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Theology > Rationalism and Empircism > Flashcards

Rationalism and Empircism Flashcards

1
Q

Define A priori

A

Propositions which can be known to be true prior or independently of experience

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2
Q

Define a posteriori

A

propositions which depend upon evidence which can only be provided from experience

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3
Q

Define analytic

A

True by virtue of the meaning of the words/concepts used to express it so that denying it would be a self-contradiction

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4
Q

Example of an analytic proposition?

A

All bachelors are unmarried

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5
Q

Define synthetic

A

Not necessarily true because of the meaning of words/concepts used to express it
verified by experience

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6
Q

Example of an synthetic proposition?

A

my cat is black

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7
Q

Define necessary

A

Necessary truths have to be true and it to say they are false is logically impossible
A is a necessary condition for B when you have to have A in order to have B

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8
Q

Define sufficient

A

A is a sufficient condition of B if you have A as enough to have B

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9
Q

Define contingent

A

A contingent proposition is neither necessarily true nor false (not a contradiction nor a tautology or self-evident proposition)

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10
Q

Define a deductive argument

A

If the premises are true and logically related, then the conclusion follows necessarily. Once premises have been accepted it is impossible to deny the conclusion without a contradiction or absurdity e.g. a syllogism

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11
Q

Example of a deductive argument

A

P1: All bachelors are male
P2: Sam is a bachelor
C: Sam is male

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12
Q

Define an inductive argument

A

Uses evidence to suggest the high probability of something rather than an absolute logical certainty. Involves observations of specific incidences in support of a conclusion. The conclusion doesn’t follow necessarily but is likely to be correct.

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13
Q

Examples of when inductive arguments are used

A

In science and law courts

“Convinced beyond all reasonable doubt”

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14
Q

What does Rationalism uphold?

A

All knowledge is derived from, or depended upon, truths obtained by the employment of unaided reason alone

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15
Q

According to Rationalists, we can have “…” knowledge of how things are outside the mind

A

synthetic a priori

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16
Q

According to Rationalists, all knowledge forms part of…

A

one great deductive system

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17
Q

According to Rationalists, some knowledge is…

A

innate

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18
Q

According to Rationalists, if there is such a thing as, empirically acquired knowledge it is…

A

inferior

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19
Q

What does Empiricism uphold?

A

All knowledge is ultimately derived from or consists in truths obtained from experience alone

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20
Q

According to Empiricists, all a priori knowledge is only of…

A

analytic propositions

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21
Q

According to Empiricists, all knowledge is acquired…

A

inductively

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22
Q

According to Empiricists, there is no…

A

innate knowledge

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23
Q

According to Empiricists, rationally acquired knowledge is in error unless…

A

it can be traced back to empirical sensation

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24
Q

Give the two types of relevant rationalism

A

Platonic (Plato) & Cartesian (Descartes)

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25
Q

What are the Greek terms Plato uses for knowledge and belief/opinion?

A

Episteme and doxa

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26
Q

Describe Plato on knowledge and belief

A

Plato argued opinion/belief relates to the senses (empirical) and knowledge to the real of Forms (rational)
Doxa is fallible and can be mistaken whilst episteme is infallible and about what is real

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27
Q

How does Plato explain our innate knowledge of Forms?

A

Learning is recollection…
Our souls know forms before we are borns, people have immortal souls. Therefore, we have concepts of the Ideal Forms without having sensory experience of them.
The soul is the seat of rationality

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28
Q

Examples of Plato’s innate ideas and why

A

Numbers - we don’t have sensory experiences of numbers themselves; we know what double, half etc. means even though 2 is both double 1 and half 4.

Beauty - Plato argued concepts such as beauty and justice are never encountered themselves (beautiful things/just things do not = beauty and justice). Plato concluded we must acquire these concepts by observing their essential nature with our minds not our senses.

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29
Q

Criticism 1 of Plato on knowledge (importance of sensory experience)

A

Plato’s ideas on immortality depend on recalling things we already know. This can be rejected as empirical knowledge helps us survive so we need knowledge of the physical world.

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30
Q

Criticism 2 (rejection of Meno)

A

Meno’s slave boy example can be rejected as the teacher can be said to have strongly implied the answers rather than the slave boy having innate, pre-natal knowledge.

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31
Q

What is a “clear and distinct” idea according to Descartes?

A

o No one can agree on anything completely, therefore there are no definite truths.
o However, we can determine definite truths if we examine them fully and find no doubts.
o Ideas that he cannot doubt, must be definite truths. These are clear and distinct ideas.
o We must break down every problem into the smallest parts and then build arguments back up without doubt.
o Clear and distinct ideas are at least the truest ideas. These are his existence and God’s existence.
o Constantly deceived by senses, but sight and dreams must have some foundations of truth within.

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32
Q

What is Foundationalism?

A

Foundationalists look for beliefs that are indubitable or self-justifying to build the rest of their knowledge upon

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33
Q

What is D’s 1st wave of doubt? Examples?

A

Sensory deception

  • One can believe what they are seeing is there but we can be deceived e.g. illusions, mirages, things too far away to see
  • Therefore, “never to trust entirely those who deceive us”
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34
Q

What is D’s 2nd wave of doubt? Examples

A

Dreams
- D Doubts that we are not just dreaming because when he is actually dreaming he thinks that it is lucid life
- Therefore, all existence could be a dream
However, again not enough because whether we are dreaming or not self-justifying/analytic truths (e.g. 2+2+4) remain true. Moreover, things that appear in dreams aren’t imaginary, they. are related to truth and only include things we can know (we cannot come up with new concepts in dreams)
Therefore this asserts there must be a real world because maths is still active.

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35
Q

What is D’s 3rd wave of doubt? Examples?

A

Evil demon

  • D doubts whether God would deceive us because he also has the power to wish D to be deceived every time he forms a judgement
  • It would contradict God’s omni-benevolence to allow us to be wrong however he must permit it sometimes
  • If this does not suffice, D supposes there is not a God but rather an evil demon who is the source of truth and uses all his power to deceive;
  • This would make all external things illusions and D believes he could be wrong to believe his own body actually exists
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36
Q

What does D conclude? Why is this important for his rationalism?

A

“cogito ergo sum” - I think therefore I am
This is an analytic truth and the first certainty D found; it is true just by thinking it and is important for his rationalism because it is a self-justifying belief from which a body of knowledge can be formed without sense experience

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37
Q

Summarise D’s metaphor of the wax to describe the supremacy of the cogito

A
  • When wax melts, its physical properties change yet we understand it to remain as wax
  • According to D, what we recognise as remaining is not properties perceived empirically but the stuff underlying these qualities
  • D argues it impossible to imagine every state wax could be so concludes we do not understand wax with our imagination
  • For D, the only possible option left by which we apprehend the wax is by the intellect or understanding
  • D claims it is not our senses which perceive the wax, it is our mind which understands beyond physical appearance seen by senses and with an “intuition of the mins” perceives the wax’s essential nature

Ultimately his own existence as a thinking mind is more certain than the wax: whether or not the wax exists, D can ponder this so he must himself exist.

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38
Q

Examples of rationalists

A

Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Plato

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39
Q

examples of empiricists

A

Aristotle, Hume, Locke, Berkeley.

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40
Q

List Descartes’ innate ideas

A

Belief in God, maths, geometry.

41
Q

Descartes quote on knowledge known through reason

A

“something known by reason cannot be false.”

42
Q

Anselm’s ontological argument

A
  1. God is the greatest being, nothing is better.
  2. It is greater to exist in reality than just the mind.
  3. Therefore God must exist in reality.
43
Q

Critique of Anselm - Guanilo

A

Think of the most perfect lost island and use the same logic.
Using Anselm’s logic you can materialise anything you want.

44
Q

Anselm’s 2nd Ontological argument

A

Added the key distinction of God as a necessary being. Things like islands are contingent, they don’t need to exist.

45
Q

Descartes continued the ontological argument. What was Kant’s criticism of it?

A

Existence is not predicate (it does not add anything) saying it exists doesn’t add anything to it. to know about something you must experience, not just know it is there.

46
Q

Descartes Trademark argument

A

You cannot conceive of perfection as you can never experience perfection.

His idea of God is perfect and therefore cannot be from anything he has experienced.

Thus, his idea of God must be innate and planted as a ‘trademark’ of him.

47
Q

Hume Criticism of Descartes’ trademark argument

A

o We develop the idea of perfection from extrapolating our experiences
o We cannot have a notion of perfection prior to experiencing something
o We cannot form an idea that is not related to our experiences.
o Perfection is an abstract concept that doesn’t exist except in the mind, it is not a valuable concept.

48
Q

Chomsky argument for innate knowledge: innate language structure

Poverty of the Stimulus

A

example of a child being able to conjugate verbs and forming sentences that rhea have never heard. This seems to hint at some form of innate understanding of the structure of language.

49
Q

Descartes quote about distinct and clear ideas

A

“I could take it as a general rule that things we conceive very vividly and very clearly are all true”

50
Q

Criticism of Clear and distinct ideas

A

o Cartesian circle, circular reasoning. – I know something to be true because I discern it clearly and distinctly.
o I cannot be deceived of this truth as God is not a deceiver.
o My idea of God is discerned clearly and distinctly. This whole argument relies on God to prove himself.
o How is his statement “clear and distinct” clear and distinct itself?

51
Q

Aristotle’s empiricism

A

o Knowledge comes from the senses, not innate, posteriori.
o Argues that there are essences of things that you begin to understand when you experience lots of them. You can begin to categorise a dog as something furry that barks, has 4 legs, wags tail etc.
o We must look to the outside world for knowledge.
o Criticised Plato with his third man argument. Called Plato out for his ‘perfect man’ by saying this would go on Ad infinitum because there would have to be another perfect man that he was based off.

52
Q

Aristotle’s 3 types of knowledge

A

Practical/ ability knowledge – knowing now
o language, breathing, Physically doing something. innate as in DNA?
oBehaviourists say that all knowledge can be reduced into this form.

Acquaintance – knowing ‘of’
oGained through experience using sense data
o Some argue this is the foundation of all knowledge: eg knowing a person, sensation.

Factual/propositional – knowing that
oExpressed in verbal form usually
oStatements about the world being a certain way

53
Q

What does Locke’s “Nihil in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu” mean?

A

Nothing in the intellect unless first in the senses

54
Q

What is Locke’s tabula rasa?

A

blank slate. no innate ideas.

His idea that minds were originally “white paper, void of all characteristics, without any ideas”

55
Q

How does Locke suggest we understand

A

They are abstractions from particulars.

The mind can store up, repeat and combine simple ideas once it has experienced them: sensation and reflection.

56
Q

What are “simple ideas”?

A

The most basic elements of our knowledge; ideas that aren’t compounded of any other element/cannot be broken down further.?

57
Q

Examples of primary qualities?

A

Physical Quality an object itself has e.g. mass, depth, figure, mobility

58
Q

Examples of a secondary quality?

A

Not real (only exist in our minds) e.g. colour, taste, sound, feel

59
Q

Are primary or secondary more real according to Locke?

A

Primary are more real, as secondary qualities can be subjective

60
Q

Problem with Locke’s abstraction?

A

Only possible if we have some innate faculty to recognise similarities

61
Q

Problem with “tabula rasa”?

A

It’s been widely rejected that the mind starts as a blank slate

62
Q

Problem with Locke’s understanding of “innate ideas”?

A

Locke’s rejection of simple concepts (e.g. law of non-contradiction) not being known by everyone as support for empiricism fails. Innate ideas does not always mean a universal idea that everybody is born with but rather an idea that can be understood without experience, simply with logic.

63
Q

Descartes and Plato’s understanding of innate ideas as rejection of Locke’s empiricism?

A

Plato: perfect circle cannot be understood by experience alone
Descartes: any idea which one sees so clearly and distinctly that. it cannot be doubted it must be true

64
Q

what does the distinction between primary and secondary qualities mean?

A

explains the disagreements that we all have over perceptions of the outside world.

Secondary qualities cause disagreements eg red or pink.

while primary qualities prove people right or wrong.

65
Q

what is an idea?

A

immediate object of perception. It is something the mind perceives. Mixture of primary and secondary qualities.

66
Q

what is an object?

A

primary qualities that have the power to form secondary qualities in our mind.

67
Q

what is indirect realism?

A

Primary qualities come to us via sense particles. Locke says ideas in our mind do not have the full resemblance of the external world. This is because secondary qualities are subjective.

68
Q

What is the veil of perception?

A

Secondary qualities are subjective so there is always a cloud between us and the object. We never experience it fully.

69
Q

Locke’s argument against innate ideas with Leibniz response to it.

NUMBER 1

A

1.There are no universally held ideas - children don’t know things.

Leibniz: It’s possible to have an innate idea and not be aware of it or be able to express it.

70
Q

Locke’s argument against innate ideas with Leibniz response to it.

NUMBER 2

A
  1. Locke; it makes no sense to be unaware of ideas. For a person to have something in their mind they must be aware of it.
    Leibniz: We can subconsciously take in information.Triggered by experience. Eg Music lyrics.
71
Q

Locke’s argument against innate ideas with Leibniz response to it.

NUMBER 3

A

There is a contradiction in the innate idea’s thesis. If it is admitted that experience is required to trigger the development of innate ideas. Then therefore all ideas rely on experience. How do we then tell what ideas are innate or not?
leibniz: Replies with the distinction between general ideas and those that are necessarily true. Certain principles, maths for example is a necessary truth and therefore innate.

72
Q

Locke’s Positive argument for empiricism/against innatism

+ locke quote

A

o Tabula Rasa – born a blank slate
o Ockham’s razor – if there are lots of competing theories, it is most likely just the simplest option and therefore preferred.
o “Nothing is in the understanding that was not earlier in the senses.”

73
Q

What is a compex idea?

A

Developed from combining simple ideas. The imagination can create “new” or “complex” ideas by combining simple ideas. E.g. gold mountain

74
Q

What was Berkeley?

A

An idealist

75
Q

Berkelely’s criticism of Locke

A

o Locke says that primary qualities are made up of substances but he never defines what substances are.
o How do primary qualities give rise to secondary qualities? How do they interact?
o Are secondary qualities completely separate from primary? Do they even exist in the real world? Eg colour? Or is it just in our heads?

76
Q

Berkeley’s response to Locke

A

o You can’t see objects made up of only primary qualities. Eg you can’t see a colourless, weightless apple
Therefore there are no primary or secondary qualities.

oThere is just no such thing as matter. There is only perception.
oOnly minds and ideas exist, no matter.
o Never experience matter because both primary and secondary qualities are mind dependent.
o God is the only thing that puts us into existence, he is the ultimate perceiver.

77
Q

Berkeley Quote

A

“To be is to be perceived”

78
Q

Berkeley’s master argument

A

o For something to be truly mind independent – it would have to exist without being thought of.
o Anything that you can think of, exists in your mind and therefore is not truly mind dependent
o So nothing can be dependent of the mind
o Nothing exists when you are not perceiving it. But because God is always looking over us, we always exist.

79
Q

Criticism of Berkeley

A

o Dr Johnson tried to form an argument critiquing him by simply saying because I can feel myself kicking a stone then the stone must be there. Berkeley just simply responded saying that the feeling of the stone was in his head. God perceives it so it will be there in your mind but not in matter.
o His argument is basically solipsism – one’s mind is the only thing that exists.
o Berkeley’s argument relies on God as the perceiver but actually lays out no argument for God’s existence.

80
Q

Hume’s Fork

A

Knowledge can be divided into
1. Relations of Ideas – absolute, a priori, analytic, necessary. (only need to think about to verify)
2. Matters of fact – possible, a-posteriori, synthetic, contingent.(would need to experience to verify)
Hume believes the statement ‘I think therefore I am’ is actually not an analytic statement as Descartes claims, but a mix of sense experiences.

Analytic–>A priori–>Necessary (Bachelors are unmarried men)

Synthetic–>A posteriori–> Contingent (The cow jumped over the moon)

81
Q

Hume’s inductive Argument

A

Need to trust induction when there is no other option.
Deduction - a priori analytic etc.
But when this is not available… We must use inductive logic here, he says; by experience. Although this can never provide certainty, Hume argues that it is our best option for acquiring knowledge about the external world.

82
Q

What does it mean to say sense data is incorrigible?

A
  • Cannot be wrong about a specific experience or perception

- Interpretation/inference can be wrong but nothing can change about the experience itself

83
Q

What is empiricist foundationalism?

A

All knowledge can be finally justified in terms of immediate experience; experiences are the true foundation of human knowledge

84
Q

Problem of a priori knowledge…

A

Maths; we can have examples of 2 apples and another one make 3 but we don’t need this to understand maths and the basic laws of it

85
Q

Sense data being incorrigible seems to fall into the trap of…

A

Solipsism; view that the self is the only thing known to exist

Berkeley was often called a solipist

86
Q

Problem: examples of innate ideas?

A

Perfection, equality, justice etc.

87
Q

Kant introduced which two terms?

A

Analytic and synthetic

88
Q

Was Kant an empiricist or a rationalist?

A

neither

89
Q

Was Berkeley an empiricist or a rationalist?

A

Neither - idealist.

90
Q

What kind of concepts did Kant think rationalists and empiricists had neglected?

A

Concepts that don’t rely on experience of the world but could not have been known through reason alone e.g. space between objects, numbers, time
Things we must experience to exist.

91
Q

According to Kant, what is the condition of having a mind?

A

Having synthetic a priori concepts e.g. space and time

Some believe that we have foundation innate ideas and the rest is off experience. Those foundations are synthetic a priori concepts.

92
Q

What does transcendental mean?

A

Going beyond what we already have metaphysically

93
Q

What are the two realms Kant proposes and what do they mean?

A
  • The phenomenal world: the world as we experience it; world as a human experience
  • The noumenal realm: the world how it is as itself independent of experience
94
Q

How doe Kant explain causation?

A

Causal relations are “projected” onto the world by us, the experiencing consciousness

95
Q

Why did Kant believe empiricism alone is wrong?

A

The mind is not mere tabula rasa which passively receives knowledge of the world through the senses

96
Q

Why did Kant believe rationalism alone is wrong?

A

Reason alone can never give rise to knowledge since knowledge demands both concepts and raw data supplied by the senses

97
Q

Hume’s copy principle

A

o All knowledge about the world that we have has derived from simple impressions that make up simple ideas, which make up complex ideas.
o Any knowledge that cannot be traced back to the set of simple ideas/copies of impressions is meaningless.

98
Q

Eg of Simple Impression, Simple idea and complex idea

A

Simple impression – red, circle, heat
Simple idea – redness, circle-ness, hotness
Complex idea – a hot, red, circle

Theology (7 decks)

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