Are We Social Beings?: Identity and Culture
"Are We Social Beings?" looks at the relationship between personality and culture while contrasting the atomistic and societal views of the self represented by Descartes and Hegel. Using the endangered culture of the Laplanders in Sweden as the basi...
Is Time Real?: Time and Human Consciousness
Even if the external world does not seem to require the passage of time, human consciousness does. It is a tool that evolution appears to have given humans in order for them to deal successfully with the world. But is it all just illusion? Like St. ...
Is Time Real?: Time as an Inner Sense
Immanuel Kant considers time a human creation. Like space, it is an inner sense our minds use to organize our experiences and structure reality. But if there really isn't any time, what is it? As Augustine said, "if I want to explain it to someone w...
Is Time Real?: Origins and Functions of Time
In 1870 the world does not have standard time. Each county, each city, sometimes each village keeps its own time. In 1884, representatives from around the world meet in Washington D.C. to establish a common standard for time, the time zones that are...
Is Time Real?: Contrasting Perspectives on Time
J.M.E. McTaggart considered time unreal. "Past, present, and future," he said," are incompatible determinations.... No event can be more than one." Does the present enjoy privileged status in terms of its reality, or is it a subjective illusion of h...
Is Time Real?: Paradox of Time
Aristotle formulated one of the basic paradoxes of time. "Time, whether limitless or any given length, is made up of the no-longer and the not-yet. How can we conceive of that which is composed of non-existents?
What is the Meaning of Life?: What is the Meaning of Life?
Is there a Divine Plan that can give purpose and meaning to our lives? Hegel and Mark argued that meaning for individual lives comes from contributing to the progress of history, the arena in which humans come to the full realization of reason and f...