Philosophical foundations

Question 1

Skepticism

Answer 1

(Descartes) aims to eliminate all belief that it is possible to doubt, thus leaving only basic beliefs. Don’t really doubt beliefs about external world etc, but philosophical question of how they can be justified

Question 2

Dualism

Answer 2

There are thinking things (human minds - res cogitans) and extending things (everything else - res extensa)

Question 3

Empiricism

Answer 3

Knowledge comes primarily from the senses

Question 4

Ideas

Answer 4

Thoughts ≈ mental imagery. Derived

Question 5

Impression

Answer 5

Senses ≈ perception. Primary

Question 6

Simple perceptions

Answer 6

Cannot be separated further. Both idea and impressions

Question 7

Complex perceptions

Answer 7

Can be divided into underlying simple perceptions

Question 8

Analytic

Answer 8

True by their meaning (it’s contained in the subject itself) (e.g. “All bachelors are unmarried”)

Question 9

Synthetic

Answer 9

How the meaning relates to the world (it’s not contained in the subject itself). Adds new information

Question 10

A priori

Answer 10

Analyzing concepts without experience. What is left when ‘one removes from our experience everything that belongs to the senses’

Question 11

A posteriori

Answer 11

Gained through experience

Question 12

Copernican revolution (in philosophy)

Answer 12

Kant suggests that we must shift our perspective to consider that objects conform to our knowledge rather than our knowledge conforming to objects. This means that the way we perceive and understand the world is shaped by the inherent structures of the human mind.
“If intuition has to conform to the constitution of the objects, then I do not see how we can know anything of them a priori, but if the object (as the object of the senses) conforms to the constitution of our faculty of intuition, then I can very well represent this possibility to myself

Question 13

Metaphysics

Answer 13

Studies what reality is. A wholly isolated speculative cognition of reason that elevates itself entirely above all instruction from experience. Our mind shaping our perception of the world rather than the world directly shaping our mind.

Question 14

The transcendental aesthetic

Answer 14

Space and time shape our intuition. We cannot abstract from them.

Question 15

Manifest image

Answer 15

Things-as-they-appear-to-us: Includes all the usual objects of our everyday world, e.g. persons, animals, material things

Question 16

Scientific image

Answer 16

Things-in-themselves: Allows for imperceptible entities that explain the perceptible (manifest) qualities

Question 17

Justified true beliefs

Answer 17

S knows P iff:
(i) P is true
(ii) S believes P
(iii) S is justified in believing P
S = subject
P = proposition

Question 18

Gettier problem

Answer 18

Is JTB knowledge? Gettier argues no with the example with Smith and Jones and the man who has 10 coins in his pocket will get the job

Question 19

Idealism

Answer 19

The view that only ideas exist, there is no external world beyond ideas. The metaphysical view that associates reality to ideas in the mind rather than to material objects (Kant - he soon changed)

Question 20

Epistemological idealism

Answer 20

Knowledge about the world comes primarily from knowledge of the mind (Kant)

Question 21

Phenomena

Answer 21

The world as we experience it

Question 22

Noumena

Answer 22

The world as it is in itself, independent of our perceptions

Question 23

Sensation

Answer 23

The effect of an object on the capacity for representations, insofar as we are affected by it

Question 24

Reason

Answer 24

The capacity of applying logic consciously by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth

Question 25

Formal logic

Answer 25

The abstract study of propositions, statements, or assertively used sentences and of deductive arguments. It is founded on a set of principles and philosophies

Question 26

Cause

Answer 26

An object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it, that the idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other

Question 27

Transcendental logic

Answer 27

Contains the principles of pure thinking

Question 28

Intuition

Answer 28

In whatever way and through whatever means a cognition may relate to objects, that through which it relates immediately to them, and at which all thoughts as a means is directed as an end. The raw data of experience, such as sights, sounds, and other sensory impressions.

Question 29

Sensibility (Kant)

Answer 29

Senses

Question 30

Constant conjunction

Answer 30

Term used by Hume to describe the relation between two events one of which invariably accompanies the other.

Question 31

Content

Answer 31

The sensory data or the material that our thoughts are about, which we receive through experience

Question 32

Necessity (Hume)

Answer 32

The “connection” between a cause and an effect, exists only in the mind. Cannot be empirically observed.

Question 33

Persons (manifest image)

Answer 33

Puts normativity and reason at center stage. According to the manifest image, people think and they do things for reasons

Question 34

Things/objects (manifest image)

Answer 34

Are very different from mere things; things do not act rationally, in accordance with normative rules, but only in accord with laws or perhaps habits

Question 35

Perennial philosophy

Answer 35

What Sellars called the ‘perennial philosophy’ from Plato onwards accepts the reality of the elements and features of the manifest image, but it is also a perennial problem to compare and reconcile its claims with that of the scientific image, which is in reality the arbiter ‘of what is, that it is, and of what is not that it is not’

Question 36

Synoptic view

Answer 36

This view does not simply merge the the manifest and scientific images but seeks to understand their respective contributions and limitations

Question 37

Res cogitans

Answer 37

Mental substances or minds Essence: thinking or conscious Properties: Indivisible, free will, known directly (since we ‘are’ minds)

Question 38

Res extensa

Answer 38

Extended or physical objects or bodies Essence: extended in 3D space Properties: Divisible, bound by laws of nature, known indirectly

Question 39

Cogito ergo sum

Answer 39

“I think, therefore i am”. You cannot doubt the fact that you are doubting - because if you doubt the fact that you are doubting you are all the same doubting. - escapes his skepticism.

Question 40

Cartesian/substance dualism

Answer 40

Res cogitans and res extensa

Question 41

Appearance

Answer 41

“the undetermined object of an empirical intuition” matter: the part of appearance which corresponds to sensation (e.g. color, hardness…) -> physical object form: “that which allows the manifold of appearance to be intuited as ordered in certain relations” -> what that experience represents about reality