Philosophy Flashcards
Philosophy and Logic
What are the three main movements in philosophy?
- Premodernism
- Modernism
- Postmodernism
Philosophy and Logic
What are the three broad types of philosophical question?
- Metaphysics
- Epistemology
- Axiology
Philosophy and Logic
What is the basic question in the study of metaphysics?
What is fundamental reality?
What underlies the physical, observable world? What is the essence or true form of any particular object or aspect of our reality?
Philosophy and Logic
What is the basic question in epistemology?
How do we arrive at knowledge? What can we know or not know?
Evidential and logical processes are examples of epistemology.
Philosophy and Logic
What is the basic question in axiology?
What has value? What does it mean to have value?
Ethics and aesthetics are axiologic schools of thought.
Philosophy and Logic
Describe the Socratic method.
A dialectical process of asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out ideas and underlying presuppositions.
Philosophy and Logic
Generally thinking, premodern philosophy placed primacy on which philosophical school of thought as the underpinning of reality?
Metaphysics
I.e., perspectives starting with metaphysical claims like “all is fire,” deistic foundations, etc. to undergird all of society as the basis for all other thought.
Philosophy and Logic
Generally thinking, modern philosophy placed primacy on which philosophical school of thought as the underpinning of reality?
Epistemology
I.e., perspectives starting with logical and evidence-based analysis to undergird all of society as the basis for all other thought.
Philosophy and Logic
Generally thinking, postmodern philosophy placed primacy on which philosophical school of thought as the underpinning of reality?
Axiology
I.e., perspectives starting with human values/preferences to undergird all of society as the basis for all other thought.
Philosophy and Logic
What are the two major pre-Socratic groups of Western philosophy?
- Milesians
- Eleadics
- Milesians - emphasizing the chaos and disorder of the world. Emphasizing sense experience over reason as proper epistemology. Metabole.
- Eleadics - emphasizing the oneness and order of the world. Emphasizing reason over sense experience as proper epistemology. Logos.
Philosophy and Logic
Pre-socratic thinkers were largely essentialist and found new ways of making broad, sweeping claims about the nature of the fundamental world. For examples:
* In monism, all is ??.
* In atomism, all is ??.
* In Pythagoreanism, all is ??.
Pre-socratic thinkers were largely essentialist and found new ways of making broad, sweeping claims about the nature of the fundamental world. For examples:
* In monism, all is fire, water, or air.
* In atomism, all is tiny, individual units called atoms.
* In Pythagoreanism, all is math.
Philosophy and Logic
What did the sophists of Socrates’ day do?
Taught rhetorical skills without focus on truth.
Focused on how to win arguments and not how to actually be correct.
Philosophy and Logic
Socrates asked what basic question?
What underpins our reality?
Socrates encouraged the common person to engage in philsophophical thought in a way never before seen.
Philosophy and Logic
- What did Socrates say about the importance of reflecting on one’s life?
- How did Aristotle respond?
- “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
- “The unplanned life is not worth examining.”
Philosophy and Logic
True/False.
Socrates wanted to teach everyone around him that we all know nothing.
True.
Unfortuantely, he was put on trial for it and sentenced to death.
Philosophy and Logic
How did Plato build on Socrates’ work?
He took the question of what underpins reality and called the ideal, imagined basis of the physical world “forms” and that the ideal world was all that is real and fixed as the physical world changes constantly
E.g., the idea of the “human being” is the form which we should conform ourselves to be. Morality is based on forming ourselves to the ideal, abstract form.
Philosophy and Logic
Plato asserted that morals are ?? and universal and also that they are largely self-serving. He asserted that ?? ??, those who could untie themselves from the cave and see the truth, should be cultivated to lead society.
Plato asserted that morals are absolute and universal and also that they are largely self-serving. He asserted that philosopher kings, those who could untie themselves from the cave and see the truth, should be cultivated to lead society.
Philosophy and Logic
Describe Plato’s allegory of the cave.
Philosophy and Logic
How did Aristotle contradict Plato’s work?
He argued that Plato’s “forms” don’t exist in some separate reality but that they are the essence of the physical world and not just shadows of the physical world
E.g., the “human being” is made of both an essence and also a substantial matter. Morality is the balance between competing, natural human virtues.
Philosophy and Logic
Which premodern philosopher is credited with inventing syllogisms, stated that our goal in life should be “to live well,” and was a believer in teleology.
Aristotle
Philosophy and Logic
Who was one of Aristotle’s young pupils who may have helped spread premodern ideas of Western philosophy?
Alexander the Great
With the Roman Empire then spreading them further.
Philosophy and Logic
- ?? used Plato’s ideas about ideal forms to help spread the Christian teaching of humans having both a physical form and also a soul.
- ?? used Aristotle’s ideas about a prime mover to justify the Christian god.
- Augustine
- Aquinas
Philosophy and Logic
Define epicureanism (the ancient school of thought from Athens).
Dictionary definition:
The school rejected determinism and advocated hedonism (pleasure as the highest good), but of a restrained kind: mental pleasure was regarded more highly than physical, and the ultimate pleasure was held to be freedom from anxiety and mental pain, especially that arising from needless fear of death and of the gods.
Philosophy and Logic
The shift from premodern to modern philosophy is known as what?
The Enlightenment
An epistemic shift beginning with Descartes.
Philosophy and Logic
Which philosopher kicked off much of the epistemic shift (“The Enlightenment”) with his Rationalism?
Descartes
An attempt to deconstruct everything and start from the ground up using nothing but reason and this is the foundation of justified knowledge.
Philosophy and Logic
Which philosopher built off Descartes’ work with Empiricism and stated that metaphysics and ethics are not connected; i.e., that we cannot gain an “ought” from an “is”?
Hume
All of our epistemology is based off sense experience. This experience is all we have and can justify us in knowledge of how the world is but does not necessarily dictate causality in how the world operates on a fundamental level.
Philosophy and Logic
Describe Kant’s description of the noumenal and phenomenal realms as a response and critique to Descartes’ rationalism and builds off Hume’s empiricism.
- There are noumenal aspects to the world (the underlying, foundational state) and phenomenal aspects to the world (the state we can observe).
- We only have access to the phenomenal aspect, and so we are forever barred from the noumenal, meaning rationalism will never lead us to ultimate reality.
- We can assume from a practical viewpoint that our view of the phenomenal is based on the noumenal, and so we can take the laws of logic (which seem universal) as basic assumptions.
I.e., we will never have justified true belief of how the world actually is.
Philosophy and Logic
Essentially, what is Kant’s “categorical imperative”?
That a moral law can be assumed as correct if it can be universalized
E.g., if lying were permissible, then trust would cease to exist, and thus lying as a concept would not exist either, making the concept self-defeating. However, if lying is not permissible, then the concept of both it and trust are upheld and must be universalized, creating moral virtue/imperative.
Philosophy and Logic
What did Hegel propose as an argument against Kant’s neoumenal-phenomenal dichotomy?
To argue that we are not locked out of the noumenal and solely confined to the phenomenal world.
That human rational dialectic will lead to continuing refinement of human thought, always further approximating the noumenal until it is justified knowledge
Philosophy and Logic
Hegel argued that humans started in a(n) ?? state, moved into a(n) ?? state, and can finally be liberated into a(n) ?? state.
Hegel argued that humans started in a religious state, moved into an ethical state, and can finally be liberated into an aesthetic state.
This is Hegelian existentialism. He argued this was the natural course of individual human lives and of humanity.
Philosophy and Logic
How did Kierkegaard argue against Hegel’s idea that humankind (collectively and individually) can progress from religious to ethical to aesthetic stages?
He argued the opposite
That humankind (collectively and individually) can progress from aesthetic (childlike) to ethical to religious (enlightened, divine) stages?
Philosophy and Logic
What major world event started the shift from modern to postmodern philosophy?
The Holocaust
As a reaction to the alleged end result of epistemology as the basis of thought leading to dehumanization.
Philosophy and Logic
As a reaction to The Holocaust, the postmodern movement sought to do what?
To abandon metaphysical claims and frontload axiologic claims of justice/dignity/morality on which to base reason/rationality.
Philosophy and Logic
What is a basic definition of postmodernism?
A reactionary movement seeking to reexamine and deconstruct the epistemic bases of The Enlightenment with a focus on human dignity and value and justice
Philosophy and Logic
- Empiricism/rationalism are most associated with which era of philosophical thought?
- And essentialism?
- And nihilism/aburdism and social justice?
- Modernism
- Premodernism
- Postmodernism
Philosophy and Logic
Epistemology is the study of what?
Knowledge
(‘How we know what we know’)
Philosophy and Logic
Ontology is the study of what?
The nature of being
Philosophy and Logic
What is a tautology (in the linguistic sense)?
An assertion which repeats itself
(A redundancy; saying the same thing twice)
Examples: ‘it is what it is.’ ‘Boys will be boys.’
Philosophy and Logic
What is a tautology (in the logical sense)?
An assertion which is true no matter what
(You can’t be wrong)
Examples: ‘it is this or it is not this.’ ‘The ball is all red or the ball is not all red.’
Philosophy and Logic
Which philosopher came up with the ‘veil of ignorance’ thought experiment as a way of explaining our collective agreement to a hypothetical social contract?
John Rawls
Philosophy and Logic
What is teleology?
The philosophical interpretation of natural phenomena as exhibiting purpose or design.
Philosophy and Logic
What is a truism?
A claim that is so obvious or self-evident as to be hardly worth mentioning, except as a reminder or as a rhetorical or literary device
Philosophy and Logic
What is sophistry?
Plausible but misleading or fallacious arguments
Philosophy and Logic
Define stoicism.
Wikipedia definition:
‘as social beings, the path to eudaimonia (happiness, or blessedness) is found in accepting the moment as it presents itself, by not allowing oneself to be controlled by the desire for pleasure or by the fear of pain, by using one’s mind to understand the world and to do one’s part in nature’s plan, and by working together and treating others fairly and justly.’
Philosophy and Logic
How does compatibilism attempt to reconciliate the ideas of free will and determinism?
Free will is defined as action in accordance with one’s motivations and in the absence of external coercions.
Thus, you act as determined, but you are still ultimately responsible for your actions.
Ex. I can walk out of this room, or I can be carried out. Although this is determined in advance, it is only freely done if in accordance with my own motivations and absent external force.
Philosophy and Logic
Which form of free will (libertarian, compatibilist, or determinist) represents an infinite regress?
Libertarian
Wikipedia: ‘Some forms of libertarianism assert that human actions do not have causes and are chosen consciously – i.e. are not random. This assertion raises the question: what are these conscious decisions based on? Since they can’t be based on nothing (as the possibility of decisions being random is excluded), this question can be asked for each subsequent answer or answers to it, thus forming an infinite regress.’
Philosophy and Logic
What is the meaning of the word ‘philosophy?’
‘Love of wisdom’
Philosophy and Logic
Describe the moral system generally proposed by utilitarian philosophers.
Morally right = that which maximizes well-being
Philosophy and Logic
Describe the moral system generally proposed by Kant-ian philosophers.
Treating others as means to an ends is morally wrong. True altruism is doing things for others when those actions don’t benefit us.
Philosophy and Logic
Describe the moral system generally proposed by Rawlsian philosophers.
Whichever society you’d decide upon if you didn’t know who you’d be within it, that is the morally just society.
(This is known as the Rawlsian ‘veil of ignorance.’)
Philosophy and Logic
What is a modern cinematic take on Plato’s allegory of the cave?
The red pill in The Matrix
Philosophy and Logic
What is “the prisoner’s dilemma”?
A thought experiment in which you and an accomplice have been arrested for a crime and are being held separately. You are given the option of (A) staying silent or (B) confessing. If only one of you confesses, that inmate who confessed goes free, and the other takes the sentence; if both confess, both serve the sentence at a reduced length; if both stay silent, then both go free.
Philosophy and Logic
What is the utilitarian response to the trolley dilemma?
What is the Kantian response?
What is the deontological response?
Utilitarian: five beings’ well-being > one being’s well-being; pull the lever
Kantian: you can’t treat the single being as a means to an ends for the five beings; don’t pull the lever
Deontological: the law says not to actively kill your fellow being(s); don’t pull the lever
Philosophy and Logic
What is the question raised by the ‘ship of Theseus’ thought experiment?
If an object has had each of its components replaced by corresponding, identical components (e.g., one-by-one, the axe handle, head, and wedge are replaced by an identical handle, head, and wedge), does it remain the same object?
(This can be extended to science-fiction transport machines, etc.)
Philosophy and Logic
Give the general gist of the replacement argument thought experiment. (Expound as to how it relates to meat consumption.)
Is life a good in and of itself? Is it better for 20 billion people to live in poor conditions or 10 billion in rich conditions? If the rich conditions, what is lost in the other 10 billion who never lived?
(Ending meat consumption -and thus ending the production/exchange of meat products- would drastically decrease the number of cows/chickens/pigs on the earth.)
Philosophy and Logic
Give the syllogistic form of the Kalam cosmological argument in its most commonly accepted version.
- Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
- The universe began to exist.
- Therefore, the universe has a cause.
Philosophy and Logic
Name some common objections to the Kalam cosmological argument.
“Why should it be supposed that absolutely everything which begins to exist has a cause for its beginning to exist?”
“If time did not exist prior to the big bang, who is to say that the universe ‘began’ with the big bang?”
“We have no other universes to compare this one to in determining if universes generally need to have beginnings.”
(Note: even if the universe has a cause, this argument still is a long way off from proving a personal, intelligent, powerful being as the cause.)
Philosophy and Logic
What is a deepity?
A nonsensical or banal statement that is presented as if it held some profound meaning.
(E.g., ‘love is just a word.’)
Philosophy and Logic
True/False.
Pascal’s wager is an example of an epistemic justification for the belief in a god.
False.
Pascal’s wager is an example of a pragmatic justification for the belief in a god.
Philosophy and Logic
Who are some examples of major philosophers of postmodernism?
- Schopenhauer
- Nietzsche
- Derrida
- Foucault
