Straighterline Introduction to Philosophy Final Study

Aristotle's primary area of interest was

metaphysics.

Which of the following is not one of the ten basic categories Aristotle used to describe the ways in which humans think about things?

weight

How many souls did Aristotle believe humans have?

three

Aristotle's works include all of the following except:

Nicomachean Ethics

What is a thing, according to Aristotle?

A specific form in a particular hunk of matter.

What does Aristotle mean by the efficient cause of a thing?

Where it came from.

If you want to say what a thing is, which of Aristotle's four causes must you provide?

The formal cause.

What did Aristotle say about all change?

It is a movement from potentiality to actuality.

Which of the following is an example of what Aristotle called a universal?

The property of being red.

What is a syllogism?

A kind of inference.

What is not true of Hinduism?

It has no scriptures or holy writings.

What is the central doctrine of the Upanishads?

The identity of Brahman and Atman.

What is the main cause of human suffering, according to Siddhartha Gautama?

Ignorance and selfish craving.

Which is not a characteristic of the Tao, for Taoists?

Man can improve it.

According to Confucius, this principle governs both the well-ordered family and the well-ordered state.

The principle of the Mean.

Which would Mencius say true happiness consists in?

Seeing parents and family alive and well and free from anxiety.

What must one do to discover ultimate reality and truth, according to Hui Neng, sixth patriarch of Ch'an Buddhism?

Give up false attachments and selfish interests.

What Mahayana Buddhist view did Murasi Shikibu object to?

Women must wait for reincarnation as a male before they can achieve enlightenment.

Which did Dogen Zenji advocate?

The Parental Mind.

What do samurai warriors believe in?

All of the above.

Why is diversity a challenge for modern feminism?

Race, class, and gender are tied together in ways that make working-class and minority women disadvantaged in different ways from middle-class white women.

Why are feminist epistemologists suspicous of the concept of the ideal knower as dispassionate, objective, and purely rational?

This makes the ideal knower rather like the ideal male.

According to Val Plumwood, how does the rationalistic framework view the human self?

As autonomous, separate, and egoistic.

According to Mary Wollstonecraft, which of the following virtues should be cultivated in women as well as men?

wisdom

How do feminists like Andrea Dworkin and Ctharine MacKinnon define pornography?

Media that both equates sex and violence against women, and endorses it.

What tends to be true of words associated with women, their occupations, and their bodies in a male-dominated society?

They get devalued and take on demeaning, derogatory, and insulting senses.

What is true of woman, according to Simone de Beauvoir?

Woman is not born but made by society's definition of her as man's Other.

What do supporters of the "Androgynous Ideal" believe about the differences we observe between men and women?

They are socially constructed.

According to Nancy Chodorow, why do boys often become isolated, separate, and misogynist?

Society requires that boys break personal identification with the mother in order to positionally identify with male gender roles imposed by society.

Which position does Susan Moller Okin advocate?

The modern, middle-class family is an unjust institution for women.

What did Anselm believe about proving God's existence?

You could do it using just the concept of God as the greatest being conceivable.

St. Thomas Aquinas's first three ways are all versions of which sort of argument?

Cosmological

How did mystical experience compare with reason as a source of knowledge about God, according to Julian of Norwich?

It is as valid a source of knowledge as reason is.

Given his epistemological standards, what characteristic must all of Descartes arguments for God possess?

They must yield conclusions that are absolutely certain.

According to Leibniz, what is the sufficient reason for the changing of the seasons?

God.

Given his epistemological standards, what characteristic would Hume insist that any argument for God possess?

It must be based on sensory experience.

Why didn't Immanuel Kant think that existence is a property or characteristic of a thing?

A characteristic always adds something to the concept of a thing, but existence does not do this.

What kind of an argument did Kant use to justify the rationality of belief in God?

Moral

What is truth, for Soren Kierkegaard?

How you live if it is with passionate commitment.

What would Mary Daly say about the image of God the Father?

It perpetuates the polarization of human qualities built into the traditional sexual stereotypes.

In terms of what did G. E. Moore define goodness?

Tricky! He claimed that it can't be defined.

What do moral judgments do, according to the emotivists?

Express emotion and encourage others to feel the same way.

What is not true of John Rawls's original position?

It leads to an entitlement view of justice.

What is Rawls's position on the just distribution of income and wealth in a society?

It should be equal unless an unequal distribution would benefit everyone.

Why does Robert Nozick believe that any state that goes beyond the minimal state is unjust?

Such a state necessarily involves redistributive taxation that violates persons' natural entitlement rights.

What is a thick moral argument, for Michael Walzer?

Moral argument that takes into account the actual, particular details of the association or culture involved.

Which of the following is the political philosophy based on respect for established institutions and traditions?

conservatism

The attempt to understand the sources and criteria of moral value judgments is known as:

metaethics

Which of the following is not one of the three main philosophical causes looked at when studying ecological crises?

democratic socialism

What is the name of the influential publication by John Rawls?

A Theory of Justice

What is the form of the ideal state, according to Plato?

It is an aristocracy ruled by an elite group of intellectually superior individuals.

What is the form of the ideal state for Aristotle?

Another trick question! Aristotle didn't think there is any single form that the ideal state must take.

What is not true of the natural law, for St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas?

When there is a conflict between it and human law, human law takes precedence.

What is not true of the contract that gives rise to the state, according to Thomas Hobbes?

It gives citizens a right to revolt if the state acts unjustly towards them.

Which best describes Locke's governmental contract?

The people delegate or entrust their natural rights to a divided government, retaining the right to revolt if the government violates its trust.

What is true, moral freedom, according to the later Rousseau?

Obedience to the general will.

In which of the following was the power of the Supreme Court to declare laws unconstitutional established?

Marbury v. Madison

Which did Harriet Taylor support?

The toleration of nonconformist thought and lifestyles.

John Stuart Mill believed that

one should seek general happiness.

Karl Marx viewed history as the struggle between two classes. What are they?

A dominant class that owns and controls the means of production and a subordinate class that doesn't.

What is evil, according to Socrates?

Ignorance of the good.

How is goodness apprehended, according to Plato?

By reason.

The just or well-ordered soul manifests which virtue, according to Plato?

Wisdom

In what does human happiness consist, according to Aristotle?

All of the above

Which desires did Epicureans say you should occasionally satisfy?

Those that are natural but not necessary.

Which piece of advice would be more likely to come from a stoic?

Become self-reliant and accept your fate in life with serenity and calm indifference.

Where does moral evil come from, according to St. Augustine?

Misdirected love.

What are people naturally like, according to Thomas Hobbes?

They are fundamentally selfish.

What is morality ultimately based on, according to Immanuel Kant?

Reason

According to John Stuart Mill, why should we seek to raise the general happiness rather than just our own?

By its very nature morality must assume the perspective of an impartial spectator.

Which view about truth is common to all pragmatists?

Truth is relative to place, time, and purpose.

What does philosophical analysis attempt to do?

Reduce complex, philosophically puzzling propositions into simpler, less puzzling ones.

What determines the meaning of a proposition, according to the logical positivists?

The possible observations that would verify it.

According to logical atomism, what does the world ultimately consist of?

Atomic facts

Which best expresses phenomenalism as a metaphyical theory?

Physical objects just are sense-data.

According to the epistemological foundationalist, when is a belief knowledge?

When it logically follows from other beliefs that cannot be doubted.

Antirepresentationalists like Richard Rorty always deny this claim.

True beliefs somehow picture or mirror reality.

Which view maintains that mental words like "hope", "belief", or "desire" do not refer to things at all, whether physical or nonphysical?

Behaviorism

Which view maintains that mental states just are states of the brain and central nervous system?

Identity Theory

Which view maintains that, although mental states require a physical system to exist, they are not reducible to states of any particular physical system?

Functionalism

Which philosophical tradition includes existentialism and phenomenology?

continental philosophy

Which is not a theme an existentialist would be likely to accept?

Metaphysics can reveal the reason and purpose of life.

What was the fundamental philosophical question for Albert Camus?

Is there any reason not to commit suicide?

How can we give life purpose in a purposeless world, according to Camus?

Rebel against the absurd.

Why is man abandoned, according to Jean-Paul Sartre?

Because there is no God.

Which best describes what Sartre means by good faith?

Taking responsibility for the choices we make.

Phenomenology originated from which of the following distinctions?

Kant's distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal world.

How was Edmund Husserl's philosophy similar to Descartes'?

He too sought to achieve rational certainty by grounding the truth in a deeper source.

What does authentic existence require for the early, existentialist Heidegger?

Understanding oneself as a being-unto-death.

Which would the late Heidegger accept?

A human being should be one who simply and quietly dwells in Being.

Which is true of Jurgen Habermas?

He is a Marxian.

What did Michel Foucault claim concerning epistemes?

They are socially created realities that serve as the ground of truth for their eras.

For French structuralist anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, what is a culture?

A system of signs.

What would Jacques Derrida say about the essential meaning of a text?

A trick question, since he rejects the whole notion of essential meaning.

Which is not true of Richard Rorty?

He believes in necessary starting points for rational inquiry.

Which term is not generally associated with Jacques Derrida?

epistemes

Who is most likely to have written this? "There is no method for knowing when one has reached the truth, or when one is closer than ever before."

Richard Rorty

Modern linguistics is based on the work of which philosopher?

Ferdinand de Saussure

Critical theory is associated with which philosopher?

Jürgen Habermas

Who is most likely to have written this? "The relation of technical progress and social life-world and the translation of scientific information into practical consciousness is not an affair of private cultivation."

Jürgen Habermas