Deck 7: Rationalism

Question 1

Baruch Spinoza argued for a mind-body position known as

A)psychophysical parallelism.
B)materialism.
C)double-aspect monism.
D)interactionism.

Answer 1

double-aspect monism.

Question 2

A tautology is an expression that

A)reflects a profound truth
B)is highly insightful
C)is filled with information
D)is redundant or trivial

Answer 2

is redundant or trivial

Question 3

According to Kant, synthetic a priori truths are

A)informative about the world
B)redundant or trivial
C)uninformative in themselves but important in formal logic
D)not necessary to the work of empirical science

Answer 3

informative about the world

Question 4

According to Immanuel Kant, the so-called categories of understanding

A)are always products of learning
B)are ordering principles such as intuition of time and causality
C)are dependent upon cultural influence
D)are products of formal logic

Question 5

According to Kant, the ____ world is independent of perception, whereas the ______ world is as it appears to us in experience.

A)noumenal . . . phenomenal
B)phenomenal . . . noumenal
C)tautological . . . noumenal
D)phenomenal . . . tautological

Question 6

Which of the following was most devoted to finding a middle way between the extremes of rationalism and empiricism?

A)David Hume
B)George Berkeley
C)Immanuel Kant
D)Claude-Adrien Helvétius

Question 7

The term heteronomy as used by Immanuel Kant refers to

A)self-government
B)the capacity to act freely and independently
C)government from the outside
D)a neurosis marked by an overemphasis on independence

Question 8

The task of individuals, according to Kant, is to grow into moral

A)heteronomy
B)autonomy
C)certitude
D)conservatism

Question 9

According to Kant, truly moral actions will be based on our capacity to regard other people as

A)ends rather than means
B)means rather than ends
C)heteronomously determined
D)products of conditioning

Question 10

Which of the following is the most monistic?

A)Baruch Spinoza
B)Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
C)René Descartes
D)Immanuel Kant

Question 11

According to Herbart, the central goal of education should be

A)mastery of technical concepts
B)mastery of reading, writing, and arithmetic
C)moral development
D)to instill common sense in students

Question 12

Herbart believed that a major goal of education should be to

A)build what he called the apperceptive mass
B)focus on drills in order to instill discipline
C)emphasize pure science and pure knowledge and deemphasize practical applications
D)focus always on concrete facts

Question 13

According to Herbart, humans are unique from the rest of the animal kingdom because they possess

A)apperception
B)mathematics
C)language
D)souls

Question 14

The philosopher most clearly associated with so-called commonsense philosophy was

A)David Hume
B)Thomas Reid
C)Johann Friedrich Herbart
D)George Berkeley

Question 15

The expression ""common sense"" as used by philosophers typically refers to

A)those beliefs accepted by the mass of people
B)beliefs that derive out of a combination of sensory components
C)unreflective or naïve opinions
D)any deeply felt opposition to beliefs that are counterintuitive

Question 16

Reid argued for a number of propositions he called ""first principles."" Which of the following is an example?

A)to be is to be perceived
B)those things do really exist which we distinctly perceive by our senses
C)I think, therefore I am
D)education should build the apperceptive mass

Question 17

Christin von Wolff was one of the first to use the term psychology in a major publication. In 1732 he wrote a book called Empirical Psychology and in 1734 he published Rational Psychology. He believed that

A)empirical psychology clearly occupies a more important place in the scheme of things than rational psychology
B)rational psychology is clearly superior to empirical psychology
C)once we collect enough data we can do away with rational psychology
D)the two psychologies are co-equal partners

Question 18

""Nature never takes leaps."" This view that change follows a gradual and incremental developmental course led to a deemphasis on miracles. All change, from the healing of a broken bone, to the learning of a new skill follows lawful development patterns. This view, advocated by Leibniz, came to be known as

A)uniformitarianism
B)unitarianism
C)continuity theory
D)punctuated equilibrium theory

Question 19

Many petites perceptions or ""small perceptions"" in concert form the basis of perception. Thus, the sound of the waterfall consists of thousands of drops of water in concert. The idea of petites perceptions suggests the importance of unconscious processes. This idea was advanced by

A)Baruch Spinoza
B)Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
C)Christian von Wolff
D)Johann Friedrich Herbart

Question 20

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibneiz's solution to the mind-body problem most closely resembles what?

A)materialism.
B)psychophysical parallelism.
C)double-aspect monism.
D)interactionism.

Question 21

____________ argued that belief in demons was pure nonsense because there could be only one power and that is God.

A)Immanual Kant
B)Baruch Spinoza
C)Johann Weyer
D)Rene Descartes

Question 22

The term rationalism was derived from the Latin _____ which means to ______

A)ration . . . conserve
B)ratio . . . reason or think
C)ratus . . . define
D)rapidus . . . snatch

Question 23

Rationalism is to empiricism as ___ is to _____.

A)deduction . . . induction
B)induction . . . deduction
C)a posteriori knowledge . . . a priori knowledge
D)passive mind . . . active mind

Question 24

Descartes's philosophy of science was motivated partly by

A)his wish to challenge the skepticism of Montaigne
B)his wish to repudiate every detail of Baconian empiricism
C)his love of the inductive method and the hope it offered to the world
D)his wish to expose the absurdities of belief in a priori knowledge

Question 25

Descartes's method was modeled after that of

A)the Greek philosopher Aristotle
B)the Greek philosopher Socrates
C)Galen, the Roman physician
D)the work of mathematicians

Question 26

The most important building block in the Cartesian method is

A)the discovery of clear and distinct ideas or ideas that are immune to doubt
B)to throw out theories and begin with the facts
C)to place experimental results always in highest priority
D)to state all conclusions in terms of probabilities

Question 27

Which of the following is NOT one of the four methodological procedures outlined by Descartes in his Discourse on Method?

A)never accept anything as true unless it is so clear as to be immune from doubt
B)divide all difficulties into as many parts as possible
C)ensure that nothing is left out
D)begin with the most complex elements and proceed to knowledge of the more simple

Question 28

Descartes ______ reject the results of experiments that ran counter to common sense.

A)was quick to
B)would almost never
C)was slow to
D)simply did not

Question 29

Descartes's philosophical method is most accurately characterized as

A)empiricial
B)inductive
C)deductive
D)emotional

Question 30

______ argued against the metaphysical basis of demonology and thus figured in humanitarian reform in the treatment of people with mental illnesses.

A)Immanuel Kant
B)Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
C)Baruch Spinoza
D)René Descartes

Question 31

If we develop a hatred for something that was once loved, our hatred may be greater than if we had never loved the thing in the first place. Spinoza argued that the greater hatred in such cases is fueled by

A)the selfish nature of the original love
B)jealousy that the loved object might someday be possessed by another
C)sorrow over the loss of love
D)clear-cut psychopathology

Question 32

The term monad (from monas) was probably adopted by Leibniz from Lady Anne Conway and F. M. Von Helmont. The term refers to

A)a principle of existence
B)the identity of mind and brain
C)a principle of beauty
D)an ideal mental state

Question 33

The mental realm is always parallel with the physical (neurophysiological) realm. Leibniz explained the perfect correspondence of the two realms in terms

A)of the harmony of the spheres
B)of the idea that the mental realm is an epiphenomenon and thus not truly independent
C)of their perfect coordination in the pineal gland
D)of the creation of the universe such that there is a pre-established harmony of its individual parts

Question 34

Leibniz coined the term ""theodicy"" which refers to

A)the relationship between God and the world
B)the relationship between mind and brain
C)the relationship between empiricism and rationalism
D)the relationship between faith and reason

Question 35

________ was a direct realist and believed that common sense was a good enough reason to believe in the existence of the physical world and that any philosopher who denied the physical world was simply ridiculous

A)Thomas Reid
B)Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
C)Johann Friedrich Herbart
D)Pierre Gassendi