Chapter 2

Question 1

What is theory of mind?

Answer 1

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…

Question 2

What is the Neolithic revolution?

Answer 2

• 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.

Question 3

How did early humans explain natural events?

Answer 3

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

Question 4

How did thinking about the world change during the ancient Greek era?

Answer 4

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.

Question 5

Describe Plato’s theory of forms

Answer 5

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.

Question 6

Describe Plato’s theory of the divided line.

What is the core idea behind it?

Answer 6

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.

Question 7

Describe Plato’s allegory of the cave

What is the role of reason/rationality in this allegory?

Answer 7

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.

Question 8

Who’s responsible for the reminiscence theory of knowledge?

What is it?

Answer 8

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.

Question 9

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?

Answer 9

The soul has 3 components: (ARE)

1. Emotional
   - ex. fear, love, rage.
2. Appetitive
   - Bodies needs and desires
3. 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.

Question 10

According to Plato, what is the nature of sleep and dreams?

Answer 10

Base appetites and impulses overpower our rational side. Like Freud.

Question 11

What was Plato’s influence on science?

Answer 11

• Roots of cognitive psych
• expanded pythagorean commitment to math and logic
• dualism that divided body and mind

Question 12

In what order came the 3 great greek philosophers?

Answer 12

SPA. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle

Question 13

Describe Aristotle’s epistemology in terms of his differences with Plato.

Aristotle felt that…

Which philosophers influence both of them

Answer 13

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

Question 14

Aristotle said that to know something you had to know what?

Answer 14

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.

Question 15

What is teleology?

Which ancient Greek philosopher was into this and how does he apply this concept to humans?

Answer 15

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.

Question 16

Who is responsible for the “scala naturae” concept?

Explain the concept

Answer 16

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.

Question 17

Was Artistotle a dualist or a monist?

Answer 17

Hard to pin down. He felt that soul to body was like “marble to its shape”.

Question 18

Which philosopher had an “hierarchy of souls”?

Describe it

Answer 18

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.

Question 19

______ 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.

Answer 19

Aristotle
Plato
Aristotle

Question 20

Explain the Aristotilean process of how we gain knowledge

Answer 20

Gathering sensory info was only the first step. (Necessary but not sufficient)

1. Sensory info. Objects cause movement in media or medium that our sense(s) are attuned to.
   ex. see red, feel hot, smell smoke.
2. Common Sense: Combines sensory info into synthesized experience.
   ex. oh, that’s a fire.
3. Passive reason: using synthesized experience to get along in everyday life.
   ex. stay close enough to stay warm, not too close though.
4. 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.

Question 21

According to Aristotle what is the entelechy of man?

Answer 21

To exert active reason, the highest way of knowing and our highest potential/purpose. This is what provides us the greatest pleasure as well.

Question 22

For Aristotle, memory was the result of _______. This contrasts with Platos view how?

Explain how Aristotle viewed the process of learning and memory

Answer 22

• 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

Question 23

Define Associationism? Who invented it?

How influential is this idea?

Answer 23

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.

Question 24

Describe the paradigm shift in human thinking leading to Socrates? (Pre-socratic)

Answer 24

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.

Question 25

NOT TESTED
How did Pythagoras view the universe, humans, and our ability to know it?

Who did this concept influence?

Answer 25

Pythagoras proposed (among the first) a dualistic universe and a dualistic humanity.

Humans: Reason and abstract understanding vs. the senses

Universe: Abstract and permanent vs. empirical

Thus, reason and abstract understanding are the true ways of knowing.

• The senses are a distraction to knowledge of the “perfect”, which was gained through math and rejection of the senses.
• This influence Plato and the Christians.
• Pythagoras one of the first clear mind-body dualists

Question 26

NOT TESTED
Briefly explain the role of the sophists and Socrates

What method did Socrates use to gain knowledge?

Answer 26

Sophists: professors of rhetoric and logic.
- relativists. No absolute truth.

Socrates

• rejected Sophists’ relativism.
• inductive definition: method he used for knowledge. Examine instances of concepts and look for similarities. Ex. a flower, a sunset, a woman. All beautiful. What makes them similar? The aim was to use instances to know the essence, the larger concept.

Socrates taught Plato, who then taught Aristotle

Question 27

Which early Greek thinkers championed Hippocrates and Pythagoras, respectively?

Explain the difference this means in terms of their epistemology

Answer 27

Plato was of the Pythagorean tradition, emphasizing math as a way of knowledge (rationalist)

Aristotle was of the Hippocratic tradition, emphasizing classification and study of nature as a path to knowledge (empiricist married with rationalism)