Chapter 1 - Ideas from antiquity Flashcards
psyche
something that is present in a living being and absent in a dead being. Once translated from Greek to English, psyche means soul
sophists
specialized in teaching the skills of rhetoric and public speaking, which enables students to express their political and social views in public
who was Plato’s teacher?
Socrates
Socrates
wanted his students to understand what is true and enduring, and he did this by having his students conduct dialogues. these dialogues encouraged his students to discover their own innate capacities for finding the truth
Socratic dialogues
what Plato was able to bring together from Socrates’ ideas
- formed the basis for mental philosophy: a combination of nativism and rationalism
nativism
emphasises innate qualities as the main source of human knowledge
Socrates believed that by repeatedly asking people questions, they would develop an understanding of what the answers should be
rationalism
the idea that knowledge is not obtained through experience but rather by rationalising one’s own innate ideas about the world
deduction
a way of acquiring knowledge (from general to specific)
the Academy
founded by Plato, a collective of scholars who pursued their intellectual goals. the subjects in the Academy included philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy
apparitions
refer to a person’s conscious experience of something
ideal forms
perfect, unchanging concepts or blueprints that represent the true essence of things
- everything we see in the real world is considered an imperfect reflection or manifestation of these ideal forms
idealism
the notion that behind every-day sensory experiences lies something more fundamental and idealistic
the allegory of the cave
illustrates the distinction between appearances and ideal forms
model of the psyche
consisting of appetite, duty/courage, and reason
- appetite is a direct reflection of immediate physical gratification
- courage involves the ability to resit threats
Aristotle
was one of the best students at Plato’s Academy. Aristotle was less interested in Plato’s nativist ideas and more interested in extracting knowledge from the world by using observation
empiricism
the idea that knowledge comes from the environment and must be processed through sensory experience
induction
one arrives at a general conclusion based on empirical investigation
the Lyceum
Aristotle’s own school
hierarchical arrangement of psyche in organisms
hierarchical ranking dependent on the complexity of the organism
vegetative souls
the organisms lowest in the hierarchy, possessed only by the ability to feed and reproduce
sensitive souls
organisms that have the ability of sensation, memory, imagination, and locomotion
rational souls
highest function of the psyche that only humans possessed, they had the ability to reason
innate set of categories (Aristotle)
substance, quantity, quality, place, time, relation, and activity
Alhazen
contributed to our understanding of perception and also demonstrated that knowledge comes from the outside in
camera obscura
light from objects enters the eyes, allowing you to see, Alhazen supported this with his experiment, camera obscura
Avicenna
distinguished between external senses and internal senses. knowledge for him came from the outside as much as the inside
floating man thought experiment
With his senses taped off and his limbs bound, does the man floating in space have consciousness of himself? Avicenna said yes, concluding that the mind exists independently of the body. this conclusion went more in line with the view of Plato
