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Reality

Reality

Reality in everyday usage means "everything that exists." The term "Reality," in its most liberal sense, includes everything that is, whether or not it is observable, accessible or understandable by science, philosophy, theology or any other system of analysis. Reality in this sense may include both being and nothingness, whereas "existence" is often restricted to being. (Compare with nature). In the strict sense of European-German philosophy, there are levels or gradation to the nature and conception of reality. These levels include, from the most subjective to the most rigorous:
- Phenomenological reality
- Truth
- Fact
- Axiom Other cultural traditions, particularly those based on Buddhism, have different concepts of the nature of reality: see, for example, samsara and maya.

Simple reality

In the simplest sense, our reality consists of our four-dimensional world: height, width, depth and time. What happens when we lose one of these dimensions from our reality? What if we lose depth, for instance? Most people would reply that we'd then have a cinematic effect, as in a movie. When we view a motion picture, what we are watching has height, width and time, but no depth. One dimension of our reality is missing. What happens if we remove the fourth dimension? Here we have a photograph. A photo has height and width, but no time or depth. Lose one more dimension and we have a line. Lose another and we are left with a point. We have position but no longer have magnitude. People know these four dimensions well. For us they make up our simple reality: the space-time continuum. However, modern theoretical physics suggest this may not be the whole of reality.

Phenomenological reality

On a much broader and more subjective level, the private experiences, curiosity, inquiry, and selectivity involved in the personal interpretation of an event, shapes reality as seen by one and only one individual and hence is called phenomenological. This form of reality might be common to others as well, but at times could also be so unique to oneself as to be never experienced or agreed upon by any one else. Much of the spiritual experience of an individual occurs on this level of reality.

Truth

When two or more individuals agree upon the interpretation and experience of a particular event, a consensus about an event and its experience begins to be formed. This being common to a few individuals or a larger group, then becomes the 'truth' as seen and agreed upon by a certain set of people. Thus one particular group may have a certain set of agreed truths, while another group might have still different set of truths that have reached consensus. This lets different communities and societies have varied and extremely different notions of reality and truth of the external world. The religion and beliefs of people or communities are a fine example of this level of reality. This is well expressed in the famous quote by Henry Thoreau, "It takes two to speak the truth — one to speak and another to hear." However, humans are fallible and are limited to individual experience. Truth cannot simply be considered truth if one speaks and another hears because individual bias and fallibility take away any assertion that the idea of truth, itself, exists. Other views of truth assert that truth is that which is considered to be the supreme reality and to have the ultimate meaning and value of existence, regardless of subjective inference. Truth can not merely be discerned by deductive reasoning but can only be more deeply understood by inductive study and skepticism.

Fact

A fact or factual entity is a phenomenon that is perceived as an elemental principle. It is rarely one that could be subject to personal interpretation. Instead it is most often the observed phenomena of the natural world. The proposition 'the sun rises in the east', is a fact. It is a fact for people belonging to any group or nationality regardless of which language they speak or which part of the hemisphere they come from. The Galilean proposition in support of the Copernican theory, that the sun is the centre of the solar system is one that states the fact of the natural world. However during his lifetime Galileo was ridiculed for that factual proposition, because far too few people had a consensus about it in order to accept it as a truth. Fewer propositions are factual in content in the world, as compared to the many truths shared by various communities, which are also fewer to the innumerable individual phenomenological realities. Much of scientific exploration, experimentation, interpretation and analysis is done on this level. This view of reality is well expressed by Philip K. Dick's statement that "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

Axiom

Axioms are self-evident realities, the existence of which is accepted as given and on which further conceptions are generated. The facts of a natural world would hold true only in the systemic construction of that world. Hence in a different system, the facts of another world might no longer hold valid. The fact that 'the sun rises in the east', might not be valid in a different solar system where the planet might be tilted in a different angle, or revolving in a different direction around its star, so that the star might rise on the planet's horizon in the west instead of the east. Hence the facts of a systemic entity might not be universal outside the realms of that system. However, exceptionally rare conceptions might be universal in ethos. For example, the mathematical-set theoretic idea that the union of a set of one entity and another set of four entities would create a set that contains five entities, :A = ; B = ; A ∪ B = would be valid in any systemic process or in any universe. It is in effect a conception more rigorous and pervasive than a fact. It can be argued that statements of this nature are only trivially true, since the definitions of the concepts "set", "entity", "union", "one", "four", and "five" are all defined in terms of each other, and that these concepts have no inherent reality apart from this self-referencing structure. Mathematical formulations and propositions in mathematical logic are based on axioms, and hence these fields are often referred to as pure disciplines. The validity of the set theoretic proposition would hold true in any systemic process or universe. Its validity is self evident in ontological existence and works on the axiomatic level of reality. Some portion of ultimate reality may lie beyond our scope to examine or even imagine. Many of the concepts of science and philosophy are often defined culturally and socially. This idea was well elaborated by Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). See socially constructed reality for more discussion on this point. Most of the cultural conflict in the world occurs when certain individuals or groups try to impose their phenomenological realities or truths on other people or communities.

What reality might not be

"Reality," the concept, is contrasted with a wide variety of other concepts, largely depending upon the intellectual discipline. It can help to understand what we mean by "reality" to note what we say is not real. In philosophy, reality is contrasted with nonexistence (e.g., unicorns do not exist; so they are not real) and mere possibility (a mountain made of gold is merely possible, but is not real) unless they are discovered. Sometimes philosophers speak as though reality is contrasted with existence itself, though ordinary language and many other philosophers would treat these as synonyms. They have in mind the notion that there is a kind of reality--a mental or intensional reality, perhaps--that imaginary objects, such as the aforementioned golden mountain, have. Alexius Meinong is famous, or infamous, for holding that such things have so-called subsistence, and thus a kind of reality, even while they do not actually exist. Most philosophers find the very notion of "subsistence" mysterious and unnecessary, and one of the shibboleths and starting points of 20th century analytic philosophy has been the forceful rejection of the notion of subsistence--of "real" but nonexistent objects. It is worth saying at this point that many philosophers are not content with saying merely what reality is not--some of them have positive theories of what broad categories of objects are real, in addition. See ontology as well as philosophical realism; these topics are also briefly treated below. In ethics, political theory, and the arts, reality is often contrasted with what is ideal. In ethics, discussions of ethical perfectionism, what might be called "moral idealism" or the notion that we are obligated to be morally perfect human beings, runs up against notions of what is real about human nature and the human condition. In political theory there is an old and distinguished tradition of inventing utopias and utopianism--those of Plato and Thomas More are the most famous--but these are often accused of ignoring the so-called facts of reality concerning human nature. Political liberalism, by contrast with conservatism, is usually thought of as being of the contrary view--that human nature is inherently changeable, and that there are no "facts of reality" concerning human nature, a view advocated in the twentieth century by the existentialists. And, consequently, utopianism is more often a feature of liberalism than conservatism. (This perspective is further explored in the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek's book The Road to Serfdom (ISBN 0226320618), defending the theory that efforts towards utopia inevitably lead to totalitarianism, theories further explored by the Public Choice school of economics, applying the study of human incentives on political and group behavior through rational choice.) In the arts there was a broad movement beginning in the 19th century, realism (which led to naturalism), which sought to portray characters, scenes, and so forth, realistically. This was in contrast and reaction to romanticism, which portrayed their subjects idealistically. Commentary about these artistic movements is sometimes put in terms of the contrast between the real and the ideal: on the one hand, the average, ordinary, and natural, and on the other, the superlative, extraordinary, improbable, and sometimes even supernatural. Obviously, when speaking in this sense, "real" (or "realistic") does not have the same meaning as it does when, for example, a philosopher uses the term to distinguish, simply, what exists from what does not exist. In the arts, and also in ordinary life, the notion of reality (or realism) is also often contrasted with illusion. A painting that precisely indicates the visually-appearing shape of a depicted object is said to be realistic in that respect; one that distorts features, as Pablo Picasso's paintings are famous for doing, are said to be unrealistic, and thus some observers will say, but with questionable grammatical correctness, that they are "not real." But there are also tendencies in the visual arts toward so-called realism and more recently photorealism that invite a different sort of contrast with the real. Trompe l'oeil (French, "fool the eye") paintings render their subjects so "realistically" that the casual observer might temporarily be deceived into thinking that he is seeing something, indeed, real--but in fact, it is merely an illusion, and an intentional one at that. In psychiatry, reality, or rather, the idea of being in touch with reality is integral to the notion of schizophrenia, since it has often been defined in part by reference to being "out of touch" with reality. The schizophrenic is said to have hallucinations and delusions which concern people and events that are not real. However, there is controversy over what is considered out of touch with reality, particularly due to the noticeable comparison of the process of forcefully instituting individuals for expressing their beliefs in society to reality enforcement. The practice's possible covert use as a political tool can perhaps be illustrated by the 18th Century psychiatric sentences in the U.S of black slaves for 'crazily' attempting to escape. See also anti-psychiatry and one its prominent figures, the psychiatrist Thomas Szasz. In each of these cases, discussions of reality, or what counts as "real," take on quite different casts; indeed, what we say about reality often depends on what we want to say it is not.

Reality, world views, and theories of reality

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, not to quibble over deeply different conceptions of what is real. For example, in a religious discussion between friends, one might say (attempting humor), "You might disagree, but in my reality, everyone goes to heaven." But occasionally--and particularly in the case of those who have been exposed to certain ideas from philosophy, sociology, literary criticism, and other fields--it is thought that there simply and literally is no reality beyond the perceptions or beliefs we each have about reality. Such attitudes indicate anti-realism, that is, the view that there is no objective reality, whether acknowledged explicitly or not. These topics will be discussed in greater detail below. If we really do literally mean by "reality" simply "beliefs about reality," then our article about reality would necessarily, to be complete, have to outline every world view (this is how the German word Weltanschauung is usually translated)--every broadly different way of "seeing" reality. In this sense, the topic of reality encompasses many other topics: perception, psychology generally, cognitive psychology and cognitive science, religion, sociology and anthropology, and topics in philosophy. But there is a way to make the topic of reality less cumbersome for present purposes: restrict the discussion to theories about the general topic of reality itself. Thus, for example, a certain Christian world view would not count as a theory of reality, but the theory that the Christian world view is a "construction" of reality would count as a theory about reality. It is theories about reality, in this sense, that philosophers discuss as part of metaphysics; such theories are also sometimes discussed in literary theory (which is, today, heavily influenced by Continental philosophy and heavily anti-realist) as well as in sociology and cultural anthropology.

Philosophical views of reality

Philosophy addresses two different aspects of the topic of reality: the nature of reality itself, and the relationship between the mind (as well as language and culture) and reality. On the one hand, ontology is the study of being, and the central topic of the field is couched, variously, in terms of being, existence, "what is," and reality. The task in ontology is to describe the most general categories of reality and how they are interrelated. If--what is rarely done--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," one of the leading questions of analytic philosophy has been whether existence (or reality) is a property of objects. 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. On the other hand, particularly in discussions of objectivity that have feet in both metaphysics and epistemology, philosophical discussions of "reality" often concern the ways in which reality is, or is not, in some way dependent upon (or, to use fashionable jargon, "constructed" out of) mental and cultural factors such as perceptions, beliefs, and other mental states, as well as cultural artifacts, such as religions and political movements, on up to the vague notion of a common cultural world view or Weltanschauung. The view that there is a reality independent of any beliefs, perceptions, etc., is called realism. More specifically, philosophers are given to speaking about "realism about" this and that, such as realism about universals or realism about the external world. Generally, where one can identify any class of object the existence or essential characteristics of which is said to depend on perceptions, beliefs, language, or any other human artifact, one can speak of "realism about" that object. One can also speak of anti-realism about the same objects. "Anti-realism" is the latest in a long series of terms for views opposed to realism. Perhaps the first was idealism, so called because reality was said to be in the mind, or "ideal" in that special sense. Berkeleyan idealism is the view, propounded by the Irish empiricist George Berkeley, that the objects of perception are actually ideas in the mind. On this view, one might be tempted to say that reality is a "mental construct"; this is not quite accurate, however, since on Berkeley's view perceptual ideas are created and coordinated by God. By the twentieth century, views similar to Berkeley's were called phenomenalism. Phenomenalism differs from Berkeleyan idealism primarily in that Berkeley believed that minds, or souls, are not merely ideas nor made up of ideas, whereas varieties of phenomenalism, such as that advocated by Russell, tended to go farther to say that the mind itself is merely a collection of perceptions, memories, etc., and that there is no mind or soul over and above such mental events. Finally, anti-realism became a fashionable term for any view which held that the existence of some object depends upon the mind or cultural artifacts. The view that the so-called external world is really merely a social, or cultural, artifact, called social constructionism, is one variety of anti-realism. Cultural relativism is the view that social issues such as morality are not absolute, but at least partially cultural artifact. But if reality is not real than we would notice it isn't real. (like a dream we think it might be real but after awhile we notice it isn't real)

Being

A being, in the most general sense, is anything that is alive. Being with a capital 'B', on the other hand, is often used in philosophy to refer to divine Being, God, or ultimate reality. In philosophy, a being is anything that can be said to be. Ontology is the philosophical study of being. See also categories of being and "I think, therefore I am". In linguistics, "to be" is a copula.

Being in historical philosophy

Being and substance in Aristotle

Among the first inquiries into what "being" encompassed was undertaken by Aristotle. The term "substance" in Aristotle was a precise metaphysical term denoting an individual thing about which specific assertions may be made. Since the Aristotelian view of matter is negative, the "substance" or "being" is a real thing that exists. Since matter renders things more obscure to our perception, it follows that the true essence of an object is independent of matter, its "being" is independent of the material world. To Aristotle, only spirits and God are independent of matter, and thus these entities are purely "substance" or "being." This is the origin of the phrase "One in substance with the Father" or modernly "One in being with the Father" in the Catholic Nicene Creed.

Being in continental philosophy and existentialism

Some philosophers deny that the concept of "being" has any meaning at all, since we only define an object's existence by its relation to other objects, and actions it undertakes. The term "I am" has no meaning by itself; it must have an action or relation appended to it. This in turn has led to the thought that "being" and nothingness are closely related, developed in existential philosophy. Existentialist philosophers such as Sartre, as well as continental philosophers such as Hegel and Heidegger have also written extensively on the concept of being. Hegel distinguishes between the being of objects (being in itself) and the being of people (Geist (philosophy). Hegel, however, did not think there was much hope for deliniating a "meaning" of being, because being stripped of all predicates is simply nothing. Heidegger, in his quest to pioneer the path by which we might learn how to meaningfully ask the question of the meaning of being, distinguishes between different modes of being, which are present-to-hand (or objective presence - the kind of being possesed by objects), readiness-to-hand, which is the kind of being possessed by tools, and Da-sein ("there-being"), which is the kind of being possessed by the beings which we ourselves are. Sartre, popularly understood as mis-reading Heidegger (a reading supported by Heidegger's essay "Letter on Humanism" which responds to Sartre's famous address, "Existentialism is a Humanism"), employs modes of being in an attempt to ground his concept of freedom ontologically by distinguishing between being-in-itself and being-for-itself.

Being in popular culture

The film "Being There" starring Peter Sellers was influenced by existentialism and the works of Martin Heidegger. Eckhart Tolle in his best-selling book, The Power of Now, uses the word "Being" as a substitute and more accurate word for "God".

External links

- [http://www.formalontology.it/being.htm Being in philosophy and linguistics] Category:Ontology simple:Being

Nothing

:This article is on the abstract meaning of nothing. For alternate meanings, see Nothing (disambiguation) Nothing is the lack or absence of anything (including empty space). "Nothing" and "zero" are closely related but not identical concepts. The term "nothing" is rarely used mathematically, though it could be said that a set contains nothing iff (if and only if) it is the empty set, in which case its cardinality (or size) is zero. Nothing differs from zero in the way that zero is something, a finite amount which is defined. While nothing overlaps the quantity zero, in the way that it also is, when finitely defined, zero, it differs in the way that it has no specific basis like zero does in numbers. From a philosophical point of view, the concept of "nothing" can have many interpretations. In fact, people can even state that nothing does not exist. One cannot sense, see, feel, or think nothing. There is no contact with nothing. Nothing is where everything isn't. Visualizing "nothing" would make "something". It could be seen as a physical void or as just a word which only has meaning when used to describe a relationship between different "somethings". A single "correct" definition of nothing could be considered impossible, since "right" and "wrong" do not fit within the confines of nothing. The concept of "nothing" has been studied throughout history by philosophers and theologians; many have found that careful consideration of the notion can easily lead to the logical fallacy of reification. The understanding of "nothing" varies widely between cultures, especially between Western and Eastern cultures and philosophical traditions, though existentialism, and in particular Heidegger have brought the understandings closer together. Informally, a person, event or object might be said to be nothing if particularly unimpressive. Nothing is a state of being, in a sense, not being. Ceasing to exist. Nothing is also a state of mind in Buddhism (See nirvana, Mu, Enlightenment).

Quotes

-
- "Nothing is too wonderful to be true." + - : — Michael Faraday + -
- What is greater than God,
+ - More evil than the Devil,
+ - The poor have it,
+ - The rich need it,
+ - And if you eat it, you'll die?
+ - Answer:Nothing. + - : — popular riddle which appeared in an email chain letter as well as The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands by Stephen King. + - + - "If nothing exists, there is empty space. If there is empty space there is something. Since this is a contradiction of the first statement neither statement exists. Therefore something must always exist. Therefore nothing is the only thing that does not exist." + - + - "Nothing looks, feels and bounces like Tofu... which, ironically, tastes like nothing" - Dave in the movie 'Nothing' “We start, then, with nothing, pure zero. But this is not the nothing of negation. For not means other than, and other is merely a synonym of the ordinal numeral second. As such it implies a first; while the present pure zero is prior to every first. The nothing of negation is the nothing of death, which comes second to, or after, everything. But this pure zero is the nothing of not having been born. There is no individual thing, no compulsion, outward nor inward, no law. It is the germinal nothing, in which the whole universe is involved or foreshadowed. As such, it is absolutely undefined and unlimited possibility -- boundless possibility. There is no compulsion and no law. It is boundless freedom.” Charles S. Peirce

External link

- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nothingness/ Plato at Stanford] Category:Philosophy

Nature

:For alternative meanings, see nature (disambiguation). nature (disambiguation). Image Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF team.]] nature (disambiguation)s shown as cross-sections with color-coded probability density]] nature (disambiguation) nature (disambiguation) crew traveling toward the moon.]] Nature (also called the material world, the material universe, the natural world, and the natural universe) is all matter and energy, especially in its essential form. Nature is the subject of scientific study, and the history of the concept is linked to the history of science. The English word derives from a Latin term, natura, which was in turn a translation of a Greek term, physis (φύσις). Natura is related to the Latin words relating to "birth", while physis relates to Greek words relating to "growth". In scale, "nature" includes everything from the universal to the subatomic. This includes all things animal, plant, and mineral; all natural resources and events (hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes). It also includes the behaviour of living animals, and processes associated with inanimate objects - the "way" that things change.

Scientific divisions of Nature

Nature outside Earth and its atmosphere

Events and phenomena outside Earth and its atmosphere are in the natural science of astronomy.

Life

Life, the characteristics and behaviors of organisms, how species and individuals come into existence, and the interactions they have with each other and with their environment are all in the natural science of biology. The branch of biology that focuses on the relationships of organisms and their environment is the science of ecology.

Chemicals

The structure, properties, composition, and reactions of chemical elements and compounds are part of the natural science of chemistry.

Matter and force

The behaviour and interactions of matter and force are a part of the natural science of physics.

Earth

Everything relating to the planet Earth is a part of earth science.

Philosophy of Nature

Metaphysics

In philosophy, the view that the material world of atoms, animals, gravity, stars, wind, microbes, etc., actually exist independently of our observations of them is termed realism; the opposing view is called idealism.

The natural and the artificial

A distinction is often drawn between the "natural" and the "artificial" (="man-made"). Can such a distinction be justified? One approach is to exclude mind from the realm of the natural; another is to exclude not only mind, but also humans and their influence. In either case, the boundary between the natural and the artificial is a difficult one to draw (see mind-body problem). Some people believe that the problem is best avoided by saying that everything is natural, but that does little to clarify the concept of the "artificial". In any event, ambiguities about the distinction between the natural and the artificial animate much of art, literature and philosophy. Another approach is to distinguish natural processes and artificial (man-made) processes. In this viewpoint, a process is deemed to occur either at the behest of man, or not. For example, flipping a light switch might illuminate a room, or perhaps a sunrise might illuminate that room. In this viewpoint, the sunrise would be termed a natural process; the decision of a human being to flip the light switch would be termed an artificial illumination, in contrast. In this viewpoint, artifice (art or literature) is clearly the result of willful human action; furthermore, the act of stating a philosophical position could also be a willful action (and hence at the behest of man), whether or not the content of the philosophy were to be about science. The distinction between what is natural and artificial was initially important, as far as we know, to the ancient Greeks. Perhaps their main interest was in distinguishing good aims from ones that have been distorted.

Beauty in Nature

The writer Steven Fry has commented that if we look around us, anything ugly that we see will have been created by human hands; this exemplifies a widely held view that nature is intrinsically beautiful. That the beauty of nature has been celebrated by so large a proportion of our art is further proof of the strength of this association between nature and beauty. Many scientists also share the conviction that nature is beautiful; the French mathematician, Jules Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) said:
"The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.
If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living."

Related concepts

The term natural science is used in a variety of ways, primarily:
- to denote the study of natural processes as opposed to human activities, in contrast to the social sciences; and
- to denote those sciences which employ the scientific method, in contrast, for example, to mathematics or computer science. The term natural philosophy formerly named the scientific discipline now known as physics. Natural theology straddles the disciplines of theology and philosophy of religion. In education and related areas, the contrast "natural/artificial" can appear as " nature/nurture". See also: praeternatural, unnatural and supernatural.

External links

- [http://nature.org/ The Nature Conservancy] - a charitable organization devoted to preserving natural diversity worldwide
- [http://www.english-nature.org.uk/ English Nature] UK government organization devoted to preserving natural diversity in the UK
- [http://www.naturedetectives.org.uk Nature Detectives] An online research and education project for under 18s in the UK
- [http://www.takesomeaction.co.uk A Guide to Nature and Wildlife Conservation] Category:Environmental science zh-min-nan:Chū-jiân ko:자연 ms:Alam Semulajadi ja:自然 simple:Nature

Truth

When someone sincerely agrees with an assertion, they are claiming that it is the truth. Epistemology, the study of knowledge, seeks solutions for the many philosophical problems associated with truth. The first problem for philosophers is deciding what sorts of things are true or false, the so-called truth-bearers. At stake is the terminology we use to discuss truth. Then there are a range of theories about what makes these truth-bearers true. Some, the robust theories, treat truth as a property; others, the deflationary theories, suggest that it is no more than a convenient tool in our language. Developments in formal logic have thrown light on the way in which truth is used both in formal systems and in natural languages. Standing beside these problems are the issues of how we know something to be true. The way in which one knows that one has a toothache seems different from the way in which one knows that the Earth is the third planet from the sun; perhaps one is subjective, and determined by introspection, while the other objective, and determined by a combination of shared observations, reasonings, and calculations. Similarly, some truths seem to be relative to one's position or background, while others appear absolute. Philosophers have diverse opinions on each of these issues.

Bearers of truth

Philosophers call any entity that can be true or false a "truth bearer." Propositions, sentences, statements, ideas, beliefs, and judgements are said to be truth bearers. Thus, a truth bearer, in the philosophical sense, is not a person or god. Some philosophers exclude one or more of these categories, or argue that some of them are true (or false) only in a derivative sense. These claims are made on the basis of theories about truth such as those discussed below. For example, propositions are often thought to be the only things that are literally true. A proposition is the abstract entity which is expressed by a sentence, held in a belief, affirmed in a statement or judgement. All these things (which are parts of a language) are called true only if they express, hold, or affirm true propositions. So plausibly sentences of different languages, such as the (English) The sky is blue and the (German) Der Himmel ist blau express the same proposition. On the other hand, many philosophers have claimed that propositions and similar abstract entities are mysterious and provide little explanation; surely sentences, or even utterances of sentences, are a more clear-cut and fundamental truth bearer.

Theories about truth

Philosophers and logicians have proposed a number of broad theories about truth, which are now frequently sorted into two camps:

Robust theories

Some theories hold in common that truth is a robust (sometimes inflationary) concept. These theories all hold that the surface grammar of sentences that seem to predicate truth or falsity, such as "Snow is white is true" can be taken at face value. Truth is a property, just as red is a property predicated of a barn in the sentence in "The barn is red." The task for such theories is to explain the nature of this property. Hence, according to these theories, truth needs explanation and is something about which significant things can be said:
- The correspondence theory of truth sees truth as correspondence with objective reality. Thus, a sentence is said to be true just in the case that it expresses a state of affairs in the world.
- The coherence theory sees truth as coherence with some specified set of sentences or, more often, of beliefs. For example, one of a person's beliefs is true just in case it is coherent with all or most of her other beliefs. Usually, coherence is taken to imply something stronger than mere consistency: justification, evidence, and comprehensiveness of the belief set are common restrictions.
- The consensus theory holds that truth is whatever is agreed upon, or in some versions, might come to be agreed upon, by some specified group.
- Pragmatism sees truth as the success of the practical consequences of an idea, i.e. its utility.
- Social constructivism holds that truth is constructed by social processes, is historically and culturally specific, and that it is in part shaped through the power struggles within a community.
- The Indefinability theory of truth views the concept of truth along the same lines as a correspondence theorist, but it holds that truth cannot be defined in terms of simpler concepts.

Deflationary theories

Other philosophers reject the idea that truth is a robust concept in this sense. From this point of view, to say "2 + 2 = 4 is true" is to say no more than that "2 + 2 = 4", and that there is no more to say about truth than this. These positions are broadly called "deflationary" theories of truth (because the concept has been "deflated" of importance) or "disquotational" theories (to draw attention to the mere "disappearance" of the quotation marks in cases like the above example). In addition to highlighting this formal feature of the predicate "is true", some deflationists point out that the concept enables us to express things that might otherwise require an infinitely long sentences. For example, I cannot express my confidence in Michael's accuracy by asserting the endless sentence: :Michael says, 'snow is white' and snow is white, or he says 'roses are red' and roses are red or he says ... etc. But I can express it succinctly just by saying: :Whatever Michael says is true. Once we have identified the truth predicate's formal features and utility, deflationsists argue, we have said all there is to be said about truth. The primary theoretical concern of these views is to explain away those special cases where it appears that the concept of truth does have peculiar and interesting properties. (See Semantic paradoxes, and below.) From this point of view (see Gottlob Frege and F. P. Ramsey), truth is not the name of some property of propositions — some thing about which one could have a theory. The belief that truth is a property is just an illusion caused by the fact that we have the predicate "is true" in our language. Since most predicates name properties, we naturally assume that "is true" does as well. But, deflationists say, statements that seem to predicate truth actually do nothing more than signal agreement with the statement. For example, the redundancy theory of truth holds that to assert that a statement is true is just to assert the statement itself. Thus, to say that "Snow is white" is true is to say nothing more nor less than that snow is white. A second example, attributed to P. F. Strawson, is the performative theory of truth which holds that to say "Snow is white" is true is to perform the speech act of signalling one's agreement with the claim that snow is white (much like nodding one's head in agreement). The idea that some statements are more actions than communicative statements is not as odd as it may seem. Consider, for example, that when the bride says "I do" at the appropriate time in a wedding, she is performing the act of taking this man to be her lawful wedded husband. She is not describing herself as taking this man. A third type of deflationary theory is the disquotational theory which uses a variant form of Tarski's schema: To say that '"P" is true' is to say that P. One of the most thoroughly worked out versions of this view is the prosentential theory of truth, first developed by Dorothy Grover, Joseph Camp, and Nuel Belnap as an elaboration of Frank P. Ramsey's claims. They argue that sentences like "That's true" are prosentences (see pro-form), expressions that merely repeat the content of other expressions. In the same way that it means the same as my dog in the sentence My dog was hungry, so I fed it, That's true is supposed to mean the same as It's raining if you say the latter and I then say the former.

Formal definitions

Semantic theory of truth

The semantic theory of truth has as its general case for a given language: :'P' is true if and only if P where 'P' is a reference to the sentence (the sentence's name), and P is just the sentence itself. Logician and philosopher Alfred Tarski developed the theory for formal languages (such as formal logic). Here he restricted it in this way: no language could contain its own truth predicate, that is, the expression is true could only apply to sentences in some other language. The latter he called an object language, the language being talked about. (It may, in turn, have a truth predicate that can be applied to sentences in still another language.) The reason for his restriction was that languages that contain their own truth predicate will contain paradoxical sentences like the Liar: This sentence is not true. See The Liar Paradox. As a result Tarski held that the semantic theory could not be applied to any natural language, such as English, because they contain their own truth predicates. Tarski thought of his theory as a species of correspondence theory. Donald Davidson used it as the foundation of his truth-conditional semantics and linked it to radical interpretation in a form of coherentism.

Kripke's theory of truth

Saul Kripke contends that a natural language can in fact contain its own truth predicate without giving rise to contradiction. He showed how to construct one as follows:
- Begin with a subset of sentences of a natural language that contains no occurrences of the expression "is true" (or "is false"). So The barn is big is included in the subset, but not ' The barn is big is true', nor problematic sentences such as "This sentence is false".
- Define truth just for the sentences in that subset.
- Then extend the definition of truth to include sentences that predicate truth or falsity of one of the original subset of sentences. So ' The barn is big is true' is now included, but not either This sentence is false nor "' The barn is big is true' is true".
- Next, define truth for all sentences that predicate truth or falsity of a member of the second set. Imagine this process repeated infinitely, so that truth is defined for The barn is big; then for ' The barn is big is true'; then for "' The barn is big is true' is true", and so on. Notice that truth never gets defined for sentences like This sentence is false, since it was not in the original subset and does not predicate truth of any sentence in the original or any subsequent set. In Kripke's terms, these are "ungrounded." Since these sentences are never assigned either truth or falsehood even if the process is carried out infinitely, Kripke's theory implies that some sentences are neither true nor false. This contradicts the Principle of bivalence: every sentence must be either true or false. Since this principle is a key premise in deriving the Liar paradox, the paradox is dissolved.

Types of truth

Subjective versus objective

Subjective truths are those with which we are most intimately acquainted. That I like broccoli or that I have a pain in my foot are both subjectively true. Metaphysical subjectivism holds that all we have are such truths. That is, that all we can know about are, one way or another, our own subjective experiences. This view does not necessarily reject realism. But at the least it claims that we cannot have direct knowledge of the real world. In contrast, objective truths are supposed in some way to be independent of our subjective beliefs and tastes. Such truths would subsist not in the mind but in the external object.

Relative versus absolute

Relative truths are statements or propositions that are true only relative to some standard or convention or point-of-view. Usually the standard cited is the tenets of one's own culture. Everyone agrees that the truth or falsity of some statements is relative: That the fork is to the left of the spoon depends on where one stands. But Relativism is the doctrine that all truths within a particular domain (say, morality or aesthetics) are of this form, and Relativism entails that what is true varies across cultures and eras. For example, Moral relativism is the view that moral truths are socially determined. Some logical issues about Relativism are taken up in the article on the relativist fallacy. Relative truths can be contrasted with absolute truths. The latter are statements or propositions that are taken to be true for all cultures and all eras. For example, for Muslims "God is great" expresses an absolute truth; for the microeconomist, that the laws of supply and demand determine the value of any consumable in a market economy is true in all situations; for the Kantian, "act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law" forms an absolute moral truth. They are statements that are often claimed to emanate from the very nature of the universe, God, human nature, or some other ultimate essence or transcendental signifier. Absolutism in a particular domain of thought is the view that all statements in that domain are either absolutely true or absolutely false: none is true for some cultures or eras while false for other cultures or eras. For example, Moral absolutism is the view that moral claims such as "Abortion is wrong" or "Charity is good" are either true for all people in all times or false for all people in all times.

Other uses of "Truth"

In addition to its use in reference to propositions, there are other uses of "truth" and "true" in the English language: # most often applied to people, and is used as a commendation, synonymous with "loyal", as in she is true to her friends. This sense of truth should be contrasted with being fake, insincere, misleading and so on. # True can mean "in accordance with a standard or archetype," which is how it is used in "He is a true Englishman." # True in engineering and construction can be used as meaning "straight", not warped but in the same flat plane - as the spokes of a wheel.

Double truth

In thirteenth century Europe, the Roman Catholic Church denounced what it described as theories of "double truth," i.e. theories to the effect that although a truth may be established by reason, its contrary ought to be believed as true as a matter of faith. The condemnation was aimed specifically at a "Latin Averroist," (see Averroës), Siger of Brabant, but it was more broadly an attempt to halt the spread of Aristotle's ideas, which the reconquest of Spain and, accordingly, access to the libraries of the Moors had re-introduced into the Latin literate world. At the time, much of the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church was based upon neoplatonic ideas, and Aristoteleanism struck many as heresy. Siger and others seem to have conceded this, and to have used the sharp reason/faith distinction that came to be known as "double truth" as a way of legitimizing discussion of Aristotle despite that concession.

True testimony

Witnesses who swear under oath to testify truthfully in courts of law, are not expected to make infallibly true statements, but to make a good faith attempt to recount an observed event from their memory or provide expert testimony. That what one witness says may differ from true accounts of other witnesses is a commonplace occurrence in the practice of law. Triers-of-fact are then charged with the responsibility to determine the credibility or veracity of a witness's testimony.

External links

- [http://www.foundationsmag.com/truth.html Truth Is Stranger Than It Used To Be]
- [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv2-04 Dictionary of the History of Ideas:] Double Truth
- [http://www.galilean-library.org/int10.html An Introduction to Truth] by Paul Newall, aimed at beginners.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-coherence/ Coherence theory of truth]
- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-correspondence/ Correspondence theory of truth]
- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-deflationary/ Deflationary theory of truth]
- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-identity/ Identity theory of truth]
- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-identity/ Revision theory of truth]
- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/tarski-truth/ Tarski's definition of truth]
- [http://uk.geocities.com/frege@btinternet.com/cantor/joachim.htm Harold Joachim's The Nature of Truth]

References

- Blackburn, S and Simmons K. 1999. Truth. Oxford University Press. A good anthology of classic articles, including papers by James, Russell, Ramsey, Tarski and more recent work.
- Field, H. 2001. Truth and the Absence of Fact, Oxford.
- Grover, Dorothy. 1992. The Prosentential Theory of Truth, Princeton University Press.
- Habermas, Jürgen. 2003. Truth and Justification. MIT Press.
- Horwich, P. Truth. Oxford.
- Kirkham, Richard 1992: Theories of Truth. Bradford Books. A very good reference book.
- Kripke, Saul 1975: "An Outline of a Theory of Truth" Journal of Philosophy 72:690-716.
- Nietzsche, Friedrich. "On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense".
- Rescher, Nicholas, The Coherence Theory of Truth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973). ISBN 0198244010.
- http://www.ditext.com/tarski/tarski.html Tarski's classic 1944 paper on the Semantic Conception of Truth online.
- Williams, Bernard, Truth and Truthfulness (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004) ISBN 0691117918. Category:Core issues in ethics Category:Epistemology Category:ISBN needed ja:真理 i love him and that is the truth

Axiom

In epistemology, an axiom is a self-evident truth upon which other knowledge must rest, from which other knowledge is built up. Not all epistemologists agree that any axioms, understood in that sense, exist. In mathematics, an axiom is not necessarily a self-evident truth but rather, a formal logical expression used in a deduction to yield further results. Mathematics distinguishes two types of axioms: logical axioms and non-logical axioms.

Etymology

The word axiom comes from the Greek word αξιωμα (axioma), which means that which is deemed worthy or fit or that which is considered self-evident. The word comes from αξιοειν (axioein), meaning to deem worthy, which in turn comes from αξιος (axios), meaning worthy. Among the ancient Greek philosophers an axiom was a claim which could be seen to be true without any need for proof.

Mathematics

In the field of mathematical logic, a clear distinction is made between two notions of axioms: logical axioms and non-logical axioms.

Logical axioms

These are certain formulas in a language that are universally valid, that is, formulas that are satisfied by every structure under every variable assignment function. More colloquially, these are statements that are true in any possible universe, under any possible interpretation and with any assignment of values. Usually one takes as logical axioms some minimal set of tautologies that is sufficient for proving all tautologies in the language.

Examples

In the propositional calculus it is common to take as logical axioms all formulas of the following forms, where

\phi

\psi

, and

\chi

can be any formulas of the language: #

\phi \to (\psi \to \phi)

(\phi \to (\psi \to \chi)) \to ((\phi \to \psi) \to (\phi \to \chi))

(\lnot \phi \to \lnot \psi) \to (\psi \to \phi)

Each of these patterns is an axiom schema, a rule for generating an infinite number of axioms. For example, if

A

B

, and

C

are propositional variables, then

A \to (B \to A)

and

(A \to \lnot B) \to (C \to (A \to \lnot B))

are both instances of axiom schema 1, and hence are axioms. It can be shown that with only these three axiom schemata and modus ponens, one can prove all tautologies of the propositional calculus. It can also be shown that no pair of these schemata is sufficient for proving all tautologies with modus ponens. These axiom schemata are also used in the predicate calculus, but additional logical axioms are needed.

Example. Let

\mathfrak\,

be a first-order language. For each variable

x\,

, the formula

x = x

is universally valid.

This means that for any variable symbol

x\,

, the formula

x = x\,

can be regarded as an axiom. Also, in this example, for this not to fall into vagueness and a never-ending series of "primitive notions", either a precise notion of what we mean by

x = x\,

(or, for all what matters, "to be equal") has to be well established first, or a purely formal and syntactical usage of the symbol

=\,

has to be enforced, and mathematical logic does indeed do that. Another, more interesting example, is that which provides us with what is known as universal instantiation:

Example. Given a formula

\phi\,

in a first-order language

\mathfrak\,

, a variable

x\,

and a term

t\,

that is substitutable for

x\,

\phi\,

, the formula

\forall x. \phi \to \phi^x_t

is universally valid.

Informally speaking, this example allows us to state that if we know that a certain property

P\,

holds for every

x\,

and that if

t\,

stands for a particular object in our structure, then we should be able to claim

P(t)\,

. Again, we are claiming that the formula

\forall x. \phi \to \phi^x_t

is valid, that is, we must be able to give a "proof" of this fact, or more properly speaking, a metaproof. Actually, these examples are metatheorems of our theory of mathematical logic since we are dealing with the very concept of proof itself. Aside from this, we can also have existential generalization:

Axiom scheme. Given a formula

\phi\,

in a first-order language

\mathfrak\,

, a variable

x\,

and a term

t\,

that is substitutable for

x\,

\phi\,

, the formula

\phi^x_t \to \exists x. \phi

is universally valid.

Non-logical axioms

Non-logical axioms are formulas that play the role of theory-specific assumptions. Reasoning about two different structures, for example the natural numbers and the integers, may involve the same logical axioms; the non-logical axioms aim to capture what is special about a particular structure (or set of structures, such as groups). Thus non-logical axioms, unlike logical axioms, are not tautologies. Another name for a non-logical axiom is postulate. Almost every modern mathematical theory starts from a given set of non-logical axioms, and it was thought that in principle every theory could be axiomatized in this way and formalized down to the bare language of logical formulas. This turned out to be impossible and proved to be quite a story (see below). Non-logical axioms are often simply referred to as axioms in mathematical discourse. This does not mean that it is claimed that they are true in some absolute sense. For example, in some groups, the group operation is commutative, and this can be asserted with the introduction of an additional axiom, but without this axiom we can do quite well developing (the more general) group theory, and we can even take its negation as an axiom for the study of non-commutative groups. Thus, an axiom is an elementary basis for a formal logic system that together with the rules of inference define a deductive system.

Examples

This section gives examples of mathematical theories that are developed entirely from a set of non-logical axioms (axioms, henceforth). A rigorous treatment of any of these topics begins with a specification of these axioms. Basic theories, such as arithmetic, real analysis (sometimes referred to as the theory of functions of one real variable), linear algebra, and complex analysis (a.k.a. complex variables), are often introduced non-axiomatically in mostly technical studies, but any rigorous course in these subjects always begins by presenting its axioms. Geometries such as Euclidean geometry, projective geometry, symplectic geometry. Interestingly one of the results of the fifth Euclidean axiom being a non-logical axiom is that the three angles of a triangle do not by definition add to 180°. Only under the umbrella of Euclidean geometry is this always true. The study of topology in mathematics extends all over through point set topology, algebraic topology, differential topology, and all the related paraphernalia, such as homology theory, homotopy theory. The development of abstract algebra brought with itself group theory, rings and fields, Galois theory. This list could be expanded to include most fields of mathematics, including axiomatic set theory, measure theory, ergodic theory, probability, representation theory, and differential geometry.

Arithmetic

The Peano axioms are the most widely used axiomatization of arithmetic. They are a set of axioms strong enough to prove many important facts about number theory and they allowed Gödel to establish his famous second incompleteness theorem. We have a language

\mathfrak_ = \\,

where

0\,

is a constant symbol and

S\,

is a unary function and the following axioms: #

\forall x. \lnot (Sx = 0)

\forall x. \forall y. (Sx = Sy \to x = y)

((\phi(0) \land \forall x.\,(\phi(x) \to \phi(Sx))) \to \forall x.\phi(x)

for any

\mathfrak_\,

formula

\phi\,

with one free variable. The standard structure is

\mathfrak = \langle\N, 0, S\rangle\,

where

\N\,

is the set of natural numbers,

S\,

is the successor function and

0\,

is naturally interpreted as the number 0.

Euclidean geometry

Probably the oldest, and most famous, list of axioms are the 4 + 1 Euclid's postulates of plane geometry. This set of axioms turns out to be incomplete, and many more postulates are necessary to rigorously characterize his geometry (Hilbert used 23). The axioms are referred to as "4 + 1" because for nearly two millennia the fifth (parallel) postulate ("through a point outside a line there is exactly one parallel") was suspected of being derivable from the first four. Ultimately, the fifth postulate was found to be independent of the first four. Indeed, one can assume that no parallels through a point outside a line exist, that exactly one exists, or that infinitely many exist. These choices give us alternative forms of geometry in which the interior angles of a triangle add up to less than, exactly, or more than a straight line respectively and are known as elliptic, Euclidean, and hyperbolic geometries.

Real analysis

The object of study is the real numbers. The real numbers are uniquely picked out (up to isomorphism) by the properties of a complete ordered field. However, expressing these properties as axioms requires use of second-order logic. The Löwenheim-Skolem theorems tell us that if we restrict ourselves to first-order logic, any axiom system for the reals admits other models, including both models that are smaller than the reals and models that are larger. Some of the latter are studied in non-standard analysis.

Role in mathematical logic

Deductive systems and completeness

A deductive system consists of a set

\Lambda\,

of logical axioms, a set

\Sigma\,

of non-logical axioms, and a set

\\,

of rules of inference. A desirable property of a deductive system is that it be complete. A system is said to be complete if, for all formulas

\phi

, if

\Sigma \models \phi

then

\Sigma \vdash \phi

that is, for any statement that is a logical consequence of

\Sigma

there actually exists a deduction of the statement from

\Sigma\,

. This is sometimes expressed as "everything that is true is provable", but it must be understood that "true" here means "made true by the set of axioms", and not, for example, "true in the intended interpretation". Gödel's completeness theorem establishes the completeness of a certain commonly-used type of deductive system. Note that "completeness" has a different meaning here than it does in the context of Gödel's first incompleteness theorem, which states that no recursive, consistent set of non-logical axioms

\Sigma\,

of the Theory of Arithmetic is complete, in the sense that there will always exist an arithmetic statement

\phi\,

such that neither

\phi\,

nor

\lnot\phi\,

can be proved from the given set of axioms. There is thus, on the one hand, the notion of completeness of a deductive system and on the other hand that of completeness of a set of non-logical axioms. The completeness theorem and the incompleteness theorem, despite their names, do not contradict one another.

Further discussion

Early mathematicians regarded axiomatic geometry as a model of physical space, and obviously there could only be one such model. The idea that alternative mathematical systems might exist was very troubling to mathematicians of the 19th century and the developers of systems such as Boolean algebra made elaborate efforts to derive them from traditional arithmetic. Galois showed just before his untimely death that these efforts were largely wasted, but that the grand parallels between axiomatic systems could be put to good use, as he algebraically solved many classical geometrical problems. Ultimately, the abstract parallels between algebraic systems were seen to be more important than the details and modern algebra was born. In the modern view we may take as axioms any set of formulas we like, as long as they are not known to be inconsistent.

External links

- [http://us.metamath.org/mpegif/mmset.html#axioms Metamath axioms page] Category:Algebra Category:Logic ko:공리 ja:公理

Samsara

:This article is about the religious concept. For other uses, see Samsara (disambiguation). In Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and other related religions, samsara or saṃsāra refers to the concept of reincarnation or rebirth in Indian philosophical traditions.

Etymology

Samsara is derived from saṃ√sṛ, "to flow together," to go or pass through states, to wander. One who is subject to Samsara is called a samsarin.

Cycle of rebirth

In most Indian philosophical traditions, including the orthodox Hindu and heterodox Buddhist and Jain systems, an ongoing cycle of birth, death, and rebirth is assumed as a fact of nature. These systems differ widely, however, in the terminology with which they describe the process and in the metaphysics they use in interpreting it. Most of these traditions, in their evolved forms, regard Saṃsāra negatively, as a fallen condition which is to be escaped. Some, such as Advaita Vedanta regard the world and Saṃsāric participation in it as fundamentally illusory. Some later adaptations of these traditions identify Saṃsāra as a mere metaphor.

Saṃsāra in Hinduism

In some types of Hinduism, Saṃsāra is seen as ignorance of the True Self, Brahman, and thus the soul is led to believe in the reality of the temporal, phenomenal world. In Hinduism, it is avidya, or ignorance, of one's true self, that leads to ego-consciousness of the body and the phenomenal world. This grounds one in desire and the perpetual chain of karma and reincarnation. The state of illusion is known as Maya. Hinduism had many terms for the state of liberation like moksha, mukti, nirvana, and mahasamadhi. The Hindu Yoga traditions hold various beliefs. Moksha may be achieved by love of Ishwar/God (see bhakti movement), by psycho-physical meditation (Raja Yoga), by discrimination of what is real and unreal through intense contemplation (Jnana Yoga) and through Karma Yoga, the path of selfless action that subverts the ego and enforces understanding of the unity of all. Advaita Vedanta, which heavily influenced Hindu Yoga, believes that Brahman, the ultimate Truth-Consciousness-Bliss, is the infinite, impersonal reality (as contrasted to the Buddhist concept of shunyata) and that through realization of it, all temporal states like deities, the cosmos and samsara itself are revealed to be nothing but manifestations of Brahman.
- [http://veda.harekrsna.cz/samsara/index.htm Samsara - tour of this universe and beyond] +

Saṃsāra in Jainism

In Jainism, karma, anuva (ego) and the veil of maya are central. In Jainism, liberation from samsara is called moksha or mukti.

Saṃsāra in Buddhism

Saṃsāra in Nikaya Buddhism

Whereas in Hinduism some being (ātman, jiva, etc.) is regarded as being subject to Saṃsāra, Buddhism was founded on a rejection of such metaphysical substances, and originally accounts for the process of rebirth/reincarnation by appeal to phenomenological or psychological constituents. Later schools of Buddhism such as the Pudgalavada, however, re-introduce the concept of a "person" which transmigrates. The basic idea that there is a cycle of birth and rebirth is, however, not questioned in early Buddhism and its successors, and neither is, generally, the concept that saṃsāra is a negative condition to be abated through religious practice concluding in the achievement of final nirvāṇa.

Saṃsāra in Mahayana Buddhism

According to several strands of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, the division of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa is attacked using an argument that extends some of the basic premises of anatta and of Buddha's attack on orthodox accounts of existence. This is found poetically in the "Perfection of Wisdom" literature and more analytically in the philosophy of Nāgārjuna and later writers. It is not entirely clear which aspects of this theoretical move were developed first in the sutras and which in the philosophical tradition.

Samsara in Surat Shabda Yoga

In Surat Shabda Yoga, the purpose is to realize the individual's True Self (Self-Realization), True Essence (Spirit-Realization) and True Divinity (God-Realization) while living in the human physical body. This Journey of Soul involves reuniting in stages with what is called the Essence of the Absolute Supreme Being, the Shabd. Attaining self-realization and above also results in jivan moksha/mukti, liberation/release from samsara, the cycle of karma and reincarnation while in the physical body. Surat Shabda Yoga Cosmology presents the constitution of the initiate (the microcosm) as an exact replica of the macrocosm. Consequently, the microcosm consists of a number of bodies, each one suited to interact with its corresponding plane or region in the macrocosm. These bodies developed over the yugas through involution (emanating from higher planes to lower planes) and evolution (returning from lower planes to higher planes), including by karma and reincarnation in various states of consciousness.

Maya (illusion)

Maya in Hinduism

See also: Maya_(Hinduism) In Vedic philosophy, maya (Sanskrit: ma: not, ya: this) is the illusion of a limited, purely physical and mental reality in which our everyday consciousness has become entangled, a veiling of the true, unitary Self, also known as Brahman. Maya originated in the Hindu scriptures known as the Upanishads. Many philosphies or religions seek to "pierce the veil" in order to glimpse the transcendent truth, from which the illusion of a physical reality springs, drawing from the idea that first came to life in the Hindu stream of Vedanta. In Hinduism, Maya must be seen through in order to achieve moksha (liberation of the soul from the cycle of death and rebirth) - ahamkar (ego-consciousness) and karma are seen as part of the binding forces of Maya. Maya is seen as the phenomenal universe, a lesser reality-lens superimposed on the one Brahman that leads us to think of the phenomenal cosmos as real. Maya is also visualized as part of the Divine Mother (Devi) concept of Hinduism. In the Hindu scripture 'Devi Mahatmyam,' Mahamaya (Great Maya) is said to cover Vishnu's eyes in Yoganidra (Divine Sleep) during cycles of existence when all is resolved into one. By exhorting Mahamaya to release Her illusory hold on Vishnu, Brahma is able to bring Vishnu to aid him in killing two demons, Madhu and Kaitabh, who have manifested from Vishnu's sleeping form. Shri Ramakrishna often spoke of Mother Maya and combined deep Hindu allegory with the idea that Maya is a lesser reality that must be overcome so that one is able to realize his or her true Self.

Maya as Adopted And Viewed By Other Religions

Maya In Sikhism

In Sikhism, maya (the world as you normally perceive it) is said to be no more manifest than a dream. The Sikh concept is in line with Vedanta. Sikhism, as well as many other paths of spirituality, state that the world is like a dream, and there is nothing in it which is yours. (This last sentence has been translated right from the Guru Granth Sahib). An example of this is when our dreams feel so solid and real, but how will we know if we're dreaming if we do not wake up the next morning? What can a person actually call "MINE" in the temporary existence of a life spanning three-quarters of a century? A modern concept that illustrates Maya / Illusion is the sci-fi movie "The Matrix". Everything in The Matrix is believed to be real, until the character Neo wakes up, and sees that it's just a dream world. The movie points out that one never knows he is asleep until he wakes up.

Parallels To Maya In Other Religions

Some dialogues of Plato also contain ideas reminiscent of maya, especially the famous "Parable of the Cave". Arthur Schopenhauer uses the term "Veil of Maya" to describe his view of The World as Will and Representation

Phenomenology

:This article treats the philosophical movement of phenomenology. For other meanings see Phenomenology (Disambiguation). Phenomenology is a current in philosophy that takes the intuitive experience of phenomena (what presents itself to us in conscious experience) as its starting point and tries to extract the essential features of experiences and the essence of what we experience. It stems from the School of Brentano and was mostly based on the work of the 20th century philosopher Edmund Husserl, and was developed further by philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Max Scheler, Hannah Arendt, and Emmanuel Levinas. As such, phenomenological thought influenced the development of existential phenomenology and existentialism in France, as is clear from the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and Munich phenomenology (Johannes Daubert, Adolf Reinach in Germany and Alfred Schütz in Austria.

Historical overview of the use of the term

While the term "phenomenology" was used several times in the history of philosophy before Husserl, modern use ties it more explicitly to his particular method.
- Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (German pietist) for the study of the "divine system of relations"
- Johann Heinrich Lambert (mathematician, physician and philosopher) for the theory of appearances underlying empirical knowledge.
- Immanuel Kant used it in a similar vein.
- Hegel can be considered one of the precursors to phenomenology, due to his Phenomenology of Spirit, which prompted the existential work of Søren Kierkegaard and Sartre
- Brentano seems to have used the term in some of his lectures at Vienna.
- Edmund Husserl redefined it at first as a kind of descriptive psychology and later as an epistemological, foundational eidetic discipline to study essences. He is known as a "father" of phenomenology.
- Carl Stumpf used it to refer to an ontology of sensory contents.
- Max Scheler developed further the phenomenological method of Edmund Husserl and extended it to include also a reduction of the scientific method. He influenced the thinking of Pope John Paul II and Edith Stein.
- Alfred Schutz developed a phenomenology of the social world on the basis of everyday experience. He influenced the more popular sociologists as Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann. Later usage is mostly based on or (critically) related to Husserl's introduction and use of the term. This branch of philosophy differs from others in that it tends to be more "descriptive" than "prescriptive".

Husserl and the origin of Phenomenology

Husserl derived many important concepts that are central to phenomenology from the works and lectures of his teachers, the philosophers and psychologists Franz Brentano and Carl Stumpf. An important element of phenomenology that Husserl borrowed from Brentano was intentionality, the notion that the main characteristic of consciousness is that it is always intentional. Intentionality, which could be summarised as "aboutness", describes the relationship between mental acts and the external world. Every mental phenomenon or psychological act is directed at an object — the intentional object. Every belief, desire, etc. has an object to which it refers: the believed, the desired. The property of being intentional, of having an intentional object, is the key feature which distinguishes mental/psychical phenomena from physical phenomena (objects), because physical phenomena lack intentionality altogether. Intentionality is the key concept by means of which phenomenological philosophy attempts to overcome the subject/object dichotomy prevalent in modern philosophy.

Precursors and influences

- Skepticism (for the concept of the epochè)
- Descartes (Methodological doubt, ego cogito)
- British empiricism (Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Mill)
- Immanuel Kant and neokantianism (for Husserl's transcendental turn)
- Franz Brentano (for the concept of intentionality and the method of descriptive psychology)
- Carl Stumpf (psychological analysis, influenced Husserl's early works)

Phenomenology in the first edition of the Logische Untersuchungen (1900/1901)

In the Logical Investigations his first major work, still under the infuence of Brentano, Husserl still conceives of phenomenology as descriptive psychology. Husserl analyzes the intentional structures of mental acts and how they are directed at both real and ideal objects. The Logical Investigations begin with a devastating critique of psychologism i.e. the attempt to subsume the a priori validity of the laws of logic into psychology. Husserl establishes a separate field for research in logic, philosophy and phenomenology, independently from the empirical sciences.

Transcendental phenomenology after the Ideen (1913)

Some years after the publication of the Logical Investigations, Husserl made some key elaborations which led him to the distinction between the act of consciousness (noesis) and the phenomena at which it is directed (the noemata).
- "noetic" refers to the act of consciousness (believing, willing, hating and loving ...)
- "noematic" refers to the object or content (noema) which appears in the noetic acts (respectively the believed, wanted, hated and loved ...). What we observe is not the object as it is in itself, but how and inasmuch it is given in the intentional acts. Knowledge of essences would only be possible by "bracketing" all assumptions about the existence of an external world and the inessential (subjective) aspects of how the object is concretely given to us. This procedure Husserl called epoché. Husserl in a later period concentrated more on the ideal, essential structures of consciousness. As he wanted to exclude any hypothesis on the existence of external objects, he introduced the method of phenomenological reduction to eliminate them. What was left over was the pure transcendental ego, as opposed to the concrete empirical ego. Now (transcendental) phenomenology is the study of the essential structures that are left in pure consciousness: this amounts in practice to the study of the noemata and the relations among them. German philosopher Theodor Adorno criticised Husserl's concept of phenomenological epistemology in his metacritique "Against Epistemology", which is anti-foundationalist in its stance.

Transcendental phenomenologists

- Oskar Becker
- Aron Gurwitsch
- Alfred Schutz

Realist phenomenology

After Husserl's publication of the Ideen in 1913, many phenomenologists took a critical stance towards his new theories. Especially the members of the Munich group distanced themselves from his new transcendental phenomenology and preferred the earlier realist phenomenology of the first edition of the Logical Investigations.

Realist phenomenologists

- Adolf Reinach
- Alexander Pfänder
- Johannnes Daubert
- Max Scheler
- Roman Ingarden
- Nicolai Hartmann

Existential phenomenology

Existential phenomenology differs from transcendental phenomenology by its rejection of the transcendental ego. Merleau-Ponty objects to the ego's transcendence of the world, which for Husserl leaves the world spread out and completely transparent before the conscious. Heidegger thinks of conscious being as always and already in the world. Transcendence is maintained in existential phenomenology to the extent that the method of phenomenology must take a presuppositionless starting point - transcending claims about the world arising from, for example, natural or scientific attitudes or theories of the ontological nature of the world.

Heidegger's "phenomenology" and differences with Husserl

While Husserl thought philosophy to be a scientific discipline that had to be founded on a phenomenology understood as epistemology, Heidegger radically changed this view. Heidegger himself phrases their differences this way: :For Husserl the phenomenological reduction is the method of leading phenomenological vision from the natural attitude of the human being whose life is involved in the world of things and persons back to the transcendental life of consciousness and its noetic-noematic experiences, in which objects are constituted as correlates of consciousness. For us phenomenological reduction means leading phenomenological vision back from the apprehension of a being, whatever may be the character of that apprehension, to the understanding of the being of this being (projecting upon the way it is unconcealed). According to Heidegger philosophy was not at all a scientific discipline, but more fundamental than science itself. Therefore, instead of taking phenomenology as prima philosophia or foundational discipline, he took it as a metaphysical ontology: "being is the proper and sole theme of philosophy". While for Husserl in the epochè being appeared only as a correlate of consciousness, for Heidegger being is the starting point. While for Husserl we would have to abstract from all concrete determinations of our empirical ego, to be able to turn to the field of pure consciousness, Heidegger claims that: "the possibilities and destinies of philosophy are bound up with man's existence, and thus with temporality and with historicality". (NB: Heidegger's quotes taken from The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (1954), published by Indiana University Press, 1975. Introduction, p. 1 - 23 reproduced at [http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/heidegge.htm www.marxists.org].)

Existential phenomenologists

- Martin Heidegger (1889 - 1976)
- Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975)
- Emmanuel Levinas (1906 - 1995)
- Gabriel Marcel
- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 - 1980)
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1907 - 1960)

Currents influenced by phenomenology

- Hermeneutics
- Structuralism
- Poststructuralism
- Existentialism
- Deconstruction
- Philosophy of Technology

External links

- [http://www.phenomenologycenter.org/phenom.htm What is Phenomenology?]
- [http://www.connect.net/ron/phenom.html About Phenomenology]
- [http://www.husserlpage.com/ About Edmund Husserl]
- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry]
- [http://www.o-p-o.net/ Organization of Phenomenology Organizations O.P.O.]
- [http://www.phenomenology.ro Romanian Society for Phenomenology] Category:Philosophical movements Category:Philosophy of mind Category:Social philosophy ja:現象学

Group (sociology)

In sociology, a group is usually defined as a collection consisting of a number of humans or animals, who share certain aspects, interact with one another, accept rights and obligations as members of the group and share a common identity. Using this definition, society can appear as a large group. While an aggregate comprises merely a number of individuals, a group in sociology exhibits cohesiveness to a larger degree. Aspects that members in the group may share include interests, values, ethnic/linguistic background and kinship.A group becomes a group when communication is involved, if there is no communication, there is no group. Primary groups consist of small groups with intimate, kin-based relationships: families, for example. They commonly last for years. The term was coined by Charles Horton Cooley. They are small and display

Reality

Simple reality

Phenomenological reality

Truth

Fact

Axiom

What reality might not be

Reality, world views, and theories of reality

Philosophical views of reality

See also

Being

Being in historical philosophy

Being and substance in Aristotle

Being in continental philosophy and existentialism

Being in popular culture

Further reading

See also

External links

Nothing

Quotes

See also

External link

Nature

Scientific divisions of Nature

Nature outside Earth and its atmosphere

Life

Chemicals

Matter and force

Earth

Philosophy of Nature

Metaphysics

The natural and the artificial

Beauty in Nature

Related concepts

See also

External links

Truth

Bearers of truth

Theories about truth

Robust theories

Deflationary theories

Formal definitions

Semantic theory of truth

Kripke's theory of truth

Types of truth

Subjective versus objective

Relative versus absolute

Other uses of "Truth"

Double truth

True testimony

See also

Truth in logic

Major philosophers who have proposed theories of truth

External links

References

Axiom

Etymology

Mathematics

Logical axioms

Examples

Non-logical axioms

Examples

Arithmetic

Euclidean geometry

Real analysis

Role in mathematical logic

Deductive systems and completeness

Further discussion

See also

External links

Samsara

Etymology

Cycle of rebirth

Saṃsāra in Hinduism

Saṃsāra in Jainism

Saṃsāra in Buddhism

Saṃsāra in Nikaya Buddhism

Saṃsāra in Mahayana Buddhism

Samsara in Surat Shabda Yoga

See also