C6 Terms

Question 1

The Absolute

Answer 1

Ultimate, unified reality in Hegel’s philosophy; a total mind/spirit developing toward self-awareness.

Question 2

active mind

Answer 2

The idea (Kant) that the mind actively organizes experience rather than passively receiving it.

Question 3

anthropology (Kant)

Answer 3

Study of humans from a pragmatic perspective, focusing on behavior, experience, and practical knowledge.

Question 4

apperceptive mass (Herbart)

Answer 4

A body of existing ideas that shapes how new information is perceived and understood.

Question 5

categorical imperative

Answer 5

Kant’s moral law: act only according to principles that could be universal laws.

Question 6

categories of thought

Answer 6

Innate mental structures (Kant) that organize sensory experience (e.g., causality, unity).

Question 7

commonsense philosophy

Answer 7

Reid’s view that basic beliefs about the world are self-evident and reliable.

Question 8

dialectic process

Answer 8

Hegel’s model of development through thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.

Question 9

direct realism

Answer 9

The belief that we perceive the external world directly, not via mental representations.

Question 10

double aspectism

Answer 10

View (Spinoza) that mind and body are two aspects of the same underlying substance.

Question 11

faculty psychology

Answer 11

Theory that the mind consists of distinct faculties (e.g., memory, reason, perception).

Question 12

law of continuity (Leibniz)

Answer 12

Principle that changes occur gradually with no abrupt breaks in nature or experience.

Question 13

limen

Answer 13

Threshold at which a stimulus becomes consciously detectable.

Question 14

monads

Answer 14

Leibniz’s basic, indivisible, non-material units of reality.

Question 15

occasionalism

Answer 15

Doctrine that God mediates all interactions between mind and body.

Question 16

pantheism

Answer 16

Belief that God and the universe are identical (God = Nature).

Question 17

passive mind

Answer 17

Empiricist view (Locke) that the mind receives and reflects sensory input.

Question 18

petites perceptions (Leibniz)

Answer 18

Small, unconscious perceptions that influence conscious experience.

Question 19

preestablished harmony (Leibniz)

Answer 19

Idea that mind and body run in parallel without interaction, coordinated by God.

Question 20

psychic mechanics

Answer 20

Herbart’s idea that mental contents interact like forces, competing for awareness.

Question 21

physiophysical parallelism

Answer 21

View that mental and physical events run in parallel without causal interaction.

Question 22

rationalism

Answer 22

Philosophy that knowledge arises primarily from reason and innate ideas.