Section 1 (pages 1-3)
Bacon, Francis -- 1561-1626 -- Creator of Empiricism; established and popularized the scientific method and inductive reasoning. In inductive reasoning, knowledge is derived from the evidence of our senses, and our theories are not absolutely true, but rather are conditional on the evidence. Any theory may be falsified if new evidence is gathered which contradicts it (though the term theory is not properly applied to any hypothesis until it has been quite thoroughly tested.) He is also credited with bringing in the industrial age through his belief that innovation, informed by scientific knowledge, was capable of solving the problems of mankind.
Descartes, René -- 1596-1650 -- "The Father of Modern Philosophy" -- Laid the foundations for Rationalism. First champion of the use of reason (or logic) to determine truth; considered a well-informed reason to be the proper basis of morality. Used a method called methodological skepticism, which involved rejecting all hypotheses that "can be doubted" and then attempting to re-establish them. In doing so he shifted the emphasis in philosophy from "What is true?" to "Of what can I be certain?" "Cogito, ergo sum" -- "I think, therefore I am" -- was his first, and most famous, example of a self-evident truth. He felt confident that thought (specifically, conscious thought) existed, and trusted logical deduction as a method of proof, but doubted the evidence of his senses. Later in life, he put forward an ontological proof of a benevolent God, and used that proof to justify the conclusion that his senses could in fact be trusted (at least to a limited extent,) and that the external world of which his senses informed him did in fact exist, because a benevolent God would not choose to deceive him. (Yikes! Surely there must be a better reason than *that*!) Originated the concept of a dualism between a non-material mind and a material body, connected through the pineal gland as the seat of the soul (So that's where that idea comes from!) Believed in free will. Also a mathematician; the Cartesian coordinate system was named after him, and he laid the groundwork for the development of calculus. Influenced by Aristotle, Stoicism, Augustine.
Rationalism -- opposed by Empiricism. Originated in the work of Descartes; championed by Spinoza and Leibniz (all of whom were mathematicians.) The idea that reason, not evidence (i.e. logic, not experimentation) is the proper source of knowledge.
Empiricism -- opposed by Rationalism. Originated in the work of Bacon; championed by Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Rousseau, and Hume. The idea that sensory evidence, not reason, is the proper source of knowledge.
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Socrates -- circa 469-399 BC -- primarily known through the writings of Plato; his beliefs cannot be readily distinguished from Plato's. Championed the Socratic method (a.k.a. dialectics,) in which a series of questions is used to elucidate a subject. In this method, beliefs are broken down and examined, and rejected if they can be contradicted. He applied this technique primarily in the field of ethics, but it is also one of the bases of the scientific method, in which a large unknown is broken down into smaller unknowns until one arrives at a hypothesis which can be tested. Made lasting contributions to epistemology; famous quote: "What I do not know, I do not think I know," often paraphrased/intepreted as "I know that I know nothing." He believed in the innate goodness of humanity, and that people only do wrong out of ignorance.
Epistemology -- the philosophy of knowledge. What is it, how can it be acquired, to what extent is it possible to know?
Sophism -- root word means "wisdom." An ancient Greek educational system, whose members taught philosophy and rhetoric to children of the nobility. They were condemned by Socrates for withholding wisdom from those who could not afford to pay for it.
Stoicism -- "Virtue is sufficient for happiness." Destructive emotions are a result of errors in judgement; a sage (perfect person) is free from such emotions. Actions, not words, are the true measure of a man. This school of thought originated in ancient Greece, a century or so after Socrates and Plato.
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Spinoza, Baruch -- 1632-1677 -- Laid the groundwork for the Enlightenment. He rejected Descartes's mind-body dualism, and believed instead in the essential unity of all things. In his view, God is immanent in Nature, and all of reality is made up of a single substance, governed by a single set of rules. "Human experience is but a single drop of water in an infinite ocean which constitutes existence." (Cool; I love this conception of reality, but I never knew where it came from before.) He rejected free will in favor of determinism, believing that the course of history is entirely predetermined by an infinite chain of cause and effect. He imagined, however, that it is possible to achieve a more enlightened state of enslavement to our impulses, by becoming rationally aware, or conscious, of the reasons behind them (an idea that was fleshed out in Freud's psychoanalytic method.) In his view, good and evil are only meaningful in relation to a situation or set of interests: all that exists is part of the perfect underlying substance of God. Knowledge is divided into opinion, reason, and intuition; Spinoza preferred intuition.
Enlightenment -- An intellectual movement that favored reason and individualism over faith and tradition, and promoted scientific thought, skepticism, and intellectual exchange.
Individualism -- The idea that individual rights take precedence over collective goals and interests.
Leibniz, Gottfried -- 1646-1716 -- Admired Spinoza's intellect, and was accused of appropriating some of his ideas, but was dismayed by his conclusions where they departed from Christianity. His ideas laid the foundations for logic, and anticipated analytic and linguistic philosophy. Believed that this is the best of all possible worlds God could have created, and that everything exists in harmony and for a reason. (This must be the philosophy that was caricatured in the person of Pangloss, in Candide.) Developed a theory of monads, which he conceived as individual, independent, eternal and decomposable "elementary particles" of being, which could be as simple as an atom or as complex as a human being. This was a departure both from Decartes's dualism and Spinoza's essential unity of being. He believed that reason and faith are ultimately compatible, and must be reconciled; to do so, he softened Spinoza's absolute determinism to a relative determinism in which spontaneous action is possible. God is infinite and perfect, in his view, but humans have limited understanding, and evil comes into the world through human error when we exercise our capacity for spontaneous action. Leibniz was too busy being a scientist to pull his philosophy together into a coherent body of work, so it's mostly been inferred from a collection of short articles and letters.
------------ Okay, my brain is full. Here's a placeholder for the rest of them.....
Metaphysics
Kant (Immanuel)
Continental Philosophy
Hegel
Pragmatism
Positivism
Analysis
Existentialism
Romanticism
Plato
Aristotle
Hume (John)
Utilitarianism
Nietzche
William James
John Dewey
Linguistic Analysis
British Idealism
T.H. Green
Language Philosophy
Bradley
G.E. Moore
Bentham
Heidegger
Ack! That's it for section 1 (the first three pages)
Section 2.
Mill (John Stuart)
Hobbes
Berkeley
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