Practice Exam A Flashcards
What is meant by dialectical analysis?
*Evaluating ideas in terms of their opposites.
What branch of philosophy most directly addresses the question, “How are the mind and body related to each other?”
*Metaphysics involves the study of the most general or ultimate characteristics of reality or existence.
In The Apology, what did Socrates propose he be given instead of a death sentence?
*Membership to the Prytaneum.
The Prytaneum was something akin to the city council.
Socrates felt that he could do the most good as a member of this group of citizens.
What limits freedom to the self?
*External constraints.
Limits of freedom that come from outside of oneself.
Which philosopher believed that the basic matter of the universe consisted of monads?
*Gottfried Leibniz. Monads are minds linked together by a sort of pre-established harmony.
Aristotle did not believe the matter of the universe was animate.
Berkeley did not believe that tables and chairs were actually ideas in the mind of God, he did not believe that matter itself was composed of minds.
Plato believed the world of matter was fundamentally illusory and the basic elements of the universe were forms, not minds.
How would Pascal respond to the person who wants to believe but is unable to have faith?
*Act like one who believes, follow in the footsteps of believers, and one will come to believe.
By following others who have come to believe, the disbeliever too will find his doubts allayed, according to Pascal.
Pascal seems to admit that a simple leap of faith may not be available in the face of doubt.
According to Gilbert Ryle, what is the self?
*an observable pattern of behavior.
Ryle is a behaviorist who identifies the self with a pattern of behavior.
The materialist identifies the self with the brain.
A Cartesian dualist sees the self as an immaterial soul.
A phenomenologist sees the self as an embodies subjectivity.
According to David Hume, what will happen if an observer experiences an event unlike any other, followed by a second, equally unlikely event?
*The two events will be experienced as separate, unrelated objects.
In The Inquiry, Hume teaches that an observer in the situation described would not experience the events as related to one another in any way.
Hume says we can never observe the power in one event acting as a cause to bring about another event as its effect.
Both St. Thomas Aquinas’s argument from contingency and first cause argument rest on what basic assumption?
*There can be no infinite regression.
Both the argument from contingency and the first cause argument are based on the idea that neither beings nor causes can go back to infinity.
In the Bhagavad-Gita, what is the name given to the illusion that the material world is important?
*Maya - is the name for the sometimes personified illusion that the material world has importance.
Karma - refers to cause and effect in Hindu metaphysics or, in the form of karma yoga, to the holy work pursued to gain unity with the true reality.
Krishna - is the deity who instructs Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita.
Yoga - is the practice meant to dispel the illusion of maya and lead the practitioner to unity with the true reality.
How is the state of nirvana best described?
Select the two that apply.
Right answers:
*extinction of the self. - This is Nirvana, which is the ultimate state of bliss, with no concerns for self or physical being.
*end of desire and suffering. - This is also Nirvana, which constitutes nothingness, escape from the cycle of birth and death.
Wrong answers are:
purgatory and hell - this is a description of Christian belief.
resurrection and afterlife - also a description of Christian belief.
Who wrote “The System of Nature”?
*Baron d’Holbach was the author.
(He was a determinist - every event is “determined” by previous causes or events).
People that were also determinists:
- Darrow
- Mill
- Sknner
According to Churchland, what primary thing will a better understanding of the self lead to?
*a more peaceful and humane society.
Churchland believed humans were material objects and NOT immortal. Mind/body are NOT separate.
What is human experience, according to the split-level model of human functioning?
*the product of the conscious and unconscious wishes and desires.
This was Frued’s view of the “split-level model” of human functioning.
Which philosopher argued that ideas like impossibility and identity are NOT innate?
*John Locke argues this in Book 1, Chapter 3 of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
According to Plato, what is the highest level of knowledge?
*understanding.
This is the highest level of knowledge in Plato’s “divided line”.
What do Ptolemy’s computations of planetary position exemplify?
*a paradigm.
Kuhn explicitly cites Ptolemy’s computations of planetary position as an example of a paradigm.
What is an important difference between Buddhist and Cartesian epistemology?
*Buddhism maintains that the self is an illusion; Descartes maintains that the self is one of the few things of which we can be certain.
This is a stark difference between Buddhist and Cartesian epistemology.
How does Descartes interpret the nature of a piece of wax?
*clearly intuited by the mind.
Descartes thinks this sort of rational insight is how we learn about the world.
What are synthetic a “priori” judgments?
*judgements NOT based on experience that expand our knowledge are a “priori”.
Judgments based ON experience that expand our knowledge are a synthetic a “posteriori”.
What is the main philosophical difference between Immanual Kant’s epistemology and that of John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume?
*Kant believed that the mind was active, whereas Locke, Berkeley, and Hume believed it was passive.
Which describes the ideal epistemic agent in standpoint theory?
*the conditionally oppressed subject.
Longino explicitly describes the ideal epistemic agent in standpoint theory in this way.
Which is the view that morality is determined by an individual’s feelings and attitudes?
*ethical subjectivism.
Ethical subjectivism is the view that morality is determined by an individual’s feelings and attitudes.
Lightning strikes a family’s house, causing a fire that kills their child. According to Albert Camus, the child’s parents find meaning and even happiness in this if they do what?
*embrace the absurdity of the event, and return fearlessly to the work life.
According to Albert Camus - Family members must realize that the tragic nature of the event comes from their own consciousness of it, not of any inherent meaning to the universe. The event itself is absurd, but meaning can be created by realizing this and moving on.
