CHAPTER THREE: REALITY AND BEING P H I L O S O P H Y A Text with Readings TENTH EDITION M A N U E L V E L A S Q U E Z

CHAPTER THREE: REALITY AND BEING P H I L O S O P H Y Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that asks what reality and being are, and questions what can ultimately matter.

CHAPTER THREE: REALITY AND BEING P H I L O S O P H Y Materialism is the position that reality is ultimately matter. Hobbes, an early materialist, argued that only physical objects are real.

CHAPTER THREE: REALITY AND BEING P H I L O S O P H Y Idealism is the position that reality is nonmatter: idea, mind, or spirit, for example. Berkeley, an idealist, argued that because all we perceive are our own ideas, only minds and their ideas are real.

CHAPTER THREE: REALITY AND BEING P H I L O S O P H Y Pragmatism, as developed in America by Peirce, James, and Dewey, rejects all absolutistic assumptions about reality, admits the pluralistic nature of reality, and refuses to consider any claims but those focused on "fruits, consequences, facts".

CHAPTER THREE: REALITY AND BEING P H I L O S O P H Y Logical positivists, who base their views on how language works, have generally held that metaphysics is based on linguistic confusions. Logical positivists such as Alfred J. Ayer and Rudolph Carnap argue that metaphysical statements about reality are meaningless expressions of emotion and not statements of fact.

CHAPTER THREE: REALITY AND BEING P H I L O S O P H Y Postmodern antirealists say no reality exists independent of our language, our thoughts, our perceptions, and our beliefs. Different languages, thoughts, perceptions, and beliefs create different realities.

CHAPTER THREE: REALITY AND BEING P H I L O S O P H Y The concept of human existence and being plays an important part in existentialism and phenomenology, which arose out of disillusionment with past philosophies.

CHAPTER THREE: REALITY AND BEING P H I L O S O P H Y Husserl's phenomenology emphasizes that only reality as it appears to consciousness can have any meaning to us. Heidegger's phenomenology stresses being. What is ultimately real for the phenomenologist is pure consciousness, which itself has being. Existentialism stresses personal freedom, the lack of an essential human nature, and the lack of behavioral guidelines.

CHAPTER THREE: REALITY AND BEING P H I L O S O P H Y The issue of determinism has significant implications for our views on punishment and responsibility. Determinists hold that all human actions are caused by previous events and the laws of nature; indeterminists hold that human actions are free and so determinism is false; compatibilists hold that determinism and human freedom are compatible. Kant agreed that determinism and indeterminism arise from two different but inescapable ways of thinking about our actions.

CHAPTER THREE: REALITY AND BEING P H I L O S O P H Y Time may be thought of as objective time, which does not flow from the future into the past, or as subjective time, which we experience as flowing from the future into the past. Many philosophers and scientists have agreed that real time is objective time whereas subjective time is an illusion that does not exist. Henri Bergson has argued that subjective time is real whereas objective time is an abstraction.