Philosophy midterm

What is epistemology?

The study of knowledge. It asks what knowledge is, what we can know, and how we can know that we know something.

What is rationalism?

The view that knowledge comes primarily through reason, reflection, and innate knowledge. It emphasizes mathematical and logical truths.

What is empiricism?

The view that knowledge comes primarily through experience and observation. It emphasizes scientific and observational knowledge.

What is the main difference between rationalism and empiricism?

One emphasizes reason, reflection, and innate knowledge, while the other emphasizes experience and observation.

Who was Plato?

A student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle who believed that true knowledge involves understanding perfect Forms that exist beyond the physical world.

What is Plato's Theory of Forms?

The belief that perfect, unchanging models exist beyond the physical world and that the things we experience are imperfect copies of those models.

What is the Allegory of the Cave?

A story showing that people can mistake appearances or shadows for reality. Philosophy helps people move from appearances toward greater knowledge and understanding of what is actually real.

According to Plato, why don't we recognize the Forms?

Our souls knew them before becoming embodied, but we forget them when we enter physical bodies. Philosophy helps us remember them.

According to Plato, is observation or abstraction more reliable for reaching truth?

Abstraction, because the physical world consists of imperfect copies, while thinking about the underlying models brings us closer to truth.

Who was John Locke?

An important British philosopher who argued that knowledge comes primarily from experience rather than innate ideas.

What did Locke disagree with Descartes about?

Descartes placed more emphasis on doubting the senses and relying on reason, while Locke emphasized experience and perception as sources of knowledge.

What are primary qualities?

Properties such as solidity, motion, rest, and number that belong to objects themselves.

What are secondary qualities?

Features such as color and taste that are produced as ideas in our minds by objects.

What is the difference between simple and complex ideas?

One consists of a single idea, such as color, temperature, number, or motion, while the other combines multiple individual ideas together.

Does Locke believe in innate ideas?

No. He rejects the idea that people are born already possessing ideas.

What does Locke think we can know through our senses?

We can know that something exists while we are currently sensing it. We can also know that things we remember existed, but we cannot be certain that something exists when we are only imagining it.

What is the traditional definition of knowledge?

A person must believe something, that thing must be true, and the person must have justification for believing it.

What is a sufficient condition?

Something that is enough to guarantee another thing. For example, being a cat guarantees that something is a mammal.

What is a necessary condition?

Something that is required for another thing to be true. For example, being a mammal is required for something to be a cat.

What did Gettier argue?

That having a belief that is justified and true is not always enough to count as knowledge because the belief can be true through luck or coincidence.

What is a Gettier case?

A situation where someone has a justified and true belief, but it is true because of coincidence or luck, so we do not want to call it knowledge.

What is entailment?

When one statement logically guarantees another. For example, if Garfield is a cat, then Garfield must be a mammal.

Who is Helen Longino?

A philosopher of science who argues that scientific knowledge is influenced by social perspectives, values, and the communities in which science takes place.

What are constitutive values?

Values that are part of science itself, such as valuing observation and regularities.

What are contextual values?

Values that come from the social, cultural, and environmental circumstances surrounding scientific work rather than from science itself.

What is the value-free ideal?

The idea that scientific work should be independent of contextual values. Longino argues that this cannot actually be achieved.

What is underdetermination?

A situation in which the available information and rules do not guarantee one single conclusion, allowing multiple possible explanations or theories to fit the same evidence.

How does underdetermination relate to science?

Scientific evidence can sometimes support multiple possible theories, so scientists may need values and perspectives to help decide which interpretation to accept.

What does Longino think can make science more objective?

Including people with different backgrounds and perspectives can make scientific communities more objective because different viewpoints can challenge one another.

What is metaphysics?

The study of what is, including the nature of reality and what the world is actually like.

What is a reductive account?

An explanation that reduces one thing to another. For example, saying that water is H₂O or that mental states are simply brain states.

What problem does Nagel see with reductive accounts of consciousness?

They do not explain the subjective character of experience—what an experience actually feels like from the inside.

What does "what it is like" mean for Nagel?

The subjective feeling or experience of being something—for example, the experience a bat has while perceiving the world.

Why does Nagel use bats?

They have very different sensory experiences from humans, especially because they use echolocation. We can know objective physical facts about them without knowing what their experience actually feels like.

What is Nagel's main argument in "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"

Knowing all the objective physical facts about something does not necessarily tell us its subjective experience. This creates a problem for explanations that try to reduce consciousness entirely to physical facts.

Does Nagel prove that physicalism is false?

No. His point is that we currently do not have a way to understand how a physical explanation could account for subjective experience.

What does Nagel recommend?

Developing a new kind of language or concepts—called objective phenomenology—that could help describe subjective experiences in a way that does not depend entirely on our own imagination or empathy.

Who is David Chalmers?

A philosopher who argues that consciousness creates a serious problem for explanations that try to explain everything purely in physical terms.

What is a philosophical zombie?

A being that is physically identical to a conscious person but has no conscious experience.

What is Chalmers' zombie argument?

1. Such beings are possible.

2. If they are possible, consciousness cannot be purely physical.

3. Therefore, consciousness cannot be explained as purely physical.

What is the easy problem of consciousness?

Finding the physical or neurological processes that correlate with conscious experiences—for example, determining what the brain is doing when someone is happy.

What is the hard problem of consciousness?

Explaining why consciousness exists at all and why physical processes are accompanied by conscious experience.

What are Chalmers' radical solutions to consciousness?

The possibilities discussed in your slides are to deny consciousness, treat consciousness as something fundamental, or treat it as universal.

What is the philosophical problem of personal identity?

It asks what makes you the same person over time, how much you can change while remaining the same person, and how we identify the same person at different points in time.

What are the four views of personal identity?

Biological, Psychological, Substance dualist, Non-self

Biological

You are a biological organism/body.

Psychological

You are something that remains psychologically continuous over time.

Substance dualist

You are a soul that is distinct from your body.

Non-self

There is no single self that truly persists through time.

What does Dennett believe about the self?

There is no centrally located self inside the brain. Mental processing happens throughout the brain rather than in one central place.

What is the Cartesian Theatre?

The idea that there is a central place in the brain where everything comes together and is presented to a "self." Dennett rejects this idea.

What is the basic setup of Dennett's "Where Am I?"

His brain, Yorick, is separated from his body, Hamlet. They communicate through a technological connection, creating a problem about where he actually is.

What happens in Phase 1?

His brain is placed in a vat while his body goes on a mission. The two remain connected through radio waves, creating several possible answers about where he is.

What happens in Phase 2?

The situation becomes increasingly complicated as the brain and body are separated, connected to other brains and bodies, and eventually become out of sync. This makes it impossible to identify one clear physical location as the person.

What conclusion does Dennett reach from the thought experiment?

There is no single, centrally located self that can be identified as the "real Dennett." We should instead think in terms of brains and mental processes rather than one central self.

What is the Ship of Theseus problem?

It asks whether an object remains the same object after all of its individual parts have gradually been replaced.

What is the main problem with the Ship of Theseus?

There does not seem to be one solution that preserves all of our ordinary intuitions about identity.

What is the Worm Theory?

The view that an object is a four-dimensional entity made up of different temporal parts extending through time. The different stages of the object are parts of one larger "worm."

What is fusion?

A situation in which two people or objects become one.

What is JTB?

justified true belief

What is a transitive relation?

A relation where, if A relates to B and B relates to C, then A also relates to C. Examples: older than, taller than, shorter than. Not necessarily: friend of, cousin of.

What does Joseph Butler say about changes to ordinary objects?

An ordinary object can survive some changes and still remain the same object. For example, a sweater can lose a button and still be the same sweater.

What does the Chinese Room argument try to show?

A system can manipulate symbols and produce correct answers without actually understanding what those symbols mean, so correct behavior alone does not prove genuine understanding or consciousness.

What is panpsychism?

The view that consciousness is a fundamental and widespread feature of reality, so even basic physical things may have some form of consciousness.

What is physicalism?

The view that everything about reality, including the mind and consciousness, is ultimately physical.

What is the objection to Chalmers' philosophical zombie argument?

Critics question whether a physically identical being without consciousness is actually possible; being able to imagine something does not necessarily show that it is physically possible.

What are the main issues involved in the nature of mental phenomena?

The relationship between the mind and brain, the subjective/qualitative feel of experience, what mental states are about, and how mental states interact with the physical world.

What is a determinate inference?

An inference where the available information and rules guarantee one particular answer or conclusion.

What is conceptual analysis?

Breaking down a concept by identifying the conditions that are necessary and sufficient for something to count as that concept.

What is a counterexample?

An example that shows a proposed definition or claim does not always work.

What is the correct answer to Dennett's Phase 1 question?

Dennett goes wherever he thinks he is.

What is the Chinese Room argument?

It argues that a computer can manipulate symbols and give the correct responses without actually understanding what the symbols mean, showing that producing intelligent-looking responses does not necessarily mean a system is conscious or understands.