Chapter 2 Flashcards
What is theory of mind?
Our ability to think about what others are thinking. Always a necessary trait for survival since humans live in societies, having to avoid bad actors etc…
What is the Neolithic revolution?
- The birth of agriculture, cities. Food surpluses led to specialization
Historians assumed when humans domesticated plants and animals for agriculture it required us to stay put to tend livestock/fields, storage, and security. This led us to build temples, social stratification, and society.
Recent discovery of Gobleki Tepe has made some archaeologists think we have it backwards. It predates agriculture and shows a system of social stratification and evidence of society. Thus, perhaps social and religious gatherings came first and contributed to agriculture.
How did early humans explain natural events?
Animism: looking at all of nature as if it were alive.
Anthropomorphism: projecting human attributes onto nature.
ex. rain was alive and you could please or calm it with magic: ritual or offering
How did thinking about the world change during the ancient Greek era?
logos replace mythos. Logical explanations replaced mythical ones.
The first philosophers (“cosmologists”) finally assumed that the universe operated in an orderly, systematic way that could be figured out! THE ASSUMPTION OF ORDERLINESS, a big deal. vs. whims of the gods.
Describe Plato’s theory of forms
Everything in existence is a manifestation of a pure “form” of that object. We only experience those manifestations through our senses, whereby the form is interacting with matter.
Describe Plato’s theory of the divided line.
What is the core idea behind it?
The senses are limited when it comes to knowledge of true reality. Understanding of forms comes from the reasoning ability of the mind.
- Imagining: lowest form of understanding. Reflections on water
- Confronting the objects themselves
- Mathematics: explains relationships, but the relationships could be false!
- Contemplating the form itself. Highest form of knowledge and the only TRUE form of knowledge.
- Contemplating the “form of the good”. Highest form of knowledge because the form of the good encompasses all and shows their relatedness.
Describe Plato’s allegory of the cave
What is the role of reason/rationality in this allegory?
People are chained in a cave with a light behind them that displays shadows of moving objects. They can’t turn to see whats going on behind them, and see the reflections as reality. They get really involved with them.
They are like us in that we see the world of forms but it takes effort to free oneself and explore the deeper reality and truths of the world behind us. Reason frees us to explore the world beyond, though the light is blinding.
Who’s responsible for the reminiscence theory of knowledge?
What is it?
Plato.
- All knowledge is innate and can be only be attained through introspection. (NATIVIST/RATIONALIST: knowledge is inborn and mental operations are the path to knowledge
- the soul once inhabited the world of forms and is contaminated by sensory experience
- Thus, the only path to knowledge is to dismiss sensory experience and focus on the contents of the mind.
What did Plato say about the nature of the soul?
What is the optimal way it should behave according to Plato?
What novel did he write to communicate this?
The soul has 3 components: (ARE)
- Emotional
- ex. fear, love, rage. - Appetitive
- Bodies needs and desires - Rational
- Duty of the rational part to delay gratification from the bodies’ needs and emotional desires, in favor of longer term projects that benefit us. Not impulsive.
- The supreme goal is to free the soul from the impulsivity of the flesh in favor of rationality.
Plato’s republic: Depicted a utopian society with a social hierarchy based on which aspect of the soul dominated people. Appetitive would be workers and slaves, courage = soldiers, and reason would be philosopher kings.
According to Plato, what is the nature of sleep and dreams?
Base appetites and impulses overpower our rational side. Like Freud.
What was Plato’s influence on science?
- Roots of cognitive psych
- expanded pythagorean commitment to math and logic
- dualism that divided body and mind
In what order came the 3 great greek philosophers?
SPA. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle
Describe Aristotle’s epistemology in terms of his differences with Plato.
Aristotle felt that…
Which philosophers influence both of them
Aristotle’s epistemology was more grounded in reality vs. abstract. Aristotle married empiricism and rationalism.
- Believed that knowledge gained through the senses, investigating objects, you COULD come to know the true form.
- For Aristotle, nature and knowledge are inseparable. For Plato, knowledge exists independently of nature.
- Aristotle didn’t agree with Plato’s emphasis on math. Preferred examination/classification of nature. (empirical view). BUT MARRIED WITH RATIONALISM BECAUSE one did not acquiesce to emotion or appetite, rather it takes rationalism and the mind to ruminate on those observations
Plato- Pythagoran emphasis on math
Aristotle- Hippocratic tradition
Aristotle said that to know something you had to know what?
Causation, you had to know the 4 aspects of it:
1) Material cause: the matter a thing is made of. ex. Statue of marble
2) Efficient cause: Force that transforms the material into the thing. ex. sculptor
3) Formal cause: form/pattern of the thing. ex. marble shaped in aphrodite
4) Final cause: The thing’s purpose. ex. to give pleasure to worshippers of Aphrodite.
What is teleology?
Which ancient Greek philosopher was into this and how does he apply this concept to humans?
Teleology: Seeing things in terms of their purpose and function, not how they were made.
Aristotle believed in entelechy: the idea that nature is a process whereby things progress from potentialities to actualities. Everything is trying to reach their final function, like an acorn to an oak tree.
According to Aristotle man’s entelechy or potentiality is to exercise rationality- that is our highest capability and purpose.
Who is responsible for the “scala naturae” concept?
Explain the concept
Aristotle (hippocratic classification style)
Scala naturae:
- Nature is a hierarchy of “perfection” from neutral matter to the UNMOVED MOVER. Humans are right below unmoved mover.
Unmoved mover: Pure actuality that gives things their purpose or essence.
Was Artistotle a dualist or a monist?
Hard to pin down. He felt that soul to body was like “marble to its shape”.
Which philosopher had an “hierarchy of souls”?
Describe it
Aristotle. All living things have souls because that is what gives it life.
- 3 types of souls. Soul type determines a being’s purpose
1. Vegetative: Plant. growth and reproduction
2. Sensitive: Animals. Memory, pleasure/pain, respond to environment
3. Rational. Human. Thinking/rationality.
Items higher up the hierarchy possess qualities below. ie. rational beings have vegetative and sensitive qualities.
______ disagreed with past thinkers that objects gave off copies of themselves that we sensed.
_____ said that we couldn’t trust our senses to provide a fairly accurate version of the world.
_______ believed that objects created movement in a certain medium. Each of our senses is attuned to a different medium and this allows us to pick up the movement and perceive things.
Aristotle
Plato
Aristotle
Explain the Aristotilean process of how we gain knowledge
Gathering sensory info was only the first step. (Necessary but not sufficient)
- Sensory info. Objects cause movement in media or medium that our sense(s) are attuned to.
ex. see red, feel hot, smell smoke. - Common Sense: Combines sensory info into synthesized experience.
ex. oh, that’s a fire. - Passive reason: using synthesized experience to get along in everyday life.
ex. stay close enough to stay warm, not too close though. - Active reason: Learning abstract principles from synthesized experience.
ex. seeking the general laws of thermodynamics, understanding how heat works on a molecular level, etc…
SCPA
Note: Active reason is man’s highest potential and true purpose. It provides us the greatest pleasure.
According to Aristotle what is the entelechy of man?
To exert active reason, the highest way of knowing and our highest potential/purpose. This is what provides us the greatest pleasure as well.
For Aristotle, memory was the result of _______. This contrasts with Platos view how?
Explain how Aristotle viewed the process of learning and memory
- Sense perception. Contrasts with Plato because he thought memory was nativistic and came from within.
Distinguished between remembering and recall:
Remembering is spontaneous recollection of something you experienced.
Recall is active mental search for a past experience
Define Associationism? Who invented it?
How influential is this idea?
Associationism: - formation of new ideas, formation of complex ideas from simple ones, and memory: can be explained by one or more laws of association. FCCS frequency contiguity contrast similarity
Aristotle
Was the basis of learning theory for more than 2,000 years. The heart of modern learning theories.
Describe the paradigm shift in human thinking leading to Socrates? (Pre-socratic)
Explanations of events shift from mythos(supernatural) to logos (natural explanations). This begins philosophy.
Early greek thinkers started to assume an ordered universe according to cause and effect, opening up explanation and exploration.
