...Metaphysics: The Transcendental Attributes of Being A research paper submitted to [Professor Name] In Partial Fulfillment of the requirements For The course [Course Name] [Seminary Name] By [Student Name] Place Date Introduction While Plato had also covered the notions surrounding the properties of being, Aristotle was the first to bring the term transcendental to the context of the attributes of being. Plato offered valuable insight regarding the four transcendental attributes of being. [1] Aristotle shaped the transcendentals in a specific manner and refined his own perspective. Later philosophers also expanded the discussion surrounding the transcendental attributes of being. These transcendentals become significant in the context of theology because they possess a link with Christian theology and unfold in the form of what man desires. For explicating the four transcendental attributes of being, it becomes significant to first explore the definition of an attribute. An attribute falls under the category of that aspect which does not exist in the form of the embodiment but originates from the same. As regards ‘being’, it can only give rise to what is also being and thus, a ‘being’ cannot spawn attributes or properties while discussing these terminologies in a firm manner. Nevertheless, while approaching the subject in a broader manner, an attribute can be defined for a specific perspective on being as long as it applies to each instance of being and overall entities...
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...Kant's transcendental idealism has the dual aspect of being difficult to interpret and widely discredited. Kant's relevancy has been on the decline since his day, largely due to a wide variety of attacks from modern analytic philosophy. One of their main targets has been Kant's distinction between appearances and things in themselves. This distinction is integral to Kant's entire transcendental idealism; their attacks risk undermining the entire critical philosophy. These attacks are largely based on the two world interpretation of Kant's philosophy. This perspective is the most common of Kant's viewpoint; appearances and things in-themselves occupy distinct metaphysical realms. Noumena exist independently of phenomena and cause some of them,...
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...THE MIND IN IDEALISM Philosophy of mind is widely considered a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness, and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind–body problem, i.e. the relationship of the mind to the body, is commonly seen as one key issue in philosophy of mind, although there are other issues concerning the nature of the mind that do not involve its relation to the physical body, such as how consciousness is possible and the nature of particular mental states. One of these issues that do not presume a relationship of a mind and body is the conception of mind in Idealism. Philosophically, idealism is the view that fundamental reality is the make-up of mind and ideas only. This essay will discuss at length what the mind generally means to the idealist especially in the classical sense as espoused by George Berkeley and then proceed to analyse the concept of mind or self in the radical transcendentalism of Joseph von Schelling and conclude with Edmund Husserl, a 20th century philosopher and reputed founder of Phenomenology Idealism is the form of monism that sees the world as consisting of minds, mental contents and or consciousness, according to Stoljar (2005). Idealists are not faced with explaining how minds arise from bodies: rather, the world, bodies and objects are regarded as mere appearances held by minds. According to Stoljar, accounting for the mind–body...
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...Philosophy 1500 14 May 2015 Prompt 1 The True Nature of Reality When it comes to describing the nature of our reality, philosophers have been in search of a system that truly and completely explains everything. It is noteworthy that numerous system have developed over the past few centuries. However, in this paper only four notable theories (dualism, materialism, idealism and transcendental idealism) will be explored. Each theories provide adequate explanation of reality but there are limitations and shortcomings when one contemplate carefully. The theories will be explored and critique by using the mind body problem, The Chinese room, the radical emergence theory. Moreover, one should consider which theory describes the nature of reality with least logical incoherencies. Substance Dualism is a theory that describes “mind and matter” as “two distinct things” (Nagel Thomas 206). Furthermore, substance dualism categorize matter as “physical or material substance” and mind or soul as “non-physical or immaterial substance” (Lacewing Michael) “Substance Dualism”). So, dualism is the proposal that human being as a living, thinking entity not only includes brain and physical matter but also a non-physical substance to account for the mind. The famous seventeenth century French philosopher René Descartes claimed that as “a subject of conscious thought and experience, he cannot consist of spatially extended matter”. He therefore states that “his essential nature must be non-material...
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...Transcendental Philosophy One needs specific initiation into the classics of transcendental philosophy (Kant’s "Criticism," Descartes’s "Metaphysics," and Fichte’s "Doctrine of Science") because all say farewell to the common sense view of things. The three types of transcendental thinking converge in conceiving rational autonomy as the ultimate ground for justification. Correspondingly, the philosophical pedagogy of all three thinkers is focused on how to seize and make that very autonomy (or active self-determination) intellectually and existentially available. In the concrete way of proceeding, however, the three models diverge. Descartes expects one to become master of oneself and "the world" by methodologically suspending his judgement on what cannot qualify itself to be undoubtable. Kant leads us to the point where we can triangulate universal conditions of the possibility of knowledge through individually acquiring the competence to judge the legitimacy of encountered propositional claims. Finally, Fichte confronts us with the idea of the identity of self-consciousness and objectivity. (1) Transcending ordinary life and experience to a somewhat higher being is surely not the scope of transcendental philosophy. What the revolutionary achievements of Descartes, Kant, and Fichte have generically in common is to account for the legitimacy of our knowledge claims or, in other words, for the possibility of autonomy. The business of that kind of philosophy is to rationally...
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...analysis. Affine functions | Quadratic function | Continuous function | Trigonometric function | An affine function | A quadratic function. | The signum function is not continuous, since it "jumps" at 0. | The sine and cosine function. | f(x) = ax + b. | f(x) = ax2 + bx + c. | Roughly speaking, a continuous function is one whose graph can be drawn without lifting the pen. | e.g., sin(x), cos(x) | Further types of function * differentiable, integrable * polynomial, rational * algebraic, transcendental * odd or even * convex, monotonic * holomorphic, meromorphic, entire * vector-valued * computable * Proposition In logic and philosophy the term proposition refers to either (a) the "content" or "meaning" of a meaningful declarative sentence or (b) the pattern of symbols, marks, or sounds that make up a meaningful declarative sentence. In classical logic, the meaning of a proposition includes having the quality or property of being either true or false, and as such propositions are claimed to betruthbearers Example | Name | Result | $a and $b | And | TRUE if both $a and $b are TRUE. | $a or $b | Or | TRUE if either $a or $b is TRUE. | $a xor $b | Xor | TRUE if either $a or $b is TRUE, but not both. | ! $a | Not | TRUE if $a is not TRUE. | $a && $b | And | TRUE if both $a and $b are TRUE. | $a || $b | Or | TRUE if either $a or $b is TRUE....
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...The philosophers tell us that art consists essentially, not in performing a moral act, but in making a thing, a work, in making an object with a view not to the human good of the agent, but to the exigencies and the proper good of the object to be made, and by employing ways of realization predetermined by the nature of the object in question. Art thus appears as something foreign in itself to the sphere of the human good, almost as something inhuman, and whose exigencies nevertheless are absolute: for, needless to say, there are not two ways of making an object well, of realizing well the work one has conceived -- there is but one way, and it must not be missed. The philosophers go on to say that this making activity is principally and above all an intellectual activity. Art is a virtue of the intellect, of the practical intellect, and may be termed the virtue proper to working reason. But then, you will say, if art is nothing other than an intellectual virtue of making, whence comes its dignity and its ascendancy among us? Why does this branch of our activity draw to it so much human sap? Why has one always and in all peoples admired the poet as much as the sage? It may be answered first that to create, to produce something intellectually, to make an object rationally constructed, is something very great in the world: for man this alone is already a way of imitating God. And I am speaking here of art in general, such as the ancients understood it -- in short, of art as the...
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...3.2 God in the Critique of Pure Reason's Transcendental Dialectic 3.2.1 The Ens Realissimum The Transcendental Dialectic's “Ideal of Reason” contains the best known and most frequently anthologized components of Kant's philosophy of religion. In addition to its portrayal of the ens realissimum, one finds within it Kant's objections to the Ontological, Cosmological and Physico-theological (Design) arguments for God's existence. It is thus the text most central to the negative elements of Kant's philosophy of religion and is integral to the widely held view that Kant is deeply hostile to faith. The general aim of the Transcendental Dialectic is to expose reason's excesses, its drive to move beyond the limits of possible experience, and to bring all concepts into a systematic unity under an “unconditioned condition.” The Transcendental Dialectic begins with a critique of reason's illusions and errors within the sphere of Rational Psychology. It then moves on to a critique of cosmological metaphysics, and then to the “Ideal of Reason” where Kant turns to Rational Theology and its pursuit of religious knowledge. As Kant explains, underlying all the traditional proofs for God's existence is the concept of the ens realissimum, the most real being. Reason comes to the idea of this being through the principle that every individuated object is subject to the “principle of complete determination.” While the generality of concepts allow them to be less than fully determined (e.g...
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...and therefore cannot grasp the perception of the next dimension. The second dimension consists of moving lines which turns into shapes along two axis’, this dimension can fully understand the first dimension but yet again the next dimension is inconceivable. In the third dimension the same idea is applied, the shapes formed along the second dimension are moved and twisted into, as we perceive it, three dimensional shapes that are multisided and multifaceted. The same rule applies where the third dimension can understand the first and second dimensions. In respect of the first three dimension does it not make sense that the next dimension, the fourth dimension, would also be squared making shapes along four plains? With human understanding being caught in the third dimension there is no definite way to prove what the fourth...
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...the "mob" (majority rule) and the "elite" (group of nobles) in his country (Johansen 22). He felt that majority rule was irrational and volatile because the average person lacked knowledge and self-restraint, making decisions from emotional responses based on desire and sentiment (Johansen 25). When is comes to metaphysics, Plato’s Theory of the Forms is by far the nucleus of it. For Plato, Forms are timeless essence or entities that rule the well being of a person. Also according to Plato, Forms are transcendental because they depend on the declaration that there is a plane of being outside of our ordinary existence (Tovar 10). Plato divided metaphysics into four levels of reality and four epistemological ways of apprehending the Forms. The four levels of reality are images, sensible objects, lower forms, and higher forms (Tovar 22). The four epistemological ways of apprehending are imagination, perception, reasoning and understanding. When is comes to his epistemology, he tied his dualistic notion of being and becoming. Being is said to be unchangeable and becoming is the way the world appears. Plato though that whatever is relative and always shifting could not be true. So basically Plato is saying the becoming is something that is not real. When it comes to truth and knowledge, these two things are found in another realm of reality. For Descartes metaphysics, it comes down to three things. First would be mind and body. Descartes considered mind and body were...
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...soft core members (Fox 1987; Kates 2002; Beverland et al. 2006). Hard core members are strictly enslaved to the core value while soft core members only have peripheral relationship with the group. Being the key opinion leaders, hard...
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...Emerson is often considered the father of the transcendental philosophical tradition. Transcendentalists believe in three major principles: individualism, idealism and the divinity of nature. The Transcendentalists believed that an individual could “transcend” or go beyond the physical world of the senses into a different world of spiritual experience through free will and intuition. Emerson and the Transcendentalists believed that God was not distant and unreachable, but knowable through our own souls and through a deep connection with nature. The central themes in all of his works were individuality, freedom, human self-realization and relation to nature. In his essay on Nature, Emerson explores the relationship between humans and nature. He asserts that the beauty of nature can be understood by people only when one is in solitude. The true understanding of significance of nature is hindered by the hustle and bustle of daily life. Emerson is of the view that we take nature for granted. For example, we take the stars for granted because we know that they will always be there. However, although they are “accessible” in that they are visible to us, they are also inaccessible due to the distance between us. We can never physically touch them. However, there is an inter-connectedness among the nature, soul and the divine that we miss. “Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.” He feels that we must view nature from the eyes of a child. A child sees things in new an unbiased...
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...The philosophers tell us that art consists essentially, not in performing a moral act, but in making a thing, a work, in making an object with a view not to the human good of the agent, but to the exigencies and the proper good of the object to be made, and by employing ways of realization predetermined by the nature of the object in question. Art thus appears as something foreign in itself to the sphere of the human good, almost as something inhuman, and whose exigencies nevertheless are absolute: for, needless to say, there are not two ways of making an object well, of realizing well the work one has conceived -- there is but one way, and it must not be missed. The philosophers go on to say that this making activity is principally and above all an intellectual activity. Art is a virtue of the intellect, of the practical intellect, and may be termed the virtue proper to working reason. But then, you will say, if art is nothing other than an intellectual virtue of making, whence comes its dignity and its ascendancy among us? Why does this branch of our activity draw to it so much human sap? Why has one always and in all peoples admired the poet as much as the sage? It may be answered first that to create, to produce something intellectually, to make an object rationally constructed, is something very great in the world: for man this alone is already a way of imitating God. And I am speaking here of art in general, such as the ancients understood it -- in short, of art...
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...John Milton. An idyll was originally a short, peaceful pastoral lyric, but has come to include poems of epic adventure set in an idealized past, including Lord Alfred Tennyson's take on Arthurian legend, The Idylls of the King. The Biblical Song of Songs is also considered an idyll, as it tells its story of love and passion by continuously evoking imagery from the natural world. The more familiar form of surviving pastoral poetry that has retained its integrity is the eclogue, a poem attuned to the natural world and seasons, placed in a pleasant, serene, and rural place, and in which shepherds often converse. The first eclogue was written by Virgil in 37 B.C.E. The eclogue also flourished in the Italian Renaissance, its most notable authors being Dante and Petrarch. It became something of a requirement for young poets, a form they had to master before embarking upon great original work. Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and Edmund Spenser’s The Shephearde’s Calendar are English triumphs of the form, the latter relying on the months of the year to trace the changes in a shepherd's life. In "Januarye," Spenser compares the shepherd's unreturned affection with "the frosty ground," "the frozen trees" and "his own winter beaten flocks." In "April" he writes "Like April showers, so streams the trickling tears." It was the...
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...This skepticism gives no foundation on knowledge, as not only knowledge cannot be derived by reason, but also senses experiences are not reliable – it often deceives us. Kant’s Transcendental Philosophy The mention of Kant’s epistemology is necessary as his idea is revolutionary. Since Descartes’ “Cogito, Ergo Sum”, modern philosophy has shifted its approach to subjectivity, and the trend reaches its peak in Kant’s philosophy. To what he called “Copernican Revolution” – from concerning the objectivity of knowledge to subject’s cognitive ability. In Kant’s view, human are not born as blank sheet, but was given the concept of time, space, causality, etc. The acquisition of knowledge is then possible under such a framework, where those concepts are stated under 4 categories of pure understanding. Kant attempted to look for a type of proposition that is informative and universal – to respond Hume’s view that what is universal...
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