Philosophy

Question 1

Define solipsism

Answer 1

Belief that only I myself and my own experiences are real, while anything else-a physical object or another person is nothing more than an object of my consciousness.

Question 2

Define epistemology

Answer 2

Branch of philosophy that investigates the possibility, origins, nature and extent of human knowledge.

Question 3

Define metaphysics

Answer 3

Metaphysics is the study that is concerned with providing a comprehensive account of the most general features of reality as a whole. The study of being as such.

Question 4

Define rationalism

Answer 4

Reliance on reason, not experience as the only reliable source of human nature

Question 5

Define argument

Answer 5

A collection of two or more propositions, all but one of which are the premises, which are supposed to provide inferential support for the truth of the remaining one.

Question 6

Define premise

Answer 6

A statement whose truth is to infer that of others.

Question 7

Define skepticism

Answer 7

Belief that some or all human knowledge is impossible.

Question 8

Define determinism

Answer 8

Belief that since each momentary state of the world entails all of its future States and it must be possible to offer an explanation for everything that happen. All events occur outside of will and is already pre determined.

Question 9

Define free will

Answer 9

A philosophical term for a capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives.

Question 10

What is a deterministic universe.

Answer 10

Determinism is the philosophical idea that every event or state of affairs, including every human decision and action, is the inevitable and necessary consequence of previous states of affairs.
More strictly, determinism should be distinguished from pre-determinism, the idea that the entire past (as well as the future) was determined at the origin of the universe.

Question 11

Is the universe completely deterministic?

Answer 11

It is impossible to tell for sure if the universe is in fact deterministic or not. Humans believe and have the illusion of free will, where we believe any choice or action that we make is our own and that we can do anything we want. Despite this it is possible that every action we may ever take and that we believe was taken under free will had already been predicted and the action we took was just playing out as it is supposed too.

Question 12

Do humans have free will?

Answer 12

Many humans believe to live under the illusion of free will, but it is not possible to understand if we do or do not have free will. It is argued that humans do have their own free will and are able to make their own choices, decisions and take actions and do freely. They believe that every choice is their own and that every decision was made by themselves. However it is possible that every action we take can be explained and predicted by our environment and people around us and that we are just playing out scenes of an already predicted future. Because of our environment around us, it can be predicted how it will be changed and how everything around us will change thus affecting the decisions made by a person.

Question 13

Two theories of personal identity?

Answer 13

1. Identities, are built up from memories of their own sensory experiences, as well as our reflections on these experiences. This can be objectified as experiences do not exhaust knowledge from our memories.
2. Central to many religious beliefs, it is thought that we may be born with a soul that defines and makes up our identity from our time of birth to our time of death.

Question 14

Is there a constant which gives us indentity?

Answer 14

There is yet to be a proven constant for our identity. It is thought that our memories give us our identities, but they often change over the course of time. It is also thought that the environment and people around us could influence our identity but as they are constantly changing as well it is not a constant.

Question 15

Is time travelling backwards in time possible?

Answer 15

Time travelling backwards is impossible because it creates so many paradoxes and contradictions such as

The Grandfather Paradox: Can a person who has traveled to the past kill his or her own grandfather?
The Self-Visitation Paradox: Can a person visit himself or herself? How can there be two of one person at once?
The Nowhere Argument: If only the present moment exists, how could we travel to the past or the future?
The Double-Occupancy Problem: Can a person time travel backwards in time without colliding with him- or herself?

Question 16

What is the tripartite definition of knowledge?

Answer 16

The tripartite definition of knowledge is perhaps the oldest accepted definition of knowledge. The tripartite definition holds that knowledge is justified true belief. The purpose of the tripartite definition is to provide an adequate account of our conception of what knowledge is. Truth, knowledge or belief.

Question 17

Plato forms (ideas)

Answer 17

Plato believed that the same point could be made with regard to many other abstract concepts: even though we perceive only their imperfect instances, we have genuine knowledge of truth, goodness, and beauty no less than of equality. Things of this sort are the Platonic Forms, abstract entities that exist independently of the sensible world.

Question 18

Descartes doubting the existence of the physical world

Answer 18

First, Descartes noted that the testimony of the senses with respect to any particular judgment about the external world may turn out to be mistaken. Second, Descartes raised a more systematic method for doubting the legitimacy of all sensory perception. Since my most vivid dreams are internally indistinguishible from waking experience, he argued, it is possible that everything I now “perceive” to be part of the physical world outside me is in fact nothing more than a fanciful fabrication of my own imagination. Finally, then, Descartes raises even more comprehensive doubts by inviting us to consider a radical hypothesis derived from one of our most treasured traditional belief

Question 19

What can Descartes not doubt?

Answer 19

I think therefore I am. It does not. Descartes claimed that one thing emerges as true even under the strict conditions imposed by the otherwise universal doubt: “I am, I exist” is necessarily true whenever the thought occurs to me. This truth neither derives from sensory information nor depends upon the reality of an external world, and I would have to exist even if I were systematically deceived. For even an omnipotent god could not cause it to be true, at one and the same time, both that I am deceived and that I do not exist. If I am deceived, then at least I am.

Question 20

What is Descartes argument for the existence of God

Answer 20

He stated (1) Our idea of God is of a perfect being, (2) it is more perfect to exist than not to exist, (3) therefore, God must exist.

Question 21

Define sense data

Answer 21

Reliance on reason, not experience, as the only reliable source of human knowledge.

Question 22

How are baby’s like a blank slate?

Answer 22

Children were born as “blank slates”, beginning their lives morally neutral. A child’s nature and personality would develop over childhood, a period of time during which the educationalists believed a child was particularly impressionable.

Question 23

Locke complex ideas in epistemology.

Answer 23

On Locke’s view, complex ideas are of three varieties: Modes are invariably conceived as the features of something else, which are never capable of existing independently. Substances, on the other hand, are understood to be the existing things in which modes inhere. Relations are nothing more than mental comparisons in some respect among other ideas.

Question 24

Hume problem of induction.

Answer 24

Hume’s problem is usefully divided in two. There is first what I shall call the descriptive problem: How do human beings form opinions about unobserved matters fact? And then there is the normative problem: Are beliefs formed in this way justified? Does someone who “reasons” as we normally do really have reason to believe his conclusions about the parts of nature he has not observed?

Question 25

Define validity

Answer 25

In philosophy, “validity” is a property of arguments. Every argument represents one or more conclusions as each being entailed by various steps in the argument. Now this representation can be correct or incorrect.More simply, to say that an argument is “valid” is just to say that all of the entailment relations the argument represents actually hold.j

Question 26

Philosophical soundness

Answer 26

To say that an argument is “sound” is to say that that argument is valid and that all of its premises are true

Question 27

Define priori

Answer 27

are used in philosophy (epistemology) to distinguish two types of knowledge, justification, or argument: A priori knowledge or justification is independent of experience

Question 28

Define epistemology

Answer 28

The theory of knowledge and is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.

Question 29

Define empiricism

Answer 29

The theory that all knowledge is all derived from sense and experiences.

Question 30

How does the butterfly effect relate to the theory of determinism?

Answer 30

The butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state.

Question 31

Define the theory of dualism

Answer 31

In philosophy of mind, dualism is the position that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical,[1] or that the mind and body are not identical.

Question 32

Define materialism

Answer 32

The theory of materialism states that everything that occurs can be explained by or in relation to matter. Materialism states that everything in the universe is matter, without any true spiritual or intellectual existence. A tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values.

Question 33

Is backwards time travel possible?

Answer 33

Backward time travel will necessarily interfere and alter the future of the person or things creation — be it a human being or a spinning electron — and the possibility of this interference with creation of the thing that travelled leads to a paradox which makes backward time travel impossible.

Question 34

Give the meaning of the word know.

Answer 34

Having knowledge or certain information on a particular subject.
What we ‘know’ can also be debated. Do we know anything? The only thing that is known is that my mind exist.

Question 35

What are and give examples of Plato’s forms.

Answer 35

According to Plato, reality consists of two realms. First, there is the physical world, the world that we can observe with our five senses. And second, there is a world made of eternal perfect “forms” or “ideas.”

What are “forms”? Plato says they are perfect templates that exist somewhere in another dimension (He does not tell us where). These forms are the ultimate reference points for all objects we observe in the physical world. They are more real than the physical objects you see in the world.

For example, a chair in your house is an inferior copy of a perfect chair that exists somewhere in another dimension. A horse you see in a stable is really an imperfect representation of some ideal horse that exists somewhere. In both cases, the chair in your house and the horse in the stable are just imperfect representations of the perfect chair and horse that exist somewhere else.

According to Plato, whenever you evaluate one thing as “better” than another, you assume that there is an absolute good from which two objects can be compared. For example, how do you know a horse with four legs is better than a horse with three legs? Answer: You intuitively know that “horseness” involves having four legs.

Question 36

Is it possible to doubt the existence of your body?

Answer 36

Yes it is logically possible that your mind could be separated and what you experience every day is just stimulated to give the illusion of having a body. There is no way to tell if anything or anyone around you or apart from yourself is real.

Question 37

Karl Poppers theory of scientific progress

Answer 37

Popper was famous more for his theory of false cation towards scientific methods which would test us on what we really knew. A theory in the sciences can never be proven, but it can be falsified, meaning that it can and should be scrutinised by decisive experiments. If the outcome of an experiment contradicts the theory

Question 38

define causality

Answer 38

Is simply the relationship between cause and effect. It is similar to determinism.

Question 39

what makes a good justification?

Answer 39

A good justification requires a person to believe the proposition and it needs to be true.

Question 40

What is induction?

Answer 40

The mental process of concluding because something has occured at a finite number of times, it will continue to occur in a certain way.

Question 41

What is a pardigm

Answer 41

A particular way of viewing a reality that excludes other way.

Question 42

what are the two reasons to refuse an argument?

Answer 42

It is either because the reasoning is faulty (in other words, the relationship between the premises and the conclusion isnt working or at least one of the premises is false.

Question 43

Define cogency

Answer 43

Used to describe the relationship between an arguments premises and is consultant.

Question 44

Inductive arguments

Answer 44

are false arguments.

Question 45

Define deductive arguments

Answer 45

Arguments that the conclusion is presented as following the premises neseccarily.

Question 46

Define mind and body theory.

Answer 46

He reaches this conclusion by arguing that the nature of the mind (that is, a thinking, non-extended thing) is completely different from that of the body (that is, an extended, non-thinking thing), and therefore it is possible for one to exist without the other.

Question 47

Define Essence.

Answer 47

In philosophy, essence is the attribute or set of attributes that make an entity or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it loses its identity

Question 48

Define a Priori

Answer 48

The term a priori is used in philosophy to indicate deductive reasoning.

Question 49

define induction

Answer 49

Induction is a specific form of reasoning in which the premises of an argument support a conclusion, but do not ensure it.

Question 50

define premise

Answer 50

a previous statement or proposition from which another is inferred or follows as a conclusion.

Question 51

What is the Grandfather paradox?

Answer 51

The basic idea is that, no matter how hard you try, you can’t go back in time and kill your grandfather, because if you did, your mother or father would never have been born, which means that you would never have been born, which means you couldn’t have gone back in time and killed your grandfather, which means that you didn’t go back in time and kill your grandfather, because you can’t go back in time and kill your grandfather, because if you did, you wouldn’t be born, which you obviously have already been born because if you were never born then you couldn’t have gone back in time and tried (and failed) to kill your grandfather in the first place.