MIDTERM

Question 1

What is metaphysics?

Answer 1

Study of reality

Question 2

What does Theogony mean?

Answer 2

origin story of the universe, the gods, and humanity

Question 3

explain Chaos, Gaia, and Uranus

Answer 3

The first primordial entity of Hediod’s creation is Chaos. From Chaos emerges the Earth, personified by the goddess Gaia. Gaia gives birth to Uranus; Uranus is the father of Cronus; represents being

Question 4

Which philosopher does Uranus anticipate?

Answer 4

anticipates Parmenites/being

Question 5

Which philosopher does Cronos anticipate?

Answer 5

anticipates Heraclitus

Question 6

Which philosopher does Zeus anticipate?

Answer 6

Anticipated Nous/ anaxagoras

Question 7

Who are the Milesian philosophers?

Answer 7

first of these philosophers; Anaximenes, Anaximander & Thales

Question 8

Who is Thales and what did he believe?

Answer 8

Presocratic; All of reality was made of water

Question 9

Who is Anaximander and what did he believe?

Answer 9

Presocratic; a perion; the boundless/infinity

Question 10

Who is Anaximenes and what did he believe?

Answer 10

Presocratic; Reality was air

Question 11

Who are the Pythagoreans? What did they believe?

Answer 11

Everything is made of mathematic ratios

Question 12

Who is Heraclitus? What did he believe?

Answer 12

Presocratic; Pure becoming

Question 13

Who is Parmenides? What did he believe?

Answer 13

Presocratic; Being must be eternal, unchanging, continuous, and whole

Question 14

Who is Zeno? What did he believe?

Answer 14

Presocratic; Developed paradoxes to demonstrate that motion doesn’t exist.

Question 15

What is the difference between monism and pluralism?

Answer 15

Monism: thinks reality is essentially one thing
Pluralism: thinking reality is made up of many things

Question 16

Who is Empedocles? What did he believe?

Answer 16

Presocratic; the universe was composed of essentially four indestructible elements; earth, air, water, & fire, & two forces; love & hate

Question 17

Who is Anaxagoras? What did he believe?

Answer 17

Presocratic; believed matter is infinite; nous

Question 18

Who is Democritus? What did he believe?

Answer 18

Presocratic; atoms are indestructible, invisible, many, & eternal

Question 19

Who is Simplicius? Why is he important?

Answer 19

Neoplatonist; He saved parts of Parmenides’ poem

Question 20

Who is Xenophanes? What did he believe?

Answer 20

A theologian who might have taught Parmenides. He was known for his critique of anthropomorphic representations of divinity.

Question 21

What is Parmenides’ poem about? What happens to the hero? Who escorts the hero?

Answer 21

The hero goes on a dramatic journey. He is led by the maidens of the Sun.

Question 22

What does Parmenides’ goddess tell the hero?

Answer 22

-There is a way of truth (way of being)
-The way mortals lacks conviction (way of becoming)
-There is a true discourse: the identity of thinking & being

Question 23

Why are thinking and being identical for Parmenides?

Answer 23

If one begins to think, then one enters into the realm of Being, & vice versa

Question 24

Why can’t we think nothing, change, plurality for Parmenides?

Answer 24

They depend on the concept of “non-being” or nothingness

Question 25

What does ontology mean?

Answer 25

study of being

Question 26

What are Zeno’s paradoxes?

Answer 26

Achilles & the tortoise, the case of the arrow, & the dichotomy paradox

Question 27

What is dialectics in Zeno?

Answer 27

Logic of contradiction

Question 28

Who are the sophists?

Answer 28

itinerant teachers in ancient Greece who taught rhetoric and other skills

Question 29

Who is Protagoras? What did he believe?

Answer 29

Sophist; truth is relative; “man is the measure (metron) of all things– alike of the being of things that are & of the Nonbeing of things that are not”

Question 30

Who is Gorgias? What was his argument in favor of nothing?

Answer 30

sophist; nothing exists; a. If being is eternal, than it exists everywhere Existing somewhere would be existing nowhere b. If being came from somewhere, it would come from nothing But nothing comes from nothing c. Language limits us; pure being is impossible to communicate in a historically rhetoric language

Question 31

What are Plato’s ideas? What is the original Greek term for them?

Answer 31

Eidos, The idea of beauty or the idea of the good exist on their own

Question 32

What are the four levels of Plato’s divided line?

Answer 32

most real & intelligible to least: 1. Understanding 2. Thought 3. Belief 4. Imagination

Question 33

What is the difference between rationalism and empiricism?

Answer 33

Rationalism means that pure reason is the primary instrument to knowledge Empiricism is know things according to sense of experience

Question 34

What is nominalism?

Answer 34

Physiological position that only individual things exist

Question 35

What does Plato mean by dialectic?

Answer 35

Ilangus; dialogue, -formal dialectics: cutting up a concept into particular parts; -real dialectic: understanding the actual world & reality

Question 36

What does the sun symbolize in the allegory of the cave?

Answer 36

Form of the Good; the ultimate source of truth, reality, and knowledge.

Question 37

What is the form of the good?

Answer 37

The most rational & real thing you can think of; symbolized by the sun; what gives meaning to everything else on the divided line; (beyond being); does not create the world;

Question 38

What is the anhypotheton?

Answer 38

means “without hypothesis”

Question 39

What is the demiurge?

Answer 39

It represents a form of efficient causation; mixed two ideas: the same & the difference

Question 40

What are Plato’s unwritten doctrines according to Aristotle?

Answer 40

Principle of the one & Indeterminate dyad

Question 41

Why does Plato think mathematics is so important?

Answer 41

It helps us to understand things beyond senses; it directs the soul upwards

Question 42

Why does Plato think philosophy is more fundamental than mathematics?

Answer 42

It is able to operate w/o hypothesis. Math depends on assumptions