Muskingum College - Center for Advancement and Learning (CAL)
 Muskingum College - Center for Advancement and Learning (CAL)
Muskingum College - Center for Advancement and Learning (CAL)
 

Philosophy Strategies Menu

Several organizational formats are suggested for Philosophy material: concept or term lists, flow charts, and matrices. Each is described and illustrated in this section (E. Granitsas, CAL).

Information Organization

Concept and Terms Lists

Students should keep concept lists or term lists for each philosopher for two reasons. First, students are expected to use the philosopher's names and contributions in papers and on exams. Second, different philosophers sometimes used the same terminology to refer to different, or somewhat different, concepts in their philosophy. Concept/term lists for three philosophers are provided below to illustrate this strategy.


FRANCIS BACON

FOUR CLASSES OF IDOLS



  • Idols of the Tribe

    group, human nature itself

  • Idols of the Cave

    individual man, personal preferences

  • Idols of the Market Place

    miscommunication in dealings between men, faulty language, imposed by words

  • Idols of the Theater

    faulty philosophical systems


 


RENE DESCARTES

THREE KINDS OF IDEAS



  1. Innate

    derives from my own nature

  2. Adventitious

    derives externally, from things located outside of me

  3. Self-Produced

    imaginative, invented by me, combination of innate and adventitious ideas


 


DAVID HUME

THREE PRINCIPLES OF CONNECTION BETWEEN IDEAS



  1. Resemblance

    things actually have a resemblance, there is a similarity

    examples: two impressionist paintings, twins

  2. Contiguity in Time and Place

    the connection is something that you make, because of your experience

    examples: Monday night and football, one class reminds you of another class

  3. Cause and Effect

    one thing is directly connected to another

    examples: smoke - fire, Reformation - Counter Reformation


Flow Charts

Flow charts may be used to organize processual information or a series of events. Questions to consider when developing flow charts for Philosophy information are: What is the object, procedure, or initiating event? What are the stages or steps? How do the steps lead to one another? What is the final outcome? An example of a processual flow chart in given below.

Descarte's Meditations on the First Philosophy


MEDITATION I

argument that doesn't really know what it claims to know

method of systematic doubt

possibility of God as deceiver, evil genus

 


MEDITATION II

cognito sum - while thinking I exist

I am a thinking thing

sensory qualities vs. primary qualities

wax example

 


Descartes doubts everything

slowly reinterdouces "truths"

truths build on previous truths

Matrices

Similarities and differences among concepts may be organized using matrices, such as the examples below.


RATIONALISM


EMPIRICISM


  • a priori knowledge

  • innate ideas

  • reason alone can give us knowledge of the world

  • sense experience is an inferior form of reasoning

  • principle of sufficient reason



  • a posteriori knowledge

  • all ideas must originally derive from experience

  • experience alone is the origin of all knowledge

  • concepts are faint copies of sense impressions


Hume's Objects of Human History


Relations of Ideas


Matters of Fact


"intuitively or demonstratively certain"


.


object of mathematical sciences


object of empirical sciences


employs reason, first and foremost


investigates relations of cause and effect


a priori: knowledge is derived independently of experience (but not of world)


a posteriori: employs observation of particular state of affairs (is not a matter of reason alone)