Shared Flashcard Set

Details

Philosophy of Religion
Philosophy of Religion
68
Philosophy
Undergraduate 3
12/06/2010

Additional Philosophy Flashcards

 


 

Cards

Term
Rationalism
Definition
Reasoning, the dialectic, intuition
Term
Epistemology
Definition
Theory of the nature of Knowledge
Term
Empiricism
Definition
Sense experience, observations, experimentation
Term
Innate Idea
Definition

  Inborn in the human mind, as contrasted with those received or compiled from experience.

 

The doctrine that at least certain ideas (e.g., those of God, infinity, substance) must be innate, because no satisfactory empirical origin of them can be conceived.

Term
Transcendental argument
Definition
a form of argument that is supposed to proceed from a fact to the necessary conditions of its possibility.
Term
Circular argument
Definition

The proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in one of the premises.

(Petitio principii, "begging the question")

Term
Independence
Definition
Existence that is unconditioned by anything outside itself.
Term
Particular
Definition
Individual, physical object. Dependent on sense experience.
Term
Realism
Definition
Universals exist independently of minds.
(Plato)
Term
Ethical relativism
Definition
Whatever one believes to be moral/ethical is so.
Term
Materialism
Definition
All that exists is matter.
Term
Material Cause
Definition
The Matter something is made out of.
Term
Formal Cause
Definition
The essence of the item.
Term
Efficient Cause
Definition
The agent that brought the item into being.
Term
Final Cause
Definition
Purpose of the item.
Term
Nominalism
Definition
Universals are nothing more than names.
Term
Conceptualism (Aristotle)
Definition
Universals exist w/i particulars, not independent.
Term
Ockham's Razor
Definition
Simplest explanation is the best.
Term
Solipsism
Definition
"I am only sure that I exist."
Term
Skepticism
Definition
A questioning attitude of doubt, demanding evidence.
Term
Teleological explanation
Definition
Goal-oriented principles that give purpose that pervades all of reality.
Term
Mechanistic explanation
Definition
The universe is best understood as a completely mechanical system—that is, a system composed entirely of matter in motion under a complete and regular system of laws of nature.
Term
Eidological Argument
Definition
Who put the idea of perfection in our minds in the first place? A perfect Being.
Term
Clarity and distinctness criterion
Definition
"Whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive to be true is true."
Term
Interactionism
Definition
Physical states cause mental states and vice versa. (Problem: Chorismos)
Term
Idealism
Definition
All is mental or mind-dependent.
Term
Introspectionism
Definition
Conscious examination or observation by a subject of his or her own mental processes.
Term
Internalism
Definition
everything necessary to provide Justification for a belief must be immediately available in an agent's conscious.
Term
Transcendental Argument
Definition
Attempt to establish the existence of an entity a priori.
Term
Direct Realism
Definition
Universals exist independently of their being thought about.
Term
Transcendental Idealism
Definition
(Kant) Tried to reconcile empiricism & rationalism. We are constantly exposed to sense data (E) and this data is actively processed by our mind (R).
Term
Causal Theory of Perception
Definition
The view that to perceive an object is to be in a state that has some appropriate causal relationship to it.
Term
Cognitive rationality
Definition
Respect for truth and evidence
Term
Non-emotional Rationality
Definition
Attempt to stifle emotions with the ultimate goal of being rational
Term
Volitional rationality
Definition
To exercise one's free will in accordance with evidence clause
Term
Rationalization
Definition
Psychological defense mechanism
Term
Internalism
Definition
Begin with knowledge of the self ONLY.
(Egocentric predicament)
Term
Externalism
Definition
Starting point = Assume the existence of the external world.
Term
Introspectionism
Definition
The belief that psychology must be derived from introspective data.
Term
Tabula rasa
Definition
"Blank slate"
Term
a priori
Definition
Justification that is independent of sense experience
Term
a posteriori
Definition
Justification dependent on sense experience
Term
Analytic
Definition
Concept contained in the predicate is the same as the conclusion. ("Bachelors are unmarried.")
Term
Synthetic
Definition
Truth value can only be determined by relying upon observation and experience. Its truth value cannot be determined by relying solely upon logic or examining the meaning of words.
Term
Intellectual abstraction
Definition
(Aristotle) Universals are common attributes that exist within particulars.
Term
"Esse est percipi aut percipere."
Definition
That which perceives or is perceives exists.
Term
Impression
Definition
(Hume) Top of the sense experience spectrum, "hits the mind with force"
Term
Idea
Definition
(Hume) Bottom of the sense experience spectrum, faint copy of an impression.
Term
Relations of ideas
Definition
(Hume) Semantic redundancies; necessary truths. ("Blue is a color.")
Term
Matters of Fact
Definition
Ideas that bear upon and inform us about the world. Contingent truths = Could be true, but depends on reality.
Term
Principle of Induction
Definition
"The future will resemble the past."
Term
Problem of Induction
Definition
1) One may conceive of a future that is unlike the past.
2) Circular argument
Term
Custom/Habit
Definition
Hume's psychological explanation for why we expect the future to resemble the past.
Term
Purple Paragraph
Definition
(Hume) Contradictory paragraph in which he states that every philosophy book should contain Relations of Ideas and Matters of Fact; if not they should be burned. This statement contains neither of these bases of knowledge.
Term
Hume's views on the Self
Definition
1)Cannot identify a mental substratum during introspection
2) The mind is like a "stage with passing actors", can we ever maintain a personal identity?
Term
Problem of Evil (Secular)
Definition
Why do bad things happen to good people, and vice versa.
Term
Problem of Evil (Religious)
Definition
How does God, as he is typically conceived of, allow for the occurrence of evil in the world that he created and controls?
Term
God's aseity
Definition
"God in himself" = His omnipotence/benevolence/etc.
(Problem: Contrasts with the personal, responsive God found in scripture)
Term
God's conceivability
Definition
Seems to be a different kind of being entirely from ourselves; how may we conceive of him without resorting to anthropomorphism?
Term
End-of-the-Day Solution
Definition
(Austine, Aquinas) Attempt to solve theodicy by arguing that what we view as "evil" now will someday be reveled to us as a necessary part of God's plan. Problem: Based on Faith Argument
Term
secret springs and principles
Definition
To form generalizations based on observed uniformities
Term
Hume's view on miracles
Definition
His arguments against miracles:
1) The people who tend to tell miracle stories tend to be uneducated and biased.
2) They are in direct contradiction with the evidence for the Law of Nature.
Term
Contiguity
Definition
Near to one another in time and space.
(Aspect of causality)
Term
Necessary connection
Definition
There must be an effect for each action.
Term
Temporal Priority/Succession
Definition
Cause always occurs first.
Term
Natural Theology
Definition
God's attributes and existence can be determined through logic. Revelation is unnecessary. (Bottom-up)
Term
Reveled Theology
Definition
Must have religious revelation(miracles, visions, prophecies, etc.) in order to know of God.(Top-down.)
Term
necessarily existing being
Definition
(Aquinas and Anselm)Both Kant and Hume denied that there are any such things as necessarily existing beings. Kant believed that one of the versions of the
cosmological argument amounted to the claim that God is a necessarily
existing being, but that reduced to the claim that existence is an
attribute of God, which is the essence of the ontological argument.
Supporting users have an ad free experience!