Philosophical foundations Flashcards
Skepticism
(Descartes) aims to eliminate all belief that it is possible to doubt, thus leaving only basic beliefs. Don’t really doubt beliefs about external world etc, but philosophical question of how they can be justified
Dualism
There are thinking things (human minds - res cogitans) and extending things (everything else - res extensa)
Empiricism
Knowledge comes primarily from the senses
Ideas
Thoughts ≈ mental imagery. Derived
Impression
Senses ≈ perception. Primary
Simple perceptions
Cannot be separated further. Both idea and impressions
Complex perceptions
Can be divided into underlying simple perceptions
Analytic
True by their meaning (it’s contained in the subject itself) (e.g. “All bachelors are unmarried”)
Synthetic
How the meaning relates to the world (it’s not contained in the subject itself). Adds new information
A priori
Analyzing concepts without experience. What is left when ‘one removes from our experience everything that belongs to the senses’
A posteriori
Gained through experience
Copernican revolution (in philosophy)
Kant suggests that we must shift our perspective to consider that objects conform to our knowledge rather than our knowledge conforming to objects. This means that the way we perceive and understand the world is shaped by the inherent structures of the human mind.
“If intuition has to conform to the constitution of the objects, then I do not see how we can know anything of them a priori, but if the object (as the object of the senses) conforms to the constitution of our faculty of intuition, then I can very well represent this possibility to myself
Metaphysics
Studies what reality is. A wholly isolated speculative cognition of reason that elevates itself entirely above all instruction from experience. Our mind shaping our perception of the world rather than the world directly shaping our mind.
The transcendental aesthetic
Space and time shape our intuition. We cannot abstract from them.
Manifest image
Things-as-they-appear-to-us: Includes all the usual objects of our everyday world, e.g. persons, animals, material things
Scientific image
Things-in-themselves: Allows for imperceptible entities that explain the perceptible (manifest) qualities
Justified true beliefs
S knows P iff:
(i) P is true
(ii) S believes P
(iii) S is justified in believing P
S = subject
P = proposition
Gettier problem
Is JTB knowledge? Gettier argues no with the example with Smith and Jones and the man who has 10 coins in his pocket will get the job
Idealism
The view that only ideas exist, there is no external world beyond ideas. The metaphysical view that associates reality to ideas in the mind rather than to material objects (Kant - he soon changed)
Epistemological idealism
Knowledge about the world comes primarily from knowledge of the mind (Kant)
Phenomena
The world as we experience it
Noumena
The world as it is in itself, independent of our perceptions
Sensation
The effect of an object on the capacity for representations, insofar as we are affected by it
Reason
The capacity of applying logic consciously by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth
Formal logic
The abstract study of propositions, statements, or assertively used sentences and of deductive arguments. It is founded on a set of principles and philosophies
Cause
An object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it, that the idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other
Transcendental logic
Contains the principles of pure thinking
Intuition
In whatever way and through whatever means a cognition may relate to objects, that through which it relates immediately to them, and at which all thoughts as a means is directed as an end.
The raw data of experience, such as sights, sounds, and other sensory impressions.
Sensibility (Kant)
Senses
Constant conjunction
Term used by Hume to describe the relation between two events one of which invariably accompanies the other.
Content
The sensory data or the material that our thoughts are about, which we receive through experience
Necessity (Hume)
The “connection” between a cause and an effect, exists only in the mind. Cannot be empirically observed.
Persons (manifest image)
Puts normativity and reason at center stage. According to the manifest image, people think and they do things for reasons
Things/objects (manifest image)
Are very different from mere things; things do not act rationally, in accordance with normative rules, but only in accord with laws or perhaps habits
Perennial philosophy
What Sellars called the ‘perennial philosophy’ from Plato onwards accepts the reality of the elements and features of the manifest image, but it is also a perennial problem to compare and reconcile its claims with that of the scientific image, which is in reality the arbiter ‘of what is, that it is, and of what is not that it is not’
Synoptic view
This view does not simply merge the the manifest and scientific images but seeks to understand their respective contributions and limitations
Res cogitans
Mental substances or minds
Essence: thinking or conscious
Properties: Indivisible, free will, known directly (since we ‘are’ minds)
Res extensa
Extended or physical objects or bodies
Essence: extended in 3D space
Properties: Divisible, bound by laws of nature, known indirectly
Cogito ergo sum
“I think, therefore i am”. You cannot doubt the fact that you are doubting - because if you doubt the fact that you are doubting you are all the same doubting. - escapes his skepticism.
Cartesian/substance dualism
Res cogitans and res extensa
Appearance
“the undetermined object of an empirical intuition”
matter: the part of appearance which corresponds to sensation (e.g. color, hardness…) -> physical object
form: “that which allows the manifold of appearance to be intuited as ordered in certain relations” -> what that experience represents about reality
