Ontology

Ontology In computer science and information science, an ontology formally represents knowledge as a set of concepts within a domain, and the relationships between pairs of concepts. It can be used to model a domain and support reasoning about entities .

In theory, an ontology is a "formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualisation".[1] An ontology renders shared vocabulary and taxonomy which models a domain with the definition of objects and/or concepts and their properties and relations.[2] Ontologies are the structural frameworks for organizing information and are used in artificial intelligence, the Semantic Web, systems engineering, software engineering, biomedical informatics, library science, enterprise bookmarking, and information architecture as a form of knowledge representation about the world or some part of it. The creation of domain ontologies is also fundamental to the definition and use of an enterprise architecture framework.

The term ontology has its origin in philosophy and has been applied in many different ways. The word element onto- comes from the Greek ὤν, ὄντος « being; that which is », present participle of the verb εἰμί « be ». The core meaning within computer science is a model for describing the world that consists of a set of types, properties, and relationship types. Exactly what is provided around these varies, but they are the essentials of an ontology. There is also generally an expectation that there be a close resemblance between the real world and the features of the model in an ontology.[3] What many ontologies have in common in both computer science and in philosophy is the representation of entities, ideas, and events, along with their properties and relations, according to a system of categories. In both fields, one finds considerable work on problems of ontological relativity (e.g., Quine and Kripke in philosophy, Sowa and Guarino in computer science),[4] and debates concerning whether a normative ontology is viable (e.g., debates over foundationalism in philosophy, debates over the Cyc project in AI). Differences between the two are largely matters of focus. Philosophers are less concerned with establishing fixed, controlled vocabularies than are researchers in computer science, while computer scientists are less involved in discussions of first principles, such as debating whether there are such things as fixed essences or whether entities must be ontologically more primary than processes.

Other fields make ontological assumptions that are sometimes explicitly elaborated and explored.

For instance, the definition and ontology of economics (also sometimes called the political economy) is hotly debated especially in Marxist economics[1] where it is a primary concern, but also in other subfields [2]. Such concerns intersect with those of information science when the intent of a simulation or model is to enable decisions in the economic realm, for instance, to determine what capital assets are at risk or how much (see risk management). All social sciences have explicit ontology issues because they do not have hard falsification[disambiguation needed]

criteria like most models in physical sciences - indeed the lack of such widely accepted hard falsification criteria is what defines a social or soft science.[citation needed] Historically, ontologies arise out of the branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, which deals with the nature of reality – of what exists. This fundamental branch is concerned with analyzing various types or modes of existence, often with special attention to the relations between particulars and universals, between intrinsic and extrinsic properties, and between essence and existence. The traditional goal of ontological inquiry in particular is to divide the world "at its joints" to discover those fundamental categories or kinds into which the world’s objects naturally fall.[5] During the second half of the 20th century, philosophers extensively debated the possible methods or approaches to building ontologies without actually building any very elaborate ontologies themselves. By contrast, computer scientists were building some large and robust ontologies, such as WordNet and Cyc, with comparatively little debate over how they were built.

Since the mid-1970s, researchers in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) have recognized that capturing knowledge is the key to building large and powerful AI systems. AI researchers argued that they could create new ontologies as computational models that enable certain kinds of automated reasoning. In the 1980s, the AI community began to use the term ontology to refer to both a theory of a modeled world and a component of knowledge systems. Some researchers, drawing inspiration from philosophical ontologies, viewed computational ontology as a kind of applied philosophy.[6] In the early 1990s, the widely cited Web page and paper "Toward Principles for the Design of Ontologies Used for Knowledge Sharing" by Tom Gruber[7] is credited with a deliberate definition of ontology as a technical term in computer science. Gruber introduced the term to mean a specification of a conceptualization: "An ontology is a description (like a formal specification of a program) of the concepts and relationships that can formally exist for an agent or a community of agents. This definition is consistent with the usage of ontology as set of concept definitions, but more general. And it is a different sense of the word than its use in philosophy."[8] According to Gruber (1993): "Ontologies are often equated with taxonomic hierarchies of classes, class definitions, and the subsumption relation, but ontologies need not be limited to these forms. Ontologies are also not limited to conservative definitions — that is, definitions in the traditional logic sense that only introduce terminology and do not add any knowledge about the world.[9] To specify a conceptualization, one needs to state axioms that do constrain the possible interpretations for the defined terms."[1]

2 Ontology (from onto-, from the Greek ὤν, ὄντος "being; that which is", present participle of the verb εἰμί, eimi "be", and -λογία, -logia: "science, study, theory") is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence, or reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations.

Traditionally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, ontology deals with questions concerning what entities exist or can be said to exist, and how such entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences.[citation needed] Ontology, in analytic philosophy, concerns the determination whether some categories of being are fundamental and asks in what sense the items in those categories can be said to "be." It is the inquiry into being in so much as it is being ("being qua being"), or into beings insofar as they exist—and not insofar as, for instance, particular facts can be obtained about them or particular properties belong to them.[citation needed] Some philosophers, notably of the Platonic school, contend that all nouns (including abstract nouns) refer to existent entities. Other philosophers contend that nouns do not always name entities, but that some provide a kind of shorthand for reference to a collection of either objects or events. In this latter view, mind, instead of referring to an entity, refers to a collection of mental events experienced by a person; society refers to a collection of persons with some shared characteristics, and geometry refers to a collection of a specific kind of intellectual activity.[1] Between these poles of realism and nominalism, there are also a variety of other positions; but any ontology must give an account of which words refer to entities, which do not, why, and what categories result. When one applies this process to nouns such as electrons, energy, contract, happiness, space, time, truth, causality, and God, ontology becomes fundamental to many branches of philosophy.[citation needed] Some fundamental questions Principal questions of ontology are "What can be said to exist?", "Into what categories, if any, can we sort existing things?", "What are the meanings of being?", "What are the various modes of being of entities?". Various philosophers[who?] have provided different answers to these questions.[citation needed] One common approach is to divide the extant subjects and predicates into groups called categories. Of course, such lists of categories differ widely from one another, and it is through the co-ordination of different categorical schemes that ontology relates to such fields as library science and artificial intelligence. Such an understanding of ontological categories, however, is merely taxonomic, classificatory. The categories are, properly speaking,[2] the ways in which a being can be addressed simply as a being, such as what it is (its 'whatness', quidditas or essence),

how it is (its 'howness' or qualitativeness), how much it is (quantitativeness), where it is, its relatedness to other beings, etc.[citation needed] Further examples of ontological questions include:[citation needed] What is existence, i.e. what does it mean for a being to be?

Is existence a property?

Is existence a genus or general class that is simply divided up by specific differences?

Which entities, if any, are fundamental? Are all entities objects?

How do the properties of an object relate to the object itself?

What features are the essential, as opposed to merely accidental attributes of a given object?

How many levels of existence or ontological levels are there? And what constitutes a 'level'?

What is a physical object?

Can one give an account of what it means to say that a physical object exists?

Can one give an account of what it means to say that a non-physical entity exists?

What constitutes the identity of an object?

When does an object go out of existence, as opposed to merely changing?

Do beings exist other than in the modes of objectivity and subjectivity, i.e. is the subject/object split of modern philosophy inevitable?

Concepts Essential ontological dichotomies include: Universals and particulars Substance and accident Abstract and concrete objects Essence and existence Determinism and indeterminism Etymology While the etymology is Greek, the oldest extant record of the word itself is the New Latin form ontologia, which appeared in 1606, in the work Ogdoas Scholastica by Jacob Lorhard (Lorhardus) and in 1613 in the Lexicon philosophicum by Rudolf Gรถckel (Goclenius); see classical compounds for this type of word formation.[citation needed] The first occurrence in English of "ontology" as recorded by the OED (Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989) appears in Nathaniel Bailey's dictionary of 1721, which defines ontology as 'an Account of being in the Abstract' - though, of course, such an entry indicates the term was already in use at the time. It is likely the word was first used in its Latin

form by philosophers based on the Latin roots, which themselves are based on the Greek. [citation needed] The current on-line edition of the OED (Draft Revision September 2008) gives as earliest documented occurrence in English a work by Gideon Harvey (1636/7-1702): Archelogia philosophica nova; or, New principles of Philosophy. Containing Philosophy in general, Metaphysicks or Ontology, Dynamilogy or a Discourse of Power, Religio Philosophi or Natural Theology, Physicks or Natural philosophy - London, Thomson, 1663.[citation needed] Origins Parmenides and monism Parmenides was among the first to propose an ontological characterization of the fundamental nature of existence. In his prologue or proem he describes two views of existence; initially that nothing comes from nothing, and therefore existence is eternal. Consequently our opinions about truth must often be false and deceitful. Most of western philosophy, and science - including the fundamental concepts of falsifiability and the conservation of energy - have emerged from this view. This posits that existence is what can be conceived of by thought, created, or possessed.

Hence, there can be neither void nor vacuum; and true reality can neither come into being nor vanish from existence. Rather, the entirety of creation is eternal, uniform, and immutable, though not infinite (he characterized its shape as that of a perfect sphere). Parmenides thus posits that change, as perceived in everyday experience, is illusory. Everything that can be apprehended is but one part of a single entity. This idea somewhat anticipates the modern concept of an ultimate grand unification theory that finally explains all of existence in terms of one inter-related subatomic reality which applies to everything.[citation needed]

Epistemology (Listeni/ɨˌpɪstɨˈmɒlədʒi/ from Greek ἐπιστήμη - epistēmē, meaning "knowledge, understanding", and λόγος - logos, meaning "study of") is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge.[1][2] It questions what knowledge is, how it is acquired, and the possible extent a given subject or entity can be known.

Much of the debate in this field has focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to connected notions such as truth, belief, and justification.

The term was introduced by the Scottish philosopher James Frederick Ferrier (1808–1864).[3] The field is sometimes referred to as the theory of knowledge.

Knowledge that, knowledge how, and knowledge by acquaintance

In epistemology in general, the kind of knowledge usually discussed is propositional knowledge, also known as "knowledge that." This is distinct from "knowledge how" and "acquaintanceknowledge."[4] For example: in mathematics, it is known that 2 + 2 = 4, but there is also knowing how to add two numbers and knowing a person (e.g., oneself), place (e.g., one's hometown), thing (e.g., cars), or activity (e.g., addition). Some philosophers think there is an important distinction between "knowing that," "knowing how," and "acquaintance-knowledge," with epistemology primarily interested in the first.[5] Bertrand Russell is famous for distinguishing "knowledge by description" (a form of knowledge that) and "knowledge by acquaintance" in Problems of Philosophy. Gilbert Ryle is often credited with emphasizing the distinction between knowing how and knowing that in The Concept of Mind. In Personal Knowledge, Michael Polanyi argues for the epistemological relevance of knowledge how and knowledge that; using the example of the act of balance involved in riding a bicycle, he suggests that the theoretical knowledge of the physics involved in maintaining a state of balance cannot substitute for the practical knowledge of how to ride, and that it is important to understand how both are established and grounded. This position is essentially Ryle's, who argued that a failure to acknowledge the distinction between knowledge that and knowledge how leads to vicious regresses.

In recent times, some epistemologists (Sosa, Greco, Kvanvig, Zagzebski) and Duncan Pritchard have argued that epistemology should evaluate people's properties (i.e., intellectual virtues) and not just the properties of propositions or propositional mental attitudes.[citation needed] Belief Main article: Belief Euler diagram representing a definition of knowledge.

In common speech, a statement of "belief" means that the speaker has faith (trust) that something will prove to be useful or successful— the speaker might "believe in" his favorite football team or "believe in" his dad. This is not the kind of belief addressed within epistemology. The kind dealt with simply means any cognitive content accepted as true whether or not there is sufficient proof or reason. For example, to believe that the sky is blue is to accept the proposition "The sky is blue" as true, even if one cannot see the sky. To believe is to accept as true. [6] Truth Main article: Truth Whether someone's belief is true is not a prerequisite for (its) belief. On the other hand, if something is actually known, then it categorically cannot be false. For example, a person believes that a particular bridge is safe enough to support him, and attempts to cross it; unfortunately, the bridge collapses under his weight. It could be said that he believed that the bridge was safe, but that this belief was mistaken. It would not be accurate to say that he knew that the bridge was safe, because plainly it was not. By contrast, if the bridge actually supported

his weight then he might say he "thought" that the bridge was safe, and now after proving it to himself, he knows. However, he could say he knew, by intuition . If one's belief is held in full acceptance, and the proposition is indeed true, he knows.

Epistemologists argue over whether belief is the proper truth-bearer. Some would rather describe knowledge as a system of justified true propositions, and others as a system of justified true sentences. Plato, in his Gorgia, argues that belief is the most commonly invoked truth bearer. [citation needed] See also: Criteria of truth Justification In many of Plato's dialogues, such as the Meno, and in particular the Theaetetus, Socrates considers a number of theories as to what knowledge is, the last being that knowledge is true belief that has been "given an account of" — meaning explained or defined in some way.

According to the theory that knowledge is justified true belief, in order to know that a given proposition is true, one must not only believe the relevant true proposition, but one must also have a good reason for doing so. One implication of this would be that no one would gain knowledge just by believing something that happened to be true. For example, an ill person with no medical training, but with a generally optimistic attitude, might believe that he will recover from his illness quickly. Nevertheless, even if this belief turned out to be true, the patient would not have known that he would get well since his belief lacked justification. The definition of knowledge as justified true belief was widely accepted until the 1960s. At this time, a paper written by the American philosopher Edmund Gettier provoked major widespread discussion.

See theories of justification for other views on the idea.

The Gettier problem Main article: Gettier problem Edmund Gettier is remembered for his 1963 argument, which called into question the theory of knowledge that had been dominant among philosophers for thousands of years.[7] In a few pages, Gettier argued that there are situations in which one's belief may be justified and true, yet fail to count as knowledge. That is, Gettier contended that while justified belief in a true proposition is necessary for that proposition to be known, it is not sufficient. As in the diagram above, a true proposition can be believed by an individual (purple region) but still not fall within the "knowledge" category (yellow region).

According to Gettier, there are certain circumstances in which one does not have knowledge, even when all of the above conditions are met. Gettier proposed two thought experiments, which have come to be known as "Gettier cases," as counterexamples to the classical account of knowledge. One of the cases involves two men, Smith and Jones, who are awaiting the results of their applications for the same job. Each man has ten coins in his pocket. Smith has excellent reasons to believe that Jones will get the job and, furthermore, knows that Jones has ten coins in

his pocket (he recently counted them). From this Smith infers, "the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket." However, Smith is unaware that he also has ten coins in his own pocket.

Furthermore, Smith, not Jones, is going to get the job. While Smith has strong evidence to believe that Jones will get the job, he is wrong. Smith has a justified true belief that a man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job; however, according to Gettier, Smith does not know that a man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job, because Smith's belief is "...true by virtue of the number of coins in Jones's pocket, while Smith does not know how many coins are in Smith's pocket, and bases his belief...on a count of the coins in Jones's pocket, whom he falsely believes to be the man who will get the job." (see[7] p. 122.) These cases fail to be knowledge because the subject's belief is justified, but only happens to be true by virtue of luck. In other words, he made the correct choice (in this case predicting an outcome) for the wrong reasons. This example is similar to those often given when discussing belief and truth, wherein a person's belief of what will happen can coincidentally be correct without them having the actual knowledge to base it on.

Responses to Gettier The responses to Gettier have been varied. Usually, they have involved substantive attempts to provide a definition of knowledge different from the classical one, either by recasting knowledge as justified true belief with some additional fourth condition, or as something else altogether.

Infallibilism, indefeasibility In one response to Gettier, the American philosopher Richard Kirkham has argued that the only definition of knowledge that could ever be immune to all counterexamples is the infallibilist one.

[8] To qualify as an item of knowledge, goes the theory, a belief must not only be true and justified, the justification of the belief must necessitate its truth. In other words, the justification for the belief must be infallible.

Yet another possible candidate for the fourth condition of knowledge is indefeasibility.

Defeasibility theory maintains that there should be no overriding or defeating truths for the reasons that justify one's belief. For example, suppose that person S believes he saw Tom Grabit steal a book from the library and uses this to justify the claim that Tom Grabit stole a book from the library. A possible defeater or overriding proposition for such a claim could be a true proposition like, "Tom Grabit's identical twin Sam is currently in the same town as Tom." When no defeaters of one's justification exist, a subject would be epistemically justified.

The Indian philosopher B K Matilal has drawn on the Navya-Nyaya fallibilism tradition to respond to the Gettier problem. Nyaya theory distinguishes between know p and know that one knows p – these are different events, with different causal conditions. The second level is a sort of implicit inference that usually follows immediately the episode of knowing p (knowledge simpliciter). The Gettier case is analyzed by referring to a view of Gangesha (13th c.), who takes any true belief to be knowledge; thus a true belief acquired through a wrong route may just be

regarded as knowledge simpliciter on this view. The question of justification arises only at the second level, when one considers the knowledgehood of the acquired belief. Initially, there is lack of uncertainty, so it becomes a true belief. But at the very next moment, when the hearer is about to embark upon the venture of knowing whether he knows p, doubts may arise. "If, in some Gettier-like cases, I am wrong in my inference about the knowledgehood of the given occurrent belief (for the evidence may be pseudo-evidence), then I am mistaken about the truth of my belief – and this is in accordance with Nyaya fallibilism: not all knowledge-claims can be sustained."[9] Reliabilism Main article: Reliabilism Reliabilism has been the main line of response to the Gettier challenge among philosophers, originating with work by Alvin Goldman in the 1960s. According to reliabilism, a belief is justified (or otherwise supported in such a way as to count towards knowledge) only if it is produced by processes that typically yield a sufficiently high ratio of true to false beliefs. In other words, this theory states that a true belief counts as knowledge only if it is produced by a reliable belief-forming process.

Reliabilism has been challenged by Gettier cases. Another argument that challenges reliabilism, like the Gettier cases (although it was not presented in the same short article as the Gettier cases), is the case of Henry and the barn façades. In the thought experiment, a man, Henry, is driving along and sees a number of buildings that resemble barns. Based on his perception of one of these, he concludes that he has just seen barns. While he has seen one, and the perception he based his belief that the one he saw was of a real barn, all the other barn-like buildings he saw were façades. Theoretically, Henry doesn't know that he has seen a barn, despite both his belief that he has seen one being true and his belief being formed on the basis of a reliable process (i.e. his vision), since he only acquired his true belief by accident.[10] Other responses The American philosopher Robert Nozick has offered the following definition of knowledge: S knows that P if and only if: P; S believes that P; if P were false, S would not believe that P; if P is true, S will believe that P.[11] Nozick believed that the third subjunctive condition served to address cases of the sort described

by Gettier. Nozick further claims this condition addresses a case of the sort described by D. M. Armstrong:[12] A father believes his daughter innocent of committing a particular crime, both

because of faith in his baby girl and (now) because he has seen presented in the courtroom a conclusive demonstration of his daughter's innocence. His belief via the method of the courtroom satisfies the four subjunctive conditions, but his faith-based belief does not. If his daughter were guilty, he would still believe her innocent, on the basis of faith in his daughter; this would violate the third subjunctive condition.

The British philosopher Simon Blackburn has criticized this formulation by suggesting that we do not want to accept as knowledge beliefs, which, while they "track the truth" (as Nozick's account requires), are not held for appropriate reasons. He says that "we do not want to award the title of knowing something to someone who is only meeting the conditions through a defect, flaw, or failure, compared with someone else who is not meeting the conditions.".[citation needed] In addition to this, externalist accounts of knowledge, like Nozick's, are often forced to reject closure in cases where it is intuitively valid.

Timothy Williamson has advanced a theory of knowledge according to which knowledge is not justified true belief plus some extra condition(s). In his book Knowledge and its Limits, Williamson argues that the concept of knowledge cannot be analyzed into a set of other concepts —instead, it is sui generis. Thus, though knowledge requires justification, truth, and belief, the word "knowledge" can't be, according to Williamson's theory, accurately regarded as simply shorthand for "justified true belief."

Alvin Goldman writes in his Causal Theory of Knowing that in order for knowledge to truly exist there must be a causal chain between the proposition and the belief of that proposition.

Practical applications Far from being purely academic, the study of epistemology is useful for a great many applications. It is particularly commonly employed in issues of law where proof of guilt or innocence may be required, or when it must be determined whether a person knew a particular fact before taking a specific action (e.g., whether an action was premeditated). Another practical application is to the design of user interfaces. For example, the skills, rules, and knowledge taxonomy of human behavior has been used by designers to develop systems[vague] that are compatible with multiple "ways of knowing": abstract analytic reasoning, experience-based 'gut feelings', and 'craft' sensorimotor skills.

Other common applications of epistemology include: Education Theory Education Technology Artificial intelligence Cognitive science

Cultural anthropology (do different cultures have different systems of knowledge?)

History and archaeology Intelligence (information) gathering Knowledge management Mathematics and science Medicine (diagnosis of disease) Neurology Behavioral neuroscience

Product testing (how can we know that the product will not fail?)

Psychology Philosophy Linguistics Logic Literature Theology and apologetics Sociology Testimony

Axiology (from Greek ἀξίᾱ, axiā, "value, worth"; and -λόγος, -logos) is the philosophical study of value. It is either the collective term for ethics and aesthetics[1]—philosophical fields that depend crucially on notions of value—or the foundation for these fields, and thus similar to value theory and meta-ethics. The term was first used in the early 20th century by Paul Lapie, in 1902, and Eduard von Hartmann, in 1908.[2] Axiology studies mainly two kinds of values: ethics and aesthetics. Ethics investigates the concepts of "right" and "good" in individual and social conduct. Aesthetics studies the concepts of "beauty" and "harmony." Formal axiology, the attempt to lay out principles regarding value with mathematical rigor, is exemplified by Robert S. Hartman's Science of Value.

axiology, (from Greek axios, “worthy”; logos, “science”), also called Theory Of Value, the philosophical study of goodness, or value, in the widest sense of these terms. Its significance lies (1) in the considerable expansion that it has given to the meaning of the term value and (2) in the unification that it has provided for the study of a variety of questions—economic, moral, aesthetic, and even logical—that had often been considered in relative isolation.

The term “value” originally meant the worth of something, chiefly in the economic sense of exchange value, as in the work of the 18th-century political economist Adam Smith. A broad extension of the meaning of value to wider areas of philosophical interest occurred during the 19th century under the influence of a variety of thinkers and schools: the Neo-Kantians Rudolf Hermann Lotze and Albrecht Ritschl; Friedrich Nietzsche, author of a theory of the transvaluation of all values; Alexius Meinong and Christian von Ehrenfels; and Eduard von Hartmann, philosopher of the unconscious, whose Grundriss der Axiologie (1909; “Outline of Axiology”) first used the term in a title. Hugo Münsterberg, often regarded as the founder of applied psychology, and Wilbur Marshall Urban, whose Valuation, Its Nature and Laws (1909) was the first treatise on this topic in English, introduced the movement to the United States.

Ralph Barton Perry’s book General Theory of Value (1926) has been called the magnum opus of the new approach. A value, he theorized, is “any object of any interest.” Later, he explored eight “realms” of value: morality, religion, art, science, economics, politics, law, and custom.

[Credit: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.]A distinction is commonly made between instrumental and intrinsic value—between what is good as a means and what is good as an end. John Dewey, in Human Nature and Conduct (1922) and Theory of Valuation (1939), presented a pragmatic interpretation and tried to break down this distinction between means and ends, though the latter effort was more likely a way of emphasizing the point that many actual things in human life— such as health, knowledge, and virtue—are good in both senses. Other philosophers, such as C.I. Lewis, Georg Henrik von Wright, and W.K. Frankena, have multiplied the distinctions— differentiating, for example, between instrumental value (being good for some purpose) and technical value (being good at doing something) or between contributory value (being good as part of a whole) and final value (being good as a whole).

[Credit: Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London]Many different answers are given to the question “What is intrinsically good?” Hedonists say it is pleasure; Pragmatists, satisfaction, growth, or adjustment; Kantians, a good will; Humanists, harmonious self-realization; Christians, the love of God. Pluralists, such as G.E. Moore, W.D. Ross, Max Scheler, and Ralph Barton Perry, argue that there are any number of intrinsically good things. Moore, a founding father of Analytic philosophy, developed a theory of organic wholes, holding that the value of an aggregate of things depends upon how they are combined.

Because “fact” symbolizes objectivity and “value” suggests subjectivity, the relationship of value to fact is of fundamental importance in developing any theory of the objectivity of value and of value judgments. Whereas such descriptive sciences as sociology, psychology, anthropology, and comparative religion all attempt to give a factual description of what is actually valued, as well as causal explanations of similarities and differences between the valuations, it remains the philosopher’s task to ask about their objective validity. The philosopher asks whether something is of value because it is desired, as subjectivists such as Perry hold, or whether it is desired

because it has value, as objectivists such as Moore and Nicolai Hartmann claim. In both approaches, value judgments are assumed to have a cognitive status, and the approaches differ only on whether a value exists as a property of something independently of human interest in it or desire for it. Noncognitivists, on the other hand, deny the cognitive status of value judgments, holding that their main function is either emotive, as the positivist A.J. Ayer maintains, or prescriptive, as the analyst R.M. Hare holds. Existentialists, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, emphasizing freedom, decision, and choice of one’s values, also appear to reject any logical or ontological connection between value and fact.

Aesthetics (also spelled æsthetics) is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of art, beauty, and taste, with the creation and appreciation of beauty.[1][2] It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste.[3] More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as "critical reflection on art, culture and nature."[4][5] Etymology The word aesthetic is derived from the Greek αἰσθητικός (aisthetikos, meaning "esthetic, sensitive, sentient"), which in turn was derived from αἰσθάνομαι (aisthanomai, meaning "I perceive, feel, sense").[6] The term "aesthetics" was appropriated and coined with new meaning in the German form Æsthetik (modern spelling Ästhetik) by Alexander Baumgarten in 1734.

History of aesthetics Main article: History of aesthetics before the 20th century Bronze sculpture, thought to be either Poseidon or Zeus, National Archaeological Museum of Athens Ancient aesthetics Examples of pre-historic art are rare. The context of their production and use is unclear.

Aesthetic doctrines that guided their production and interpretation are mostly unknown.

Ancient art was largely, but not entirely, based on the nine great ancient civilizations: Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece, China, Rome, India, the Celtic peoples, and Maya. Each of these centers of early civilization developed a unique and characteristic style in its art. Greece had the most influence on the development of aesthetics in the West. This period of Greek art saw a veneration of the human physical form and the development of corresponding skills to show musculature, poise, beauty and anatomically correct proportions. Furthermore, in many Western and Eastern cultures alike, traits such as body hair are rarely depicted in art that addresses

physical beauty.[citation needed] In contrast with this Greek-Western aesthetic taste is the genre of the grotesque.[7] Greek philosophers initially felt that aesthetically appealing objects were beautiful in and of themselves. Plato believed that for us to have a perception of beauty there must be a transcendent form for beauty in which beautiful objects partake and which causes them to be beautiful also.

He felt that beautiful objects incorporated proportion, harmony, and unity among their parts.

Similarly, in the Metaphysics, Aristotle found that the universal elements of beauty were order, symmetry, and definiteness. An example of ancient aesthetics in Greece through poetry is Plato's quote: "For the authors of those great poems which we admire, do not attain to excellence through the rules of any art; but they utter their beautiful melodies of verse in a state of inspiration, and, as it were, possessed by a spirit not their own."[8] Islamic aesthetics Islamic art does not pertain to religion only. The term "Islamic" refers not only to the religion, but to any form of art created in an Islamic culture or in an Islamic context. Not all Muslims are in agreement on the use of art in religious observance, the proper place of art in society, or the relation between secular art and the demands placed on the secular world to conform to religious precepts. Islamic art frequently adopts secular elements and elements that are frowned upon, if not forbidden, by some Islamic theologians.[9] According to Islam, human works of art are inherently flawed compared to the work of God; thus, it is believed by many that attempting to realistically depict the form of an animal or person is insolence to God. This tendency affected the narrowing field of artistic possibility to such forms of art as Arabesque, mosaic, Islamic calligraphy, and Islamic architecture, as well as any form of abstraction that can claim the status of non-representational art.

Limited possibilities have been explored by artists as an outlet to artistic expression, and has been cultivated to become a positive style and tradition, emphasizing the decorative function of art, or its religious functions via non-representational forms such as Geometric patterns, floral patterns, and arabesques.

Human or animal depiction is generally forbidden. Muslims believe these depictions lead to sculptural pieces, which then leads to worship of that sculpture or "idol". Human portrayals can be found in early Islamic cultures with varying degrees of acceptance by religious authorities.

Human representation for the purpose of worship is uniformly considered idolatry as forbidden in Sharia law.[10][11] The calligraphic arts grew out of an effort to devote oneself to the study of the Quran. By patiently transcribing each word of the text, the writer was made to contemplate the meaning of it. As time passed, these calligraphic works began to be prized as works of art, growing

increasingly elaborate in the illumination and stylizing of the text. These illuminations were applied to other works besides the Quran, and it became a respected art form in and of itself.

Indian aesthetics Indian art evolved with an emphasis on inducing special spiritual or philosophical states in the audience, or with representing them symbolically. According to Kapila Vatsyayan, "Classical Indian architecture, sculpture, painting, literature (kāvya), music, and dancing evolved their own rules conditioned by their respective media, but they shared with one another not only the underlying spiritual beliefs of the Indian religio-philosophic mind, but also the procedures by which the relationships of the symbol and the spiritual states were worked out in detail."

In the Pan Indian philosophic thought the term 'Satyam Shivam Sundaram' is another name for the concept of the Supreme. 'Sat' is the truth value, 'Shiv' is the good value & 'Sundaram' is the beauty value. Man through his 'Srabana' or education, 'Manana' or experience and conceptualization and 'Sadhana' or practice, through different stages of life (Asramas) comes to form and realize the idea of these three values to develop a value system. This Value-system helps us to develop two basic ideas 1) that of 'Daksha' or the adept/expert and 2) of Mahana/Parama or the Absolute and thus to judge anything in this universe in the light of these two measures, known as 'Adarsha'. A person who has mastered great amounts of knowledge of the grammars, rules, & language of an art-form are adepts (Daksha), whereas those who have worked through the whole system and journeyed ahead of these to become a law unto themselves is called a Mahana. Individuals idea of 'Daksha' and 'Mahana' is relative to one's development of the concept of 'Satyam-Shivam-Sundaram.' For example, Tagore's idea of these two concepts should be way above any common man's and many perceive Tagore as a 'Mahana' Artist in the realm of literature. This concept of Satyam-Shivam-Sundaram, a kind of Value Theory is the cornerstone of Indian Aesthetics.

Of particular concern to Indian drama and literature are the term 'Bhava' or the state of mind and rasa referring generally to the emotional flavors/essence crafted into the work by the writer and relished by a 'sensitive spectator' or sahṛdaya or one with positive taste and mind. Poets like Kālidāsa were attentive to rasa, which blossomed into a fully developed aesthetic system. Even in contemporary India the term rasa denoting "flavor" or "essence" is used colloquially to describe the aesthetic experiences in films; "māsala mix" describes popular Hindi cinema films which serve a so-called balanced emotional meal for the masses, savored as rasa by these spectators.

Rasa theory blossoms beginning with the Sanskrit text Nātyashāstra (nātya meaning "drama" and shāstra meaning "science of"), a work attributed to Bharata Muni where the Gods declare that drama is the 'Fifth Veda' because it is suitable for the degenerate age as the best form of religious instruction. While the date of composition varies wildly among scholars, ranging from the era of Plato and Aristotle to the seventh century CE. The Nātyashāstra presents the aesthetic concepts

of rasas and their associated bhāvas in Chapters Six and Seven respectively, which appear to be independent of the work as a whole. Eight rasas and associated bhāvas are named and their enjoyment is likened to savoring a meal: rasa is the enjoyment of flavors that arise from the proper preparation of ingredients and the quality of ingredients. What rasa actually is, in a theoretical sense, is not discussed and given the Nātyashāstra's pithy wording it is unlikely the exact understanding of the original author(s) will be known.

The theory of the rasas develops significantly with the Kashmiri aesthetician Ãndandavardhana's classic on poetics, the Dhvanyāloka which introduces the ninth rasa, shānta-rasa as a specifically religious feeling of peace (śānta) which arises from its bhāva, weariness of the pleasures of the world. The primary purpose of this text is to refine the literary concept dhvani or poetic suggestion, by arguing for the existence of rasa-dhvani, primarily in forms of Sanskrit including a word, sentence or whole work "suggests" a real-world emotional state or bhāva, but thanks to aesthetic distance, the sensitive spectator relishes the rasa, the aesthetic flavor of tragedy, heroism or romance.

The 9th - 10th century master of the religious system known as "the nondual Shaivism of Kashmir" (or "Kashmir Shaivism") and aesthetician, Abhinavagupta brought rasa theory to its pinnacle in his separate commentaries on the Dhvanyāloka, the Dhvanyāloka-locana (translated

by Ingalls, Masson and Patwardhan, 1992) and the Abhinavabharati, his commentary on the Nātyashāstra, portions of which are translated by Gnoli and Masson and Patwardhan.

Abhinavagupta offers for the first time a technical definition of rasa which is the universal bliss of the Self or Atman colored by the emotional tone of a drama. Shānta-rasa functions as an equal member of the set of rasas but is simultaneously distinct being the most clear form of aesthetic bliss. Abhinavagupta likens it to the string of a jeweled necklace; while it may not be the most appealing for most people, it is the string that gives form to the necklace, allowing the jewels of the other eight rasas to be relished. Relishing the rasas and particularly shānta-rasa is hinted as being as-good-as but never-equal-to the bliss of Self-realization experienced by yogis.

Chinese aesthetics Chinese art has a long history of varied styles and emphases. Confucius emphasized the role of the arts and humanities (especially music and poetry) in broadening human nature and aiding li (etiquette, the rites) in bringing us back to what is essential about humanity. His opponent Mozi, however, argued that music and fine arts were classist and wasteful, benefiting the rich over the poor.

By the 4th century AD artists had started debating in writing over the proper goals of art as well.

Gu Kaizhi has left three surviving books on the theory of painting. Several later artists or scholars both created art and wrote about the creation of it. Religious and philosophical influences on art were common (and diverse) but never universal.

African aesthetics

The Great Mosque's signature trio of minarets overlooks the central market of Djenné. Unique Malian aesthetic African art existed in many forms and styles, and with fairly little influence from outside Africa.

Most of it followed traditional forms and the aesthetic norms were handed down orally as well as written. Sculpture and performance art are prominent, and abstract and partially abstracted forms are valued, and were valued long before influence from the Western tradition began in earnest.

The Nok culture is testimony to this. The mosque of Timbuktu shows that specific areas of Africa developed unique aesthetics.

Western medieval aesthetics Surviving medieval art is primarily religious in focus and funded largely by the State, Roman Catholic or Orthodox church, powerful ecclesiastical individuals, or wealthy secular patrons.

These art pieces often served a liturgical function, whether as chalices or even as church buildings themselves. Objects of fine art from this period were frequently made from rare and valuable materials, such as gold and lapis, the cost of which commonly exceeded the wages of the artist.

Medieval aesthetics in the realm of philosophy built upon Classical thought, continuing the practice of Plotinus by employing theological terminology in its explications. St. Bonaventure’s “Retracing the Arts to Theology”, a primary example of this method, discusses the skills of the artisan as gifts given by God for the purpose of disclosing God to mankind, which purpose is achieved through four lights: the light of skill in mechanical arts which discloses the world of artifacts; which light is guided by the light of sense perception which discloses the world of natural forms; which light, consequently, is guided by the light of philosophy which discloses the world of intellectual truth; finally, this light is guided by the light of divine wisdom which discloses the world of saving truth.

Saint Thomas Aquinas's aesthetic is probably the most famous and influential theory among medieval authors, having been the subject of much scrutiny in the wake of the neo-Scholastic revival of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and even having received the approbation of the celebrated Modernist writer, James Joyce. Thomas, like many other medievals, never gives a systematic account of beauty itself, but several scholars have conventionally arranged his thought—though not always with uniform conclusions—using relevant observations spanning the entire corpus of his work. While Aquinas's theory follows generally the model of Aristotle, he develops a singular aesthetics which incorporates elements unique to his thought. Umberto Eco's The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas identifies the three main characteristics of beauty in Aquinas's philosophy: integritas sive perfectio, consonantia sive debita proportio, and claritas sive splendor formae. While Aristotle likewise identifies the first two characteristics, St. Thomas conceives of the third as an appropriation from principles developed by neo-Platonic and Augustinian thinkers.

Lorsch Gospels 778–820. Charlemagne's Court School.

With the shift from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, art likewise changed its focus, as much in its content as in its mode of expression