Platos "The Allegory of the Cave": A Summary. "In fact, you get pretty good at understanding how the patterns in the show work, and everyone else chained up is like, 'Holy shit bro, how did you know that that tree was going to fall on that guy? ' and you're like, 'It's because I fucking pay attention and I'm smart as shit.' You're the smartest of the chained, and they all revere you. " Glaucon: "But Socrates, a tree didn't really hit a guy. It's all shadows. " Socrates: "No shit, Glaucon, but you don't know that. You think the shadows are real things. Everyone does. "So eventually, someone comes and unchains you and drags you out of the cave. "Slowly, as your eyes got better, you'd see more and more shit. "Finally you'd want to go down and tell everyone about everything you've discovered. "Philosophy, same thing.
Possibilianism. Not to be confused with Possibilism. Possibilianism is a philosophy which rejects both the diverse claims of traditional theism and the positions of certainty in strong atheism in favor of a middle, exploratory ground.[1][2][3][4][5] The term was first defined by neuroscientist David Eagleman in relation to his book of fiction Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives.[6] Asked whether he was an atheist or a religious person on a National Public Radio interview in February 2009, he replied "I call myself a Possibilian: I'm open to...ideas that we don't have any way of testing right now. "[6] In a subsequent interview with the New York Times, Eagleman expanded on the definition: "Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion. A third position, agnosticism, is often an uninteresting stance in which a person simply questions whether his traditional religious story (say, a man with a beard on a cloud) is true or not true.
The L-Space Web: Death and What Comes Next - StumbleUpon. The L-Space Web Copyright © Terry Pratchett 2002 When Death met the philosopher, the philosopher said, rather excitedly: "At this point, you realise, I'm both dead and not dead. " There was a sigh from Death. Oh dear, one of those, he thought. "You see," said the philosopher, while Death, motionless, watched the sands of his life drain through the hourglass, "everything is made of tiny particles, which have the strange property of being in many places at one time. YES, BUT NOT INDEFINITELY, said Death, EVERYTHING IS TRANSIENT.
"Well, then, if we agreed that there are an infinite number of universes, then the problem is solved! "What? Death nodded at the bed. "No, because there are a million versions of me, too, And...here is the good bit ...in some of them I am not about to pass away! Death tapped the handle of his scythe as he considered this. "Well, I'm not exactly dying, correct? There was a sigh from Death. "No answer, eh? " THIS IS A CONUNDRUM CERTAINLY, said Death. "What? " "Yes. Alan Watts discusses Nothing.
List of unsolved problems in philosophy. This is a list of some of the major unsolved problems in philosophy. Clearly, unsolved philosophical problems exist in the lay sense (e.g. "What is the meaning of life? ", "Where did we come from? ", "What is reality? ", etc.). However, professional philosophers generally accord serious philosophical problems specific names or questions, which indicate a particular method of attack or line of reasoning. Aesthetics[edit] Essentialism[edit] In art, essentialism is the idea that each medium has its own particular strengths and weaknesses, contingent on its mode of communication. Art objects[edit] This problem originally arose from the practice rather than theory of art. While it is easy to dismiss these assertions, further investigation[who?] Epistemology[edit] Epistemological problems are concerned with the nature, scope and limitations of knowledge.
Gettier problem[edit] In response to Gettier's article, numerous philosophers have offered modified criteria for "knowledge. " Qualia[edit] [edit] Twelve Virtues of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky - StumbleUpon. By Eliezer Yudkowsky The first virtue is curiosity. A burning itch to know is higher than a solemn vow to pursue truth. To feel the burning itch of curiosity requires both that you be ignorant, and that you desire to relinquish your ignorance. If in your heart you believe you already know, or if in your heart you do not wish to know, then your questioning will be purposeless and your skills without direction. Curiosity seeks to annihilate itself; there is no curiosity that does not want an answer. The second virtue is relinquishment. The third virtue is lightness. The fourth virtue is evenness. The fifth virtue is argument.
The sixth virtue is empiricism. The seventh virtue is simplicity. The eighth virtue is humility. The ninth virtue is perfectionism. The tenth virtue is precision. The eleventh virtue is scholarship. Before these eleven virtues is a virtue which is nameless. Miyamoto Musashi wrote, in The Book of Five Rings: How can you improve your conception of rationality? Existence (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) - StumbleUpon.
First published Wed Oct 10, 2012 Existence raises deep and important problems in metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophical logic. Many of the issues can be organized around the following two questions: Is existence a property of individuals? And Assuming that existence is a property of individuals, are there individuals that lack it?
What does it mean to ask if existence is a property? A full answer to this question requires a general theory of properties, which is well beyond the scope of this article. I briefly sketch the landscape to set up our discussion of existence. (See the entries on properties and substance for deeper discussion.) We can trace the issue of whether existence is a property to a disagreement between the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle and some of his medieval followers over the relationship between an individual's essence and its existence. The view that existence is not a property of individuals became the common view in the early 20th Century. Ancient Theories of Soul. First published Thu Oct 23, 2003; substantive revision Wed Apr 22, 2009 Ancient philosophical theories of soul are in many respects sensitive to ways of speaking and thinking about the soul [psuchê] that are not specifically philosophical or theoretical.
We therefore begin with what the word ‘soul’ meant to speakers of Classical Greek, and what it would have been natural to think about and associate with the soul. We then turn to various Presocratic thinkers, and to the philosophical theories that are our primary concern, those of Plato (first in the Phaedo, then in the Republic), Aristotle (in the De Anima or On the Soul), Epicurus, and the Stoics.
These are by far the most carefully worked out theories of soul in ancient philosophy. Later theoretical developments — for instance, in the writings of Plotinus and other Platonists, as well as the Church Fathers — are best studied against the background of the classical theories, from which, in large part, they derive. 1. 2. 3. Western Philosophy. Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? - StumbleUpon.
Dialogue.
Kants View of the Mind and Consciousness of Self. First published Mon Jul 26, 2004; substantive revision Tue Jan 22, 2013 Even though Kant himself held that his view of the mind and consciousness were inessential to his main purpose, some of his ideas came to have an enormous influence on his successors. Ideas central to his view are now central to cognitive science. Other ideas equally central to his point of view had almost no influence on subsequent work, however. In this article, first we survey Kant's model as a whole and the claims that have been influential.
Then we examine his claims about consciousness of self specifically. Many of his ideas about the consciousness of self and related issues have not been influential. 1. In this article, we will focus on Immanuel Kant's (1724–1804) work on the mind and consciousness of self and related issues. Some commentators believe that Kant's views on the mind are dependent on his idealism (he called it transcendental idealism).
The mind is complex set of abilities (functions). 2. 3. OpenCourseWare | Linguistics and Philosophy | 24.201 Topics in the History of Philosophy: Kant, Fall 2005 | Lecture Notes. Philosophy for Beginners - Download free content from Oxford University on iTunes - StumbleUpon. Nsciousness: why bother? | Chris Frith | Science | guardian.co.uk. The collection of abilities and experiences that we call the mind emerges from the brain, so the study of the brain can provide important information about the mind. For most of the 20th century, mind-brain relationships could only be explored in people with damaged brains, typically caused by strokes or head injuries.
Such damage can result in loss of consciousness, and in extreme cases coma, but more interestingly it can also result in changes in the content of consciousness. There can be loss of some aspects of sensory experience despite the sense organs remaining intact, and there can be novel and unusual sensory experiences such as hallucinations. For example, damage to the colour area in the visual part of the brain can result in loss of colour experience, even though the colour receptors in the eye are working normally.
Furthermore, abnormal activity in this area can lead to hallucinations of colour. These unconscious processes are not unique to patients with damaged brains. Animal Consciousness. First published Sat Dec 23, 1995; substantive revision Wed Oct 13, 2010 There are many reasons for philosophical interest in nonhuman animal (hereafter “animal”) consciousness. First, if philosophy often begins with questions about the place of humans in nature, one way humans have attempted to locate themselves is by comparison and contrast with those things in nature most similar to themselves, i.e., other animals. Second, the problem of determining whether animals are conscious stretches the limits of knowledge and scientific methodology (beyond breaking point, according to some).
Third, the question of whether animals are conscious beings or “mere automata”, as Cartesians would have it, is of considerable moral significance given the dependence of modern societies on mass farming and the use of animals for biomedical research. Questions about animal consciousness are just one corner of a more general set of questions about animal cognition and mind. 1. 2. 3. 4. Sitemap: Philosophy: Famous Philosophers from Ancient Greek Indian and Chinese Philosophy to Modern Western / 20th Century Philosophy.