Phil 4 Midterm Study Guide

Introduction:
- Ontology is the study of being, kinds of things that exists, the different kinds of being. What is ultimately real?
- Material: spatial/public/mechanical
- Immaterial: nonspatial/private/teleological
- Materialism: Matter is truly real and immaterial things are not
- Idealism: Ideas are ultimately real
- Dualism: Reality is both material and immaterial
- Monism: There’s one single reality

Lau Tzu (Laozi):
- Taos analogy to water: water takes all shape, water doesn’t compete, it does nothing yet there’s nothing it can do, takes no form, all forms can be taken.
- Taos analogy to uncarved block: un-carved block is preconceived, preconceived thoughts/values makes it harder to respond to present situations.
- Taos analogy to valley spirit and the female: nonbeing “spirit of value with divine female”. Value -> space-> spirit -> life. Life fills empty space. Always allows for nonbeing.
- The Tao that can be told of not the eternal Tao because the name that can be named is not the eternal name.
- The Tao is the source of all reality because “The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth and The Named is the mother of all things.”
- The saying there is a doing that comes from not doing is when the action emerges from you instead of it being something that you think about.

Plato:
- Form is immaterial reality
- The divided line represents B as the highest point in the scale of reality, A being the lowest form of existence. The main division is point C. AC is the visible, CB being the intelligible world, AD is the world of images, and mathematical realities are in CE, platonic forms in EB, and the good at B.
- The allegory cave was meant to show how a philosopher was like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall don’t make up reality at all and