Bentley College
Fall semester, 2004
PH 101: Problems of
Philosophy
Instructor: Miles Rind
December 9, 2004
STUDY QUESTIONS FOR THE
FINAL EXAMINATION
As before, the examination
will comprise two parts. As before, part I will consist of a selection of five essay
questions taken from among the eight questions given below, of which you will
be required to answer four. (In this case, however, I am giving you the actual questions
from which the questions on the exam will be selected; the only alteration to
appear in the examination itself is that I will remove the citations, as they
will be of no use to you then.) Part II will consist of questions on logic (explained below). Also as
before, part II will count for as much of the grade as one essay question (in
other words, one fifth of the total grade).
Part I: Essay questions
1. Explain how Gettier uses
the story about Smith and Jones copied below (“Is Justified True Belief
Knowledge?”, ¶¶ 3–4) to refute the theory that knowledge is justified true
belief. (Note that the refutation is not contained in this passage alone.)
Suppose that Smith and
Jones have applied for a certain job. And suppose that Smith has strong
evidence for the following conjunctive proposition:
(d) Jones is the man who will get the job, and Jones has ten coins
in his pocket.
Smith’s evidence for (d)
might be that the president of the company assured him that Jones would in the
end be selected, and that he, Smith, had counted the coins in Jones’s pocket
ten minutes ago. Proposition (d) entails:
(e) The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket.
Let us suppose that Smith
sees the entailment from (d) to (e), and accepts (e) on the grounds of (d), for
which he has strong evidence. In this case, Smith is clearly justified in
believing that (e) is true.
But imagine, further, that
unknown to Smith, he himself, not Jones, will get the job. And, also, unknown
to Smith, he himself has ten coins in his pocket.
2. Explain Aristotle’s
argument for the thesis that happiness is the chief human good (Nicomachean
Ethics, book I, chapter 7, ¶¶ 7–9).
3. Explain Aristotle’s
argument for the thesis that the human good is activity of soul (or rational
activity) in accordance with virtue (Nicomachean Ethics, book I, chapter
7, ¶ 11).
4. Explain Aristotle’s theory
that moral virtue is an intermediate state, using an example of a state of
character that Aristotle recognizes as a virtue, explaining also the states of
excess and defect between which that state is intermediate (Nicomachean
Ethics, book II, chapters 6 and 7).
5. Explain Socrates’ argument
for the thesis that a tyrant who puts people to death and confiscates their
property as he sees fit does not necessarily do what he wants (Gorgias,
466b–468e).
6. Explain Socrates’ argument
for the thesis that no one would take doing what is unjust over suffering what
is unjust (Gorgias, 474c–475e).
7. Explain Socrates’ argument
for the thesis that it is never just to harm anyone (Republic, I,
334c–335e).
8. How does Socrates establish
that there are three parts of the soul, and what are the three parts (Republic,
IV, 436a–441c, especially 439c–441c)?
Part II: Logic
This part of the
examination will comprise two kinds of question. One will require you to construct
truth tables for some or all of the five logical connectives—“not,” “or,”
“and,” “if . . . then,” and “if and only if.” The other kind of
question will be like those in the logic part of the mid-term examination,
namely arguments that you will have to analyze logically, using letters to
stand for simple statements, indicating from which steps a conclusion is drawn
and by what argument form it is drawn. As before, the argument forms will be
listed on the examination sheet. The arguments, however, may make use of any
of the argument forms listed in §§ 8–14 of part II of “Logic Notes, part
II.”