Questions on Each Book (T = TMA; S = Specimen Exam Paper; E = Exam Paper) from 2000, the Exam

A222 - EXAMINATION & ASSIGNMENT QUESTIONS TO DATE

Questions on each book (T = TMA; S = Specimen exam paper; E = Exam paper; No = year, e.g. T12 = TMA question from 2011/12.)

Book 1 – The Self 1. Give a critical account of John Locke’s views on personal identity. (T12) 2. Is there a you? (S) 3. What is Derek Parfit’s teletransporter example meant to show? Does it? (S) 4. Are you now the same person as the person who started this module? (E12) 5. Does David Hume show that the self is just an illusion? (E12) 6. Is the self a fiction, as Hume argues? (T13) 7. Is personal identity a matter of bodily continuity? (E13) 8. Do Parfit’s thought experiments help us make sense of personal identity? (E13) 9. Should people ever be held responsible for crimes they have no memory of having committed? (T14) 10.Is the self just a bundle of perceptions? (E14) 11.Is there any science-fiction thought experiment that advances our understanding of personal identity? (E14) 12.Is Locke’s distinction between ‘man’ and ‘person’ useful for understanding personal identity? (T15) 13. Explain and assess Hume’s view that the self is nothing more than “an imaginary principle of union”. (E15) 14. Were Rembrandt’s self-portraits, painted over a period of 40 years, all [painted by the same person? (E15) 15. Is there anything that makes you the same person over time? (T16)

Book 2 – Philosophy of Religion 1. ‘The modern theory of evolution demolishes the design argument for the existence of God.’ Does it? (T12) 2. ‘Religious faith does not need reasoned justification.’ Do you agree? (S) 3. Does the testimony of those who claim to have witnessed miracles show that there is a God? (S) 4. Does the problem of evil prove that there is no God? (E12) 5. Critically assess the argument that religious experience supports the claim that God exists. (E12) 6. Can religious experience be used to justify belief in God? (T13) 7. State and assess the argument from design. (E13) 8. State the problem of evil. Can theists solve it? (E13) 9. In what circumstances could someone be justified in believing that a miracle had occurred? (T14) 10.‘Theists could solve the problem of evil by dropping the claim that God is omnipotent, but a non-omnipotent God is not a God at all.’ Discuss. (E14) 11.How convincing are Hume’s objections to the argument from design? (E14) 12.What are Hume’s objections to the argument from design? Are they compelling? (T15) 13. Are there ever good grounds to believe that a miracle has occurred? (E15) 14. Is the existence of evil compatible with the existence of God? (E15) 15. Is any version of the argument from design convincing? (T16)

Book 3 - Ethics 1. Compare Jeremy Bentham’s version of hedonism with John Stuart Mill’s. Is either version adequate? (T12) 2. According to Kant, what is wrong with making insincere promises? Is he right? (S) 3. Is killing a human fetus on a moral par with killing a human adult? (S) 4. What is Glaucon’s challenge? Assess Socrates’s strongest response to it. (E12) 5. What is Judith Jarvis Thomson’s violinist analogy meant to show? Does it? (E12) 6. What is Judith Jarvis Thomson’s ‘famous violinist’ analogy supposed to show? Does it? (T13) 7. Describe ONE change that Mill made to Bentham’s version of utilitarianism. Why did he make it and was it an improvement? (E13) 8. What gives acts moral worth, according to Kant? Was he right? (E13) 9. What is the difference between act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism? Compare and evaluate the two. (T14) 10.How convincing is Socrates’ response to Glaucon’s challenge in Plato’s Republic? (E14) 11.‘A fetus is not a person, so abortion is morally permissible’. Discuss. (E14) 12.‘A fetus is not a person, so abortion is morally permissible’. Discuss. (T15) 13. Does Mill’s appeal to ‘higher’ pleasures fix difficulties facing Bentham’s utilitarianism? (E15) 14. Does Kant’s universalizability test represent a genuine improvement on the Golden Rule? (E15) 15. What are the difficulties facing ‘act utilitarianism’ that ‘rule utilitarianism’ is meant to avoid? Does it manage to do so without generating insuperable difficulties of its own? (T16) Book 4 - Knowledge 1. Explain how René Descartes applied his method of doubt and evaluate whether the method delivers Descartes’s objective of finding certainty. (T12) 2. Should we trust inductive inference? (S) 3. What contrast does Kuhn draw between normal and revolutionary science? Do you agree with the lessons he draws from this contrast? (S) 4. Is my belief that because bread nourished me yesterday it will nourish me tomorrow based on reason? Discuss with reference to David Hume. (E12) 5. How does Karl Popper demarcate science and non-science? Is his demarcation justified? (E12) 6. According to Kuhn, what is wrong with Popper’s account of the scientific method? Is Kuhn’s criticism successful? (T13) 7. Is certainty required for genuine knowledge? Discuss in connection with Descartes’ method of doubt. (E13) 8. Has Popper solved Hume’s problem of induction? (E13) 9. Does Popper successfully demarcate science and non-science? (T14) 10.Critically compare Descartes’s and Hume’s forms of scepticism. (E14) 11.Did people living in the middle ages see the world differently from people in the 21st century? Discuss with reference to Kuhn. (E14) 12.Is it true that a scientific theory can be refuted but never verified? (T15) 13. Does Descartes successfully establish that he exists? (E15) 14. Can the belief that the course of nature will not change be justified? (E15) 15. Can induction be rationally justified? (T16)

Book 5 - Mind 1. Can your mind extend beyond your brain? (T12) 2. ‘Descartes’s inability to say how mental and physical substances interact sinks his theory.’ Discuss. (S) 3. Is functionalism a genuine improvement on the mind-body identity theory? (S) 4. On what grounds does Descartes think we are made up of two substances? Are we? (E12) 5. Can there be a complete physicalist account of consciousness? (E12) 6. Is functionalism a viable theory of mind? (T13) 7. Why did Descartes think we are composed of two distinct substances? Was he right? (E13) 8. Is your diary part of your mind? (E13) 9. Does the fact that mind and body can be conceived apart mean that they can exist apart? (T14) 10.What are the main objections to the extended-mind hypothesis? Can they be overcome? (E14) 11.How serious is the qualia problem for functionalism? (E14) 12.Does functionalism give us a good account of pain? (T15) 13. Descartes argued that mind and body must be really distinct because we can conceive of them as distinct. Is this a good argument? (E15) 14. How far does your mind extend? (E15) 15. Can functionalism cope with the most serious objection it faces? (T16)

Book 6 – Political Philosophy 1. ‘Citizens only have obligations towards their state if that state is broadly just. States that exhibit large economic inequalities between citizens are not broadly just. So citizens can have no obligations to such states.’ Is this a sound argument? (T12) 2. Is the relation between the state and its citizens analogous, in any interesting way, to the relation between a family and its members? (S) 3. Why did John Rawls ask us to imagine a veil of ignorance when thinking about distributive justice? How convincing is the theory he comes up with after doing so himself? (S) 4. What, if anything, can a citizen do to avoid obligations to the state? (E12) 5. ‘Economic equality is a fine ideal but it is undermined by self-interest.’ Discuss. (E12) 6. Are analogies between the state/citizen relation and the parent/child relation robust enough to explain a citizen’s obligation to the state? (T13) 7. Explain and assess the consent theory of political obligation. (E13) 8. If you are born with a talent, do you deserve the full benefits that flow from you exercising that talent? Answer with reference to Rawls OR Nozick OR both. (E13) 9. Are you entitled to the full rewards of exercising those talents you just happen to have been born with? (T14) 10.Is any analogy between parent-child and state-citizen relations close enough to justify political obligation? (E14) 11.What is Nozick’s public-address system example meant to show? Does it? (E14) 12. What is luck egalitarianism? Is it a plausible account of distributive justice? (T15) 13.What is philosophical anarchism and is it defensible? (E15) 14. Am I obliged to contribute to a cooperative scheme simply because I benefit from it? (E15) 15. “Distributions don’t need to be equal to be just.” Discuss. (T16)