Module 4 Flashcards
According to Hobbes, all animals, including humans, are nothing more than ______.
Flesh-and-blood machines
Hobbes had met the Italian astronomer _____, frequently regarded as the “father of modern science”, and had been closely associated with ______, whose thinking had helped to revolutionize scientific practice.
Galileo, Francis Bacon
In _____, his major political
work, Hobbes proclaims: “The
universe—that is, the whole mass of things that are—is corporeal, that is to say, body.”
Leviathan
He goes on to say that each of these bodies has “____, ____, and _____”, and “that which is not body is no part of the universe.”
Length, Breadth, and Depth
Some bodies or objects, Hobbes declares, are imperceptible, even though they occupy physical space and have physical dimensions. These, he calls “____.”
Spirits
Orphaned in infancy, _____ was fortunately taken in by a wealthy uncle, who offered him a good education. His first book, ____, was published in Paris in 1642. But it was his ideas on morality, politics, and the functions of society and the state, set out in ____.
Thomas Hobbes, De Cive, Leviathan
Labelled _____, these move around the body, carrying with them and passing on information, in much the same way as we now think of
the nervous system doing.
Animal Spirits
Sometimes, Hobbes seems to
apply his concept of physical spirits to God and other entities found in religion, such as angels. However, he does state that God himself, but not other physical spirits, should be described as “_____.”
Incorporeal
Because Hobbes considers that human beings are purely _____, and are therefore no more than _____, he is then
faced with the problem of how to account for our mental nature.
Physical, Biological Machines
Hobbes has nothing to say about what the modern-day Australian philosopher _____ calls the hard problem of consciousness”.
David Chalmes
Hobbes also had to contend with the very different thinking about mind and body that ____ set out in his _____ of 1641.
Descartes, Meditations
14 years later, Hobbes addressed the problem again in a passage in his book ____ which presents and criticizes what seems to be a muddled form of part of Descartes’ argument. He said that incorporeal substance is an example of insignificant or empty language due to the notion of “a body without a body”.
De Corpore
The concepts of sovereignty and the divine right of kings emerge,
influenced by ______ by _____.
Six Books of The Republic, Jean Bodin
The Glorious Revolution in England leads to the 1689 ______, which limits the
powers of the monarch in law.
Bill of Rights
_____ opposes absolutist rule, arguing that government should represent the people and protect their rights to life, health, liberty, and possessions.
John Locke
The ______ that followed the Middle Ages in Europe introduced new views on human nature that were not based on religious doctrine, but were instead
founded on rational thought.
Enlightenment Period
To settle such abstract, fundamental differences, scholars began to state their views on the so-called “______”—the
theoretical condition of mankind
before the introduction of social
structures and norms.
State of Nature
Many thinkers believed that by analyzing the human “_____” and behaviors of this state of nature, one could design a system of government that met the needs of its citizens and would promote
good behaviors and counteract bad
ones
Instincts
Hobbes’s view was that human beings needed to be ruled by government, as
the state of nature was a terrible,
“______” world.
Dog-eat-dog
In his most famous work, Leviathan, Hobbes portrays humans as ______ who
seek to maximize power and act according to self-interest, because
acting otherwise would threaten
their self-preservation.
Rational Agents
To avert a descent into the state of nature, men must enter into
a _______, submitting to the authority and protection of a sovereign.
Social Contract
Enlightenment thinkers referred to
the concept of a ______ between the ruled and the ruler to answer questions of the political legitimacy of various modes of governance.
Social Contract
Hobbes argued that humans had two principal choices in life — they could either live _____ government (the state of nature) or _____ government.
Without, With
However, because each individual has to protect their own interests in the state of nature, a “________” arises.
Collective Action Problem
_____ led the anti-Royalist forces that deposed King Charles I in 1649. Hobbes believed the social contract was still intact, since rule had passed unbroken to Parliament
Oliver Cromwell
Although he did not take a decisive stance on which mode of government was best, he clearly preferred Charles I’s
_____ as a good, stable form of government. However, he also regarded ________ as a suitable form of government, as long as the legislative assembly contained an __ number of
members to prevent a situation of political stalemate.
Monarchy, Parliamentary Sovereignty, Odd
Two other influential philosophers—____ and Scottish philosopher _____—also
criticized Hobbes.
John Locke, David Hume
In ______ (1971), Rawls argues that people would choose a condition where everyone had some basic rights and economic safeguards if forced to choose
under a “______,” not knowing whether they would have a privileged position in this imagined society.
A Theory of Justice, Veil of Ignorance
_____ is traditionally included in the group of philosophers known as the
_____, together with two later philosophers, George Berkeley and David Hume. The ______ are generally thought to hold the view that all human
knowledge must come directly or indirectly from the experience of the world that we acquire through the use of our senses alone.
John Locke, British Empiricists, Empiricists
The ____ all accept that in practice our
knowledge of the world ultimately
stems from our experience, and
most notably from scientific enquiry.
Rationalists
