Exam 1: Reality

The concept of __________ allowed Plato to explain what it was that one came to understand when one learned that two or more things were of the same kind.

In his allegory of the cave, Plato advanced the notion that ___________.

Plato postulated the pre-existence of the soul to account for our knowledge of Forms.

Inherent in philosophical systems of the Middle Ages was the confidence that the world was ultimately __________.

How do Leibniz's monads come into being?

Causal explanations seek to understand how something came about rather than why it came about.

Write a dialogue between Descartes and Aristotle on the Question of substance and our knowledge of substance.

"The realm of the visible should be compared to the prison dwelling, and the fire inside it to the power of the sun. If you interpret the upward journey and the contemplation of things above as the upward journey of the soul to the intelligible realm, you will grasp what I surmise … . Whether it is true or not God only knows, but this is how I see it, namely that in the intelligible world the Form of the Good is the last to be seen, and with difficulty … ." The passage concludes Plato's __________.

Monism is the attempt to reduce all the things in the world to things of one kind.

Spinoza argued that God, substance, and the cause-of-itself were all identical.

Descartes thought that human existence could be reduced through science to the functioning of a mere machine.

Socrates was human. What type of property is "being human"?

Who, in Plato's allegory of the cave, were the people sitting in the cave?

Confucius, a Chinese thinker in the sixth century BCE, believed that each individual has an impact on the well-being of society by fulfilling his or her role in relation to other people.

At the center of Descartes's metaphysics is Aristotle's conception of __________.

Teleology explains something by looking for its purpose, goal, or end.

For Plato what aspects of the "intelligible realm" is controlled by the Form of the Good?

How do Buddhists explain the causal interdependence of all things, if all things are insubstantial? How can insubstantial things, that is, nothing, interact or relate to anything?

How does Plato's theory of the forms drastically distinguish him from the pre-Socratics? Furthermore, explain Aristotle's response to Plato's theory of Forms.

The god of Zoroastrianism is Ahura Mazda.