Up@dawn 2.0

Sunday, April 1, 2018

March Study Guide

March 2018, EXAM #2 Study Guide

1. In the Hellenistic period Western philosophy came to be seen as what? What did the Hellenistic philosophies all praise, and what did they all see as the key to wisdom?

2. Of what later philosophy was Epicureanism the main ancestor?

3. What central problem of philosophy was Epicurus apparently the first to state?

4. From what did the Stoics take their name?

5. What was the one thing the Stoics thought the Epicureans were right about?

6. How does Gottlieb say the Stoics were inconsistent?

FL 22
7. Where was the New Age philosophy/lifestyle invented?

8. What central New Age tenet did Jane Roberts "channel," and from whom?

9. What "sudden and enthusiastic embrace" helped turn America into fantasyland?

10. What bestseller whose popularity announced the mainstreaming of fantastical beliefs did Andersen's mother read?

11. Who wrote “Ethics in the Real World”?

#3 12. What Chinese philosopher of the mid-6th to mid-5th centuries, aka K’ung Fu-tzu, promoted a concept of virtue called “Ren”?

LH 3, DR 13 (p.336-357)
1. What was the main teaching of skepticism? ("Scepticism" in Br. spelling)

2. How did Pyrrho say you could become free from all worry? Does Warburton think this would work for most of us?

3. How does modern skepticism differ from its ancient predecessor?

4. Why does Gottlieb think Pyrrho must not have been as radically skeptical as legend has it?

5. What did David Hume say about too much skepticism?

6. What did "throwing in the sponge" mean, in Sextus Emiricus's story?

FL 23-24
7. What was the "takeaway" for '60s academics who turned away from reason and rationalism?

8. How did UCLA psychologist Charles Tart get tenure?

9. Tom Wolfe said the Jesus People of the '60s were what?

10. What bestselling "nonfiction" book by Hal Lindsey predicted the looming apocalypse?

11. Even though his basic religious beliefs were not much different from Pat Robertson's and Jerry Falwell's, _____ seemed moderate by comparison.

1. What happened in AD 529, and why is it a convenient milestone for philosophy?

2. What did medieval Christians "know" that Aristotle said wasn't so?

3. What's the one question almost everyone has heard about medieval philosophy? What's the obvious answer?

4. What was "the strangest document in the history of philosophy" and how did it catch the spirit of its time?

5. What was Plotinus's philosophy called, and what was its goal?

6. What did Proclus see as the job of philosophy?

FL
7. What happened after the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) adopted its founding document in 1962?

8. Who were our first gun rights absolutists?

9. When did Kurt Andersen realize fantasy would now rule pop culture?

10. What pharmacological development, "available everywhere by 1965," made sex less "real"?


#8 11. Who wrote “The Meaning of Human Existence”?

#8 12. Smit’s & Madonna’s report addressed the subject of _____. [dreaming]

T 21 - Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, DR 14 (390-425), LH 6-8, FL 27-28

1. What religion did Augustine espouse before his conversion to Christianity, and how did it account for evil?

2. To what did Augustine return, that most of the first philosophers had rejected?

3. What form does Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy take, what does it never explicitly mention, and how does it account for the compatibility of real choice with the existence of an omniscient deity?

4. How did Anselm define God, and what is his famous "proof" called?

5. Who was Heloise's boyfriend, what was his greatest misfortune, and how did he go beyond established traditions?


6. Who wrote Guide for the Perplexed? What did he try to do in it?

7. Who had a "razor," and what was it for?

8. Who declared that there are other worlds, and was burned at the stake?

LH 6-8
9. How did Augustine "solve" the problem of evil in his younger days, and then after his conversion to Christianity? Why wasn't it such a problem for him originally?

10. What does Boethius not mention about himself in The Consolation of Philosophy?

11. What uniquely self-validating idea did Anselm say we have?

12. What was Aquinas' 2d Way?

FL 27-28
13. Who pretended to slap and body-slam the head of the WWF on stage before entering politics?

14. At what annual event do adults go to the desert and dress up as unicorns, birds, mermaids, geishas etc.?

15. Who was a hideous and tragic victim of "Kids 'R' Us Syndrome?

1. What effect did the new Renaissance humanist movement have on philosophy?

2. What did Vespucci mean when he said New Worlders were more Epicurean than Stoic?

3. What "prophet of modern science" nonetheless wanted to "build on astrology, alchemy, and magic"? Why?

4. What 15th century "remarkable development" gave rise to mass literacy?

5. What did Luther refuse to accept? What was the essence of Protestantism?

6. Whose cousin first mentioned "scientific method" and said it could support only "limited claims about the appearances"?

7. Who "revamped Epicurus' picture of the universe" to make it more Bible-friendly? How?

8. With what metaphor did Descartes propose to support the new scientific worldview of Galileo?

LH
9. What did Machiavelli say a leader needs to have?

10. Life outside society would be what, according to Hobbes?

FL 29-30
11. For what American president was "the world of legend and myth a real world"?

12. What made it possible, beginning in the '90s, for "cockamamie ideas and outright falsehoods" to spread fast and wide?

13. What percentage of Americans say they never doubt the existence of God?

14. What was Augustine's instruction, 1,600 years ago?

#3 15. Hunter’s report was on the English empiricist philosopher _____. [JL]

LH 11-12
1. What state of mind, belief, or knowledge was Descartes' Method of Doubt supposed to establish? OR, What did Descartes seek that Pyrrho spurned?

2. Did Descartes claim to know (at the outset of his "meditations") that he was not dreaming?

3. What strange and mythic specter did Gilbert Ryle compare to Descartes' dualism of mind and body? ("The ____ in the ______.")

4. Pascal's best-known book is _____.

5. Pascal's argument for believing in God is called ________.

6. Pascal thought if you gamble on God and lose, "you lose ______."

7. (T/F) By limiting his "wager" to a choice between either Christian theism or atheism, says Nigel Warburton, Pascal excludes too many other possible bets.

DE 1
8. Did Descartes claim that people are machines?

9. In what way was Descartes "a true follower of Plato"?

10. What's the "flimsiest part" of Descartes's project?

FL 33-34

11. What's the basic idea in A Course in Miracles?

12. Who is most responsible for giving a platform and credibility to magical thinking?

13. Name an argument Andersen compares to those for "harnessing placebo power."

1. Spinoza's view, that God and nature (or the universe) are the same thing, is called _______.

2. If god is _____, there cannot be anything that is not god; if _____, god is indifferent to human beings.

3. Spinoza was a determinist, holding that _____ is an illusion.

4. According to John Locke, all our knowledge comes from _____; hence, the mind of a newborn is a ______.

5. Locke said _____ continuity establishes personal identity (bodily, psychological); Thomas Reid said identity relies on ______ memories, not total recall.

DE 3-4
6. Who called Spinoza "the noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers"?

7. If we "understood clearly the whole order of Nature," according to Spinoza, what would we conclude?

8. "...atheism now carries no stigma in economically developed countries except _____."

9. What did Thomas Jefferson exaggerate about John Locke?

10. How did Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding play a role in advancing the Enlightenment?

11. From where did Locke say the authority of a ruler derives?

12. What is one of the odd consequences of Locke's theory of personal identity?

FL 35-36
13. Who does Andersen say ought to be important fighters defending reason, but have instead become enablers of Fantasyland?

14. What political scientist defends the veracity of people who say they were abducted by space aliens?

15. What Texas charter school's textbooks teach Genesis as a scientific theory?

16. When did Thomas Jefferson say it was okay for people to believe whatever they want?

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