Philosophy Exam 1

Metaphysics

The branch of philosophy that deals with the first principle of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space.

Epistemology

The theory of knowledge especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. It is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.

Aesthetics

Deals with the principles of beauty and artistic taste.

Social and Political Philosophy

Examinations and evaluations of all aspects of social life, from the family, to the nation-state, to international relations

Thales

Material monism | various forms of water (ice, air, water) | arche’ - the orgin; foundation

Pythagoras

Everything comes into accordance with numbers | Interested in mythicism

Heraclitus

Flux Doctrine - “everything is changing all the time in everyway” “everything is changing all the time in some way.”

Unity of Opposites - Opposite qualities or characteristics are metaphysically dependent upon one another.

Logos Doctrine - All change is governed by a lawlike principle, stemming either from its individual composition or from a universal semi-religious principle imposed from above.

Democritus

Being is OR Being is not | “There are laws that govern the behavior of atoms” → Beings have no sense of freewill?

The Sophists

There’s not a general sense of physis (The Nomos /Physis Distinction)

Empiricism

What your senses tell you

Rationalism

What critical thinking tells you

Hosion

Holyness, righteousness, justice (in the eyes of the gods)

Socratic Definition

An answer to a “What is F?” question (usually a significant moral or aesthetic quality). → Proves that people contradict themselves

Command Theory

Proposes that an action’s status as morally good is equivalent to whether it is commanded by God.

The Dependence Thesis

If DCT is true, the ____ is true, i.e, there is no autonomous ethics

The Automony Thesis

The subject of morality is logically independent of religious truth, i.e. rightness or wrongness need to be studied not as a function of God’s will but of reasons for acting one way or another.

T/F : Someone who is religious can’t hold the autonomy thesis

False

The four distinct ways in which God and religion might relate to morality:

Foundation, Motivation, Education, Implementation

The Euthyphro Problem

“Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?”