Phil 102 quiz (2) Flashcards
What is idealism? Who is associated with Transcendental idealism?
Idealism suggests that what we perceive as our ideas, consciousness, or perceptions shape the external world. In other words, the mind plays a central role in creating or determining what we experience as “reality.”
Kant is associated with Transcendental idealism.
define monoism.
Monism
Definition: Monism holds that everything in the universe is fundamentally made of one substance or thing.
Reality is unified, consisting of only one type of essence—physical or mental.
ex: idealism(belief that reality is a projection of our ideas)
What is dualism?
Dualism
Definition: Dualism claims that reality consists of two distinct substances: the mental (mind) and the physical (body or matter). These two substances interact but remain fundamentally different.
Key Idea: The mind and body are separate entities—mental experiences cannot be reduced to physical processes, and vice versa.
Who is Descartes, and what is his radical method?
Descartes’ method is grounded in radical doubt. He begins by questioning everything that could possibly be doubted, even logical truths, to find a certain foundation for knowledge.
What are Descrates’ key concepts?
- Cartesian Dualism.
- Cogito, Ergo Sum (“I think, therefore I am”)
- Innate Ideas: Descartes argued that some ideas, such as the concept of God and mathematical truths, are innate.
- God as a guaranteer of knowledge
Differentiate between direct vs indirect realism.
Direct Realism (Naïve Realism):
Belief: We experience the world exactly as it is, with no intermediary between us and the objects.
Indirect Realism (Representational Realism)
Belief: We do not perceive objects directly but through mental representations or sense data formed by our mind.
What is the phenoumena and noumena?
Phenomena and Noumena:The phenomenal world is the world we experience, while the noumenal world refers to the world as it exists independently of human perception—though it remains inaccessible to us.
Differentiate between Locke’s primary and secondary qualities.
Primary Qualities:
These are qualities inherent to an object, existing independently of any observer. They are objective and measurable, and they include size, shape, motion, and number.
Ex: A table’s shape or size remains the same, regardless of who is observing it or how they perceive it.
Secondary Qualities:
These qualities depend on the interaction between the object and the observer’s senses. They exist only in the observer’s perception and not in the object itself. Examples include colour, taste, sound, and smell.
Ex: A leaf’s color appears green, but greenness is not an inherent quality of the leaf—it depends on how our senses respond to light reflecting off it.
Explain Berkely’s concepts of Phenomenalism.
Berkeley believed that all knowledge comes from sensory experience, meaning we only experience the ideas in our minds. This led to his conclusion that we cannot prove the existence of a material world independent of perception.
Berkely was an anti-realist and an idealist. Explain
Berkeley denied the existence of a material world separate from our perception. For him, only minds and the ideas within those minds exist. Even what we think of as “real” objects are collections of ideas.
What is foundationalism?
Foundationalism is the idea that knowledge needs a solid starting point—like a foundation for a building.
These starting points are basic beliefs or true ideas (they don’t need proof).
From these fundamental beliefs, we build other knowledge step by step.
Example:”I exist” can be a foundation (like in Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am”). Once we know this, we can build more knowledge on top of it.
What is naturalism?
Naturalism in philosophy claims that everything is part of the natural world, and we can understand it through science, logic, and experience—without invoking anything supernatural.
What is intuition from Kant and Descartes’s view?
For Descartes: Intuitions are innate ideas—truths already present in the mind at birth and do not rely on sensory experience.
For Kant: Intuition refers to our immediate awareness of space and time—the fundamental frameworks through which we experience the external world.
