Chapter 2 - Ancient Greece

Question 1

What is animism?

Answer 1

Everything in nature has a soul

Question 2

What is anthropomorphism?

Answer 2

attributing human qualities and abilities to nonhumans

Question 3

What is magic?

Answer 3

Use of words, rituals and potions to influence the spirits to change the situation

Question 4

Describe early Greek religion.

Answer 4

1) olympian religion - for the nobility (Zeus, Hera, etc)

2) Dionysiac-orphic religion - working class, seek pleasure, soul liberated in the afterlife

Question 5

Describe Thales’s philosophy.

Answer 5

• geometric principles could be extended to the universe
• welcomed criticism & critical condition
• physis = water (because water is in everything)

Question 6

Describe Anaximander’s philosophy.

Answer 6

• Physis was a substance that had the capability of becoming anything
• called physis the “boundless” or the “infinite”
• water + fire = nothing (so physis couldn’t be either)

Question 7

Describe Heraclitus’s philosophy.

Answer 7

• Physis is fire because it transforms
• nature is in a constant state of change (is always “becoming”, never “is”)
• Everything exists between opposites

Question 8

Describe how early Greek medicine influenced later medicine?

Answer 8

Early medicine: temple doctors, healing rituals practised by priests, ceremonies.
Alcmaeon, Hippocrates and Galen all moved away from temple medicine, instead thinking the cure for sicknesses were to find a balance between various things

Question 9

What was the philosophy of the pre-socratic thinkers?

Answer 9

Physis: nature of everything

Question 10

Describe Empedocles’s theory of “eidola”. How is this different than Leibniz’s theory of monads?

Answer 10

• Eidola: objects in the world throw off tiny copies of themselves (also called “emanations”); these enter the blood through the pores in the body which then combine with elements like themselves. The fusion of external and internal elements results in perception, which takes place in the heart.
• Monads: act as atoms, but each have a separate consciousness…they never influence each other but only appear to do so.
• While eidola are copies of objects in the world, monads exists in an infinite number in the universe; eidola influence our perception but monads act in parallel with our mental activities.

Question 11

What was the main philosophy that the Sophists held to?

Answer 11

Truth is relative

Question 12

Describe the philosophy of Protogoras?

Answer 12

• truth depends on the perciever

Question 13

Describe the philosophy of Gorgias?

Answer 13

• believed all things are equally false (nihilism: there is no objective basis for truth; solipsism: one can only be aware of one’s own experiences and mental states)

Question 14

Describe the philosophy of Xenophanes?

Answer 14

• attacked religion as being a human invention

Question 15

Describe Socrates’s philosophy. What was his reaction to the sophists’s relativity? What was his method of inductive definition? What was the goal in life, according to him?

Answer 15

• Disagreed that no truth exists beyond personal opinion
• Method of inductive definition: examines instances of a concept (ex. beauty) > ask what do these instances have in common? > find the essence of that concept…essence was universal
• Understanding essences constituted knowledge & the goal in life was to gain knowledge

Question 16

Describe Plato’s theory of forms.

Answer 16

Plato theorized that everything in the empirical world is a copy of some pure form found in the abstract. Example: all the cats we see are copies of some pure quality of “catness”

Question 17

Describe Plato’s analogy of the divided line.

Answer 17

The highest form of knowledge is grasping at the forms themselves. To look at a picture is the lowest form of learning because you are looking at the image twice removed from its original form (the form itself and then the painter’s perception of it). Even when we confront the object itself, the best we can do is formulate an opinion on it. Higher still is the contemplation of mathematical problems, but even this is applied to empirical things. Thinking about mathematics in the abstract is the highest form of learning.

picture > object > mathematical formulas > mathematical abstractions

Question 18

Describe Plato’s allegory of the cave.

Answer 18

In his allegory of the cave, Plato describes how difficult it is, after reaching enlightenment, to steer others in the right direction (they often choose ignorance instead)

Question 19

What was Plato’s reminiscence theory of knowledge?

Answer 19

All knowledge is innate and is gained through introspection (reminiscence from remembering the experiences the soul had prior to entering the body)

Question 20

Describe Plato’s tripartite nature of the soul.

Answer 20

The soul was comprised of three parts:

1) the immortal - the rational component that existed with the forms
2) the courageous - emotional or spirited (mortal emotions such as fear, rage and love)
3) the appetitive - mortal needs such as hunger, thirst, sex
- the job of the immortal was to control the appetitive and the courageous in order to gain knowledge through introspection

Question 21

What is the major difference in Aristotle’s theory of gaining knowledge, in contrast to Plato’s?

Answer 21

Plato: knowledge gained through introspection (rationalism)
Aristotle: knowledge gained through sensory experience (empiricism)

Question 22

How did Aristotle seek to understand object phenomenon? (4 causes)

Answer 22

One must know the causes:’

1) material cause: matter of which it is made
2) formal cause: form or pattern of the object
3) efficient cause: who made it?
4) final cause: why it exists

Question 23

Describe Aristotle’s hierarchy of souls.

Answer 23

• All living things have a soul:
  1) vegetative soul: provides growth, assimilation of food, and reproduction (plants)
  2) sensitive soul: functions of vegetative soul + ability to sense and respond to environment; experience pleasure and pain, and use memory (animals)
  3) rational soul: functions of vegetative soul + sensitive soul + ability of thinking & rational thought

Question 24

What was Aristotle’s theory of sensation and reasoning?

Answer 24

sensory info: experience > common sense: synthesized experience > passive reason: use of synthesized experiences > active reason: abstraction of essences from utilized experience

Question 25

According to Aristotle, what is the difference between remembering and recall?

Answer 25

Remembering: spontaneous recollection of a previous experience
Recall: an actual mental search for a previous experience (practise of recall affected by laws of association)

Question 26

What are Aristotle’s 4 laws of association?

Answer 26

1) law of contiguity: associate things that occurred close in time and/or in same situation
2) law of similarity: similar things are associated
3) law of contrast: opposite things are associated
4) law of frequency: the more often events occur together, the stronger the association

Question 27

What is associationism?

Answer 27

belief that one or more laws of association can be used to explain the origins of ideas, memory, or how complex ideas are formed from simple ideas

Question 28

What was Aristotle’s theory on imagination and dreaming?

Answer 28

Imagination: lingering effects of sensory experience
Dreaming: images from past experience which are stimulated by events inside and outside the body

Question 29

According to Aristotle, what was the root of happiness?

Answer 29

Happiness is doing what is natural

Question 30

According to Aristotle, what do emotions also influence (motivation)?

Answer 30

Emotions influence us to be more selective concerning our appetites and give us greater rewards when we employ reasoning to them.