- •Philosophy exam
- •Define the difference between philosophy and common sence
- •Define the difference between philosophy and humanities/science
- •Define the difference between philosophy and ideology
- •4. What are the three general branches of phylosophy/what are the basic philosophycal questions?
- •5. Explain the meaning and significanse of “the arche question”
- •6. The being and becoming dilemma in early Greek philosophy
- •7. Explain Zeno’s paradoxes
- •8. Is total flux chaotic? Explainthe nature of change in the system of Heraclitus
- •9. Difine dialectic
- •10. Virtue in Greek philosophy. Explain the meaning of knowledge in Socrate’s ethics
- •11. Explain the ‘’Euthyfro dilemma”
- •12. Plato’s theory of ideas: ideas and sensual objects – differences and similarities
- •13. Plato’s theory of ideas: the conception of participation
- •14. Plato’s theory of ideas: the allegory of the cave
- •15. Plato’s theory of ideas: the ideal state
- •16. Aristotle: syllogisms
- •17. Hylomorphism: substance and its components
- •18. Aristotle: the four causes: what is the sence of final cause?
- •19. Aristotle: the theory of virtue (Golden Mean)
- •20. Aristotle: what does it mean to be a political animal?
- •21. The existence of God: ontological argument as formulated by St. Anselm
- •22. The existence of God: ontological argument as formulated by Descartes (deceitful demon and “Matrix”)
- •23. The existence of God: Pascal’s wager
- •24. Theodicy: how to explain suffering and injustice?
- •25. Descartes: the Cartesian method – its main assumptions and functions
- •26. Descartes: cogito and the mind/body problem
- •27. The theory of substance: monism and monistic theories
- •28. The theory of substance: pluralism and pluralistic theories
- •29. What is the ultimate source of our knowledge? Nativism vs.Empiricism
- •30. Locke’s tabula rasa and the critique of nativism
- •31. Locke: primary and secondary qualities
- •32. Berkeley: “esse est percipi” and phenomenalism
- •33. Hume: ideas and perceptions
- •34. Hume: the critique of necessary connection between cause and effect
- •35. Kant: a priory/ a posteriory and analytic/synthetic judgements
- •36. Kant: forms of sensible intuition and “the second Copernican revolution”
- •37. Kant: is metaphysics a science?
- •38. Kant ethics: categorical imperative
25. Descartes: the Cartesian method – its main assumptions and functions
Descartes began from the premise “Doubt everything” – for, as he used to say, Descartes therefore intended, as many others, to make philosophy a science and as he was a very good mathematician himself he took the pattern of mathematics to create his famous new method
The Cartesian method had four primary rules:
accept as as true only what is clear and insusceptible of doubt
divide every problem into as very parts as necessary
consider each part clearly and completely, building by accretion to knowledge as the whole
omit nothing of consideration that might be a source of error
in other words: accept only what is clear and evident.
26. Descartes: cogito and the mind/body problem
Cogito
Descartes set out to build a new fundation for philosophy beginning with the search for a base that was immune from doubt.
As St. Augustine had done before him he concluded that doubt itself implies the existence of doubting being. This conclusion led to his famous declaration “Cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am).
The mind/body problem
The famous mind/body problem is the question whether there exists a distinct mental or spiritual sphere separate from the physical and, if so, how the two interact.
The relationship between spirit and matter is an age-old mystery and is basic to many religious conceptions. Its importance as philosophical problem derives from the strict dualism of Descartes. For whom reality consisted of two disparate types of substance, mind and matter.
The question rised by this formulation is how two utterly dissimilar substances can interact; if I cut my finger, how does my mind know it hurts? If I want to rise my hand, how does my body know what it should do?
27. The theory of substance: monism and monistic theories
The one-substance-view is reffered to as monism or monistic theories
Probably the most extreme monist was Parmenides, who held that there is only one eternal being and that the appereance of individual things is only an illusion.
The term is most closely associated with Spinoza who believed that God and nature are one and that mind and matter are a “double aspect” of a single universal substance, fundamentally neither physical, nor mental and therefore “neutral”.
This view is imperatively linked to pantheism God and nature are one and therefore there is no Divine person – God is not a person – God is everything and by the same token every human being being a part of the nature is a part of God.
Other monisms are not neutral for according to them there is only one substance but the substance is either material or spiritual.
Therefore a materialiast is a monist;
the materialsit view asserts that mind is reducible to an aspect of matter (according to Democritus who is seen as the firt materialist philosopher, even human soul is made of atoms, according to Thomas Hobbes, another materialist living in the XVIIth century our ideas and everthing which is falsly described by us as spiritual can be explained by physics.)
On the other hand idealistic or solipsistic view holds that the reality is fundamnetally spititual or mental and that what we tend to perceive as matter is just a phenomenon, an illusion or that simply we cannot find any sensible proof for the existence of metrial world (hence solipsism from the Latin expression “Solus ipse sum” – “Therefore I am alone”.)