Practice Exam A

Question 1

What is meant by dialectical analysis?

Answer 1

*Evaluating ideas in terms of their opposites.

Question 2

What branch of philosophy most directly addresses the question, “How are the mind and body related to each other?”

Answer 2

*Metaphysics involves the study of the most general or ultimate characteristics of reality or existence.

Question 3

In The Apology, what did Socrates propose he be given instead of a death sentence?

Answer 3

*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.

Question 4

What limits freedom to the self?

Answer 4

*External constraints.

Limits of freedom that come from outside of oneself.

Question 5

Which philosopher believed that the basic matter of the universe consisted of monads?

Answer 5

*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.

Question 6

How would Pascal respond to the person who wants to believe but is unable to have faith?

Answer 6

*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.

Question 7

According to Gilbert Ryle, what is the self?

Answer 7

*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.

Question 8

According to David Hume, what will happen if an observer experiences an event unlike any other, followed by a second, equally unlikely event?

Answer 8

*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.

Question 9

Both St. Thomas Aquinas’s argument from contingency and first cause argument rest on what basic assumption?

Answer 9

*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.

Question 10

In the Bhagavad-Gita, what is the name given to the illusion that the material world is important?

Answer 10

*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.

Question 11

How is the state of nirvana best described?

Select the two that apply.

Answer 11

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.

Question 12

Who wrote “The System of Nature”?

Answer 12

*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

Question 13

According to Churchland, what primary thing will a better understanding of the self lead to?

Answer 13

*a more peaceful and humane society.

Churchland believed humans were material objects and NOT immortal. Mind/body are NOT separate.

Question 14

What is human experience, according to the split-level model of human functioning?

Answer 14

*the product of the conscious and unconscious wishes and desires.

This was Frued’s view of the “split-level model” of human functioning.

Question 15

Which philosopher argued that ideas like impossibility and identity are NOT innate?

Answer 15

*John Locke argues this in Book 1, Chapter 3 of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

Question 16

According to Plato, what is the highest level of knowledge?

Answer 16

*understanding.

This is the highest level of knowledge in Plato’s “divided line”.

Question 17

What do Ptolemy’s computations of planetary position exemplify?

Answer 17

*a paradigm.

Kuhn explicitly cites Ptolemy’s computations of planetary position as an example of a paradigm.

Question 18

What is an important difference between Buddhist and Cartesian epistemology?

Answer 18

*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.

Question 19

How does Descartes interpret the nature of a piece of wax?

Answer 19

*clearly intuited by the mind.

Descartes thinks this sort of rational insight is how we learn about the world.

Question 20

What are synthetic a “priori” judgments?

Answer 20

*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”.

Question 21

What is the main philosophical difference between Immanual Kant’s epistemology and that of John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume?

Answer 21

*Kant believed that the mind was active, whereas Locke, Berkeley, and Hume believed it was passive.

Question 22

Which describes the ideal epistemic agent in standpoint theory?

Answer 22

*the conditionally oppressed subject.

Longino explicitly describes the ideal epistemic agent in standpoint theory in this way.

Question 23

Which is the view that morality is determined by an individual’s feelings and attitudes?

Answer 23

*ethical subjectivism.

Ethical subjectivism is the view that morality is determined by an individual’s feelings and attitudes.

Question 24

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?

Answer 24

*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.

Question 25

Which ancient Greek philosopher wrote The Crito?

Answer 25

*Plato.

The Crito was one of the initial dialogues written by Plato about Socrates.

Question 26

In The Republic, Thrasymachus defnes justice as what is in the interest of the stronger party. How does Socrates show that this definition is not true?

Answer 26

*he reduces the definition to a contradiction.

Socrates argues that rulers often make mistakes and pass laws that aren’t in their best interest, so that what is just is then not in the interest of the stronger party, giving a contradiction.

Question 27

Which ethical theory says that we should only focus on what is in our self-interest as supported by compelling evidence?

Answer 27

*rational egoism.

Rationale egoism says that we ought to choose what is in our own self-interest as supported by compelling evidence.

Question 28

According to Jean-Paul Sartre, what brings about feelings of anguish, abandonment, and despair in humans?

Answer 28

*the realization that humans are condemned to be free and are entirely responsible for themselves.

For Sartre, it is the basic truth that we are all free and entirely responsible for ourselves, but that we are terrified by this and feel helpless as a result. Thus, we feel anguish, abandonment, and despair.

Question 29

Axiology refers to the study of what?

Answer 29

*values

Axiology refers to the study of value or quality.

Question 30

According to Thomas Hobbes, where do the concepts of justice and injustice come from?

Answer 30

*they are created by humans when they come together to establish laws and legally reinforce them.

Hobbes believes - when we realize we are equal in ability as well as in the threats we pose to each other, it leads to an “everyone for himself” mentality. It is only when mankind agrees to come together and develop a moral code that concepts of morality are created.

Question 31

What ethical theory does Aquinas advocate and argue for in his Summa Theologica?

Answer 31

*natural law theory.

Aquinas argues for one and only one type of ethical theory, and that is natural law theory.

Wrong answer:
Divine Command theory.

Question 32

Which philosopher wrote, God is dead”?

Answer 32

*Friedrich Nietzsche.

Nietzsche said, “God is dead”.

Question 33

Which of theses statements would James Rachels agree with?

Answer 33

*The feeling of sympathy is fundamental to human psychological makeup.

Rachels felt that a pure egoist, who has no sympathy or feelings for anyone else but her/himself, is rare.

Rachels believes there is a clear difference between selfishness and self-interest.