Plato
This is Plato's theory regarding ideal, transcendent objects which exists as the perfect structures of everything in the immaterial, transcendent realm.
What is Plato's Theory of the Forms?
According to Aristotle, substances cannot exist without both of these things.
What are form and matter (primary and secondary substances, or essence and accident)?
Descartes was considered the "father" of this era in the history of philosophy for his contribution of shifting the philosophical emphasis from metaphysics to epistemology.
What is the Early Modern Period (in philosophy)?
This was Descartes' standard for knowledge.
What is certainty?
This metaphysical view states that there are mind-independent, physical objects that exist.
What is (metaphysical) realism?
This is the Greek word which means "end-goal" or "purpose" and is used by Aristotle and Descartes alike.
What is telos?
This term is used to describe Descartes' notion as to how we come to know the objects of our experience, indirectly, of course.
What is Descartes' theory of ideas?
Plato uses this analogy to demonstrate human knowledge before and after the pursuit of the Form, which ultimately can lead us from the darkness of ignorance to the light of enlightenment.
What is Plato's Allegory of the Cave?
According to Aristotle, these are types of properties that, if changed, change the things themselves.
What are essential properties?
Descartes uses this Aristotelian notion to describe the primary mode of existence present in all objects.
What is substance?
This term refers to Descartes' practice of investigating potential sources of knowledge by casting away that which can be doubted.
What is methodological doubt?
This view states that the only types of objects that exist are minds and ideas. In other words, there are no mind-independent objects that exist.
What is (metaphysical) idealism?
This field of philosophy is dedicated to the search for what we can justifiably know, and what conditions have to be met in order for something to count as knowledge.
What is epistemology?
Descartes argued that in order to know objects of our perception, we must form these types of ideas in our minds of them.
What are clear and distinct ideas?
These are the terms used to indicate the types of realities or worlds that exist for Plato.
What are the World of Being and the World of Becoming.
These are the four types of causal explanations to describe any object, according to Aristotle (you have to name all four).
What are material, formal, efficient, and final causes?
According to Descartes, this is the essence or substance of physical objects.
What is extension?
Descartes and Plato believed in this epistemic view, which states that knowledge is acquired through reason and rational processes.
What is rationalism?
This type of realist view states that the senses can provide us with direct access to objects as they really are in themselves.
What is direct (naive) realism?
For Plato, these are ideal transcendent objects. For Aristotle, these are essential properties of an object.
What are the Forms?
According to Descartes, this is the source of the interaction between the mind and the brain.
What is the pineal gland?
According to Plato, knowledge is remembering what's been imprinted on our souls from past lives. We can be secure in our knowledge of the representations of the Forms we gather from the external world because we have these things in mind to map onto the Forms.
What are innate ideas?
This is the teleological explanation Aristotle gives for the universe: to be like this entity who is responsible for the universe having come into existence.
What is the Unmoved Mover?
Descartes argued that we must be skeptical of the senses as a source of knowledge, given that we can be mislead by them. He used this argument to demonstrate his point, very vividly.
What is the Dream Argument?
According to Descartes, these are states of mind that represent objects in the world that are their causes.
What are ideas?
Descartes and Plato shared this metaphysical view, involving the belief that we don't have direct access to objects as they are in themselves. Instead, we only have indirect, representations of objects.
What is indirect (representational) realism?
This field of philosophy is dedicated to discovering the truths about the nature of reality, and the fundamental constructs thereof.
What is metaphysics?
These are the three conditions that need to be met in order to form a clear and distinct idea.
What is self-evident, held in the mind, and incapable of being logically doubted?
This example is supposed to demonstrate for Plato the relationship between the physical, experiential world and the world of ideal objects, considering we are to those objects what shadows are to us.
What is the Divided Line?
For Aristotle, these two things combine to make form.
What is extension plus function?
For Descartes, these are the three distinct types of substances that exist (you must name all three).
What are minds (non-physical substances), bodies (physical substances), and God?
Aristotle held the belief that knowledge is acquired through sense experience, known as this.
What is empiricism?
This type of metaphysical view states that there is only one type of reality that exists.
What is metaphysical monism?
This term is used to describe intellectual freedom from an external authority. In other words, the ability to self-govern one's own mind.
What is autonomy?
This view was held by René Descartes and describes the belief that the mind and brain are substantively different entities.
What is Cartesian (mind) dualism?
One of the problems with Plato's theory is the third man objection, which states that the Forms are treated as separate objects from their participants. So, there is a third Form apart from those two objects, and a fourth apart from those, so on ad infinitum. This is a problem known as this.
What is infinite regression?
These are the five types or ways of knowing for Aristotle (you must name all five).
What are techne, episteme, phronesis, sophia, and nous?
These are the two works of René Descartes which describe his epistemological and metaphysical accounts (you must name them both).
What are Meditations on First Philosophy and On Substance.
According to Descartes, these are the three sources of knowledge about which we can be absolutely certain (you must name all three).
What are the laws of math and science, God, and myself?
According to Descartes, these two aspects are the essence of non-physical substances (essences of minds) (you have to name both).
What are sensation and imagination.
This Latin term, meaning "I think, therefore I am" is the basis of Descartes' epistemology, in that we can be certain of one thing: we are certain that there is a thinking thing which doubts.
What is cogito ergo sum?
According to Descartes, the mind is made up of these two aspects.
What are the intellect and the "will"?