Fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society
This article is about the concept. For the WorldView satellite class, seeDigitalGlobe. For the World View near-space balloon technology, seeWorld View Enterprises. For the Worldview public television network owned by MHz Networks, seeMHz Networks § MHz Worldview.
Aworldview (alsoworld-view) orWeltanschauung is said to be the fundamentalcognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the whole of the individual's or society'sknowledge,culture, andpoint of view.[1] However, when two parties view the same real world phenomenon, their world views may differ, one including elements that the other does not.
A worldview can includenatural philosophy; fundamental, existential, andnormative postulates; or themes, values, emotions, and ethics.[2]
The termworldview is acalque of the German wordWeltanschauung[ˈvɛltʔanˌʃaʊ.ʊŋ]ⓘ, composed ofWelt ('world') andAnschauung ('perception' or 'view').[3] The German word is also used in English. It is a concept fundamental toGerman philosophy, especiallyepistemology and refers to awide world perception. Additionally, it refers to the framework of ideas and beliefs forming a global description through which an individual, group or culture watches and interprets theworld and interacts with it as asocial reality.
Withincognitive philosophy and thecognitive sciences is the German concept ofWeltanschauung. This expression is used to refer to the "wide worldview" or "wide world perception" of a people, family, or person. TheWeltanschauung of a people originates from the unique world experience of a people, which they experience over several millennia. Thelanguage of a people reflects theWeltanschauung of that people in the form of itssyntactic structures and untranslatableconnotations and itsdenotations.[4][5]
The termWeltanschauung is often wrongly attributed toWilhelm von Humboldt, the founder of Germanethnolinguistics. However, Humboldt's key concept wasWeltansicht.[6]Weltansicht was used by Humboldt to refer to the overarching conceptual and sensorial apprehension of reality shared by a linguistic community (Nation). On the other hand,Weltanschauung, first used byImmanuel Kant and later popularized by Hegel, was always used in German and later in English to refer more to philosophies,ideologies and cultural or religious perspectives, than to linguistic communities and their mode of apprehending reality.
In 1911, the German philosopherWilhelm Dilthey published an essay entitled "The Types ofWeltanschauung and their Development in Metaphysics" that became quite influential. Dilthey characterized worldviews as providing a perspective on life that encompasses the cognitive, evaluative, and volitional aspects of human experience. Although worldviews have always been expressed in literature and religion, philosophers have attempted to give them conceptual definition in their metaphysical systems. On that basis, Dilthey found it possible to distinguish three general recurring types of worldview. The first of these he called naturalism because it gives priority to the perceptual and experimental determination of what is and allows contingency to influence how we evaluate and respond to reality. Naturalism can be found in Democritus, Hobbes, Hume and many other modern philosophers. The second type of worldview is called the idealism of freedom and is represented by Plato, Descartes, Kant, and Bergson among others. It is dualistic and gives primacy to the freedom of the will. The organizational order of our world is structured by our mind and the will to know. The third type is called objective idealism and Dilthey sees it in Heraclitus, Parmenides, Spinoza, Leibniz and Hegel. In objective idealism the ideal does not hover above what is actual but inheres in it. This third type of worldview is ultimately monistic and seeks to discern the inner coherence and harmony among all things. Dilthey thought it impossible to come up with a universally valid metaphysical or systematic formulation of any of these worldviews, but regarded them as useful schema for his own more reflective kind of life philosophy. SeeMakkreel and Rodi, Wilhelm Dilthey, Selected Works, volume 6, 2019.
Anthropologically, worldviews can be expressed as the "fundamental cognitive, affective, and evaluative presuppositions a group of people make about the nature of things, and which they use to order their lives."[7]
According to James W. Underhill, worldview can periodically be used very differently by certainlinguists andsociologists. It is for this reason that Underhill, and those who influenced him, attempted to wed metaphor in, for example, thesociology of religion, withdiscourse analysis. Underhill also proposed five subcategories for the study of worldview: world-perceiving, world-conceiving, cultural mindset, personal world, and perspective.[6][9][10]
One can think of a worldview as comprising a number ofbasic beliefs which are philosophically equivalent to the axioms of the worldview considered as a logical or consistent theory. These basic beliefs cannot, by definition, be proven (in the logical sense) within the worldview – precisely because they areaxioms, and are typically arguedfrom rather than arguedfor.[11] However their coherence can be explored philosophically and logically.
If two different worldviews have sufficient common beliefs it may be possible to have a constructive dialogue between them.[12]
On the other hand, if different worldviews are held to be basically incommensurate and irreconcilable, then the situation is one ofcultural relativism and would therefore incur the standard criticisms fromphilosophical realists.[13][14]Additionally, religious believers might not wish to see their beliefs relativized into something that is only "true for them".[15][16]Subjective logic is a belief-reasoning formalism where beliefs explicitly are subjectively held by individuals but where a consensus between different worldviews can be achieved.[17][clarification needed]
A third alternative sees the worldview approach as only a methodological relativism, as a suspension of judgment about the truth of various belief systems but not a declaration that there is no global truth. For instance, the religious philosopherNinian Smart begins hisWorldviews: Cross-cultural Explorations of Human Beliefs with "Exploring Religions and Analysing Worldviews" and argues for "the neutral, dispassionate study of different religious and secular systems—a process I call worldview analysis."[18]
The comparison of religious, philosophical or scientific worldviews is a delicate endeavor, because such worldviews start from differentpresuppositions and cognitive values.[19] Clément Vidal has proposed metaphilosophical criteria for the comparison of worldviews, classifying them in three broad categories:
WhileLeo Apostel and his followers clearly hold that individuals can construct worldviews, other writers regard worldviews as operating at acommunity level, or in anunconscious way. For instance, if one's worldview is fixed by one's language, as according to a strong version of theSapir–Whorf hypothesis, one would have to learn or invent a new language in order to construct a new worldview.
According to Apostel,[20] a worldview is anontology, or a descriptivemodel of the world. It should comprise these six elements:
A worldview, according toterror management theory (TMT), serves as a buffer against death anxiety.[21] It is theorized that living up to the ideals of one's worldview provides a sense of self-esteem which provides a sense of transcending the limits of human life (e.g. literally, as in religious belief in immortality; symbolically, as in art works or children to live on after one's death, or in contributions to one's culture).[21] Evidence in support of terror management theory includes a series of experiments by Jeff Schimel and colleagues in which a group of Canadians found to score highly on a measure of patriotism were asked to read an essay attacking the dominant Canadian worldview.[21]
Using a test ofdeath-thought accessibility (DTA), involving an ambiguous word completion test (e.g. "COFF__" could either be completed as either "COFFEE" or "COFFIN" or "COFFER"), participants who had read the essay attacking their worldview were found to have a significantly higher level of DTA than the control group, who read a similar essay attacking Australian cultural values. Mood was also measured following the worldview threat, to test whether the increase in death thoughts following worldview threat were due to other causes, for example, anger at the attack on one's cultural worldview.[21] No significant changes on mood scales were found immediately following the worldview threat.[21]
To test the generalisability of these findings to groups and worldviews other than those of nationalistic Canadians, Schimelet al conducted a similar experiment on a group of religious individuals whose worldview included that ofcreationism.[21] Participants were asked to read an essay which argued in support of the theory of evolution, following which the same measure of DTA was taken as for the Canadian group.[21] Religious participants with a creationist worldview were found to have a significantly higher level of death-thought accessibility than those of the control group.[21]
Goldenberget al found that highlighting the similarities between humans and other animals increases death-thought accessibility, as does attention to the physical rather than meaningful qualities of sex.[22]
The Christian thinkerJames W. Sire defines a worldview as "a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true, or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basicconstruction of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being." He suggests that "we should all think in terms of worldviews, that is, with a consciousness not only of our own way of thought but also that of other people, so that we can first understand and then genuinely communicate with others in our pluralistic society."[25]
The commitment mentioned by James W. Sire can be extended further. The worldview increases the commitment to serve the world. With the change of a person's view towards the world, he/she can be motivated to serve the world. This serving attitude has been illustrated by Tareq M Zayed as the 'Emancipatory Worldview' in his writing "History of emancipatory worldview of Muslim learners".[26]
David Bell has also raised questions on religious worldviews for the designers ofsuperintelligences – machines much smarter than humans.[27]
^abUnderhill, James W. (2009).Humboldt, Worldview and Language (Transferred to digital print. ed.). Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press.ISBN978-0748638420.
^Hiebert, Paul G. (2008).Transforming Worldviews: an anthropological understanding of how people change. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic. p. 15.ISBN978-0-8010-2705-5.
^In the Christian tradition this goes back at least toJustin Martyr'sDialogues with Trypho, A Jew, and has roots in the debates recorded in theNew Testament For a discussion of the long history of religious dialogue in India, seeAmartya Sen'sThe Argumentative Indian
^The problem of self-refutation is quite general. It arises whether truth is relativized to a framework of concepts, of beliefs, of standards, of practices.Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
^abcdefghSchimel, Jeff; Hayes, Joseph; Williams, Todd; Jahrig, Jesse (2007). "Is death really the worm at the core? Converging evidence that worldview threat increases death-thought accessibility".Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.92 (5):789–803.doi:10.1037/0022-3514.92.5.789.PMID17484605.
^Goldenberg, Jamie L.; Cox, Cathy R.; Pyszczynski, Tom; Greenberg, Jeff; Solomon, Sheldon (November 2002). "Understanding human ambivalence about sex: The effects of stripping sex of meaning".Journal of Sex Research.39 (4):310–320.doi:10.1080/00224490209552155.PMID12545414.S2CID24419836.
^Indeed Kitaro's final book isLast Writings: Nothingness and the Religious Worldview
^David K. NaugleWorldview: The History of a ConceptISBN0-8028-4761-7 page 4
^James W. SireThe Universe Next Door: A Basic World view Catalog pp. 15–16 (text readable at Amazon.com)
^Bell, David (2016).Superintelligence and World-views: Putting the Spotlight on Some Important Issues. Guildford, Surrey, UK: Grosvenor House Publishing Limited.ISBN9781786237668.OCLC962016344.[page needed]
"You are what you speak"(PDF). Archived from the original on 20 September 2009.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)(5.15 MB) – a 2002 essay on research in linguistic relativity (Lera Boroditsky)
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