Theories and Philosophers

Question 1

Descartes

Mind and Body

Answer 1

• Argues that the mind is a thinking, non-extended thing and is completely different from that of the body which s an extended, non-thinking thing. Therefore it is possible for one to exist without the other.
• Quote: “I think, therefore I am”
• The essence of mind is thought while the essence of body is extension, and this duality of essences implies a duality of corresponding substances.

Question 2

Plato

Justice

Answer 2

• Individually, justice is a human virtue that makes a person self-consistent and good; socially, justice is a social consciousness that makes a society internally harmonious and good.
• Justice is a sort of specialization
• Quote:”The result, then, is that more plentiful and better quality goods are more easily produced if each person does one thing for which he is naturally suited, does it at the right time, and is released from having to do any of the others.”
• Political justice boils down to this guiding rule - that everyone do that to which their nature best suits them, and not meddle in any other businesses. Producers must produce according to their natures (eg the farmer farms, the painter paints).

Question 3

Aristotle

Causation

Answer 3

Four types of causation
- Material cause - something inherent in the material the object is made of that allows it to change.
-Efficient or moving cause - the power that is provided for change to happen.
-Final cause - an intended end point for the change.
-Formal cause - a blue print or plan
Quote: “All those means towards the end which arise as the instigation of something else.”

Question 4

Aristotle

Change

Answer 4

Three main kinds of change

• Kinesis - is physical movement (kinetic)
• Boulesis - the changes that happen in our emotions, and changes in what we want; changes in our will.
• Morphing - change in shape, appearance, of changing form.

Question 5

Tolstoy

Determinism

Answer 5

-The problem lies in the fact that if we regard man as subject for observation from whatever point of view, we find the universal law of necessity from which he (like everything else that exists) is subject.
-But looking upon man from within ourselves - man as the object of our own inner consciousness of self - we feel ourselves to be free.
- It is necessary to renounce a freedom that doesn’t exist and to recognize a dependence of which we are not personally conscious.
Quote: “However we shift our point of view, however clear we make to ourselves the connection in which man is placed with the external world, or however fully comprehensible it may appear to us, we can never conceive of complete free will, no complete necessity in any action.”
-Tolstoy held that everything in the universe was determined.

Question 6

Karl Marx

Culture and Society

Answer 6

-Society is comprised of moving balance of antithetical forces that generate social change by their tension and struggle.
-Struggle, rather than peaceful growth, was the engine progress.
-The social order in every society in the production of economic goods.
-Worked to set humanity free from the chains of capitalism.
Quote: “Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.”

Question 7

Ludwig Wettgenstein

Intention

Answer 7

Quote: “When i raise my arm my arm goes up… When i raise my arm I do not usually try to raise it.”

• He was seeking to isolate what it s that makes intentional acts intentional. It is not ‘trying’ that makes the arm raising intentional, yet there is something that makes the intentional act different from the mere even of the arm raising.
• He left it to later philosophers to try to answer his questions.