Exam 1

Question 1

What are the 5 predicables? Give examples of each

Answer 1

1. Genus: socrates is an animal
2. Species: socrates is a human being
3. Difference: a human being is rational
4. Property: a human being is capable of laughter or a human being is capable of speech
5. Accident: Socrates is pale
   -accidents can change, so if socrates went out into the sun, he’ll get a sunburn

Question 2

property vs specific difference

Answer 2

property: something that always belongs to a member of that species and only that species– tells you what belongs to the species
-ex. speech is a property that human possess

specific difference: sets one kind apart from another; distinguishes man from dog even though they are both under the genus animal
-answers the question, what kind of animal

Question 3

accident vs property

Answer 3

accident: something that every doesn’t have, like certain genetic traits;
-ex. every human doesn’t have blue eyes; eye color doesn’t characterize man

property: something that always belongs to a member of that species and only that species
-ex. the ability to speak is exclusive to man, every man possesses it while not every man possesses blue eyes

Question 4

What is a category and how do they differ from predicables

Question 5

categories: substance vs accident

Question 6

What is the difference between the predicable accident and those categories that are accidents

Question 7

Indicate how Aristotle uses this distinction between act and potency in response to Parmenides’ argument against the reality of change.

Question 8

What is the distinction between substantial form and accidental form? How is it related to different kinds of change

Answer 8

substantial form: what makes something exist substantially, the essence of that thing
-substantial change: a change to its essential features
-ex. a red ball being melted into a different substance

accidental form: what makes something exist accidentally, the characteristics of that thing
-accidental change:a change to its accidental features
-ex. a red ball turning blue

Question 9

Explain the distinction between form and matter, and how it is understood differently in the context of substantial form and accidental form

Answer 9

form: the thing it comes to be; that stuff actualized
matter: the stuff its made out of

substantial form and prime matter
accidental form and matter

Question 10

Can any forms exist without matter? Can matter exist without form?

Answer 10

no

Question 11

What are the four causes

Answer 11

1. material cause: underlying, so the things a pig is composed of i.e organs, tissues, elements, prime matter
2. formal cause: the form, pattern, or structure it exhibits, so the pig is pink and chubby, its prime is actualized
3. efficient cause: that which actualizes the matter into existence, so the pig’s parents brought it into existence
4. final cause: end, goal, or purpose, so the pig exist so that he can eat, reproduce, etc

using the ex of a pig

Question 12

What is the final cause? Is the causal agent always conscious of the final cause?

Answer 12

final cause: end, goal, or purpose, so the pig exist so that he can eat, reproduce, etc

No, final causality is unconscious. While every agent intends an end it does not know about that end

Question 13

According to the Naiyayikas, what are composite wholes, and how are they related to atoms? Are these composite wholes the same as Aristotelian substances? Why or why not?

Question 14

What is meant when Naiyayikas argue that we couldn’t know anything if composite wholes didn’t exist? Reconstruct the argument.

Question 15

Explain the “holding and pulling” argument in support of composite wholes.

Question 16

How does Vatsayana explain the sutra that “If one contends that the composite wholes are experienced like an army or a forest, that would be wrong, since atoms are beyond the range of the senses”?

Question 17

Explain how Thomas Aquinas’s account of causality differs from that of David Hume.

Answer 17

Unlike Aquinas, Hume denies final causality and redescribes efficient causality

Humes explains the cause and effect are two separate events and not simultaneous, he claims there is no connection between efficient and final cause

Aristotle says that every agent acts for an end, cause and effect are tow inseparable actions

Question 18

Why does Schumacher quote Thomas Aquinas’s paraphrase of Aristotle, “The slenderest knowledge that may be obtained of the highest things is more desirable than the most certain knowledge obtained of lesser things”? What importance does this quote have for Schumacher’s wider argument?

Answer 18

He quotes this to say that the things proved to exist or that we know exist without doubt are always shown on the map but they are not the most important.

Instead it is the things we don’t know that are the most important, these higher things are what we should seek to uncover

Question 19

What is Materialistic Scientism? How does Schumacher connect it with a faulty map of the world? In what way might such faulty maps result from the work of modern philosophers such as Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kant?

Question 20

What are the Four Levels of Being? How are they related to each other?

Answer 20

1. mineral: inanimate
2. plant: m + x
3. animal: m + x + y
4. human: m + x + y + z

m= mineral
x= being alive
y= consciousness
z= self awareness

Question 21

How are the Four Levels of Being related to the sciences? Do physics or chemistry provide an adequate account of any particular levels? Can they account for life?

Answer 21

physics and chemistry can be used to described the lower two levels (minerals and plants) but they are not adequate accounts of life

life sciences can be used to describe life while the humanities can be used to describe self awareness

Question 22

Explain how the Four Levels of Being involve progressions from passivity to activity, from necessity and freedom, and from lack of integration and unity to integration and unity.

Answer 22

1. from passivity to activity
2. from necessity to freedom
3. toward integration and unity
4. kinds of worlds

Question 23

Explain the importance of Thomas Aquinas’s claims that knowledge comes about insofar as the known object is in the knower. How might it be connected with Plotinus’s claim that “knowing demands that the organ be fitted to the object”?

Question 24

How does Schumacher use a book to show how knowers might not be adequate to certain kinds of knowledge? How is it connected with his account of Materialistic Scientism?

Question 25

Explain how Materialistic Scientism makes its possessor less adequate to the more important kinds of knowledge.

Question 26

What are the characteristic features of modern science? How are they related to Descartes’ philosophy?