Philosophy Test #2

Empiricism

A philosophical belief that states your knowledge of the world is based on your experiences, particularly your sensory experiences. According to empiricists, our learning is based on our observations and perception; knowledge is not possible without experience.

Cynicism

A school of philosophy from the Socratic period of ancient Greece, which holds that the purpose of life is to live a life of Virtue in agreement with Nature. This means rejecting all conventional desires for health, wealth, power and fame, and living a life free from all possessions and property.

Jen

A set of essential Confucian virtues, including benevolence, sympathy, kindness, generosity, respect for others, and human-heartedness. It is a kind of goodness; benevolence, person-to-person-ness; what makes man distinctively human (that which gives human beings their humanity). It is a moral quality that sets us apart from other species.

Esse est percepii

A tenet that existence consists in the condition of being perceived

Ontological argument

Arguments from nothing but analytic, a priori and necessary premises to the conclusion that God exists. The first, and best-known, argument was proposed by St. Anselm of Canterbury in the 11th. century.

Leibniz

As a philosopher, he was, along with René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, a major figure in the Continental Rationalism movement He devised his rather eccentric metaphysical theory of monads operating in a pre-established divine harmony in order to overcome what he saw as some of the drawbacks of the theories of Descartes and Spinoza. He remained a devout Christian throughout his life and his formulation of the Problem of Evil in a world created by a good God was an influential one. He also came up with calculus.

Natural Desires

Choose to be happy and achieve a state of contentment.

Brahman

Eternal, conscious, irreducible, infinite, omnipresent, and the spiritual core of the universe of finiteness and change.

Complex Ideas

Formed by the mind, by comparing, combining and abstracting from simple ideas. The acts of the mind—wherein it exerts its power over its simple ideas—are mainly three: Combining several simple ideas into one compound idea. Bringing two ideas together and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all the ideas of relation. And, thirdly, separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence. This is called abstraction and, thus, all the general ideas are formed.

Arguments for God's existence

Forms a diverse family of arguments that reason from some feature of morality or the moral life to the existence of God, usually understood as a morally good creator of the universe. Moral arguments are both important and interesting. They are interesting because evaluating their soundness requires attention to practically every important philosophical issue dealt with in metaethics. They are important because of their prominence in popular apologetic arguments for religious belief.

Hobbes

His vision of the world was strikingly original at the time, and is still relevant to contemporary politics. He did not shrink from addressing sensitive issues head on, and while few have liked his thesis, many have seen the political realism it represents. He wrote "Leviathan" and his social contract theory, developed during the tumultuous times around the English Civil War, established the foundation for most of Western Political Philosophy.

Sense impression

Hume's analysis of human belief begins with a careful distinction among our mental contents:impressions are the direct, vivid, and forceful products of immediate experience; ideas are merely feeble copies of these original impressions.

Hume's fork

Hume's epistemological position means that he divides all knowledge into either ideas of relations or matters of fact. Ideas of relation demonstrate an analytical statement such as a mathematical or logical truism and one which can be logically contradicted as in the statement it is either raining or it is not raining. Matters of fact, on the other fork, are ideas derived directly from sense experience and may be falsified as in the sun will rise tomorrow

Necessary Desires

Important desires. ex/ food, water, shelter

Yoga

Knowledge or practice

Moksha

Liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth.

Four Noble Truths

Life is suffering. Suffering is caused by desires ("craving" or "thirst"). To banish suffering, banish desires. Banish desires and end suffering by following the Noble Eightfold Path.

Hume's laws of association (resemblance, contiguity, cause and effect)

See something that reminds you of other, things that happen close in time are remembered, things which cause another are associated (causality is a predictable regularity)

Teleological argument

The argument for the existence of God from the evidence of order, and hence design, in nature.

Filial piety

The important virtue and primary duty of respect, obedience, and care for one's parents and elderly family members.

Karma

The universal principle that our actions result in deserved pleasure or pain in this life or the next.

Atman

The universal self, identical with the eternal core of the personality that after death either transmigrates to a new life or attains release from the bonds of existence.

Res cogitans

Thinking thing → mind

Doctrine of double effect

This says that if doing something morally good has a morally bad side-effect, it's ethically okay to do it providing the bad side-effect wasn't intended. This is true even if you foresaw that the bad effect would probably happen.

matters of fact

are beliefs that claim to report the nature of existing things; they are always contingent.

Eight-fold Path

-Right View or Right Understanding, insight into the true nature of reality. -Right Intention, the unselfish desire to realize enlightenment. -Right Speech, using speech compassionately. -Right Action, ethical conduct; manifesting compassion. -Right Livelihood, making a living through ethical and non-harmful means. -Right Effort, cultivating wholesome qualities; releasing unwholesome qualities. -Right Mindfulness, whole body-and-mind awareness. -Right Concentration, meditation or some other dedicated, concentrated practice

Anselm

A Benedictine monk, philosopher, and father of the church who held the title of Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093-1109. Considered the founder of Scholasticism, he has been a major influence in Western theology. Famous for the Ontological Argument from his major work the Proslogion. Ontological: Proof, Cosmological, Arg by Desism, Teleological, Morality

Scholasticism

A Medieval school of philosophy taught by the academics of medieval universities and cathedrals in the period from the 12th to 16th Century. It combined Logic, Metaphysics and semantics into one discipline, and is generally recognised to have developed our understanding of Logic significantly. It is best known for its application in medieval Christian theology, especially in attempts to reconcile the philosophy of the ancient classical philosophers with Christian theology.

Hume

A Scottish philosopher, economist and historian of the Age of Enlightenment. He was an important figure in the Scottish Enlightenment and, along with John Locke and Bishop George Berkeley, one of the three main figureheads of the influential British Empiricism movement. He was a fierce opponent of the Rationalism of Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza, as well as an atheist and a skeptic.

Li

A central concept in early Confucianism. Its essence is conscientious behavior and right action. There are several ways to grasp the concept LI, but essentially it is the proper way to treat oneself and others in:Using the right words (truth: fitting the right word), Doctrine of the mean: avoiding extremes, Respect in the 5 cardinal relationships : -Father-child -Husband-wife -Sibling-sibling -Friend-friend -Ruler-ruled -Reciprocity

Buddhism

A non-theistic system of beliefs based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, an Indian prince later known as the Buddha, in the 5th Century B.C. It is founded on the rejection of certain orthodox Hindu philosophical concepts It advocates a Noble Eightfold Path to end suffering, and its philosophical principles are known as the Four Noble Truths. The philosophy deals extensively with problems in metaphysics, phenomenology, ethics and epistemology. There are three major divisions: Theravada (School of the Elders), including the Thai Forest Tradition Mahayana (Great Vehicle), including such subsidiary schools as Zen Vajrayana (Diamond Vehicle), also known as Tibetan (Lamaism) or Tantric Buddhism

Thomism

A philosophical school that arose as a legacy of the work and thought of this philosopher, theologian, and Doctor of the Church. In philosophy, he disputed questions and commentaries on Aristotle are perhaps his most well-known works.

Sufficient reason

A powerful and controversial philosophical principle stipulating that everything must have a reason, cause, or ground. This simple demand for thoroughgoing intelligibility yields some of the boldest and most challenging theses in the history of philosophy

Zen Buddhism

A school of Mahayana Buddhism that emerged in China about 15 centuries ago. Refers to a mind absorbed in meditation. In any language, the name could be translated "Meditation Buddhism" It began to emerge as a distinctive school of Mahayana Buddhism when the Indian sage Bodhidharma, taught at the Shaolin Monastery of China.To this day Bodhidharma is called the First Patriarch of Zen. His teachings tapped into some developments already in progress, such as the confluence of philosophical Taoism with Buddhism. Zen organized itself into five "houses," or five schools. Two of these, called in Japanese the Rinzai and the Soto schools, still exist and remain distinctive from each other. Zen was transmitted to Vietnam very early, possibly as early as the 7th centuryFocus on how to achieve enlightenmentRock gardens, tea ceremonies → Soto schools Meditation is important but their is a realization of understanding → Rinzai schools A series of teachers transmitted Zen to Korea during the Golden Age. Eihei Dogen (1200-1253), was not the first Zen teacher in Japan, but he was the first to establish a lineage that lives to this day. The West took an interest in Zen after World War II, and now Zen is establishing itself in North America, Europe, and elsewhere

Modified skepticism

A skeptic who does not doubt that at least some things are known but denies or suspends judgment on the possibility of knowledge about some particular subject.

Ataraxia

A state of consciousness, characterized by freedom from mental agitation. It is an important concept for several Hellenistic schools of philosophy, including the Stoics, Epicureans and Skeptics, though each school tends to have a slightly different interpretation.

Epicureanism

A system of philosophy based upon the teachings of the ancient Greek philosopher. He was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. It teaches that the greatest good is to seek modest pleasures in order to attain a state of tranquillity, freedom from fear and absence from bodily pain.

Diogenes

A wealthy son to the banker of Sinope, Turkey he eschewed his family's wealth and chose to lead a life of "cheerful poverty" searching for wisdom. He taught that there exists a "natural law: we ought to follow and where it conflicted with human law, we ought to disdain the arbitrary human convention. He was the first person to use the word COSMOPOLITAN, a citizen of the world.

Locke

Among the most influential political philosophers of the modern period. In the Two Treatises of Government, he defended the claim that men are by nature free and equal against claims that God had made all people naturally subject to a monarch. He argued that people have rights, such as the right to life, liberty, and property, that have a foundation independent of the laws of any particular society. Used the claim that men are naturally free and equal as part of the justification for understanding legitimate political government as the result of a social contract where people in the state of nature conditionally transfer some of their rights to the government in order to better ensure the stable, comfortable enjoyment of their lives, liberty, and property. Since governments exist by the consent of the people in order to protect the rights of the people and promote the public good, governments that fail to do so can be resisted and replaced with new governments.

Argument from design

An argument for the existence of God based on the hypothesis of an ultimate design, intention, or purpose in the universe

Cosmological argument

An argument for the existence of God that claims that all things in nature depend on something else for their existence and that the whole cosmos must therefore itself depend on a being that exists independently or necessarily.

Moral argument

An argument for the existence of God. Arguments from morality tend to be based on moral normativity or moral order.They observe some aspect of morality and argue that God is the best or only explanation for this, concluding that God must exist.

Wu-wei

An important concept of Taoism and means natural action, or in other words, action that does not involve struggle or excessive effort. It is the cultivation of a mental state in which our actions are quite effortlessly in alignment with the flow of life. Non-action, spontaneity, effortlessness.

Rationalism

Appealing to intellectual and deductive reason (as opposed to sensory experience or any religious teachings) as the source of knowledge or justification. Thus, it holds that some propositions are knowable by us by intuition alone, while others are knowable by being deduced through valid arguments from intuited propositions. Depending on the strength of the belief, this can result in a range of positions from the moderate view that reason has precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge, to the radical position that reason is the only path to knowledge.

Simple Ideas

Are the elements of thought we passively receive through sensation and reflection. According to Locke, they mostly agree with things. Thus we can have ideas derived from one sense e.g., taste, smell, colour, through more than one sense, figure, motion, size, through reflection, perception; through sensation and reflection both, pleasure and pain

Quinque Viae

Argument from motion (Aristotle): Unmoved mover argument - every motion has a prior cause, there must be something that starts all motion but in itself doesn't require something to move on it. Argument from efficient cause (Avicenna). The maker - Argument from contingency and necessity (Maimonides), Argument from gradation (Plato and Augustine), Argument from teleology (St John Damascene)

Epictetus

Born in Hierapolis, Turkey and taken as a slave— Would eventually wind up in Rome where after his manumission would study philosophy. Exiled from Rome by Emperor Domitian he settled in Nicopolis, Turkey and founded a school of philosophy there dying in 135. His major work is the Enchiridion or Handbook. -Ataraxia: tranquility -Apathia: unperturbed ness -Aponia: pain free -Autrakia: self sufficiency -Askesis: discipline

Descartes

Born in La Haye, France. Attended the college de Fleche. University of Poitiers. Served with Prince Maurice of Nassau during the 30 years wars. Maurice Beekmann, Mersenne, Gassendi, Hobbes (lovers?). Lived in Brussels, Amsterdam. Three Dreams: In November 1619, while stationed in Neuburg, Germany, Descartes shut himself in a "stove" and after falling asleep, he had three dreams that divine spirit revealed to him in a new philosophy. He concluded from these dreams that the pursuit of science would prove to be the pursuit of true wisdom. Mathematics, Analytical geometry (algebra + geometry) - provides the basis of Newton's and Leibniz's discovery of calculus. Introduced x and y axis's. Pioneered superscripts. Having asserted the truth of the cogito, he turns to an examination of the contents of his immediate consciousness and finds a mediated experience of body.

Augustine

Confessions- first autobiography. Bishop of Milan. He combined Platonism with Christianity. "Confessions", "City of God". The problem of evil → Good vs. evil and "Moral evil". Time and necessary truths. The hierarchy of being (the great chain of being).

Res extensa

Extended thing(s) → matter

Nirvana

Extinguishment; Enlightenment. It is the earliest and most common term used to describe the goal of the Buddhist path

Spinoza

He is considered one of the great Rationalists of the 17th Century. One of the definitive ethicists (he took a largely Moral Relativist position), and as a harbinger of enlightened modernity. His metaphysical views were essentially monistic and pantheistic, holding that God and Nature were just two names for the same single underlying reality.

Chuang-Tzu

He was an influential Chinese and Confucian philosopher who lived around the 4th century BCE during the Warring States period , a period corresponding to the greatest period of Chinese philosophy known as the Hundred Schools of Thought. He is credited with writing the Zhuangzi, within which he expresses a philosophy of skepticism, anarchism, ecology.

Confucius

His "golden rule" offered a version of a deontological (i.e. rule-based) ethic found in every major world religion today... Confucians often use the "Golden Rule" to define Jen

Dualism

In Metaphysics is the belief that there are two kinds of reality: material (physical) and immaterial (spiritual). In Philosophy of Mind, it is the position that mind and body are in some categorical way separate from each other, and that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical in nature.

Apatheia

In Stoicism, refers to a state of mind in which one is not disturbed by the passions. It is best translated by the word equanimity rather than indifference.

Zen

In any language, the name could be translated "Meditation Buddhism. It began to emerge as a distinctive school of Mahayana Buddhism. Organized itself into five "houses," or five schools. Two of these, called in Japanese the Rinzai and the Soto schools, still exist and remain distinctive from each other. It was transmitted to Vietnam very early, possibly as early as the 7th century. Focus on how to achieve enlightenment. Rock gardens, tea ceremonies → Soto schools

Satori

Is a Japanese Buddhist term for awakening, "comprehension; understanding"

Tabula rasa

Is the notion, popularized by John Locke, that the human mind receives knowledge and forms itself based on experience alone, without any pre-existing innate ideas that would serve as a starting point. Thus implies that individual human beings are born with no built-in mental content, and that their identity is defined entirely by their experiences and sensory perceptions of the outside world. In general terms, the contention that we start life literally "from scratch" can be said to imply a one-sided emphasis on empiricism over idealism.

Uniformity of nature

Is the principle that the course of nature continues uniformly the same. In particular, the uniformities observed in the past will hold for the present and future as well.

Tao

Literally means "path" or "way", although it more often used as a term that describes the flow of the universe or the force behind the natural order.

Lao-Tzu

Lived during the decline of the Zhou dynasty and criticized the Confucian philosophy. Worked as a librarian.

Buddha

Means "awakened one", someone who has awakened from the sleep of ignorance and sees things as they really are; a person who is completely free from all faults and and mental obstructions

Aponia

Means the absence of pain, and was regarded by the Epicureans to be the height of bodily pleasure. As with the other Hellenistic schools of philosophy, the Epicureans believed that the goal of human life is happiness

Thomas Aquinas Ockham

One of the greatest philosophers who ever lived→ he wrote over a million words and managed to re-introduce Aristotle to the Christian world by finding a rapprochement between Catholic dogma and Aristotelian philosophy. He argued that there was no conflict between the truths of religion and the truths of science; any apparent conflicts arise from either bad theology or bad science or both. This emphasis on reason will be hallmark of Thomistic philosophy.

Cyrenaicism

One of the minor schools of Greek philosophy, flourishing in the late 4th and early 3rd B.C. This philosophy taught that present individual pleasure is the highest good. It is thus an early version of hedonism, but its importance in philosophy declined in favor of the later version of Epicurus.

The problem of induction

Questions whether inductive reasoning leads to knowledge understood in the classic philosophical sense, since it focuses on the alleged lack of justification for either:Generalizing about the properties of a class of objects based on some number of observations of particular instances of that class or, presupposing that a sequence of events in the future will occur as it always has in the past

Samsara

Reincarnation; the cycle of death and rebirth to which life in the material world is bound.

Stoicism

Teaches the development of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions.

Deus sive natura

That eternal and infinite being we call God, or Nature, acts from the same necessity from which he exists

Descartes' three conjectures (sense, dream and evil demon):

The Sense Conjecture: All that I know, Descartes tells us, arises from my senses but my senses are not completely reliable... "Whatever I have accepted until now as most true has come to me through my senses. But occasionally I have found that they have deceived me, and it is unwise to trust completely those who have deceived us once." The Dream Conjecture: "Indeed! As if I didn't remember other occasions when I have been tricked by exactly similar thoughts while asleep! As I think about this more carefully, I realize that there is never any reliable way of distinguishing being awake from being asleep. This discovery makes me feel dizzy, which itself reinforces the notion that I may be asleep!" The Evil Demon: "So I shall suppose that some malicious, powerful, cunning demon has done all he can to deceive me—rather than this being done by God, who is supremely good and the source of truth. I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely dreams that the demon has contrived as traps for my judgment."

Reflection

The act of reflecting or the state of being reflected. Something, such as light, radiant heat, sound, or an image, that is reflected. Serious thinking or careful consideration: engaged in reflection on the problem. A thought or an opinion resulting from such thinking or consideration. An indirect expression of censure or discredit

Dogma

The doctrine of belief in a religion or a political system. The literal meaning of this in ancient Greek was something that seems true.

radical skepticism

The philosophical position that knowledge is most likely impossible. Skeptics hold that doubt exists as to the veracity of every belief and that certainty is therefore never justified.

Pineal gland

The pineal gland is a tiny organ in the center of the brain that played an important role in Descartes' philosophy. He regarded it as the principal seat of the soul and the place in which all our thoughts are formed.

Cogito

The principle establishing the existence of a being from the fact of its thinking or awareness.

Hinduism

The religion of the majority of people in India and Nepal and parts of Pakistan. It boasts over 900 million adherents worldwide. It's the oldest living religion in the world. It precedes recorded history and has no human founder. It is a mystical religion, leading the devotee to experience truth within reaching the pinnacle of consciousness uniting the human and divine as one. Has four main denominations--Saivism, Shaktism, Vaishnavism and Smartism. Yet it resists easy definition partly because of the sheer vastness of practices and beliefs found within it. It is also closely associated conceptually and historically with the other Indian religions

Skepticism

The senses are easily fooled, and reason follows too easily our desires. Pyrrhonism or Pyrrhonian skepticism was a school of skepticism founded by his follower Aenesidemus in the first century BC and recorded by Sextus Empiricus in the late 2nd century or early 3rd century CE.Sextus Empiricus (200 CE) became the main authority for Greek skepticism, and developed the position further, incorporating aspects of empiricism into the basis for knowledge. It all starts with an Epoche or suspension of belief similar to Socrates' aporia.

OM

The symbol of Brahman. It is the word of power. It is the sacred monosyllable. It is the essence of the vedas. It is the boat to take you across to the other shore of fearlessness and immortality.

Epistemology

The theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. It is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.

Empiricism

The theory that the origin of all knowledge is sense experience. It emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory perception, in the formation of ideas, and argues that the only knowledge humans can have is a posteriori. Most empiricists also discount the notion of innate ideas or innatism.

Best of all Possible worlds

The thesis that the existing world is the best world that God could have created.

Confucianism

This school was developed from the teachings of the sage Confucius (551 - 479 B.C.), and collected in the Analects of Confucius. It is a system of moral, social, political, and quasi-religious thought, whose influence also spread to Korea and Japan. The major Confucian concepts include ren, zhengming, zhong, xiao, and li. It introduced the Golden Rule, the concept of Yin and Yang, the idea of meritocracy, and of reconciling opposites in order to arrive at some middle ground combining the best of both.

Taoism

This thought focuses on wu wei ("non-action"), spontaneity, humanism, relativism, emptiness and the strength of softness (or flexibility). Nature and ancestor spirits are common in this popular though, although typically there is also a pantheon of gods, often headed by the Jade Emperor. The Three Jewels of the Tao are: Compassion, Moderation and Humility. It shares much with the later movement known as Zen. Both focus on accepting the natural as perfected and ideal and argue that to achieve happiness or serenity one must "let go" of the selfish concerns of civilization such as fame, fortune and power.

Primary quality

Thoughts to be properties of objects that are independent of any observer, such as solidity, extension, motion, number and figure. These characteristics convey facts. They exist in the thing itself, can be determined with certainty, and do not rely on subjective judgments.

Secondary quality

Thoughts to be properties that produce sensations in observers, such as color, taste, smell, and sound. They can be described as the effect things have on certain people. Knowledge that comes from secondary qualities does not provide objective facts about things.

Berkeley

Was an Irish philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment, best known for his theory of Immaterialism, a type of Idealism (he is sometimes considered the father of modern Idealism). He is also a major figure in the British Empiricism movement, although his Empiricism is of a much more radical kind, arising from his mantra "to be is to be perceived". He was a brilliant critic of his predecessors and a talented metaphysician capable of defending the apparently counter-intuitive theory of Immaterialism. He also had some minor influence on the development of mathematics (and calculus in particular).

Epicurus

Was the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism. Just a few fragments and letters of Epicurus's 300 written works remain. He also founded the third great ancient school and called it, simply, The Garden. The purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized by ataraxia—peace and freedom from fear—and aponia—the absence of pain—and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends and the search for wisdom. Wisdom was to be searched for in studying nature and philosophy.

Relations of Ideas

are a priori and indestructible bonds created between ideas. All logically true statements are these. They are intuitively or demonstrably certain, and a denial of such a proposition implies a contradiction.

Vivacity

the quality or state of being vivacious. liveliness; animation; sprightliness.

Natural law

we ought to follow and where it conflicted with human law, we ought to disdain the arbitrary human convention