Reality’s Fugue : : Reconciling Worldviews in Philosophy, Religion, and Science / / F. Samuel Brainard.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Penn State University Press Complete eBook-Package 2014-2015
• VerfasserIn: Brainard, F. Samuel,
• Place / Publishing House: University Park, PA : : Penn State University Press, , [2021]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (288 p.) :; 8 illustrations

Science, religion, philosophy: these three categories of thought have organized humankind’s search for meaning from time immemorial. Reality’s Fugue presents a compelling case that these ways of understanding, often seen as competing, are part of a larger puzzle that cannot be rendered by one account of reality alone.This book begins with an overview of the concept of reality and the philosophical difficulties associated with attempts to account for it through any single worldview. By clarifying the differences among first-person, third-person, and dualist understandings of reality, F. Samuel Brainard repurposes the three predominant ways of making sense of those differences: exclusionist (only one worldview can be right), inclusivist (viewing other worldviews through the lens of one in order to incorporate them all, and thus distorting them), and pluralist or relativist (holding that there are no universals, and truth is relative). His alternative mode of understanding uses Douglas Hofstadter’s metaphor of a musical fugue that allows different “voices” and “melodies” of worldviews to coexist in counterpoint and conversation, while each remains distinct, with none privileged above the others. Approaching reality in this way, Brainard argues, opens up the possibility for a multivoiced perspective that can overcome the skeptical challenges that metaphysical positions face.Engagingly argued by a lifelong scholar of philosophy and global religions, this edifying and accessible exploration of the nature of reality addresses deeply meaningful questions about belief, reconciliation, and being.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- PART ONE: WHAT IS REAL? -- Chapter One: The Predicament -- Chapter Two: Two Views of Reality -- PART TWO: THREE THEMES -- Chapter Three: Universals and Particulars -- Chapter Four: Hinduism and the Third-Person View -- Chapter Five: Awareness and Its Objects -- Chapter Six: Buddhism and the First-Person View -- Chapter Seven: The Dualism of Everyday Reality -- Chapter Eight: Western Theism and the Dualist View -- PART THREE: REALITY AS FUGUE -- Introduction to Part Three -- Chapter Nine: Awareness’s Two Roles -- Chapter Ten: Artifacts of Awareness -- Chapter Eleven: Physical Reality -- Chapter Twelve: Religions Revisited -- Postscripts -- Postscript One: Scale as a Dimension of Reality -- Postscript Two: A Definition for Truth -- Acknowledgments -- Terms Defined in This Book -- Glossary of Hindu and Buddhist Terms -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index