This next to last scene of the Admonitions Scroll shows a palace lady sitting in quiet contemplation, presumably following the admonitions in the accompanying lines:
"Therefore I say: Be cautious and circumspect in all you do, and from
this, good fortune will arise. Calmly and respectfully think about your
actions, and honor and fame will await you."
Self-reflection is the ability to witness and evaluate our own cognitive, emotional, and behavioural processes. In psychology, other terms used for this self-observation include 'reflective awareness', and 'reflective consciousness', which originate from the work of William James.
Self-reflection depends upon a range of functions, including introspection and metacognition, which develop from infancy through adolescence, affecting how individuals interact with others, and make decisions.
The concept of self-reflection is ancient. More than 3,000 years ago, "Know thyself" was the first of three Delphic maxims inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. It is also considered a form of thought that generates new meaning and an opportunity to engage with what seemingly appears incongruous.
History
Early writings
Notions about the status of humanity may be revealed by the etymology of ancient words for humans. Latinhomo (PIE*dʰǵʰm̥mō) means "of the earth, earthling", probably in opposition to "celestial" beings. Greekἂνθρωπος (mycenaean*Anthropos) means "low-eyed", again probably contrasting with a divine perspective.
From the third-millenniumOld Kingdom of Egypt, belief in an eternal afterlife of the human ka
is documented along with the notion that the actions of a person would
be assessed to determine the quality of that existence. A claim of
dominance of humanity alongside radical pessimism because of the frailty and brevity of human life is asserted in the Hebrew BibleGenesis 1:28, where dominion of humans is promised, but contrarily, King Solomon who is the alleged author of Ecclesiastes according to rabbinic tradition, bewails the vanity of all human effort.
Classical antiquity
Protagoras made the famous claim that humans are "the measure of all things; of what is, that it is; of what is not, that it is not". Socrates advocated the ancient adage for all humans to "Know thyself", and gave the (doubtlessly tongue-in-cheek) definition of humans as, "featherless bipeds" (Plato, Politicus). Aristotle
described humans as the "communal animal" (ζῶον πολιτικόν), i.e.,
emphasizing society-building as a central trait of human nature, and
being a "thought bearer animal" (ζῶον λόγον ἔχον, animal rationale), a term that also may have inspired the species taxonomy, Homo sapiens.
Middle Ages
The dominant world-view of medieval Europe, as directed by the Catholic Church, was that human existence is essentially good and created in "original grace", but because of concupiscence, is marred by sin, and that its aim should be to focus on a beatific vision after death. The thirteenth century pope Innocent III
wrote about the essential misery of earthly existence in his "On the
misery of the human condition"—a view that was disputed by, for example,
Giannozzo Manetti in his treatise "On human dignity".
A famous quote of Shakespeare's Hamlet (II, ii, 115–117), expresses the contrast of human physical beauty, intellectual faculty, and ephemeral nature:
What a piece of work is a man! How
noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how
like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
Selbstbetrachtung (self-reflection) pen and ink drawing by Alfred Kubin (c. 1901)
René Descartes famously and succinctly proposed: Cogito ergo sum (French: "Je pense donc je suis";
English: "I think, therefore I am"), not an assessment of humanity, but
certainly reflecting a capacity for reasoning as a characteristic of
humans, that potentially, could include individual self-reflection.
Modern era
The Enlightenment was driven by a renewed conviction, that, in the words of Immanuel Kant,
"Man is distinguished above all animals by his self-consciousness, by
which he is a 'rational animal'." In conscious opposition to this
tradition during the nineteenth century, Karl Marx defined humans as a "labouring animal" (animal laborans). In the early twentieth century, Sigmund Freud dealt a serious blow to positivism by postulating that, to a large part, human behaviour is controlled by the unconscious mind.
Joseph Conrad uses the analogy of chemistry to describe how the tiniest
idea can stimulate a person during reflection like a "little drop
precipitating the process of crystallization in a test tube containing a
colourless solution".
Mandatory or advisory periods for reflection are built into some regulatory requirements, for example changes to divorce law in England and Wales adopted in 2022 prescribe a 20-week period of reflection before certain proceedings are concluded, and the European Union's Mortgage Credit Directive allows for a seven-day period of reflection before a mortgage offer needs to be accepted.
Impact
Self-reflection
is a process of communicating internally with oneself. When one takes
time to think about their character or behavior, they analyze the
reasons that caused the behavior, where this comes from, what the
outcome of the behavior means to them, is it effective for them and what
they can do about it. Individuals process this information about
themselves to help them find methods to deal with the information gained
during the self-reflection process and applying this information to
future behavior has been shown to elicit strength and joy.
Self-reflection helps people in multiple ways:
First, self-reflection fortifies an individual’s emotional
stability. When setting aside some effort to self-reflect they are
looking inwards. This assists with building two parts to their emotional intelligence: self-awareness and self-concept. Self-awareness
enables a person to comprehend their feelings, qualities, shortcomings,
drives, and objectives, and recognize their effect on others. Self-concept
includes the capacity to control or divert their troublesome feelings
and motivations and adjust to changing circumstances. Building these
skills will improve both their personal and professional life and
language learning.
Second, self-reflection enhances a person’s self-esteem and gives transparency for decision-making.
Self-esteem is significant for dealing with a filled, complex life that
incorporates meetings, vocation, family, network, and self-necessities.
It helps in decision-making, effective communication, and building
influence. The more they think about their qualities and how they can
grow them the more confident they will be later on. A person may become
happy with their good qualities and identify the ones that require
growth.
Third, the self-reflection process requires honesty of the
individual in order to be effective. When a person is honest with
themselves when self-reflecting, they are able to understand their
experiences; this person can grow and makes changes based on what they
have learned and lead them to better choices.
Fourth, self-reflection adapts a person’s actions in future
situations. Making time to step back and consider their behaviors, the
consequences of those behaviors, and the expectations of those behaviors
can give them a source of a clear insight and learning.
A person engaging in self-reflection may ask themselves: What appeared
to have a more remarkable impact? How can we accomplish a greater amount
of that and enhance it? This cycle of reflection and variation—before,
during, after actions—is regularly a recognized part of the process.
A study involving clients in a twelve-step program
explored the role of self‑reflection through diary writing, not only as
daily therapy, but in a retrospective context. The study concluded that
clients who read and reflected on their past diary entries demonstrated
increased participation in the treatment program.
The twelve-step program is based on self reflection and the
accountability of actions past. The article by Mitchell Friedman
indicates that success in one's recovery relies on self-reflection.
Reality in Buddhism is called dharma (Sanskrit) or dhamma (Pali).
This word, which is foundational to the conceptual frameworks of the
Indian religions, refers in Buddhism to the system of natural laws which
constitute the natural order of things. Dharma is therefore reality as-it-is (yatha-bhuta). The teaching of Gautama Buddha constitutes a method by which people can come out of their condition of suffering through developing an awareness of reality (seemindfulness).
Buddhism thus seeks to address any disparity between a person's view of
reality and the actual state of things. This is called developing Right
or Correct View (Pali: samma ditthi). Seeing reality as-it-is is thus an essential prerequisite to mental health and well-being according to Buddha's teaching.
Buddhism addresses deeply philosophical questions regarding the
nature of reality. One of the fundamental teachings is that all the
constituent forms (sankharas) that make up the universe are transient (Pali: anicca), arising and passing away, and therefore without concrete identity or ownership (atta). This lack of enduring ownership or identity (anatta)
of phenomena has important consequences for the possibility of
liberation from the conditions which give rise to suffering. This is
explained in the doctrine of dependent origination.
One of the most discussed themes in Buddhism is that of the emptiness (sunyata) of form (Pali: rūpa),
an important corollary of the transient and conditioned nature of
phenomena. Reality is seen, ultimately, in Buddhism as a form of 'projection', resulting from the fruition (vipaka) of karmic seeds (sankharas). The precise nature of this 'illusion' that is the phenomenal universe is debated among different schools. For example;
Some consider that the concept of the unreality of "reality" is
confusing. They posit that the perceived reality is considered illusory
not in the sense that reality is a fantasy or unreal, but that
perceptions and preconditions mislead to believe that one is separate
from the material. Reality, in this school of Buddhist thought, would
be described as the manifestation of karma.
Other schools of thought in Buddhism (e.g., Dzogchen), consider perceived reality literally unreal. As Chögyal Namkhai Norbu puts it: "In a real sense, all the visions that we see in our lifetime are like a big dream [...]".
In this context, the term 'visions' denotes not only visual
perceptions, but appearances perceived through all senses, including
sounds, smells, tastes and tactile sensations, and operations on
received mental objects.
Reality in Buddhist scriptures
Buddhistsutras devote considerable space to the concept of reality, with each of two major doctrines—the Doctrine of Dependent Origination (pratitya-samutpada) and the Doctrine of Cause and Effect (karma and vipaka)—attempting
to incorporate both the natural and the spiritual into its overall
world view. Buddhist teachings continue to explore the nature of the
world and our place in it.
The Buddha promoted experience over theorizing. According to Karel Werner,
Experience
is ... the path most elaborated in early Buddhism. The doctrine on the
other hand was kept low. The Buddha avoided doctrinal formulations
concerning the final reality as much as possible in order to prevent his
followers from resting content with minor achievements on the path in
which the absence of the final experience could be substituted by
conceptual understanding of the doctrine or by religious faith, a
situation which sometimes occurs, in both varieties, in the context of
Hindu systems of doctrine.
The Mahayana developed those statements he did make into an
extensive, diverse set of sometimes contrasting descriptions of reality
"as it really is." For example, in Tibetan Buddhism the Gelugpa draw a distinction between Svatantrika-Prasaṅgika in Madhyamika philosophy. This distinction was most prominently promulgated by Je Tsongkhapa (1357–1419 CE), when he argued that this distinction can be found explicitly and implicitly in the works of Nagarjuna, Chandrakirti, and Buddhapalita.
The Theravada school teaches that there is no universal personal god. The world does not have its origin in a primordial being such as brahman or the creator god.
What is seen is only a product of transitory factors of existence,
which depend functionally upon each other. The Buddha is said to have
said: "The world exists because of causal actions, all things are
produced by causal actions and all beings are governed and bound by
causal actions. They are fixed like the rolling wheel of a cart, fixed
by the pin of its axle shaft." (Sutta Nipata 654)
The word 'illusion' is frequently associated with Buddhism
and the nature of reality. Some interpretations of Buddhism teach that
reality is a coin with two sides: the not-permanent characteristic or anicca and the "not-self characteristic" or anatta, referred to as "emptiness" in some Mahayana schools. Dzogchen, as the non-dual culmination of the Nyingmapa (a sect with a few million followers out of a few hundred million Buddhists) of Mantrayana, resolves atman and anatman into the Mindstream Doctrine of Tapihritsa. The Buddha Shakyamuni is said to have taught the variously understood and interpreted concept of "not-self" in the Anatta-lakkhana Sutta.
In this sutta, he lists the characteristics that are often associated
with self identity, and found that these characteristics, ultimately,
are not who an individual is because they are subject to change without
control. He further illustrates the changing nature of feelings,
perceptions, and consciousness.
The concepts of not-permanent and not-self in objective terms, for example by deconstructing the concept of an aggregated object such as a lotus
and seeing that the flower is made up entirely of non-flower elements
like soil, nutrients, photosynthetic energy, rain water and the effort
of the entities that nourished and grew the flower. All of these
factors, according to the Diamond Sutra,
co-exist with each other to manifest what we call a 'flower'. In other
words, there is no essence arisen from nothingness that is unique and
personal to any being. In particular, there is neither a human soul
that lives on beyond the death of the physical body nor one that is
extinguished at death since, strictly speaking, there is nothing to
extinguish. The relative reality (i.e., the illusory perceived reality)
comes from our belief that human life is separate from the rest of the
things in the universe and, at times, at odds with the processes of
nature and other beings. The ultimate or absolute reality, in some
schools of Buddhist thought, shows that we are inter-connected with all
things. The concept of non-discrimination expands on this by saying
that, while a chair is different from a flower, they 'inter-are' because
they are each made of non-flower and non-chair elements. Ultimately
those elements are the same, so the distinction between chair and flower
is one of quantity not of quality.
The Diamond Sutra, a Mahayana scripture, has many passages that use the formula: A is not A, therefore A is called A.
Reality and dreams in Dzogchen
In Dzogchen, perceived reality is considered to be illusion.
The real sky is (knowing) that samsara and nirvana are merely an illusory display.
— Mipham Rinpoche, Quintessential Instructions of Mind, p. 117
According to contemporary teacher Chögyal Namkhai Norbu,
all appearances perceived during the whole life of an individual,
through all senses, including sounds, smells, tastes and tactile
sensations in their totality, are like a big dream.
It is claimed that, on careful examination, the dream of life and
regular nightly dreams are not very different, and that in their
essential nature there is no difference between them.
The non-essential difference between the dreaming state and
ordinary waking experience is that the latter is more concrete and
linked to attachment; the dreaming experience while sleeping is slightly
detached.
Also according to this teaching, there is a correspondence
between the states of sleep and dream and our experiences when we die.
After experiencing the intermediate state of bardo, an individual comes out of it, a new karmic illusion is created and another existence begins. This is how transmigration happens.
According to Dzogchen teachings, the energy of an individual is essentially without form and free from duality. However, karmic traces contained in the individual's mindstream give rise to two kinds of forms:
forms that the individual experiences as his or her body, voice and mind
forms that the individual experiences as an external environment.
What appears as a world of permanent external phenomena, is the
energy of the individual him or herself. There is nothing completely
external or separate from the individual. Everything that manifests in
the individual's field of experience is a continuum. This is the 'Great Perfection' that is discovered in Dzogchen practice.
It is possible to do yogic practice such as Dream Yoga and Yoga Nidra whilst dreaming, sleeping and in other bardo states of trance.
In this way the yogi can have a very strong experience and with this
comes understanding of the dream-like nature of daily life. This is also
very relevant to diminishing attachments, because they are based on
strong beliefs that life's perceptions such as objects are real and as a
consequence: important. If one really understands what Buddha
Shakyamuni meant when he said that everything is (relatively) unreal,
then one can diminish attachments and tensions.
The teacher advises that the realization that life is only a big
dream can help us finally liberate ourselves from the chains of various
emotions, different kinds of attachment and the chains of ego. Then we
have the possibility of ultimately becoming enlightened.
Different schools and traditions in Tibetan Buddhism give different explanations of what is called "reality".
Reality in the Tathagatagarbha Sutras
Prior to the period of the Tathagatagarbha Sutras, Mahayana metaphysics had been dominated by teachings on emptiness in the form of Madhyamaka
philosophy. The language used by this approach is primarily negative,
and the Tathagatagarbha genre of sutras can be seen as an attempt to
state orthodox Buddhist teachings of dependent origination
using positive language instead, to prevent people from being turned
away from Buddhism by a false impression of nihilism. In these sutras
the perfection of the wisdom of not-self is stated to be the true self;
the ultimate goal of the path is then characterized using a range of
positive language that had been used in Indian philosophy previously by
essentialist philosophers, but which was now transmuted into a new
Buddhist vocabulary to describe a being who has successfully completed
the Buddhist path.
Contrasting with some forms of Buddhism, the Buddha's teaching on 'reality' in the Tathagatagarbha Mahayana scriptures - which the Buddha states constitute the ultimate manifestation of the Mahayana Dharma (other Mahayana sutras make similar claims about their own teachings) - insists that there truly is
a sphere or realm of ultimate truth - not just a repetitious cycle of
interconnected elements, each dependent on the others. That
suffering-filled cycle of
x-generating-y-and-y-generating-z-and-z-generating-a, etc., is Samsara, the prison-house of the reincarnating non-self; whereas liberation from dependency, enforced rebirth and bondage is nirvana or reality / spiritual essence (tattva / dharmata). This sphere also bears the name Tathagatagarbha
(Buddha matrix). It is the deathless realm where dependent origination
holds no sway, where non-self is supplanted by the everlasting,
sovereign (aishvarya) self (atman)
(as a trans-historical, unconditioned, ultimate, liberating,
supra-worldly yet boundless and immanent awakened mind). Of this real
truth, called nirvana - which, while salvationally infused into samsara,
is not bound or imprisoned in it - the Buddha states in the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra:
"What is the Real (tattva)? Knowledge of the true
attributes of Nirvana; the Tathagata, the Dharma, the Sangha, and the
attributes of space ... is the Real. What is knowledge of the attributes
of Nirvana? The attributes of Nirvana are eightfold. What are these
eight? Cessation [of ignorance and suffering]; loveliness/
wholesomeness; Truth; Reality; Eternity, Bliss, the Self [atman], and complete Purity: that is Nirvana."
He further comments: " ... that which is endowed with the
Eternal, Bliss, the Self, and Purity is stated to be the meaning of
'Real Truth' ... Moreover, the Real is the Tathagata [i.e., the Buddha];
the Tathagata is the Real ... The Tathagata is not conditioned and not
tainted, but utterly blissful: this is the Real ...".
Thus, in such doctrines, a very positive goal is envisioned,
which is said to lie beyond the grasp of the five senses and the
ordinary, restless mind, and only attainable through direct meditative
perception and when all inner pollutants (twisted modes of view, and all
moral contaminants) are purged, and the inherently deathless, spotless,
radiantly shining mind of Buddha stands revealed. This is the realm of
the Buddha-dhatu (popularly known as buddha nature) - inconceivable, beginning-less, endless, omniscient truth, the Dharmakaya
(quintessential body-and-mind) of the Buddha. This reality is empty of
all falsehood, impermanence, ignorance, afflictions, and pain, but
filled with enduring happiness, purity, knowingness (jnana), and omni-radiant loving-kindness (maitri).
Vipassanā
Vipassanā (Pāli) or vipaśyanā (Sanskrit: विपश्यन) in the Buddhist tradition means insight into the true nature of reality. It is a practice of realizing our reality in order to see life as it is, in turn liberating ourselves like Lord Buddha.
Multivariate statistics is a subdivision of statistics encompassing the simultaneous observation and analysis of more than one outcome variable, i.e., multivariate random variables.
Multivariate statistics concerns understanding the different aims and
background of each of the different forms of multivariate analysis, and
how they relate to each other. The practical application of multivariate
statistics to a particular problem may involve several types of
univariate and multivariate analyses in order to understand the
relationships between variables and their relevance to the problem being
studied.
In addition, multivariate statistics is concerned with multivariate probability distributions, in terms of both
how these can be used to represent the distributions of observed data;
how they can be used as part of statistical inference, particularly where several different quantities are of interest to the same analysis.
Certain types of problems involving multivariate data, for example simple linear regression and multiple regression, are not
usually considered to be special cases of multivariate statistics
because the analysis is dealt with by considering the (univariate)
conditional distribution of a single outcome variable given the other
variables.
Multivariate analysis (MVA) is based on the principles
of multivariate statistics. Typically, MVA is used to address situations
where multiple measurements are made on each experimental unit and the
relations among these measurements and their structures are important. A modern, overlapping categorization of MVA includes:
Normal and general multivariate models and distribution theory
The study and measurement of relationships
Probability computations of multidimensional regions
The exploration of data structures and patterns
Multivariate analysis can be complicated by the desire to include
physics-based analysis to calculate the effects of variables for a
hierarchical "system-of-systems". Often, studies that wish to use
multivariate analysis are stalled by the dimensionality of the problem.
These concerns are often eased through the use of surrogate models,
highly accurate approximations of the physics-based code. Since
surrogate models take the form of an equation, they can be evaluated
very quickly. This becomes an enabler for large-scale MVA studies: while
a Monte Carlo simulation
across the design space is difficult with physics-based codes, it
becomes trivial when evaluating surrogate models, which often take the
form of response-surface equations.
Types of analysis
Many different models are used in MVA, each with its own type of analysis:
Multivariate regression attempts to determine a formula that can
describe how elements in a vector of variables respond simultaneously to
changes in others. For linear relations, regression analyses here are
based on forms of the general linear model.
Some suggest that multivariate regression is distinct from
multivariable regression, however, that is debated and not consistently
true across scientific fields.
Principal components analysis
(PCA) creates a new set of orthogonal variables that contain the same
information as the original set. It rotates the axes of variation to
give a new set of orthogonal axes, ordered so that they summarize
decreasing proportions of the variation.
Factor analysis
is similar to PCA but allows the user to extract a specified number of
synthetic variables, fewer than the original set, leaving the remaining
unexplained variation as error. The extracted variables are known as
latent variables or factors; each one may be supposed to account for
covariation in a group of observed variables.
Canonical correlation analysis finds linear relationships among two sets of variables; it is the generalised (i.e. canonical) version of bivariate correlation.
Redundancy analysis (RDA) is similar to canonical correlation
analysis but allows the user to derive a specified number of synthetic
variables from one set of (independent) variables that explain as much
variance as possible in another (independent) set. It is a multivariate
analogue of regression.
Correspondence analysis
(CA), or reciprocal averaging, finds (like PCA) a set of synthetic
variables that summarise the original set. The underlying model assumes
chi-squared dissimilarities among records (cases).
Canonical (or "constrained") correspondence analysis
(CCA) for summarising the joint variation in two sets of variables
(like redundancy analysis); combination of correspondence analysis and
multivariate regression analysis. The underlying model assumes
chi-squared dissimilarities among records (cases).
Multidimensional scaling
comprises various algorithms to determine a set of synthetic variables
that best represent the pairwise distances between records. The original
method is principal coordinates analysis (PCoA; based on PCA).
Discriminant analysis,
or canonical variate analysis, attempts to establish whether a set of
variables can be used to distinguish between two or more groups of
cases.
Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) computes a linear predictor from two sets of normally distributed data to allow for classification of new observations.
Clustering systems
assign objects into groups (called clusters) so that objects (cases)
from the same cluster are more similar to each other than objects from
different clusters.
Recursive partitioning
creates a decision tree that attempts to correctly classify members of
the population based on a dichotomous dependent variable.
Simultaneous equations models involve more than one regression equation, with different dependent variables, estimated together.
Vector autoregression involves simultaneous regressions of various time series variables on their own and each other's lagged values.
Principal response curves
analysis (PRC) is a method based on RDA that allows the user to focus
on treatment effects over time by correcting for changes in control
treatments over time.
Iconography of correlations
consists in replacing a correlation matrix by a diagram where the
“remarkable” correlations are represented by a solid line (positive
correlation), or a dotted line (negative correlation).
Dealing with incomplete data
It is very common that in an experimentally acquired set of data the values of some components of a given data point are missing. Rather than discarding the whole data point, it is common to "fill in" values for the missing components, a process called "imputation".
Important probability distributions
There is a set of probability distributions used in multivariate analyses that play a similar role to the corresponding set of distributions that are used in univariate analysis when the normal distribution is appropriate to a dataset. These multivariate distributions are:
MVA was formerly discussed solely in the context of statistical
theories, due to the size and complexity of underlying datasets and its
high computational consumption. With the dramatic growth of
computational power, MVA now plays an increasingly important role in
data analysis and has wide application in Omics fields.
Overdetermination occurs when a single-observed effect is
determined by multiple causes, any one of which alone would be
conceivably sufficient to account for ("determine") the effect. The term
"overdetermination" (German: Überdeterminierung) was used by Sigmund Freud as a key concept in his psychoanalysis, and later by Louis Althusser.
In the philosophy of science,
the concept of overdetermination has been used to describe a situation
in which there are more causes present than are necessary to cause an
effect. Overdetermination here is in contrast to underdetermination, when the number or strength of causes is insufficient.
Freud and psychoanalysis
Freud wrote in The Interpretation of Dreams
that many features of dreams were usually "overdetermined," in that
they were caused by multiple factors in the life of the dreamer, from
the "residue of the day" (superficial memories of recent life) to deeply
repressed traumas and unconscious wishes, these being "potent
thoughts". Freud favored interpretations which accounted for such
features not only once, but many times, in the context of various levels
and complexes of the dreamer's psyche.
The concept was later borrowed for a variety of other realms of thought.
Freud taught us that a dream may
mean a dozen different things; he has persuaded us that some symbols
are, as he says, 'over-determined' and mean many different selections
from among their causes. This theorem goes further, and regards all
discourse – outside the technicalities of science – as over-determined,
as having multiplicity of meaning.
Althusser and structuralist Marxism
The Marxist philosopherLouis Althusser imported the concept into Marxist political theory in an influential essay, "Contradiction and overdetermination." Drawing from both Freud and Mao Zedong,
Althusser used the idea of overdetermination as a way of thinking about
the multiple, often opposed, forces active at once in any political
situation, without falling into an overly simple idea of these forces
being simply "contradictory." Brewster, in Althusser et al.'s Reading Capital defines overdetermination as such:
"Althusser uses [overdetermination] to describe the
effects of the contradictions in each practice constituting the social
formation on the social formation as a whole, and hence back on each
practice and each contradiction, defining the pattern of dominance and
subordination, antagonism and non-antagonism of the contradictions in
the structure in dominance at any given historical moment. More
precisely, the overdetermination of a contradiction is the reflection in
it of its conditions of existence within the complex whole, that is, of
the other contradictions in the complex whole, in other words its
uneven development."
An instance of a popular riot calling for revolution could exemplify
overdetermination. The event has to it, in capitalist culture, an
over-application (determination) of agitation. The determinant
contradictions (the reasons for popular revolt) are not addressed and so
their great mass is "displaced" onto the singular event.
In analytic philosophy
In contemporary analytic philosophy an event or state of affairs is said to be overdetermined if it has two or more distinct, sufficient causes.
In philosophy of mind, the famous case of overdetermination is called
mental-physical causal overdetermination. If we accept that a mental
state (M) is realized by a physical state (P). And M can cause another
mental state (M*) or another physical state (P*). Then, nomologically
speaking, P can cause M* or P* too. In this way, M* or P* is both
determined by M and P. In other words, both M* and P* are
overdetermined. Since either M or P is sufficient for M* or P*, the
problem of mental-physical causal overdetermination is the causal
redundancy.
Whereas there may unproblematically be recognised many different necessary
conditions of the event's occurrence, no two distinct events may lay
claim to be sufficient conditions, since this would lead to
overdetermination. A much used example is that of firing squads,
the members of which simultaneously firing at and 'killing' their
targets. Apparently, no one member can be said to have caused the
victims' deaths, since they would have been killed anyway. Another
example is that Billy and Suzy each throw a rock through a window, and
either rock alone could have shattered the window. In this case, similar
to the example of firing squads, Billy and Suzy together shatter
the window and the result is not overdetermined. Or, we can say, even
if these two examples are a kind of overdetermination, this kind of
overdetermination is benign.
There are many problems of overdetermination. First,
overdetermination is problematic in particular from the viewpoint of a
standard counterfactual
understanding of causation, according to which an event is the cause of
another event if and only if the latter would not have occurred, had
the former not occurred. In order to employ this formula to actual
complex situations, implicit or explicit conditions need to be accepted
to be circumstantial, since the list of counterfactually acceptable
causes would otherwise be impractically long (e.g. the Earth's continued
existence could be said to be the (necessary) cause of one drinking
one's coffee). Unless a circumstance-clause is included, the putative
cause to which one wishes to draw attention could never be considered
sufficient, and hence not comply with the counterfactual analysis.
Second, overdetermination is problematic in that we do not know how to
explain where the extra causation "comes from" and "goes". This makes
overdetermination mysterious.
In economics and game theory, a participant is considered to have superrationality (or renormalized rationality) if they have perfect rationality (and thus maximize their utility)
but assume that all other players are superrational too and that a
superrational individual will always come up with the same strategy as
any other superrational thinker when facing the same problem. Applying
this definition, a superrational player playing against a superrational
opponent in a prisoner's dilemma will cooperate while a rationally self-interested player would defect.
This decision rule is not a mainstream model within the game theory and was suggested by Douglas Hofstadter in his article, series, and book Metamagical Themas as an alternative type of rational decision making different from the widely accepted game-theoretic
one. Hofstadter provided this definition: "Superrational thinkers, by
recursive definition, include in their calculations the fact that they
are in a group of superrational thinkers."
This is equivalent to reasoning as if everyone in the group obeys
Kant's categorical imperative: "one should take those actions and only
those actions that one would advocate all others take as well."
Unlike the supposed "reciprocating human", the superrational thinker will not always play the equilibrium that maximizes the total social utility and is thus not a philanthropist.
Prisoner's dilemma
The
idea of superrationality is that two logical thinkers analyzing the
same problem will think of the same correct answer. For example, if two
people are both good at math and both have been given the same
complicated problem to do, both will get the same right answer. In math,
knowing that the two answers are going to be the same doesn't change
the value of the problem, but in the game theory, knowing that the
answer will be the same might change the answer itself.
The prisoner's dilemma
is usually framed in terms of jail sentences for criminals, but it can
be stated equally well with cash prizes instead. Two players are each
given the choice to cooperate (C) or to defect (D). The players choose
without knowing what the other is going to do. If both cooperate, each
will get $100. If they both defect, they each get $1. If one cooperates
and the other defects, then the defecting player gets $200, while the
cooperating player gets nothing.
The four outcomes and the payoff to each player are listed below.
Player B cooperates
Player B defects
Player A cooperates
Both get $100
Player A: $0 Player B: $200
Player A defects
Player A: $200 Player B: $0
Both get $1
One valid way for the players to reason is as follows:
Assuming the other player defects, if I cooperate I get nothing and if I defect I get a dollar.
Assuming the other player cooperates, I get $100 if I cooperate and $200 if I defect.
So whatever the other player does, my payoff is increased by defecting, if only by one dollar.
The conclusion is that the rational thing to do is to defect. This
type of reasoning defines game-theoretic rationality and two
game-theoretic rational players playing this game both defect and
receive a dollar each.
Superrationality is an alternative method of reasoning. First, it
is assumed that the answer to a symmetric problem will be the same for
all the superrational players. Thus the sameness is taken into account before
knowing what the strategy will be. The strategy is found by maximizing
the payoff to each player, assuming that they all use the same strategy.
Since the superrational player knows that the other superrational
player will do the same thing, whatever that might be, there are only
two choices for two superrational players. Both will cooperate or both
will defect depending on the value of the superrational answer. Thus the
two superrational players will both cooperate since this answer
maximizes their payoff. Two superrational players playing this game will
each walk away with $100.
Note that a superrational player playing against a game-theoretic
rational player will defect, since the strategy only assumes that the
superrational players will agree. A
superrational player playing against a player of uncertain
superrationality will sometimes defect and sometimes cooperate, based on
the probability of the other player being superrational.
Although standard game theory assumes common knowledge of
rationality, it does so in a different way. The game-theoretic analysis
maximizes payoffs by allowing each player to change strategies
independently of the others, even though in the end, it assumes that the
answer in a symmetric game will be the same for all. This is the
definition of a game-theoretic Nash equilibrium,
which defines a stable strategy as one where no player can improve the
payoffs by unilaterally changing course. The superrational equilibrium
in a symmetric game is one where all the players' strategies are forced
to be the same before the maximization step. (There is no agreed-upon
extension of the concept of superrationality to asymmetric games.)
Some argue that superrationality implies a kind of magical thinking
in which each player supposes that their decision to cooperate will
cause the other player to cooperate, even though there is no
communication. Hofstadter points out that the concept of "choice"
doesn't apply when the player's goal is to figure something out, and
that the decision does not cause the other player to cooperate, but
rather the same logic leads to the same answer independent of
communication or cause and effect. This debate is over whether it is
reasonable for human beings to act in a superrational manner, not over
what superrationality means, and is similar to arguments about whether
it is reasonable for humans to act in a 'rational' manner, as described
by game theory (wherein they can figure out what other players will or
have done by asking themselves, what would I do if I was them, and
applying backward induction and iterated elimination of dominated strategies).
Probabilistic strategies
For simplicity, the foregoing account of superrationality ignored mixed strategies:
the possibility that the best choice could be to flip a coin, or more
generally to choose different outcomes with some probability. In the prisoner's dilemma,
it is superrational to cooperate with probability 1 even when mixed
strategies are admitted, because the average payoff when one player
cooperates and the other defects are the same as when both cooperate and
so defecting increases the risk of both defecting, which decreases the
expected payout. But in some cases, the superrational strategy is mixed.
For example, if the payoffs in are as follows:
CC – $100/$100
CD – $0/$1,000,000
DC – $1,000,000/$0
DD – $1/$1
So that defecting has a huge reward, the superrational strategy is
defecting with a probability of 499,900/999,899 or a little over
49.995%. As the reward increases to infinity, the probability only
approaches 1/2 further, and the losses for adopting the simpler strategy
of 1/2 (which are already minimal) approach 0. In a less extreme
example, if the payoff for one cooperator and one defector was $400 and
$0, respectively, the superrational mixed strategy world be defecting
with probability 100/299 or about 1/3.
In similar situations with more players, using a randomising
device can be essential. One example discussed by Hofstadter is the platonia dilemma:
an eccentric trillionaire contacts 20 people, and tells them that if
one and only one of them send him or her a telegram (assumed to cost
nothing) by noon the next day, that person will receive a billion
dollars. If they receive more than one telegram or none at all, no one
will get any money, and communication between players is forbidden. In
this situation, the superrational thing to do (if it is known that all
20 are superrational) is to send a telegram with probability p=1/20—that
is, each recipient essentially rolls a 20-sided die and only sends a telegram if it comes up "1". This maximizes the probability that exactly one telegram is received.
Notice though that this is not the solution in the conventional
game-theoretical analysis. Twenty game-theoretically rational players
would each send in telegrams and therefore receive nothing. This is
because sending telegrams is the dominant strategy;
if an individual player sends telegrams they have a chance of receiving
money, but if they send no telegrams they cannot get anything. (If all
telegrams were guaranteed to arrive, they would only send one, and no
one would expect to get any money).
The question of whether to cooperate in a one-shot Prisoner's
Dilemma in some circumstances has also come up in the decision theory
literature sparked by Newcomb's problem. Causal decision theory suggests that superrationality is irrational, while evidential decision theory
endorses lines of reasoning similar to superrationality and recommends
cooperation in a Prisoner's Dilemma against a similar opponent.
Program equilibrium has been proposed as a mechanistic model of superrationality.
Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions of material things. According to philosophical materialism, mind and consciousness are by-products or epiphenomena of material processes (such as the biochemistry of the human brain and nervous system), without which they cannot exist. Materialism directly contrasts with idealism, according to which consciousness is the fundamental substance of nature.
Materialism is closely related to physicalism—the
view that all that exists is ultimately physical. Philosophical
physicalism has evolved from materialism with the theories of the
physical sciences to incorporate more sophisticated notions of
physicality than mere ordinary matter (e.g. spacetime, physical energies and forces, and exotic matter). Thus, some prefer the term physicalism to materialism, while others use the terms as if they were synonymous.
Philosophies traditionally opposed or largely historically
unreconciled to the scientific theories of materialism or physicalism
include idealism, pluralism, dualism, panpsychism, and other forms of monism. Epicureanism is a philosophy of materialism from classical antiquity that was a major forerunner of modern science. Though ostensibly a deist, Epicurus affirmed the literal existence of the Greek gods
in either some type of celestial "heaven" cognate from which they ruled
the Universe (if not on a literal Mount Olympus), and his philosophy
promulgated atomism, while Platonism taught roughly the opposite, despite Plato's teaching of Zeus as God.
Overview
In 1748, French doctor and philosopher La Mettrie espouses a materialistic definition of the human soul in L'Homme Machine.
Despite the large number of philosophical schools and their nuances, all philosophies are said to fall into one of two primary categories, defined in contrast to each other: idealism and materialism.
The basic proposition of these two categories pertains to the nature of
reality: the primary difference between them is how they answer two
fundamental questions—what reality consists of, and how it originated.
To idealists, spirit or mind or the objects of mind (ideas) are
primary, and matter secondary. To materialists, matter is primary, and
mind or spirit or ideas are secondary—the product of matter acting upon
matter.
The materialist view is perhaps best understood in its opposition
to the doctrines of immaterial substance applied to the mind
historically by René Descartes;
by itself, materialism says nothing about how material substance should
be characterized. In practice, it is frequently assimilated to one
variety of physicalism or another.
Modern philosophical materialists extend the definition of other scientifically observable entities such as energy, forces, and the spacetime continuum; some philosophers, such as Mary Midgley, suggest that the concept of "matter" is elusive and poorly defined.
Materialism is often associated with reductionism,
according to which the objects or phenomena individuated at one level
of description, if they are genuine, must be explicable in terms of the
objects or phenomena at some other level of description—typically, at a
more reduced level.
Non-reductive materialism explicitly rejects this notion,
taking the material constitution of all particulars to be consistent
with the existence of real objects, properties or phenomena not
explicable in the terms canonically used for the basic material
constituents. Jerry Fodor
held this view, according to which empirical laws and explanations in
"special sciences" like psychology or geology are invisible from the
perspective of basic physics.
Materialism developed, possibly independently, in several geographically separated regions of Eurasia during what Karl Jaspers termed the Axial Age (c. 800–200 BC).
In ancient Indian philosophy, materialism developed around 600 BC with the works of Ajita Kesakambali, Payasi, Kanada and the proponents of the Cārvāka school of philosophy. Kanada became one of the early proponents of atomism. The Nyaya–Vaisesika
school (c. 600–100 BC) developed one of the earliest forms of atomism
(although their proofs of God and their positing that consciousness was
not material precludes labelling them as materialists). Buddhist atomism and the Jaina school continued the atomic tradition.
Ancient Greekatomists like Leucippus, Democritus and Epicurus prefigure later materialists. The Latin poem De Rerum Natura by Lucretius (99 – c. 55 BC) reflects the mechanistic
philosophy of Democritus and Epicurus. According to this view, all that
exists is matter and void, and all phenomena result from different
motions and conglomerations of base material particles called atoms (literally "indivisibles"). De Rerum Natura
provides mechanistic explanations for phenomena such as erosion,
evaporation, wind, and sound. Famous principles like "nothing can touch
body but body" first appeared in Lucretius's work. Democritus and
Epicurus did not espouse a monist ontology, instead espousing the
ontological separation of matter and space (i.e. that space is "another
kind" of being).
Early Common Era
Wang Chong (27 – c. 100 AD) was a Chinese thinker of the early Common Era said to be a materialist. Later Indian materialist Jayaraashi Bhatta (6th century) in his work Tattvopaplavasimha (The Upsetting of All Principles) refuted the Nyāya Sūtra epistemology. The materialistic Cārvāka philosophy appears to have died out some time after 1400; when Madhavacharya compiled Sarva-darśana-samgraha (A Digest of All Philosophies) in the 14th century, he had no Cārvāka (or Lokāyata) text to quote from or refer to.
The materialist conception of
history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to
support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things
produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society
that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed
and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is
produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From
this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political
revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in men's better
insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of
production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy,
but in the economics of each particular epoch.
— Friedrich Engels, Socialism: Scientific and Utopian (1880)
A more naturalist-oriented materialist school of thought that developed in the mid-19th century was German materialism, which included Ludwig Büchner (1824–1899), the Dutch-born Jacob Moleschott (1822–1893), and Carl Vogt (1817–1895), even though they had different views on core issues such as the evolution and the origins of life.
Scientific materialism is often synonymous with, and has typically been described as, a reductive materialism. In the early 21st century, Paul and Patricia Churchland advocated a radically contrasting position (at least in regard to certain hypotheses): eliminative materialism.
Eliminative materialism holds that some mental phenomena simply do not
exist at all, and that talk of such phenomena reflects a spurious "folk psychology" and introspection illusion.
A materialist of this variety might believe that a concept like
"belief" has no basis in fact (e.g. the way folk science speaks of
demon-caused illnesses).
With reductive materialism at one end of a continuum (our theories will reduce to facts) and eliminative materialism at the other (certain theories will need to be eliminated in light of new facts), revisionary materialism is somewhere in the middle.
Contemporary continental philosopherGilles Deleuze has attempted to rework and strengthen classical materialist ideas. Contemporary theorists such as Manuel DeLanda, working with this reinvigorated materialism, have come to be classified as new materialists. New materialism
has become its own subfield, with courses on it at major universities,
as well as numerous conferences, edited collections and monographs
devoted to it.
Jane Bennett's 2010 book Vibrant Matter has been particularly instrumental in bringing theories of monist ontology and vitalism back into a critical theoretical fold dominated by poststructuralist theories of language and discourse. Scholars such as Mel Y. Chen
and Zakiyyah Iman Jackson have critiqued this body of new materialist
literature for neglecting to consider the materiality of race and gender
in particular.
Métis scholar Zoe Todd, as well as Mohawk (Bear Clan, Six Nations) and Anishinaabe scholar Vanessa Watts, query the colonial orientation of the race for a "new" materialism.
Watts in particular describes the tendency to regard matter as a
subject of feminist or philosophical care as a tendency too invested in
the reanimation of a Eurocentric tradition of inquiry at the expense of an Indigenous ethic of responsibility.
Other scholars, such as Helene Vosters, echo their concerns and have
questioned whether there is anything particularly "new" about "new
materialism", as Indigenous and other animist ontologies have attested to what might be called the "vibrancy of matter" for centuries. Others, such as Thomas Nail, have critiqued "vitalist" versions of new materialism for depoliticizing "flat ontology" and being ahistorical.
One challenge to the conventional concept of matter as tangible "stuff" came with the rise of field physics in the 19th century. Relativity
shows that matter and energy (including the spatially distributed
energy of fields) are interchangeable. This enables the ontological view
that energy is prima materia and matter is one of its forms. In contrast, the Standard Model of particle physics uses quantum field theory to describe all interactions. On this view it could be said that fields are prima materia and the energy is a property of the field.
According to the dominant cosmological model, the Lambda-CDM model,
less than 5% of the universe's energy density is made up of the
"matter" the Standard Model describes, and most of the universe is
composed of dark matter and dark energy, with little agreement among scientists about what these are made of.
With the advent of quantum physics, some scientists believed the
concept of matter had merely changed, while others believed the
conventional position could no longer be maintained. Werner Heisenberg
said: "The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the
kind of existence, the direct 'actuality' of the world around us, can be
extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation, however, is
impossible...atoms are not things."
The concept of matter has changed in response to new scientific
discoveries. Thus materialism has no definite content independent of the
particular theory of matter on which it is based. According to Noam Chomsky, any property can be considered material, if one defines matter such that it has that property.
George Stack distinguishes between materialism and physicalism:
In
the twentieth century, physicalism has emerged out of positivism.
Physicalism restricts meaningful statements to physical bodies or
processes that are verifiable or in principle verifiable. It is an
empirical hypothesis that is subject to revision and, hence, lacks the
dogmatic stance of classical materialism. Herbert Feigl
defended physicalism in the United States and consistently held that
mental states are brain states and that mental terms have the same
referent as physical terms. The twentieth century has witnessed many
materialist theories of the mental, and much debate surrounding them.
But not all conceptions of physicalism are tied to verificationist
theories of meaning or direct realist accounts of perception. Rather,
physicalists believe that no "element of reality" is missing from the
mathematical formalism of our best description of the world.
"Materialist" physicalists also believe that the formalism describes
fields of insentience. In other words, the intrinsic nature of the
physical is non-experiential.
Most Hindus and transcendentalists regard all matter as an illusion, or maya, blinding humans from the truth. Transcendental experiences like the perception of Brahman are considered to destroy the illusion.
Criticism and alternatives
From contemporary physicists
Rudolf Peierls, a physicist who played a major role in the Manhattan Project, rejected materialism: "The premise that you can describe in terms of physics the whole function of a human being... including knowledge and consciousness, is untenable. There is still something missing."
Erwin Schrödinger
said, "Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For
consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in
terms of anything else."
Werner Heisenberg wrote: "The ontology
of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the
direct 'actuality' of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the
atomic range. This extrapolation, however, is impossible... Atoms are not things."
Then came our Quantum theory, which
totally transformed our image of matter. The old assumption that the
microscopic world of atoms was simply a scaled-down version of the
everyday world had to be abandoned. Newton's deterministic machine was
replaced by a shadowy and paradoxical conjunction of waves and
particles, governed by the laws of chance, rather than the rigid rules
of causality. An extension of the quantum theory goes beyond even this;
it paints a picture in which solid matter dissolves away, to be replaced
by weird excitations and vibrations of invisible field energy.
Quantum physics undermines materialism because it reveals that matter
has far less "substance" than we might believe. But another development
goes even further by demolishing Newton's image of matter as inert
lumps. This development is the theory of chaos, which has recently
gained widespread attention.
— Paul Davies and John Gribbin, The Matter Myth, Chapter 1: "The Death of Materialism"
Digital physics
The objections of Davies and Gribbin are shared by proponents of digital physics, who view information rather than matter as fundamental. The physicist and proponent of digital physics John Archibald Wheeler wrote, "all matter and all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe." Some founders of quantum theory, such as Max Planck, shared their objections. He wrote:
As a man who has devoted his whole
life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can
tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no
matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a
force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this
most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind
this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind
is the matrix of all matter.
— Max Planck, Das Wesen der Materie (1944)
James Jeans
concurred with Planck, saying, "The Universe begins to look more like a
great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be
an accidental intruder into the realm of matter."
During the 20th century, several other philosophers also offered
specific criticisms related to the fundamental concepts underlying
scientific materialism. Among them was the Australian scholar Colin Murray Turbayne, who in his The Myth of Metaphor
analyzes the limitations associated with several metaphors routinely
incorporated as literal constructs in the "mechanistic" explanations of
the universe first outlined by Isaac Newton and Descartes's mind-body dualism,
such as "substance" and "substratum", which according to Turbayne have
little if any meaning. He further argues that such physicalist theories
of the universe generally rely upon mechanistic metaphors drawn through
the use of deductive logic for the synthesis of their respective
hypotheses.
Turbayne observes that modern man has become victimized by the
metaphors underlying these hypotheses, which have been unintentionally
interpreted as examples of literal truth despite their limitations.
Varieties of idealism
Arguments for idealism, such as those of Hegel and Berkeley, often take the form of an argument against materialism; indeed, Berkeley's idealism was called immaterialism. Now, matter can be argued to be redundant, as in bundle theory, and mind-independent properties can, in turn, be reduced to subjective percepts.
Berkeley gives an example of the latter by pointing out that it is
impossible to gather direct evidence of matter, as there is no direct
experience of matter; all that is experienced is perception, whether
internal or external. As such, matter's existence can only be inferred
from the apparent (perceived) stability of perceptions; it finds
absolutely no evidence in direct experience.
If matter and energy are seen as necessary to explain the physical world, but incapable of explaining mind, dualism results. Emergence, holism and process philosophy seek to ameliorate the perceived shortcomings of traditional (especially mechanistic) materialism without abandoning materialism entirely.
Materialism as methodology
Some critics object to materialism as part of an overly skeptical, narrow or reductivist approach to theorizing, rather than to the ontological claim that matter is the only substance. Particle physicist and Anglican theologianJohn Polkinghorne objects to what he calls promissory materialism—claims that materialistic science will eventually succeed in explaining phenomena it has not so far been able to explain. Polkinghorne prefers "dual-aspect monism" to materialism.
Some scientific materialists have been criticized for failing to provide clear definitions of matter, leaving the term materialism without any definite meaning. Noam Chomsky
states that since the concept of matter may be affected by new
scientific discoveries, as has happened in the past, scientific
materialists are being dogmatic in assuming the opposite.
