Read the assigned reading from the chapter. Then choose ONE of the questions below to answer. Answer the question you chose in a response that is a minimum of 1-2 paragraphs.
Be sure to explain your answers and give reasons for your views. You should cite the textbook and use brief quotations and summaries from the textbook in your response. Do NOT use any other sources besides the textbook.
According to Plato, are the ideas of Beauty and Courage objectively real, or are they notions that we invent in our minds whenever we want to? Do you think these ideas are objectively real? Provide an argument to back up your answer.
Is there any way that you can tell whether you are awake or dreaming? Is Descartes right that he cannot tell the difference? Try to identify and explain at least two ways that dreaming experiences and waking experiences are different.
Complete the Philosophy Lab thought experiment questions on page 297.
Read the assigned reading from the chapter. Then choose ONE of the questions below to answer. Answer the question you chose in a response that is a minimum of 1-2 paragraphs.
Be sure to explain your answers and give reasons for your views. You should cite the textbook and use brief quotations and summaries from the textbook in your response. Do NOT use any other sources besides the textbook.
Explain Locke’s view that we can have knowledge of an external world despite our being directly aware only of sense data. Do you agree with him, or do you side with his critics who say that we can know only the contents of our minds?
Why does Berkeley deny the existence of material objects? Explain his view of subjective idealism. Do you accept or reject his theory? Why or why not?
Suppose someone claims that he can easily refute Berkeley’s idealism by simply kicking a rock or eating an apple. Does this demonstration show that Berkeley’s view is false? Explain.
Hume thinks that all knowledge must be traced back to perceptions; otherwise, assertions of knowledge are meaningless. From this, he concludes that all theological and metaphysical speculations are worthless. Do you agree with him? Why or why not?
What does Kant mean by “Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind?” Do you agree that at least some of your perceptions are conceptualized?
Choose either Topic A or Topic B. To answer these topics completely, it takes a minimum of 2 pages – 8-10 paragraphs. Use the topic questions and the scoring rubric to see if your draft responds fully to all parts of the question. A complete, thoughtful answer is more important than word count.
Topic A:
In this essay you will address the controversy between free will and determinism. You will go deeper into the problem of determinism by choosing whether it is the predictability or the unpredictability of our actions that poses a bigger threat to free will. Using passages from the textbook, explain in detail what determinism is and why determinism threatens the idea of free will.
Now consider these two opposite points of view about our ability to predict behavior:
Everything you do is predictable to those who know you well. This predictability means your life is determined by choices beyond your control.—Paraphrase from Vaughn, p.268
“He sat a long time and he thought about his life and how little of it he could have foreseen and he wondered for all his will and all his intent how much of it was his doing.”—Cormac Mc Carthy (reprinted in Vaughn, p.265)
Explain what these two points of view mean and then give your own reasoned opinion about which point of view is correct. Defend your answer.
Topic B:
Describe the theory of knowledge called skepticism. Consider the skeptic’s charge that we can never be confident about the reliability of our normal sources of knowledge (perceptions, memory, introspection, and reasoning.) Describe why and how, for each of the 4 sources mentioned, the source is unreliable. Use examples to show your understanding.
If a source of knowledge is unreliable, it means these sources can trick us into believing falsehoods. Does it follow from the fact that we are sometimes mistaken when we rely on these sources that we are always mistaken? In other words, once we admit is possible that we are mistaken, does that mean that we need to admit that we might never be correct? How would you respond to the skeptic?
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