AI Flashcards
What is the main idea of Plato’s rationalism?
Reason as a source of knowledge
What does the allegory of the cave symbolize?
- People being prisoners and seeing only shadows
- The struggle to enlighten others to pursue higher truth
What is the main idea of Aristotle’s empiricism?
Sense as a source of knowledge
What are the aspects of the Scientific Revolution?
- Rejection of authority
- Acceptance of observation over faulty reasoning
- Use of induction and experimentation
- Rediscovery of mathematics as a tool
What were Isaac Newton’s major contributions to science?
- 3 laws of motion
- Law of gravity
- Law of mechanics
What did Francis Bacon criticize in his philosophy?
Dogmas and philosophy authority of the pasts
What concept did Bacon introduce to defend empiricism?
Total reconstruction of science on solid foundation
What are the two ways of doing science according to Bacon?
- Deductive Way: From the most general axioms to the less general axioms and to theorems
- Inductive Way: Generalizing from sensory perceptions ultimately to the most general axioms
What are the four idols according to Bacon?
- Idols of the Tribe: False ideas of our mind, influenced by our human nature
- Idols of the Cave: False ideas resulting from our education and personal biases
- Idols of the Market: False ideas caused by the language we use, such as words with multiple meanings
- Idols of the Theatre: False ideas from accepting dogmas and philosophical views without critical thinking
What is the main idea of skepticism?
Reality is not perceived directly, but through the representations of our mind. Everything could be an illusion.
What was Descartes’ response to skepticism?
Reason as the source of knowledge, doubting everything to find certainty
What is Descartes’ famous quote?
Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am)
What concept did John Locke introduce?
Rejecting inborn ideas and claiming that knowledge comes from experience
What are the two types of qualities according to Locke?
- Primary qualities: Objective qualities (e.g., temperature)
- Secondary qualities: How we experience the primary qualities subjectively (e.g., feeling hot or cold)
According to George Berkeley, what is the role of perception in the existence of things?
Things exist through our perception
Without secondary qualities and perception, things do not exist
Who sustains the universe, according to George Berkeley?
God
God is the one who observes things and makes them exist when we are not perceiving them
What concept did David Hume criticize in relation to science?
Causality
State one critique that David Hume had about causality
- Billiard balls problem
- Contiguity, priority, and Constant Conjunction
- We cannot be sure that what we have seen in the past will happen again the same way
- Causality is just a conjecture
- We draw conclusions through imagination
According to David Hume, what is the best guess we have in science?
Informed guess
What is the Copy Principle proposed by David Hume?
All our ideas are nothing but copies of our impressions
This is the first principle in the science of human nature
What concept did Immanuel Kant shift the understanding of reality from?
Outer world to the mind and its cognitive structure
According to Kant, knowledge is not in the world but in how our mind organizes the information
What are the categories that Kant proposes for organizing the world?
- Causality
- Synthetic a priori
- Synthetic a posteriori
These are some of the cognitive structures (categories) that Kant proposes
What is hermeneutics?
The art of interpretation
In the context of human sciences, hermeneutics focuses on understanding in terms of reasons, rather than explaining in terms of natural causes
What is the Verstehen method in social sciences?
All human actions are part of a historical process and can be understood by imagining their specific point of view.
The Verstehen method involves determining the mental state expressed in a meaningful action and considering the concept of ‘Erleben’ as the sum of all the perspectives of personal experience in a precise moment.
What is the hermeneutic circle?
To understand a meaningful expression, one needs to understand the context, but understanding the context is achieved through its meaningful expressions.
What is the critique of the Verstehen method?
Putting oneself in someone’s shoes is ultimately a subjective practice, leading to the threat of relativism and subjectivism.
This would result in an absence of scientific objectivity, which is essential for science.
How does Hempel define Verstehen in positivism?
Hempel defines Verstehen as merely a heuristic, a practical mental shortcut.
Positivism emphasizes the need for laws and conditions to deduce explanations in science.
What are the two features of the scientific world-conception described by the Circle of Vienna?
- Empiricism: a focus on knowledge from experience, setting the limits of what is considered legitimate science.
- Logical analysis: applying a certain method to empirical material in pursuit of unified science.
What does the Circle of Vienna reject in contrast to Kant?
The synthetic a priori statements that provide knowledge, such as ‘The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.’
What does Wittgenstein suggest in understanding science?
To understand science, one must first understand language and sentences.
How does Wittgenstein classify formal statements in philosophy?
Formal statements are logical/rational statements that are independent of the empirical world.
They refer to a priori sources of knowledge.
How does Wittgenstein classify factual statements in philosophy?
Factual statements expand our knowledge by referring to a posteriori sources of knowledge and being tested through empirical testing.
What does Wittgenstein consider as non-scientific statements?
Fictional statements that cannot be verified and are cognitively meaningless.
An example is the statement ‘God exists’.
What is the verification principle?
A cognitive meaningful statement must be verifiable by empirical facts.
Scientific hypotheses, particularly those stating ‘all a’s are b’s’, are considered scientific only if they can be verified by empirical facts.
What is the rule of Bayes used for?
The rule of Bayes is used to update probabilities of truthfulness based on new information, starting from subjective probability.
While it is good for making informed guesses, it does not provide certainty and is not considered logical positivism.
