Exam 1 Flashcards
Philosophy
The attempt to think rationally and critically about the most important questions
Greek roots
Philia “love”
Sophia “wisdom”
Another Definition of Philosophy:
The study of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful”
The Good: Ethics
The True: Epistemology
The Beautiful: Aesthetics
Homers Mythology
The Greek Gods
Rational explanations
Contra Myth: Homer, Hesiod
Hesiod (700 B.C.)
Theogony (Origin of the Gods) Theogony: Primary text for the myths about the origin of the Gods, earth, sea, and sky *Zeus became the supreme deity Rational explanations: Contra Myth: Homer, Hesiod
Idealism: George Berkeley (1685-1753)
“The metaphysical view that mind is ultimate and that all things are thus reducible to mind and ideas”
subjective idealism
Materialism
“The metaphysical doctrine that matter with its motions and qualities is the ultimate reality of all things.”
Thales
Metaphysical Monist (600 B.C.) One "substance": water. All living things need water Moisture is present in most things Oceans show that water is more prevalent than any other thing Water exists in different forms: Solid, Liquid, Gas All objects have one of these three consistencies
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
Everything is composed of matter and
energy (reality is “corporeal”)
No such things as “free will” or “immaterial soul”
God exists as a “corporeal spirit”
Mechanistic Materialism
“The view which conceives of the universe and everything in it as a machine, that is, as governed by a fixed and finite number of laws.”
Mechanistic Materialism - Skinner
human behavior can be conditioned, controlled and predicted
Rene Descartes
Mind/Matter (Body)
Plato
Immaterial/Material
Dualism
Two Substances
Pluralism
more than two substances (e.g. earth, air, fire, water- Empedocles)
