Mdn Phil, Unit Outline
Philosophy
Dr. Weiselberg
Modern Philosophy, Unit Outline
Historical Background/Context
The Renaissance
The Scientific Revolution
Galileo
Isaac Newton
Universal laws
The Enlightenment
Nature, Reason, Progress
Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau
The Rationalists
General definition:
Deduction
a priori
René Descartes
Project:
Methodology:
Line of Thought:
Cartesian doubt (skepticism)
Cogito, ergo sum
Role of God in RD's argument
Two types of matter
Extended substance
Thinking substance
Mind-Body Dualism
Baruch Spinoza
Monism
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Monads
"The best of all possible worlds"
The Empiricists
General Definition:
Empiricism
Induction
a posteriori
John Locke
Project:
Line of Thought:
Primary qualities
Secondary qualities
Tabula rasa
No innate ideas
Other ideas:
Natural rights: life, liberty, property
Theory of government: social contract, protection of individual rights
On education
George Berkeley
Idealism
"If a tree falls a forest and no person is there to hear it, does it make a sound?"
David Hume
Skepticism
Line of thought:
Causation vs. correlation
"constant conjoinment"
habit
On miracles
Ethics
Hume's Law (the naturalistic fallacy)
The Kantian Synthesis
Immanuel Kant
Problems with Rationalists:
Problems with Empiricists:
Kantian Synthesis
Phenomena
Noumena
Ding-an-sich
Time and space, quality and quantity
Role of the mind
Analytic concepts
Synthetic concepts
The good, the true, the beautiful
The Categorical Imperative
