Chapter 2

Question 1

Active reason

Answer 1

according to Aristotle, the faculty of the soul that searches for the essences or abstract concepts that manifest themselves in the empirical world. Aristotle thought that the active reason part of the soul was immortal

Question 2

alcmaeon (fl. ca. 500 B. C.)

Answer 2

One of the first Greek physicians to move away from the magic and superstition of temple medicine and toward a naturalistic understanding and treatment of illness

Question 3

Allegory of the cave

Answer 3

Plato’s description of individuals who live their lives in accordance with the shadows of reality provided by sensory experience

Question 4

Analogy of the divided line

Answer 4

Plato’s illustration of his contention that there is a hierarchy of understanding. The lowest type of understanding is based on images of empirical objects. Next highest is an understanding of empirical objects themselves, which results only in opinion. Next is an understanding of abstract mathematical principles. Then comes an understanding of the forms. The highest understanding (true knowledge) is an understanding of the form of the good that includes a knowledge of all forms and their organization.

Question 5

Anaxagoras (ca. 500-428 B. C.)

Answer 5

Postulated an infinite number of elements (seeds) from which everything is made. He believed that everything contains all the elements and that a thing’s identity is determined by which elements predominate. An exception is the mind, which contains no other element but may combine with other elements, thereby creating life.

Question 6

Anaximander (ca. 610-547 B.C.)

Answer 6

Suggested the infinite of boundless as the physis and formulated a rudimentary theory of evolution

Question 7

Animism

Answer 7

The belief that everything in nature is alive

Question 8

Anthropomorphism

Answer 8

The projection of human attributes onto nonhuman things

Question 9

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

Answer 9

Believed sensory experience to be the basis of all knowledge, although the five senses and the common sense provided only the information from which knowledge could be derived. Aristotle also believed that everything in nature had within it an entelechy (purpose) that determined its potential. Active reason, which was considered the immortal part of the human soul, provided humans with their greatest potential, and therefore fully actualized humans engage in active reason. Because everything was thought to have a cause, Aristotle postulated an unmoved mover that caused everything in the world but was not itself caused.

Question 10

Associationism

Answer 10

The philosophical belief that mental phenomena, such as learning, remembering, and imagining, can be exxplained in terms of the laws of association

Question 11

Becoming

Answer 11

According to Heraclitus, the state of everything in the universe. Nothing is static and unchanging; rather, everything in the universe is dynamic – that is, becoming something other than what it was

Question 12

Being

Answer 12

Something that is unchanging and thus, in principle, is capable of being known with certainty. Being implies stability and certainty; becoming implies instability and uncertainty.

Question 13

Common sense

Answer 13

According to Aristotle, the faculty lovated in the heart that synthesizes the information provided by the five senses.

Question 14

Cosmology

Answer 14

The study of the origin, structure, and processes governing the universe.

Question 15

Democritus (ca. 460-379 B.C.)

Answer 15

Offered atoms as the physis. Everything in nature, including humans, was explained in terms of atoms and their activities. His was the first completely materialistic view of the world and of humans.

Question 16

Dionysiac-Orphic religion

Answer 16

religion whose major belief was that the soul becomes a prisoner of the body because of some transgression committed by the soul. The soul continues on a circle of transmigrations until it has been purged of sin, at which time it can escape its earthly existence and return to its pure, divine existence among the Gods. A number of magical practices were thought useful in releasing the soul from its bodily tomb.

Question 17

Dreaming

Answer 17

For Plato, the manifestation of numerous irrational impulses that, while awake, would rather be under rational control. For Aristotle, the experience of images retained from waking experience. Dreams are often bizarre because the images experienced during sleep are neither organized by our rational powers nor supported by ongoing sensory experience. That dreams sometimes correspond to future events was, for Aristotle, mere coincidence. However, because bodily processes are exaggerated in dreams, physicians can sometimes use dreams to detect the early signs of disease.

Question 18

Efficient cause

Answer 18

According to Aristotle, the force that transforms a thing

Question 19

Eidola (plural, eidolon)

Answer 19

A tiny replication that some early greek philosophers thought emanated from the surfaces of things in the environment, allowing the things to be perceived.

Question 20

Elementism

Answer 20

The belief that complex processes can be understood by studying the elements of which they consist

Question 21

Empedocles (ca. 490-430 B.C.)

Answer 21

Postulated earth, fire, air, and water as the four basic elements from which everything is made and two forces, love and strife, that alternately synthesize and separate those elements. He was also the first philosopher to suggest a theory of perception, and he offered a theory of evolution that emphasized a rudimentary form of natural selection.

Question 22

Entelechy

Answer 22

According to Aristotle, the purpose for which a thing exists, which remains a potential until actualized. Active reason, for example, is the human entelechy, but it exists only as a potential in many humans.

Question 23

Essence

Answer 23

That indispensable characteristic of a thing that gives it its unique identity

Question 24

Final cause

Answer 24

According to Aristotle, the purpose for which a thing exists

Question 25

Formal cause

Answer 25

According to Aristotle, the form of a thing

Question 26

Forms

Answer 26

according to Plato, the pure, abstract realities that are unchanging and timeless and therefore knowable. Such forms create imperfect manifestations of themselves when they interact with matter. It is these imperfect manifestations of the forms that are the objects of our sense impressions