Editing World (section)

== History of philosophy ==
In philosophy, the term ''world'' has several possible meanings. In some contexts, it refers to everything that makes up [[reality]] or the physical [[universe]]. In others, it can mean have a specific [[ontology|ontological]] sense (see [[world disclosure]]). While clarifying the [[concept]] of world has arguably always been among the basic tasks of [[Western philosophy]], this theme appears to have been raised explicitly only at the start of the twentieth century,<ref>{{cite book|last=Heidegger|first=Martin|title=Basic Problems of Phenomenology|location=Bloomington|publisher=Indiana University Press|year=1982 |page=[https://archive.org/details/basicproblemsofp00mart/page/165 165]|isbn=0-253-17686-7|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/basicproblemsofp00mart/page/165}}</ref>

=== Plato ===
[[Plato]] is well known for his [[theory of forms]], which posits the existence of two different worlds: the sensible world and the intelligible world. The sensible world is the world we live in, filled with changing physical things we can see, touch and interact with. The intelligible world is the world of invisible, eternal, changeless forms like goodness, beauty, unity and sameness.<ref name="Kraut">{{cite web |last1=Kraut |first1=Richard |title=Plato |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato/ |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=24 April 2021 |date=2017}}</ref><ref name="Brickhouse">{{cite web |last1=Brickhouse |first1=Thomas |last2=Smith |first2=Nicholas D. |title=Plato: 6b. The Theory of Forms |url=https://iep.utm.edu/plato/#SH6b |website=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |access-date=24 April 2021}}</ref><ref name="Nehamas">{{cite journal |last1=Nehamas |first1=Alexander |title=Plato on the Imperfection of the Sensible World |journal=American Philosophical Quarterly |date=1975 |volume=12 |issue=2 |pages=105–117 |jstor=20009565 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20009565 |issn=0003-0481}}</ref> Plato ascribes a lower ontological status to the sensible world, which only imitates the world of forms. This is due to the fact that physical things exist only to the extent that they participate in the forms that characterize them, while the forms themselves have an independent manner of existence.<ref name="Kraut"/><ref name="Brickhouse"/><ref name="Nehamas"/> In this sense, the sensible world is a mere replication of the perfect exemplars found in the world of forms: it never lives up to the original. In the [[allegory of the cave]], Plato compares the physical things we are familiar with to mere shadows of the real things. But not knowing the difference, the prisoners in the cave mistake the shadows for the real things.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Partenie |first1=Catalin |title=Plato's Myths |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-myths/ |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=24 April 2021 |date=2018}}</ref>

=== Wittgenstein ===
Two definitions that were both put forward in the 1920s, however, suggest the range of available opinion. "The world is everything that is the case", wrote [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]] in his influential ''[[Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus]]'', first published in 1921.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/|title=Ludwig Wittgenstein|publisher=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |editor-last=Zalta|editor-first=Edward N.|date=3 March 2014|access-date=3 December 2017|first1=Anat|first2=Anat|last1=Biletzki|last2=Matar|edition=Fall 2016}}</ref>

=== Heidegger ===
[[Martin Heidegger]], meanwhile, argued that "the surrounding world is different for each of us, and notwithstanding that we move about in a common world".<ref>Heidegger (1982), p. 164.</ref>

=== Eugen Fink ===
"World" is one of the key terms in [[Eugen Fink]]'s philosophy.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Elden |first1=Stuart |title=Eugen Fink and the Question of the World |journal=Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy |date=2008 |volume=5 |pages=48–59 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/ELDEFA}}</ref> He thinks that there is a misguided tendency in western philosophy to understand the world as one enormously big thing containing all the small everyday things we are familiar with.<ref name="Homan">{{cite journal |last1=Homan |first1=Catherine |title=The Play of Ethics in Eugen Fink |journal=Journal of Speculative Philosophy |date=2013 |volume=27 |issue=3 |pages=287–296 |doi=10.5325/jspecphil.27.3.0287 |s2cid=142401048 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/HOMTPO-2}}</ref> He sees this view as a form of forgetfulness of the world and tries to oppose it by what he calls the "cosmological difference": the difference between the world and the inner-worldly things it contains.<ref name="Homan"/> On his view, the world is the totality of the inner-worldly things that transcends them.<ref name="Halák2">{{cite journal |last1=Halák |first1=Jan |title=Beyond Things: The Ontological Importance of Play According to Eugen Fink |journal=Journal of the Philosophy of Sport |date=2016 |volume=43 |issue=2 |pages=199–214 |doi=10.1080/00948705.2015.1079133 |s2cid=146382154 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/HALBTT-3}}</ref> It is itself groundless but it provides a ground for things. It therefore cannot be identified with a mere container. Instead, the world gives appearance to inner-worldly things, it provides them with a place, a beginning and an end.<ref name="Homan"/> One difficulty in investigating the world is that we never encounter it since it is not just one more thing that appears to us. This is why Fink uses the notion of play or playing to elucidate the nature of the world.<ref name="Homan"/><ref name="Halák2"/> He sees play as a symbol of the world that is both part of it and that represents it.<ref name="Halák">{{cite journal |last1=Halák |first1=Jan |title=Towards the World: Eugen Fink on the Cosmological Value of Play |journal=Sport, Ethics and Philosophy |date=2015 |volume=9 |issue=4 |pages=401–412 |doi=10.1080/17511321.2015.1130740 |s2cid=146764077 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/HALTTW-2}}</ref> Play usually comes with a form of imaginary play-world involving various things relevant to the play. But just like the play is more than the imaginary realities appearing in it so the world is more than the actual things appearing in it.<ref name="Homan"/><ref name="Halák"/>

=== Goodman ===
The concept of worlds plays a central role in [[Nelson Goodman]]'s late philosophy.<ref name="Declos"/> He argues that we need to posit different worlds in order to account for the fact that there are different incompatible truths found in reality.<ref name="Cohnitz">{{cite web |last1=Cohnitz |first1=Daniel |last2=Rossberg |first2=Marcus |title=Nelson Goodman: 6. Irrealism and Worldmaking |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goodman/#IrrWor |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=15 April 2021 |date=2020}}</ref> Two truths are incompatible if they ascribe incompatible properties to the same thing.<ref name="Declos"/> This happens, for example, when we assert both that the earth moves and that the earth is at rest. These incompatible truths correspond to two different ways of describing the world: [[heliocentrism]] and [[geocentrism]].<ref name="Cohnitz"/> Goodman terms such descriptions "world versions". He holds a [[correspondence theory of truth]]: a world version is true if it corresponds to a world. Incompatible true world versions correspond to different worlds.<ref name="Cohnitz"/> It is common for theories of modality to posit the existence of a plurality of possible worlds. But Goodman's theory is different since it posits a plurality not of possible but of actual worlds.<ref name="Declos"/><ref name="Sandkühler"/> Such a position is in danger of involving a contradiction: there cannot be a plurality of actual worlds if worlds are defined as maximally inclusive wholes.<ref name="Declos"/><ref name="Sandkühler"/> This danger may be avoided by interpreting Goodman's world-concept not as maximally inclusive wholes in the absolute sense but in relation to its corresponding world-version: a world contains all and only the entities that its world-version describes.<ref name="Declos"/><ref name="Sandkühler"/>