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Vertiginous Question
Benj Hellie's vertiginous question asks why, of all the subjects of experience out there, ''this'' one—the one corresponding to the human being referred to as Benj Hellie—is the one whose experiences are ''lived''? (The reader is supposed to substitute their own case for Hellie's.) In other words: Why am I me and not someone else? A simple response is that this question reduces to "Why are Hellie's experiences lived from Hellie's perspective," which is trivial to answer. However, Hellie argues, through a parable, that this response leaves something out. His parable describes two situations, one reflecting a broad global ''constellation'' view of the world and everyone's phenomenal features, and one describing an ''embedded'' view from the perspective of a single subject. The former seems to align better with the simple response above, but the latter seems to be a better description of consciousness. Overview Philosophers have used various different terminology to describe the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Parable
A parable is a succinct, didactic story, in prose or verse, that illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles. It differs from a fable in that fables employ animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as characters, whereas parables have human characters. A parable is a type of metaphorical analogy. Some scholars of the canonical gospels and the New Testament apply the term "parable" only to the parables of Jesus, although that is not a common restriction of the term. Etymology The word ''parable'' comes from the Greek παραβολή (''parabolē''), literally "throwing" (''bolē'') "alongside" (''para-''), by extension meaning "comparison, illustration, analogy." It was the name given by Greek rhetoricians to an illustration in the form of a brief fictional narrative. History The Bible contains numerous parables in the Gospels of the New Testament ( Jesus' parables). These are believed by some scholars (such as John P. Meier) to have been inspir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Hitoshi Nagai
is one of the most influential Japanese philosophers, who taught philosophy at Chiba University and later at Nihon University. His main research fields are metaphysics and metaethics. His books include "Philosophy for Kids!" and "A Transfer Student and Black Jack: A Seminar on Solipsity," which interpret solipsism from a unique metaphysical point of view. Nagai's philosophy has been heavily influenced by Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. From 1929 to 1947, Witt ..., however, his philosophy successfully elucidates an important aspect of solipsism which Wittgenstein could not fully express in his philosophical works. Nagai stresses that the solipsistic subject (such as "I!") can be pointed to by using the public language, but the trial of this pointing ought to be failed every time ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Concepts In The Philosophy Of Mind
A concept is an abstract idea that serves as a foundation for more concrete principles, thoughts, and beliefs. Concepts play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied within such disciplines as linguistics, psychology, and philosophy, and these disciplines are interested in the logical and psychological structure of concepts, and how they are put together to form thoughts and sentences. The study of concepts has served as an important flagship of an emerging interdisciplinary approach, cognitive science. In contemporary philosophy, three understandings of a concept prevail: * mental representations, such that a concept is an entity that exists in the mind (a mental object) * abilities peculiar to cognitive agents (mental states) * Fregean senses, abstract objects rather than a mental object or a mental state Concepts are classified into a hierarchy, higher levels of which are termed "superordinate" and lower levels termed "subordinate". Additi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Conceptions Of Self
Conception commonly refers to: * Concept, an abstract idea or a mental symbol * Conception (biology), fertilization of the ovum Conception may also refer to: Entertainment * ''Conception'' (album), an album by Miles Davis * "Conception" (song), a 1950 jazz standard by George Shearing * ''Conception'', a posthumous album by Bill Evans * Conception (band), a Norwegian band * ''Conception'' (film), a 2011 film * ''Conception'' (video game), a 2012 role-playing video game developed by Spike ** ''Conception'' (anime), a 2018 anime TV series adaptation of the same video game * '' Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars'', a 2013 RPG video game also by Spike Maritime * Sinking of MV ''Conception'', a 2019 fire and sinking of a dive boat Places * Conception, Missouri, US * Conception, Minnesota, US * Conception Bay, Newfoundland, Canada * Conception Bay (Namibia) See also * Concept (other) * Concepción (other) Concepción (Spanish for ''conc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Type–token Distinction
The type–token distinction is the difference between a ''type'' of objects (analogous to a ''class'') and the individual ''tokens'' of that type (analogous to ''instances''). Since each type may be instantiated by multiple tokens, there are generally more tokens than types of an object. For example, the sentence "A Rose is a rose is a rose" contains three word types: three word tokens of the type ''a'', two word tokens of the type ''is,'' and three word tokens of the type ''rose''. The distinction is important in disciplines such as logic, linguistics, metalogic, typography, and computer programming. Overview The type–token distinction separates ''types'' (abstract descriptive concepts) from ''tokens'' (objects that instantiate concepts). For example, in the sentence "''the bicycle is becoming more popular''" the word ''bicycle'' represents the abstract concept of bicycles and this abstract concept is a type, whereas in the sentence "''the bicycle is in the garage''", it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Subjectivity And Objectivity (philosophy)
The distinction between subjectivity and objectivity is a basic idea of philosophy, particularly epistemology and metaphysics. Various understandings of this distinction have evolved through the work of countless philosophers over centuries. One basic distinction is: *Something is subjective if it is dependent on a mind (biases, perception, emotions, opinions, imagination, or experience, conscious experience).Robert C. Solomon, Solomon, Robert C.]"Subjectivity" in Honderich, Ted. ''Oxford Companion to Philosophy'' (Oxford University Press, 2005), p.900. If a claim is true exclusively when considering the claim from the viewpoint of a sentient being, it is subjectively true. For example, one person may consider the weather to be pleasantly warm, and another person may consider the same weather to be too hot; both views are subjective. *Something is objective if it can be confirmed independently of a mind. If a claim is true even when considering it outside the viewpoint of a sentient ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Subjectivism
Subjectivism is the doctrine that "our own mental activity is the only unquestionable fact of our experience", instead of shared or communal, and that there is no external or objective truth. While Thomas Hobbes was an early proponent of subjectivism, the success of this position is historically attributed to Descartes and his methodic doubt. He used it as an epistemological tool to prove the opposite (an objective world of facts independent of one's own knowledge, ergo the "Father of Modern Philosophy" inasmuch as his views underlie a scientific worldview). Subjectivism accords primacy to subjective experience as fundamental of all measure and law. In extreme forms like Solipsism, it may hold that the nature and existence of every object depends solely on someone's subjective awareness of it. One may consider the qualified empiricism of George Berkeley in this context, given his reliance on God as the prime mover of human perception. Metaphysical subjectivism Subjectivism is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Subjective Idealism
Subjective idealism, or empirical idealism or immaterialism, is a form of philosophical monism that holds that only minds and mental contents exist. It entails and is generally identified or associated with immaterialism, the doctrine that material things do not exist. Subjective idealism rejects dualism, neutral monism, and materialism; it is the contrary of eliminative materialism, the doctrine that all or some classes of mental phenomena (such as emotions, beliefs, or desires) do not exist, but are sheer illusions. Overview Subjective idealism is a fusion of phenomenalism or empiricism, which confers special status upon the immediately perceived, with idealism, which confers special status upon the mental. Idealism denies the knowability or existence of the non-mental, while phenomenalism serves to restrict the mental to the empirical. Subjective idealism thus identifies its mental reality with the world of ordinary experience, and does not comment on whether this real ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Problem Of Mental Causation
The problem of mental causation is a conceptual issue in the philosophy of mind. That problem, in short, is how to account for the common sense idea that intentional thoughts or intentional mental states are causes of intentional actions. The problem divides into several distinct sub-problems, including the problem of causal exclusion, the problem of anomalism, and the problem of externalism. However, the sub-problem which has attracted most attention in the philosophical literature is arguably the exclusion problem. Description The basic problem of mental causation is an intuitive one: on the face of it, it seems that mental events cause physical events (and vice versa), but how can mental events have any causal effect on physical events? Suppose that a person, John, orders dessert after dinner. It seems that at least one cause for such a physical, behavioral event is that John desired to have dessert and believed that by ordering dessert he would be able to soon have dessert. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Indexicality
In semiotics, linguistics, anthropology, and philosophy of language, indexicality is the phenomenon of a ''Sign (semiotics), sign'' pointing to (or ''indexing'') some element in the context (language use), context in which it occurs. A sign that signifies indexically is called an index or, in philosophy, an indexical. The modern concept originates in the semiotic theory of Charles Sanders Peirce, in which indexicality is one of the three fundamental sign modalities by which a sign relates to its referent (the others being iconicity and Symbolic anthropology, symbolism).Charles Sanders Peirce, Peirce, C.S., "Division of Signs" in ''Collected Papers'', 1932 [1897]. Peirce's concept has been adopted and extended by several twentieth-century academic traditions, including those of linguistic pragmatics, linguistic anthropology, and Anglo-American philosophy of language. Words and expressions in language often derive some part of their referential meaning from indexicality. For example ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Further Facts
In philosophy, further facts are facts that do not logical consequence, follow logically from the physical facts of the world. Reductionism, Reductionists who argue that at bottom there is nothing more than the physical facts thus argue against the existence of further facts. The concept of further facts plays a key role in some of the major works in analytic philosophy of the late 20th century, including in Derek Parfit's ''Reasons and Persons'', and David Chalmers's ''The Conscious Mind''. One context in which the existence of further facts is debated is that of personal identity across time: in what sense is Alice today the ''same'' person as Alice yesterday, given that across the two days the state of her brain is different and the atoms that constitute her are different? On the one hand, we may believe that at bottom, there is nothing more than the atoms and their arrangement at different points in time; while we may for practical purposes come up with some notion of sameness ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
