Chapter 6: Rationalism Flashcards

A set of vocabulary flashcards defining key concepts and thinkers from Chapter 6: Rationalism.

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.

Rene Descartes

The founder of modern rationalism.

Baruch Spinoza

A philosopher who rejected Descartes' claim that God, matter, and mind were separate entities, proposing instead that all three were simply aspects of the same substance.

Pantheism

The belief that God is present everywhere and in everything.

Double Aspectism

The view that the 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 view that because God is nature and nature is lawful, human thoughts and behavior are determined, and only human ignorance of causes creates the belief in free will.

Pleasure (Spinoza)

The entertaining of clear ideas, with the highest pleasure arising from understanding God.

Clear idea

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

Emotions (Spinoza)

Affective states that are linked to a specific thought.

Passions

Emotions not associated with any particular thought; described as emotions with inadequate ideas that reduce the probability of survival.

Nicolas de Malebranche

A mystically oriented priest who accepted Descartes' separation of the mind and body but disagreed with his explanation of how the two interacted.

Occasionalism

The belief that there is no direct contact between mind and body, but interaction appears to occur because of God's intervention (parallelism with divine intervention).

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz

A philosopher who disagreed with Locke, contending that nothing material could cause a nonmaterial idea and that no ideas come directly from experience.

Innate Potential (Leibniz)

Leibniz's concept that what is innate is the potential to have an idea, which experience activates rather than creates.

Monadology

Leibniz's conclusion that everything was living, formulated through the aid of the newly invented microscope.