EPISTEMOLOGY

Question 1

What is the primary aim of philosophy?

Answer 1

To systematically study the most fundamental structures of our entire experience.

Question 2

Why is philosophy considered an ongoing task?

Answer 2

There are always new problems to face and old problems to be solved in new ways.

Question 3

What is epistemology?

Answer 3

The theory of knowledge.

Question 4

What does epistemology seek to answer?

Answer 4

Questions such as ‘What is truth?’ and ‘What is knowledge?’.

Question 5

What is metaphysics?

Answer 5

The theory of reality.

Question 6

What are some key questions in metaphysics?

Answer 6

Questions like ‘What is the ultimate reality?’ and ‘Are there other kinds of reality besides the physical world?’.

Question 7

What is ethics in philosophy?

Answer 7

The theory of what is good.

Question 8

What are some central questions in ethics?

Answer 8

Questions such as ‘What makes an action right or wrong?’ and ‘Are there any absolute or objective moral principles?’.

Question 9

What is the focus of logic in philosophy?

Answer 9

The study of the principles of reasoning.

Question 10

What does social and political philosophy examine?

Answer 10

Questions like ‘What is the ideal state?’ and ‘What makes a government legitimate?’.

Question 11

What is the philosophy of religion concerned with?

Answer 11

Questions about the existence and nature of God.

Question 12

According to Plato, how does knowledge differ from belief?

Answer 12

Knowledge is always true, while belief can be either true or false.

Question 13

What is the principle behind knowledge in Plato’s theory?

Answer 13

To be knowledge, it must be grounded in some sort of rational insight.

Question 14

What is anamnesis in Plato’s theory of knowledge?

Answer 14

The idea that knowledge is imprinted on the soul and can be recollected.

Question 15

According to Aristotle, where is the source of knowledge found?

Answer 15

In our immersion in sense experience.

Question 16

What did Augustine believe about knowledge?

Answer 16

That the mind must interpret and judge sense data through divine illumination.

Question 17

What is the key difference between Augustine and Plato’s views?

Answer 17

Augustine argues that reason cannot function without faith.

Question 18

What is Thomas Aquinas’s view on innate knowledge?

Answer 18

He claims there is no innate knowledge and that the mind is like a blank tablet prior to experience.

Question 19

What is methodic doubt according to Descartes?

Answer 19

To question all beliefs to eliminate false beliefs and build a foundation of certain knowledge.

Question 20

What does Locke argue about knowledge?

Answer 20

That knowledge does not originate in the mind but through experience.

Question 21

What is representative realism as proposed by Locke?

Answer 21

The idea that the mind is acquainted only with its own ideas, which represent external objects.

Question 22

What is Leibniz’s stance on innate ideas?

Answer 22

He argues that there are innate ideas that the mind discovers within itself.

Question 23

What does Kant argue about knowledge and experience?

Answer 23

All knowledge begins with experience, but it does not arise solely from it.

Question 24

What does Hegel believe about the rational and reality?

Answer 24

He asserts that the rational is real and ideas have internal laws of change.

Question 25

What is the dialectical process introduced by Hegel?

Answer 25

The process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.

Question 26

What is Nietzsche’s perspective on knowledge?

Answer 26

He claims that we don’t have any knowledge and that truths are fictions shaped by individual perspectives.