Myswizard

The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view.

The mind is the term most commonly used to describe the higher functions of the human brain, particularly those of which humans are subjectively conscious, such as personality, thought, reason, memory, intelligence and emotion. Although other species of animals share some of these mental capacities, the term is usually used only in relation to humans. It is also used in relation to postulated supernatural beings to which human-like qualities are ascribed, as in the expression “the mind of God.”

Theories of the mind
There are many theories of what the mind is and how it works, dating back to Plato, Aristotle and other Ancient Greek philosophers. Pre-scientific theories, which were rooted in theology, concentrated on the relationship between the mind and the soul, the supposed supernatural or divine essence of the human person. Modern theories, based on a scientific understanding of the brain, see the mind as a phenomenon of psychology, and the term is often used more or less synonymously with consciousness.

The question of which human attributes make up the mind is also much debated. Some argue that only the “higher” intellectual functions constitute mind: particularly reason and memory. In this view the emotions - love, hate, fear, joy - are more “primitive” or subjective in nature and should be seen as different in nature or origin to the mind. Others argue that the rational and the emotional sides of the human person cannot be separated, that they are of the same nature and origin, and that they should all be considered as part of the individual mind.

In popular usage mind is frequently synonymous with thought: it is that private conversation with ourselves that we carry on “inside our heads” during every waking moment of our lives. Thus we “make up our minds,” “change our minds” or are “of two minds” about something. One of the key attributes of the mind in this sense is that it is a private sphere. No-one else can read our thoughts or “know our mind.” They can only know what we communicate (and this is true even under torture).

Nature of the mind
Both philosophers and psychologists remain divided about the nature of the mind. Some take what is known as the substantial view, and argue that the mind is a single entity, perhaps having its base in the brain but distinct from it and having an autonomous existence. This view ultimately derives from Plato, and was absorbed from him into Christian thought. In its most extreme form, the substantial view merges with the theological view that the mind is an entity wholly separate from the body, in fact a manifestation of the soul, which will survive the body’s death and return to God, its creator.

Others take what is known as the functional view, ultimately derived from Aristotle, which holds that the mind is a term of convenience for a variety of mental functions which have little in common except that humans are conscious of their existence. Functionalists tend to argue that the attributes which we collectively call the mind are closely related to the functions of the brain and can have no autonomous existence beyond the brain - nor can they survive its death. In this view mind is a subjective manifestation of consciousness: the human brain’s ability to be aware of its own existence. The concept of the mind is therefore a means by which the conscious brain understands its own operations.

History of the philosophy of the mind
A leading exponent of the substantial view was George Berkeley, an 18th century Anglican bishop and philosopher. Berkeley argued that there is no such thing as matter and what humans see as the material world is nothing but an idea in God’s mind, and that therefore the human mind is purely a manifestation of the soul or spirit or similar. This type of belief is also common in certain types of spiritual non-dualistic belief, but outside this field few philosophers take an extreme view today. However, the view that the human mind is of a nature or essence somehow different from, and higher than, the mere operations of the brain, continues to be widely held.

Berkeley’s views were attacked, and in the eyes of many philosophers demolished, by T.H. Huxley, a 19th century biologist and disciple of Charles Darwin, who agreed that the phenomena of the mind were of a unique order, but argued that they can only be explained in reference to events in the brain. Huxley drew on a tradition of materialist thought in British philosophy dating to Thomas Hobbes, who argued in the 17th century that mental events were ultimately physical in nature, although with the biological knowledge of his day he could not say what their physical basis was. Huxley blended Hobbes with Darwin to produce the modern materialist or functional view.

Huxley’s view was reinforced by the steady expansion of knowledge about the functions of the human brain. In the 19th century it was not possible to say with certainty how the brain carried out such functions as memory, emotion, perception and reason. This left the field open for substantialists to argue for an autonomous mind, or for a metaphysical theory of the mind. But each advance in the study of the brain during the 20th century made this harder, since it became more and more apparent that all the components of the mind have their origins in the functioning of the brain.

Huxley’s rationalism, however, was disturbed in the early 20th century by the ideas of Sigmund Freud, who developed a theory of the unconscious mind, and argued that those mental processes of which humans are subjectively aware are only a small part of their total mental activity. Freudianism was in a sense a revival of the substantial view of the mind in a secular guise. Although Freud did not deny that the mind was a function of the brain, he held the mind has, as it were, a mind of its own, of which we are not conscious, which we cannot control, and which can be accessed only though psychoanalysis (particularly the interpretation of dreams). Freud’s theory of the unconscious, although impossible to prove empirically, has been widely accepted and has greatly influenced the popular understanding of the mind.

More recently, Douglas Hofstadter’s 1979 Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Gödel, Escher, Bach - an eternal Gold Braid”, is a tour de force on the subject of mind, and how it might arise from the neurology of the brain. Amongst other biological and cybernetic phenomena, Hofstadter places tangled loops and recursion at the center of Self, Self-awareness, and perception of oneself, and thus at the heart of Mind and thinking. Likewise philosopher Ken Wilber posits that Mind is the interior dimension of the brain holon. That is, that mind is what a brain looks like internally, when it looks at itself.

Current research
The debate about the nature of the mind is relevant to the development of artificial intelligence. If the mind is indeed a thing separate from or higher than the functioning of the brain, then presumably it will not be possible for any machine, no matter how sophisticated, to duplicate it. If on the other hand the mind is no more than the aggregated functions of the brain, then it will be possible, at least in theory, to create a machine with a mind.

The Mind/Brain/Behavior Interfaculty Initiative (MBB) at Harvard University aims to elucidate the structure, function, evolution, development, and pathology of the nervous system in relation to human behavior and mental life. It draws on the departments of psychology, neurobiology, neurology, molecular and cellular biology, radiology, psychiatry, organismic and evolutionary biology, history of science, and linguistics.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Mind”.

Everyone has their own view of the nature of consciousness based on their education and background. The intention of this book is to expand this view by providing an insight into the various ideas and beliefs on the subject as well as a review of current work in neuroscience. The neuroscientist should find the philosophical discussion interesting because this provides first-person insights into the nature of consciousness and also provides some subtle arguments about why consciousness is not a simple problem. The student of philosophy will find a useful introduction to the subject and information about neuroscience and physics that is difficult to acquire elsewhere.

It is often said that consciousness cannot be defined. This is not true; philosophers have indeed defined it in its own terms. It has two principle components: firstly phenomenal consciousness which consists of our experience with things laid out in space and time, sensations, emotions, thoughts, etc., and secondly access consciousness which is the processes that act on the things in experience.

As will be seen in the following pages, the issue for the scientist and philosopher is to determine the location and form of the things in phenomenal consciousness. Is phenomenal consciousness directly things in the world beyond the body, is it brain activity based on things in the world and internal processes-a sort of virtual reality-or is it some spiritual or other phenomenon?
Consciousness Studies

Epistemology
Epistemology is one of the core areas of philosophy. It is concerned with the nature, sources and limits of knowledge. Epistemology has been primarily concerned with propositional knowledge, that is, knowledge that such-and-such is true, rather than other forms of knowledge, for example, knowledge how to such-and-such. There is a vast array of views about propositional knowledge, but one virtually universal presupposition is that knowledge is true belief, but not mere true belief (see Belief and knowledge). For example, lucky guesses or true beliefs resulting from wishful thinking are not knowledge. Thus, a central question in epistemology is: what must be added to true beliefs to convert them into knowledge?

1 The normative answers: foundationalism and coherentism
The historically dominant tradition in epistemology answers that question by claiming that it is the quality of the reasons for our beliefs that converts true beliefs into knowledge (see Epistemology, history of). When the reasons are sufficiently cogent, we have knowledge (see Rational beliefs). This is the normative tradition in epistemology (see Normative epistemology). An analogy with ethics is useful: just as an action is justified when ethical principles sanction holding it (see Justification, epistemic; Epistemology and ethics). The second tradition in epistemology, the naturalistic tradition, does not focus on the quality of the reasons for beliefs but, rather, requires that the conditions in which beliefs are acquired typically produce true beliefs (see Internalism and externalism in epistemology; Naturalized epistemology).

Within the normative tradition, two views about the proper structure of reasons have been developed: foundationalism and coherentism (see Reasons for belief). By far, the most commonly held view is foundationalism. It holds that reasons rest on a foundational structure comprised of ‘basic’ beliefs (see Foundationalism). The foundational propositions have autonomous justification that does not depend upon any further justification which could be provided by inferential relations to other propositions. (Coherentism, discussed below, denies that there are such foundational propositions).

These basic beliefs can be of several types. Empiricists (such as Hume and Locke) hold that basic beliefs exhibit knowledge initially gained through the senses or introspection (see A posteriori; Empiricism; Introspection, epistemology of; Perception, epistemic issues in). Rationalists (such as Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza) hold that at least some basic beliefs are the result of rational intuition (see A priori; A priori knowledge and justification, recent work on; Rationalism). Since not all knowledge seems to be based on sense experience or introspection or rational intuition, some epistemologists claim that some knowledge is innate (see Innate knowledge; Knowledge, tacit; Kant, I.; Plato). Still others argue that some propositions are basic in virtue of conversational contextual features. (See Contextualism, epistemological; Contextualism, epistemic, recent work on).

Foundationalists hold that epistemic principles of inference are available that allow an epistemic agent to reason from the basic propositions to the non-basic (inferred) propositions. They suggest, for example, that if a set of basic propositions is explained by some hypothesis and additional confirming evidence for the hypothesis is discovered, then the hypothesis is justified (see Inference to the best explanation). A notorious problem with this suggestion is that it is always possible to form more than one hypothesis that appears equally well confirmed by the total available data, and consequently no one hypothesis seems favoured over all its rivals (see Induction, epistemic issues in; Goodman, N.). Some epistemologists have argued that this problem can be overcome by appealing to features of the rival hypotheses beyond their explanatory power. For example, the relative simplicity of one hypothesis might be thought to provide a basis for preferring it to its rivals (see Simplicity (in scientific theories); Theoretical (epistemic) virtues).

In contrast to foundationalism, coherentism claims that every belief derives its justification from inferential relationships to other beliefs (see Knowledge and justification, coherence theory of; Probability theory and epistemology; Bosanquet, B.; Bradley, F.H.). All coherentists hold that, like the poles of a tepee, beliefs are mutually reinforcing. Some coherentists, however, assign a special justificatory role to those propositions that are more difficult to dislodge from the web of belief . The set of these special propositions overlaps the set of basic propositions specified by foundationalism.

There are some objections aimed specifically at foundationalism and others aimed specifically at coherentism. But there is one deep difficulty with both traditional normative accounts. This problem, known as the ‘Gettier Problem’ (after a famous three-page article by Edmund Gettier in 1963), can be stated succinctly as follows (see Gettier problems): suppose that a false belief can be justified (see Fallibilism), and suppose that its justificatory status can be transferred to another proposition through deduction or other principles of inference (see Deductive closure principle). Suppose further that the inferred proposition is true. If these suppositions can be true simultaneously - and that seems to be the case - the inferred proposition would be true, justified (by either foundationalist or coherentist criteria) and believed, but in many cases it clearly is not knowledge, since it is a felicitous coincidence that the truth was obtained.

One strategy for addressing the Gettier Problem remains firmly within the normative tradition. It employs the original normative intuition that it is the quality of the reasons which distinguishes knowledge from mere true belief. This is the defeasibility theory of knowledge. There are various defeasibility accounts but, generally, all of them hold that the felicitous coincidence can be avoided if the reasons which justify the belief are such that they cannot be defeated by further truths (see Knowledge, defeasibility theory of).

2 The naturalistic answers: causes of belief
There is a second general strategy for addressing the Gettier Problem that falls outside of the normative tradition and lies squarely within the naturalistic tradition (see Quine, W.V.). As the name suggests, the naturalistic tradition describes knowledge as a natural phenomenon occurring in a wide range of subjects. Adult humans may employ reasoning to arrive at some of their knowledge, but the naturalists are quick to point out that children and adult humans arrive at knowledge in ways that do not appear to involve any reasoning whatsoever. Roughly, when a true belief has the appropriate causal history, then the belief counts as knowledge (see Knowledge, causal theory of).

Suppose that I am informed by a reliable person that the temperature outside the building is warmer now than it was two hours ago. That certainly looks like a bit of knowledge gained and there could be good reasons provided for the belief. The normativists would appeal to those good reasons to account for the acquisition of knowledge. The naturalists, however, would argue that true belief resulting from testimony from a reliable source is sufficient for knowledge (see Social epistemology; Testimony).

Testimony is just one reliable way of gaining knowledge (see Reliabilism). There are other ways such as sense perception, memory and reasoning. Of course, sometimes these sources are faulty (see Memory, epistemology of). A central task of naturalized epistemology is to characterize conditions in which reliable information is obtained (see Information theory and epistemology). Thus, in some of its forms, naturalized epistemology can be seen as a branch of cognitive psychology, and the issues can be addressed by empirical investigation.

Now let us return to the Gettier Problem. Recall that it arose in response to the recognition that truth might be obtained through a felicitous coincidence. The naturalistic tradition ties together the belief and truth conditions of knowledge in a straightforward way by requiring that the means by which the true belief is produced or maintained should be reliable.

3 Scepticism
The contrast between normative and naturalized epistemology is apparent in the way in which each addresses one of the most crucial issues in epistemology, namely, scepticism (see Scepticism). Scepticism comes in many forms. In one form, the requirements for knowledge become so stringent that knowledge becomes impossible, or virtually impossible, to obtain. For example, suppose that a belief is knowledge only if it is certain, and a belief is certain only if it is beyond all logically possible doubt. Knowledge would then become a very rare commodity (see Certainty; Doubt).

Other forms of scepticism only require that knowledge be based upon good, but not logically unassailable, reasoning. We have alluded to scepticism about induction. That form of scepticism illustrates the general pattern of the sceptical problem: there appear to be intuitively clear cases of the type of knowledge questioned by the sceptic, but intuitively plausible general epistemic principles appealed to by the sceptic seem to preclude that very type of knowledge.

Another example will help to clarify the general pattern of the sceptical problem. Consider the possibility that my brain is not lodged in my skull but is located in a vat and hooked up to a very powerful computer that stimulates it to have exactly the experiences, memories and thoughts that I am now having. Call that possibility the ’sceptical hypothesis’. That hypothetical situation is clearly incompatible with the way I think the world is. Now, it seems to be an acceptable normative epistemic principle that if I am justified in believing that the world is the way I believe it to be (with other people, tables, governments and so on), I should have some good reasons for denying the sceptical hypothesis. But, so the argument goes, I could not have such reasons; for if the sceptical hypothesis were true, everything would appear to be just as it now does. So, there appears to be a conflict between the intuition that we have such knowledge and the intuitively appealing epistemic principle. Thus, scepticism can be seen as one instance of an interesting array of epistemic paradoxes (see Paradoxes, epistemic).

Of course, epistemologists have developed various answers to scepticism. Within the normative tradition, there are several responses available. One of them is simply to deny any epistemic principle - even if it seems initially plausible - that precludes us from having what we ordinarily think is within our ken (see Commonsensism; Chisholm, R.M.; Moore, G.E.; Reid, T.). Another response is to examine the epistemic principles carefully in an attempt to show that, properly interpreted, they do not lead to scepticism. Of course, there is always the option of simply declaring that we do not have knowledge. Whatever choice is made, some initially plausible intuitions will be sacrificed.

Within the naturalistic tradition, there appears to be an easy way to handle the sceptical worries. Possessing knowledge is not determined by whether we have good enough reasons for our beliefs but, rather, whether the processes that produced the beliefs in question are sufficiently reliable. So, if I am a brain in a vat, I do not have knowledge; and if I am not a brain in a vat (and the world is generally the way I think it is), then I do have knowledge. Nevertheless, those within the normative tradition will argue that we are obliged to withhold full assent to propositions for which we have less than adequate reasons, regardless of the causal history of the belief.

Contextualism, mentioned earlier, responds to the sceptical problem in a way that does not fall neatly into either the normative or naturalistic tradition (see Contextualism, epistemological; Contextualism, epistemological, recent work on). There are many varieties of contextualism, but central to all of them is that the truth conditions of a sentence or utterance attributing knowledge to someone will vary from one context to another. Hence, the utterance `Sarah knows that the car she left in the parking lot is still there’ will be true in one context when the standards for knowledge are lower than they are in a context in which the standards are those approaching certainty. In such a high standards context, Sarah will fail to know. Thus, by extension, says the contextualist, both our ordinary claims to knowledge and the sceptical claims that we don’t have knowledge can be true because of variations in the contexts of the utterances. So-called `invariantists’ deny that there is such a contextual shift of the truth values of the utterances and, hence, they reject the contextualist solution to the sceptical problem.

4 Recent developments in epistemology
Some recent developments in epistemology question and/or expand on some aspects of the tradition. Virtue epistemology focuses on the characteristics of the knower rather than individual beliefs or collections of beliefs (see Virtue epistemology). Roughly, the claim is that when a true belief is the result of the exercise of intellectual virtue, it is, ceteris paribus, knowledge. Thus, the virtue epistemologist can incorporate certain features of both the normative and naturalist traditions. Virtues, as opposed to vices, are good, highly prized dispositional states. The intellectual virtues, in particular, are just those deep dispositions that produce mostly true beliefs. Such an approach reintroduces some neglected areas of epistemology, for example, the connection of knowledge to wisdom and understanding (see Wisdom).

In addition, there are emerging challenges to certain presuppositions of traditional epistemology. For example, some argue that there is no set of rules for belief acquisition that are appropriate for all peoples and all situations (see Cognitive pluralism; Epistemic relativism). Others have suggested that many of the proposed conditions of good reasoning, for example ‘objectivity’ or ‘neutrality’, are not invoked in the service of gaining truths, as traditional epistemology would hold, but rather they are employed to prolong entrenched power and (at least in some cases) distort the objects of knowledge (see Feminist epistemology).

In spite of these fundamental challenges and the suggestions inherent in some forms of naturalized epistemology that the only interesting questions are empirically answerable, it is clear that epistemology remains a vigorous area of inquiry at the heart of philosophy.

KLEIN, PETER D. (1998, 2005). Epistemology. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved December 27, 2005, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/P059

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Relativism

Philosophy Portal
Relativism is the view that the meaning and value of human beliefs and behaviors have no absolute reference. Relativists claim that humans understand and evaluate beliefs and behaviors only in terms of, for example, their historical and cultural context.

Philosophers identify many different kinds of relativism depending upon what allegedly depends on something and what something depends on. The term is often used for truth relativism - the doctrine that there is no absolute truth (i.e. whether a belief is true or not depends on the believer). Few modern philosophers support truth relativism.

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson define relativism in their book Metaphors We Live By as the rejection of both subjectivism and objectivism in order to focus on the relationship between them, i.e. the metaphor by which we relate our current experience to our previous experience. In particular, they characterize “objectivism” as a “straw man”, and, to a lesser degree, criticize the views of Karl Popper, Kant and Aristotle.

Advocates of relativism
The concept of relativism has importance both for philosophers and for anthropologists, although in different ways. Philosophers explore how beliefs might or might not in fact depend for their truth upon such items as language, conceptual scheme, culture, and so forth; with ethical relativism furnishing just one example. Anthropologists, on the other hand, occupy themselves with describing actual human behavior. For them, relativism refers to a methodological stance, in which the researcher suspends (or brackets) his or her own cultural biases while attempting to understand beliefs and behaviors in their local contexts. This has become known as methodological relativism, and is specifically concerned with avoiding ethnocentrism, or applying one’s cultural standards to the assessment of other cultures.

The combination of both approaches results in what is known as descriptive relativism, which claims that different cultures have different views of morality, which cannot be unified under one general conception of morality. Thus, one might want to claim that all cultures, for example, prohibit the killing of innocents. The descriptive relativist reply to this is that while this might be true at a general level, different cultures have different understandings of what “innocent” means, and so are still culturally relative.

Elements of relativism emerged at least as early as the Sophists.

One argument for relativism is that our own cognitive bias prevents us from observing something objectively with our own senses, and notational bias will apply to whatever allegedly can be measured without using our senses. In addition, we have a culture bias shared with other trusted observers, which cannot be eliminated. A counterargument to this is that subjective certainty and concrete objects and causes are part of our everyday life, and that there is no great value in discarding such useful ideas as isomorphism, objectivity and a final truth.

Another important advocate of relativism, Bernard Crick, a British political scientist, wrote the book In Defence of Politics (first published in 1962), suggesting the inevitability of moral conflict between people. Crick stated that only ethics could resolve such conflict, and when that occurred in public it resulted in politics. Accordingly, Crick saw the process of dispute resolution, harms reduction, mediation or peacemaking as central to all of moral philosophy. He became an important influence on the feminists and later on the Greens.

Arguments against relativism
A common argument against relativism suggests that it is inherently contradictory or self-refuting or self-stultifying: the statement “all is relative” is either a relative statement or an absolute one. If it is relative, then this statement does not rule out absolutes. If the statement is absolute, on the other hand, then it provides an example of an absolute statement, proving that not all truths are relative.

Counter-argumentsHowever such a contradiction is irrelivant as it constitutes arguing from the premise. Once you have said if the X is absolute you have presupposed relativism is false. And one cannot prove a statement using that statement as a premise. There is a contradiction, but the contradiction is between relativism and the presuppositions of absoluteness in the ordinary logic used. Nothing has been proven wrong and nothing has been proven in and of itself, only the known incompatibility has been restated inefficiently.

Another counter-argument uses Bertrand Russell’s Paradox, which refers to the “List of all lists that do not contain themselves”. This paradox has been famously debated by Kurt Gödel, Jorge Luis Borges, and Jean Baudrillard.

A very different approach is to explicate the rhetorical production of supposedly ‘bottom line’ arguments against relativism. Edwards et al’s influential and controversial Death and Furniture paper takes this line in its staunch defence of relativism.

The Catholic Church and relativism
The Catholic Church for some time now, especially with Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) as head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, has identified relativism as one of the problems of today.

According to the Church and some philosophers, relativism, as a denial of absolute truth, leads to moral license and a denial of the possibility of sin and of God.

Relativism, they say, is a denial of the capacity of our mind and reason to arrive at truth. Truth, according to Catholic theologians and philosophers, following Aristotle and Plato, is adequatio rei et intellectus, the correspondence of the mind and reality. Another way of putting it is: the mind having the same form as reality. This means when the form of the computer in front of me (the type, color, shape, capacity, etc.) is also the form that is in my mind, then what I know is true because my mind corresponds to objective reality.

Relativism, according to the Catholic and Aristotelian viewpoint, violates the philosophical principle of non-contradiction, a most fundamental principle of all thinking without which there is no way to understand each other nor any possibility of science.

The denial of an absolute reference is a denial of God, who is Absolute Truth, according to these Christian philosophers. Thus, they say, relativism is linked to secularism, an obstruction of God in human life.

John Paul II
John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor (the Beauty of the Truth) stressed the dependence of man on God and his law (”Without the Creator, the creature disappears”) and the “dependence of freedom on the truth”. He warned that man “giving himself over to relativism and skepticism, goes off in search of an illusory freedom apart from truth itself”.

In the Gospel of Life, he says:

The original and inalienable right to life is questioned or denied on the basis of a parliamentary vote or the will of one part of the people-even if it is the majority. This is the sinister result of a relativism which reigns unopposed: the “right” ceases to be such, because it is no longer firmly founded on the inviolable dignity of the person, but is made subject to the will of the stronger part. In this way democracy, contradicting its own principles, effectively moves towards a form of totalitarianism. The State is no longer the “common home” where all can live together on the basis of principles of fundamental equality, but is transformed into a tyrant State, which arrogates to itself the right to dispose of the life of the weakest and most defenceless members, from the unborn child to the elderly, in the name of a public interest which is really nothing but the interest of one part. (Italics added)

Benedict XVI
Benedict XVI in his address to the cardinals during the pre-conclave Mass which would elect him as Pope, a key public address to the top leaders of the Church, talked about the world “moving towards a dictatorship of relativism.” (Italics added)

On June 6, 2005, he told educators:

“Today, a particularly insidious obstacle to the task of education is the massive presence in our society and culture of that relativism which, recognizing nothing as definitive, leaves as the ultimate criterion only the self with its desires. And under the semblance of freedom it becomes a prison for each one, for it separates people from one another, locking each person into his or her own ‘ego’”
Then during the World Youth Day, he also traced to relativism the problems produced by the communist and sexual revolutions, and provides a counter-counter argument.

In the last century we experienced revolutions with a common programme – expecting nothing more from God, they assumed total responsibility for the cause of the world in order to change it. And this, as we saw, meant that a human and partial point of view was always taken as an absolute guiding principle. Absolutizing what is not absolute but relative is called totalitarianism. It does not liberate man, but takes away his dignity and enslaves him. It is not ideologies that save the world, but only a return to the living God, our Creator, the guarantor of our freedom, the guarantor of what is really good and true.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Relativism”.

His character
The character of Socrates provides an illustration of a historical conundrum. If Socrates ever wrote a single word, it has not survived. As such, the entirety of modern knowledge concerning Socrates must be drawn from a limited number of secondary sources, such as the works of Plato, Aristophanes and Xenophon. Aristophanes was known as a satirist, and so his accounts of Socrates may well be skewed, exaggerated, or totally falsified. Fragmentary evidence also exists from Socrates’ contemporaries. Giannantoni, in his monumental work Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae collects every scrap of evidence pertaining to Socrates. It includes writers such as Aeschines Socraticus (not the orator), Antisthenes, and a number of others who knew Socrates. Plato, following Greek tradition, appears to have attributed his own ideas, theories, and possibly personal traits, to his mentor. Due to the problems inherent in such sources, all information regarding Socrates should be taken as possibly, but not definitely, true.

His life
According to accounts from antiquity, Socrates’ father was Sophroniscus, a sculptor, and his mother Phaenarete, a midwife. He was married to Xanthippe, who bore him three sons. By the cultural standards of the time, she was considered a shrew. Socrates himself attested that he, having learned to live with Xanthippe, would be able to cope with any other human being, just as a horse trainer accustomed to wilder horses might be more competent than one not. He also saw military action, fighting at the Battle of Potidaea, the Battle of Delium and the Battle of Amphipolis. It is believed, based on Plato’s Symposium, that Socrates was decorated for bravery. In one instance he stayed with his wounded friend Alcibiades, and probably saved his life; despite the objections of Alcibiades, Socrates refused any sort of official recognition and instead encouraged the decoration of Alcibiades. During such campaigns, he also showed his extraordinary hardiness, walking without shoes and a coat in winter.

What did Socrates do for a living? He did not work; in Xenophon’s Symposium he explicitly states that he devotes himself only to discussing philosophy, and that he thinks this is the most important art or occupation. It is unlikely that he was able to live off of family inheritance, given his father’s occupation as an artisan. Perhaps Aristophanes lends some insight who, in his wildly exaggerated plays, depicts Socrates as running a school of sophistry with his friend Chaerephon. However, Aristophanes is a comic poet more interested in getting a laugh than documenting history. Plus, in the accounts of Plato, Socrates explicitly denies accepting money for teaching. How then does he live without any source of income, spending all his time engaged in conversation? It is most likely that Socrates survived off of the generosity of his wealthy and powerful friends. Men such as Alicibiades (mentioned above) would certainly have had the means to do so if they wished. There are two accounts from Plato of Socrates’ friends putting money down for his sake. Crito, Critobulus and Apollodorus in the dialogue ‘the Apology,’ (line 38c), and Glaucon, Adeimantus and others in the Republic (line 337d.)

Trial and Death
Socrates lived during the time of the transition from the height of the Athenian Empire to its decline after its defeat by Sparta and its allies in the Peloponnesian War. At a time when Athens was seeking to recover from humiliating defeat, the Athenian public court was induced by three leading public figures to try Socrates for impiety and for corrupting the youth of Athens. According to Dr. Will Beldam, he was the first person to question everything and everyone, and apparently it offended the leaders of his time. He was found guilty as charged, and sentenced to drink hemlock, which cost him his life.

According to the version of his defense speech presented in Plato’s Apology, Socrates’ life as the “gadfly” of Athens began when his friend Chaerephon asked the oracle at Delphi if anyone was wiser than Socrates; the Oracle responded negatively. Socrates, interpreting this as a riddle, set out to find men who were wiser than him. He questioned the men of Athens about their knowledge of good, beauty, and virtue. Finding that they knew nothing and yet believing themselves to know much, Socrates came to the conclusion that he was wise only in so far as he knew he knew nothing. The others only falsely thought they had knowledge.

See Trial of Socrates for more detail and background about Socrates’ trial and execution.

Philosophy

Socratic method
Main article: Socratic method

Perhaps his most important contribution to Western thought is his dialogical method of inquiry, known as the Socratic Method or method of elenchos, which he largely applied to the examination of key moral concepts such as the Good and Justice, concepts used constantly without any real definition. It was first described by Plato in the Socratic Dialogues. For this, Socrates is customarily regarded as the father and fountainhead for ethics or moral philosophy, and of philosophy in general.

In this method, a series of questions are posed to help a person or group to determine their underlying beliefs and the extent of their knowledge. The Socratic method is a negative method of hypothesis elimination, in that better hypotheses are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those which lead to contradictions. It was designed to force one to examine his own beliefs and the validity of such beliefs.

Philosophical beliefs
Detailing the philosophical beliefs of Socrates is no easy matter; as he wrote nothing himself, we must rely on the (sometimes) conflicting reports of Xenophon and Plato. There is ongoing debate as to what, exactly, Socrates believed as opposed to Plato, and little in the way of concrete evidence when demarcating the two. There are some who claim that Socrates had no particular set of beliefs, and sought only to examine; the lengthy theories he gives in the Republic are considered to be the thoughts of Plato. Others argue that he did have his own theories and beliefs, but there is much controversy over what these might have been, owing to both the difficulty of separating Socrates from Plato and the difficulty of even interpreting the dramatic writings of Plato. Therefore, it is very important to keep this in mind when reading the following presentations of Socrates’ thought; none of it is agreed upon, and all must be taken with a grain of salt.

Evidence from the dialogues suggests Socrates had only two teachers: Prodicus, a grammarian, and Diotima, a woman from Mantinea who taught him about eros, or love. His knowledge of other contemporary thinkers such as Parmenides and Anaxagoras is evident from a number of dialogues, and historical sources often include both of them as Socrates’ teachers. Apollo himself may be considered one of his teachers, as Socrates claims (in Plato’s Apology) that his habit of constant conversation was obedience to god. See below for more on the divine sign.

Knowledge
Socrates believed that his wisdom sprung from an awareness of his own ignorance. “He knew that he knew nothing” (Thomas 83). “I think I do not know what I know” (Plato’s Apology). Along these lines, it is often argued that Socrates taught that all wrong doing by man could be attributed to a lack of knowledge (”Socrates” 3). In simpler terms, if a person made an error, Socrates would have believed the error must have been due to ignorance of some sort. Although he never focused on one specific issue, most of Socrates’ debates were centered around the characteristics of the ideal man as well as what form the ideal government would take. (Solomon 44).

The one thing Socrates consistently claimed to have knowledge of was “the art of love” or “the love of wisdom”, i.e., philosophy. He never claimed to be actually wise, only to understand the path one must take to become wise. In Xenophon’s Symposium Socrates describes what he knows and does as the art of pandering; as a teacher, he is paid to show people how and where to acquire wisdom, although he is not himself what they are looking for. In the Theaetetus and elsewhere Socrates calls himself a midwife, explaining that he is himself barren of theories, but knows how to bring the theories of others to birth and determine whether they are worthy or mere “wind eggs”. Perhaps significantly, he points out that midwives are barren due to age, and women who have never given birth are unable to become midwives; a truly barren woman would have no experience or knowledge of birth and would be unable to separate the worthy infants from those that should be left on the hillside to be exposed. To judge this, the midwife must have experience and knowledge of what she is judging.

It is debated whether or not Socrates believed that one could even become wise. Against this, his own self-professed lack of knowledge and the clear line between the ideal world and the everyday world are presented; when arguing that Socrates did believe one could become wise, the Symposium and other texts detailing the philosophic path are pointed out. he was a heroe of himself and he drived Euthyphro into a baseless argument

Virtue
Socrates believed that the best way for people to live was to focus not on accumulating possessions, but to focus on self-development (Gross 2). He always invited others to try to concentrate more on friendships and a sense of true community, for Socrates felt that this was the best way for people to grow together as a populace. His actions lived up to this: in the end, Socrates accepted his death sentence when most thought he would simply leave Athens, as he felt he could not run away from or go against the will of his community; as above, his reputation for valor on the battlefield was without reproach.

The idea that humans possessed certain virtues formed a common thread in Socrates’ teachings. These virtues represented the most important qualities for a person to have, foremost of which were the philosophical or intellectual virtues. Socrates stressed that “virtue was the most valuable of all possessions; the ideal life was spent in search of the Good. Truth lies beneath the shadows of existence, and that it is the job of the philosopher to show the rest how little they really know.” (Solomon 44)

Ultimately, virtue relates to the form of the Good; to truly be good and not just act with “right opinion” one must come to know the unchanging Good in itself. In the Republic, he describes the “divided line”, a continuum of ignorance to knowledge with the Good on top of it all; only at the top of this line do we find true good and the knowledge of such.

Politics
It is often argued that Socrates believed “ideals belong in a world that only the wise man can understand” making the philosopher the only type of person suitable to govern others. According to Plato’s account, Socrates was in no way subtle about his particular beliefs on government. He openly objected to the democracy that ran Athens during his adult life. It was not only Athenian democracy: Socrates objected to any form of government that did not conform to his ideal of a perfect republic led by philosophers (Solomon 49), and Athenian government was far from that. During the last years of Socrates’ life, Athens was in continual flux due to political upheaval. Democracy was at last overthrown by a junta known as the Thirty Tyrants, led by Plato’s relative, Critias, who had been a student of Socrates. The Tyrants ruled for nearly a year before the Athenian democracy was reinstated, at which point it declared an amnesty for all recent events. Four years later, it acted to silence the voice of Socrates.

This argument is often denied, and the question is one of the largest philosophical debates when trying to determine what, exactly, it was that Socrates believed. The strongest argument of those who claim that Socrates did not actually believe in the idea of philosopher kings is Socrates’ constant refusal to enter into politics or participate in government of any sort; he often stated that he could not look into other matters or tell people how to live when he did not yet understand himself. The philosopher is only that, a lover of wisdom, and is not actually wise. Socrates’ acceptance of his death sentence, after his conviction by the Boule, can also support this view. It is often claimed that much of the anti-democratic leanings are from Plato, who was never able to overcome his disgust at what was done to his teacher. In any case, it is clear that Socrates thought that the rule of the Thirty Tyrants was at least as objectionable as democracy; when called before them to assist in the arrest of a fellow Athenian, Socrates refused and narrowly escaped death before the Tyrants were overthrown. Judging by his actions, he considered their rule less legitimate than that of the democratic senate who sentenced him to death.

Mysticism
When reading the dialogues of Plato, Socrates often seems to manifest a mystical side, discussing reincarnation and the mystery religions; however, this is generally attributed to Plato. Regardless, this cannot be dismissed out of hand, as we cannot be sure of the differences between Plato and Socrates; in addition, there seem to be some corollaries in the works of Xenophon. In the culmination of the philosophic path as discussed in Plato’s Symposium and Republic, one comes to the Sea of Beauty or to the sight of the form of the Good in an experience akin to mystical revelation; only then can one become wise. (In the Symposium, Socrates credits his speech on the philosophic path to his teacher, the priestess Diotima, who is not even sure if Socrates is capable of reaching the highest mysteries). In the Meno he references the Eleusinian Mysteries, telling Meno he would understand Socrates’ answers better if only he could stay for the initiations next week.

Perhaps the most interesting facet of this is Socrates’ reliance on what he calls his “daemon”, a voice who speaks to Socrates only and always when Socrates is about to do something wrong. It was this daemon that prevented Socrates from entering into politics. In the Phaedrus, we are told Socrates considered this to be a form of “divine madness”, the sort of insanity that is a gift from the gods and gives us poetry, mysticism, love, and even philosophy itself. Alternately, the daemon is often taken to simply mean “intuition”; however, the Greek word was clearly used to signify a spirit or entity akin to what we would call a guardian angel, and Socrates certainly seemed to attribute personality and voice to his daemon.

Satirical playwrights
He was prominently lampooned in Aristophanes’s comedy The Clouds, produced when Socrates was in his mid-forties; he said at his trial (in Plato’s version) that the laughter of the theater was a harder task to answer than the arguments of his accusers. Socrates is also ridiculed in Aristophanes’ play The Birds for his dirtiness, which is associated with the Laconizing fad; also in plays by Callias, Eupolis, and Telecleides. In all of these, Socrates and the Sophists were criticised for “the moral dangers inherent in contemporary thought and literature”.

Prose sources
Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle are the main sources for the historical Socrates; however, Xenophon and Plato, were direct disciples of Socrates, and presumably, they idealize him; however, they wrote the only continuous descriptions of Socrates that have come down to us. Aristotle refers frequently, but in passing, to Socrates in his writings.

The Socratic Dialogues
Note: the naming conventions regarding Wikipedia articles on Plato’s texts are currently under revision.
See: Category Talk:Dialogues of Plato
The Socratic dialogues are a series of dialogues written by Plato and Xenophon in the form of discussions between Socrates and other persons of his time, or as discussions between Socrates’ followers over his concepts. Plato’s Phaedo is an example of this latter category. While Plato’s Apology is a speech (with Socrates as speaker), it is nonetheless generally counted as one of the Socratic dialogues.

Plato’s dialogues only contain the direct words of each of the speakers, while Xenophon’s dialogues are written down as a continuous story, containing, along with the narration of the circumstances of the dialogue, the “quotes” of the speakers.

Plato generally does not place his own ideas in the mouth of a specific speaker; he lets ideas emerge via the Socratic method, under the guidance of Socrates. Most of the dialogues present Socrates applying this method to some extent, but nowhere as completely as in the Euthyphro. In this dialogue, Socrates and Euthyphro go through several iterations of refining the answer to Socrates’ question, “What is piety?”

In Plato’s dialogues, learning appears as a process of remembering. The soul, before its incarnation in the body, was in the realm of Ideas. There, it saw things the way they truly are, rather than the pale shadows or copies we experience on earth. By a process of questioning, the soul can be brought to remember the ideas in their pure form, thus bringing wisdom.

Especially for Plato’s writings referring to Socrates, it is not always clear which ideas brought forward by Socrates (or his friends) actually belonged to Socrates and which of these may have been new additions or elaborations by Plato — this is known as the Socratic problem. Generally, the early works of Plato are considered to be close to the spirit of Socrates, whereas the later works — including Phaedo — are considered to be possibly products of Plato’s elaborations.

Other views
Some hold that Socrates was a fictional character, invented by Plato and plagiarised by Xenophon and Aristophanes to articulate points of view which were considered too revolutionary for the author to admit to holding. However, this theory has little merit, especially when it is considered that Aristophanes wrote about Socrates (in a negative light) long before Socrates died and Plato began to write his dialogues.

Quotations
SocratesThe following quotations are attributed to Socrates in Plato’s and Xenophon’s writings:

The unexamined life is not worth living. (Apology, 38. In Greek, ho de anexetastos bios ou biôtos anthorôpôi).
For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. - Apology, by Plato. Translated by Benjamin Jowett.
You, Antiphon, would seem to suggest that happiness consists of luxury and extravagance; I hold a different creed. To have no wants at all is, to my mind, an attribute of Godhead - Memorabilia, by Xenophon. Translated by H.G. Dakyns.
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. (Phaedo, 91)
So now, Athenian men, more than on my own behalf must I defend myself, as some may think, but on your behalf, so that you may not make a mistake concerning the gift of god by condemning me. For if you kill me, you will not easily find another such person at all, even if to say in a ludicrous way, attached on the city by the god, like on a large and well-bred horse, by its size and laziness both needing arousing by some gadfly; in this way the god seems to have fastened me on the city, some such one who arousing and persuading and reproaching each one of you I do not stop the whole day settling down all over. Thus such another will not easily come to you, men, but if you believe me, you will spare me; but perhaps you might possibly be offended, like the sleeping who are awakened, striking me, believing Anytus, you might easily kill, then the rest of your lives you might continue sleeping, unless the god caring for you should send you another. (Apology)
Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt? (Last words, according to the Phaedo — Asclepius was the god of medicine and healing, to whom such a sacrifice might be made upon the curing of a disease).
Really, Ischomachus, I am disposed to ask: “Does teaching consist in putting questions?” Indeed, the secret of your system has just this instant dawned upon me. I seem to see the principle in which you put your questions. You lead me through the field of my own knowledge, and then by pointing out analogies to what I know, persuade me that I really know some things which hitherto, as I believed, I had no knowledge of. (Oeconomicus by Xenophon, translated: The Economist by H.G. Dakyns)
Is the pious holy because it is loved by the gods, or is it loved by the gods because it is holy? (Eurythpro)
And I say that there will only be a perfect city when philosophers have become kings. (Republic)
And I went down to Pireus, to see the festival of the goddess… Opening words of the Republic. The phrase ‘I went down’ is important because it describes, in the parable of the cave, the duty of the philosopher.
All learning is really just recollection. (Meno)

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Socrates”.

Tao or Dao 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”.

The philosophic and religious use of the character can be analyzed in two main segments: one meaning is “doctrine” or “discourse”; every school owns and defends a specific Tao or discourse about doctrine. In the other meaning, there is the ‘Great Tao’, that is the source of and guiding principle behind all the processes of the universe. Beyond being and non-being, prior to space and time, Tao is the intelligent ordering principle behind the unceasing flow of change in the natural world. In this sense Tao gains great cosmological and metaphysical significance comparable to the Judaeo-Christian concept of God (albeit stripped of anthropomorphic characteristics); the Greek concept of the logos; or the Dharma in Indian religions.

The nature and meaning of the Tao received its first full exposition in the Tao Te Ching of Laozi, a work which along with those of Confucius and Mencius would have a far-reaching effect on the intellectual, moral and religious life of the Chinese people. Although a book of practical wisdom in many ways, its profoundly metaphysical character was unique among the prevailing forms of thought in China at that time. The religion and philosophy based on the teaching of Laozi and his successor Zhuangzi is known in English as “Taoism.” Even if often said to be undefinable and unexplainable with words (even Chinese ones), the present article focuses on the Tao of Taoism.

Some characteristics of Tao
The Tao is the main theme discussed in the Tao Te Ching, an ancient Chinese scripture attributed to Laozi. This book does not specifically define what the Tao is; it affirms that in the first sentence, “The Tao that can be told of is not an Unvarying Tao” (tr. Waley, modified). Instead, it points to some characteristics of what could be understood as being the Tao. Below are some excerpts from the book.

Tao as the origin of things: “Tao begets one; One begets two; Two begets three; Three begets the myriad creatures.” (TTC 42, tr. Lau, modified)
Tao as an inexhaustible nothingness: “The Way is like an empty vessel / That yet may be drawn from / Without ever needing to be filled.” (TTC 4, tr. Waley)
Tao is omnipotent: “What Tao plants cannot be plucked, what Tao clasps, cannot slip.” (TTC 54, tr. Waley)
In the Yi Jing, a sentence closely relates Tao to Yin-Yang, asserting that “one (phase of) Yin, one (phase of) Yang, is what is called the Tao”. Being thus placed at the conjunction of Yin and Yang alternance, Tao can be understood as the continuity principle that underlies the constant evolution of the world.

A perhaps closest approximation in relatively common usage to the Tao may be Logos in the Christian religious sense: “In the beginning was the Word (literally from the Greek, “Logos”), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Moreover, in the words of Pope Ratzinger, “Christianity is the religion of Logos”…providing a fundamental point of commonality with Taoism when the Tao is considered to be ‘like’ — if not, in fact, identical to — the Logos or Word.

Tao in the Tao Te Ching
Tao is refered to in many ways in the Tao Te Ching. There are different shades of meanings in the various translations of this great work, which, with over 100 translations, is perhaps the most translated Chinese text in the English language. Here is one translation of the first stanza, describing Tao:

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao;
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name;
this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.
—(Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English, 1972).

Examples of Tao as path
In the Japanese tradition, it is thought that any human activity, when engaged without reservations and in harmony with the Tao, can become a path to awakening. Some examples of such otherwise ordinary activities raised to the intensity of a spiritual path are:

Aikido - the Way of harmony and spiritual energy (especially as expressed through martial arts)
Bushido - the Way of warriorship
Chado - the Way of tea (best know through the Tea ceremony)
Judo - the Way of supleness
Kendo - the Way of the sword
Kodo - the Way of incense
Kyudo - the Way of the bow (also known in the West as Zen archery)
Shudo - the Way of men (the Japanese pederastic tradition)
Tae Kwon Do - the Way of hands and feet (of Korean origin)

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Tao or Dao”.

Within the world of non-linearity (spiritual) there is No Thing causing anything else. In order for anything to cause another thing to occur, an infinite number of things has had to go into the occurance. The laws of cause and effect can be debated ad infinitum. The Heisenberg Principle and wave collapse change outcomes. Below are some of the recognized theories on causality. All of the linear theories become inexplicable when confronted with the question,”What came before that?” (See Cosmological argument below)
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Causality
The philosophical concept of causality or causation refers to the set of all particular “causal” or “cause-and-effect” relations. A neutral definition is notoriously hard to provide since every aspect of causation has received substantial debate. Most generally, causation is a relationship that holds between events, objects, variables, or states of affairs. It is usually presumed that the cause chronologically precedes the effect. Finally, the existence of a causal relationship generally suggests that, all things equal, if the cause occurs the effect will as well (or at least the probability of the effect occurring will increase).

Examples describing causal relationships:

The cue ball colliding with the eight ball causes the eight ball to roll into the pocket.
The presence of heat causes water to boil.
The Moon’s gravity causes the Earth’s tides.
A good blow to the arm causes a bruise.
My pushing of the accelerator caused the car to go faster.
Causation in the history of philosophy

Aristotle
Aristotle suggested four types of cause for a thing which exists: Material, Efficient, Final and Formal.

Take for example the causality involved in creating a silver chalice used in a religious ceremony (this example is from Martin Heidegger). The four causes of the event of its creation are:

The material cause would be the silver used to create the chalice; the raw matter required by the event.
The formal cause would be the chalice design itself—the shape in which to form the silver; the design for the use of the raw matter.
The efficient cause would be the silversmith who took the silver and formed it into shape of the chalice; the actual agent required in turning the raw matter into the desired form.
The final cause would be the religious ceremony which required a silver chalice in the first place; the ultimate reason behind the event, what compels the agent to make the raw matter into its form.
Note that cause here does not imply a temporal relation between the cause and the effect. See supervenience.

Hume
The philosopher who produced the most striking analysis of causality was David Hume. He asserted that it was impossible to know that certain laws of cause and effect always apply - no matter how many times one observes them occurring. Just because the sun has risen every day since the beginning of the Earth does not mean that it will rise again tomorrow. However, it is impossible to go about one’s life without assuming such connections and the best that we can do is to maintain an open mind and never presume that we know any laws of causality for certain. This was used as an argument against metaphysics, ideology and attempts to find theories for everything. A.J. Ayer and Karl Popper both claimed that their respective principles of verification and falsifiability fitted Hume’s ideas on causality.

Causality, nihilism, and existentialism
Nihilists subscribe to a deterministic world-view in which the universe is nothing but a chain of meaningless events following one after another according to the law of cause and effect. According to this worldview there is no such thing as “free will”, and therefore, no such thing as morality. Learning to bear the burden of a meaningless universe, and justify one’s own existence, is the first step toward becoming the “Übermensch” (English: “overman”) that Nietzsche speaks of extensively in his philosophical writings.

Nietzsche’s life provides an object lesson for some wary of nihilism, maintaining that such lives end quite typically in madness and chaos. Existentialists have suggested that people have the courage to accept that while no meaning has been designed in the universe, we each can provide a meaning for ourselves.

In light of the difficulty philosophers have pointed out in establishing the validity of causal relations, it might seem that the clearest plausible example of causation we have left is our own ability to be the cause of events. If this be so, then our concept of causation would not prevent seeing ourselves as moral agents.

Necessary and sufficient causes
A similar concept occurs in logic, for this see Necessary and sufficient conditions
Causes are often distinguished into two types: necessary and sufficient. If x is a necessary cause of y, then y will only occur if preceded by x. In this case the presence of x does not ensure that y will occur, but the presence of y ensures that x must have occurred. On the other hand, sufficient causes guarantee the effect. So if x is a sufficient cause of y, the presence x guarantees y. However, other events may also cause y, and thus y’s presence does not ensure the presence of x.

J.L. Mackie argues that usual talk of “cause” in fact refers to INUS conditions (insufficient and non-redundant parts of unneccessary but sufficient causes). For example, consider the short circuit as a cause of the house burning down. Consider the collection of events, the short circuit, the presence of oxygen, the flammability of the house, and the absence of firefighters. Altogether these are unnecessary but sufficient to the house’s destruction (since many other collection of events certainly have destroyed the house). Within this collection, the short circuit is an insufficient but non-redundant part (since the short circuit by itself would not cause the fire, but the fire will not happen without it). So the short circuit is an INUS cause of the house burning down.

Causality contrasted with logical implication
Logical conditional statements are not statements of causality. Since logical conditional statements and causal statements are both presented using “If…then…” in English they are commonly confused; they are distinct, however. The standard conditional statement expresses a fact about the actual world, while causal statements imply something more. For example all of the following statements are true (interpreting “If… then…” as the logical conditional):

If George Bush was president of the United States in 2004, then Germany is in Europe
If George Washington was president of the United States in 2004, then Germany is in Europe
If George Washington was president of the United States in 2004, then the Moon is made of green cheese
The first is true since both the antecedent and the consequent are true. The second and third are both true because the antecedent is false. Of course, none of these statements express a causal connection between the antecedent and consequent.

Another sort of logical implication, known as counterfactual implication has a stronger connection with causality. However, not even all counterfactual statements count as examples of causality. Consider the following two statements:

If A is a triangle, then A has three sides.
If switch S is thrown, then bulb B will light.
In the first case it would not be correct to say that A’s being a triangle caused it to have three sides, since the relationship between triangularity and three-sidedness is one of definition. Nonetheless, even interpreted counterfactually, the first statement is true. Most sophisticated accounts of causation find some way to deal with this distinction.

Counterfactual theories of causation
The philosopher David Lewis notably suggested that all statements about causality can be understood as counterfactual statements (Lewis 1973, 1979, and 2000). So, for instance, the statement that John’s smoking caused his premature death is equivalent to saying that had John not smoked he would not have prematurely died. (In addition, it need also be true that John did smoke and did prematurely die, although this requirement is not unique to Lewis’ theory.)

One problem Lewis’ theory confronts is causal preemption. Suppose that John did smoke and did in fact die as a result of that smoking. However, there was a murderer who was bent on killing John, and would have killed him a second later had he not first died from smoking. Here we still want to say that smoking caused John’s death. This presents a problem for Lewis’ theory since, had John not smoked, he still would have died prematurely. Lewis himself discusses this example, and it has received subsantial discussion. (cf. Bunzl 1980; Ganeri, Noordhof, and Ramachandran 1996; Paul 1998)

Probabilistic causation
Interpreting causation as a deterministic relation means that if A causes B, then A must always be followed by B. In this sense, war does not cause deaths, nor does smoking cause cancer. As a result, many turn to a notion of probabilistic causation. Informally, A probabilistically causes B iff A’s occurrence increases the probability of B. This is sometimes interpreted to reflect imperfect knowledge of a deterministic system but other times interpreted to mean that the causal system under study has an inherently chancy nature.

The establishing of cause and effect, even with this relaxed reading, is notoriously difficult, expressed by the widely accepted statement “correlation does not imply causation”. For instance, the observation that smokers have a dramatically increased lung cancer rate does not establish that smoking must be a cause of that increased cancer rate: maybe there exists a certain genetic defect which both causes cancer and a yearning for nicotine.

In statistics, it is generally accepted that observational studies (like counting cancer cases among smokers and among non-smokers and then comparing the two) can give hints, but can never establish cause and effect. The gold standard for causation here is the randomized experiment: take a large number of people, randomly divide them into two groups, force one group to smoke and prohibit the other group from smoking (ideally in a double-blind setup), then determine whether one group develops a significantly higher lung cancer rate. Random assignment plays a crucial role in the inference to causation because, in the long run, it renders the two groups equivalent in terms of the outcome (cancer) so that any changes will reflect only the manipulation (smoking). Obviously, for ethical reasons this experiment cannot be performed, but the method is widely applicable for less damaging experiments. One limitation of experiments, however, is that whereas they do a good job of testing for the presence of some causal effect they do less well at estimating the size of that effect in a population of interest. (This is a common criticism of studies of safety of food additives that use doses much higher than what people consuming the product would actually ingest.)

That said, under certain assumptions, parts of the causal structure among several variables can be learned from full covariance or case data by the techniques of path analysis and more generally, Bayesian networks. Generally these inference algorithms search through the many possible causal structures among the variables, and remove ones which are strongly incompatible with the observed correlations. In general this leaves a set of possible causal relations, which should then be tested by designing appropriate experiments. If experimental data is already available, the algorithms can take advantage of that as well. In contrast with Bayesian Networks, path analysis and its generalization, structural equation modeling, serve better to estimate a known causal effect or test a causal model than to generate causal hypotheses.

For nonexperimental data, causal direction can be hinted if information about time is available. This is because causes must precede their effects temporally. This can be set up by simple linear regression models, for instance, with an analysis of covariance in which baseline and followup values are known for a theorized cause and effect. The addition of time as a variable, though not proving causality, is a big help in supporting a pre-existing theory of causal direction. For instance, our degree of confidence in the direction and nature of causality is much clearer with a longitudinal epidemiologic study than with a cross-sectional one.

Manipulation theories
Some theorists have equated causality with manipulability (Collingwood 1940; Gasking 1955; Menzies and Price 1993; von Wright 1971). Under these theories, x causes y just in case one can change x in order to change y. This coincides with commonsense notions of causations, since often we ask causal questions in order to change some feature of the world. For instance, we are interested in knowing the causes of crime so that we might find ways of reducing it.

These theories have been criticized on two primary grounds. First, theorists complain that these accounts are circular. Attempting to reduce causal claims to manipulation requires that manipulation is more basic than causal interaction. But describing manipulations in non-causal terms has provided a substantial difficulty.

The second criticism centers around concerns of anthropocentrism. It seems to many people that causality is some existing relationship in the world that we can harness for our desires. If causality is identified with our manipulation, then this inituition is lost. In this sense, it makes humans overly central to interactions in the world.

Some attempts to save manipulability theories are recent accounts that don’t claim to reduce causality to manipulation. These account use manipulation as a sign or feature in causation without claiming that manipulation is more fundamental than causation (Pearl 2000; Woodward 2003).

Process theories
Some theorists are interested in distinguishing between causal processes and non-causal processes (Russell 1948; Salmon 1984). These theorist often want to distinguish between a process and a pseudo-process. As an example, a ball moving through the air (a process) is contrasted with the motion of a shadow (a pseudo-process). The former is causal in nature while the second is not.

Salmon (1984) claims that causal processes can be identified by their ability to transmit a mark or alternation over space and time. An alteration of the ball (a mark by a pen, perhaps) is carried with it as the ball goes through the air. On the other hand an alteration of the shadow (insofar as it is possible) will not be transmitted by the shadow as it moves along.

These theorists claim that the important concept for understanding causality is not causal relationships or causal interactions, but rather identifying causal processes. The former notions can then be defined in terms of causal processes.

Causality in psychology
The above theories are attempts to define a reflectively stable notion of causality. This process uses our standard causal intuitions to develop a theory that we would find satisfactory in identifying causes. Another avenue of research is to discover how ordinary causal talk is employed by everyday people without challenging them. This is often studied in psychology.

Attribution
Attribution theory is the theory concerning how people explain individual occurrences of causation. Attribution can be external (assigning causality to an outside agent or force - claiming that some outside thing motivated the event) or internal (assigning causality to factors within the person - taking personal responsibility or accountability for one’s actions and claiming that the person was directly responsible for the event). Taking causation one step further, the type of attribution a person provides influences their future behavior.

The intention behind the cause or the effect can be covered by the subject of action (philosophy). See also accident; blame;intent; responsibility;

Causation and salience
Our view of causation depends on what we consider to be the relevant events. Another way to view the statement, “Lightning causes thunder” is to see both lightning and thunder as two perceptions of the same event, viz., an electric discharge that we perceive first visually and then aurally.

Symbolism and causality
While the names we give objects often refer to their appearance, they can also refer to an object’s causal powers - what that object can do, the effects it has on other objects or people. David Sobel and Alison Gopnik from the Psychology Department of UC Berkeley designed a device known as the blicket detector which suggests that “when causal property and perceptual features are equally evident, children are equally as likely to use causal powers as they are to use perceptual properties when naming objects”. More Info

Causation in religion and theology

Cosmological argument
One of the classic arguments for the existence of God is known as the “Cosmological argument” or “First cause” argument. It works from the premise that every natural event is the effect of a cause. If this is so, then the events that caused today’s events must have had causes themselves, which must have had causes, and so forth. If the chain never ends, then one must uphold the hypothesis of an “actual infinite”, which is often regarded as problematic, see Hilbert’s paradox of the Grand Hotel. If the chain does end, it must end with a non-natural or supernatural cause at the start of the natural world — e.g. a creation by God.

Sometimes the argument is made in non-temporal terms. The chain doesn’t go back in time, it goes downward into the ever-more enduring facts, and thus toward the timeless.

Two questions that can help to focus the argument are:

1) What is an event without cause?

2) How does an event without a cause occur?

Critics of this argument point out problems with it.

Karma
Karma is the belief held by some major religions that a person’s actions cause certain effects in future incarnations, positively or negatively.

Reversed causality
Some modern religious movements have postulated along the lines of philosophical idealism that causality is actually reversed from the direction normally presumed. According to these groups, causality does not proceed inward, from external random causes toward effects on a perceiving individual, but rather outward, from a perceiving individual’s causative mental requests toward responsive external physical effects that only seem to be independent causes. These groups have accordingly developed new causality principles such as the doctrine of responsibility assumption.

Causality in science and the humanities
Using the Scientific method, scientists set up experiments to determine causality in the physical world. Certain elemental forces such as gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and electromagnetism are said to be the four fundamental forces which are the causes of all other events in the universe.

However, the issue of to which degree a scientific experiment is replicable has been often raised but rarely addressed. The fact that no experiment is entirely replicable questions some core assumptions in science.

In addition, many scientists in a variety of fields disagree that experiments are necessary to determine causality. For example, the link between smoking and lung cancer is considered proven by health agencies of the United States government, but experimental methods (for example, randomized controlled trials) were not used to establish that link. This view has been controversial. In addition, many philosophers are begining to turn to more relativized notions of causality. Rather than providing a theory of causality in toto, they opt to provide a theory of causality in biology or causality in physics.

Physics

Causality is hard to interpret in many different physical theories. One problem is typified by the moon’s gravity. It isn’t accurate to say, “the moon exerts a gravitic pull and then the tides rise.” In Newtonian mechanics gravity, rather, is a law expressing a constant observable relationship among masses, and the movement of the tides is an example of that relationship. There are no discrete events or “pulls” that can be said to precede the rising of tides. Interpreting gravity causally is even more complicated in general relativity Another important implication of Causality in physics is its intimate connection to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

History
In the field of history, the term cause has at least two meanings, often mistakenly conflated.

One meaning conforms to Aristotle’s final cause — as a goal or purpose. For example, the abolition of slavery became a Union goal or intended outcome for the American Civil War following the Emancipation Proclamations and so was a cause or reason to continue the war. This meaning is not what is meant by the term causality.
Another meaning treats historic events as agents that bring about other historic events. This is a somewhat Platonic and Hegelian view that reifies causes as ontological entities and the term causality is used sometimes in this manner. In this view, slavery is often said to have inevitably produced the American Civil War as a result. In Aristotelian terminology, this use of the term cause is closest to his efficient cause.

Causality in law
According to law and jurisprudence, legal cause must be demonstrated in order to hold a defendant liable for a crime or a tort (ie. a civil wrong such as negligence or trespass). It must be proven that causality, or a ’sufficient causal link’ relates the defendant’s actions to the criminal event or damage in question.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Causality”.