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14 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
William of Ockham |
Ockham's Razor: Do not posit entities unnecessarily. (In other words, the simplest explanation for something is usually the best -- so "cut away" all the unnecessary stuff.) |
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Sir Francis Bacon |
"Knowledge is power." This British empiricist was interested not in knowledge for its own sake, but for the prediction and control of nature. This was a major shift in thought, which led 1. to scientific discovery and 2. away from Aristotle's formal and final causes. |
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Thomas Hobbes |
"The life of man...solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." That was the view of this British materialist of man's state of nature -- without the civilizing force of government. If that government happened to be a Leviathan -- the title of his greatest work -- so be it. Nothing, he thought, is worse than anarchy. |
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John Locke |
"Something...I know not what." That was Locke's view of what a thing really is, beneath its primary and secondary characteristics. This British empiricist also believed men are born with a "blank slate" and the capacity for reason -- so education for all is a good thing. His ideas helped found America's liberal democracy. |
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George Berkeley |
"To be is to be perceived." This British (actually Irish) clergyman and empiricist agreed with John Locke, that we can't know what objects really are. He added that we can't even know if they exist! All we know is what we perceive. And God perceives everything -- which maintains existence. |
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Rene Descartes |
"I think, therefore I am." This French rationalist conducted a famous thought experiment -- "Descartes' demon" -- to test what he could know for certain. God got him out of his "pit of despair" -- but Cartesian dualism resulted from his conclusion that the mind and body must be separate. |
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Baruch "Benedict" Spinoza |
"God is the indwelling, and not the transient cause of all things." This Dutch rationalist tried to solve the problem of how minds and bodies can communicate by proposing a monistic theory -- that everything is a single substance: God. This is also known as pantheism. |
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Gottfried Leibniz |
"These monads are the true atoms of nature, and, in a word, the elements of things." This German rationalist tried to solve the problem of how minds and bodies can communicate by proposing a monistic theory -- that everything is a single substance: monads. Like atoms, these monads each carry the entire history of the universe (and are constantly updated)! |
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David Hume |
"Custom is the great guide of human life." This Scottish empiricist and skeptic posed the problem of induction: that we can't prove cause and effect; we can only assume it. This assumption becomes custom, which we follow because it would be impossible to live otherwise. |
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Voltaire |
Tolerance is "the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon...each other's folly - that is the first law of nature." This French skeptic and author -- real name François-Marie Arouet -- believed we could know little for certain, and thus should be tolerant of other views. His views helped influence the French Revolution. |
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Adam Smith |
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." This Scottish economist pioneered the idea of specialization, and believed that man's self-interest drives the economy -- expressed by an "invisible hand" that helps regulate economic markets. |
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau |
"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." This Swiss-born author is the father of Romanticism and the French Revolution. He thought man in his state of nature was perfect -- that civilization corrupts. His idea of the general will (of the people) pioneered a technique used by totalitarian governments ever since. |
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Immanuel Kant |
"All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason." This Prussian academic combined empiricism and rationalism through his idea of the phenomenal world and the noumenal world. His Categorical Imperative tried to explain how morals find their way from the noumenal to the phenomenal world. |
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Niccolo Machiavelli |
"It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both." This Italian diplomat wrote one of the most influential political works ever, The Prince, advising leaders how to get and keep power. Everyone from titans of industry to hip hop moguls has taken this Machiavellian advice. But was it serious, or satire? |
