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REALITY
What is the basic essence or fundamental substance ?

By:
Syed Noman Ali
Philosopher
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Learning Objectives
• Contrast between Idealism & Materialism as two metaphysical rival views.

• Demonstrate understanding of Plato’s Idealism by interpreting his allegory of

cave.

• Differentiate Plato’s objective idealism from Subjective Idealism

• Explain Materialism and draw its implication

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Metaphysical Questions

Everything comes from something

Everything was made up of some fundamental substance

From where does everything come?

From what is everything created?

How do we explain the things found in nature?

How might we describe nature systematically?

Metaphysics
Study of being

It’s the branch that deals with the “first

principles” of existence, seeking to define basic
concepts like existence, being, causality,
substance, time, and space.

The study of “being as such” (i.e., the nature of being, or what

it is for a thing to be or to exist) and the study of “the first
causes of things” (i.e., their original or primary causes)
Types
Monism, Dualism & Pluralism
Monism
The view that there is ultimately only one substance, that all reality is one.
For e.g. : Mind or Matter

Dualism
The view that there is two fundamental substance exist,
For e.g. Mind and Body

Pluralism
The belief that the world is made of a plurality of basic elements.
For e.g Four basic element: air,fire,water& earth
 Materialism
It is an ontological, or a metaphysical, view; Matter is the fundamental reality
work with law of motion
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I. REALITY AS MATTER
Aristotle realism
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Natural philosophy

• Thales “All is water”

• Anaximander “All is boundless”
• Anaximenes “All is air”
• Parmenides “All is permanent”
• Heraclitus “All is Fire or flux “change”
• Empedocles “All are air ,water, fire and earth.
• Pythagoras “All are numbers”
• Anaxogoras “All is indefinite seeds-mind”
• Democritus “All is matter(atoms)”
 Materialism
• It is a general view about what actually exists.
• Everything that exists is material, or physical.
• Many philosophers and scientists now use the terms `material' and `physical‘.
• It is an ontological, or a metaphysical, view.
• Matter is the fundamental reality work with law of motion
• The physical world is primary reality in all.
• Matter is inner organized energy arranged in patterns.
• Natural physical world is prior over supernatural world.
• Mental process is also mechanical neuron changes.
• Mind is based on physic energy comes from physical body.
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Argument for Materialism

• It is a realist philosophy of science, which holds that the world is material; all
phenomena in the universe consist of “matter in motion” according to natural laws.
• Matter precedes thought and thought is a reflection of material world.
• Materialist dialectics is a way of conceptualizing change in everything in nature, in
history & in thought
• Change is the inevitable process of struggle, contradiction & tension between
opposite, yet unified transforming forces.

Something old is transformed into something new

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Aristotle Realism
• Truth resides around us in the world.
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Aristotle :Metaphysical Realism

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The philosophy that says

that what is real is mind

REALITY AS IDEALISM
Platonic idealism ( Plato)
 Allegory of the Cave

• Plato explains the theory of knowledge, prisoners in cave know

through the shadow on wall and fire is a source of knowledge. They
know nothing about the world outside cave . Therefore, they suppose
the reality inside.
Two things the allegory of the cave tells us…
1. that the world of our direct experience is a shadow
or imitation of the real world equally important:

2. that the world of our direct experience provides us

with some knowledge of the divine and ultimate
reality – glimpses of perfection

Allegory of the cave

…Plato’s Cave…
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Idealism
• Know the true reality by mind only through ideas.
• Human ideas shape the society even material also.
• Thought ,what is known by thought is true.
• Our own consciousness is representation of world.
• Ideas are essential plan of all actions
• God is sprit was the master mind of all.
• Ideas are develop through attainment of completeness.
• Human thought is progressive toward the truth.
• All things are idea and absolute reality is IDEA.
• Absolute spirit when thought equal to object of thought.
 Argument for Idealism
• We have reason to believe that something exists only if we can know it

• We can know an object only by making it an object of consciousness

• Any object of consciousness is conditioned by consciousness

• Anything conditioned by consciousness is mind-dependent

• So, we have reason to believe that a thing exists only if it is mind-dependent

There are only two places for things to
exist…

• In our minds

Or

• Outside our minds

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Modern Idealist thought

• Idealist thinkers are Berkley, Kant, Schopenhauer& Hegel.

• Berkley said “to be is to be perceived’

• Kant said “ if I remove thinking, the world is vanish.”

• Schopenhauer said “Man takes the limits of his own vision for the limit of the
world.”

• Hegel said “Reality is a historical process

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Reading text

•The philosopher’s way

•Chapter 5
•5.1-----Pre-Socratic
•5.2-----Plato
•5.3 ----Aristotle