What is real? This question has baffled philosophers and scientists alike for years, and has even lead to the formation of its own branch of philosophy known as metaphysics. Philosophers such as Buddha, have provided their own insight as to what is real. Various beliefs in metaphysics such as idealism attempt to provide resolution to this question. Virtual reality, in the sense of computer-generated reality, only complicates the issue. Ontology, a branch of metaphysics, also concerns itself with what is actually real. Pre-Socratic philosophers struggled to understand ultimate reality. Plato and Aristotle hypothesized about what they believed to be ultimately real, providing conflicting results. In Asia, Buddhists were attempting to provide …show more content…
The common phrase “It’s just a question of mind over matter” imitates his belief that reason controls reality. Ingrained in our culture is the idea that our bodies are inferior to our minds, and cannot be completely trusted. Only logic and reason can edge us to the truth. This provides us with the notion that we have superiority to those with lesser intellect. This allows us to live almost singularly in our heads, neglecting our bodies until they require attention. The primary implication of Plato’s view is that our proper home is not in the imperfect world, rather in another world where things exist in a perfect …show more content…
This is the theory that essentially all reality can be described as matter in motion. This ontology rejects all other theories, saying that matter alone administers ample explanation for reality. Understanding the universes physical processes is of the upmost importance, while intelligence and purpose should be looked at in lesser detail. Materialism attained its greatest expression through the scientific method. In this time, everything was governed in regard to the laws of classical physics. Every occurrence had a determined cause, and all motion was plainly resolved. No incident was free nor random, thus giving way to the epithet “clockwork universe.” For centuries materialism was the philosophical view that most closely aligned with the scientific understanding of reality. Over the course of history, physicists continued to make discovery’s providing scientific explanations for occurrences that previously had none. For a period of time it seemed as though nearly all incidents described by religion or philosophy would be replaced in materialistic terms. It wasn’t until the discover of quantum mechanics and the relativity theory, that the concept of materialism began losing
The best way to examine this would be to pick at the individual premises that Plato makes. An outline of these premises in Plato’s final argument and his conclusion are as follows:
Therefore, many of the philosophers disagreed with each other and came up with very different answers for the same concepts. Plato also did not know the answers to all of the questions that arose in the pre-Socratic era. Plato decided to look back on the pre-Socratics era in particular at the philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides. He agreed with Heraclitus who believed our world is constantly changing and with Parmenides who believed that the real world is not the same as the world of our experience. Plato chose to look at materialism and also his theory of Forms in a two-world setting in order to attempt to answer the questions of the universe. The two worlds Plato is talking about are: a world that is in constant flux (the world we live in) and a world that is ever-changing (the real world, otherwise known as Forms). Plato’s Forms distinguishes things that are real from things in our mind that we perceive as real. Plato also made the argument that reality is different than our worldly experience. Plato believed that material objects can imitate the forms because they have order, however, Aristotle’s disagreed. However, Aristotle thought that Plato’s concept of “participation” didn’t make sense. Aristotle believed that the world we live in is our reality and he argued that Plato’s idea of forms
Plato has had a lot of influence on the philosophy that we have today. In this modern time we do not really have our own philosophy we are learning our philosophy from a guy that wrote it hundreds of years ago. It is really significant that we are still going with his thoughts on justice and things like that, but the ideas are a little old and not very well applied to the modern ways of life. I found this person who was writing about why Plato was wrong and she made some very good point in which the language and arguments make no sense and there really is no information there. “Plato takes forever to say anything, spinning what should be a single sentence into a page or more. This makes it very difficult to quote his argument directly so that
I believe that it is all real in some way or the other the physical world is of course real, we feel pain, happiness, love how else we would feel those if it was not real. The spiritual world is real in a different way by that way we cannot see. Here is an example at my old house I would be home alone and every so often I would hear noises upstairs like foot steps to this day I could not tell you what the noise was.
Materialists claim that everything is either a physical thing or an aspect of a physical thing, and no physical thing is dependent on the mind. A physical thing is not necessarily a solid object, but...
Physicalism, also known as materialism, is a view on the relationship between the mind and the body. Physicalism states that the mind and body are connected; every nonphysical thing can be explained by physics and/or occurs in a physical form (Physicalism, 1999). Philosophers who have studied and trust this concept believe that things like feelings, thoughts, and other similar things are explainable through science. There are philosophers who argue that though one can know everything there is to know about the color red, while never having experienced red (Demircioglu, 2013). Though, in physicalism, red may not be solely scientific, it is also not just a concept. On the other hand, dualism claims feelings, thoughts, and the like are totally separate from the body because they are not physically there in the brain or elsewhere (Robb, 2005). Dualism, however, brings the mind body problem up for
Thus, according to the theory of materialism all things consist of material and everything that is considered a phenomena is a result of material interactions, with no involvement of spirit or consciousness. Materialism is a type of monism, but still stands as its own thing.
Which in turn creates formed matter. Without one you cannot have the other. Unlike with Plato where everything is perspective and that we only see copies that are lacking perfection because they are in this other world of Forms. Claiming that there are two worlds that run simultaneously but that we as humans may never see because we cannot break free of the chains. Aristotle states that everything is in one world. Which makes more sense since this other world from Plato cannot be seen. Also even the minutest objects have a meaning such as atoms which are smaller than the eye can see and yet they have a
Virtual reality can be defined as a, "technology that enables users to enter computer generated worlds and interface with them three dimensionally through sight, sound, and touch" (Newquist 93). Virtual reality combines computer simulation and visualization into a single, coherent whole (Peterson 8). Researchers say it embodies an attempt to eliminate the traditional distinction between the user and the machine. Virtual reality is intended to provide a means of naturally and intelligently interacting with information (8). Virtual reality is contending to be the interface of the future, allowing ordinary users to use their senses to interact with complex data.
Plato believed that the body and the soul were two separate entities, the body being mortal and the soul being immortal. In Plato’s phaedo, this is further explained by Socrates. He claims that by living a philosophical life, we are able to eventually free the soul from the body and its needs. If we have not yield to our bodily needs, we should not fear death, since it can than permanently detach the soul from the body. The most convincing argument for the immortality of the body is the theory of recollection, which shows that we are already born with knowledge of forms and that learning is thus recalling these ideas. If we are already born with knowledge this implies that are soul is immortal, since it would otherwise be a blank page.
According to Plato, his Theory of Forms states perfection only lives in the realm of thought. There only exists one of every ideal and the rest is just a copy. This one creation is called a form, the most flawless representation of an idea. In the physical world everything is a copy of these forms and all copies are imperfect. Plato believed in two worlds; the intelligible world and the illusionistic world. The intelligible world is where everything is unchanging and eternal. We can only grasp the intelligible world with our mind. It is the world of ideas and not senses. A place where there are perfect forms of the things we know on Earth. According to Plato everything in the world we live in is an illusion. All objects are only shadows of their true forms. His theory further states every group of objects that have the same defying properties must have an ideal form. For example, in the class of wine glasses there must be one in particular that is the ideal wine glass. All others would fall under this ideal form.
The study of any particular science involves embracing particular and specific ontology, epistemology and methodologies that are different from each other. Ontology is the concept that defines and explains the essential types of truth (Blaikie 2009). Every field of science constitutes its own ontology and in most cases two types of ontology exists: formal ontology and domain ontology (Blaikie 2009). Formal ontology type of research always postulates something general related to reality while on the other hand domain ontology postulate something specific with regard to different types of truths (Blaikie 2009). On its part epistemology constitute a science concept that defines how human and the general population of the world know and reason the particular truth. The two concepts are differentiated by particular assumptions that are associated with each of them. For instance assumptions associated with ontology include: shallow realist, conceptual realist, cautious realist, depth realist and idealist (Blaikie 2009). On the other hand assumptions related to epistemology include: empiricism, rationalism, falsificationism, neo-realism and constructionism (Blaikie 2009). Therefore the purpose of this essay will be to define objectivism and inteprativism as related to ontology, define positivism and interpretavism as related to epistemology, explain how ontology and epistemology are linked and how they influence each other, before lastly looking at how important ontology and epistemology are.
Plato believes there is two types of worlds that are of knowledge and opinion. As he understands, what is an every lasting reality is a true knowledge, which is the heart of what needs to be understood and everything people need to know. As he says for opinion, it will be only successful some times, as knowledge will always be right and successful at all times when implemented. An opinion for him has no base on true knowledge, but pure people’s speculations of their points of views. A true knowledge will never be influenced by any changes and it cannot be affected by anything; it will stand alone without changing. In Plato’s argument of how men will acquire knowledge in life, he says that knowledge resides in men’s immortal soul prior to his birth; this is how men will first encounter what he calls the “Forms” in that
He wrote many dialogues, and one of them includes his famous dialogue called “Allegory of the Cave.” This dialogue explained how we were born into being very naïve people about our surroundings and taking things for granted, but eventually with the right education we grow to be philosophers that know the Form of Good. Society closes our eyes and whispers things to us in our ears and we believe it, in order to break free we need to educate ourselves into being more knowledgeable about our surroundings. We need to analyze even the smallest things, nothing is to be taken for granted because everything is more complex than what it seems (Plato, p. 26). Plato also states in his idea of self, the soul, that the soul is composed of three parts, our desires, the conscious awareness of reason and the spirited part which gets angry at injustice (Plato, p.40). His allegory and this idea about the parts of the soul connect with each other and might as well lead us to understanding what his idea truly means. Like the first argument, we could say that because our souls is what makes us alive, we are aware of the life we live, therefore we become philosophers only when we do not forget where we came from. This though, sounds contradicting to itself if we take the second argument in hand. If our soul is our life and our body is what carries it, than our ability to become philosophers depends solely on our ability to remove our soul from the body in
In the Phaedo, Plato introduced the theory of Ideas which centered on the problem of immortality of the soul, which suggested that true cannot be finding in the sensible world, but in the world of ideas. He talked about the knowledge of equality in the sense world in which it is impossible to have things that are equal. Things in the sense world might seem to be equal, but in reality it is not. Equality can only come from the mind and this equality is Ideas, which has always been in the mind and is unchangeable, universal, and eternal. He lays down that ideas such as beauty itself, goodness itself, and justice itself are itself when they partake in themselves. For example, beautiful object is beautiful because they partake in itself or all beautiful things are beauty by itself. This makes beauty exist forever and not like objects in the sense world which is temporary. He used these Ideas to use as his proof for the immorality of the soul. The body is like objects in the sense world, which is temporary and insignificant. These objects can change from hour to hour and from day to day. They are unreliable and useless. The soul, on the other hand, is in the Ideas world which is unchangeable, perfect and is forever. Just like beautiful thing partake of beauty by itself, the soul partake in the ideas of life which means that the soul li...