Up@dawn 2.0

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Study Guide, exam 3

EXAM 3 REVIEW
April 19th
1. What was the main message of Wittgenstein's Tractatus?

2. What did the later Wittgenstein (of Philosophical Investigations) mean by "language games," what did he think was the way to solve philosophical problems, and what kind of language did he think we can't have?

3. Who was Adolf Eichmann, and what did Arendt learn about him at his trial?

4. What was Arendt's descriptive phrase for what she saw as Eichmann's ordinariness?

5. What did John Rawls call the thought experiment he believed would yield fair and just principles, and what was its primary device?
6. Under what circumstances would Rawls' theory permit huge inequalities of wealth between people?

7. What was the Imitation Game, and who devised a thought experiment to oppose it?

8. What, according to Searle, is involved in truly understanding something?

9. How do some philosophers think we might use computers to achieve immortality?

10. What does Peter Singer say we should sacrifice, to help strangers?

11. Why did Singer first become famous?

12. How does Singer represent the best tradition in philosophy?

FL
13. Right-wing skepticism of the press and of academic experts has effectively trained two generations of Americans to what?

14. What did candidate Trump understand "better than almost everybody"?

15. "Don't even think about it..." said who?

16. Philosopher Michael Lynch says repeated self-contradiction by politicians like Trump can dull our sensitivity to what?

17. With what good news does Fantasyland conclude?

DQ
·         Should we be silent about things we can't prove? Should philosophy concern itself with more than understanding the logic of language?
·         Do you use language as a pictorial medium, a tool for managing social relationships and expressing our thoughts and feelings, or what?
·         Are ordinary people capable of great evil? Are you? How can we be sure that a Holocaust will never happen again? What will you teach your children about that?
·         If the government attempted to round up, detain, and deport millions of Latinos and Muslims, how would you respond
·         Is "the banality of evil" relevant to our time?
·         If you were in Rawls's "Original Position," what kind of economic system would you argue for? 
·         In what sense are we "better off" in a society that allows huge income discrepancies between the least and best well-off?
·         Will Artificial Intelligence surpass human intelligence, or has it already? Is this something we should worry about? 
·         What "luxuries" are you prepared to give up, to help people less fortunate than yourself?
·         Are you a speciesist? Why or why not?
·         Is meat-eating ethically defensible?
·         Quiz Apr 17
·         RUSSELL, AYER, Sartre, de beauvoir, Camus (LH)

Recommended: WATCH:Sartre (SoL); Camus (SoL); Sartre & Existential Choice; de Beauvoir on Feminine Beauty (HI)... See also: Camus & the Myth of Sisyphus (Hap), and the last several Russell posts in Phil of Happiness beginning here.

1. Reading whose autobiography led young Bertrand Russell to reject God? OR, What did he see as the logical problem with the First Cause Argument?
·         I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day at the age of eighteen I read _____'s Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question `Who made god?'" That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject." The argument is really no better than that. Why I Am Not a Christian
·          
·         2. The idea of a barber who shaves all who don't shave themselves is a logical ______, a seeming contradiction that is both true and false. Another example of the same thing would be a statement like "This sentence is ___." 

3. 
A.J. Ayer's ______ Principle, stated in his 1936 book Language, Truth and Logic, was part of the movement known as _____ ______. 

4. Humans don't have an _____, said Jean Paul Sartre, and are in "bad faith" like the ___who thinks of himself as completely defined by his work.


5. What was Sartre's frustrating advice to the student who didn't know whether to join the Resistance?


6. When Simone de Beauvoir said women are not born that way, she meant that they tend to accept what?
·          
·         7. Which Greek myth did Albert Camus use to illustrate human absurdity, as he saw it?

FL  44-45

8. Disneyfication denotes what?

9. 1/3 of the people at theme parks are what?


10. How have we become mentally more like children?


11. A major argument of Andersen's book is that our dominant religion has become what?


12. Mark Zuckerberg became a billionaire at what age?


13. "Magical thinking" is the tendency to believe what?



BONUS+: Who had a Near Death Experience his youthful philosophy would have declared "nonsense"?

BONUS++: Name the faux English matrons who crossed the channel to ask Sartre about his views on freedom?
·          
·         Quiz Apr 12 (2)
·         Peirce & James, Nietzsche, Freud LH 28-30

1. What's the point of James's squirrel story?

2. Who said truth is what we would end up with if we could run all the experiments and investigations we'd like to? (And what's a word his name rhymes with?)

3. What did Bertrand Russell say about James's theory of truth?

4. What 20th century philosopher carried on the pragmatist tradition? What did he say about the way words work?

5. What did Nietzsche mean by "God is dead"? (And what's a word his name rhymes with?)

6. Where did Nietzsche think Christian values come from?

7. What is an Ubermensch, and why does Nigel find it "a bit worrying"?

8. How did Nietzsche differ from Kant but anticipate Freud?

9. What were the three great revolutions in thought, according to Freud?

10. The "talking cure" gave birth to what?

11. Why did Freud think people believe in God?

12. What was Karl Popper's criticism of Freudian psychoanalysis?

FL
13. Most mass killers in America are not psychotics or paranoid schizophrenics, writes Andersen, they're what?

14. What was the moment when the NRA "settled in deepest Fantasyland"?

15. What new technologies give Andersen "the heebie-jeebies"?
·          
·         Quiz Apr 12
·         Mill, Darwin, Kierkegaard, Marx LH 24-27

1. How did Mill disagree with Bentham about pleasure?
·          
·         2. What view did Mill defend in On Liberty?
·          
·         3. What's the benefit to society of open discussion, according to Mill, and what's wrong with being dogmatic?
·          
·         4. Who did Bishop Wilberforce debate at Oxford in 1860?
·          
·         5. The single best idea anyone ever had was what, according to whom?
·          
·         6. What scientific developments since Darwin's time establish evolution by natural selection as more than just a theory or hypothesis?
·          
·         7. Who was the Danish Socrates, and what was most of his writing about?
·          
·         8. Why is faith irrational, according to Nigel Warburton?
·          
·         9. What is "the subjective point of view"?
·          
·         10. Why was Karl Marx angry? How did he think the whole of human history could be explained?
·          
·         11. What was Marx's "vision"?
·          
·         12. What did Marx call religion?

FL
13. Paul Ryan grew up reading whose fictions?

14. What do Pennsylvania and Tennessee formally require officeholders to believe?

15. When did an inaccurate study ignite the false belief that vaccines cause autism?

Quiz Apr 5
Voltaire & Leibniz (& Voltaire), Hume & Rousseau; FL 37... and see below**

LH
1. What English poet declared that "whatever is, is right"?

2. What German philosopher, with his "Principle of Sufficient Reason," agreed with the poet?

3. What French champion of free speech and religious toleration wrote a satirical novel/play ridiculing the idea that everything is awesome?

4. What 1755 catastrophe deeply influenced Voltaire's philosophy?

5. What did Voltaire mean by "cultivating our garden"?

6. Was Voltaire an atheist?

7. (T/F) Hume thought the human eye so flawless in its patterned intricacy that, like Paley's watch, it constitutes powerful evidence of intelligent design.

8. (T/F) Hume's view was that it's occasionally more plausible to believe that a miracle (the unexplained suspension of a law of nature) has happened, than not.

9. Rousseau said we're born free but everywhere are in ____, but can liberate ourselves by submitting to what is best for the whole community, aka the _______.

DE (from the first half of each chapter... pose your alternative quz questions on the second half)

10. Name two fields of study Leibniz contributed to, and two of his inventions/proposals.

11. Leibniz's "atoms of nature," each a "windowless" self-contained world , are called what?

12. What did Berkeley allege to be the sole contents of the universe, and who said this was "close to my own view"?

13. Who won first place in a poll among philosophers to pick their all-time favorite, which close friend was at his deathbed, and what did he tell Boswell about an afterlife?

14. What is induction, and what did Hume think accounts for our confidence that the future will resemble the past?

15. What did Hume say theres' no point in trying to do?

16. What ill-defined concept of Rousseau's might be read as providing intellectual support for dictators?

17. What did Rousseau consider better pastimes than intellectual work?

FL 37
18. What was the message of The Courage to Heal?

19. The first big outbreak of what occurred in and around Bakersfield CA  in the '80s?



3 comments:

  1. #3

    Some of my own questions recently:
    Do you believe technology is helpful?

    Do you believe that technology can also hinder? How?

    Do you believe there is a certain age that is appropriate to introduce technology, specifically smartphones?

    Do you believe that the technology industry has been stagnant recently?

    Has technology improved medicinal studies? What new struggles has it presented?

    Where do you think the technology industry should go? Where should we limit technology?

    How has technology affected your life?

    How many times a day do you rely on some form of technology?

    What would happen to peoples lives if an EMP went off and crippled technology?

    What would happen to yours?

    Do you play video games?

    Through what medium do you play? Console, computer, VR, etc.

    Around how many hours do you play a week?

    Do you believe your time could be better spent doing something else? Why or Why not?

    What are the societal implications of playing video games?

    Does the older generation see video games as an inhibitor or self improvement? Why do you think so?

    Do you think the video game industry should be less violent? Why?

    Do you believe that the rating system on games is relatively ignored? Why do you think so?

    Do you look at the rating before you buy a game? Why?

    Do you look at the rating before you watch a movie? Why?

    ReplyDelete
  2. #8
    Alternative Quiz
    FL 46
    1. The billionaire in Florida said going to Trumps Mediterranean fantasy castle, which cost $200,000, was like what?
    2. What were the instructions of Norman Vincent Peales work, The Power of Positive Thinking?

    ReplyDelete

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