META-PHILOSOPHY PART 3 1 There are some individuals who are not satisfied with our experience, that we think about our experience and all sorts of other things, that we discuss those things, depict them in many ways and describe them in writing. A small percentage of people want to know more about all these things that occur to them as earth-situated and confined beings. The more they seek are not merely more information or data, but they wish to know how such things are known, perceived, experienced, thought, imagined, heard, touched, seen and understood. A few of these reflective persons associate their search for insights and greater understanding with the Western tradition of philosophical understanding, the socio-practical discourse of philosophizing and the philosophical discourse. For some people this gives meaning to their life, the reason for their existence. They usually are the ones who will consider these things, question and explore them in ways that are original because the ways of thinking about all aspects of their existence, life-worlds and realities they have internalized, acquired during their general and specialized socialization and the answers and insights such institutionalized ways of understanding they experience as imprisoning, lacking meaning, without validity and legitimacy and limiting. These individuals from all walks of life, classes, backgrounds, cultures, countries, religious backgrounds and historical periods (all planets, solar systems, galaxies and universes. Are there alien philosophers? Lol) are in need of the philosophical discourse. Not merely the investigation, understanding and learning of the history of philosophical ideas from the past, but the actual involvement in, the personal dealing with how and why we can make sense of things, understand things, discuss them, can depict them, know them and think about them. These individuals are in need of this particular socio-cultural practice because of their personality-type, without it they would be at a loss and have no reason to live and no meaning in their existence. They differ greatly from many who have academic qualifications in philosophy or who live off philosophy by working in this subject to earn a living as they automatically think philosophically, they must philosophize and are not able to exist without it. They are original, creative-thinking individuals and their ways of writing and talking philosophy differ greatly from the secondary, contrived, derivative styles of academic professionals. Those who produce philosophical articles, books, conference speeches and class lecturers in the pedantic, academic professional style, because it forms part of their tenured job-descriptions. Then there exist another breed of humans, not only do their personality-types and other factors determine and drive them to philosophical questioning and explorations, but they further feel the need to question, to explore, to investigate, to think, talk and write about philosophical activities, philosophical investigations and philosophizing itself. Those questions philosophers ask, such as what the nature of something is, what the structure of something is, how one can perceive, talk about, think about, depict and understand any, all, phenomena, they feel obliged to ask about philosophizing, philosophical activities and the philosophical discourse itself. Philosophy itself, because of its talking, think, writing about phenomena, their reflective activities, already appears to be a meta-activity, a second-order activity, and now here comes another kind of person who feels obligated to think about such meta-philosophical activities, to explore, investigate and research the nature, the reason for, the rationale of, the values, the attitudes, norms, rules, structure, the methodology, methods, techniques and practices of those already second-order or meta philosophical activities. I read that something, probably tongue-in-cheek, wrote so it becomes an ad infinitum meta of meta of meta of meta activity? No, this might have been said in a sarcastic or jocular manner, but meta-philosophy, meta-philosophizing and meta-explorations, investigations, questioning and problematization are much, much more serious than that. It is not intended as a joke or a game, but something essential, something necessary, an activity that first-order reflection, first-order philosophizing and the philosophical discourse requires, is in need of and cannot do without. Such activities explore the grounds, the values, the norms, the rules, the rationale, the purpose, aims, procedures, methods and subject-matter of the philosophical discourse, the socio-cultural practice of philosophy and philosophizing itself. 2 Situating the individual’s minute life-world, notion and perception of reality and the universe in the, for human thinking, the vast, seemingly endless, infinite universe. With the short life spam of homo sapiens sapiens compare the size and age of the earth, our solar system and visible universe. These are the sojourning, earth-centered and - restricted beings who attempt to imagine all-inclusive and explanatory ontologies for a universe which are 13.772 billion years old. In 2012, WMAP estimated the age of the universe to be 13.772 billion years, with an uncertainty of 59 million years. In 2013, Planck measured the age of the universe at 13.82 billion years. And, our solar system, derived from the study of meteorites (thought to be the oldest accessible material around) is near 5 billion years; that of the Earth is taken as 4.6 billion (4.543) years. The oldest rocks on Earth are dated as 3.8 billion years. It is now widely agreed that stromatolites are the oldest known lifeform on Earth which has left a record of its existence. Therefore, if life originated on Earth, this happened sometime between 4.4 billion years ago, when water vapor first liquefied, and 3.5 billion years ago.  According to the recent African origin of modern humans theory, modern humans evolved in Africa possibly from Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rhodesiensis or Homo antecessor and migrated out of the continent some 50,000 to 100,000 years ago, gradually replacing local populations of Homo erectus, Denisova hominins, Homo …. The top 10 theories of life on earth – Panspermia, (so it is assumed that there exists life in space?), abiogenesis or biopoesis, cosmogeny (with 2 limitations on such theories of creation), endosymbiosis, spontaneous origination, clay theory, the idea of extinction paved the way for the theory of catastrophism or “consecutive creations”, materialistic theory, organic evolution, theory of special creation, electric spark, deep-sea vents, chilly start, RNA World, simple beginnings. "There may have been several origins," said David Deamer, a biochemist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "We usually make 'origins' plural just to indicate that we don't necessarily claim there was just a single origin, but just an origin that didn't happen to get blasted by giant [asteroid] impacts." http://www.livescience.com/1804-greatest-mysteries-life-arise-earth.html The anthropic principles But "astronomical" is a relative term. In his book, The God Delusion, biologist Richard Dawkins entertains another possibility, inspired by work in astronomy and physics. Suppose, Dawkins says, the universe contains a billion billion planets (a conservative estimate, he says), then the chances that life will arise on one of them is not really so remarkable. Furthermore, if, as some physicists say, our universe is just one of many, ( multiverse theory - The multiverse (or meta-universe) is the hypothetical set of finite and infinite possible universes, including the universe in which we live. Together, these universes comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, and thephysical laws and constants that describe them. The various universes within the multiverse are called "parallel universes", "other universes" or "alternate universes." The structure of the multiverse, the nature of each universe within it, and the relationships among these universes differ from one multiverse hypothesis to another. Multiple universes have been hypothesized in cosmology, physics, astronomy, religion, philosophy, transpersonal psychology, and literature, particularly in science fiction and fantasy. In these contexts, parallel universes are also called "alternate universes", "quantum universes", "interpenetrating dimensions", "parallel dimensions", "parallel worlds", "alternate realities", "alternate timelines", and "dimensional planes". The physics community continues to debate the multiverse hypothesis. Prominent physicists disagree about whether the multiverse exists. Proponents of one of the multiverse hypotheses include Stephen Hawking,[16] Brian Greene,[17][18] Max Tegmark,[19] Alan Guth,[20] Andrei Linde,[21] Michio Kaku,[22] David Deutsch,[23] Leonard Susskind,[24] Alexander Vilenkin,[25] Yasunori Nomura,[26] Raj Pathria,[27] Laura Mersini-Houghton,[28][29] Neil deGrasse Tyson,[30] and Sean Carroll.[31] Scientists who are generally skeptical of the multiverse hypothesis include: Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg,[32] Nobel laureate David Gross,[33] Paul Steinhardt,[34] Neil Turok,[35] Viatcheslav Mukhanov,[36] Michael S. Turner,[37] Roger Penrose,[38] George Ellis,[39][40] Joe Silk,[41] Carlo Rovelli, [42] Adam Frank,[43] Marcelo Gleiser,[43] Jim Baggott,[44] and Paul Davies.[45] 4 levels Cosmologist Max Tegmark has provided a taxonomy of universes beyond the familiar observable universe. The four levels of Tegmark's classification are arranged such that subsequent levels can be understood to encompass and expand upon previous levels. They are briefly described below.[48][49] The American theoretical physicist and string theorist, Brian Greene, discussed nine types of parallel universes:[57] A multiverse of a somewhat different kind has been envisaged within string theory and its higher-dimensional extension, M-theory.[58]   Black-hole cosmology, anthropic principle, possible worlds, modal realism, trans-world identity, counterpart theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse)  and each universe contained a billion billion planets, then it's nearly a certainty that life will arise on at least one of them. As Dawkins writes, "There may be universes whose skies have no stars: but they also have no inhabitants to notice the lack." Shapiro doesn't think it's necessary to invoke multiple universes or life-laden comets crashing into ancient Earth. Instead, he thinks life started with molecules that were smaller and less complex than RNA, which performed simple chemical reactions that eventually led to a self-sustaining system involving the formation of more complex molecules. The above is just a few simplistic points about the universe/s our earthbound ontologizing and epistemologizing individuals are existing in. Ontologists, epistemologists and other types of philosophers attempt by thinking to identify that what exist and that what exists most fundamentally. Kant informed us that wherever we go in the universe/s we as humans will be employing certain basic notions and categories to make sense of whatever we encounter, experience, think, etc. Marx told us that social notions, especially those concerned with labour and class will structure our thinking and so on. From the information about the age of the universe and earth and speculations about the origins of life, we can see that philosophers have competition from another of other disciplines if they wish to reflect about many aspects of ontology and epistemology. Of course philosophers do not have to be naturalists but can employ other kinds of frames of reference and –isms to speculate about ontological and epistemological matters. Just as long as their reasoning and arguments conform to the rules as taught by academia!! They could for example follow  Hegel and reduce their ontologies to playing with ideas, follow Marx and discuss class warfare and labour, Sartre and explore the human condition, the Wittgensteins and explore logic and mathematics or our language practices, Habermas and his sociologism, the deconstructivists, post-moderns and emphasize relativity. Some thinkers may not be satisfied with any of the above or other existing ontological and epistemological speculations. They could turn to theoretical physicists for ideas and treat them as the contemporary ontologists or of course mathematicians or logicians. The philosophical purists might however wish to concentrate on ontological descriptions that continue traditional philosophical notions and treatments of ontological concerns. With this in mind we can explore contemporary attempts and await future ones for guidance and in the meantime deal with such questions in a Nietzschean manner, or just take in a position of scepticism (soft, average or hard). Sise of the universe - It is estimated that the diameter of the observable universe is about 28.5 gigaparsecs (93 billion light-years, 8.8×1026 metres or 5.5×1023 miles), putting the edge of the observable universe at about 46.5 billion light-years away. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe The observable universe consists of at least two trillion galaxies,[7][8] and other matter that can, in principle, be observed from Earth at the present time because light and other signals from these objects have had time to reach Earth since the beginning of the cosmological expansion. Assuming the universe is isotropic, the distance to the edge of the observable universe is roughly the same in every direction. That is, the observable universe is spherical volume (a ball) centered on the observer. Every location in the Universe has its own observable universe, which may or may not overlap with the one centered on Earth. Visualization of the whole observable universe. The scale is such that the fine grains represent collections of large numbers of superclusters. The Virgo Supercluster – home of Milky Way – is marked at the center, but is too small to be seen. Diameter 8.8×1026 m (28.5 Gpc or 93 Gly)[1] Volume 4×1080 m3[2] Mass (ordinary matter) 1053 kg[3] Density 9.9×10−30 g/cm3 (equivalent to 6 protons per cubic meter of space)[4] Age 13.799±0.021 billion years[5] Average temperature 2.72548 K[6] Contents Ordinary (baryonic) matter (4.9%) Dark matter (26.8%) Dark energy (68.3%) The word observable used in this sense does not depend on whether modern technology actually permits detection of radiation from an object in this region (or indeed on whether there is any radiation to detect). It simply indicates that it is possible in principle for light or other signals from the object to reach an observer on Earth. In practice, we can see light only from as far back as the time of photon decoupling in the recombination epoch. That is when particles were first able to emit photons that were not quickly re-absorbed by other particles. Before then, the Universe was filled with a plasma that was opaque to photons. The detection of gravitational waves indicates there is now a possibility of detecting non-light signals from before the recombination epoch. The surface of last scattering is the collection of points in space at the exact distance that photons from the time of photon decoupling just reach us today. These are the photons we detect today as cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR). However, with future technology, it may be possible to observe the still older relic neutrino background, or even more distant events via gravitational waves (which also should move at the speed of light). Sometimes astrophysicists distinguish between the visible universe, which includes only signals emitted since recombination – and the observable universe, which includes signals since the beginning of the cosmological expansion (the Big Bang in traditional cosmology, the end of the inflationary epoch in modern cosmology). According to calculations, the comoving distance (current proper distance) to particles from which the CMBR was emitted, which represent the radius of the visible universe, is about 14.0 billion parsecs (about 45.7 billion light years), while the comoving distance to the edge of the observable universe is about 14.3 billion parsecs (about 46.6 billion light years),[9] about 2% larger. The best estimate of the age of the universe as of 2015 is 13.799±0.021 billion years[5] but due to the expansion of space humans are observing objects that were originally much closer but are now considerably farther away (as defined in terms of cosmological proper distance, which is equal to the comoving distance at the present time) than a static 13.8 billion light-years distance.[10] It is estimated that the diameter of the observable universe is about 28.5 gigaparsecs (93 billion light-years, 8.8×1026 metres or 5.5×1023 miles),[11] putting the edge of the observable universe at about 46.5 billion light-years away.[12][13] The total mass of the universe can be accurately calculated with the speed of light C, gravitational constant G and the age of the universe to be 1.8×1053 kg with the relation of C3=GM/t.[14] Some parts of the Universe are too far away for the light emitted since the Big Bang to have had enough time to reach Earth, so these portions of the Universe lie outside the observable universe. In the future, light from distant galaxies will have had more time to travel, so additional regions will become observable. However, due to Hubble's law, regions sufficiently distant from the Earth are expanding away from it faster than the speed of light (special relativity prevents nearby objects in the same local region from moving faster than the speed of light with respect to each other, but there is no such constraint for distant objects when the space between them is expanding; see uses of the proper distance for a discussion) and furthermore the expansion rate appears to be accelerating due to dark energy. Assuming dark energy remains constant (an unchanging cosmological constant), so that the expansion rate of the Universe continues to accelerate, there is a "future visibility limit" beyond which objects will never enter our observable universe at any time in the infinite future, because light emitted by objects outside that limit would never reach the Earth. (A subtlety is that, because the Hubble parameter is decreasing with time, there can be cases where a galaxy that is receding from the Earth just a bit faster than light does emit a signal that reaches the Earth eventually[13][15]). This future visibility limit is calculated at a comoving distance of 19 billion parsecs (62 billion light years), assuming the Universe will keep expanding forever, which implies the number of galaxies that we can ever theoretically observe in the infinite future (leaving aside the issue that some may be impossible to observe in practice due to redshift, as discussed in the following paragraph) is only larger than the number currently observable by a factor of 2.36.[16] Artist's logarithmic scale conception of the observable universe with the Solar System at the center, inner and outer planets, Kuiper belt, Oort cloud, Alpha Centauri, Perseus Arm, Milky Way galaxy, Andromeda galaxy, nearby galaxies, Cosmic Web, Cosmic microwave radiation and the Big Bang's invisible plasma on the edge. Though in principle more galaxies will become observable in the future, in practice an increasing number of galaxies will become extremely redshifted due to ongoing expansion, so much so that they will seem to disappear from view and become invisible. Today we are fairly confident that the Milky Way is probably between 100,000 and 150,000 light years across. The observable Universe is, of course, much larger. According to current thinking it is about 93 billion light years in diameter. How can we be so sure? And how did we ever come up with such measurements from right here on Earth? The Universe is all of time and space and its contents.[9][10][11][12] It includes planets, moons, minor planets, stars, galaxies, the contents of intergalactic space, and all matter and energy. The observable universe is about 28 billion parsecs (91 billion light-years) in diameter.[3] The size of the entire Universe is unknown, but there are many hypotheses about the composition and evolution of the Universe.[13] The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our Solar System. The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy that has a diameter usually considered to be about 100,000–120,000 light-years[28] but may be 150,000–180,000 light-years.[29] The Milky Way is estimated to contain 100–400 billion stars.[30][31] There are likely at least 100 billion planets in the Milky Way.[32][33] The Solar System is located within the disk, about 27,000 light-years from the Galactic Center, on the inner edge of one of the spiral-shaped concentrations of gas and dust called the Orion Arm. The stars in the inner ≈10,000 light-years form a bulge and one or more bars that radiate from the bulge. The very center is marked by an intense radio source, named Sagittarius A*, which is likely to be a supermassive black hole. Stars and gases at a wide range of distances from the Galactic Center orbit at approximately 220 kilometers per second. The constant rotation speed contradicts the laws of Keplerian dynamics and suggests that much of the mass of the Milky Way does not emit or absorb electromagnetic radiation. This mass has been termed "dark matter".[34] The rotational period is about 240 million years at the position of the Sun.[15] The Milky Way as a whole is moving reference. The oldest stars in the Milky Way are nearly as old as the Universe itself and thus likely formed shortly after the Dark Ages of the Big Bang.[9] The Milky Way has several satellite galaxies and is part of the Local Group of galaxies, which is a component of the Virgo Supercluster, which is itself a component of the Laniakea at a velocity of approximately 600 km per second with respect to extragalactic frames of Supercluster.[35][36] The Milky Way's Galactic Center in the night sky above Paranal Observatory (the laser creates a guide-star for the telescope). The Sun and planets of the Solar System (distances not to scale) Age 4.568 billion years Location Local Interstellar Cloud, Local Bubble, Orion–Cygnus Arm, Milky Way System mass 1.0014 Solar masses Nearest star Proxima Centauri  (4.22 ly) Alpha Centauri system (4.37 ly) Nearest known planetary system Proxima Centauri system  (4.25 ly) Planetary system Semi-major axis of outer known planet (Neptune) 30.10 AU  (4.503 billion km) Distance to Kuiper cliff 50 AU Populations Stars 1  (Sun) Known planets 8 (Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune) Known dwarf planets Possibly several hundred;[1] five currently recognized by the IAU (Ceres Pluto Haumea Makemake Eris) Known natural satellites 470 (173 planetary[2] 297 minor planetary[3]) Known minor planets 707,664  (as of 2016-03-07)[4] Known comets 3,406  (as of 2016-03-07)[4] Identified rounded satellites 19 Orbit about Galactic Center Invariable-to-galactic plane inclination 60.19°  (ecliptic) Distance to Galactic Center 27,000 ± 1,000 ly Orbital speed 220 km/s Orbital period 225–250 Myr Star-related properties Spectral type G2V Frost line ≈5 AU[5] Distance to heliopause ≈120 AU Hill sphere radius ≈1–3 ly Objects by orbit by size by discovery date Lists Gravitationally-rounded (equilibrium) objects Possible dwarf planets Moons (natural satellites) Minor planets Comets Asteroids Our Solar System extends much, much farther than where the planets are. The furthest dwarf planet, Eris, orbits within just a fraction of the larger Solar System. The Kuiper Belt, where we find a Pluto, Eris, Makemake and Haumea, extends from 30 astronomical units all the way out to 50 AU, or 7.5 billion kilometers. The Solar System[a] is the gravitationally bound system comprising the Sun and the objects that orbit it, either directly or indirectly.[b] Of those objects that orbit the Sun directly, the largest eight are the planets,[c] with the remainder being significantly smaller objects, such as dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies. Of the objects that orbit the Sun indirectly, the moons, two are larger than the smallest planet, Mercury.[d] The Solar System formed 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of a giant interstellar molecular cloud. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun, with most of the remaining mass contained in Jupiter. The four smaller inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, are terrestrial planets, being primarily composed of rock and metal. The four outer planets are giant planets, being substantially more massive than the terrestrials. The two largest, Jupiter and Saturn, are gas giants, being composed mainly of hydrogen and helium; the two outermost planets, Uranus and Neptune, are ice giants, being composed mostly of substances with relatively high melting points compared with hydrogen and helium, called volatiles, such as water, ammonia and methane. All planets have almost circular orbits that lie within a nearly flat disc called the ecliptic. The Solar System also contains smaller objects. Earth is the third planet from the Sun, the densest planet in the Solar System, the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets, and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. Earth is not quite a sphere. The planet's rotation causes it to bulge at the equator. Earth's equatorial diameter is 7,926 miles (12,756 km), but from pole to pole, the diameter is 7,898 miles (12,714 km) — a difference of only 28 miles (42 km). Radius: 3,959 mi Mass: 5.972 × 10^24 kg Distance from Sun: 92.96 million mi Area: 196.9 million mi² Surface area: 196.9 million mi² Density: 5.51 g/cm³ Radius: 3,959 mi Mass: 5.972 × 10^24 kg Distance from Sun: 92.96 million mi Area: 196.9 million mi² Surface area: 196.9 million mi² Density: 5.51 g/cm³ PLANETS AND STARS SIZE - COMPARISON - EARTH SIZE - YouTube ▶ 2:22 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYVKcDvokiM Planet Earth compared to other planets and stars in size. - YouTube ▶ 4:27 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=octRYMsiLX0 The size of Earth, like the size of all of the celestial bodies, is measured in a number of parameters including mass, volume, density, surface area, and equatorial/polar/mean diameter. While we live on this planet, very few people can quote you the figures for these parameters. Below is a table with many of the pieces of the data used to measure the size of the Earth. Mass 5.9736×1024kg Volume 1.083×1012 km3 Mean diameter 12,742 km Surface area 510,072,000 km2 Density 5.515 g/cm3 Circumference 40,041 km Those numbers tell you the size of the Earth, but what about its other statistics? The atmospheric pressure at the surface is 101.325 kPa, average temperature is 14°C, the axial tilt is approximately 23°, and it has an orbital speed of 29.78 km/s. Earth orbits with a perihelion of 147,098,290 km, and an aphelion of 152,098,232 km, making for a semi-major axis of 149,598,261 km. Even though we need oxygen to survive, it is the second most abundant component of Earth’s atmosphere. Nitrogen accounts for 78% of the gases in the atmosphere and oxygen occupies 21%. The Earth only has one moon. That is pretty uncommon in our Solar System. There are currently 166 recognized moon in our system. There is one asteroid that has a quasi relationship with Earth. 3753 Cruithne has a 1:1 orbital resonance with the Earth. It is a periodic inclusion planetoid that has a horseshoe orbit. It was discovered in 1986. Since we occupy this planet, it is understandably the most extensively studied body in space. We have sent scientist to most of the corners of our world. Yet, we find dozens of new species each year and there are areas that have rarely seen a human’s footprints. There are aspects of our world that we do not understand and have theories too inadequate to explain. Science is light years ahead of where it was just 50 years ago. These advancements are exciting enough to make the possibilities of the near future seem boundless. Now that you know the size of the Earth, you could look for information on extremophiles, the Mariana Trench, and the Tunguska event. Earth bound events are often taken for granted since we live here, but, with a little research, you may find much more excitement outside of your back door than you ever expected. We have written many articles about the Solar System for Universe Today. Here’s an article about the size of Mars, and here’s one about the size of the Moon. Want more resources on the Earth? Here’s a link to NASA’s Human Spaceflight page, and here’s NASA’s Visible Earth. We have also recorded an episode of Astronomy Cast about Earth, as part of our tour through the Solar System – Episode 51: Earth. Earth (otherwise known as the world,[n 5] in Greek: Γαῖα Gaia,[n 6] or in Latin: Terra[26]) is the third planet from the Sun, the densest planet in the Solar System, the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets, and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. According to radiometric dating and other sources of evidence, Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago.[27][28][29] Earth gravitationally interacts with other objects in space, especially the Sun and the Moon. During one orbit around the Sun, Earth rotates about its axis 366.26 times, creating 365.26 solar days or one sidereal year.[n 7] Earth's axis of rotation is tilted 23.4° away from the perpendicular of its orbital plane, producing seasonal variations on the planet's surface within a period of one tropical year (365.24 solar days).[30] The Moon is the Earth's only permanent natural satellite; their gravitational interaction causes ocean tides, stabilizes the orientation of Earth's rotational axis, and gradually slows Earth's rotational rate.[31] Earth's lithosphere is divided into several rigid tectonic plates that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. 71% of Earth's surface is covered with water.[32] The remaining 29% is land mass—consisting of continents and islands—that together has many lakes, rivers, and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere. The majority of Earth's polar regions are covered in ice, including the Antarctic ice sheet and the sea ice of the Arctic ice pack. Earth's interior remains active with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the Earth's magnetic field, and a convecting mantle that drives plate tectonics. Within the first billion years of Earth's history, life appeared in the oceans and began to affect the atmosphere and surface, leading to the proliferation of aerobic and anaerobic organisms. Since then, the combination of Earth's distance from the Sun, physical properties, and geological history have allowed life to evolve and thrive. Life arose on Earth by 3.5 billion years ago, though some geological evidence indicates that life may have arisen as much as 4.1 billion years ago.[33][34] In the history of the Earth, biodiversity has gone through long periods of expansion, occasionally punctuated by mass extinction events. Over 99% of all species of life[35] that ever lived on Earth are extinct.[36][37] Estimates of the number of species on Earth today vary widely;[38][39][40] most species have not been described.[41] Over 7.3 billion humans[42] live on Earth and depend on its biosphere and minerals for their survival. Humanity has developed diverse societies and cultures; politically, the world is divided into about 200 sovereign states 3 Human individuals who are earth-confined think they are the centre of this seemingly endless and ageless universe and their minute, contingent, irrelevant, mostly meaningless and pointless life-worlds, perceptions of ‘the world’ and their reality/ies are all which exist. It is from this point of reference and in terms of their very subjective perspectives and frames of reference that they construct notions of philosophy. Such notions are of course socio-culturally, historically, socio-economically, and many other factors, determined, limited and biased. These factors include their educational background and more specifically their philosophical education, socialization and indoctrination. All these things are historically determined and situated, so that what are the reigning philosophical paradigm, theory/ies and accepted ‘truths’ are of one year, one decade, one century are shown to be restricted, rather meaningless and sometimes quite bizarre when considered from a later year, decade and century and by someone with another philosophical education, socialization and indoctrination. I have no wish or intention to be the saviour of philosophers by opening their eyes to their time, space and place limitations. I do not wish to play the messiah of any philosopher, as far as I am concerned they can live and die confined by the limitations of their assumptions, pre-suppositions, ignorance and arrogance. Many of these earthbound individuals think and act as if they believe that they are not earth- or : Γαῖα Gaia,[n 6] or in Terra[26] originated and confined but that they have the divine, god-given right over meaning, truth and the nature of the universe and existence merely because they are ignorant, and have obtained a Ph.D or other qualifications and status in some microscopic academic subject. I am for truth, insights, meaningfulness and the multiverse, while these individuals are earth-bound , their vision is institutionalized, academically internalized, limited, restricted, confined and derivative. They only think within the limits and terms they internalized from their particular academic institutions and have few original thoughts of their own and little critical and original thinking and insights. These are the individuals who attempt to restrict the multiverse within and by their limited and oh so correct academic confinements. https://youtu.be/9N4ScyVtvmA Link to one of 100 videos of my work on You Tube. Ulrich de Balbian, Meta-Art (beyond asemic writing, post-modern, post-minimalism, process painting) Dear son/daughter of man you are, has always been and will always be part of the universe/multiverse you originated from. You are no different from the lamb, the calf, the chicken you slaughter to feed yourself, no different from the carrots, spinach, milk you fill yourself with, no different from your cat, dog or horse. You come from and out of the universes like all those organisms who were before you and those that will come after you, when you already have been long forgotten and left no footprint to be remembered by. Our clever brains, minds, consciousness developed out of the stuff the universe is made from, our species developed with the universe, our solar system and earth. We form part of it although we think we do not as we are not seem to be static like the sea, the mountains, the continents, lacking independence from nature and their instincts like flora and fauna. Our organisms, bodies, brains, cultures developed with our earth. In 10, 20, 100, 500 years the present academic credentials and expertise of our institutes of learning will be laughed at, their knowledge will prove to be as limited as those of 20, 40, 100, 1000 years ago. If traders in philosophy could execute their subject in writing, discussing, doing it in simple terms, express themselves and think in more simple, everyday language talk and usage they would. They cannot as their philosophical ways have been internalised in institutionalized complex notions. It’s me one whispers to a loved one as the loved one whispers to one, but all they know is professional, academic speak, like those who are trained in almost meaningless art-speak. So they are not able to see the loved one because of the complex terms they learned to use. Art and philosophy are strangers to them because of their notions that create a distance from their subject of study, from their subject-matter, their object, they are not intimate with it like the contemplative loved ones and their god. Contrived art-speak, philosophical academic speak and theological speak are not intimate, do not allow intimacy.The talk of lovers are gentle, kind, sensitive and simple; this is not how you talk to and about your beloved, your Sophos of philo, no you approach it but keeps here at a distance by your formal, contrived, institutionalized, emotionless speech, using words in the formal way one uses with a stranger, the stranger one tries to show respect to. So what do you receive in return for that approach of yours? You obtain factual knowledge, irrelevant data and information, instead of a subtle understanding of Sophos. So what does philosophy, what can philosophizing do? Everything from one point of view and nothing when viewed from another perspective. In one sense it can and does allow an approach to all things, all phenomena, everything – can be reflected upon, while when observed in another way, compared to the investigations of ‘physical’ and other sciences it can do nothing. So what is the philosophical way, what is the path of philosophizing? What are the ways of the sciences and has these ways, methods, anything to offer philosophy? More factual knowledge, more information and data, and mathematical operations and formulae to categorize, classify and systematize them with? Is this what first philosophy, the final philosophy, philosophy which created a closed, absolute, all-explanatory system or theory is attempting to realize? Or is its aim much more simple, is its rationale more humble, its purpose much more subtle? To obtain insights of and into what it knows and what it does not yet know, to realize always more subtle understanding? Like the contemplative, who seems to repeat the same words, the same prayers, the same chants over and over, but in fact these things are not the same, the contemplative realizes always more subtle grasps of the beloved. From the outside it might appear as if nothing changes as if nothing changed, but always more subtle and greater understanding of the beloved is realized. Always a more subtle and stronger unity are developed with the beloved of the contemplative until there no longer are two selves, but only the ONE, the one SELF. This is the lesson the original, creative-thinking philosopher could learn from the solitary contemplative. I have written more on this from the side of the contemplative on this site - https://sites.google.com/site/trinityprioryinternational/ 4 To me it was no surprise that from the many subjects I came across philosophy spoke to me, it replaced the need for all other disciplines, except the socio-cultural practice of the western tradition of fine art and more specifically the genre of painting. This is because I have always automatically and naturally reflected on all things, their whys, how, their nature, etc. Two points appear to me to follow from this, that the character, the personality-type, the ‘nature’ (and nurture), the individual’s place in his family of origin and other factors play a huge part in why certain individuals are drawn to philosophy, almost like a fish to water. Furthermore that some of these individuals almost automatically take the route of original and creative-thinkers, while others follow the path of academic, scholarly, professionals. The one type of philosopher is not necessarily ‘better’, more valuable or of greater importance to the philosophical discourse than the other. I suppose each of them has a function, a role to play in the socio-cultural practice of philosophy. I probably criticize a certain type so that I can differentiate myself from it? This is often said to be the case when someone tries to distinguish himself from others that are very close to him in some characteristic, belief, etc. However that, other kind of, philosopher is in many ways alien to me. I cannot really comprehend why anyone would wish to execute the things that kind of philosopher does as to me it appears lifeless, unreal, inessential, lacking meaning, being very boring and a waste of time. I am greatly reminded by Heidegger’s insights, not that I am particularly a supporter of his ideas or consider them to be philosophical absolutes. I merely wish to refer to him so as to make a point, to illustrate that what I am trying to describe and depict a bit clearer. Being and Time (German: Sein und Zeit) is a 1927 book by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, in which Heidegger seeks to analyse the concept of Being. This has fundamental importance for philosophy, he thought, because since the time of the Ancient Greeks, philosophy has avoided this question, turning instead to the analysis of particular beings. Heidegger seeks a more fundamental ontology through understanding being itself. He approaches this through seeking understanding of beings to whom the question of being is important, i.e. 'Dasein', or the human being in the abstract.[1] Although written quickly, and though Heidegger did not complete the project outlined in the introduction, Being and Time remains his most important work. As part of his ontological project, Heidegger undertakes a reinterpretation of previous Western philosophy. He wants to explain why and how theoretical knowledge came to seem like the most fundamental relation to being. This explanation takes the form of a destructuring (Destruktion) of the philosophical tradition, an interpretative strategy that reveals the fundamental experience of being at the base of previous philosophies that had become entrenched and hidden within the theoretical attitude of the metaphysics of presence. This use of the word Destruktion is meant to signify not a negative operation but rather a positive transformation or recovery. In Being and Time Heidegger briefly undertakes a destructuring of the philosophy of René Descartes, but the second volume, which was intended to be a Destruktion of Western philosophy in all its stages, was never written. In later works Heidegger uses this approach to interpret the philosophies of Aristotle, Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Plato, among others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_and_Time http://seop.illc.uva.nl/entries/heidegger/ https://arigiddesignator.wordpress.com/2011/11/12/heidegger-on-philosophy-itself/ It would seem that in order do philosophy at all, one must first know what philosophy is. Ha-ha, I love this, such assumptions are wonderful but in one sense very meaningful and true. Heidegger like all original thinking philosophers obviously came to a unique insight or response to what philosophy is. In three of Heidegger’s works, What is Philosophy? Basic Questions of Philosophy and Being & Time. He explains the correct way to reach a definition of philosophy, and the methods and attitudes with which philosophy should proceed given that definition. He Heidegger teaches that philosophy is concerned with making explicit our pre-theoretical understanding of being. And the importance of the philosophical mood, astonishment, (which he also describes as anxiety, perplexity, and awe) in helping us make this understanding explicit. Heidegger deals with the question “What is Philosophy?” in a lecture of the same name. His treatment of the question is something like the following. Naturally, we must answer this question before we can engage with philosophy. But, in order to ask “What is X?” we must already know X, at least enough to differentiate it from other things. Thus, we should rephrase our question to “What is that which is called ‘Philosophy’?” Obviously, all past philosophers have known, at least in part, that with which they have engaged. If this is so, we can come to an understanding of philosophy simply by taking the common denominator abstracted from the projects of each of these philosophers. The result would then apply to every philosopher with equal validity. And this is precisely why it is the worst thing we can do to try to answer the question. We would need to know what philosophy is even to decide who qualifies as a philosopher. And even if this strategy worked, it would merely give us a historical answer. We need a philosophical answer to this question if ever a philosophical answer is appropriate. In that case, we need to be able to engage in philosophy before we can decide what philosophy is; just the opposite of what is natural. This seems like a circle. “Philosophy itself seems to be this circle” This treatment of the definition of philosophy is characteristic of Heidegger’s method of definition in general. In Basic Questions of Philosophy, he writes “Philosophy is knowledge of the essence of things”. “For in order to discover the facts pertaining to the essence and to select them and exhibit them as justifications for the legitimacy of this positing of the essence, the positing of the essence must already be presupposed”. f we must presuppose the essence before we know anything about it and yet we are able to ask about the essence, we must not know the essence in the normal way. We cannot know any fact about something without already grasping its essence in some way. This means the essence of something will not be established by more information about the thing. Our grasp of essence must somehow come from what we already know since we have to know this before we can even ask the question. Heidegger goes on to talk about how we do grasp the essence. “The essence of something is not at all to be discovered simply like a fact; on the contrary, it must be brought forth, since it is not directly present in the sphere of immediate representing and intending”. We have to grasp the essence already and we don’t know it explicitly, so we must bring it forth. Heidegger calls this act of bringing forth, “productive seeing” . Thus, the essence of that which we encounter depends on us in some way. However, we obviously don’t decide what the essence is since we have to ask what it is. Somehow we have implicitly brought forth the essence of the thing in order to interact with it at all. Philosophical knowledge based on fact is similarly repudiated and replaced with a more primordial form of knowledge in Being & Time. In What is Philosophy?, Heidegger finally answers that philosophy “consists in our corresponding to [answering to] that towards which philosophy is on the way. And that is—the Being of being” Philosophy is a dialogue with being. Being depends on us to bring it forth, but it is not all up to us. Being has something to say as well. Bringing forth the essence of a thing, and seeing the referential relationships that make a thing meaningful to us are examples of a correspondence with being. “For, to be sure, although we do remain always and everywhere in correspondence to the Being of being, … only at times does it become an unfolding attitude specifically adopted by us. Only when this happens do we really correspond to that which concerns philosophy”. Making our pre-theoretical understanding explicit is not easy. Heidegger thinks that we need to be in the right mood in order to explicitly see our correspondence with being. Having laid out the proper subject matter, goals, and methodology of philosophy, one might still wonder “Why?” Why is it important not to pass over the phenomenon of world? Or Why should we adopt the attitude that unfolds being? Heidegger only offers negative answers to these questions. This is sort of like asking – why do philosophy, what will what we reveal in this doing be like, what will its meaning, and aim be and what purpose will it serve? If philosophy is concerned with the essence of things, rather than the things themselves, it cannot provide any particular truth but only the essence of truth. This is a surprising result because if philosophy has no use, it would seem that we have no reason to read or study it. To even ask after the utility of philosophy shows the entrenchment of the technological understanding of being. Perhaps Heidegger wanted to shield philosophy from being turned into just another resource since this would only reinforce the problem. If philosophy is seen as useless, it might be spared from being taken over by the current understanding of being. Thus, Heidegger sees philosophy as an illuminating process which cannot solve the very problems it brings forth. https://arigiddesignator.wordpress.com/2011/11/12/heidegger-on-philosophy-itself/ I merely took Heidegger as an example and I am not trying to persuade anyone that the contents of what he says is meaningful or not, I only wish to show how original thinking philosophers question the nature, purpose, rationale for philosophy (meta-philosophy) while they are doing philosophy. And, this is probably the case their entire life. I used Heidegger as an example to show what I also attempted to say – before and while and after I was doing, what I later discovered was philosophizing, at the same time I questioned the meaning, the nature, the rationale of the philosophical discourse and philosophizing. In other words meta-philosophy/izing came to me as naturally and essentially to my being, existence, personality and character as philosophy itself. 5 In philosophy of science and philosophy of mind, cognitive closure is the proposition that human minds are constitutionally incapable of solving certain perennial philosophical problems. Cognition is the set of all mental abilities and processes related to knowledge, attention, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and "computation", problem solving and decision making, comprehension and production of language, etc. http://www.cognitivesciencesociety.org/ http://www.cogs.indiana.edu/ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1551-6709 http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/ http://cogsci.berkeley.edu// https://cognitivescience.ceu.edu/ http://www.sfu.ca/cognitive-science.html http://cogsci.jhu.edu/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cognitive-science/  1. History  2. Methods  3. Representation and Computation  4. Theoretical Approaches 4.1 Formal logic 4.2 Rules 4.3 Concepts 4.4 Analogies 4.5 Images 4.6 Connectionism 4.7 Theoretical neuroscience 4.8 Bayesian  5. Philosophical Relevance 5.1 Philosophical Applications Some philosophy, in particular naturalistic philosophy of mind, is part of cognitive science. But the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science is relevant to philosophy in several ways. First, the psychological, computational, and other results of cognitive science investigations have important potential applications to traditional philosophical problems in epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. Second, cognitive science can serve as an object of philosophical critique, particularly concerning the central assumption that thinking is representational and computational. Third and more constructively, cognitive science can be taken as an object of investigation in the philosophy of science, generating reflections on the methodology and presuppositions of the enterprise. Much philosophical research today is naturalistic, treating philosophical investigations as continuous with empirical work in fields such as psychology. From a naturalistic perspective, philosophy of mind is closely allied with theoretical and experimental work in cognitive science. Metaphysical conclusions about the nature of mind are to be reached, not by a priori speculation, but by informed reflection on scientific developments in fields such as psychology, neuroscience, and computer science. Similarly, epistemology is not a stand-alone conceptual exercise, but depends on and benefits from scientific findings concerning mental structures and learning procedures. Ethics can benefit by using greater understanding of the psychology of moral thinking to bear on ethical questions such as the nature of deliberations concerning right and wrong. Here are some philosophical problems to which ongoing developments in cognitive science are highly relevant. Links are provided to other relevant articles in this Encyclopedia. Innateness. To what extent is knowledge innate or acquired by experience? Is human behavior shaped primarily by nature or nurture? Language of thought. Does the human brain operate with a language-like code or with a more general connectionist architecture? What is the relation between symbolic cognitive models using rules and concepts and sub-symbolic models using neural networks? Mental imagery. Do human minds think with visual and other kinds of imagery, or only with language-like representations? Folk psychology. Does a person's everyday understanding of other people consist of having a theory of mind, or of merely being able to simulate them? Meaning. How do mental representations acquire meaning or mental content? To what extent does the meaning of a representation depend on its relation to other representations, its relation to the world, and its relation to a community of thinkers? Mind-brain identity. Are mental states brain states? Or can they be multiply realized by other material states? What is the relation between psychology and neuroscience? Is materialism true? Free will. Is human action free or merely caused by brain events? Moral psychology. How do minds/brains make ethical judgments? The meaning of life. How can minds construed naturalistically as brains find value and meaning? Emotions. What are emotions, and what role do they play in thinking? Mental illness. What are mental illnesses, and how are psychological and neural processes relevant to their explanation and treatment? Appearance and reality. How do minds/brains form and evaluate representations of the external world? Social science. How do explanations of the operations of minds interact with explanations of the operations of groups and societies? Additional philosophical problems arise from examining the presuppositions of current approaches to cognitive science. 5.2 Critique of Cognitive Science The claim that human minds work by representation and computation is an empirical conjecture and might be wrong. Although the computational-representational approach to cognitive science has been successful in explaining many aspects of human problem solving, learning, and language use, some philosophical critics have claimed that this approach is fundamentally mistaken. Critics of cognitive science have offered such challenges as: The emotion challenge: Cognitive science neglects the important role of emotions in human thinking. The consciousness challenge: Cognitive science ignores the importance of consciousness in human thinking. The world challenge: Cognitive science disregards the significant role of physical environments in human thinking, which is embedded in and extended into the world. The body challenge: Cognitive science neglects the contribution of embodiment to human thought and action. The dynamical systems challenge: The mind is a dynamical system, not a computational system. The social challenge: Human thought is inherently social in ways that cognitive science ignores. The mathematics challenge: Mathematical results show that human thinking cannot be computational in the standard sense, so the brain must operate differently, perhaps as a quantum computer. The first five challenges are increasingly addressed by advances that explain emotions, consciousness, action, and embodiment in terms of neural mechanisms. The social challenge is being met by the development of computational models of interacting agents. The mathematics challenge is based on misunderstanding of Gödel's theorem and on exaggeration of the relevance of quantum theory to neural processes. 5.3 Philosophy of Cognitive Science Cognitive science raises many interesting methodological questions that are worthy of investigation by philosophers of science. What is the nature of representation? What role do computational models play in the development of cognitive theories? What is the relation among apparently competing accounts of mind involving symbolic processing, neural networks, and dynamical systems? What is the relation among the various fields of cognitive science such as psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience? Are psychological phenomena subject to reductionist explanations via neuroscience? Are levels of explanation best characterized in terms of ontological levels (molecular, neural, psychological, social) or methodological ones (computational, algorithmic, physical)? The increasing prominence of neural explanations in cognitive, social, developmental, and clinical psychology raises important philosophical questions about explanation and reduction. Anti-reductionism, according to which psychological explanations are completely independent of neurological ones, is becoming increasingly implausible, but it remains controversial to what extent psychology can be reduced to neuroscience and molecular biology. Essential to answering questions about the nature of reduction are answers to questions about the nature of explanation. Explanations in psychology, neuroscience, and biology in general are plausibly viewed as descriptions of mechanisms, which are systems of parts that interact to produce regular changes. In psychological explanations, the parts are mental representations that interact by computational procedures to produce new representations. In neuroscientific explanations, the parts are neural populations that interact by electrochemical processes to produce new activity in neural populations. If progress in theoretical neuroscience continues, it should become possible to tie psychological to neurological explanations by showing how mental representations such as concepts are constituted by activities in neural populations, and how computational procedures such as spreading activation among concepts are carried out by neural processes. The increasing integration of cognitive psychology with neuroscience provides evidence for the mind-brain identity theory according to which mental processes are neural, representational, and computational. Other philosophers dispute such identification on the grounds that minds are embodied in biological systems and extended into the world. However, moderate claims about embodiment are consistent with the identity theory because brain representations operate in several modalities (e.g. visual and motor) that enable minds to deal with the world.  Bibliography Anderson, J. R., 2007. How Can the Mind Occur in the Physical Universe?, Oxford: Oxford University Press. –––, 2010. Cognitive Psychology and its Implications , 7th edn., New York: Worth. Bechtel, W., 2008. Mental Mechanisms: Philosophical Perspectives on Cognitive Neurosciences, New York: Routledge. Bechtel, W., & Graham, G. (eds.), 1998. A Companion to Cognitive Science, Malden, MA: Blackwell. Bechtel, W., Mandik, P., Mundale, J., & Stufflebeam, R. S. (eds.), 2001. Philosophy and the Neurosciences: A Reader, Malden, MA: Blackwell. Boden, M. A., 2006. Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science , Oxford: Clarendon. Chemero, A., 2009, Radical Embodied Cognitive Science, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Churchland, P. M., 2007. Neurophilosophy at Work, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Churchland, P. S., 2002. Brain-wise: Studies in Neurophilosophy, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Clark, A., 2001. Mindware: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Cognitive science, New York: Oxford University Press. –––, 2008. Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension, New York: Oxford University Press. Dawson, M. R. W., 1998. Understanding Cognitive Science, Oxford: Blackwell. Dehaene, S., 2014. Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts, New York: Viking. Dreyfus, H. L., 1992. What Computers Still Can't Do, (3rd ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Eliasmith, C., 2013. How to Build a Brain: A Neural Architecture for Biological Cognition, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eliasmith, C., & Anderson, C. H., 2003. Neural Engineering: Computation, Representation and Dynamics in Neurobiological Systems, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Friedenberg, J. D., & Silverman, G., 2005. Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Study of Mind, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Gibbs, R. W., 2005, Embodiment and Cognitive Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goldman, A., 1993. Philosophical Applications of Cognitive Science, Boulder: Westview Press. Griffiths, T. L., Kemp, C., & Tenenbaum, J. B., 2008. “Bayesian Models of Cognition,” in R. Sun (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Computational Psychology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 59-100. Johnson-Laird, P., 1988. The Computer and the Mind: An Introduction to Cognitive Science, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Knobe, J., & Nichols, S. (eds.), 2008. Experimental Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. McCauley, R. N., 2007. “Reduction: Models of Cross-scientific Relations and their Implications for the Psychology-neuroscience Interface,” in P. Thagard (ed.), Philosophy of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 105-158. Murphy, D., 2006. Psychiatry in the Scientific Image, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Nadel, L. (ed.), 2003. Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, London:Nature Publishing Group. Nisbett, R., 2003. The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently … and Why, New York: Free Press. O'Reilly, R. C., Munakata, Y., Frank, M. J., Hazy, T. E., & Contributors, 2012. Computational Cognitive Neuroscience, Wiki Book, 1st Edition, URL = http://ccnbook.colorado.edu. Pessoa, L., 2013. The Cognitive-Emotional Brain: From Interactions to Integration, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Polk, T. A., & Seifert, C. M. (eds.), 2002. Cognitive Modeling, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Searle, J., 1992. The Rediscovery of the Mind, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Smith, E. E.., & Kosslyn, S. M., 2007. Cognitive Psychology: Mind and Brain, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. Sobel, C. P., 2001. The Cognitive Sciences: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Mountain View, CA: Mayfield. Stillings, N., et al., 1995. Cognitive Science, Second edition, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sun, R. (ed.), 2008. The Cambridge Handbook of Computational Psychology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ––– (ed.), 2012. Grounding Social Sciences in Cognitive Sciences, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Thagard, P., 2005. Mind: Introduction to Cognitive Science, second edition, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ––– (ed.), 2007. Philosophy of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Amsterdam: Elsevier. –––, 2009. “Why cognitive science needs philosophy and vice versa, ” Topics in Cognitive Science, 1: 237-254. –––, 2010. The Brain and the Meaning of Life, Princeton: Princeton University Press. –––, 2012. The Cognitive Science of Science: Explanation, Discovery, and Conceptual Change, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Thompson, E., 2007. Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Science of Mind, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Von Eckardt, B., 1993. What is Cognitive Science?, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wilson, R. A., & Keil, F. C. (eds.), 1999. The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.  Academic Tools Thagard, Paul, "Cognitive Science", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2014/entries/cognitive-science/>. Other Internet Resources Artificial Intelligence on the Web Biographies of Major Contributors to Cognitive Science Cognitive Science Dictionary, University of Alberta Cognitive Science Society Computational Epistemology Lab at the University of Waterloo Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind Glossary of Cognitive Science Mind and Brain News from Science Daily Yahoo! Cognitive Science page More specific Cognitive Science links Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes.[2] It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition. Cognitive scientists study intelligence and behavior, with a focus on how nervous systems represent, process, and transform information. Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include language, perception, memory, attention, reasoning, and emotion; to understand these faculties, cognitive scientists borrow from fields such as linguistics, psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology.[3] The typical analysis of cognitive science spans many levels of organization, from learning and decision to logic and planning; from neural circuitry to modular brain organization. The fundamental concept of cognitive science is that "thinking can best be understood in terms of representational structures in the mind and computational procedures that operate on those structures."3 A central tenet of cognitive science is that a complete understanding of the mind/brain cannot be attained by studying only a single level. Marr[5] gave a famous description of three levels of analysis: the computational theory, specifying the goals of the computation; representation and algorithms, giving a representation of the inputs and outputs and the algorithms which transform one into the other; and the hardware implementation, how algorithm and representation may be physically realized Research methods 3.1 Behavioral experiments 3.2 Brain imaging 3.3 Computational modeling 3.4 Neurobiological methods Cognitive science has given rise to models of human cognitive bias and risk perception, and has been influential in the development of behavioral finance, part of economics. It has also given rise to a new theory of the philosophy of mathematics, and many theories of artificial intelligence, persuasion and coercion. It has made its presence known in the philosophy of language and epistemology - a modern revival of rationalism - as well as constituting a substantial wing of modern linguistics. Fields of cognitive science have been influential in understanding the brain's particular functional systems (and functional deficits) ranging from speech production to auditory processing and visual perception. It has made progress in understanding how damage to particular areas of the brain affect cognition, and it has helped to uncover the root causes and results of specific dysfunction, such as dyslexia, anopia, and hemispatial neglect. Some of the more recognized names in cognitive science are usually either the most controversial or the most cited. Within philosophy familiar names include Daniel Dennett who writes from a computational systems perspective, John Searle known for his controversial Chinese room, Jerry Fodor who advocates functionalism. David Chalmers who advocates Dualism, also known for articulating the hard problem of consciousness, Douglas Hofstadter, famous for writing Gödel, Escher, Bach, which questions the nature of words and thought. In the realm of linguistics, Noam Chomsky and George Lakoff have been influential (both have also become notable as political commentators). In artificial intelligence, Marvin Minsky, Herbert A. Simon, Allen Newell, and Kevin Warwick are prominent. Popular names in the discipline of psychology include George A. Miller, James McClelland, Philip Johnson-Laird, John O'Keefe, and Steven Pinker. Anthropologists Dan Sperber, Edwin Hutchins, Scott Atran, Pascal Boyer, Michael Posner, and Joseph Henrich have been involved in collaborative projects with cognitive and social psychologists, political scientists and evolutionary biologists in attempts to develop general theories of culture formation, religion, and political association.  Adapted from Miller, George A (2003). "The cognitive revolution: a historical perspective". Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7.   Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field of researchers from Linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, computer science, and anthropology that seek to understand the mind. How We Learn: Ask the Cognitive Scientist  Thagard, Paul, Cognitive Science, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_science In philosophy of science and philosophy of mind, cognitive closure is the proposition that human minds are constitutionally incapable of solving certain perennial philosophical problems.[citation needed] Owen Flanagan calls this position anti-constructive naturalism or the new mysterianism and the primary advocate of the hypothesis, Colin McGinn,[1] calls it transcendental naturalism because it acknowledges the possibility that solutions might fall within the grasp of an intelligent non-human of some kind. According to McGinn, such philosophical questions include the mind-body problem, identity of the self, foundations of meaning, free will, and knowledge, both a priori and empirical.[2]  Harris, Errol E (2006), Reflections on the Problem of Consciousness, p. 51.  McGinn, Colin (1994). "The Problem of Philosophy". Philosophical Studies (76): 133–56. it combines deep epistemic transcendence with the denial that what thus transcends is thereby non-natural. As argued in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, human thinking is unavoidably structured by categories of the understanding: Quantity – Unity, Plurality, Totality. Quality – Reality, Negation, Limitation. Relation – Inherence and Subsistence, Causality and Dependence, Community. Modality – Possibility or Impossibility, Existence or Non-Existence, Necessity or Contingence. These are ideas to which there is no escape, thus they pose a limit to thinking. What can be known through the categories is called phenomena and what is outside the categories is called noumena, the unthinkable "things in themselves". In his (famous) essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" Thomas Nagel mentions the possibility of cognitive closure to the subjective character of experience and the (deep) implications that it has for materialist reductionist science. Owen Flanagan noted in his 1991 book Science of the Mind that some modern thinkers have suggested that consciousness will never be completely explained. Flanagan called them "the new mysterians" after the rock group Question Mark and the Mysterians.[7] According to McGinn, the solution to the mind-body problem cannot be grasped, despite the fact that the solution is "written in our genes". Emergent materialism is a similar but different claim that humans are not smart enough to determine "the relationship between mind and matter." 6 MY NOTE: I cited the above for a number of reasons. I wished to indicate what cognitive sciences are about in general, what their relevance to philosophy is, what the nature and subject-matter of philosophy of cognitive sciences are about, that Kant touched on some of the issues concerning cognitive sciences. The contents I cited are merely general introductions for those who require some very elementary information on cognitive sciences and more specifically the relationship of cognitive sciences to philosophy and how the latter are involved in and why it is concerned with cognitive sciences. My main reason for using cognitive sciences in the context of philosophy/izing and meta-philosophy/izing is the following: I wish to indicate that the philosophical discourse once again loses vast areas of what traditionally were considered to be philosophy/ical have now been lost to or usurped by other disciplines and other, non-philosophical ways of thinking and investigation. Related to this loss of what once was thought to be typical philosophical subject-matter and areas of reflection by means of philosophizing and philosophical methods have now become part of another discipline, disciplines or inter-disciplinary subject-matter and fields of research and problems to be investigated inter-disciplinary. The first statement refers to a fact and cannot, perhaps regrettably, be changed or the clock turned back. Those areas traditionally formed part of philosophical fields such as metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, ethics, logic etc. Sadly we will have to say goodbye to them, but interpreted in a less negative manner, with their departure we are able, hopefully, to clarify these philosophical fields and what their meaningful, suitable, legitimate areas of study and fields of investigation are. My second statement is the one referring to the real bummer. It refers to a serious problem concerning the norms and values of the philosophical discourse, its rationale, transcendental conditions, pre-suppositions, validity, assumptions and nature. We will, again, have to question the nature of philosophy, the validity and rationale of the philosophical discourse and subject-matter and of course the how, the methodology, methods, procedures and techniques of doing philosophy, of philosophizing. By its involvement in cognitive sciences philosophy becomes just another socio-cultural practice in the inter-disciplinary fields of the cognitive sciences. This involvement with empirical research investigations and sciences is the exact opposite of what the philosophical values and rational of the philosophical discourse is about. Either the meaning, nature and aims of the philosophical discourse must be changed drastically and then be labelled as something else, be given another name, or ‘philosophers’ should withdraw from these and other types of interdisciplinary practices and concerns (for example those that have been pushed by the so-called critical theory ‘sociologists’ and others who attempt to abuse philosophy to explore, develop and promote their social theories and theorizing). The reason why I turn my meta-philosophical explorations to the cognitive sciences and more specifically ‘philosophy’s’ involvement in those inter-disciplinary domains (and the investigation of some of its subject-matter, on certain levels and in certain dimensions of those disciplines) is because the involvement of first-order philosophy/izing and the discourse of philosophy in them goes completely against the grain of what philosophy and philosophizing is about. This involvement of philosophy is of the utmost importance for this discourse as it is another sign, another symptom of the dying, the death of philosophy. This is the real reason why I referred to the inter-disciplinary cognitive sciences and their inter-disciplinary subject-matter – they are fields and concerns that seriously distract those involved from the philosophical socio-cultural practice, the rationale, values, norms and nature of the philosophical discourse and thereby confuse and create confusions concerning these things. In short, either quit being involved in (doing) those non-philosophical activities in the name of philosophy, call that what you do something else, but not philosophy – be looking carefully and critically at what you do, your aims, your methodology, methods and procedure, then conceptualize what you are doing and proceed what you do in the name of the new notion you created and continue your inter-disciplinary activities in the name of that ‘new’ idea and socio-cultural practice. Name it anything you wish, but be aware that it is not philosophy and do not label your activities as philosophical. The above is an example of philosophy (already it frequently seems and appears as if it is a meta- or second order activity, because of its reflective, thinking, talking, writing about nature) and of meta-philosophy. Meta- philosophical explorations of first-order philosophy, meta-order investigation of first-order philosophizing and meta-philosophical reflections on first-order philosophical activities, thinking and other aspects and concerns and meta-philosophizing (in or by means of ordinary language and not in the terms of mathematics, logic or logico-mathematical practices). It should be clear that meta-philosophy has the concerns of philosophy, the philosophical discourse and of philosophizing at heart. In other words it investigates these things with the aim of trying to salvage philosophy, to clarify its practices, values, norms, rationale, nature, methods and other transcendentals with purpose of enabling it to be continued, developed and preserved. 7 22