Philosophy Exam 1

Socrates’ Harm Principle

Which principle claims the following: 1. No one willingly chooses what is harmful to themselves. 2. When a person does harm to others, they actually harm themselves.

Evil as Ignorance

“When people choose bad things, they do so out of ignorance… whatever someone desires appears good to them.”

“The unexamined life is not worth living”

Socrates urges people “to investigate our beliefs and knowledge, to appreciate the limits of our own knowledge, and to strive to eliminate inconsistencies.”

Socratic Method

“Socrates would ask questions… exposing contradictions… prompting the interlocutor to revise their beliefs.”

Key features:

• Questioning

• Exposing contradictions

• Refining definitions

• Moving toward clarity

Presentism

when you judge past philosophies using modern values and beliefs

Contextualism

Definition:
A method that interprets philosophers within their own historical, cultural, and intellectual context.

Advantages:

• Avoids misinterpretation.

• Recovers original meaning.

Disadvantages:

• Can become antiquarian (treating history as an end in itself).

Two Pre‑Socratics Who Influenced Plato’s Forms

Parmenides:

Reality must be unchanging; change is an illusion.

Heraclitus:

Everything is in flux; constant change.

Plato’s synthesis:

“Every particular thing… participates in an immaterial form… The invisible realm of the forms is eternal, unchanging, and perfect, while the material realm is changing.”

Problem of Evil

Definition (textbook):

If God is all‑powerful, all‑knowing, and perfectly good, why is there so much suffering?

Why it’s a problem:
It challenges the coherence of God’s attributes.

Augustine’s Two Solutions

• Evil is a privation of good

  “Evil… was not real. It was a privation or negation of the good.”

• Evil comes from human free will

  Humans “retain the capacity to choose the good” but often misuse freedom.

Confirmation Bias

Definition: The tendency to seek or interpret evidence in ways that confirm existing beliefs.

Anchoring Bias

Definition: Relying too heavily on the first piece of information encountered.

Sunk Cost Fallacy

Definition: Continuing a behavior because of previously invested resources, even when it no longer makes sense.

Epistemic Humility

Definition: Recognizing the limits of one’s knowledge.

Dunning–Kruger Effect

Definition: People with low competence overestimate their ability because they lack the knowledge to recognize their own errors.

Strawman Argument

Definition: when someone takes another's argument and flips it into a weaker, exaggerated, or distorted version so it is easier to attack.