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historyof psych exam 1 pt
Historeography
The study of methods and approaches used in the study of history
“Zeitgeist” versus “great man” approaches
How do we study the history of ideas?
What were the ‘zeitgeist’ of each era? (for scholars, philosophers, physicians) - different for each context
Pre-socratic Greece
Big deal to worry about if you were philosopher → what is nature of the universe, can I trust my perceptions/what underlies what I see (don’t assume what you see is reality), elemental ideas
Classical Greece
Where/what is the soul
Do animals have souls
Is mind and body one?
Does universe have a soul?
Are souls contained in one another?
Reaction to subjective experience that we move and do things (physical) but have some seemingly not physical part of us that directs the physical
Natural order
The fittest to rule should do so
How do people fit together in society
Roman period
Concern for people not primarily concerned with soul
How to live a good life
Stoicism
Argued good life is life that accepts fate is cause of many things, can’t always do anything about what has happened to you but can determine your reaction
Epicureanism
Indulgence in moderation is fine, not constant indulgence = self-discipline important
Middle ages
Theology
Christianity dominant in Europe, multiple probs, civilization pop collapses in parts if Europe = lots of knowledge lost
Sources/centers of knowledge of Europe in monasteries
Knowledge of Greek lost
Practical work of Scholastics is to preserve and transcribe records, interpret what the texts mean
First philosophy (metaphysics)
Depends on Plato, Aristotle, their works are largely lost
Philosophical debates center on religious questions
What is nature of deity
What is relation of humankind to deity
If literal meaning of religious texts should be accepted as real truths
Islamic world
More scientific progress
Same kinds of religious debates
Some willing to challenge literal meaning of religious dogma
Large advances in medicine, mathematics, optics
Gradually preservation of Aristotle's work, and Greek = Aquinas can later access Aristotle’s work
Renaissance
Emergence of expression painting, tackling topics complex in Christianity
Advances in science and technology
Religious intolerance and wars continue to be significant factors, play out diff in diff parts of Europe
Continued strong influence of religion in daily life, now much more difference in religious life compared to middle ages
Enlightenment
Veracity of knowledge - how do we know what we know
What is nature of man and of society, what should be nature of government
Protect rights or impose order by absolute monarch
How to survive and thrive
Had luxury of many of us trying to understand the human mind
Who were the ‘great men’ of each era?
Pre Socratic philosophers were concerned with the nature of the universe
What is the underlying reality?
What is the world made of?
Has the world been in a constant state or has there been change?
Is perception to be trusted?
The Hippocratics
Hippocrates - physician who attracted a dedicated group of students and followers
Hippocratic corpus - extensive medical writings produced by the followers of Hippocrates, in which diseases are regarded as natural phenomena
Humoral theory - the theory that health and illness result from, respectively, a balance and an imbalance of humors
Humors - four substances within the human body: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm
Socrates and Plato
Socrates - Classical Greek philosopher who engaged his students in dialogues so they could arrive at the truth on their own
Nativism - an approach to mental philosophy that emphasized inborn or ‘native’ properties of the mind
Rationalism - an approach to mental philosophy that emphasizes the mind’s capacity for reason
Platonic idealism
Timaeus central ideas
World created by perfect deity and ideal world exists and is perfect and eternal
From ideal world emerges real world
Appearance - Plato’s term for an individual’s actual conscious experience of something
Idealism - notion that more fundamental and ideal forms, or essences, underlie our sensory experiences
Substances and ideal forms
Allegory of the cave - an example used by Plato to illustrate difference between appearances and ideal forms
Aristotle’s empiricism contrasts with rationalism, idealism of Plato
Aristotle - emphasized the importance of systematic observation of sensory experience
Empiricism - true knowledge is arrived through sensory experiences of external world
Poor biological understanding
Thought memory was inscribed on organ of memory - heart, bc heart would speed up or slow down in response to emotion and emotional things likely to be remembered
Thought brain cooled blood
Thought tiny pre-formed human was present in sperm and that women were incubators and they made no contribution
On the Psyche - De Anima - scale of nature, based on souls: vegetative soul (nourishment & reproduction), sensitive soul (locomotion, sensation, memory, imagination), rational soul (reason)
Believed everything living had a soul but only humans have rational souls
Ethics
All people have some capacity for ethical behavior but in given sitch may not be free to act ethically
Atomic theory, in primitive form, originated in Greece
Democritus - a somewhat younger contemporary of Socrates who developed atomic theory
Roman period
Galen - humoral theory; brain understanding, vitalist, dissected animals
Zeno of Cypress and Epictetus: stoicism (external events are caused by fate and one should accept these calmly; individuals are responsible for their own actions)
Neoplatonism adopted by many Christian philosophers
Idea that world is expression of mind of God
Medieval period
Medical and psychological inquiry stagnated
Knowledge based almost exclusively on theological authority, revelation over reason
Scholasticism: wrestling with texts and understanding of deity in relation to humanity
Augustine: memory: images, influenced by emotion; a priori of knowledge of some concepts; memory must be exercised to endure
Islam: advances in medicine, optics, debates about observation and reason versus doctrine; preservation of Aristotle’s work, treatment of mental illness
Islamic physicians provided accurate descriptions of the visual system and treatment of mental illnesses
Visual anatomy
Visual tracts in the brain
First asylums in the Islamic world opened in Baghdad
Rhazes wrote medical texts, directed Baghdad institutions which became in essense hospital using moral treatment
The rise of European universities and scholasticism
Charlemange established schools in every Abbey in his empire
Knowledge of Greek had disappeared, except in Ireland’s monasteries (and among Islamic scholars)
Thomas Aquinas
Deeply committed to reconciling faith and reason
Studied Aristotle using Averroes’ translation and commentary
Maintain that the church had nothing to fear from empiricism or rationalism
Accused of being an ‘Averroist’; ultimately studying Aristotle no longer banned
Roger Bacon
Entered Oxford at 13
Wrote en epistemology, ethics, optics, language; lectured on Aristotle at Oxford, University of Paris
Inspired by Aristotle, argued for direct study of nature
Scientific method attributed to him
Invention of printing and widespread impact
Spread of printed material
Poems, grammars, and first complete Gutenberg Bible
Protestant reformation
Henry VIII’s challenges to the church
Renaissance
Celebration of human in arts
Growth in knowledge, mathematics
Greater understanding of materialistic determinism of some natural phenomena
What develops in science?
Challenges to Thomas Aquinas’ synthesis of Christianity and Aristotle’s science
Cosmology: Ptolemaic system
Geocentric, challenged by Copernicus’ observations
Galileo and Kepler challenge and overturn the notion of a geo-centric universe
Growth of empirical studies continued in many areas
Anatomy: dissections of executed criminals
Botany: Islamic texts became more widely known, new works in Europe
Zoology - animal specimens
Interest grew in quantification and mathematics
Math used for practical applications in business and navigation
Knowledge of anatomy
Da Vinci: drew dissection of cadavers
Optic chiasm; other contributions to understanding vision; musculature
Julian Caesar Scaliger
Wrote extensively; including about kinesthetic senses
Vesalius - public dissection, brain connected to body through nerves, ribs
Male and female humans have same number of ribs - challenges creative narrative
Michel de Mintaigne
Established the literary form of essays
Primary theme is that we cannot be certain of knowledge or reasoning
Promoted skepticism particularly about dogma, promoted tolerance
Religious intolerance characterized the era
Scientific variance from religious doctrine could be deadly
Psychological issues
What is the nature of humankind - evil, good, neither
What are sources of knowledge
Revelation, dosmatic authority, reason, observation
Religious and philosophical issues
Consistency of materialism with belief in God
Look at clues to determine what people back then were going through
Viewing/evaluating events and persons from current perspectives, versus attempts to capture the contextual perspective
“Four Idols”
Bacon described four Idols that are impediments to human knowledge
Idols of the Tribe are the limits of the human intellectual apparatus
Idols of the Cave are the prejudices or preferred theories that blind us to alternative explanations
Idols of the Marketplace are aspects of the nominal fallacy
We often believe that we have explained a phenomenon by giving it a name
Idols of the theatre are the tendencies of humans to accept the claims of authorities
Age of Enlightenment
“Enlightenment”, roughly 1685 to 1815
Advances in science, political ideas → have challenges, inspired revolutions around Eruope and Americas
Ideas focused on rights of people to self-determination, have liberty and rights protected, state should protect people of the state
Aristotle
Aristotle was a student of Plato who founded his own school, the Lyceum
Aristotle was an empiricist who approached the problem of causality in four ways (Material, efficient, formal, final)
Aristotle argued for hylomorphism
All material objects are made of matter and form
Matter acted upon by many different effective agents
The mind and the body as interdependent
Argues causes that arrives from material nature of things, ideal forms that things are embodiments of
Essence of all life is animating principle of soul
Aristotle attributes to the soul nutritive function, sensitive and movement functions, and, in humans, reason
What is Aristotle discussing in De Anima
What does he mean by natural philosophy?
Affectations of the soul?
Ways the soul acted/responded and how it influenced people
What must the natural philosopher do in studying the soul?
Look at interaction of soul with body
Has to be an observer of self and others
Aristotle's theories of biology, cognition
Aristotle’s view on psychological processes
Aristotle separated memory, a passive process, and recollection, which is active
He provided an associationist view of memory
Aristotle maintained that sense objects cause sensations with a different medium for each sense
Thinking is rooted in perception, but thinking may be flawed
Imagination does not have the corrective influence of the external world and allows greater freedom in thought
Aristotle advocated a naturalistic approach to dreams
Dreams reflected day-to-day worries
Atomism
Anaxagoras (450 BCE) and Democritus (420 BCE) suggest that reality is hidden because the parts are too small to see
Anaxagoras: natural process make it seem that one substance can change into another
Nutrition and growth; evaporation
Everything contains the same stuff so anything can change into anything by being arranged
Anaxagoras recognizes that living things are unpredictable
The behavior of living things relies on the material stuff and mind
“Mind is infinite and self-controlling, and it has been mixed with no thing but is alone by itself”
Material stud is infinitely divisible, so we can never really know it
Democritus believed atoms were indivisible
Variously shaped, entangled, too small to be sensed, holding on to one another
Again: what we perceive with our senses is not the true, or at least not the complete, reality
Leucippus also argued for indivisible minute
Augustine
Aurelis Augustine (354 - 430 CE)
Augustine combined Greek and Christian thought with other theological and philosophical systems
He described grief, habit breaking, and his perceptions of infant motivation (selfish brutes)
Memory: images, influenced by emotion; a priori knowledge of some concepts; memory must be exercised to endure
Augustine’s explorations of psychological topics reflect his Christian theology
He acted against the values of curiosity, doubt, and openness that would eventually lead to development of scientific inquiry
Averroes
Islamic philosopher in the Middle Ages
Averroes (1126-1198) wrote extensive commentaries on Aristotle, conducted research in vision and medicine
Islamic scholars studying Aristotle
Bacon, Francis
Has to do with empiricism
Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
Francis Bacon focused on problems of knowledge
Bacon described four Idols that are impediments to human knowledge
Idols of the Tribe are the limits of the human intellectual apparatus
Idols of the Cave are the prejudices or preferred theories that blind us to alternative explanations
Idols of the Marketplace are aspects of the nominal fallacy
We often believe that we have explained a phenomenon by giving it a name
Idols of the theatre are the tendencies of humans to accept the claims of authorities
Bacon emphasized sense experience in the search for knowledge
He advocated the gathering of observations from a wide variety of sources
He recommended presentation of these observations to a community of researchers
The community could draw tentative conclusions from a wide variety of sources
Bacon advocated naturalistic approaches to a number of psychological topics including dreams, sleep, human development, thought, and emotion
Thought all of these had natural causes
(Question) Francis Bacon was
A British philosopher and scientist who encouraged empiricism
Bacon, Roger
Roger Bacon (1220 - 1292, or maybe 1414-1294)
Entered Oxford at 13
Wrote on epistemology, ethics, optics, language; lectured on Aristotle at Oxford, University of Paris
Inspired by Aristotle, argued for the direct study of nature
Scientific method attributed to him
May have had a combative personality
Causality
Aristotle was an empiricist who approached the problem of causality in four ways (Material, efficient, formal, final)
The nature of causality, according to Hume
We infer causality from the constant repeated conjunction of two events (A occurs, then B; we infer that A causes B)
If we see one instance of A followed by B, we do not infer causation
This inductive inference is flawed, but a natural consequence of human reasoning
He doesn’t deny the existence of causality, but denies that we can understand it
Hume – associationism, no basis for inference, causality and self are habits of mind
Charles the Great (Charlemagne)
The rise of European universities and scholasticism
Charlemange, in 787 CE, established schools in veery Abbey in his empire
Knowledge of Greek had disappeared, except in Ireland’s monasteries (and among Islamic scholars)
13th and 14th Centuries saw development of true universities
Copernicus
The rise of science and mathematics
The Copernican Revolution
Copernican system 1543 challenged by Tycho Brahe’s system 1573
Nicolaus Copernicus argued for a heliocentric system
The Copernican revolution increased shere in which natural causes could act
Predecible, lawful, and quantifiable forced were at work in astronomy, and these forced threatened extrinsic teleology
(Question) The philosophical impact of the Copernican revolution was
Mathematics and physical rules governed natural phenomena
And mechanical causes of natural phenomena were knowable
Copernican revolution moved beyond observation
Recorded position of sun relative to his position on earth, measured position of moon, angles of sun over seasons, changing positions of planets
Inferred each and planets moving around sun, developed mathematical explanation
Systematic collection of data overtime, production of theoretical explanations in data
Cosmology & Galileo
Cosmology: Ptolemaic system
We come to understand our place in the universe more accurately
Astronomers provided evidence to challenge the geocentric cosmology and replace it with heliocentric cosmology
The geocentric work of Ptolemu was accepted as church doctrine and could not be challenged
Galileo Galilei refined the telescope and challenged the assumptions of the church
The conflict between Galileo and the church was not only a conflict of cosmology
It was also a conflict over epistemology
The church favored authority as a method of knowledge and forced Galileo to recant his views
Galileo and Kepler challenge and overturn the notion of a goe-centric universe
Galileo (1564 - 1642) is forced to recant
Kepler (1571 - 1630) gets away with it (far from Rome)
Changing cosmology: Copernicus, Galileo
Democritus
Democritus (420 BCE) suggest that reality is hidden because the parts are too small to see
Democritus believed atoms were indivisible
Variously shaped, entangled, too small to be sensed, holding on to one another
Again: what we perceive with our senses is not the true, or at least not the complete, reality
Empiricism
Montaigne’s skepticism challenged Francis Bacon and René Descartes
Bacon and others responded to Montaigne’s challenge with empiricism
Empiricism is closest to the term “experience.”
Empiricists share some common ideas:
A posteriori knowledge
A passive mind that responds to sensory input, and
Induction as a method of knowledge
Seeing things multiple times
Bacon and Locke applied empiricism to questions of epistemology
Berkeley’s radical empiricism
If all knowledge of the world comes through experience, we cannot validate the existence of anything outside of experience
The only real world is the world of experience
Existence is defined as being perceived
Berkeley’s critics asked how the world could be so consistent without a perceiver
For Berkeley, consistency implies a continual perceiver, God
Therefore, the consistency of the world demonstrates that God must exist
If all I can know with certainty is my own experience, I may fall into solipsism. Berkeley believed that we could be confident about our experience, because of faith in a constant perceiver
Berkeley addressed other psychological topics including vision and the relationship between vision and touch
Epictetus
Stoicism was influenced by Epictetus
Stoicism advocated the calm acceptance of one’s fate and the removal of oneself from appetitive pursuits
According to him, the only things truly within our control are our thoughts, attitudes, and actions
Epistemology (definition)
Epistemology
How we learn and know things
Learn strictly by experience
Have some innate knowledge
Platonic idealism - extreme form that knowledge exists in soul before soul instilled in particular body
Born with basic perceptual understanding of space and object properties
Ethical theory of Aristotle
Aristotle views on motivation and ethics
Aristotle recognized the importance of pleasure and pain in human motivation
But he advocated a ‘golden mean’ of action between the extremes
He recognized four factors that affected human ability to achieve the good
Individual differences
Habit
Develop them over life
Social supports
Freedom of choice
Folk psychology
Folk Psychology: everyday way of understanding, or rationalizing, intentional actions in mentalistic terms
FP understanding is underwritten by capacities to mentalize or “mindread”. On the standard interpretation, mind reading minimally requires:
Representing and attributing mental state attitudes (minimally belief and desire, but possibly other mental states too);
Representing and attributing the contents of such attitudes;
Appreciating how such attitudes structurally interrelate
FP has set principals that relay to other states of mind = helps rationalize actions in terms of reason
Folk psychology theory
What is folk psychology a theory of?
How do I relate to you, influence you, predict what’s next
Galen
Roman period
Galen was the most prominent Roman physician
Galen accepted the Greek theory of four bodily humors
He argued that four qualities (cold, warm, dry, moist) were involved in the balance required for health
Mental disorders were also caused by imbalance in the four humors
He advocated an early form of psychotherapy to induce balance
Galen was a vitalist
He accepted three types of pneuma (natural spirit, vital spirit, and animal spirit)
The Christian Church assimilated Galen’s ideas as part of church dogma, bt not his emphasis on research
Harvey, William
William Harvey 1578 – 1657, British physician
Described pumping of blood from heart to lungs and to brain and throughout the body in Du Motu Cordis 1628
Arteries move blood away from the heart veins move blood to the heart; “pores” connect arteries and veins
Inferred something similar to capillaries existed but didn’t have tech to view them, argued tiny pores connected arteries and veins
Skeptical of witchcraft charges; at request of king questioned four women and his testimony led to acquittals
Embryology: Exercitationes de generatione animalium published 1651
All life comes from the egg, described development of chick embryos
Egg is equivalent to life, important bc life isn’t created out of nothing, no spontaneous generation of life from non-living stuff
Medically countered hematogenous theory
Disputed the hematogenous theory of Aristotle, based on dissections of hundreds of male and female deer
Aristotle argued life comes from the tiny potential human that is in sperm, said sperm is incubated in menstrual blood of women
Harvey found ovaries, only human cell visible to naked eye is the human ovum, found these in female deer of various sizes
First scientific explanation of the creation of life
(Question) Detailed description of vertebrate reproduction
Is attributed to William Harvey
Hippocrates
Hippocrates was the most famous of the Greek Physicians
He maintained that balance of the four humors (black bile [melancholy], yellow bile [bitter], blood [aggression, and having more with being jovial and drinking], and phlegm [slow]) was essential for health
He was the first to classify mental disorders
Hobbes, Thomas
British philosopher, influenced by Greek geometry
Thomas Hobbes (1588 - 1679)
Political philosopher – influenced Locke
Physics: nature is mechanical, understood through laws of motion
Primary qualities = invariant
Hobbes thought ‘extent of object’ - amount of space it takes up was only primary quality
Secondary qualities = depend on characteristics of observer and under which observation takes place
Ex: color
Social contract—A theory initiated by Hobbes and elaborated upon by Locke and others, that self-interest leads individuals to come together in groups and submit to a centralized authority for purposes of mutual protection
(Question) Hobbes’ view of human morality was that
Humans are amoral, aggressive acquisitive with no sense of the rights of others
Hume, David
David Hume (1711 - 1776)
Scottish empiricist
Helped formalize laws of association by contiguity and similarity and used them in a skeptical analysis of the notion of causality. “Compatibilist” explanation of free will
For Hume, experience is the primary subject matter of philosophy
Hume, however, maintained that our experience is simply a chain of events
Causality, self, and other relationships are only functions of our mental habits
Hume distinguished between impressions, mental phenomena that present themselves with force, and ideas, fainter images of impressions
The nature of the self, according to Hume
Hume argued that ourselves and our experiences are not as consistent and continuous as we would like to believe
The self is constructed and imposed on our memories; it is how we organize the story
Hume studied the emotions extensively: all derived from pain and pleasure; approval and disapproval are calm forms of love and hate
He advocated comparative studies in physical anatomy and “anatomy of the mind.”
Recap: Hume
Mechanistic determinism…and..
Room for an understanding of free will: ‘contingent compatibilism’
Ibn Sena
Avicenna wrote extensively on medical topics
He struggled to reconcile faith and reason
He accepted Galen’s description of four humors and believed that balance was essential
He argued for a tripartite soul including the vegetative soul, animal soul, and the human soul
Islam, Islamic contributions
Islamic philosophers in the Middle Ages
Alhazen (965-1039) studied optics and vision
Al-Ghazali (1058-1111) believed that God, not nature or cause, explains everything in experience
Argued against empiricism and rationalism
Averroes (1126-1198) wrote extensive commentaries on Aristotle, conducted research in vision and medicine
Islamic scholars studying Aristotle
Juan Luis Vives
Interviewed people; noting displayed affect and topics discussed; developed an educational theory; influenced Montaigne, perhaps Freud
Train child based on how they best learn
Focused more on male students
Says trying to teach a disinterested child is of no use
Opposed scholasticism: Knowledge comes through observation of evidence, and use of reason is always approximate
Faculties of the soul: vegetative, sensitive, cogitative (mind, will, memory
Kepler
Galileo and Kepler challenge and overturn the notion of a goe-centric universe
Galileo (1564 - 1642) is forced to recant
Kepler (1571 - 1630) gets away with it (far from Rome)
Johannes Kepler refined the Copernican system by introducing elliptical planetary orbits
Equations described the movement of objects
Leviathan
Leviathan political work addressing the need for a strong government, right of kings
State cannot be secure without an absolute ruler
State of nature: life is nasty brutish and short, war of all against all
Assumed in a state of nature (no organization, no villages)
Locke, John & Materialism
British elite, thought ab govt
John Locke (1632 - 1704)
Disagreed strongly w/Hobbes
Embroiled in religious and political controversies and conflicts
Essay on human understanding
Locke argued that the mind is a “blank slate” (tabula rasa) at birth
all knowledge is learned through experience; knowledge is only about our ideas
sensation - of objects in the external world; reflection - of the mind’s own operations
criticized the concept of innate ideas except for existence of self and God
Simple ideas - ideas based on the earliest sensations and reflections occurring in infants
Complex ideas - ideas produced when simple ideas are combined by the mind
Locke distinguished between primary and secondary qualities of objects
Primary qualities—According to Locke, solidity, extension, figure, and mobility; material objects in the world truly “have” these qualities, which accordingly constitute the fundamental units for constructing a true picture of the world
Secondary qualities—According to Locke, the qualities the mind perceives in objects, such as sounds, colors, temperatures, tastes, and odors: characteristics that derive as much from the perceiving sense organs as from the objects themselves
For Locke, association was a primary characteristic of thought
Association of ideas—The linkage of ideas or memories such that the thought of one tends automatically to bring the other to mind
Law of association by contiguity—The association of ideas because of the experience of two or more ideas, either simultaneously or in rapid succession
Law of association by similarity—The association of ideas because two or more ideas are similar
Locke on retention of ideas
Contemplation – keeping an idea brought into mind actively in view
Memory – reviving in mind those ideas which have disappeared or “laid aside”;
Memory is the storehouse of ideas
Locke on operations of mind
There is no knowledge without discernment
Comparing
Compounding – the mind puts together ideas created from sensation and reflection and puts them together to form more complex ideas
Abstracting – language allows particulars to be combined as universals having the same label
Locke’s views on freedom and liberty were influential in drafting the US Constitution
(Question) John Locke’s ideas are reflected in psychology’s concerns with
Memory and thinking, child development, self-concept, moral intuition and development
All
Lucretius
Lucretius (dates uncertain 1st C BCE) wrote about a number of psychological topics
Argued for the unity of mind and body
Advocated atomistic materialism, but allowed room for free will
Wrote extensively on sensation, morals, and the evolution of social groups, religion, and language
De Rerum Natura
De Rerum Natura > 7,000 verses
Proposed a human history
Tools of only hands and teeth, followed by rocks and branches, tools of copper, then bronze and iron
Huts, followed by mastery of fire, weaving, ultimately city-states
A theory of biological evolution
The world operates according to physical law, chance (fortuna), not any deity’s intervention
Mechanism
Philosophical and scientific concept that explains natural phenomena in terms of physical causes and processes, often emphasizing the idea that everything in the universe operates like a machine, driven by mechanistic laws
In philosophy, mechanism often refers to the belief that all natural events and processes, including biological and mental phenomena, can be explained in terms of mechanical interactions between physical parts
Astronomy, physics, medicine
Widespread acceptance of mechanistic, materialistic explanations of phenomena
Metaphysics (definition)
Branch of philosophy that explores the fundamental nature of reality, existence, and the world beyond what we can observe through our senses
Deals with questions about what exists, what it means for something to exist, and how the fundamental components of reality are structured
Metaphysical concerns are questions about
The nature of existence, reality, time, space
Moral sense philosophy
Moral sense theorists believed that humans have an innate sensitivity to moral good and moral deformity…we have an innate sense of natural law, we judge the impact people have on systems of which they are parts
Believed we have an inner eye, instinctively recognize something is good or bad
Endownded with a sense of natural good
Naturalism
Philosophical view that emphasizes the idea that everything arises from natural causes and laws, and that the world can be understood and explained in terms of natural phenomena, without invoking supernatural or metaphysical explanations
Belief that all aspects of reality—including the mind, morality, and even knowledge—are grounded in nature and can be studied through the methods of science, reason, and empirical observation
Ontology (definition)
Branch of metaphysics in philosophy that focuses on the study of being and existence. It seeks to answer fundamental questions about what exists in the world, what it means for something to exist, and how different kinds of entities relate to each other
The study of the nature and categories of being, as well as the classification of things in the world
Paleontology
Scientific study of the history of life on Earth through the examination of fossils
Paleontology seeks to understand the structure, behavior, evolution, and interactions of these ancient organisms
Plato's cosmology
Plato derives the existence of a creator
The universe is a thing that has become
The universe is visible, tangible and possesses a body
If a thing is visible, tangible and possesses a body, then it is perceptible
If a thing is perceptible, then it has become
Anything that becomes is caused to become by something
The universe has been caused to become by something
The cause of the universe is a Craftsman, who fashioned the universe after a model
Plato’s understanding of the physical universe and social world is best described as
Idealism
Plato's idealism
Platonic idealism - extreme form that knowledge exists in soul before soul instilled in particular body
Born with basic perceptual understanding of space and object properties
For Plato, learning is the remembering of the knowledge of forms from before our birth
Ptolemy
Self and identity
Skepticism
Theory theory
Thomas Aquinas (1255 - 1274)
Deeply committed to reconciling faith and reason
He extensively studied Aristotle
He maintained that the church had nothing to fear from empiricism or rationalism
Studying Aristotle was no longer banned
His work was condemned in 1270, 1277; ultimately canonized
For knowledge of truth, man needs divine help, but can know many things without revelation
Saw biological change as possible-”corruption of seed”, spontaneous generation
Very very anti-non procreative sex
Thomas Acquinas: What is permissible
The study of scripture, reason, the study of nature are all valid studies of God
“Five Ways” statements for the existence of God; consideration of what God is not
Not multiple, embodied, finite, occupy space
Timaeus
One of the dialogues written by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, in which he presents his ideas on the nature of the cosmos, the creation of the universe, and the relationship between the material world and the forms
Key text in Plato's philosophy, especially in terms of his metaphysical and cosmological views
Utilitarianism
Vesalius✅
