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C82CHI > Consciousness invented > Flashcards

Consciousness invented Flashcards

1
Q

How do the views of Hobbes and Spinoza compare?

A

Hobbes was a materialist who believed in free will, Spinoza also a materialist, but determinist.

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2
Q

How do the views of Descartes, Leibniz and Locke compare?

A

Descartes was a rationalist who believed that knowledge can be acquired through logic alone, and Locke an empiricist (knowledge can be acquired through experience). Leibniz was somewhere in between.

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3
Q

When did Rene Descartes live?

A

1596-1650.

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4
Q

What was Rene Descartes famous as?

A

An original physicist, physiologist, mathematician (Cartesian coordinates) and philosopher.

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5
Q

What was Descartes’ best philosophical idea?

A

The method of hyperbolic doubt; though he may doubt, he cannot doubt that he exists (“je pense donc je suis”).

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6
Q

Outline Descartes’ method of hyperbolic doubt.

A

You have to begin by asking what can I know with certainty? What can one not be fooled about. The only thing you cannot doubt is that you can think and therefore the existence of your own mind/soul, although it may be incorporeal. Sceptical about perception.

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7
Q

What were Descartes’ beliefs regarding religion?

A

He rejected religious authority in the quest of scientific and philosophical knowledge, like the humanists, but he was a devout Catholic and believed in a good God.

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8
Q

What did Descartes react strongly against?

A

The Renaissance resurgence of ancient Greek scepticism in a relentless pursuit of certainty, as epistemological scepticism suggests that attempts to ‘know’ the world are doomed to failure

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9
Q

Outline Descartes’ mechanistic view.

A

Animals are just automatons - they have basic instructions and continue in that pattern.

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10
Q

How did Bacon and Descartes disagree on the development of knowledge?

A

Bacon suggested that induction (something happens and will therefore continue to happen) was an appropriate method for science, but Descartes insisted on a deductive approach.

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11
Q

For Descartes, what three abilities constitute human reason?

A
  • Intuition – the apprehension of the simple natures of a subject (based on experience)
  • Deduction – the process of inferring the necessary relationships between simple natures
  • Enumeration - a review process used when deductions become so extensive that errors are made due to a faulty memory.
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12
Q

Define extension.

A

The occupation of physical space - defining feature of an object according to Descartes.

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13
Q

According to Descartes, what is the essential or defining attribute of mental substance?

A

Thought.

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14
Q

Why did Descartes describe matter and mind as distinct?

A

Because they COULD exist separately - he had a clear and distinct idea of both.

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15
Q

What is duality?

A

The mind/body split - both material and mental substance existing together.

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16
Q

Why did Descartes believe that only humans have a dual spirit/body nature?

A

Because animals have no souls and are biological automata (mechanistic view) which behave according to their internal biological makeup.

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17
Q

What is Descartes’ (argued) ‘ghost in the machine’ idea?

A

The intimate, God-created, inseparable connection between body and mind whereby the mind controls the body.

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18
Q

What evidence did Descartes give for the premise of innate ideas?

A

We have no reason to believe that wax and melted wax are the same thing based only on its sensible properties. Thus, our senses alone cannot inform us of the continuity of the two states of the wax, so innate ideas must exist.

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19
Q

When did John Locke live?

A

1632-1704.

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20
Q

What was Locke’s most important contribution to understanding psychology and the mind?

A

The book ‘Essay concerning human understanding’ (1690).

21
Q

What did Locke’s ‘Essay concerning human understanding’ address?

A

Issues such as the nature of the self, the world, God, and the grounds for our knowledge of them (although the first 3 books out of 4 are just preliminary reasoning!).

22
Q

What does Book 1 of Locke’s ‘Essay concerning human understanding’ state?

A

That the premise of something being innate is a hypothesis and requires empirical support. Propositions do not appear to be innate, as they would be immediately perceived (there is no agreement on what they are) and children have to be taught them - they do not perceive them. Also other cultures have different values etc.

23
Q

What do dispositional accounts of innate ideas state?

A

That innate ideas may only be expressed in certain situations or conditions.

24
Q

What did Locke state about dispositional accounts of innate ideas?

A

That they lack an adequate criterion for distinguishing those innate propositions from those other ideas that the mind may come to know from experience.

25
Q

What is Book 2 of Locke’s ‘Essay concerning human understanding’ about?

A

Empiricism and the tabula rasa. States that the mind is a tabula rasa until experience (sensation and reflection) provides the basic materials out of which most of our more complex knowledge is constructed.

26
Q

According to Locke, what three different kinds of action does the mind engage in when putting simple ideas together?

A
  1. Combination – combining simple ideas into complex ideas (e.g. blue+car).
  2. Relating - bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them.
  3. Generalisation - the production of our general ideas by abstraction from particulars, leaving out the particular circumstances of time and place, which would limit the application of an idea to a particular individual.
    (Also faculties such as memory allow for the storing of ideas.)
27
Q

What is Book 2 of Locke’s ‘Essay concerning human understanding’ about?

A

What we can know.

28
Q

What is knowledge according to Locke?

A

The perception of the connection and agreement or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our ideas - this contrasts with Descartes’ claim that knowledge is certainty.

29
Q

What can we know with certainty according to Locke?

A 
• our own existence
• the existence of God
• mathematics
• morality
All other knowledge is probable rather than certain - evidence exists, but this may not be accurate or complete.
30
Q

When did Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz live?

A

1646-1716.

31
Q

Who was Leibniz?

A

One of the great polymaths of the modern world - he was an engineer, librarian (cataloguing), mathematician and physicist who also made contributions to linguistics, history, aesthetics, political theory and philosophy.

32
Q

What did Leibniz state about the materialism/dualism debate?

A

He denied that there’s only a choice between materialism (Locke) and dualism (Descartes). Perception is inexplicable by mechanical principles - thought, ‘the simple material’, is not material.
Rejects both materialism and dualism - dualism is FROM materialism.

33
Q

What did Leibniz believe in instead of materialism or dualism?

A

A mind/body parallelism.

34
Q

What is mind/body parallelism?

A

The doctrine of preestablished harmony. Each created substance is programmed at creation (God) such that all its natural states and actions are carried out in conformity with all the natural states and actions of every other created substance. The mental and physical are separate and do not interact, but work in parallel.

35
Q

Apply the doctrine of preestablished harmony to situations.

A

If someone falls over and hurts themselves (body -> causation), the experienced pain is not caused by the fall but by some prior mental state that conforms with the physical event.
Suppose someone decides they want a drink and pour themselves a glass of wine. The movement of the arm and hand is not caused by the desire but that by some prior bodily state.

36
Q

When did Thomas Hobbes live?

A

1588-1679.

37
Q

What was Hobbes’ main concern?

A

The problem of social and political order - how to live together in peace.

38
Q

How did Hobbes suggest that the problem of social and political order be solved?

A

By giving our obedience to an unaccountable sovereign, to make sure that we behave ourselves. Legal system keeps order. The alternative is a situation of universal insecurity.

39
Q

What do Hobbes’ conclusions follow from?

A

His ideas about human nature, knowledge, and how the world works - lived in English Civil War. People killed each other for ridiculous reasons, everyone wants something and tries to get it. He also was of the opinion that geometry is the only science.

40
Q

What did Hobbes’ combination of materialism and the rightness of language result in?

A

Extreme nominalism - universals are no more than convenient names for remembered sense experiences. Once people use Language ‘rightly’ then the kinds of deductions that can be made in geometry can also be made about humans.

41
Q

What criticism did Hobbes make of dualism?

A

If using language correctly, ‘substance’ means ‘material substance’ and not some metaphysical, meaningless statement about the mind and mental states.

42
Q

What did Hobbes argue about nature?

A

That nature and everything in it is corporeal, including the mind. Everything operates according to material laws - physics.

43
Q

What did Hobbes believe about the morality of human action?

A

That there’s nothing intrinsically right or wrong about human actions - they can be perceived differently in different situations.

44
Q

What did Hobbes believe in terms of determinism?

A

There is some determinism, but free will is what we believe it is. Therefore we can make choices.

45
Q

Who was Benedict de Spinoza?

A

An excommunicated Jew reviled by both Jews and Christians alike - much of his work was suppressed and/or destroyed as it caused such offence.

46
Q

When did Benedict de Spinoza live?

A

1632-1677.

47
Q

In what way was Benedict de Spinoza similar to Hobbes?

A

Both were substance monists. However Spinoza’s preferred substance was ‘God’ - God is in (and determines) everything. This causes problems with legal systems!

48
Q

According to Spinoza, what is the most important mistaken belief that we have about ourselves?

A

Free will - we’re conscious of our actions and ignorant of the cause, everything is determined by nature. Social psychology research supports this - people don’t know why they actually do things (opposite of Locke, who stated that the mind is transparent).

C82CHI (4 decks)

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