Ontology

Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. Time dictates all forms of action, age, and causality, being a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to compare the duration of events (or the intervals between them), and to quantify rates of change of quantities in material reality or in the conscious experience. Time is often referred to as a fourth dimension, along with three spatial dimensions.

320px|thumb|Image of the physical world, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope

Reality is the state of everything that exists, not how they might be imagined. Different cultures and academic disciplines conceptualize it in various ways.

In philosophy and metaphysics, materialism is a form of monism holding that matter is the fundamental substance of nature, so that all things, including mind and consciousness, arise from material interactions and depend on physical processes, including those of the human brain and nervous system. It contrasts with monistic idealism, which treats consciousness as fundamental, and is related to naturalism, the view that only natural laws and forces operate in the universe, and to physicalism, the view that all that exists is ultimately physical. Physicalism extends materialism by including form

thumb|17th-century representation of consciousness by Robert Fludd, an English Paracelsian physician

thumb|200px|Sketch from Charles Darwin's Notebooks on Transmutation of Species (1837), arguably the first example of a phylogenetic tree. (1) represents a common ancestor, the barred branches represent extant descendants, and the unmarked branches represent extinct descendants. A theory is, in general, any hypothesis or set of ideas about something, formed in any number of ways through any sort of reasoning for any sort of reason.

Reason is the capacity to consciously apply logic by drawing valid conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking truth. It is associated with activities considered characteristic of humans, including philosophy, religion, science, language, and mathematics, and is generally considered a distinguishing ability possessed by humans. The term "reason" is sometimes used to refer to rationality, although the latter is more about its application.

right|thumb|250px|Plato, one of the first philosophers to discuss ideas in detail. Aristotle claims that many of Plato's views were Pythagorean in origin. In philosophy and in common usage, an idea (from the Greek word: ἰδέα (idea), meaning 'a form, or a pattern') is the result of thought. Also in philosophy, ideas can also be mental representational images of some object. Many philosophers have considered ideas to be a fundamental ontological category of being. The capacity to create and understand the meaning of ideas is considered to be an essential and defining feature of human beings.

Ontology is the philosophical study of being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of reality and every entity within it. To articulate the basic structure of being, ontology examines the shared characteristics among all things and investigates their classification into basic types, such as the categories of particulars and universals. Particulars are unique, non-repeatable entities, such as the person Socrates, whereas universals are general, repeatable

thumb|alt=Existential quantifier|The existential quantifier ∃ is often used in [[logic to express existence.]]

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right|thumb|280px|Generalized scheme of taxonomy

REDIRECT Existence

singular aggregation of tangible substance(s) such as matter or radiation, with overall properties

Quantity or amount is a property that includes numbers and quantifiable phenomena such as mass, time, distance, heat, angle, and information. Quantities can commonly be compared in terms of "more", "less", or "equal", or by assigning a numerical value multiple of a unit of measurement. Quantity is among the basic classes of things along with quality, substance, change, and relation. Some quantities are such by their inner nature (as number), while others function as states (properties, dimensions, attributes) of things such as heavy and light, long and short, broad and narrow, small and great,

thumb|Woman's Progress, May 1895|200px

thumb|170px|The Blind justice (concept)|concept of blind justice is a moral principle.

advanced emotion, subjective experience of total involvement of the subject, with an object of their awareness

thumb|Adriaen van Ostade, "Analysis" (1666)

concept designating the extra-categorical attributes of beings

Introspection is the examination of one's own conscious thoughts and feelings. In psychology, the process of introspection relies on the observation of one's mental state, while in a spiritual context it may refer to the examination of one's soul. Introspection is closely related to human self-reflection and self-discovery and is contrasted with external observation.

basic ontological concept

Proposed scale by which the scope of a civilisation might be measured

thumb|The formation of complex symmetrical and fractal patterns in [[snowflakes exemplifies emergence in a physical system.]] thumb|A termite "cathedral" mound produced by a termites|termite colony offers a classic example of emergence in nature.

philosophical argument for the existence of God

In philosophy (metaphysics), physicalism is the position that everything is physical, that there is nothing over and above the physical, and that everything supervenes on the physical. It stands in direct opposition to idealism, which asserts that reality arises from the mind. Physicalism is a form of ontological monism—a single-substance account of the nature of reality, in contrast to "two-substance" (mind–body dualism) or "many-substance" (pluralism) views. Physicalism is closely related to naturalism, though important distinctions exist between them.

upright=0.65|thumb|The "redness" of red is an example of a quale.

philosophical concept

thumb|right|upright=1.2|This diagram shows the medieval understanding of celestial spheres|spheres of the [[cosmos, derived from Aristotle, and as per the standard explanation by Ptolemy. It came to be understood that at least the outermost sphere (marked "Primũ Mobile") has its own intellect, intelligence or nous – a cosmic equivalent to the human mind.]]

Intentionality is the mental ability to refer to or represent something. Sometimes regarded as the mark of the mental, it is found in mental states like perceptions, beliefs or desires. For example, the perception of a tree has intentionality because it represents a tree to the perceiver. A central issue for theories of intentionality has been the problem of intentional inexistence: to determine the ontological status of the entities which are the objects of intentional states.

Buddhist concept; consists of impermanence (anicca), suffering (dukkha), and non-self (anattā)

ability to attribute mental states

philosophical theory that mental phenomena are non-physical and that matter exists independently of mind

'''''' ( ; ) is a term in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Adopted from the ordinary German word meaning 'existence', Heidegger used it to refer to the mode of being that he believed is particular to human beings, who are aware of and must confront such issues as personhood, mortality, and the dilemma or paradox of living in relationship with other humans while being ultimately alone with oneself.

in metaphysics, repeatable or recurrent qualities that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things

thumb|upright=1.25|The universe is everything that exists theoretically. ([[Hubble Ultra-Deep Field image of distant galaxies pictured)]]

Epistemological razor regarding the burden of proof

epistemology, proposed by Kant, in which space and time are merely formal features of how we perceive objects, not things in themselves that exist independently of us

Posthumanism or post-humanism (meaning "after humanism" or "beyond humanism") is an idea in continental philosophy and critical theory responding to the presence of anthropocentrism in 21st-century thought.

branch of philosophy relating to spatiality and temporality

hypothetical internal cognitive symbol that represents external reality

entity that does not have a physical existence, including abstract objects and properties

tendency not to side in a conflict

area in philosophy concerned with theories about the processes causing willful human bodily movements of a more or less complex kind. This area of thought involves epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, jurisprudence, and philosophy of mind

psychological and philosophical concept

philosophical concept

impossibility for separate objects to have all their properties in common

Posthuman or post-human is a concept originating in the fields of science fiction, futurology, contemporary art, and philosophy that means a person or entity that exists in a state beyond being human. The concept aims at addressing a variety of questions, including ethics and justice, language and trans-species communication, social systems, and the intellectual aspirations of interdisciplinarity.

In scholastic philosophy, "quiddity" (; Latin: quidditas) was another term for the essence of an object, literally its "whatness" or "what it is".

Mereology (; from Greek μέρος 'part' (root: μερε-, mere-) and the suffix -logy, 'study, discussion, science') is the philosophical study of part-whole relationships, also called parthood relationships. As a branch of metaphysics, mereology examines the connections between parts and their wholes, exploring how components interact within a system. This theory has roots in ancient philosophy, with significant contributions from Plato, Aristotle, and later, medieval and Renaissance thinkers like Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus. Mereology was formally axiomatized in the 20th century by Polish l

Classic device

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theory stating that external physical reality is a mathematical structure

distinction that separates a concept from the objects which are particular instances of the concept

Haecceity (; from the Latin , 'thisness') is a term from medieval scholastic philosophy, coined by followers of Duns Scotus to denote a concept that he seems to have originated: the irreducible determination of a thing that makes it this particular thing. Haecceity is a person's or object's thisness, the individualising difference between the concept "a person" and the concept "Socrates" (i.e., a specific person). In modern philosophy of physics, it is sometimes referred to as primitive thisness.

thumb|upright=1.2|Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act I, Scene IV by Henry Fuseli (1789)

Endurantism or endurance theory is a philosophical theory of persistence and identity. According to the endurantist view, material objects are persisting three-dimensional individuals wholly present at every moment of their existence, which goes with an A-theory of time. This conception of an individual as always present is opposed to perdurantism or four-dimensionalism, which maintains that an object is a series of temporal parts or stages, requiring a B-theory of time. The use of "endure" and "perdure" to distinguish two ways in which an object can be thought to persist can be traced to Davi

Externalism is a group of positions in the philosophy of mind which argues that the conscious mind is not only the result of what is going on inside the nervous system (or the brain), but also what occurs or exists outside the subject. It is contrasted with internalism which holds that the mind emerges from neural activity alone. Externalism is a belief that the mind is not just the brain or functions of the brain.

"natural" grouping, not an artificial one; family of entities possessing properties bound by natural law

In philosophy, the transcendentals (, from transcendere "to exceed") are the ultimate "properties of being" that exist beyond the material world, nowadays commonly considered to be truth, unity (oneness), beauty, and goodness. Formulation of transcendentals as a set arose from medieval scholasticism, namely Aquinas, though the underlying thought originated with Plato, Augustine, and Aristotle in the West.