Reading Questions for Phil 251.501, Fall 2016 (Daniel) Class One (Aug. 30): Philosophy Up to Plato (SW 3-78) 1. What does it mean to say that philosophy replaces myth as an explanatory device starting in the 6 th Century B.C.E.? 2. How do natural philosophers from Thales to Democritus differ in their accounts of how things in nature are explained? 3. How is Socrates view that immorality is due to ignorance not based on thinking that philosophy is something you learn but how you think? Class Two (Sept 1): Plato to Christianity (SW 79-161) 1. How do Plato and Aristotle differ on the role of Ideas? 2. How are Cynics, Stoics, Epicureans, and Neoplatonists alike in describing how we should live? 3. How are the aims of Oriental religions (e.g., Hinduism, Buddhism) like Indo-European religions and unlike Western religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam)? Class Three (Sept 6): Middle Ages to Descartes 1. How can religious beliefs based on the Bible be compatible with truths based on reason and experimental observation? 2. How does Descartes extend the Baroque insight that life is like a dream by insisting that both spirit and matter can be known with certainty (i.e., clearly and distinctly)? 3. For Descartes, how can we be sure that God exists, not simply our idea of God? Class Four (Sept 8): Spinoza to Kant (to be turned in no later than midnight) 1. How does Spinoza s focus on God differ from Locke s focus on knowledge in freeing ourselves from passions? 2. How do Berkeley and Hume differ about the source of our knowledge of things in the world? 3. How is Kant s emphasis on the activity of the mind and practical postulates of reason consistent with French enlightenment doctrines about moral norms and natural rights? Class Five (Sept 13): Romanticism to Darwin 1. What do thinkers Herder and Hegel mean by saying that reason itself is historical and dynamic? 2. How do Kierkegaard and Marx differ in their rejection of Hegel s account of history? 3. What does Darwin mean by saying that human history incorporates features of biological evolution and natural selection? Class Six (Sept 15): Freud to the Big Bang 1. What do thinkers Herder and Hegel mean by saying that reason itself is historical and dynamic? 2. How do Kierkegaard and Marx differ in their rejection of Hegel s account of history? 3. What does Darwin mean by saying that human history incorporates features of biological evolution and natural selection?
Class Seven (Sept 20): Think Introduction 1-13 (provide page numbers with answers) 1. How are empirical questions different from conceptual engineering (i.e., philosophy)? 2. How can we process thoughts (i.e., develop our thinking skills) well? 3. What distinguishes high ground, middle ground, and low ground answers to the question of why we should engage in reflection? Class Eight (Sept 22): Think ch.1: Knowledge 15-32 (provide page numbers with answers) 1. For Descartes, why should we doubt everything and limit our beliefs to what is simple or universal? 2. How are dreams like creations of the evil demon? 3. Why can t the cogito be doubted in the same way that we can doubt that there is some thing doing the doubting? Class Nine (Sept 27): Think ch.1: Knowledge 32-48 (provide page numbers with answers) 1. What are the Cartesian responses to the following objections: (a) God s perfection is beyond human understanding; (b) why must ideas have a cause? (c) why think our understanding of a cause is like what it really is? and (d) the effect does not always result from a cause like itself? 2. What is the Cartesian Circle, and what is Descartes way out of it? 3. How does Hume s focus on natural propensities as the foundation of knowledge differ from coherence and skeptical accounts? Class Ten (Sept 29): Think ch. 2: Mind 49-65 (provide page numbers with answers) 1. What is the difference between zombies and mutants? 2. How does the possible existence of zombies and mutants raise doubts about whether consciousness is a mere epiphenomenon? 3. Using Leibniz s principle of sufficient reason, why are zombies and mutants impossible? Class Eleven (Oct 4): Think ch. 2: Mind 65-80 (provide page numbers with answers) 1. How do logical behaviorists, functionalists, and qualia theorists differ in describing being in pain? 2. How is identity theory not really a response to the private language argument? 3. How are sensations different from thoughts? Class Twelve (Oct 6): Think ch. 3: Free Will 81-99 (provide page numbers with answers) 1. How do both determinists and indeterminists undermine the possibility of freedom? 2. How does compatibilism allow for freedom while still endorsing determinism? 3. How is the libertarian account of freedom different from the compatibilist account? Class Thirteen (Oct 11): Think ch. 3: Free Will 100-119 (provide page numbers with answers) 1. How can the compatibilist as opposed to the person who adopts the deliberative or 1 st person stance think that doing something for a reason is caused? (109) 2. Why does God not know what our futures will be whatever we do? (115) 3. How are we programmed differently? (118-19)
Class Fourteen (Oct 13): Mid-semester exam Class Fifteen (Oct 18): Think ch. 4: The Self I 120-35 (provide page numbers with answers) 1. What does Locke mean by defining personal identity as the continuity of the same life or function? 2. For Locke, to say that you are the same self or person as yesterday is not to say that you are the same human being as yesterday: why not? 3. How do Locke and Reid differ on whether the self is simple? Class Sixteen (Oct 20): Think ch 4: The Self II 135-48 (provide page numbers with answers) 1. Why can t we imagine a distinction between ourselves as the point of view from which we experience (i.e., as subjects) and ourselves as objects? 2. Why does Locke deny that the continuity of our brains is the same as the continuity of our consciousness? 3. What s the difference between Hume s and Kant s accounts of the self? Class Seventeen (Oct. 25): Think ch. 5: God 149-76 (provide page numbers with answers) 1. How (a) do Anselm and Descartes differ in their versions of the ontological argument; (b) how are both a priori (vs. a posteriori); and (c) what is the objection to both? 2. What is (a) the difference between the cosmological argument and the design argument, and (b) what are four objections to each? 3. What is (a) the problem of evil ; (b) what are nine theodicies intended to respond to it, and (c) nine replies to those theodicies? Class Eighteen (Oct. 27): Think ch. 5: God 176-92 (provide page numbers with answers) 1. Why does Hume say that doubts about miracles are based on the testimony, witnesses, and plausibility of the events they describe? 2. What, according to Pascal, is the basis for our believing in whether God exists or not; and why, for Blackburn, is this not enough for adopting such a belief? 3. How is a properly basic belief about God for example, God has created all things, or God forgives me (Plantinga) different from the claim that God exists? Class Nineteen (Nov. 1): Think ch. 6: Reasoning I 193-211 (provide page numbers with answers) 1. How can an argument be valid if the premises are false? 2. What is the difference between a tautology and a reductio ad absurdum? What about the difference between universal and existential quantification (Frege)? 3. What is the difference between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics? Class Twenty (Nov. 3): Think ch. 6: Reasoning II 211-32 (provide page numbers with answers) 1. Why does our reliance on induction prevent us from knowing that the future will resemble the past? 2. Why does thinking of aspects of a system as constituting a mechanism require that we think of them as based on experience (à la Hume) rather than as related clearly and distinctly (à la Descartes)? 3. How is Newton s account of gravitational attraction characteristically part of a scientific paradigm (vs. a non-scientific account such as psychoanalysis or creationism)?
Class Twenty-One (Nov. 8): Think ch. 7: The World 233-50 (provide page numbers) 1. What is the difference between primary and secondary qualities? 2. How could secondary qualities (provided in the manifest image of something) benefit us without providing us with specific information about the scientific image of objects? 3. How does Berkeley reduce all primary qualities (e.g., solidity) to secondary qualities that is, to qualities that depend on the mind? and if a thing is nothing other than its powers, then what are the powers of? Class Twenty-Two (Nov. 10): Think ch. 7: The World 250-69 (provide page numbers) 1. How is Kant s transcendental idealism different from Locke s transcendent realism? 2. How is Kant s view different from Berkeley s subjective idealism? 3. Regarding the question of universals, how do realists, conceptualists, and nominalists differ? Class Twenty-Three (Nov. 15): Think ch. 8: What To Do 270-87 (provide page numbers) 1. How is speaking descriptively and speaking normatively the same as the distinction between what we can expect practically and what we can expect ideally from others? 2. What is the difference between a cognitivist and a non-cognitivist approach to ethics? 3. Why should one prefer non-cognitivism over cognitivism? Class Twenty-Four (Nov. 17): Think ch. 8: What To Do 287-98 (provide page numbers) 1. Why is it preferable to begin the discussion of ethics with those things with which we are concerned (virtue, duty, obligation) rather than ethical principles (e.g., do unto others )? 2. Why is it more important to see how certain beliefs (e.g., about friendship or honesty) have survived the test of time than to identify principles on which we should act? 3. How can the appeal to rights resolve conflicts by encouraging a mitigated skepticism about ethics? Class Twenty-Five (Nov. 22): Grasshopper: Intro (Thomas Hurka) & pp. 8-20 (give page numbers) 1. What three elements make game playing the ideal of existence? 2. For Marx and Nietzsche, how is the process of achieving a goal like a game, in that it is valuable in itself? 3. How does playing games justify our existence by focusing on prudence without equating existence with leisure? Class Twenty-Six (Nov. 29): Grasshopper: Goals & Roles 24-43, 96-122 (give page numbers) 1. How can the adoption of rules be a necessary part of playing a game and still be the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles? 2. What is the difference between playing a game governed by goals and playing a game governed by the adoption of roles? 3. How can you avoid merely playing a role in a game?
Class Twenty-Seven (Dec. 1): Grasshopper: Make-Believe 126-50 (give page numbers) 1. How is adopting a proprietary role in a game different from acting as if it is a role in a game? 2. What is an open game, and how is it possible that it could have goals like a closed game? 3. How could an argument about a disputed move in a game be irreconcilable in virtue of the fact that disputants differ on whether the game is understood as open vs. closed? Class Twenty-Eight (Dec. 6): Grasshopper: Playing Games 165-96 (give page numbers) 1. How are the differences among work, play, and playing games central in justifying existence? (176-77) Work is instrumentally valuable: it is useful and has a purpose. But if work were unnecessary (in Utopia), existence could not be justified (176). Play is intrinsically valuable: it has no purpose beyond itself and cannot justify existence (176). Playing games is the justification for existence, in that rules and roles specify how to behave (177). 2. How are work and play necessary but insufficient for existence in terms of games governed by goals or games in which roles are central to the game? Work is justified by results that are beyond it; so if we could exist without work, we should. Similarly, play is not justified by goals beyond it (182). Playing a game might not require a specific goal particularly in an open game but like both work and play, it does require the adoption of rule-governed roles (192). 3. In Utopia, how does game playing become the ideal of existence by making life worth living (188-89)? Like all truly intellectual activity, playing a game is valuable in its pursuit, not in its fulfillment (189). If we think of work as useful that is, if in our lives we don t play games we will think life is worth living (195). But if useful activities (e.g., carpentry, science) include rules or the adoption of roles, they reveal how existence is like playing a game (196). Final Exam Questions (Dec. 12, Monday): 1:00-3:00 p.m. 1. How is Hume s way of describing the subject (16) like Pascal s justification of religious belief (18) in that it appeals to a game-based pragmatic paradigm (19-20) rather than a workbased justification of existence (28)? 2. How are the cosmological and design arguments for the existence of God (17) like cognitivist accounts of ethics (e.g., utilitarianism, Kantian duty ethics) (23) in that both aim to justify our existence (24) by appealing (unfortunately) to a goal that is independent of rule-governed play (26)? 3. How do Berkeley s and Kant s versions of idealism (21, 22) shift the focus of philosophic enquiry from the achievement of a transcendent goal to the mastery of roles that make our lives interesting (25, 27)?