Environments of simulacra The virtual has become a place that we constantly refer to, an environment that lacks the dimensionality of an on-the-ground location, but is no less a scene of mental, and indirectly, physical activity that shapes, for some more than others, the conduct of daily lives, thoughts, and habits. Simulacra and hyperreality Symbols and signs augment and replace aspects of our reality Simulacra replaces reality with its representation. The world we experience is hyperreal it is augmented by signs, symbols, copies and references to other images, books, media. Postmodernism A reaction against modernism, a set of critical practices that destabilize ideas about the certainty of meaning, knowledge, and identity. ModernismPostmodernism Reason and science provide accurate, objective, reliable foundation of knowledge Reason and science are fallible ideologies created by humans Reason transcends and exists independently of our historical, cultural contexts; it is universal and true There is no universal, objective means of judging any given concept as true; all judgments of truth exist within a cultural context Deconstruction The postmodern method of critical analysis that aims to reveal the ambiguities of meaning, knowledge and identity To deconstruct something is is to show that there is not just one dominating mode or signifying meaning over all others Panopticon A metaphor for modern disciplinary societies and their inclination to observe, monitor and normalize Correspondence theory of truth The view that truth is correspondence to or with a fact such that truth consists in a relation to reality This realist position holds that truth is what propositions have by corresponding to a way the world is Absolute transcription of reality Coherence theory of truth The truth of a belief can only consist in its coherence with other beliefs. The truth conditions of a proposition consist in other propositions. Deflationary theory of truth Truth does not have a nature of the kind that philosophers can find out about and develop theories of. Truth has no nature beyond what is captured in ordinary claims Pragmatic theory of truth Holds that a proposition is true if it is useful to believe. Platos analogy of the cave Phenomena and noumena Phenomena: the appearances which constitute our experience of the world first through our senses and then through our minds Noumena: the things themselves which we cannot experience directly or observe independent of ourselves