Final Exam Study Guide H2

Emily Caprio - H02

Final Exam Study Guide-covering the odd-numbered quiz questions in November

Quiz Nov 1

Fantasyland 31 - 32

1. What percentage of Americans don’t expect the 2nd coming before 2050?

2. Who is Christianity’s most prominent “blame-the-victims horror story-teller?”

3. What percentage of Americans believe in the devil?

4. What percentage of Britons said they had no religion (in 2012)?

5. What is the latest scholarly consensus about America’s exceptional religiosity?

American Philosophy Prologue

6. What did William James consider the profoundest of questions?

7. Those who are doubtful about the value of their own lives are said to have what kind of soul?

8. The holding of what two irreconcilable things is the basis for life’s “poisonousness” quality?

9. What was James’s answer to “life’s most difficult question?”

10. Who or what finally — and continually — decides the meaningfulness of life?

Quiz Nov 6

Little History 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?

Fantasyland 33 - 34

13. What’s the basic idea in A Course in Miracles?

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

15. Name an argument Anderson compares to those for “harnessing placebo power.”

American Philosophy - 38

16. According to pragmatism, how should we judge truth?

17. Who said that “idealism fails to work… chiefly because it is unfinished?”

18. James rejected anatomy’s loss of the sense that human beings were more than what?

Quiz Nov 8

Little History 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?” 

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?

Fantasyland 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?

American Philosophy - 77

17. Which of Henry Lee’s “freethinking” ancestors influenced the “revolutionary spirit” of early American thought?

18. More than allowing us to “do whatever,” Viktor Frank’s “existential vacuum” means we are what?

Thoreau, “Walking”

19. Wordsworth’s servant distinguished the poet’s library from his study, which was located where?

20. According to Thoreau, unless we hear what sound of Nature our philosophy is “belated?”

Quiz Nov 13

Little History 31-33

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?

2. The idea pf 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 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?

Fantasyland 37-39

8. What was the message of The Courage to Heal?

9. The first big outbreak of what occurred in and around Bakersfield, CA in the ‘80s?

10. Andersen says there’s a line extending from flying saucer obsessives to what?

11. What is important to recognize about David Koresh and the Branch Davidians’?

12. Who is both symptom and cause of conspiracies in America?

American Philosophy - 119

13. How did James the medical student differ from James the humanist?

14. How do analytic philosophers tend to understand philosophy?

15. Emerson tied American Transcendentalism to what philosopher and to what class of ideas?

Quiz Nov 15

Little History 34 - 37

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. Both Popper and Kuhn changed the way people understood science. What did Popper say about the method for checking a hypothesis and what name did Kuhn give to major breaks in the history of science?

6. What is the Law of Double Effect? Many people who disagree with its principle — and with Thomson’s violinist thought experiment — think that whatever our intentions we shouldn’t play who?

Fantasyland 40 - 41

7. Paul Ryan grew up reading whose fictions?

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

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

American Philosophy - 149

10. What great American poet agreed with James, Royce, and Santayana about the deeper meaning of ordinary experience?

11. How did Camus define “the absurd?”

12. What did James say would be his first act of free will?

Quiz Nov 20

Little History 38 - 40

1. What did John Rawls call the thought experiment he believed would yield fair and just principles, and what was its primary device?

2. Under what circumstances would Rawls’ theory permit huge inequalities of wealth between people?

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

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

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

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

7. Why did Singer first become famous?

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

Fantasyland 42 - 43

9. Most mass killers in America are not psychotics or paranoid schizophrenics, writes Andersen, they’re what?

10. What was the moment when the NRA “settled in deepest Fantasyland?”

11. What new technologies give Andersen “the heebie-jeebies?”

American Philosophy - 178

12. For what did William James argue in “The Moral Equivalent of War?”

13. Hocking wanted to “overcome this alienation [of Cartesian solipsism]” and argued for what?

14. What philosopher, seeing unity as achieved through conflict, disagreed with Schelling’s “static substratum?”

Quiz Nov 27

Fantasyland 44 - 45

1. Disneyfication denotes what?

2. 1/3 of the people at theme parks are what?

3. How have we become mentally more like children?

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

5. Mark Zuckerberg became a billionaire at what age?

6. “Magical thinking” is the tendency to believe what?

American Philosophy - 208

7. Who said women had to be self-reliant because they were expected to take care of men?

8. Who defeated Teddy Roosevelt and Thomas Edison in 1913, and won a Nobel Prize in 1931?

9. When “developed too exclusively,” becoming educated omits a response to what “human appeal” or presence?

10. What school brought “young children into contact with original literacy sources” and who created this school?

Quiz Nov 29

Fantasyland 46

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

2. What did candidate Drumpf understand “better than almost everybody?”

3. “Don’t even think about it…” said who?

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

5. With what good news does Fantasyland conclude?

American Philosophy - 235

6. Who said that the “incessant preaching” of missionaries in China was “producing . . . a horde of hypocrites?”

7. What did Marcela and Sartre agree was the “basic method of philosophy,” and what was the “fissure” between them?

8. What is the “very old institution that sought to memorialize and counteract the tragedy of human finitude?”

Final Presentation Quiz Answers for Section 2:

[I’m sorry sections 1 & 3]

Democritus:

1. What’s one of the main problems facing the act of studying ancient philosophers today?

2. Who was Democritus’s teacher?

3. What term did Democritus use to refer to that distinctive feature of living things that accounts for their ability to perform their life-functions?

4. Democritus suggests that what kind of life was originally like that of animals?

This I Believe on “The Little History of Philosophy”:

1. Why was Socrates executed?

2. What philosopher is renown for creating the Garden?

3. Rousseau’s arguments focused on man living in a state of __________.

4. What famous philosopher was godfather to Bertrand Russell?

Martin Luther:

1. Whose view on the soul after death did Luther contradict?

2. What did Luther call Islam in his writings?

3. What is one way we can follow Luther’s example of questioning authority?

4. What term is associated with making religion and the Bible accessible to the masses?

Romanticism:

1. Romanticism is a philosophical movement during the Age of Enlightenment which emphasizes what?

2. Rationalism is any view appealing to what?

3. Romanticism was largely centered in which country during the late 18th and early 19th century?

4. The work of which two philosophers can be accredited for the roots of Philosophical Romanticism?

Personal Identity:

1. Who would have said that there is no reliable way to prove we exist?

2. Who said that we must perceive ourselves whenever we perceive anything else?

3. How did Thomas Reid poke a hole in John Locke’’s idea of continuous memories?

4. What is the ship of Theseus?

American Horror Story & Philosophy:

1. What is absurdity?

2. What does the author compare the absurdity in AHS to?

3. Why can’t we reach knowledge of a critical mass?

4. What is to us that aliens are to Dr. Arden?

The Walking Dead & Philosophy:

1. Who did Rick memorialize to remind the group that they were human once?

2. What do we respect when a person dies?

3. Which philosopher defines dignity?

4. Who’s wishes do Rick and Shane fulfill?

Philosophy of Walking:

1. Gros says that walking is not a what?

2. Is it best to walk alone or with a group?

3. Name one of the topics Gros discusses in his book.

4. Walking manages to free us from our what?

Fatalism:

1. What is fatalism?

2. What are the different types of fatalism?

3. Who are supporters of logical fatalism?

4. Who is in disagreement with fatalism?

Scum or Worse Than Scum:

1. What tragic childhood event scarred Kakashi towards the Ninja Way?

2. What important lesson did Kakashi teach every team of students he was assigned to? And with what type of method?

3. What did Obito and Kakashi consider worse than scum?

4. What famous philosopher agreed that true friendships, ones based on trust and caring love, are more important than accidental friendships?

Divergent and Philosophy:

1. What divergent faction was similar to the producers of Plato’s classes of society?

2. What faction served as the protectors?

3. Who had the theory of Ubermensch?

Confucianism:

1. What religion is Filial Piety from?

2. From what original teachings did this religion come from?

3. Who wrote these original teachings?

4. What are the fundamental concepts of this religion?

The Philosophy of John Locke:

1. What writing John Locke’s was the focus of this presentation?

2. What is the distinction between land and property?

3. Who did God give the world to, according to Locke?

4. Who, among the U.S. government’s founding fathers, showed the most prominent influence by John Locke?

Anakin Skywalker and the Fear of Death:

1. What do Buddhists call the fear of death?

2. Who wrote the 1973 book The Denial of Death?

3. Around what age do children realize that they, too, can die, not just old people?

[4 more to be added soon…]