April Flashcards
Descartes dates
1596-1650
Spinoza bondage
The idea that for most of us, our happiness depends on things outside our control.
Leibniz adder divider multiplier and subtractor
Stepped Reckoner
Monads
Leibniz Indivisible Do not exist in space Not extended Cannot be changed (no way into them) Cannot have effects (the monads have no windows through which anything may come in or go out) All different properties May undergo internal change Mirror the whole universe
Leibniz’ law
Identity of indiscernibles
‘it is never true that two substances are entirely alike’.
Voltaire parody of Leibniz in Candide
Pangloss
Glorious Revolution
1688
William of Orange, with wife Mary, overthrows Catholic James II.
Help from both Torys and Whigs in parliament.
Locke degrees of knowledge
Intuition
Demonstrative knowledge
Faith/opinion
> Also knowledge of substances when directly perceived (a kind of abduction?)
Locke degrees of knowledge
Intuition
Demonstrative knowledge
Faith/opinion
> Also knowledge of substances when directly perceived (a kind of abduction?)
Locke Dates
1632-1704
Berkeley dates
1685-1753
Hume dates
1711-1776
Hobbes escape from state of nature
All humans fear death
Deduce three laws
1 must desire peace
2 must accept restrictions on liberty (only having as much as we are willing for others to have against us)
3 must keep our covenants (especially our social contract to give up power)
Hobbes “without the sword…”
Without the sword there are but words
Rousseau alternative to state of nature
“noble savages” solitary and interested in securing our own interests
Rousseau the general will
He argues that once people live in social groups, in fixed relations with other people, they are no longer absolutely free to pursue their own selfish interests. The only way they can retain a modified sort of freedom is by agreeing to a social contract, which establishes that every individual member of the group forms part of that group’s sovereign body. Freedom then consists in acting in accordance with the ‘general will’ of the group.
Locke: failure of the ruler to act in the interests of the people creates…
Right of rebellion
Mary Wollstonecraft main work
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman 1792
Right to education to enable the individual to attain such habits of virtue as will render it independent
Epistemological idealism
The most acceptable view of the world is true only for us, and truth for us is the only kind of truth it is sensible to seek.
Johann Fichte metaphysics
Radical idealism - the external world is a creation of the mind.
Absolute idealism
That the world is playing our according to the working of a grand mind or spirit.
Hegel
Hegel main work
The Phenomenology of Spirit
Hegel Master and Slave
In order to achieve self-certainty an individual must experience an object which at the same time is negated. A mind is the only thing that can self-negate. This leads to a dynamic whereby individuals attempt to enslave eachother in order to achieve self-certainty. Each asserting their own reality while denying that of others.
Philosopher who invented the trolley problem
Phillippa Foot
Being-for-itself
Sartre. Self consciousness. Essence is nothingness. Awareness that it is not the object of its awareness.
Nietzsche dates
1844-1900
Blaise Pascale (1623-62), “Humanity is great…”
Humanity is great because it knows itself to be wretched
Utopia for Realists author
Rutger Bregman
Charity that distributes money to international poor
GiveDirectly
Those who cannot remember…
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana 1863 1952
Rutger Bregman two types of poor main point
Deserving and Undeserving poor
Capitalist or communist, it all boils down to a pointless distinction between two types of poor, and to a major misconception that we almost managed to dispel some forty years ago –the fallacy that a life without poverty is a privilege you have to work for, rather than a right we all deserve.
As wealth grows, we choose between what two things?
Increased consumerism
Increased leisure
The first machine age
Late 1700s
Automated loom
“On mechanical slavery…
“On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends
Oscar Wilde
Euthyphro main points
Divine command theory suffers dilemma
Acts precede states e.g Carrying and being carried.
Piety and doing business with the Gods
Rutger Bregman Utopia for Realists main points
Basic Income (and housing first) is affordable and effective
There is no distinction between the deserving poor and the undeserving poor.
GDP does not measure progress (e.g.tech prices)
Opening borders is the most effective way to eradicate poverty and inequality ($67bn estimated value)
Plato Apology main points
Socrates is wise but knows little, but knows it.
Unexamined life is not worth living
Death not to be feared. Sleep is pleasant. Afterlife will be pleasant.
One who hoards books
Bibliotaph
Bibliotaph
One who hoards books
The Cartesian wound
Consciousness (Terrence Deacon, 2011)“the Cartesian wound that severed mind from body at the birth of modern science”
Critic of Darwin strange inversion of reasoning
Robert Mackenzie Beverley 1868
In the theory with which we have to deal, Absolute Ignorance is the artificer; so that we may enunciate as the fundamental principle of the whole system, that, IN ORDER TO MAKE A PERFECT AND BEAUTIFUL MACHINE, IT IS NOT REQUISITE TO KNOW HOW TO MAKE IT. This proposition will be found, on careful examination, to express, in condensed form, the essential purport of the Theory, and to express in a few words all Mr. Darwin’s meaning; who, by a strange inversion of reasoning, seems to think Absolute Ignorance fully qualified to take the place of Absolute Wisdom in all the achievements of creative skill. (Beverley 1868)
Timothy Williamson main idea
Knowledge first epistemology. Knowledge is a basic factive state. Read more.
May Sinclair dates
1863-1946 (83)
May Sinclair main ideas
Idealist panentheist (theist idealist) Presentist - time constantly moving forward.
Free floating rationales
Reasons derived from taking the design stance towards biological phenomena.
Types of memory
Procedural Declarative Episodic Semantic Implicit Explicit
Terrence Deacon 2012 main idea
Mental computers must be made of living tissue that can self repair, power themselves by harvesting energy, and self organise
Cladograms
Phylogenetic trees e.g. tree of life
Tree of life type of diagram
Cladogram
Phylogenetic tree
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity
Hanlon’s Razor
Hanlon’s razor
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity
Vocabulary of children at age 6
About 15,000 words.
7 words a day
About 200 at age 2. Speeds up then tapers off.
