Heusser                                                                                 Philosophy 100                                                                     SG 12                                                                                                                              

Study Topics and Directions for Exam 2

 

·         Anything said in an announcement supersedes this guide. Exams will cover material from the readings, lecture, and discussion. Brief points I bring up about particular philosophers that are in lecture, but not the text, may be included in a few minor non-essay questions.

·         There will be about 20 to 25 multiple-choice and true-false questions.

·         There may be some direct quotations or paraphrases taken from our texts or required internet readings. You may be asked which philosopher has that particular view (i.e., Who wrote what?). No passages will be chosen that do not represent a significant philosophical issue.

Unit 7 Concepts: (Most are listed in the Magee Glossary and/or the Rauhut Index) Butterfly Effect, Causality, Chaos Theory, Determinism: Hard and Soft

Unit 8 Concepts: (Traditional) Compatibilism, Existentialism, Indeterminism, Libertarianism

Unit 9 Concepts: Conceivability argument, (Substance) Dualism, Idealism, Materialism, Mind-Body Problem, Monism, Physicalism, Properties/States (Mental and Physical)

Unit 10 Concepts: Logical Behaviorism, Category Mistake, Conservation of Energy, Identity Theory (Reductive Materialism), Occasionalism, Parallelism, Problem of Interaction, Telekinesis

Unit 11 Concepts: Chinese Room, Eliminative Materialism, Folk psychology, Inverted Spectrum, Functionalism, Qualia, Strong and Weak A.I., Systems Reply, Turing Test

Possible Essay Questions: I will announce more details.

  1. I may display a few arguments against Hard Determinism and ask you to discuss which premise the Determinists will most likely object to and explain why they will object.
  2. Discuss how a soft determinist would defend their view of freedom. How might the hard determinist and libertarian respond? What two different definitions for “acts freely” are being used by the Soft Determinist and the Hard Determinist?
  3. Discuss how a hard determinist would defend their view of freedom, punishment, and reward. How might the soft determinist and libertarian respond?
  4. What is the distinction between Dualism and Monism (consider Idealism and Materialism)
  5. What are Descartes’ divisibility and conceivability arguments for Dualism? Do you think either succeeds? Why or why not? (Whether you think either succeeds or not, you should consider one problem for the theory)
  6. What do the “inverted spectrum” and “absent qualia” thought experiments show?
  7. Explain the main point of Searle’s Chinese Room Argument. (You do not have to get every detail correct, just the main idea.) What would Turing say in response to Searle’s argument that the computer doesn’t have “Property P” (thoughts or understanding).