哲学专业,英语专业毕业论文.doc

Hierarchy, Form and Reality 摘要：现代科学对哲学所提供的最重要成就是一种层次的世界观，对世界层次结构的分析将对形而上学和哲学具有明显的意义。夏法尔的论文“是否存在一个基础的层次？” 系统地讨论了基础主义在这方面的工作及其面临的问题，在缺乏论证的情况下最后指出了一条非还原主义的出路，我们可以把每一层都看作是等同的，承认它们都具有“存在共和国中的完全公民权”。本文将为此提供一个论证：将亚里士多德的形式理论应用于世界层次结构的分析，发展出形式实在论，并以此来论证一种本体论的非还原主义以反对原子主义和物理主义；提出一种因果作用的说明以反对副现象论；提出认识论的非还原主义以反对观念原子主义和认识论还原主义。 Abstract: Scientific progress in the 20th century has shown that the structure of the world is hierarchical. A philosophical analysis of the hierarchy will bear obvious significance for metaphysics and philosophy in general. Jonathan Schaffers paper, Is There a Fundamental Level?, provides a systematic review of the works in the field, the difficulties for various versions of fundamentalism, and the prospect for the third option, i.e., to treat each level as ontologically equal. The purpose of this paper is to provide an argument for the third option, which is missing in Schaffers paper. The author will apply Aristotles theory of matter and form to the discussion of the hierarchy and develop a form realism, which will grant every level with full citizenship in the republic of being. It is also an argument against ontological and epistemological reductionism. 1. Introduction The most significant scientific achievement for philosophy in the 20th century is the general view that the structure of our world is hierarchical. In one direction, astronomers have proved that the remote spiral nebulae are galaxies like our own Milky Way. Thus the Universe is one level bigger than the Milky Way, and consists of galaxies as islands. Some day in the future they may discover that there is more than one Big Bang. In the opposite direction, atomic physicists have shown that, while everything consists of molecules and atoms, the atoms are not atomic. They split the atoms and drilled down all the way through protons, neutrons and electrons, quarks and leptons, ... and finally to super strings. Although they have no way to prove that a super string has no internal structure,