Portal:Philosophy/Selected article

Week 1           view - talk - edit - history

Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics and qualities to non-human beings, objects, natural, or supernatural phenomena. A form of personification (applying human or animal qualities to inanimate objects), anthropomorphism is similar to prosopopoeia (adopting the persona of another person). Animals, the forces of nature, and unseen or unknown authors of chance are frequent subjects of anthropomorphosis.

In religion and mythology, "anthropomorphism" refers to the perception of a divine being or beings in human form, or the recognition of human qualities generally, in these beings. Many mythologies are almost entirely concerned with anthropomorphic deities who express human characteristics such as jealousy, hatred, or love. The Greek gods such as Zeus and Apollo were often depicted in human form exhibiting both commendable and despicable human traits.

Pictured is the Roman god Apollo, an anthropomorphic representation of the Sun

Week 2           view - talk - edit - history

In ethics, cognitivism is the view that ethical sentences express propositions and can therefore be true or false (they are truth-apt). See also non-cognitivism.

Propositions are, roughly, what meaningful declarative sentences are supposed to express (but not interrogative or imperative sentences). Different sentences, in different languages, can (it is often thought) express the same proposition: "snow is white" and "Schnee ist weiß" (in German) both express the proposition that snow is white. A common assumption among philosophers who use this jargon is that propositions, properly speaking, are what are true or false (what bear truth values; they are truthbearers). So if an ethical sentence does express a proposition, then the sentence expresses something that can be true or false.

Week 3           view - talk - edit - history

A right is a power or liberty to which one is justly entitled, or a thing to which one has a just claim. Rights serve as rules of interaction between people, and, as such, they place constraints and obligations upon the actions of individuals or groups (for example, if one has a right to life, this means that others do not have the liberty to murder him; if one has a right within a society to a free public education, this means that other members of that society have an obligation to pay taxes in order to pay the costs of that education).

Most modern conceptions of rights are universalist and egalitarian - in other words, equal rights are granted to all people. There are two main modern conceptions of rights: on the one hand, the idea of natural rights holds that there is a certain list of rights enshrined in nature that cannot be legitimately modified by any human power. On the other hand, the idea of legal rights holds that rights are human constructs, created by society, enforced by governments and subject to change.

Week 4           view - talk - edit - history

A wrong is a concept in law, ethics, and science. In law, a wrong can be a legal injury, which is any damage resulting from a violation of a legal right. It can also imply the state of being contrary to the principles of justice or law. It means that something is contrary to conscience or morality and results in treating others unjustly. In ethics, wrong is the opposite of right. In a relativist consideration of ethics, the factors affecting the way different cultures determine norms for what is wrong form part of the subject-matter of anthropology. All cultures seem to have degrees of wrongness, reflected at the extreme in behaviours that are treated as taboos.

Week 5           view - talk - edit - history

Justice is the ideal, morally correct state of things and persons. According to most of the many theories of justice, it is overwhelmingly important: John Rawls, for instance, claims that "Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. Most people believe that injustice must be resisted and punished, and many social and political movements fight for justice worldwide. But the number and variety of theories of justice suggest that it is not clear what justice and the reality of injustice demand of us, because it is not clear what justice is. We are in the difficult position of thinking that justice is vital, but of not being certain how to distinguish justice from injustice in our characters, institutions or actions, or in the world as a whole.

This problem of uncertainty about fundamentals has inspired philosophical reflection about justice...

Week 6           view - talk - edit - history

The Age of Enlightenment refers to either the eighteenth century in European philosophy, or to the historical intellectual movement The Enlightenment, which advocated Reason as a means to establishing an authoritative system of aesthetics, ethics, government, and logic, which, it was supposed, would allow human beings to obtain objective truth about the universe. Emboldened by the revolution in physics commenced by Newtonian kinematics, Enlightenment thinkers argued that same kind of systematic thinking could apply to all forms of human activity. Its intellectual leaders regarded themselves as a courageous elite who would lead the world into progress from a long period of doubtful tradition, irrationality, superstition, and tyranny, which they imputed to the Dark Ages.

The movement helped create the intellectual framework which led to the American and French Revolutions...

Week 7           view - talk - edit - history

Logical positivism (also known as rational empiricism) is a school of philosophy that originated in the Vienna Circle in the 1920s. It combines positivism—which states that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge—with a version of apriorism—the notion that some propositional knowledge can be had without, or "prior to", experience.

Logical positivism denied the soundness of metaphysics and large swathes of traditional philosophy, and affirmed that statements about metaphysics, religion and ethics are devoid of cognitive meaning and are nothing but the expression of feelings or desires; only statements about mathematics, logic and natural sciences have definite meaning. Logical positivism holds that philosophy should aspire to the rigor of science. Philosophy should provide strict criteria for judging sentences true, false, and meaningless.

Logical positivism is perhaps best known for the verifiability criterion of meaning, which asserts that a statement is meaningful if and only if it is empirically verifiable. One intended consequence of the verification criterion is...

Week 8           view - talk - edit - history

Futures studies, also called futurology, reflects on how today’s changes (or the lack thereof) become tomorrow’s reality. It includes attempts to analyze the sources, patterns, and causes of change and stability in order to develop foresight and to map alternative futures. The subjects and methods of futures studies include possible, probable and desirable variation or alternative transformations of the present, both social and “natural” (i.e. independent of human impact). A broad field of enquiry, futures studies explores and represents what the present could become from multiple interdisciplinary perspectives.

Future studies uses scenarios - alternative possible futures - as an important tool. To some extent, people can determine what they consider probable or desirable using qualitative and quantitative methods. By looking at a variety of possibilities one comes closer to shaping the future, rather than merely predicting it...

Week 9           view - talk - edit - history

A posthuman or post-human is a hypothetical future being whose capabilities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer human by current standards. A posthuman can also be described as the creature that results from radical human enhancement. In these ways, the difference between the posthuman and other hypothetical sophisticated non-humans is that a posthuman was once a human, either in its life time or in the life times of some or all of its direct ancestors. As such, a prerequisite for a posthuman is a transhuman, the point at which the human being begins surpassing his own limitations, but is still recognisable as a human person.

Week 10           view - talk - edit - history

Meditation is a form of mental exercise in which one's attention is focused inward upon the mind itself. There are many forms of meditation, most of which are states of relaxation, but not all. Meditation may serve simply as a means of relaxation from a busy daily routine; as a technique for cultivating mental discipline; or as a means of gaining insight into the nature of reality, or of communing with one's God.

Some forms of meditation focus on the field or background perception and experience, also called mindfulness; others focus on a preselected specific object, and are called "'concentrative' meditation." There are also techniques that shift between the field and the object. Many practice meditation in order to achieve peace, while others practice certain physical yogas in order to become healthier. Many people report improved concentration, awareness, self-discipline and equanimity through meditation.

Week 11           view - talk - edit - history

In futures studies, a technological singularity (often the Singularity) is a predicted future event believed to precede immense technological progress in an unprecedentedly brief time. Futurists give varying predictions as to the extent of this progress, the speed at which it occurs, and the exact cause and nature of the event itself.

I. J. Good (1965) has predicted that if artificial intelligence reaches equivalence to human intelligence, it will soon become capable of augmenting its own intelligence with increasing effectiveness, far surpassing human intellect, resulting in an “intelligence explosion.” In the 1980s, Vernor Vinge dubbed this event “the Singularity” and popularized the idea with lectures, essays, and science fiction. Vinge argues the Singularity will occur following creation of strong AI or sufficiently advanced intelligence amplification technologies such as brain-computer interfaces.

Week 12           view - talk - edit - history

In ethics and political science to promote the common good means to benefit members of society. Thus, helping the common good equates with helping all people, or at least the vast majority of them. The common good is often regarded as a utilitarian ideal, thus representing "the greatest possible good for the greatest possible number of individuals". In the best case scenario, the "greatest possible number of individuals" would mean all individuals. In this sense common good is a quality which is convertible, or reducible, to the sum total of all the private interests of the individual members of a society and interchangeable with them.

Another definition of the common good, as the quintessential goal of the State, requires an admission of the individual's basic right in society, which is, namely, the right of everyone to the opportunity to freely shape his life by responsible action, in pursuit of virtue and in accordance with the moral law. The common good, then, is the sum total of the conditions of social life which enable people the more easily and straightforwardly to do so. The object of State sovereignty is the free choice of means for creating these conditions.

Week 13           view - talk - edit - history

The felicific calculus was an algorithm formulated by Jeremy Bentham for calculating the degree or amount of happiness that a specific action is likely to cause, and hence its degree of moral rightness. It is also known as the "Utility Calculus", the "Hedonistic Calculus" and the "Hedonic Calculus".

The calculus was proposed by Bentham as part of his project of making morals amenable to scientific treatment. Since classical utilitarians considered that the rightness of an action was a function of the goodness of its consequences, and that the goodness of a state of affairs was itself a function of the happiness it contained, the felicific calculus could, in principle at least, establish the moral status of any considered act.

Some critics argue that the happiness of different people is incommensurable, and thus a felicific calculus is impossible in practice...

Week 14           view - talk - edit - history

Eudaimonism is a philosophy that defines right action as that which leads to "well-being." The concept originates in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. In Aristotle eudaimonism means that all correct actions lead to the greater well-being of the individual human. By extending well-being from the narrowest concerns to the largest, all social rules can be adduced. Augustine of Hippo adopted the concept as beatitudo, and Thomas Aquinas worked it out into a Christian ethical scheme. For Aquinas, well-being is found ultimately in a direct perception of God, or complete blessedness.

Week 15           view - talk - edit - history

Scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena and acquiring new knowledge, as well as for correcting and integrating previous knowledge. It is based on gathering observable, empirical, measurable evidence, subject to the principles of reasoning.

Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, there are identifiable features that distinguish scientific inquiry from other methods of developing knowledge. Scientific researchers propose specific hypotheses as explanations of natural phenomena, and design experimental studies that test these predictions for accuracy. These steps are repeated in order to make increasingly dependable predictions of future results. Theories that encompass wider domains of inquiry serve to bind more specific hypotheses together in a coherent structure. This in turn aids in the formation of new hypotheses, as well as in placing groups of specific hypotheses into a broader context of understanding.

Week 16           view - talk - edit - history

Humanism is a broad category of active ethical philosophies that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appeal to universal human qualities—particularly rationalism. Humanism is a component of a variety of more specific philosophical systems, and is also incorporated into some religious schools of thought.

Humanism entails a commitment to the search for truth and morality through human means in support of human interests. In focusing on the capacity for self-determination, Humanism rejects transcendental justifications, such as a dependence on faith, the supernatural, or divinely revealed texts. Humanists endorse universal morality based on the commonality of human nature, suggesting that solutions to our social and cultural problems cannot be parochial.

Week 17           view - talk - edit - history

Knowledge is what is known. Like the related concepts truth, belief, and wisdom, there is no single definition of knowledge on which scholars agree, but rather numerous theories and continued debate about the nature of knowledge. The study of the nature and scope of knowledge is epistemology, one of the four branches of Western philosophy.

Knowledge is distinct from belief. If someone claims to believe something, he or she is claiming that it is the truth. Of course, it might turn out that he or she was mistaken, and that what was thought to be true was actually false. This is not the case with knowledge. For example, suppose that Jeff thinks that a particular bridge is safe, and attempts to cross it; unfortunately, the bridge collapses under his weight. We might say that Jeff believed that the bridge was safe, but that his belief was mistaken. We would not accurately say that he knew that the bridge was safe, because plainly it was not. For something to count as knowledge, it must be true.

Week 18           view - talk - edit - history

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 from it 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).

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.

Week 19           view - talk - edit - history

The well-being or quality of life of a population is an important concern in economics and political science. There are many components to well-being. A large part is standard of living, the amount of money and access to goods and services that a person has; these numbers are fairly easily measured. Others factors, like freedom, happiness, art, environmental health, and innovation, are far harder to measure. This has created an inevitable imbalance as programs and policies are created to fit the easily available economic numbers, while ignoring the other measures that are very difficult to plan for or assess.

Debate on quality of life is millennia-old, with Aristotle giving it much thought in his Nicomachean Ethics and eventually settling on the notion of eudaimonia, a Greek term often translated as happiness, as central.

Week 20           view - talk - edit - history

Non-cognitivism is the meta-ethical view that moral statements lack truth-value and do not assert propositions. A noncognitivist denies the cognitivist claim that "moral judgments are capable of being objectively true, because they describe some feature of the world." If moral statements cannot be true, and if one cannot know something that is not true, noncognitivism implies that moral knowledge is impossible.

While the bare term non-cognitivism usually refers to ethics, it can also be applied in other branches of philosophy, as in theological noncognitivism.

Week 21           view - talk - edit - history

Phrenology (from Greek: φρήν, phrēn, "mind"; and λόγος, logos, "knowledge") is a theory which claims to be able to determine character, personality traits, and criminality on the basis of the shape of the head (reading "bumps"). Developed by German physician Franz Joseph Gall around 1800, and very popular in the 19th century, it is now discredited as a pseudoscience. Phrenology has however received credit as a protoscience for having contributed to medical science the ideas that the brain is the organ of the mind and that certain brain areas have localized, specific functions.

Its principles were that the brain is the organ of the mind, and that mind has a set of different mental faculties, each particular faculty being represented in a different part or organ of the brain. These areas were said to be proportional to a given individual's propensities and importance of a mental faculty, and the overlying skull bone to reflect these differences.

Phrenology, which focuses on personality and character, is to be distinguished from craniometry, which is the study of skull size, weight and shape, and physiognomy, the study of facial features. However, these fields have all claimed the ability to predict traits or intelligence. They were once intensively practised in anthropology/ethnology and sometimes utilized to "scientifically" justify racism. While some principles of phrenology are well-established today, the basic premise that personality is determined by skull shape is almost universally considered to be false.

Week 22           view - talk - edit - history

The I Ching is the oldest of the Chinese classic texts. It describes an ancient system of cosmology and philosophy which is at the heart of Chinese cultural beliefs. The philosophy centers on the ideas of the dynamic balance of opposites, the evolution of events as a process, and acceptance of the inevitability of change (see Philosophy, below). In Western cultures, the I Ching is regarded by some as simply a system of divination; many believe it expresses the wisdom and philosophy of ancient China.

• 易 (yì), when used as an adjective, means "easy" or "simple", while as a verb it implies "to change".
• 經 (jīng) here means "classic (text)", which derived from its original meaning of "regularity" or "persistency", implying that the text describes the Ultimate Way which will not change throughout the flow of time.

Week 23           view - talk - edit - history

Ethics (via Latin ethica from the Ancient Greek ἠθική [φιλοσοφία] "moral philosophy", from the adjective of ἤθος ēthos "custom, habit"), a major branch of philosophy, is the study of values and customs of a person or group. It covers the analysis and employment of concepts such as right and wrong, good and evil, and responsibility. It is divided into three primary areas: meta-ethics (the study of the concept of ethics), normative ethics (the study of how to determine ethical values), and applied ethics (the study of the use of ethical values).

Week 24           view - talk - edit - history

Kalam (علم الكلم)is one of the 'religious sciences' of Islam. In Arabic the word means "discussion", and refers to the Islamic tradition of seeking theological principles through dialectic. A scholar of kalam is referred to as a mutakallam (Muslim theologian; plural mutakallamin).

The original scholars of kalam were recruited by Hunayn Ibn Ishaq (d. 873) for the House of Wisdom under the Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad. They collected, translated, and synthesised everything that the genius of other cultures had accumulated before undertaking to augment and expand it. From their translations of Greek, Iranian, and Indian works they formed the basis of Muslim falsafa (philosophy) in the 9th and 10th centuries.

Week 25           view - talk - edit - history

Tao or Dao (pronounced "taů" or "daů") refers to a Chinese character that was of pivotal meaning in ancient Chinese philosophy and religion. Tao is central to Taoism, but Confucianism also refers to it. Most debates between proponents of one of the Hundred Schools of Thought could be summarized in the simple question: who is closer to the Tao, or, in other words, whose "Tao" is the most powerful? As used in modern spoken and written Chinese, Tao has a wide scope of usage and meaning. Depending on context, the character 道 'Tao' may be rendered as religion, morality, duty, knowledge, rationality, ultimate truth, path, or taste. Its semantics vary widely depending on the context. Tao is generally translated into English as "The Way".

Week 26           view - talk - edit - history

Decision theory is an interdisciplinary area of study, related to and of interest to practitioners in mathematics, statistics, economics, philosophy, management and psychology. It is concerned with how real decision-makers make decisions, and with how optimal decisions can be reached.

Most of decision theory is normative or prescriptive, i.e. it is concerned with identifying the best decision to take, assuming an ideal decision taker who is fully informed, able to compute with perfect accuracy, and fully rational. The practical application of this prescriptive approach (how people should make decisions) is called decision analysis, and aimed at finding tools, methodologies and software to help people make better decisions. The most systematic and comprehensive software tools developed in this way are called decision support systems.

Week 27           view - talk - edit - history

Dualism is the view that two fundamental concepts exist, such as good and evil, light and dark, or male and female. Often, they oppose each other. The word's origin is the Latin dualis, meaning "two" (as an adjective).

Moral dualism is the belief of the coexistence (in eastern and naturalistic religions) or conflict (in western religions) between the "benevolent" and the "malignant". Most religious systems have some form of moral dualism - in western religions, for instance, a conflict between good and evil.

Like ditheism/bitheism, moral dualism does not imply the absence of monist or monotheistic principles. Moral dualism simply implies that there are two moral opposites at work, independent of any interpretation of what might be "moral" and - unlike ditheism/bitheism - independent of how these may be represented.

Week 28           view - talk - edit - history

Descriptivist theory of names is a view of the nature of the meaning and reference of proper names generally attributed to Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. The theory consists essentially in the idea that the meanings (semantic contents) of names are identical to the descriptions associated with them by speakers, while their referents are determined to be the objects that satisfy these descriptions.

In the 1970's, this theory came under strong attack from causal theorists such as Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam and others. However, it has seen something of a revival in recent years, especially under the form of what are called two-dimensional semantic theories. This latter trend is exemplified by the theories of David Chalmers, among others.

Week 29           view - talk - edit - history

Maya, (Sanskrit: ma: not, ya: this) in Hinduism, is many things. Maya is the illusion that the phenomenal world of separate objects and people is the only reality. For the mystics this manifestation is real, but it is a fleeting reality; it is a mistake, although a natural one, to believe that maya represents a fundamental reality. Each person, each physical object, from the perspective of eternity is like a brief, disturbed drop of water from an unbounded ocean. The goal of enlightenment is to understand this--more precisely, to experience this: to see intuitively that the distinction between me and the universe is a false dichotomy. The distinction between consciousness and physical matter, between mind and body, is the result of an unenlightened perspective.

Maya is also the name of an Asura, who was the father-in-law of the Lord of Lanka, Ravana and the father of Mandodari. He is the archnemesis of Vishwakarma, the celestial architect of the Gods. His knowledge and skills are compatible with Vishwakarma. When Lanka was destroyed by Hanuman, it was the King of Demons, Maya who had re-installed the beauty of that Island Kingdom.

Week 30           view - talk - edit - history

Madhyamaka is a Buddhist philosophical tradition that asserts that all phenomena are empty of "self-nature" or "essence" (Sanskrit: Svabhāva), that they have no intrinsic, independent reality apart from the causes and conditions from which they arise.

Madhyamaka is the rejection of two extreme philosophies, and therefore represents the "middle way" between eternalism (the view that something is eternal and unchanging) and nihilism (the assertion that all things are intrinsically already destroyed or rendered nonexistent. This is nihilism in the sense of Indian philosophy, and may differ somewhat from Western philosophical nihilism).

Week 31           view - talk - edit - history

Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. No mysterious miracles or wholly random events occur.

The principal consequence of deterministic philosophy is that free will (except as defined in strict compatibilism) becomes an illusion. It is a popular misconception that determinism necessarily entails that all future events have already been predetermined and will necessarily happen (a position known as Fatalism); this is not obviously the case, and the subject is still debated among metaphysicists. Determinism is associated with, and relies upon, the ideas of Materialism and Causality. Some of the philosophers who have dealt with this issue are Omar Khayyám, David Hume, Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, and, more recently, John Searle.

Week 32           view - talk - edit - history

The dictatorship of the proletariat is a term employed by Karl Marx in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program that refers to a transition period between capitalist and communist society "in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat". The term refers to a concentration of power in which rule by the proletariat (working class) would supplant the current political situation controlled by the bourgeoisie (propertied class). It does not refer to the repressive situation associated with the contemporary meaning of the term "dictatorship."

Before 1875, Marx said little about what in practice would characterize a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” believing that planning in advance the details of a future socialist system constituted the fallacy of "utopian socialism." Thus, Marx used the term very infrequently.

Week 33           view - talk - edit - history

In philosophy, materialism is that form of physicalism which holds that the only thing that can truly be said to exist is matter; that fundamentally, all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions; that matter is the only substance. As a theory, materialism belongs to the class of monist ontology. As such, it is different from ontological theories based on dualism or pluralism. In terms of singular explanations of the phenomenal reality, materialism stands in sharp contrast to idealism.

Week 34           view - talk - edit - history

In the philosophy of science, instrumentalism is the view that concepts and theories are merely useful instruments whose worth is measured not by whether the concepts and theories are true or false (or correctly depict reality), but by how effective they are in explaining and predicting phenomena.

Instrumentalism relates closely to pragmatism. This methodological viewpoint often contrasts with scientific realism, which defines theories as specially being more or less true. However, instrumentalism is more of a pragmatic approach to science, information and theories than an ontological statement. Often instrumentalists (just like pragmatists) have been accused of being relativists, even though many instrumentalists are also believers in sturdy objective realism (such as Karl Popper).

Week 35           view - talk - edit - history

Naturalism is any of several philosophical stances, typically those descended from materialism and pragmatism, that do not distinguish the supernatural (including strange entities like non-natural values, and universals as they are commonly conceived) from nature. Naturalism does not necessarily claim that phenomena or hypotheses commonly labeled as supernatural do not exist or are wrong, but insists that all phenomena and hypotheses can be studied by the same methods and therefore anything considered supernatural is either nonexistent, unknowable, or not inherently different from natural phenomena or hypotheses.

Week 36           view - talk - edit - history

Moral realism is the view in philosophy that there are objective moral values. Moral realists argue that moral judgments describe moral facts. This combines a cognitivist view about moral judgments (they are truth-evaluable mental states that describe the state of the world), a view about the existence of moral facts (they do in fact exist), and a view about the nature of moral facts (they are objective: independent of our cognizing them, or our stance towards them, etc.). It contrasts with expressivist or non-cognitivist theories of moral judgment, error theories of moral judgments, fictionalist theories of moral judgment and constructivist or relativist theories of the nature of moral facts.

Week 37           view - talk - edit - history

In philosophy, the term anti-realism is used to describe any position involving either the denial of an objective reality of entities of a certain type or the denial that verification-transcendent statements about a type of entity are either true or false. This latter construal is sometimes expressed by saying "there is no fact of the matter as to whether or not P." Thus, we may speak of anti-realism with respect to other minds, the past, the future, universals, mathematical entities (such as natural numbers), moral categories, the material world, or even thought. The two construals are clearly distinct and often confused. For example, an "anti-realist" who denies that other minds exist (i. e., a solipsist) is quite different from an "anti-realist" who claims that there is no fact of the matter as to whether or not there are unobservable other minds (i. e., a logical behaviorist).

Week 38           view - talk - edit - history

Singularitarianism is a moral philosophy based upon the belief that a technological singularity — the technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence — is possible, and advocating deliberate action to bring it into effect and ensure its safety. While many futurists and transhumanists speculate on the possibility and nature of this type of singularity (often referred to as just the Singularity; capitalized and objectivized to indicate its sheer magnitude as a historical event), Singularitarians believe it is not only possible, but desirable if and only if guided safely. Accordingly, they "dedicate their lives" to acting in ways they believe will contribute to its safe arrival.

Week 39           view - talk - edit - history

Irreligion or irreligiousness is an umbrella term which, depending on context, may be understood as referring to atheism, agnosticism, deism, skepticism, freethought, secular humanism or heresy.^{[citation needed]}

Irreligion has at least three related yet distinct meanings:

• lack of religion (either due to a lack of information about religion or to lack of belief in it)
• hostility to religion
• behaving in such a way that fails to live up to one's religious tenets

Although people classified as irreligious might not follow any religion, they do not necessarily lack belief in the supernatural or in deities; such a person may be a non-religious or non-practicing theist. In particular, those who associate organized religion with negative qualities are likely to hold spiritual beliefs but describe themselves as irreligious.

The percentage of people who are irreligious is...

Week 40           view - talk - edit - history

The problem of free will is the problem of whether human beings exercise control over their own actions and decisions. Addressing this problem requires understanding the relation between freedom and causation, and determining whether or not the laws of nature are causally deterministic. The various positions taken differ on whether all events are determined or not—determinism versus indeterminism—and also on whether freedom can coexist with determinism or not—compatibilism versus incompatibilism. So, for instance, hard determinists argue that the universe is deterministic, and that this makes free will impossible.

The principle of free will has religious, ethical, and scientific implications. For example, in the religious realm, free will may imply that an omnipotent divinity does not assert its power over individual will and choices. In ethics, it may imply that individuals can be held morally accountable for their actions. In psychology, it may imply that the mind controls some of the actions of the body. In the scientific realm, it may imply that the actions of the body, including the brain, are not wholly determined by physical causality. The question of free will has been a central issue since the beginning of philosophical thought.

Week 41           view - talk - edit - history

Ontology is the study of being or existence. It seeks to describe or posit the basic categories and relationships of being or existence to define entities and types of entities within its framework. Ontology can be said to study conceptions of reality.

Week 42           view - talk - edit - history

Zen is a form of Mahayana Buddhism that places great importance on moment-by-moment awareness and 'seeing deeply into the nature of things' by direct experience. Zen emerged as a distinct school in China and spread to Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and, in modern times, the rest of the world.

Zen Buddhism is a branch of Mahayana Buddhism, and, as such, its teachings are deeply rooted in those of the Buddha. The Zen schools, like other Buddhist sects, teach the fundamental elements of Buddhist philosophy, including the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, pratitya samutpada, the five precepts, the five skandhas, and the three dharma seals: non-self, impermanence, and dukkha. Zen philosophy also includes teachings specific to Mahayana Buddhism, including the Mahayanan conception of the paramitas and the ideal of the bodhisattva's universal salvific power...

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Atheism is the state of disbelief or non-belief in the existence of a deity or deities. It is commonly defined as the positive denial of theism (i.e., the assertion that deities do not exist), or the deliberate rejection of theism (i.e., the refusal to believe in the existence of deities). However, others—including most atheistic philosophers and groups—define atheism as the simple absence of belief in deities (cf. nontheism), thereby designating many agnostics, and people who have never heard of gods, such as the unchurched or newborn children, as atheists as well. In recent years, some atheists have adopted the terms strong and weak atheism to clarify whether they consider their stance one of positive belief that no gods exist (strong atheism), or of mere absence of belief that gods exist (weak atheism).

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In religion, ethics, and philosophy, goodness and evil, or simply good and evil, refers to the concept of all human desires and behaviors as conforming to a dualistic spectrum —wherein in one direction are those aspects which are wisely reverent of life and continuity (" good"), and wherein the other direction are those aspects which are vainly reverent of death and destruction ("evil").

Religious and philosophical views tend to agree that, while " good and evil" is a concept and therefore an abstraction, goodness is intrinsic to human nature and is ultimately based on the natural love, bonding, affection that people grow to feel for other people. Likewise, most religious and philosophical interpretations agree that evil is ultimately based in an ignorance of truth (ie. human value, sanctity, divinity), and evil behavior itself is an aberration —one that defies any understanding save that the path to evil is one of confusion and excessive desire (greed)...

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The question "what is the meaning of life?" means different things to different people. The vagueness of the query is inherent in the word "meaning", which opens the question to many interpretations, such as: "What is the origin of life?", "What is the nature of life (and of the universe in which we live)?", "What is the significance of life?", "What is valuable in life?", and "What is the purpose of, or in, (one's) life?". These questions have resulted in a wide range of competing answers and arguments, from scientific theories, to philosophical, theological, and spiritual explanations.

The Question "what is the meaning of life?" can also be simplified to say "why is anything alive?" or "what is the point in living". The answers below simply offer a guide to what is the purpose IN life, not what is the purpose OF life. "Life" itself must also be defined. For example, it could refer merely to the state of existing, or, the life-span of an individual or the achievements of an individual. This can also be applied to an entire species, a planet, or even the universe.

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Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. No mysterious miracles or wholly random events occur.

The principal consequence of deterministic philosophy is that free will (except as defined in strict compatibilism) becomes an illusion. It is a popular misconception that determinism necessarily entails that all future events have already been predetermined and will necessarily happen (a position known as Fatalism); this is not obviously the case, and the subject is still debated among metaphysicists. Determinism is associated with, and relies upon, the ideas of Materialism and Causality. Some of the philosophers who have dealt with this issue are Omar Khayyám, David Hume, Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, and, more recently, John Searle.

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Normative ethics is the branch of the philosophical study of ethics concerned with classifying actions as right and wrong, as opposed to descriptive ethics. Normative ethics regards ethics as a set of norms related to actions.

Descriptive ethics deal with what the population believes to be right and wrong, while normative ethics deal with what the population should believe to be right and wrong.

Moreover, because it examines standards for the rightness and wrongness of actions, normative ethics is distinct from meta-ethics, which studies the nature of moral statements, and from applied ethics, which places normative rules in practical contexts.

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Virtue ethics, one of the three major approaches in normative ethics, focuses on what makes a good person, rather than what makes a good action. It can be described as a teleological ethical system - one that seeks to define the proper telos (goal or end) of the human person. Virtue ethics emphasizes moral character, in contrast to other normative approaches which emphasize duties or rules (deontology) or which emphasize the consequences of actions (consequentialism). Three key concepts virtue ethics are arete (excellence or virtue), phronesis (practical or moral wisdom), and eudaimonia (usually translated as happiness or flourishing).

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Applied ethics is a discipline of philosophy that attempts to apply 'theoretical' ethics, such as utilitarianism, social contract theory, and deontology to solve actual real world dilemmas. In so doing, it illuminates the potential for disagreement over the way theories and principles should be applied. Strict, principle-based ethical approaches often result in solutions to specific problems that are not universally acceptable. Drawing on medical ethics for an example, a strict deontological approach would never permit the deception of a patient about their condition, whereas a utilitarian approach would involve consideration of the consequences of so doing, and might permit lying to a patient if the result of the deception was 'good'. The example demonstrates that a deontologist can derive a different solution to a dilemma than a utilitarian.

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Consequentialism refers to those moral theories that hold that the consequences of a particular action form the basis for any valid moral judgment about that action. Thus, on a consequentialist account, a morally right action is an action which produces good consequences. More formally, consequentialism refers to those moral theories which hold that consequences are more important than any other normative criteria. Consequentialism is usually understood as distinct from deontological ethics, which emphasizes the type of action instead of its consequences, and virtue ethics, which focuses on the character and motivations of the agent.

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Humanism is a comprehensive life stance that upholds human reason, ethics, and justice, and rejects supernaturalism, pseudoscience and superstition. This article uses the words Humanism and Humanist (with a capital 'H' and no adjective such as "secular"[1]) to refer to the life stance and its adherents, and humanism (with a small 'h') to refer to other related movements or philosophies. While this convention is not universal among all Humanists, it is used by a significant number of them, and for purposes of this article, helps distinguish between Humanism as a life stance and other forms of humanism.

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Transhumanism (sometimes abbreviated >H or H+) is an international intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of new sciences and technologies to enhance human cognitive and physical abilities and ameliorate what it regards as undesirable and unnecessary aspects of the human condition, such as disease, aging, and death. Transhumanist thinkers study the possibilities and consequences of developing and using human enhancement techniques and other emerging technologies for these purposes. Possible dangers, as well as benefits, of powerful new technologies that might radically change the conditions of human life are also of concern to the transhumanist movement.

Although the first known use of the term "transhumanism" dates from 1957, the contemporary meaning is a product of the 1980s, when a group of scientists, artists, and futurists based in the United States began to organize what has since grown into the transhumanist movement. Transhumanist thinkers postulate that human beings will eventually be transformed into beings with such greatly expanded abilities as to merit the label "posthuman".

The transhumanist vision of a profoundly transformed future humanity has attracted many supporters as well as critics from a wide range of perspectives. Transhumanism has been described by a proponent as the "movement that epitomizes the most daring, courageous, imaginative, and idealistic aspirations of humanity," while according to a prominent critic, it is the world's most dangerous idea.