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Why Is There Anything At All
"Why is there anything at all?" (or "why is there something rather than nothing?") is a question about the reason for basic existence which has been raised or commented on by a range of philosophers and physicists, including Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Martin Heidegger, the last of whom called it "the fundamental question of metaphysics". The question is posed totally and comprehensively rather than concerning reasoning for the existence of anything specific, such as the universe or multiverse, the Big Bang, God, mathematical and physical laws, time or consciousness. It can be seen as an open metaphysical question, rather than a search for an exact answer. On causation The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that everything in the universe must have a cause, culminating in an ultimate uncaused cause. (See Four causes) Bertrand Russell took a " brute fact" position when he said, "I should say that the universe is just there, and that's all." Phi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sanzio 01 Parmenides
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael (; or ; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. His father was court painter to the ruler of the small but highly cultured city of Urbino. He died when Raphael was eleven, and Raphael seems to have played a role in managing the family workshop from this point. He trained in the workshop of Perugino, and was described as a fully trained "master" by 1500. He worked in or for several cities in north Italy until in 1508 he moved to Rome at the invitation of the pope, to work on the Vatican Palace. He was given a series of important commissions there and elsewhere in the city, and began to work as an architect. He was sti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Four Causes
The four causes or four explanations are, in Aristotelian thought, four fundamental types of answer to the question "why?", in analysis of change or movement in nature: the material, the formal, the efficient, and the final. Aristotle wrote that "we do not have knowledge of a thing until we have grasped its why, that is to say, its cause."" r a full range of cases, an explanation which fails to invoke all four causes is no explanation at all."—Falcon, Andrea. 0062019.Four Causes , Aristotle on Causality" ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''. While there are cases in which classifying a "cause" is difficult, or in which "causes" might merge, Aristotle held that his four "causes" provided an analytical scheme of general applicability. Aristotle's word ''aitia'' () has, in philosophical scholarly tradition, been translated as 'cause'. This peculiar, specialized, technical, usage of the word 'cause' is not that of everyday English language. Rather, the translation of Aristo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sidney Morgenbesser
Sidney Morgenbesser (September 22, 1921 – August 1, 2004) was a Jewish American philosopher and professor at Columbia University. He wrote little but is remembered by many for his philosophical witticisms. Life and career Sidney Morgenbesser was born on September 22, 1921, in New York City and raised in Manhattan's Lower East Side.''The Independent'',Professor Sidney Morgenbesser: Philosopher celebrated for his withering New York Jewish humour 6 August 2004 Morgenbesser undertook philosophical study at the City College of New York and rabbinical study at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He then pursued graduate study in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. There he obtained his M.A. in 1950 and, with a thesis titled ''Theories And Schemata In The Social Sciences,'' his PhD in 1956.Schwartz, Robert (2005)"Sidney Morgenbesser (1921—2004)"In Shook, John R. (ed). The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers' (2005) , republished in Shook, John R. (ed). The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North Pole
The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distinguish from the Magnetic North Pole. The North Pole is by definition the northernmost point on the Earth, lying antipodally to the South Pole. It defines geodetic latitude 90° North, as well as the direction of true north. At the North Pole all directions point south; all lines of longitude converge there, so its longitude can be defined as any degree value. No time zone has been assigned to the North Pole, so any time can be used as the local time. Along tight latitude circles, counterclockwise is east and clockwise is west. The North Pole is at the center of the Northern Hemisphere. The nearest land is usually said to be Kaffeklubben Island, off the northern coast of Greenland about away, though some perhaps semi-permanent gravel banks lie slightly clos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spatial–temporal Reasoning
Spatial–temporal reasoning is an area of artificial intelligence which draws from the fields of computer science, cognitive science, and cognitive psychology. The theoretic goal—on the cognitive side—involves representing and reasoning spatial-temporal knowledge in mind. The applied goal—on the computing side—involves developing high-level control systems of automata for navigating and understanding time and space. Influence from cognitive psychology A convergent result in cognitive psychology is that the connection relation is the first spatial relation that human babies acquire, followed by understanding orientation relations and distance relations. Internal relations among the three kinds of spatial relations can be computationally and systematically explained within the theory of cognitive prism as follows: (1) the connection relation is primitive; (2) an orientation relation is a distance comparison relation: you being in front of me can be interpreted as you ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stephen Law
Stephen Law (born 1960) is an English philosopher. He is currently Director of the Certificate in Higher and Education and Director of Philosophy at The Department of Continuing Education, University of Oxford. Law was previously Reader in Philosophy and Head of Department of Philosophy at Heythrop College, University of London, until its closure in June 2018. He also edits the philosophical journal ''Think'', which is sponsored by the Royal Institute of Philosophy and published by the Cambridge University Press. He is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts and Commerce and in 2008 became the provost of the Centre for Inquiry UK. Life Law was born 12 December 1960 in Cambridge, England, and attended Long Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge. However, having been "asked to leave", he began his working life as a postman. At 24 he successfully managed to persuade City University in London to accept him for the BSc in philosophy, despite his lack of A levels. There he managed to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metaphysical Necessity
In philosophy, metaphysical necessity, sometimes called broad logical necessity, is one of many different kinds of necessity, which sits between logical necessity and nomological (or physical) necessity, in the sense that logical necessity entails metaphysical necessity, but not vice versa, and metaphysical necessity entails physical necessity, but not vice versa. A proposition is said to be ''necessary'' if it could not have failed to be the case. Nomological necessity is necessity according to the laws of physics and logical necessity is necessity according to the laws of logic, while metaphysical necessities are necessary in the sense that the world could not possibly have been otherwise. What facts are metaphysically necessary, and on what basis we might view certain facts as metaphysically but not logically necessary are subjects of substantial discussion in contemporary philosophy. The concept of a metaphysically necessary being plays an important role in certain arguments f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, librarian, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, scepticism, and naturalism. Beginning with '' A Treatise of Human Nature'' (1739–40), Hume strove to create a naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Hume argued against the existence of innate ideas, positing that all human knowledge derives solely from experience. This places him with Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and George Berkeley as an Empiricist. Hume argued that inductive reasoning and belief in causality cannot be justified rationally; instead, they result from custom and mental habit. We never actually perceive that one event caus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spontaneous Generation
Spontaneous generation is a superseded scientific theory that held that living creatures could arise from nonliving matter and that such processes were commonplace and regular. It was hypothesized that certain forms, such as fleas, could arise from inanimate matter such as dust, or that maggots could arise from dead flesh. The doctrine of spontaneous generation was coherently synthesized by Aristotle, who compiled and expanded the work of earlier natural philosophers and the various ancient explanations for the appearance of organisms. Spontaneous generation was taken as scientific fact for two millennia. Though challenged in the 17th and 18th centuries by the experiments of Francesco Redi and Lazzaro Spallanzani, it was not discredited until the work of the French chemist Louis Pasteur and the Irish physicist John Tyndall in the mid-19th century. Rejection of spontaneous generation is no longer controversial among biologists. By the middle of the 19th century, experiments by Pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steady State Model
In cosmology, the steady-state model, or steady state theory is an alternative to the Big Bang theory of evolution of the universe. In the steady-state model, the density of matter in the expanding universe remains unchanged due to a continuous creation of matter, thus adhering to the perfect cosmological principle, a principle that asserts that the observable universe is practically the same at any time and any place. While from the 1940s to the 1960s the astrophysical community was equally divided between supporters of the Big Bang theory and supporters of the steady-state theory, it is now rejected by the vast majority of cosmologists, astrophysicists and astronomers, as the observational evidence points to a hot Big Bang cosmology with a finite age of the universe, which the steady-state model does not predict. History In the 13th century, Siger of Brabant authored the thesis ''The Eternity of the World'', which argued that there was no first man, and no first specimen of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Contingency (philosophy)
In philosophy and logic, contingency is the status of propositions that are neither true under every possible valuation (i.e. tautologies) nor false under every possible valuation (i.e. contradictions). A contingent proposition is neither necessarily true nor necessarily false. Overview Propositions that are contingent may be so because they contain logical connectives which, along with the truth value of any of its atomic parts, determine the truth value of the proposition. This is to say that the truth value of the proposition is ''contingent'' upon the truth values of the sentences which comprise it. Contingent propositions depend on the facts, whereas analytic propositions are true without regard to any facts about which they speak. Along with contingent propositions, there are at least three other classes of propositions, some of which overlap: * '' Tautological'' propositions, which ''must'' be true, no matter what the circumstances are or could be (example: "It is the cas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Causal
Causality (also referred to as causation, or cause and effect) is influence by which one event, process, state, or object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the cause is partly responsible for the effect, and the effect is partly dependent on the cause. In general, a process has many causes, which are also said to be ''causal factors'' for it, and all lie in its past. An effect can in turn be a cause of, or causal factor for, many other effects, which all lie in its future. Some writers have held that causality is metaphysically prior to notions of time and space. Causality is an abstraction that indicates how the world progresses. As such a basic concept, it is more apt as an explanation of other concepts of progression than as something to be explained by others more basic. The concept is like those of agency and efficacy. For this reason, a leap of intuition may be needed to grasp it. Accordingly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
