Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The hard problem of consciousness is the question of what consciousness is and why we have consciousness as opposed to being philosophical zombies. The adjective "hard" is to contrast with the "easy" consciousness problems, which seek to explain the mechanisms of consciousness ("why" as compared with "how", or final cause versus efficient cause ).
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its methods and assumptions.
Chalmers's hard problem presents a counterexample to this view and to other phenomena like swarms of birds, since it suggests that consciousness, like swarms of birds, cannot be reductively explained by appealing to their physical constituents. Thus, if the hard problem is a real problem then physicalism must be false, and if physicalism is ...
The problem of defining philosophy concerns the question of what all forms of philosophy have in common, i.e. how philosophy differs from non-philosophy or other disciplines, such as the empirical sciences or fine art. One difficulty is due to the fact that the meaning of the term "philosophy" has changed a lot in history: it was used in a much ...
The apparent gap between "is" statements and "ought" statements, when combined with Hume's fork, renders "ought" statements of dubious validity.Hume's fork is the idea that all items of knowledge are based either on logic and definitions, or else on observation.
Analytic philosophy is a broad, contemporary movement or tradition within Western philosophy, especially anglophone philosophy, focused on analysis as a philosophical method. [ a ] [ b ] It is characterized by a clarity of prose ; rigor in arguments; and making use of formal logic and mathematics, and, to a lesser degree, the natural sciences .
[135] In a purely human moral system, it is hard to rise above the easy-going mood, since the thinker's "various ideals, known to him to be mere preferences of his own, are too nearly of the same denominational value; [136] he can play fast and loose with them at will. This too is why, in a merely human world without a God, the appeal to our ...
The philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of the mind and its relation to the body and the external world. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are addressed, such as the hard problem of consciousness and the nature of particular mental states.