Chapter 6: HISTO

Vocabulary practice flashcards generated from Chapter 6 Rationalism lecture notes.

Passive Mind

A mind that acts on sensations and ideas in an automatic, mechanical way, as described by empiricists.

Active Mind

A mind that acts on information from the senses and gives it meaning that it otherwise would not have, as postulated by rationalists.

Rationalism

A philosophical position that stresses deduction and holds that there exist truths about the world that cannot be discovered through sensory data alone.

Core Difference Between Rationalists and Empiricists

The type of mind postulated (active vs. passive) rather than whether or not a mind exists.

Rationalist View on Truth

The belief that there exist truths about the world that cannot be discovered through sensory data alone.

Rationalism Reasoning Method

The reliance on deduction to ascertain truths about the world.

Founder of Modern Rationalism

Rene Descartes.

Spinoza's Reason for Excommunication

His rejection of Descartes' contention that God, matter, and mind were separate entities, proposing instead that all three were aspects of the same substance.

Spinoza's Ultimate Goal

To discover a way of life that is both ethically correct and personally satisfying, holding that understanding nature's laws is understanding God.

Pantheism

The belief that God is present everywhere and in everything.

Double Aspectism

The view that mind and body are two aspects of the same thing (two sides of the same coin)—the living human being.

Denial of Free Will (Spinoza)

The stance that human thoughts and behavior are determined because God is nature and nature is lawful, and that belief in free will stems from human ignorance of the causes of events.

Self-Preservation as the Master Motive

Spinoza's hedonistic view that what are commonly referred to as good and evil are nothing else but the emotions of pleasure and pain.

Pleasure (Spinoza)

The entertaining of clear ideas.

Clear Idea

An idea that reflects an understanding of causal necessity and knowledge of why things are as they are.

Highest Pleasure (Spinoza)

The pleasure that comes from understanding God.

Emotions (Spinoza)

Mental experiences that are linked to a specific thought.

Passions (Spinoza)

Ununderstood emotions not associated with a specific thought (inadequate ideas) that reduce survival probability; freedom comes from understanding them.

Spinoza's Influences

Descartes' method, Stoic ethics, Hobbesian politics, and Jewish biblical scholarship fused into a single rationalist system.

Nicolas de Malebranche

A mystically oriented priest who accepted Descartes' mind-body dualism but disagreed with his explanation of their interaction.

Occasionalism

The belief that mind and body do not interact directly, but appear to do so through God's intervention (parallelism with divine intervention).

Leibniz's Disagreement with Locke

Leibniz's position that nothing material could ever cause a nonmaterial idea, concluding that no ideas come directly from experience.

Innate Potential (Leibniz)

The concept that experience does not impart ideas, but rather activates ideas we already possessed the potential for.

Monadology

Leibniz's conclusion that everything is living, developed with the aid of the newly invented microscope.

Monads (Leibniz)

Living, conscious, nonphysical 'atoms' (life units) differing in intelligence, which make up the universe and coordinate through pre-established harmony.

Psychophysical Parallelism

Leibniz's proposed mind-body relationship based on pre-established harmony, holding that God created the universe so that mind and body operate in harmony without directly influencing each other.

Law of Continuity

Leibniz's principle stating that nature never makes leaps, meaning perceptual changes occur gradually.

Petite Perception

In Leibniz's philosophy, a perception that occurs below the level of conscious awareness.

Apperception (Leibniz)

Conscious awareness that is achieved through the accumulation of petite perceptions.

Limen (or Threshold)

The border or boundary between conscious and unconscious mental experiences.

Leibniz's System Influences

Aristotle's substantial forms, Descartes' method, Scholastic metaphysics, Hobbesian mechanism, Lutheran theology, and mathematics combined to preserve purpose and continuity in a mechanical universe.

Thomas Reid's Defense of Reasoning

The argument that even individuals who claim reasoning does not exist must use reasoning powers to doubt its existence.

Common Sense Philosophy (Thomas Reid)

Thomas Reid's view that humans possess innate mental faculties allowing them to trust sensory impressions and make sense of physical reality.

Direct Realism

The belief that sensory experiences accurately and immediately reflect physical reality exactly as it exists.

Faculty Psychology

The perspective that the mind consists of innate powers or abilities (faculties) that actually exist, interact, and influence human thought and behavior.

Kant's Refutation of Hume

The demonstration that certain essential concepts, such as causality, cannot be derived from sensory experience alone and must exist a priori.

Categories of Thought

In Kant's philosophy, the innate, a priori mental structures that process and arrange sensory data into meaningful knowledge.

Kant's View on Physical Reality

The position that humans never experience the physical world directly because all sensory experiences are structured by innate mental categories.

Phenomenological Experience (Kant)

The mental experience resulting from the interaction between sensory sensations and innate categories of thought.

Perception of Time and Space (Kant)

Kant's view that our experience of temporal and spatial relationships is provided by innate categories of thought rather than sensory experience alone.

Categorical Imperative

Kant's rational principle governing moral behavior, stating that one should do the right thing simply because it is right, not for personal gain.

Kant's Rationalism Influences

A synthesis relying heavily on both sensory experience and innate mental faculties to construct knowledge.

Integrated Mind View (Herbart)

Herbart's position that the mind operates as an integrated whole and cannot be divided into distinct faculties.

Psychic Mechanics

Herbart's concept that ideas possess dynamic force, attracting or repelling other ideas based on their compatibility.

Idea Persistence (Herbart)

Herbart's view that an idea is never destroyed or fully forgotten, existing either inside or outside conscious awareness.

Self-Preservation of Ideas (Herbart)

The inherent tendency of an idea to seek and maintain conscious expression.

Apperceptive Mass

In Herbart's psychology, the group of compatible, conscious ideas (existing knowledge and attention) that determines whether new ideas can enter consciousness.

Repression (Herbart)

The force used to hold incompatible ideas in the unconscious when they are pushed out of awareness by stronger opposing ideas.

Limen (Herbart)

The border or threshold separating conscious and unconscious mental experiences.

Educational Psychology Framework (Herbart)

An instructional approach based on connecting new material to students' apperceptive mass via preparation, presentation, association, and application.

Father of Educational Psychology

Johann Friedrich Herbart.

Herbart's Contributions to Psychology

Treating psychology as a science centered on idea dynamics, introducing the unconscious threshold, founding educational psychology, and bridging rationalism with experimental psychology.

The Absolute (Hegel)

Hegel's concept of the universe as an interrelated whole or unity, which must be understood as a whole rather than through isolated instances.

Dialectic Process

The intellectual method of arriving at truth through back-and-forth argumentation among conflicting ideas, advancing toward the Absolute.

Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis

The three stages of Hegel's dialectic process, moving from a point of view (thesis) to its opposite (antithesis) to a compromise (synthesis).

Alienation (Hegel)

The self-estranged realization that one exists separate from the Absolute while striving to embrace it.

Hegel's System Influences

A fusion combining Spinoza's interconnectedness, Heraclitus's constant change, and Kant's mind-shaped reality into a single system where history is Spirit becoming self-aware.