Metaphysics Quiz Review

Plato

• Believed that “earthly objects are but pale shadows, or representatives, of their ideal, perfect forms, and that the philosopher should try to gain insights to that perfects”

• Theory of Forms

• The main point of his philosophy is the belief that our world is deceptive and that our senses cannot be trusted (our world is a shadow or world of forms)

• He is a rationalist (knowledge gained through ideas)

• The world of forms or ideas is the standard by which we judge the physical world. It is the perfect world that can only be accessed by the mind

Example: We have all seen a representation of a circle. Plato would say that the idea of a “circle” exists in the perfect world of forms and that we compare the physical circles we see in his world to the ideal.

• There are also abstract forms of love, truth, justice, and beauty by which we judge the representations we see here in the physical realm.

• For him, the real world is the world of ideas or forms

• Since only philosophers can perceive the world of forms, they should be in charge. Therefore, he advocated for philosopher kings who could organize society and advise on ethical matters.

Aristotle

• Was Plato’s most brilliant student

• He did not agree with Plato’s theory of forms. Instead, he proposed that we learn about the world through reason alone

• He is an empiricist (knowledge gained in the physical world)

• Believed that there is only one cosmos, which we learn about through our experience of it

• Although he accepted that “universal qualities” exist, he did not believe that they do so in separate dimensions

• Rather, he said that they exist in each particular instance in this world

Example: The idea of a circle. We see many instances of circles in the world and therefore generalize about them as we’ve seen what they have in common.

• For him, we gather information about the world through our sense (not just ideas) and make sense of it using reason and intellect

• Argued that all two things have 2 properties —> Essential Properties or Accidental Properties

• He influenced St. Thomas Aquinas who in turn heavily influenced Catholic theology.

Thomas Hobbes

• Is an English Philosopher in the 17th century best known for his book “Leviathan” and his political views on society

• Was a mechanical materialist

• Believed that all occurrences in the universe, without exception, can be explained in terms of motions and interactions of material bodies.

• He did not believe in the soul, or the mind as separate from the body, or in any of the other nonphysical and metaphysical entities in which different writers have believed

• He saw human beings as machines with even their thoughts and emotions functioning according to physical laws and chains of cause and effect

• He saw commonwealth or society as a similar machine, larger than the human body and artificial, operating according to the laws governing motion and collision

• He believed that human beings, as machine-like creatures need strong leadership

• If allowed to live in a “state of nature” people would be naturally violent, aggressive, and fearful so for peace to be possible humans must allow themselves to be ruled (freedom in exchange for security)

• He believed this because essentially sees humans as machines and machines need to be contorlled

Descartes

• Was a French mathematician, philosopher, and devout Catholic

• He is often referred to as the “Father of Modern Philosophy”

• He is known for two things —> “I think Therefore I am” and Ghost in the Machine

• He questioned everything. He reasoned that everything should be held in doubt. We all have different perspectives. Our senses can easily be fooled.

• He even noticed that his beliefs are based on the beliefs of others and the beliefs of others and so on. He concluded that there must be a foundational self-justifying belief, this is called foundationalism

• He then concluded that instead of questioning individual beliefs, he could just questions the fundamental or foundational beliefs that all other beliefs are built up. His goal was to figure out the few solid, self-evident, foundational beliefs that we could know for sure

• This made him depressed as he started to wonder if he even existed

• His existence is the first foundational belief he could confirm. He then went on to argue that God, by nature, is all good and wouldn’t deceive us. So from there, he started building his argument for reality.

• He also believed that the mind and body were distinct entities that somehow cooperated. The body allows us to perceive our world, but it is the mind that controls the body.

Berkely

• Was an Irish-Anglo philosopher and Bishop

• He is known for his famous quote “To be is to be perceived”

• His theory is known a “Idealism”

• Essentially he argued that all the things we experience in the world are simply a collection of ideas. There is no such thing as matter or physical things.

Example: language is simply the stringing together of symbols that represent ideas. So when I say the word “chair” or “cat” you instantly perceive the idea in your mind.

• When you perceive something, you are simply perceiving a grouping of ideas

• He argued that when no one is there to perceive an object (including you in your mind) then the object ceases to exist

• But we know things continue to exist

Example: You can leave your home and return at the end of he day to exactly where it was. Nor can you think of your home and have it pop out of thin air.

• He argues that objects are perceived eternally by the mind of God, thus the idea of them is always preserved whether we are there to perceive them or not

Spinoza

• Was a Dutch philosopher

• Monism is the theory that the universe is ultimately one thing only

• Describes the whole of reality as being composed of one substance, of which both the material and immaterial attributes

• For him, matter and mind are like the shape and taste of an apple: neither gives rise to the other, but each is an attribute of something greater than itself

• Substance is the foundation of the universe

• The substance is made up of two things:

  1) Extension: the world of physical things

  2) Thought: the world of ideas an abstract ideas

• He also used the terms “God” and “substance” interchangeably. He believed all reality is made of this substancce

• For God, all is one and nature is God, and God is nature

Heidegger

• German philosopher who thought about what it meant to be at all (being)

• Made a bold claim that the entire Western metaphysics since Plato had been based on a huge mistake - the mistake of thinking of being as a very special thing or entity such as a timeless form or substance

• According to him, we need to think of Being as a transitive verb rather than a noun

• Being is the most fundamental of verns; it is more basic than verbs such as playing, talking, thinking, and doing. The verb Being picks out the most fundamental event that can occur to any being at all.

St. Thomas Aquinas

• Was heavily influenced by Aristotle

• Like Aristotle, he believed that this world is real and that we come to a real knowledge of it and reality through our senses combined with our intellect

• But as a Catholic, he looked to God as the ultimate source of reality and truth

• He believed all things had a purpose so humanity’s ultimate purpose was union with God in heaven

• Believed that humans are composed of both body and soul. our soul is eternal, our body is corruptible

• Our soul is eternal because it can know things outside of itself. It can also know and love God. Our souls differentiate us from animals and allow us access to psychological life. The body is a gift and temple of the Holy Spirit that must be cared for however it is our soul which has knowledge of God

• He placed creation in a hierarchy In the Middle Ages this was known as “The Great Chain of Being”

  1. God (God is a pure Being and Intellect. Therefore he is the first cause of all. The creatures that come after him descend in perfection, being, and intellect).

  2. Angels (spiritual beings of pure intellect and will)

  3. Humans

  4. Animals

  5. Plants, rocks, etc.

Idealism

Reality is based on the mind of ideas. The physical is an illusion. Ideas in minds are all that real.

Key Philosophers: Plato, Berkeley

Materialism

Reality only consists of physical matter. What you can see, hear, taste, touch, and feel is what’s real.

Key Philosophers: Hobbes

Dualism

Reality consists of 2 fundamentally different kinds of things. (e.g. body and soul, physical and spiritual).

Key Philosophers: Descrates

Monism

Reality consists of one unified all-encompassing substance or principle

Key Philosophers: Spinoza

Catholic View of Reality

• From a Christian point of view, God created the physical world

• God is the source of all things. He sustains reality, and all of reality will find its destiny in him alone. He is eternal.

• The physical world is real and, according to the Book of Genesis and the Book of revelation, it is good. It is a gift given to us by God. Humans stand as the pinnacle of creation as we are made in the image and likeness of God. Our souls are eternal.

• There is also a spiritual aspect to reality

• We see this declared in the Nicene Creed: “we believe in things visible and invisible”.

• Namely, we believe in God’s creation as “real”, not an illusion, both the physical aspects and the invisible parts

• Together, these form reality

Key Philosophers: St. Thomas Aquinas

Theory of Forms

Plato

• The belief that our world is deceptive and that our sense cannot be trusted. (our world is a shadow or world of forms)

• The world of forms or ideas is the standard by which we judge the physical world. It is the perfect world that can only be accessed by the mind.

Essence

Plato

• The inherent nature of something, separate from its physical appearance

• The reason why a particular thing is a thing (e.g. a sphere is a sphere because it partakes in the Form of the Sphere)

• Not dependant on physical existence, it would still “exist’ even if no physical examples did

Substance

Descartes

• Is a thing, rather than an event or a process

• It is not a bundle of properties that can morph from one form to another or a property that belongs to something. It is a thing that underlies or supports changing properties, rather like an anchor that holds a ship in place

• Descartes argued that reality consists of two basic types of properties; extended substances, whose essence takes up space and thinking substances, whose essence is thought.

Essential properties

Aristotle

• What a thing is

• Example: properties of an apple are its apple nature, or “appleness”

Accidental Properties

Aristotle

• Unimportant characteristics of a thing

• Example: properties of an apple are its size, color, shape, etc.

Taoism

Lao Tzu

• Is a kind of mystical philosophy

• Human reason is incapable of grasping the ultimate nature of reality, as well as the relayed view that language is inadequate to describe reality

• Tao which is the central pillar of Taoism, is considered to be the fundamental principle of the universe; everything comes from it, and all particular things are made possible by it, but it is not itself a thing or a form

Being vs. being

Heidegger

• “Being” and “being” refer to the noun and verb forms of the word “be”. “Being” (capitalized) is a noun representing the state of existing or the essence of existence. “being”(lowercase) is a verb form that picks out the most fundamental event that can occur to any being at all.

Contract Theory

Hobbes

• A society without tules and laws to govern our actions would be a dreadful place to live

• If humans were allowed to live in a “state of nature”, they would be naturally violent, aggressive, and fearful because as machines humans are hard-wired to be selfish and seek power

• For peace to be possible, humans must allow themselves to be rules.