Uts midterms

• Philosophy


  Love of wisdom
• Philosophy


  • Understanding elements, mathematics, heavenly bodies, atoms, and man
• Socrates


  Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar, Teacher
• Socrates was the mentor of Plato
• Philosophy


  Love of wisdom
• Philosophy


  • Understanding elements, mathematics, heavenly bodies, atoms, and man
• Socrates


  Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar, Teacher
• Socrates was the mentor of Plato
• Socrates is considered to be the main source of Western Thought
• Socrates' works were only known through Plato's writing (The Dialogues)
• Socratic Method


  Method of inquiry consisting of series of questions to search for the correct/proper definition of a thing
• Goal of Socratic Method


  To bring the person closer to the final understanding
• Socrates: '"The unexamined life is not worth living"'
• Socrates' view of human nature

  • Touching the soul may mean helping the person to get in touch with his/her true self
  • A person will become wiser by reaching inside themselves, to learn continuously, and to look for answers by thinking, seeking, and asking repeatedly
• Plato


  • Aristocles (428-348 BCE)
  • Founder of The Academy
  • Wrote more than 20 Dialogues with Socrates as protagonist in most of them
• Plato's Theory of Forms

  The physical world is not the real world; ultimate reality exists beyond our physical world
• Forms


  • Abstract, perfect, unchanging concepts or ideals that transcend time and space; they exist in the Realm of Forms
  • Ageless and therefore are eternal
  • Unchanging and therefore permanent
  • Unmoving and indivisible
• Plato's Dualism


  • Realm of Shadows: Composed of changing, 'sensible' things which are lesser entities and therefore imperfect and flawed
  • Realm of Forms: Composed of eternal things which are permanent and perfect. It is the source of all reality and true knowledge
• Plato's view of human nature


  • Humans have the immortal, rational soul that is created in the image of the divine
  • People are intrinsically good and ignorance equates with evil
• Three components of the soul (Tripartite Soul)

  • The Reason: Rational and is the motivation for goodness and truth
  • The Spirited: Non-rational and is the will or drive toward action
  • The Appetites: Irrational and lean towards the desire for pleasures of the body
• Plato's Theory of Love and Becoming


  • Allegory of the Cave
  • "The more the person knows, the more he is and the better he is."
  • "Love is the way by which a person can move from a state of imperfect knowledge and ignorance to a state of perfection and true knowledge."
  • "Love is the way of knowing and realizing the truth. And to love the highest is to become the best."
• St. Augustine of Hippo


  • Christian Philosopher
  • Initially rejected Christianity as it could not provide him answers to questions that interested him
  • Wanted to know about moral evil and why it existed in people and also questioned sufferings in the world
• St. Augustine's view of human nature

  Two realms: God as the source of all reality and truth, and the sinfulness of man
• The role of love in St. Augustine's view

  • God is love and he created humans for them to also love
  • Disordered love results when people loves the wrong things which was believed to give him/her happiness
  • Physical objects - sin of greed
  • Not lasting and excessive love for people - sin of jealousy
  • Self - sin of pride
  • God - supreme virtue and real happiness
• Rene Descartes


  • Father of Modern Philosophy
  • Rationalist
  • Employed scientific method and mathematics in his philosophy
  • Cartesian Method and Analytic Geometry
• Descartes' system


  Two powers of the human mind: Intuition - ability to apprehend direction of certain truths, Deduction - power to discover what is not known by progressing an orderly way from what is already known
• Descartes' view of human nature

  • Cogito ergo sum - "I think therefore I am"
  • The cognitive aspect of human nature is his basis for the existence of the self
• John Locke


  • Born in Wrington, England
  • His works focus on the workings of the human mind, particularly, acquisition of knowledge
  • Believed that knowledge results from ideas produced a posteriori or by objects that were experienced
  • Tabula Rasa (i.e.blank slate)
• Locke's view of human nature


  • Morals, religious and political values must come from sense experiences
  • Greatest Possible Good
  • Moral Good depends on conformity or nonconformity towards some law: Law of Opinion, Civil Law, Divine Law
• David Hume


  • Born in Edinburgh, Scotland
  • After reading the Philosophy of John Locke, 'he never again entertained any belief in religion'
• Hume's view of the human mind

  Mind receives materials from sense and calls it perceptions, which have two types: Impressions - immediate sensation of external reality, Ideas - recollections of impressions
• Hume's Principles of Association

  • The Principle of Resemblance
  • The Principle of Contiguity
  • The Principle of Cause-and-Effect
• Hume's view of human nature

  • Other Philosopher's called the human nature as the 'soul' but Hume termed it 'the self'
  • Hume concluded that we have no sense impression of a self, thus, we already have the idea of the so-called "self' inside us
  • The self is a product of our imagination and there is no such thing as 'personal identity' behind perceptions and feelings that come and go, thus, the unchanging/permanent self is nonexistent
• Sigmund Freud


  • Austrian Neurologists
  • One of the pioneering figures in the field of Psychology
  • Founder of psychoanalysis (method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a client and a psychoanalyst)
  • The unconscious mind
  • Hysteria
  • Free association, dream analysis, hypnosis
• Levels of mental life

  • Unconscious - contains all those drives, urges, or instincts that are beyond our awareness but that nevertheless motivate most of our words, feelings, and actions
  • Preconscious - contains all the elements that are not conscious but can become conscious either quite readily or with some difficulty
  • Conscious - mental elements in awareness at any given point in time
• Provinces of the mind

  • Id - its function is to seek pleasure (pleasure principle)
  • Ego - the only region of the mind in contact with reality (reality principle)
  • Superego - represents the moral and ideal aspects of personality (moralistic/idealistic principle)
• Freud's view of human nature

  • An individual is a product of his past lodges within his subconscious
  • We live our lives by balancing the forces of life and death – opposing forces that make mere existence a challenge
• Defense mechanisms


  • Repression
  • Denial
  • Projection
  • Displacement
  • Regression
  • Sublimation
  • Reaction Formation
  • Fixation
  • Introjection
• Gilbert Ryle


  • English Philosopher
  • He contradicted Cartesian Dualism
  • Ghost in the Machine – human consciousness and mind are very dependent on the human brain
• Ryle's view of human nature

  • Man is endowed with freewill and it was invented to determine if an action deserves a praise or blame
  • Two types of Knowledge: Knowing-that, Knowing-how