Philosophy Final Flashcards
(55 cards)
he ancient philosophers knew there were 4 elements. Name these elements
Water
Air
Fire
Earth
Which country was home to the activities of the earliest known philosophers?
Greece
What is the definition of the word ‘Philosophy’?
Love of wisdom
Monists believed that the world is composed of:
One thing
Define Anthropomorphism
assigning human attributes to non human objects or entities
How did Anaximander believe this element became the other four elements (that is, what caused it to become those four elements)?
Entropy
Thales
-The first of the monists: Reality is composed of one thing.
-Thales’s assumption: If there is change in the world, there must be
something that does not change.
-Thales chooses water as the primary element from which all others are
derived.
Anaximander
There must be a hidden abstract element—the “boundless,” the “unlimited”—from which all other elements are derived.
Anaximenes
-Air is the fundamental element from which all others are derived.
-The world as it appears to us is composed of air in more or less condensed
or “rarified forms.” (Quality is determined by quantity: more or less air in a
given space.)
Pythagoras
Number is the fundamental building block of reality.
All explanations must be mathematical.
Xenophanes
A criticism of the religious views in Greek mythology: On Olympus, the gods
are like very strong, badly behaved, immoral humans.
If there are gods, they don’t look and dress like humans, any more than
they look and dress like cows or lions (attack on anthropomorphism in reli-
gious thought).
Heraclitus
-Fire is the basic element from which all other elements derive (or, more
likely, fire is a metaphor for the nature of reality).
-Change is the key feature of reality. (“You can’t step in the same river twice.”)
-Heraclitus is “the Dark One”: His philosophy was interpreted as pessimism.
Parmenides
The opposite of Heraclitus: Nothing ever changes; motion is an illusion.
Only Being is real, because “nothingness” and “change” are self-contradic-
tory concepts.
Being is uncreated, unchanging, eternal, immovable, indivisible, solid, and
spherical (equally real in all directions).
Zeno
Defender of Parmenides’s philosophy using reductio ad absurdum argumen-
tation against Parmenides’s detractors.
Zeno’s paradoxes are proofs that motion and change are impossible.
Overview: In the face of the powerful Parmenides’s revelation of the implica-
tions of monism, either Parmenides’s conclusions will have to be accepted
or monism will have to be abandoned. In the face of the powerful logical
arguments of Zeno, future philosophers who believe in change and motion
will have to explain how these phenomena are possible.
Empedocles
The first of the pluralists: Reality is composed of an irreducible plurality of elements.
The “four roots”—fire, air, earth, and water—cannot be reduced to some-
thing more basic.
Motion and change are real, produced by two forces: a positive force (Love)
and a negative force (Strife).
First recorded theory of evolution
Anaxagoras
Pluralism continued: Everything produced from “infinite seeds” (replacing
Empedocles’s “four roots”).
Motion and change are caused by Nous (Mind or Reason).
Leucippus and Democritus
Pluralism and materialism.
Atomism: The world is composed of “atoms”: invisible, indivisible particles of matter in constant motion traveling in pre-determined paths, colliding,
grouping, and scattering according to rigid natural laws.
The Sophists
Goal: To replace philosophy with rhetoric and the pursuit of truth with the pursuit of rhetorical victory for the power it might bring; to replace
objectivity with subjectivism, objective truth with relativity , and knowledge
with skepticism.
Protagoras
Relativity: “Man is the measure of all things.”
Thrasymachus
Power, not law or morality, should be everyone’s goal. Might makes right.
Callicles
Power, not justice, is good. Power is good for survival. Survival allows
pleasure. Food, drink, and sex are the meaning of life.
Morality is the weapon of the weak masses to shackle powerful individuals.
Critias
Clever rulers control their subjects by encouraging the fear of non-existent
gods.
Socrates
The greatest opponent of the Sophists, challenging them at almost every level.
Socrates’s motto: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Socrates queried everybody on every philosophical topic: knowledge, being, truth, meaning, justice, love, beauty, death, etc.
He professed to know nothing, being on a permanent quest for knowledge.
Irony as a tool of analysis.
He became the first
recorded martyr for philosophy.
PLATO
Plato’s goal in Republic: to establish a complete account of ontology,
epistemology, ethics, social and political philosophy, psychology, and
philosophy of art through a series of dialogues with Socrates as the
spokesman.
Plato’s Main Philosophical Ideas:
Ontology: two main divisions—the “intelligible world” at the top and the
“visible world” below, the latter being a mere copy of the former.
Intelligible world divided into the “Forms” at the top and “Formal
Concepts” below, the latter being a mere copy of the former.
