Does the universe itself have a purpose? If so, what is this purpose? If not, is it, as some modern philosophers have argued, just a universe of “matter in motion”—particles and electromagnetic fields acting according to the laws of physics?

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The Nature of Reality

1. How “real” are the following items? (Rate them on a scale from

1 to 10, where 10 is most real, 1 is least real.)
The person sitting next to you ———
The chair you are sitting in ———
God ———
The planet Uranus ———
Beethoven’s music ———
The headache you had last night ———
Human rights ———
Electrons ———
The woman or man in (not “of”) your dreams ———
Angels ———
The number 7 ———
Water ———
Ice ———
Love ———
Beauty ———
Genes ———
The theory of relativity ———
Einstein’s brain (when he was alive) ———
Einstein’s ideas ———
Your own mind ———
The color red ———
A red sensation (in your own mind) ———
“Unreal numbers” ———
The NFL ———
Your own body ———
Your soul ———

2. Do you believe that the earth is flat and does not move, while the stars, sun, moon, and planets circle around it in more or less regularly shaped orbits? If not, why not? (If so, why?)

3. If a tree falls in the forest when there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? Why or why not? If no one ever sees, hears, or touches the tree itself, what sense does it make to say that the tree is “real”?

4. Does the universe itself have a purpose? If so, what is this purpose? If not, is it, as some modern philosophers have argued, just a universe of “matter in motion”—particles and electromagnetic fields acting according to the laws of physics?

Are you a materialist? An immaterialist? Do you believe that ultimate reality can be discovered by science? Do you believe that ultimate reality is a matter of religious belief? What are the basic entities in your ontology? What is most real?

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Pre-Socratic philosophers

Choose one of the elements defended by the pre-Socratic philosophers (water, fire, numbers, and so on) and argue for it as well as you can, preferably with a friend or a few friends who will try to prove you wrong. For example, if you choose fire, an immediate objection would be that fire could not possibly be the essential element in cold objects—a block of ice, for example. A reply might be that cold objects simply contain much less fire than hot things. You might also argue that not all fire manifests itself as flame, and soon, no doubt, you will find yourself moving into more modern-day talk about energy instead of fire as such. The point of the exercise is (1) to see how very much alive we can still make these ancient theories in our own terms and (2) to show how any theory, if it has only the slightest initial plausibility, can be defended, at least to some extent, if only you are clever enough to figure out how to answer the various objections presented to you and modify your theory to meet them.

Describe the Form of some ordinary objects around you, in accordance with Plato’s theory. How do you know whether an object is defined by one Form or another? What can you say about the Form of an ordinary object, in the fashion of Plato’s discussion of the Form of triangle? If an object changes, does it change Forms as well? Can an object have conflicting Forms? Can we understand our recognition of objects without some conception of Forms to explain how it is that we recognize them?

Categories in philosophy often seem too rigid or too simple- minded to classify the complexity of our views, but perhaps the following checklist will help you understand your own position in the history of philosophy:

  • Are you a materialist? An immaterialist? Do you believe that ultimate reality can be discovered by science? Do you believe that ultimate reality is a matter of religious belief?
  • What are the basic entities in your ontology? What is most real?
  • Are you a monist? A pluralist? If you are a pluralist, what is the connection between the different entities in your ontology? Rank them in order of their relative reality, or explain their relationship.
  • Are the basic entities in your ontology eternal? If not, how did they come into being?
  • Are you an idealist? (Do you believe that the basic entities of your ontology are dependent on the existence of minds?)
  • How do you explain the existence of (or how do you deny the existence of) the following? Minds, numbers, God, tables and chairs, the law of gravity, evil, moral principles, dreams, Santa Claus.
  • Is the experience of seeing a green flash nothing other than having a certain brain event go on inside your skull? Why would someone want to say that? What problems are there with that suggestion?
  • Could a computer have a sense of humor? What would it have to do to have one? What would it have to do to convince you that it had one? (Would it be enough to print out “Ha Ha” and shake around a bit?)
  • Does the universe have a purpose? (Sometimes, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”)
  • What does the word real mean to you? Using your definition, run once again through the items in Opening Question 1 and rate them for their reality in your view.
  • Do you think this world is the real world? Or do you believe that there is an existence more real than our own?

 

Do you believe in God? What are the most prominent features of God? Why do you believe in God? Or why don’t you?

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Believing in God

1. Do you believe in God?

If your answer is yes, you are a theist (no matter what particular conception of God you believe in).
If your answer is no, you are an atheist.
If you say, “I don’t know,” you are an agnostic.

2. What are the most prominent features of God? (This question is just as important if you are an agnostic or an atheist; it is important to know what it is you don’t believe in or don’t know; perhaps you don’t believe in a fatherly God who looks after us but do believe in some vital force or “prime mover” that got the universe going in the first place, for example.)
Is God all-powerful (omnipotent)?
Is God all-knowing (omniscient)?
Did God create the universe?
Does God care about human beings?
Does God have emotions?
If so, which ones?

  • Love,
  • Jealousy,
  • Anger (wrath),
  • Hatred,
  • Vengeance,
  • Mercy,
  • Others.

Is God distinct and separate from the world he created?
Is God knowable to us?
Can God take or has God ever taken human form?

3. Why do you believe in God? Or why don’t you?

Suppose an angel is sitting on a cloud, watching the parade of human activities below—the way we would watch a colony of ants hurrying along in their daily business. What would the angel say about the flurry of activity? What would it amount to, in the angel’s eyes?

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The Meaning of Life

1. Fill in the blank: “Life is _______________________________.”

Some examples:
Life is a puzzle, except that you don’t know what the picture is supposed to look like, and you don’t even know if you’ve got all the pieces.
Life is a maze, except that you try to avoid the exit.
Life is a poker game. (It requires luck, but you can win with a high pair and you can lose with a flush.)
Life is win or lose. A few people win. Most are losers.
Life is an adventure.
Life is a learning experience.
Life is a blessing.
Life is suffering.

What does your answer say about you and how you see yourself? What are your ultimate goals? Expectations? Hopes? Fears?

2. Suppose an angel is sitting on a cloud, watching the parade of human activities below—the way we would watch a colony of ants hurrying along in their daily business. What would the angel say about the flurry of activity? What would it amount to, in the angel’s eyes?

3. Name three or four things that you would not like to leave undone at your death. How many of these things have you already accomplished or begun? Which of these things could you now be doing, but are not? (Why not?)

4. The philosopher Albert Camus suggested that life is like the task of the Greek mythological hero Sisyphus, who was condemned to roll a rock up a mountain, only to have it fall back again; and he had to do this forever. Is life indeed like this? How?

Is there anything you would willingly die for? What? If you had only a few minutes to live, what would you do with them? What if you had only a few days? Twenty years?

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Philosophical Questions

Philosophy, simply stated, is the experience of asking such grand questions about life, about what we know, about what we ought to do or believe in. It is the process of getting to the bottom of things, asking those basic questions about ideas that, most of the time, we simply take for granted, never think of questioning, and probably never put into words. We assume, for example, that some acts are right and some are wrong. Why? We know that it is wrong to take a human life. Why is this? Is it always so? What about in wartime? What about before birth? What about the life of a person who is hopelessly sick and in great pain? What if the world were so overcrowded that millions would die in one way if others did not die in another?

However you respond to these difficult questions, your answers reveal a net- work of beliefs and doctrines that you may never have articulated before you first found yourself arguing about them. Not surprisingly, the first time an individual tries to argue about questions he or she has never before discussed, the result may be awkward, clumsy, and frustrating. That is the point behind philosophical questions in general: to teach us how to think about, articulate, and argue for the things we believe in, and to clarify these beliefs for ourselves and present them in a clear and convincing manner to other people, who may or may not agree with us. Very often, therefore, philosophy proceeds through disagreement, as when two philosophers or philosophy students argue with one another. Sometimes the dispute seems trivial or just a matter of semantics. However, because what we are searching for are basic meanings and definitions, even arguments about the meaning of words— especially such words as freedom, truth, and self, for example—are essential to everything else we believe. With that in mind, let’s begin our study with a series of somewhat strange but provocative questions, each of which is designed to get you to think about and express your opinions on a variety of distinctly philosophical issues. (It will help enormously if you write down your answers to the questions before you read on in the text.)

Questions

1. Is there anything you would willingly die for? What?

2. If you had only a few minutes to live, what would you do with them? What if you had only a few days? Twenty years?

3. A famous philosopher once said that human life is no more significant than the life of a cow or an insect. We eat, sleep, stay alive for a while, and reproduce so that others like us can eat, sleep, stay alive for a while, and reproduce, but without any ultimate purpose at all. How would you answer him? What purpose does human life have, if any, that is not to be found in the life of a cow or an insect? What is the purpose of your life?

4. Do you believe in God? If so, for what reason(s)? What is God like? (That is, what is it that you believe in?) How would you prove to someone who does not believe in God that God does indeed exist and that your belief is true? (What would change your mind about this?) If you do not believe in God, why not? Describe the Being in whom you do not believe. (Are there other conceptions of God that you would be willing to accept? What would change your mind about this?)

5. Which is most “real”—the chair you are sitting on, the molecules that make up the chair, or the sensations and images you have of the chair as you are sitting on it?

6. Suppose you were an animal in a psychologist’s laboratory but that you had all the mental capacities for thought and feeling, the same “mind,” that you have now. You overhear the scientist talking to an assistant, saying, “Don’t worry about that; it’s just a dumb animal, without feelings or thoughts, just behaving according to its instincts.” What could you do to prove that you do indeed have thoughts and feelings, a “mind”?

Now suppose a psychological theorist (for example, the late B. F. Skinner of Harvard University) were to write that, in general, there are no such things as “minds,” that people do nothing more than “behave” (that is, move their bodies and make sounds according to certain stimulations from the environment). How would you argue that you do indeed have a mind, that you are not just an automaton or a robot, but a thinking, feeling being?

7. Suppose that you live in a society in which everyone believes that the earth stands still, with the sun, the moon, and the stars revolving around it in predictable, if sometimes complex, orbits. You object, “You’re all wrong: The earth revolves around the sun.” No one agrees with you. Indeed, they think that you’re insane because anyone can feel that the earth doesn’t move at all, and you can see the sun, moon, and stars move. Who’s right? Is it really possible that only you know the truth and everyone else is wrong?

8. “Life is but a dream,” says an old popular song. Suppose the thought were to occur to you (as it will in a philosophy class) that it is possible, or at least conceivable, that you are just dreaming at this moment, that you are still asleep in bed, dreaming about reading a philosophy book. How would you prove to yourself that this is not true, that you are indeed awake? (Pinching yourself won’t do it. Why not?)

9. Describe yourself as if you were a character in a story. Describe your gestures, habits, personality traits, and characteristic word phrases. What kind of a person do you turn out to be? Do you like the person you have just described? What do you like—and dislike—about yourself?

10. Explain who (what) you are to a visitor from another planet.

11. We have developed a machine, a box with some electrodes and a life-support system, which we call the “happiness box.” If you get in the box, you will experience a powerfully pleasant sensation, which will continue indefinitely with just enough variation to keep you from getting too used to it. We invite you to try it. If you decide to do so, you can get out of the box any time you want to; but perhaps we should tell you that no one, once they have gotten into the happiness box, has ever wanted to get out of it. After ten hours or so, we hook up the life-support system, and people spend their lifetimes there. Of course, they never do anything else, so their bodies tend to resemble half-filled water beds after a few years because of the lack of exercise. But that never bothers them either. Now, it’s your decision: Would you like to step into the happiness box? Why or why not?

12. Will a good person (one who does no evil and does everything he or she is supposed to do) necessarily be happy, too? In other words, do you believe that life is ultimately fair? Will a wicked person surely suffer, at least in the long run? (If not, why should anyone bother trying to be good?)

13. Do you believe that it is wrong to take a life under any circumstances? Any life?

14. Have you ever made a decision that was entirely your own, that was no one’s responsibility but yours? (That is, it was not because of the way your parents raised you, not because of the influence of your friends or television or books or movies, not because you were in any way forced into it or unduly influenced by someone or by certain circumstances.)

15. Is freedom always a good thing?

16. Do you want to have children? If so, why?

Do you believe that the earth is flat and does not move, while the stars, sun, moon, and planets circle around it in more or less regularly shaped orbits? If not, why not?

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Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

1. How “real” are the following items? (Rate them on a scale from 1 to 10, where 10 is most real, 1 is least real.)

The person sitting next to you ———
The chair you are sitting in ———
God ———
The planet Uranus ———
Beethoven’s music ———
The headache you had last night ———
Human rights ———
Electrons ———
The woman or man in (not “of”) your dreams ———
Angels ———
The number 7 ———
Water ———
Ice ———
Love ———
Beauty ———
Genes ———
The theory of relativity ———
Einstein’s brain (when he was alive) ———
Einstein’s ideas ———
Your own mind ———
The color red ———
A red sensation (in your own mind) ———
“Unreal numbers” ———
The NFL ———
Your own body ———
Your soul ———

2. Do you believe that the earth is flat and does not move, while the stars, sun, moon, and planets circle around it in more or less regularly shaped orbits? If not, why not? (If so, why?)

3. If a tree falls in the forest when there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? Why or why not? If no one ever sees, hears, or touches the tree itself, what sense does it make to say that the tree is “real”?

4. Does the universe itself have a purpose? If so, what is this purpose? If not, is it, as some modern philosophers have argued, just a universe of “matter in motion”—particles and electromagnetic fields acting according to the laws of physics?

What do you think Aristotle would have to say about the theory of “ideas” or “forms” that Plato expounds in the Republic? Does he also have a theory of ideas, or forms, that we discover primarily in his Physics and Metaphysics?

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DISCUSSION ESSAY

What do you think Aristotle would have to say about the theory of “ideas” or “forms” that Plato expounds in the Republic? Does he also have a theory of ideas, or forms, that we discover primarily in his Physics and Metaphysics? If so, how is it different, or not, from Plato’s? Which account is more credible in terms of accounting for what it means to have knowledge, and explaining what, in these cases, knowledge must grasp? What is the relevance, if any, to his ethical and political thought? (Spend the majority of your essay discussing Aristotle, not Plato.)

Using your own words, briefly explain Hegel’s notion of dialectical mediation. Very briefly, state and explain the four types of alienation according to Marx’s theory of workers’ alienation under capitalism. List and briefly explain three similarities between the philosophies of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.

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PHI 310 final exam

Answer one and only one of the following short answer questions by entering your response in the space provided. There is no specific length requirement, but a suitable answer will consist of about 6 or 7 pointed, well-formulated, and accurate sentences.

(1) Using your own words, briefly explain Hegel’s notion of dialectical mediation.

(2) Very briefly, state and explain the four types of alienation according to Marx’s theory of workers’ alienation under capitalism.

(3) List and briefly explain three similarities between the philosophies of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.

(4) Explain Kierkegaard’s claim that ”truth is subjectivity” as alternative to the epistemological position of evidentialism.

 

Answer one and only one of the following short answer questions by entering your response in the space provided. You must choose a different question than the one to which you responded in the previous question. There is no specific length requirement, but a suitable answer will consist of about 6 or 7 pointed, well-formulated, and accurate sentences.

(1) Using your own words, briefly explain Hegel’s notion of dialectical mediation.

(2) Very briefly, state and explain the four types of alienation according to Marx’s theory of workers’ alienation under capitalism.

(3) List and briefly explain three similarities between the philosophies of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.

(4) Explain Kierkegaard’s claim that ”truth is subjectivity” as alternative to the epistemological position of evidentialism.

 

Answer one and only one of the following essay questions by entering your response in the space provided. Again, there are no specific length requirements, but a suitable answer should be around double the length of your responses to the two previous questions.

(1) Using your own words, compare and contrast Kant’s transcendental idealism and Hegel’s absolute idealism.

(2) Using your own words, summarize the main components of Nietzsche’s critique of morality.Answer one and only one of the following essay questions by entering your response in the space provided. Again, there are no specific length requirements, but a suitable answer should be around double the length of your responses to the two previous questions.

Write a well-condensed and composed entry containing all three elements: @ a succinct summary of the reading material or section of your choice @ a critical response to or close analysis of any crucial passage(s) which should also be clearly cited, and @ a conclusive elaboration of the significance of the topic and the passage(s) under discussion.

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Chap 4 & 5

Chapter 4 titled (The Nature of Reality) & Chapter 5 (The Search of Truth)

Instructions: Write a well-condensed and composed entry containing all three elements: @ a succinct summary of the reading material or section of your choice @ a critical response to or close analysis of any crucial passage(s) which should also be clearly cited, and @ a conclusive elaboration of the significance of the topic and the passage(s) under discussion.

Chapter 4 is 500 words & Chapter 5 also written in 500 words.

Do these definitions have any practical relevance? Explain using examples from the dialogues and or your own experience.

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DISCUSSION ESSAY

In the Euthyphro Socrates insists on the importance of definition. If one doesn’t know a things definition then one can’t know a thing. This requirement has led to the charge of the Socratic fallacy; one can use word properly (be a competent language user) without actually knowing the definition of a word. This issue is still a converted point in the literature. However, putting aside whether Socrates is committed to this fallacy given the events related in the Euthyphro and the Apology is Socrates correct to place such an emphasis on the definition of words. Do these definitions have any practical relevance? Explain using examples from the dialogues and or your own experience.