Term
| It is clear that the same thing cannot act in opposite ways, or be in opposite states at the same time in the same part of itself in relation to the same thing. |
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Definition
Plato
- Principle of Opposites |
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Term
| [I]sn’t it appropriate for the rational part to rule, since it is really wise and exercises foresight on behalf of the whole soul, and for the spirited part to obey it and be its ally? |
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Definition
Plato
- Why reason should rule |
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Term
| Reason and spirit] will govern the appetitive part, which is the largest part in each person’s soul and which is by nature most insatiable for money. They’ll watch over it to see that it isn’t filled with the so-called pleasures of the body and that it doesn’t become so big and strong that it no longer does its own work but attempts to enslave and rule over the classes it isn’t fitted to rule, thereby overturning everyone’s whole life. |
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Definition
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Term
| W]ouldn’t these two parts [reason and spirit] also do the finest job of guarding the whole soul and body against external enemies – reason by planning, spirit by fighting, following its leader, and carrying out the leader’s decisions through its courage? |
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Definition
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Term
| Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good… |
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Definition
Aristotle
- The art of medicine aims at health
- Studying aims at knowledge
- Practicing aims at skill |
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Term
| If we desire everything for the sake of something else, the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be in vain. |
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Definition
Aristotle
There must be something we desire for its own sake, and not for the sake of anything else.
- Ultimate end = Whatever it is that we desire for its own sake, and not for the sake of anything else. |
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Term
| The self-sufficient we now define as that which when isolated makes life desirable and lacking in nothing; and such we think happiness to be. |
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Definition
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Term
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Definition
Aristotle
1. It is desired for its own sake
2. It is not desired for the sake of anything else
3. It is a self-sufficient good
The ultimate end of human activity is happiness |
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Term
| …to say that happiness is the chief good seems a platitude, and a clearer account of what it is still desired. This might perhaps be given, if we could first ascertain the function of man. For just as for a flute-player, a sculptor, or any artist, and in general, for all things that have a function or activity, the good and the ‘well’ is thought to reside in the function, so would it seem to be for man, if he has a function. |
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Definition
Aristotle
• To determine whether a thing is in good or bad shape, we must look to it’s ergon (function, proper work)
• Happiness depends on the function of man
• We can determine whether a human being is happy (whether she is flourishing/living well) by considering the function or proper work of a human being |
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Term
| But we must add 'in a complete life.' For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy. |
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Definition
Aristotle
• To determine whether a human being is happy we must look to his life as a whole.
• Happiness is not a feeling or a state. |
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Term
| For without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods. |
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Definition
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Term
| But [friendship] is not only necessary but also noble; for we praise those who love their friends, and it is thought to be a fine thing to have many friends; and again we think it is the same people that are good men and are friends |
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Definition
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Term
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Definition
Aristotle
- Useful – friendship of utility
- Pleasant – friendship of pleasure
- Good – Virtuous friendship |
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Term
| Now there are three grounds on which people love; of the love of lifeless objects we do not use the word 'friendship'; for it is not mutual love, nor is there a wishing of good to the other (for it would surely be ridiculous to wish wine well; if one wishes anything for it, it is that it may keep, so that one may have it oneself); but to a friend we say we ought to wish what is good for his sake. |
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Definition
Aristotle
- Friendship requires mutual good will
- Friendship is a two way relationship |
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Term
| Now those who love each other for their utility do not love each other for themselves but in virtue of some good which they get from each other. So too with those who love for the sake of pleasure […] And thus these friendships are only incidental; for it is not as being the man he is that the loved person is loved […] Such friendships, then, are easily dissolved, if the parties do not remain like themselves; for if the one party is no longer pleasant or useful the other ceases to love him. |
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Definition
Aristotle
• Object of love is not a person as a whole
• Object of love is a part of a person (e.g., her looks, her wit, her money) which is useful or pleasant
• People change: we may lose our looks, our wit, our money
• Friendships of utility and pleasure are fleeting |
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Term
| Distance does not break off the friendship absolutely, but only the activity of it. But if the absence is lasting, it seems actually to make men forget their friendship; hence the saying 'out of sight, out of mind'. |
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Definition
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Term
| Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist. It is therefore nothing either to the living or to the dead since it is not present to the living, and the dead no longer are. |
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Definition
Epicurus
1. All good and evil lie in sensation.
2. Sensation ends with death.
3. Death brings neither good nor evil to the one who dies.
4. Death is of no concern to us. |
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Term
| We recognize pleasure as the first and natural good; starting from pleasure we accept or reject; and we return to this as we judge every good thing, trusting this feeling of pleasure as our guide. |
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Definition
Epicurus
- Pleasure is the highest good |
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Term
| For the very reason that pleasure is the chief and the natural good, we do not choose every pleasure, but there are times when we pass by pleasures if they are outweighed by the hardships that follow; and many pains we think better than pleasures when a greater pleasure will come to us once we have undergone the long-continued pains. |
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Definition
Epicurus
• We should pass by any pleasure that leads to pain greater than that pleasure.
• We should endure pain that leads to pleasure greater than that pain.
• We should act so as to maximize pleasure (?) |
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Term
| To be accustomed to simple and plain living is conducive to health and makes a man ready for the necessary tasks of life. It also makes us more ready for the enjoyment of luxury if at intervals we chance to meet with it, and it renders us fearless against fortune. |
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Definition
Epicurus
• The truly wise man is the one who can be happy with a little.
• We regard self-sufficiency as a great good, not so that we may enjoy only a few things, but so that, if we do not have many, we may be satisfied with the few. |
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Term
| The thirst for grasping the real meaning of things was indeed my habit and wont from my early years and in the prime of my life. It was an instinctive, natural disposition placed in my makeup by God Most High, not something of my own choosing and contriving |
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Definition
Ghazali
- We have an instinctive thirst for truth. |
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Term
| […] inherited beliefs lost their hold on me, when I was still quite young. For I saw that the children of Christians always grew up embracing Christianity, and the children of Jews always grew up adhering to Judaism, and the children of Muslims always grew up following the religion of Islam |
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Definition
Ghazali
- We have a tendency toward “servile conformism”: we tend to believe what our parents and friends believe. |
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Term
| Then it became clear to me that sure and certain knowledge is that in which the thing known is made so manifest that no doubt clings to it, nor is it accompanied by the possibility of error and deception, nor can the mind even suppose such a possibility |
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Definition
Ghazali
- Criteria for Sure and Certain Knowledge
S knows P if
1. P is clear to S, and
2. S cannot doubt P
In order to obtain certain knowledge, we must first question our beliefs. |
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Term
| I then scrutinized all my cognitions and found myself devoid of any knowledge answering the previous description except in the case of sense-data and the self-evident truths (p. 21). |
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Definition
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Term
| Don’t you see that when you are asleep you believe certain things and imagine certain circumstances and believe they are fixed and lasting and entertain no doubts about that being their status? Then you wake up and know that all your imaginings and beliefs were groundless and unsubstantial |
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Definition
Ghazali
“Dreaming Argument”: things you know for sure in a dream are not so when you wake up |
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Term
| When these thoughts occurred to me they penetrated my soul, and so I tried to deal with that objection. However, my effort was unsuccessful, since the objection could be refuted only by proof. But the only way to put together a proof was to combine primary cognitions. So if, as in my case, these were inadmissible, it was impossible to construct the proof |
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Definition
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Term
| This malady was mysterious and it lasted for nearly two months. During that time I was a skeptic in fact, but not in utterance and doctrine. At length God Most High cured me of that sickness. My soul regained its health and equilibrium and once again I accepted the self-evident data of reason and relied on them with safety and certainty. But that was not achieved by constructing a proof or putting together an argument |
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Definition
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Term
| [I]t is not customary to pull down all the houses of a town with the single design of rebuilding them differently, and thereby rendering the streets more handsome; but it often happens that a private individual takes down his own [house] with the view of erecting it anew, and that people are even sometimes constrained to this when their houses are in danger of falling from age, or when the foundations are insecure. |
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Definition
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Term
| But as for the opinions which up to that time I had embraced, I thought that I could not do better than resolve at once to sweep them wholly away, that I might afterwards be in a position to admit either others more correct, or even perhaps the same when they had undergone the scrutiny of reason. |
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Definition
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Term
| The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt. |
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Definition
Descartes
• Descartes first rule: Accept no claim unless it is so clear and distinct as to be indubitable.
• Not Indubitable:
1. Claims based on sensory perception
2. Claims based on reasoning |
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Term
| I observed that, whilst I wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should exist. |
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Definition
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Term
| As I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am (COGITO ERGO SUM), was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the skeptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search. |
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Definition
Descartes
Solipsism – the view that the self is all that can be known to exist |
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Term
| In the next place, I attentively examined what I was and as I observed that I could suppose that I had no body, and that there was no world nor any place in which I might be; but that I could not therefore suppose that I was not; and that, on the contrary, from the very circumstance that I thought to doubt of the truth of other things, it most clearly and certainly followed that I was. |
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Definition
Descartes
1. I cannot doubt the existence of the “I” that thinks.
2. I can doubt the existence of my body.
3. The “I” that thinks is not my body.
Masked Man Fallacy |
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Term
| I … concluded that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature consists only in thinking, and which, that it may exist, has need of no place, nor is dependent on any material thing; so that "I," that is to say, the mind by which I am what I am, is wholly distinct from the body, and is even more easily known than the latter, and is such, that although the latter were not, it would still continue to be all that it is. |
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Definition
Descartes
- Descarte’s Dualism
1. Mind – a thinking thing
2. Body – an extended thing |
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Term
| There are no men so dull and stupid, not even idiots, as to be incapable of joining together different words, and thereby constructing a declaration by which to make their thoughts understood; and that on the other hand, there is no other animal, however perfect or happily circumstanced, which can do the like. |
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Definition
Descartes
• Human beings are capable of joining words together to make their thoughts understood.
• Non-human animals cannot do this. |
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Term
| [W]hy isn’t mixing what I own with what I don’t own a way of losing what I own rather than a way of gaining what I don’t. If I own a can of tomato juice and spill it in the sea so that its molecules […] mingle evenly throughout the sea, do I thereby come to own the sea, or have I foolishly dissipated my tomato juice? |
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Definition
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Term
| That being then one plant, which has such an organization of parts in one coherent body, partaking of one common life, it continues to be the same plant, as long as it partakes of the same life, though that life be communicated to new particles of matter. |
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Definition
Locke
One and the same organic substance = one and the same life |
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Term
| Person = a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places |
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Definition
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Term
| Personal identity = the sameness of a rational being; and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person |
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Definition
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