Lecture 1

Question 1

what is Rationalism

Answer 1

We can’t trust our senses at all, what matters is the realm of «ideal forms» that we can only know using our reason.

Question 2

what is Nativism/Innatism

Answer 2

We are born already knowing the world.

Question 3

who said “Man is nothing but a bundle of sensations”

Answer 3

Protagoras, 450 B.C

Question 4

what was plato’s view

Answer 4

rationalism

Question 5

what is the allegory of the cave

Answer 5

by plato
3 men chained in a cave, all that they see on the wall is shadows of objects and that is what they think is real. When one of them gets out, he realizes the what he has been PERCIEVING as reality is just shadows and not reality

Question 6

how did plato explain what we perceive as reality If nothing that we perceive is real

Answer 6

nativism/innatism

if we cant trust our senses then what we know is what we are born with

Question 7

what is the theory of Anamnesis (Plato):

Answer 7

1) our immortal souls are made of left-overs of a greater «cosmos-soul» that had universal knowledge.
2) We lost this knowledge when our souls were incarnated in our imperfect (material) bodies.
3) We must recover this knowledge by trying to «remember» what we «forgot».
aka we cannot learn anything from our senses

Question 8

what is the opposite position to rationalism

Answer 8

empiricism

Question 9

what is empiricism

Answer 9

proposes that the only way we can learn about the world is through our senses

Question 10

what is john locke’s theories of ideas

Answer 10

empiricism

Knowledge is the addition or substraction of ideas

Question 11

according to Locke what are idea

Answer 11

Ideas are mental representation

Question 12

according to locke what is knowledge

Answer 12

Knowledge takes the form of a judgment, or proposition

Question 13

explain the statement “all human are mortal” in own locke’s terms

Answer 13

"humans"= subject, idea #1, generalized idea
"mortal"= predicate, idead#2, qualitative idea

Question 14

what is tabula rasea

Answer 14

empiricism idea
Humans are blank pieces of papers on which experience leaves its mark

everything starts with experience, from experience comes simple ideas, and from simple ideas we combine them to complex ideas

locke says this is the prices how we get ideas (any ideas)

Question 15

how does Locke explain reality

Answer 15

Cause-and-effect argument that the external reality is objective

Question 16

explain Cause-and-effect argument that the external reality is objective:

Answer 16

You get to reality through causation, i.e. the external world is causing my ideas. But our immediate awareness is only of our ideas.

Question 17

what is Copy theory of knowledge

Answer 17

our ideas are mental copies of the external world (representationalism).

Question 18

explain our ideas are mental copies of the external world (representationalism).

Answer 18

the images we have in our mind are copies of the external world

Question 19

what is truth and can we access it (according to locke)

Answer 19

Truth is correspondance between the idea and the thing. But we can never be absolutely sure of the truth correspondance, probabilities are the best we can have.