Phil 270 Midterm - Kant
Flashcard 1
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Front: What is ontology according to Wolff?
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Back: The most fundamental branch of philosophy that defines and demonstrates the basic concepts and principles common to every other scientific discipline
. It provides principles for all other parts of philosophy
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Flashcard 2
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Front: What is the first principle of ontology, according to Wolff?
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Back: The principle of non-contradiction (PNC)
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Flashcard 3
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Front: How does Wolff define possibility?
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Back: What does not involve a contradiction is possible
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Flashcard 4
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Front: Why does Wolff analyze Descartes' cogito argument?
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Back: To discover the criteria needed for being certain about anything
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Flashcard 5
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Front: What makes the cogito argument absolutely certain, according to Wolff?
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Back: It is inferred from premises which are themselves absolutely certain, and the inference pattern is deductively valid
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Flashcard 6
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Front: How does Wolff demonstrate the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR)?
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Back: By assuming that this principle is either true or not-true and showing that assuming something can exist without a sufficient reason leads to a contradiction
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Flashcard 7
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Front: How does Wolff define sufficient reason?
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Back: That by means of which something else can be understood
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Flashcard 8
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Front: What is Wolff's view on composite beings?
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Back: They are made up of other beings that are simple and which cannot be observed through the senses
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Flashcard 9
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Front: Why does Wolff believe in simple beings?
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Back: Because a composite being cannot consist of an endless network of relations without any relata that are so related
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Flashcard 10
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Front: How does Wolff explain our representation of bodies as continuous and extended?
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Back: Bodies are composed of simple substances that are discrete and un-extended, and the mind represents them as continuous and extended due to confused sensory cognition
. Analogies include a cog-wheel in motion and the sound of a bell ringing rapidly
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Flashcard 11
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Front: What is the difference between the sensible and intelligible worlds for Wolff?
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Back: The sensible world is the actual world as represented by our senses (bodies), while the intelligible world is the actual world as represented through the understanding (simple substances)
. The sensible world is the actual world as it appears to us through our senses
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Flashcard 12
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Front: According to Wolff, how can something naturally go out of existence?
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Back: Through decomposition, which consists of the dissolution of the parts that make something up
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Flashcard 13
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Front: According to Wolff, why is the soul naturally immortal?
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Back: The soul is not a composite being since it is not extended, and therefore cannot go out of existence naturally through decomposition, since it has no parts
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Flashcard 14
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Front: What is Wolff's argument for the existence of God based on?
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Back: The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR). Everything that exists must have a sufficient reason why it exists
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Flashcard 15
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Front: According to Wolff, what are the characteristics of a necessary being?
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Back: Eternal, not identical to the world, omniscient, and omnipotent
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Flashcard 16
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Front: What is Kant's central goal in the Inaugural Dissertation?
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Back: To secure a method for metaphysics
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Flashcard 17
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Front: What is general metaphysics?
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Back: The science of being qua being
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Flashcard 18
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Front: What are the two ways a concept of a substantial compound can be formed?
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Back: Analysis and synthesis
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Flashcard 19
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Front: What concepts are generated when the mind attempts to make the concept of a substantial compound distinct through the understanding?
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Back: Simple and world
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Flashcard 20
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Front: According to Kant, what must exist if composite substances exist?
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Back: Simple substances
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Flashcard 21
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Front: According to Kant, what is required for the parts of a composite to constitute a genuine whole?
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Back: The composite must be a whole which is not itself a part of anything else, that is to say, a world
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Flashcard 22
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Front: How does Kant describe composite substances perceived through the senses?
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Back: As a "comparative totality"
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Flashcard 23
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Front: What problem arises if simple substances exist in space?
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Back: If they are extended, they are not genuine simples, and if they are not extended, they must be mathematical points, but un-extended points cannot be combined to compose something extended
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Flashcard 24
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Front: What does Kant propose to do in the Dissertation regarding the conflict between sense and intellect?
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Back: Split the horns of the dilemma
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Flashcard 25
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Front: How does Kant say the laws that govern human sensory cognition impose limits?
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Back: They only impose limits on what a being constituted like ourselves can imagine or sense, not on what the mind can conceive
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Flashcard 26
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Front: What is the method of metaphysics which Kant proposes in ID?
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Back: Essentially rationalistic
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Flashcard 27
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Front: What does Kant maintain about the human intellect in the Dissertation?
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Back: It is a source of cognition which can provide us with knowledge of things as they are in themselves, and it is the only such source
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Flashcard 28
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Front: What is Kant's most basic, generic term for any kind of mental state which has intentional content?
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Back: Representation
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Flashcard 29
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Front: What are the two kinds of cognition?
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Back: Intuition and concept
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Flashcard 30
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Front: How does Kant characterize intuitions and concepts in terms of singularity and generality?
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Back: Intuitions as singular and concepts as general
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Flashcard 31
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Front: What are judgments and inferences?
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Back: A judgment is a representation in which two concepts are combined in thought; an inference is a representation in which a series of judgments are combined together in thought
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Flashcard 32
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Front: According to Kant, what is the logical use of the understanding primarily responsible for?
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Back: Making our cognitions distinct
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Flashcard 33
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Front: How does the mind form a general concept, according to Kant?
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Back: By first discerning the various features that belong to each of these objects, and comparing the features that belong to one with the features that belong to the others
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Flashcard 34
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Front: How are concepts that are more general formed, according to Kant?
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Back: By leaving out the marks contained in a less general concept
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Flashcard 35
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Front: What does Kant stress in his account of the logical use of the understanding?
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Back: That the acts of reflection, comparison, and abstraction are always grounded in what is originally given by sense
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Flashcard 36
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Front: How does Kant characterize the most general concepts of all?
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Back: As those which belong to ontology, which is the study of the most fundamental concepts of reality
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Flashcard 37
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Front: What is Kant's first major disagreement with Wolff?
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Back: Although Kant acknowledges that the concepts studied in ontology can be analyzed through the logical use of the understanding, they are not themselves generated through acts of reflection, comparison, and abstraction
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Flashcard 38
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Front: What does Kant call the concepts that are given through something other than the logical use of understanding?
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Back: "The real use of the understanding"
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Flashcard 39
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Front: What examples does Kant give of the fundamental concepts of ontology?
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Back: Possibility, existence, necessity, substance, cause etc., together with their opposites or correlates
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Flashcard 40
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Front: What does Kant claim about the concepts of ontology?
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Back: They are devoid of sensory content, and are not contained in anything intuited by sense to begin with
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Flashcard 41
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Front: What is Kant's objection to the Wolffian account?
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Back: The concepts of ontology cannot be acquired through the operations characteristic of the logical use of the understanding
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Flashcard 42
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Front: What does Kant say is the criterion for the distinction between sense and intellect based on?
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Back: The different origins of the mind’s representations
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Flashcard 43
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Front: How are the faculties of sense and intellect defined?
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Back: In terms of receptivity and spontaneity
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Flashcard 44
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Front: What is Kant’s definition of sensibility?
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Back: Sensibility is a receptive faculty; it is the capacity the mind has to undergo certain modifications in its internal, representative states when it is affected by external objects
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Flashcard 45
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Front: What is Kant’s definition of intelligence (rationality)?
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Back: Intelligence (rationality) is the faculty of a subject in virtue of which it has the power to represent things which cannot by their own quality come before the senses of that subject
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Flashcard 46
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Front: What does Descartes say is required for a belief to count as knowledge?
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Back: The reasons have to be so strong, that they guarantee the truth of the proposition in question
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Flashcard 47
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Front: What does Descartes mean by the "natural light of reason?"
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Back: A non-doxastic source of evidence, a form of rational insight which provides us with epistemic warrant for a given belief
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Flashcard 48
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Front: According to Descartes, how are non-basic beliefs justified?
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Back: They must be inferred from those that are basic by means of deductively valid inferences
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Flashcard 49
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Front: According to Christian Wolff, what was the most influential philosopher in Germany in the first half of the 18th Century?
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Back: Christian Wolff
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Flashcard 50
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Front: According to Wolff, what are the operations which are characteristic of the intellect?
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Back: Acts of reflection, comparison and abstraction
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Flashcard 51
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Front: According to Wolff, what is a nominal definition of a concept?
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Back: Corresponds to the complete concept of a thing; to have a nominal definition of a concept one must be able to enumerate the marks which are both necessary and sufficient for any object to fall under that concept
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Flashcard 52
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Front: According to Wolff, what is a real definition?
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Back: A demonstration that the concept defined is possible
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Flashcard 53
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Front: What is Kant proposing to demonstrate with the argument from incongruent counterparts?
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Back: The reality of absolute space by showing that it is a necessary precondition for other cognitions which are already known to be actual
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Flashcard 54
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Front: According to Leibniz, what is a situation, or situs?
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Back: A set of relations that a multitude of coexistent bodies have to one another at a given time; in particular, a situation is generally described as the collection of angles and distances that are formed when lines are drawn
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