Midterm Exam
Which is a common characteristic of philosophical questions?
They are strictly empirical questions.
They involve fundamental concepts that are unavoidable by the thoughtful person.
They are purely semantic questions.
They aren't relevant to ordinary, everyday situations.
Which of the following branches of philosophy does not involve questions related to values?
Moral
Metaphysics
Social
Political
In philosophy, what is an argument?
A factual disagreement between people.
Giving reasons for a belief.
A shouting match.
Any verbal attempt to persuade.
What fallacy is it when an argument attacks the person rather than the person's beliefs?
Red Herring
Begging the Question
Straw Man
Argumentum ad Hominem
"I don't agree with Jones when she says we should wait for a trial, and I'll tell you why. I don't approve of letting someone get away with murder! That's why I say let's hang him now!" What fallacy does this most clearly illustrate?
Straw Man
False Dilemma
Argumentum ad Hominem
Red Herring
What must be the case for an argument to succeed with a rational person?
The premises must be acceptable.
The conclusion must be acceptable.
The premises must logically support the conclusion.
The premises must be acceptable and they must logically support the conclusion.
What are Thales, Anaximenes and Anaximander collectively known as?
The Atomists
The Pythagoreans
The Milesians
The Particle Theorists
According to Theano, what did Pythagoras claim?
Numbers are unreal.
Everything is in accordance with number.
Everything is made out of numbers.
Reality is totally material.
What is reality according to a follower of Parmenides?
One and changing.
One and unchanging.
Many and changing.
Many and unchanging.
Which is a theme common to all the pre-Socratics?
Nothing changes.
Everything is made of particles.
The experienced world is a manifestation of a more fundamental underlying reality.
True reality is unknowable.
What did the Atomists do?
They rejected the void.
They rejected determinism.
They believed that the basic particles were infinitely divisible.
They distinguished between atomic properties and relational properties.
Which argument did St. Augustine use to refute total Academic skepticism?
When we are in doubt we can at least know that we exist as a doubter.
Memory can give us accurate knowledge of past events.
Statistically speaking, if you believe enough things you can know that you are bound to be right about some of them.
God guarantees that our clear and distinct perceptions and ideas will be true.
What do Pyrrhonic skeptics maintain?
Nothing can be known.
People should suspend judgment about all things.
Some topics of inquiry are unknowable.
Some sources are ruled out as sources of knowledge.
Which view did Aquinas accept?
A physical thing is matter plus form.
All reality is material.
Forms exist independently of matter.
Nothing changes.
How did St. Thomas Aquinas distinguish philosophy from theology?
Philosophy is limited to the natural world and theology is limited to the supernatural world.
Philosophy is based on reason while theology is based on divine revelation and faith.
Philosophy is a source of ignorance, error, and illusion while only theology can give us truth.
Theology is dependent on philosophy but not vice versa.
Which view of Aristotle's did Aquinas disagree with?
Physical things are always a blend of matter plus form.
The essence of a thing is the same as its existence.
One and the same form (universal) can be in more than one physical thing (particular).
Change is explained in terms of four causes, the formal, material, efficient and final.
What did Hypatia think about the study of mathematics and astronomy?
They were useful in finding practical solutions to practical problems on earth.
They were an amusing diversion and, like philosophy, just idle speculation.
They were a way of proving the truth of Christianity.
They were part of a way of life and a means of testing the implications of Platonic and Neoplatonic metaphysics and epistemology.
What is asserted by the principle of noncontradiction?
People who don't contradict themselves are rational.
A proposition and its contradictory opposite cannot both be false at the same time.
A proposition and its contradictory opposite can't both be true at the same time.
If two propositions don't contradict each other then both of them are true.
St. Augustine rejected this Neoplatonic claim.
There are two realms to reality.
The immaterial realm is more real than the physical realm.
The ground of all reality, knowledge, and truth lies beyond the physical world.
The highest reality is the One, an impersonal, indefinable, and indescribable god.
What did Aquinas maintain concerning the human soul?
It is the passive potentiality of the body.
It is finite and destructible.
It cannot exist without the body.
It is a direct creation of God.
What did John Locke believe about perception?
Knowledge of the external world is based on the fact that some of the ideas we get through sense impressions represent the way things actually are in the external world.
Our senses give us direct acquaintance with the objects in the external world.
Our sense impressions only give us knowledge of the external world when they are clear and distinct.
The senses can provide us with no knowledge whatsoever about a world beyond the mind.
Why is there no mind/body interaction problem for Spinoza?
Only minds exist.
Only bodies exist.
Minds and bodies are simply aspects of the selfsame unit of infinite substance.
God guarantees that our mental states correlate with our bodily states.
What did Benedict Spinoza think a person is?
A mode of God/Nature.
An immaterial mind.
A physical body.
An immaterial mind in a physical body.
What did George Berkeley mean about such things as tables and chairs when he denied the existence of matter?
There are no unperceived tables and chairs.
There are no tables and chairs.
Tables and chairs are really just swarms of particles in motion.
Everything, including tables and chairs, is an illusion.
Which statement would Thomas Hobbes have accepted?
The mind and the body are separate and distinct substances.
All psychological states derive ultimately from perception.
Reasoning is not based on perceptions.
To be is to be perceived.
What was Berkeley's explanation for the fact that things like rocks and trees seem to continue to exist even when humans don't perceive them?
They are material objects, so naturally they can exist unperceived.
Appearances are deceiving. In fact such things do cease to be when we no longer perceive them.
Being partly mental, they continue to exist because they can perceive themselves.
God always perceives them.
Which claim about God did Anne Conway make?
God is part mental, part physical.
God is in time and space and subject to change.
God created the universe in a single, past creation event.
God is an eternal creator.
What is the highest reality (the Absolute), for Hegel?
The entire material world.
A God who exists beyond the world.
Infinite thought thinking itself.
A vast group of independent particulars.
What do we directly observe, according to David Hume?
Physical objects
Sense impressions
Ourselves
Our brains
What does Kant mean by the noumenal world?
The world as it really is, independently of our experiences of it.
The world as it is presented to us in experience.
The world of mind.
The world of matter.
According to Absolute Idealism, what is the relationship between being real and being knowable?
No reality is knowable.
All reality is knowable.
Some reality is knowable and some isn't.
Only God is ultimately unknowable.
What is the self, according to Hume?
A sequence of perceptions.
An immaterial, unchanging substance.
A physical body.
A social entity.
Why doesn't Kant think that we can have knowledge of the things-in-themselves (das ding-an-sich)?
Because they have not yet been experienced.
Because they are not physical in nature.
Because they are not mental in nature.
Because the organizing principles of the mind no not apply to them.
What is perception, for Immanuel Kant?
Sense impressions.
The organizing principles of the mind.
The application of the organizing principles of the mind to sense impressions.
The direct awareness of noumenal objects.
VWhy can't past experience justify claims about the future, according to Hume?
Our knowledge of past experience depends on memory, which cannot be known to be accurate.
Trick question! Hume does think that past experience can justify claims about the future.
Because we can never know if we are the same person as the person we seem to remember being, past experience cannot be a guide to claims about our future.
We can never know whether or not the future will be like the past.
{"name":"Midterm Exam", "url":"https://www.quiz-maker.com/QPREVIEW","txt":"Which is a common characteristic of philosophical questions?","img":"https://www.quiz-maker.com/3012/images/ogquiz.png"}