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39 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What is the main criticism of the argument from design? |
Darwin's theory of evolution |
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Who said, " The heart has its reasons, which the reason does not understand." |
Blaze Pascal |
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Was pascals "wager" conclusive proof? |
No |
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Who said belief in god costs very little? |
Blaze Pascal |
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who is the father of modern philosophy? |
Rene Descartes, known for metaphysics |
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What was Rene Descartes 2 most famous works? |
1. Meditations - mind has two powers a). Intuition - things you simply see b). Deduction - things known from known facts 2. Discourage method - 4 rules a). Demand Certainty (most important)
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What is the evil demon argument? |
reason/rational power one thing we know is that "I" exist. Ogita ergo some - "i think therefore I am" |
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What is Cartesian Dualism? |
there are 2 kinds of substance 1. Mind - thinking but not extended 2. Body - extended but unthinking |
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What is the mind/body problem? |
how does mind and body interact if both are separate things?
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What is the Cartesian circle? |
decarte using reason to show that reason works. "seems so obviously true that i have to believe it." (all clear and distinct ideas are guaranteed to be true.) |
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How do humans make mistakes? |
we break rule one, (demand certainty). |
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Who has a similar style of reasoning, emphasizing reason and de-emphasizing the senses (as Decarte)? |
Leibniz |
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What are Leibniz and Decarte recognized as? |
Rationalists. |
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What does being a rationalist mean? |
Monism - there is one kind of substance 1. Monads - not physical, force or energy, not extended. They aren't effected by anything outside of themselves. |
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What is the efficient cause? |
we have free will in a "special" sense.
Freedom = absence of external constraint or compulsion. |
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What is the problem of evil? |
If god exists, why is there evil? |
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What is Leibniz's answer to the problem of evil? |
This is the best of all possible worlds.
(there were multiple "scripts" for god to choose as the universe should go on as a path and he chose the best possible one.)
"Compossibility - must be compatible and possible." |
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What is the problem with leibniz's answer to the problem of evil? |
Personal responsibility.
If someone was to be scripted into a role of evil (hitler) then why should he go to hell if he was only following what god made him out to do. |
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Thomas Hobbes and John Locke are considered what? |
Empiricists |
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how do all ideas get into the mind? |
sense experience |
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What are the two kinds of sense experience according to locke and hobbes |
Sensation and reflection |
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what is primary? |
qualities that really are in the objective just as we precieve them to be |
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what is secondary? |
no counterpart in what the object is the power to cause certain perception in us
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with political philosophy, how are locke and hobbes described? |
they are social contract theorists. |
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what is hobbes state of nature? |
no gov/ social structure "war of all against all" "life would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" |
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what are the 4 natural rights according to Locke? |
life health liberty and possessions |
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what is the labor theory of private property? |
the right to private property arises when we do the work we have the moral right to the fruit of our labor |
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What is david hume considered? |
Empiricist |
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What are the two types of perceptions according to locke? |
impressions and ideas |
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what are the 3 ways to associate ideas |
resemblance, contiguity in time or place, cause and effect. |
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what are the 3 elements to our concept to cause and effect? |
priority in time - cause precedes the effect contiguity in space necessary connection |
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what are other things that "have to go" according to david hume? |
substance, god, self, external world |
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1.Summarize “Pascal’s Wager.” |
•Pascal suggested that we approach the issue of God’s existence from a gambler’s perspective: is it smarter to bet that God exists, or not? •According to Pascal, if we bet that God exists, we will gain an infinite amount if we’re right, or lose almost nothing if we’re wrong. •If we bet that God does not exist, we will gain almost nothing if we’re right, or lose an infinite amount if we’re wrong. •A belief in God is therefore the smarter bet – we have a chance at infinite gain, preclude the possibility of infinite loss, all at little or no cost to us. |
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Summarize Descartes’ “dream argument.” What is the point of the argument? |
•Sometimes we have dreams so vivid that we cannot distinguish them from reality. Can we be sure that we’re not dreaming right now? We wouldn’t know until we woke up. Can we be sure that our whole life isn’t one giant dream? •Descartes used this argument to show that it is possible to doubt all sense experience. [The senses can always be doubted; they never yield certainty.] |
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Summarize the “evil demon” argument and explain what role that argument plays in Descartes’ philosophy. |
•The “evil demon” argument asks us to suppose that God is evil. Descartes wondered whether a deceitful and malicious God could fool us in the most fundamental way: could our beliefs about simple math and logic actually be false? •Descartes used this argument to suggest that it is possible to doubt even reason itself – our rational faculties might be seriously flawed. [At least for now. Later in the Meditations he will try to show that the evil demon hypothesis is false, at which point he proclaims that all “clear and distinct” ideas are guaranteed to be true. Our rational faculties are back in action!] [Please note: Descartes doesn’t really doubt the truths of math and logic. But he thinks the argument shows that it’s possible to doubt them, and he’s looking for something that isimpossible to doubt, no matter what.] |
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Why (or how) does a batted baseball break a window, according to Leibniz? |
A batted baseball breaks a window because of the “preestablished harmony.” •Monads are like musicians in different rooms, each playing his or her own music without hearing the music of the others. The music was written by God such that together they form a beautiful harmony. •So each monad in the baseball and the window is playing its part, unaffected by the world around it. As such, the ball doesn’t really break the window. The window breaks because, according to God’s plan, it was time for it to fly apart at precisely that moment. |
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What is the difference between primary qualities and secondary qualities, according to Locke? |
Primary qualities are those that “really do exist in the bodies themselves,” just as we perceive them to be. For example, a basketball looks round and it really is round. •Secondary qualities produce ideas in our mind that have no exact counterpart in the object itself. The basketball looks brown, but it’s not. What is in the ball is something that causes us to perceive [have a sensation of] the color brown. [Recall that modern physics teaches that atoms have no color. Objects appear to have a certain color because their chemical structure is such that they reflect only a portion of the visible spectrum of light and absorb the rest.] |
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6.Name four ways in which Locke’s political philosophy influenced the founding of our own country. |
Inalienable natural rights. •The right to revolution.
•The separation of powers.
•Religious tolerance.
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Summarize Hume’s views on causation. |
•Hume argued that all knowledge comes from sense experience. [Any claim about the world that cannot be traced back to an impression (direct sense experience) is meaningless nonsense.] •Causality requires that there be a necessary connection between a cause and its effect. •Unfortunately, we can never have sense experience of a necessary connection. •So our belief in causation is not a rational belief. Rather, it’s a psychological habit. |
