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21 Cards in this Set
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Compatibilism |
All events even humans actions are caused however we can consider human actions free if it is driven by internal motivations and not externally. |
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Libertarianism |
Humans are able to make free choices that are not determined by previous events in accordance with universal causal laws. |
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Determinism |
Every event including human actions is brought about by previous events in accordance with universal causal laws. Human freedom is an illusion |
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Rationalism |
the theory that reason rather than experience is the foundation of certainty in knowledge. |
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Empiricism |
the theory that all knowledge is derived from sense-experience. Stimulated by the rise of experimental science, it developed in the 17th and 18th centuries, expounded in particular by John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume. |
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Cogito ergo sum |
Cogito ergo sum [a] is a Latin philosophical proposition by René Descartes usually translated into English as "I think, therefore I am".
This thinking must exist in order to be thinking
The only thought he could not doubt, as he knew himself to be doubting, and that his thinking proved that he existed. |
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Idealism |
In philosophy, idealism is the group of philosophies which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial |
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Esse est percipi |
To be is to be perceived
George Berkeley idealism i: a tenet that existence consists in the condition of being perceived. |
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Perpetual perceiver |
God |
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Constant conjunction |
Strictly speaking, for Hume, our only external impression of causation is a mere constant conjunction of phenomena, that B always follows A, and Hume sometimes seems to imply that this is all that causation amounts to. David Hume
Sets up the link between cause and effect in our mind
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Monism |
a theory or doctrine that denies the existence of a distinction or duality in some sphere, such as that between matter and mind, or God and the world. the doctrine that only one supreme being exists. |
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Dualism |
In philosophy of mind, dualism is the position that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical, or that the mind and body are not identical. |
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Platos theory of forms |
The Theory of Forms differentiates the abstract world of thought from the world of the senses, where art and mythology operate. Plato also argued that abstract thought is superior to the world of the senses. By investigating the world of Forms, Plato hopes to attain a greater knowledge.
Everything on earth, whether an object (such as a car) or an idea (such as justice), is actually an imperfect copy of an ideal and permanent “form” that exists somewhere, beyond our universe. This is known as the Theory of Forms. The place where all these ideal forms exist is guided by a heavenly force that Plato believed should influence our behavior. (This notion shaped Christianity.) The ideal that was the most important to Plato was moral goodness, which he called “the good.” He believed that we should spend our lives trying to attain absolute goodness, even if we always fall short, because it is the path to happiness. |
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Platos allegory of the cave |
Summary of Platos Cave FEATURED POSTS PHILOSOPHY ‘THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE’ BY PLATO: SUMMARY AND MEANING
2012 SEP 21 40
The ‘Allegory Of The Cave’ is a theory put forward by Plato, concerning human perception. Plato claimed that knowledge gained through the senses is no more than opinion and that, in order to have real knowledge, we must gain it through philosophical reasoning.
‘The Allegory of the Cave’ by Plato
In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato distinguishes between people who mistake sensory knowledge for the truth and people who really do see the truth. It goes like this:
The Cave
Imagine a cave, in which there are three prisoners. The prisoners are tied to some rocks, their arms and legs are bound and their head is tied so that they cannot look at anything but the stonewall in front of them. These prisoners have been here since birth and have never seen outside of the cave. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between them is a raised walkway. People outside the cave walk along this walkway carrying things on their head including; animals, plants, wood and stone. The Shadows
So, imagine that you are one of the prisoners. You cannot look at anything behind or to the side of you – you must look at the wall in front of you. When people walk along the walkway, you can see shadows of the objects they are carrying cast on to the wall. If you had never seen the real objects ever before, you would believe that the shadows of objects were ‘real.’ The Game
Plato suggests that the prisoners would begin a ‘game’ of guessing which shadow would appear next. If one of the prisoners were to correctly guess, the others would praise him as clever and say that he were a master of nature. The Escape
One of the prisoners then escapes from their bindings and leaves the cave. He is shocked at the world he discovers outside the cave and does not believe it can be real. As he becomes used to his new surroundings, he realizes that his former view of reality was wrong. He begins to understand his new world, and sees that the Sun is the source of life and goes on an intellectual journey where he discovers beauty and meaning He see’s that his former life, and the guessing game they played is useless. The Return
The prisoner returns to the cave, to inform the other prisoners of his findings. They do not believe him and threaten to kill him if he tries to set them free.
The Cave
In Plato’s theory, the cave represents people who believe that knowledge comes from what we see and hear in the world – empirical evidence. The cave shows that believers of empirical knowledge are trapped in a ‘cave’ of misunderstanding.
Shadows:. If you believe that what you see should be taken as truth, then you are merely seeing a shadow of the truth
The game: Plato is demonstrating that this master does not actually know any truth, and suggesting that it is ridiculous to admire someone like this.
The escape: The escaped prisoner represents the Philosopher, who seeks knowledge outside of the cave and outside of the senses.
The Return
The other prisoners reaction to the escapee returning represents that people are scared of knowing philosophical truths and do not trust philosophers. |
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Cartesian Descartes method of doubt |
who sought to doubt the truth of all his beliefs in order to determine which beliefs he could be certain were true. |
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Descartes dream argument |
The dream argument is the postulation that the act of dreaming provides preliminary evidence that the senses we trust to distinguish reality from illusion should not be fully trusted, and therefore any state that is dependent on our senses should at the very least be carefully examined and rigorously tested to ...
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Descartes evil demon argument |
In order to know that something is the case, you first have to rule out all the alternatives.
The Evil Demon Argument •I can’t rule out the possibility that I’m being deceived by an evil demon. •If (1), then I can’t know anything about the external world. •[So] I can’t know anything about the external world. |
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Berkeley argument for idealism |
What Berkeley contends is that minds (including God’s) and ideas are all that exist — matter doesn’t exist, the external world consists of ideas not matter. He is opposing the Lockean view that the external world consists of matter and we know about it through the senses which represent it to us as ideas of sensation (representative realism).
In support of his views he has several arguments. They are not formally presented with premises and conclusions. Two of them can be stated as follows.
1. Basic argument
P1. We perceive ordinary objects P2. We perceive only ideas Concl. Ordinary objects are ideas |
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Hume on causality |
So from examining the first object, we can’t infer the thought that it causes ‘what happens next’. The idea of causation is the idea of a relation between the two objects or events. We must use experience to find the causal relations between events. But what kind of experience will give us this knowledge? If we witness just one instance of an event being followed by another – a ball striking a second, the second ball moving off – we can’t, from this single experience, infer that the first event caused the second. We have seen that the second follows the first; but to say that it is an effect of the first is to claim much more. The second event follows many events, e.g. your eye blinking as you look at the two balls, someone sneezing outside the room. Perhaps either of these is what caused the second ball to move... How do you know? You have only had experience of this one occasion. |
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Naive realism |
Naïve realism, also known as direct realism or common sense realism, is a philosophy of mind rooted in a theory of perception that claims that the senses provide us with direct awareness of the external world. |
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Indeterminism |
Some events, including human actions, are not necessarily determined by previous events in accordance with universal human laws. |
