits remained part of philosophy, for example, is beauty objective or subjective. Are there many scientific methods or just one, is political utopia a hopeful dream or hopeless fantasy. Major sub-fields of academic philosophy include metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, logic, philosophy of science, since the 20th century, professional philosophers contribute to society primarily as professors, researchers and writers. Traditionally, the term referred to any body of knowledge. In this sense, philosophy is related to religion, mathematics, natural science, education. This division is not obsolete but has changed, Natural philosophy has split into the various natural sciences, especially astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and cosmology. Moral philosophy has birthed the social sciences, but still includes value theory, metaphysical philosophy has birthed formal sciences such as logic, mathematics and philosophy of science, but still includes epistemology, cosmology and others. Many philosophical debates that began in ancient times are still debated today, colin McGinn and others claim that no philosophical progress has occurred during that interval. Chalmers and others, by contrast, see progress in philosophy similar to that in science, in one general sense, philosophy is associated with wisdom, intellectual culture and a search for knowledge. In that sense, all cultures and literate societies ask philosophical questions such as how are we to live, a broad and impartial conception of philosophy then, finds a reasoned inquiry into such matters as reality, morality and life in all world civilizations. Socrates was an influential philosopher, who insisted that he possessed no wisdom but was a pursuer of wisdom
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Mind
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The mind is a set of cognitive faculties including consciousness, perception, thinking, judgement, and memory. It is usually defined as the faculty of an entitys reasoning and it holds the power of imagination, recognition, and appreciation, and is responsible for processing feelings and emotions, resulting in attitudes and actions. One open question regarding the nature of the mind is the mind–body problem, pre-scientific viewpoints included dualism and idealism, which considered the mind somehow non-physical. Modern views center around physicalism and functionalism, which hold that the mind is identical with the brain or reducible to physical phenomena such as neuronal activity. Another question concerns which types of beings are capable of having minds, the concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different cultural and religious traditions. Some see mind as a property exclusive to humans whereas others ascribe properties of mind to non-living entities, to animals, important philosophers of mind include Plato, Descartes, Leibniz, Searle, Dennett, Fodor, Nagel, and Chalmers. Psychologists such as Freud and James, and computer scientists such as Turing, the original meaning of Old English gemynd was the faculty of memory, not of thought in general. Hence call to mind, come to mind, keep in mind, to have mind of, the word retains this sense in Scotland. Old English had other words to mind, such as hyge mind. The meaning of memory is shared with Old Norse, which has munr, the word is originally from a PIE verbal root *men-, meaning to think, remember, whence also Latin mens mind, Sanskrit manas mind and Greek μένος mind, courage, anger. The generalization of mind to all mental faculties, thought, volition, feeling and memory. The attributes that make up the mind is debated, some psychologists argue that only the higher intellectual functions constitute mind, particularly reason and memory. In this view the emotions — love, hate, fear, joy — are more primitive or subjective in nature and should be seen as different from the mind as such. Others argue that rational and emotional states cannot be so separated, that they are of the same nature and origin. In popular usage, mind is frequently synonymous with thought, the conversation with ourselves that we carry on inside our heads. Thus we make up our minds, change our minds or are of two minds about something, one of the key attributes of the mind in this sense is that it is a private sphere to which no one but the owner has access. No one else can know our mind and they can only interpret what we consciously or unconsciously communicate. Broadly speaking, mental faculties are the functions of the mind
15.
Knowledge
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Knowledge can refer to a theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. It can be implicit or explicit, it can be more or less formal or systematic, however, several definitions of knowledge and theories to explain it exist. Knowledge acquisition involves complex cognitive processes, perception, communication, and reasoning, the eventual demarcation of philosophy from science was made possible by the notion that philosophys core was theory of knowledge, a theory distinct from the sciences because it was their foundation. Without this idea of a theory of knowledge, it is hard to imagine what philosophy could have been in the age of modern science, the definition of knowledge is a matter of ongoing debate among philosophers in the field of epistemology. Some claim that conditions are not sufficient, as Gettier case examples allegedly demonstrate. Richard Kirkham suggests that our definition of knowledge requires that the evidence for the belief necessitates its truth. In contrast to this approach, Ludwig Wittgenstein observed, following Moores paradox, that one can say He believes it, but it isnt so, but not He knows it, but it isnt so. He goes on to argue that these do not correspond to distinct mental states, what is different here is not the mental state of the speaker, but the activity in which they are engaged. For example, on account, to know that the kettle is boiling is not to be in a particular state of mind. Wittgenstein sought to bypass the difficulty of definition by looking to the way knowledge is used in natural languages and he saw knowledge as a case of a family resemblance. Following this idea, knowledge has been reconstructed as a concept that points out relevant features. Symbolic representations can be used to indicate meaning and can be thought of as a dynamic process, hence the transfer of the symbolic representation can be viewed as one ascription process whereby knowledge can be transferred. Other forms of communication include observation and imitation, verbal exchange, philosophers of language and semioticians construct and analyze theories of knowledge transfer or communication. In his collection of essays Technopoly, Neil Postman demonstrates the argument against the use of writing through an excerpt from Platos work Phaedrus, in this excerpt, the scholar Socrates recounts the story of Thamus, the Egyptian king and Theuth the inventor of the written word. In this story, Theuth presents his new invention writing to King Thamus, King Thamus is skeptical of this new invention and rejects it as a tool of recollection rather than retained knowledge. Media theorists like Andrew Robinson emphasise that the depiction of knowledge in the modern world was often seen as being truer than oral knowledge. It is harder to preserve records of what was said or who originally said it – usually neither the nor the content can be verified. Gossip and rumors are examples prevalent in both media, major libraries today can have millions of books of knowledge
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Metaphysical
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Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy exploring the fundamental nature of reality. In this vein, metaphysics seeks to answer two questions, Ultimately, what is there. Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, a central branch of metaphysics is ontology, the investigation into the basic categories of being and how they relate to one another. Another branch is metaphysical cosmology, which seeks to understand the origin, there are two broad conceptions about what world is studied by metaphysics. The strong, classical view assumes that the objects studied by metaphysics exist independently of any observer, the weaker, more modern view assumes that the objects studied by metaphysics exist inside the mind of an observer, so the subject becomes a form of introspection and conceptual analysis. Some philosophers, notably Kant, discuss both of these worlds and what can be inferred about each one, some philosophers and scientists, such as the logical positivists, reject the entire subject of metaphysics as meaningless, while others disagree and think that it is legitimate. Ontology deals with the determination whether categories of being are fundamental and it is the inquiry into being in so much as it is being, or into beings insofar as they exist—and not insofar as particular facts may be obtained about them or particular properties belong to them. Most ontologies assume or assert the existence of categories including objects, properties, space, immediate questions arising from this include the nature of objects. Only properties can be observed directly, so what does it mean for an object to exist, how can we be sure that such objects exist at all. The word is has two uses in English, separated out in ontology. It can denote existence as in there is an elephant in the room, some philosophers also include sub-classing as a third form of is-ness or being, as in the elephant is a mammal. Some philosophers, notably of the Platonic school, contend that all refer to existent entities. Other philosophers contend that nouns do not always name entities, between these poles of realism and nominalism, stand a variety of other positions. An ontology may give an account of which refer to entities, which do not, why. Other controversial categories of objects and properties which may be argued to exist or not include aesthetic and moral properties, stances about the status of such things may form the foundation for other branches of philosophy such as aesthetics, ethics and political philosophy. Identity is a fundamental metaphysical issue, metaphysicians investigating identity are tasked with the question of what, exactly, it means for something to be identical to itself. Other issues of identity arise in the context of time, what does it mean for something to be itself across two moments in time, how do we account for this. Another question of identity arises when we ask what our criteria ought to be for determining identity, and how does the reality of identity interface with linguistic expressions
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Subjective idealism
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Subjective idealism, or empirical idealism, is the monistic metaphysical doctrine that only minds and mental contents exist. It entails and is identified or associated with immaterialism, the doctrine that material things do not exist. Subjective idealism rejects dualism, neutral monism, and materialism, indeed, it is the contrary of eliminative materialism, the doctrine that material things. Subjective idealism is a fusion of phenomenalism or empiricism, which confers special status upon the perceived, with idealism. Idealism denies the knowability or existence of the non-mental, while phenomenalism serves to restrict the mental to the empirical, subjective idealism thus identifies its mental reality with the world of ordinary experience, rather than appealing to the unitary world-spirit of pantheism or absolute idealism. The earliest thinkers identifiable as subjective idealists were certain members of the Yogācāra school of Indian Buddhism, subsequent writers have continuously grappled with Berkeleys skeptical arguments. Immanuel Kant responded by rejecting Berkeleys immaterialism and replacing it with transcendental idealism, since Kant, true immaterialism has remained a rarity, but is survived by partly overlapping movements such as phenomenalism, subjectivism, and perspectivism. Thinkers such as Plato, Plotinus and Augustine of Hippo anticipated idealisms antimaterialism with their views of the inferior or derivative reality of matter, however, these Platonists did not make Berkeleys turn toward subjectivity. Indeed, Plato rationalistically condemned sense-experience, whereas subjective idealism presupposed empiricism, the first mature articulations of idealism arise in Yogacarin thinkers such as the 7th-century epistemologist Dharmakīrti, who identified ultimate reality with sense-perception. The most famous proponent of subjective idealism in the Western world was the 18th-century Irish philosopher George Berkeley, from the point of view of subjective idealism, the material world does not exist, and the phenomenal world is dependent on humans. Hence the fundamental idea of this system is that things are complexes of ideas or sensations. Berkeley summarized his theory with the motto esse est percipi, but went on to elaborate it with God as the source of consensus reality, according to Berkeley, an object has real being as long as it is perceived by a mind. God, being omniscient perceives everything perceivable, thus all real beings exist in the mind of God. However, it is evident that each of us has free will and understanding upon self-reflection. According to Berkeley there is no universe, in fact he has absolutely no idea what that could possibly mean. To theorize about a universe that is composed of matter is not a sensible thing to do. This matters because there is no positive account for a material universe. Berkeleys assessment of immaterialism was criticized by Samuel Johnson, as recorded by James Boswell, responding to the theory, Dr. Johnson exclaimed I refute it thus
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World (philosophy)
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The world is the planet Earth and all life upon it, including human civilization. In a philosophical context, the world is the whole of the physical Universe, in a theological context, the world is the material or the profane sphere, as opposed to the celestial, spiritual, transcendent or sacred. The end of the world refers to scenarios of the end of human history. World history is understood as spanning the major geopolitical developments of about five millennia. World population is the sum of all human populations at any time, similarly, world economy is the sum of the economies of all societies or countries, terms like world championship, gross world product, world flags imply the sum or combination of all current-day sovereign states. The English word world comes from the Old English weorold, weorld, worold, a compound of wer man and eld age, which thus means roughly Age of Man. The Old English is a reflex of the Common Germanic *wira-alđiz, also reflected in Old Saxon werold, Old High German weralt, the corresponding word in Latin is mundus, literally clean, elegant, itself a loan translation of Greek cosmos orderly arrangement. Earth, on the hand, refers to the planet as a physical entity. World was also used to mean the material universe, or the cosmos, The worlde is an apte frame of heauen and earthe. The earth was often described as the center of the world, World can also be used attributively, to mean global, relating to the whole world, forming usages such as world community or world canonical texts. By extension, a world may refer to any planet or heavenly body, especially when it is thought of as inhabited, World, in its original sense, when qualified, can also refer to a particular domain of human experience. The world of work describes paid work and the pursuit of a career, in all its aspects, to distinguish it from home life. The fashion world describes the environment of the designers, fashion houses, historically, the New World vs. the Old World, referring to the parts of the world colonized in the wake of the age of discovery. Now mostly used in zoology and botany, as in New World monkey, in philosophy, the term world has several possible meanings. In some contexts, it refers to everything that makes up reality or the physical universe, in others, it can mean have a specific ontological sense. The question of what the world is has by no means been settled, in his Allegory of the Cave, Plato distinguishes between forms and ideas and imagines two distinct worlds, the sensible world and the intelligible world. In Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegels philosophy of history, the expression Weltgeschichte ist Weltgericht is used to assert the view that History is what judges men, their actions, science is born from the desire to transform the World in relation to Man, its final end is technical application. The World as Will and Representation is the work of Arthur Schopenhauer
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Idealism
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In philosophy, idealism is the group of philosophies which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing, in a sociological sense, idealism emphasizes how human ideas—especially beliefs and values—shape society. As an ontological doctrine, idealism goes further, asserting that all entities are composed of mind or spirit, Idealism thus rejects physicalist and dualist theories that fail to ascribe priority to the mind. The earliest extant arguments that the world of experience is grounded in the mental derive from India, the Hindu idealists in India and the Greek Neoplatonists gave panentheistic arguments for an all-pervading consciousness as the ground or true nature of reality. This turn toward the subjective anticipated empiricists such as George Berkeley, beginning with Immanuel Kant, German idealists such as G. W. F. Hegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, and Arthur Schopenhauer dominated 19th-century philosophy. This tradition, which emphasized the mental or ideal character of all phenomena, gave birth to idealistic, the historical influence of this branch of idealism remains central even to the schools that rejected its metaphysical assumptions, such as Marxism, pragmatism and positivism. Idealism is a term with related meanings. It comes via idea from the Greek idein, meaning to see, the term entered the English language by 1743. In ordinary use, as speaking of Woodrow Wilsons political idealism, it generally suggests the priority of ideals, principles, values. Idealists are understood to represent the world as it might or should be, unlike pragmatists, in the arts, similarly, idealism affirms imagination and attempts to realize a mental conception of beauty, a standard of perfection, juxtaposed to aesthetic naturalism and realism. Any philosophy that assigns crucial importance to the ideal or spiritual realm in its account of human existence may be termed idealist, metaphysical idealism is an ontological doctrine that holds that reality itself is incorporeal or experiential at its core. Beyond this, idealists disagree on which aspects of the mental are more basic, epistemological idealism is the view that reality can only be known through ideas, that only psychological experience can be apprehended by the mind. Thus Kant defines idealism as the assertion that we can never be certain all of our putative outer experience is not mere imagining. He claimed that, according to idealism, the reality of external objects does not admit of strict proof, on the contrary, however, the reality of the object of our internal sense is clear immediately through consciousness. However, not all idealists restrict the real or the knowable to our subjective experience. Objective idealists make claims about a world, but simply deny that this world is essentially divorced from or ontologically prior to the mental. Nor do all metaphysical idealists agree on the nature of the ideal, for Plato, monistic idealism holds that consciousness, not matter, is the ground of all being. It is monist because it holds that there is one type of thing in the universe
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Problem of induction
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Hume called this the principle of uniformity of nature. The problem calls into question all empirical claims made in life or through the scientific method. Broad said that induction is the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy, in inductive reasoning, one makes a series of observations and infers a new claim based on them. That next Monday the woman walks by the market merely adds to the series of observations, first of all, it is not certain, regardless of the number of observations, that the woman always walks by the market at 8am on Monday. In fact, Hume would even argue that we claim it is more probable. Second, the observations themselves do not establish the validity of inductive reasoning, pyrrhonian skeptic Sextus Empiricus first questioned the validity of inductive reasoning, positing that a universal rule could not be established from an incomplete set of particular instances. He wrote, When they propose to establish the universal from the particulars by means of induction, the focus upon the gap between the premises and conclusion present in the above passage appears different from Humes focus upon the circular reasoning of induction. This criterion, then, either is without an approval or has been approved. But if it is without approval, whence comes it that it is truthworthy, for no matter of dispute is to be trusted without judging. And, if it has approved, that which approves it, in turn, either has been approved or has not been approved. She concludes that Humes most important legacy is the supposition that the justification of induction is not analogous to that of deduction and she ends with a discussion of Humes implicit sanction of the validity of deduction, which Hume describes as intuitive in a manner analogous to modern foundationalism. The Carvaka, a materialist and skeptic school of Indian philosophy, few philosophers are as associated with induction as David Hume. He described the problem in An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, §4, here, reason refers to deductive reasoning and induction refers to inductive reasoning. First, Hume ponders the discovery of causal relations, which form the basis for what he refers to as matters of fact and he argues that causal relations are found not by reason, but by induction. There is no reason to any of these possibilities over the others. Only through previous observation can it be predicted, inductively, what will happen with the balls. Next, Hume ponders the justification of induction, if all matters of fact are based on causal relations, and all causal relations are found by induction, then induction must be shown to be valid somehow. One connects these two propositions not by reason, but by induction, Hume challenges other philosophers to come up with a reason for the connection
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Empiricism
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Empiricism is a theory that states that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence, especially as discovered in experiments. Empiricism, often used by scientists, says that knowledge is based on experience. One of the epistemological tenets is that sensory experience creates knowledge, empirical research, including experiments and validated measurement tools, guides the scientific method. The term was used by the Empiric school of ancient Greek medical practitioners, a central concept in science and the scientific method is that it must be empirically based on the evidence of the senses. Both natural and social sciences use working hypotheses that are testable by observation, philosophical empiricists hold no knowledge to be properly inferred or deduced unless it is derived from ones sense-based experience. This view is contrasted with rationalism, which states that knowledge may be derived from reason independently of the senses. For example, John Locke held that knowledge could be arrived at through intuition. Similarly Robert Boyle, a prominent advocate of the experimental method, the main continental rationalists were also advocates of the empirical scientific method. Vaisheshika darshana, founded by the ancient Indian philosopher Kanada, accepted perception and this is enumerated in his work Vaiśeṣika Sūtra. The notion of tabula rasa connotes a view of mind as a blank or empty recorder on which experience leaves marks. This denies that humans have innate ideas, the image dates back to Aristotle, What the mind thinks must be in it in the same sense as letters are on a tablet which bears no actual writing, this is just what happens in the case of the mind. These notions contrasted with Platonic notions of the mind as an entity that pre-existed somewhere in the heavens. This idea was developed in ancient philosophy by the Stoic school. Stoic epistemology generally emphasized that the mind starts blank, but acquires knowledge as the world is impressed upon it. The doxographer Aetius summarizes this view as When a man is born, later stoics, such as Sextus of Chaeronea, would continue this idea of empiricism in later Stoic writings as well. As Sextus contends For every thought comes from sense-perception or not without sense-perception, so the immaterial active intellect, separate from any individual person, is still essential for understanding to occur. A similar Islamic theological novel, Theologus Autodidactus, was written by the Arab theologian and physician Ibn al-Nafis in the 13th century, during the 13th century Thomas Aquinas adopted the Aristotelian position that the senses are essential to mind into scholasticism
22.
Thought experiment
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A thought experiment considers some hypothesis, theory, or principle for the purpose of thinking through its consequences. Given the structure of the experiment, it may not be possible to perform it, perhaps the key experiment in the history of modern science is Galileos demonstration that falling objects must fall at the same rate regardless of their masses. The experiment is described by Galileo in Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche thus, do you not agree with me in this opinion. Hence the heavier body moves with less speed than the lighter, thus you see how, from your assumption that the heavier body moves more rapidly than the lighter one, I infer that the heavier body moves more slowly. Although the extract does not convey the elegance and power of the demonstration terribly well, it is clear that it is a thought experiment, instead, many philosophers prefer to consider Thought Experiments to be merely the use of a hypothetical scenario to help understand the way things are. Thought experiments have used in a variety of fields, including philosophy, law, physics. In philosophy, they have used at least since classical antiquity. In law, they were well-known to Roman lawyers quoted in the Digest, in physics and other sciences, notable thought experiments date from the 19th and especially the 20th century, but examples can be found at least as early as Galileo. Johann Witt-Hansen established that Hans Christian Ørsted was the first to use the Latin-German mixed term Gedankenexperiment circa 1812, Ørsted was also the first to use its entirely German equivalent, Gedankenversuch, in 1820. The English term thought experiment was coined from Machs Gedankenexperiment, prior to its emergence, the activity of posing hypothetical questions that employed subjunctive reasoning had existed for a very long time. However, people had no way of categorizing it or speaking about it and this helps to explain the extremely wide and diverse range of the application of the term thought experiment once it had been introduced into English. In physics and other sciences many thought experiments date from the 19th and especially the 20th Century, in Galileo’s thought experiment, for example, the rearrangement of empirical experience consists in the original idea of combining bodies of different weight. Thought experiments have used in philosophy, physics, and other fields. In law, the hypothetical is frequently used for such experiments. Regardless of their goal, all thought experiments display a patterned way of thinking that is designed to allow us to explain, predict and control events in a better. However, they may make those theories themselves irrelevant, and could create new problems that are just as difficult. Ensure the avoidance of past failures Scientists tend to use thought experiments as imaginary, in these cases, the result of the proxy experiment will often be so clear that there will be no need to conduct a physical experiment at all. Scientists also use thought experiments when particular physical experiments are impossible to conduct, such as Einsteins thought experiment of chasing a light beam, leading to Special Relativity
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Qualia
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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
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Analogy
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Analogy is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject to another, or a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process. The word analogy can also refer to the relation between the source and the target themselves, which is often, though not necessarily, a similarity, as in the biological notion of analogy. Analogy plays a significant role in solving, as well as decision making, perception, memory, creativity, emotion, explanation. It lies behind basic tasks such as the identification of places, objects and people, for example, in face perception and it has been argued that analogy is the core of cognition. Specific analogical language comprises exemplification, comparisons, metaphors, similes, allegories, and parables, phrases like and so on, and the like, as if, and the very word like also rely on an analogical understanding by the receiver of a message including them. Analogy is important not only in language and common sense but also in science, philosophy. In cognitive linguistics, the notion of conceptual metaphor may be equivalent to that of analogy, Analogy has been studied and discussed since classical antiquity by philosophers, scientists, and lawyers. The last few decades have shown a renewed interest in analogy, in ancient Greek the word αναλογια originally meant proportionality, in the mathematical sense, and it was indeed sometimes translated to Latin as proportio. From there analogy was understood as identity of relation between any two ordered pairs, whether of mathematical nature or not, kants Critique of Judgment held to this notion. Kant argued that there can be exactly the same relation between two different objects. The same notion of analogy was used in the US-based SAT tests, for example, Hand is to palm as foot is to ____. This relation is not apparent in some definitions of palm and sole, where the former is defined as the inner surface of the hand. Analogy and abstraction are different cognitive processes, and analogy is often an easier one and this analogy is not comparing all the properties between a hand and a foot, but rather comparing the relationship between a hand and its palm to a foot and its sole. While a hand and a foot have many dissimilarities, the focuses on their similarity in having an inner surface. A computer algorithm has achieved human-level performance on multiple-choice analogy questions from the SAT test, the algorithm measures the similarity of relations between pairs of words by statistical analysis of a large collection of text. It answers SAT questions by selecting the choice with the highest relational similarity, Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle actually used a wider notion of analogy. They saw analogy as a shared abstraction, analogous objects did not share necessarily a relation, but also an idea, a pattern, a regularity, an attribute, an effect or a philosophy. These authors also accepted that comparisons, metaphors and images could be used as arguments, analogies should also make those abstractions easier to understand and give confidence to the ones using them
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Brain in a vat
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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
listen); from Latin solus, meaning 'alone', and ipse, meaning 'self')[1] is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist.
Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Materialism". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "
