Philosophy 1 questions
Here are your final exam questions. Answer only 5. Each answer should be 1-2 double-spaced pages long. (Use no bigger than 12 point font.) You may NOT quote anywhere and all your answers much be your own.
1) Explain the 4 kinds of less-than-ideal city-states that Plato discuses. What are the significant features of each? How does each one “devolve” into the next? How do they each differ from the ideal Republic?
2) Explain the divided line, including all the objects and all the states of mind. Give examples of each.
3) Consider Gettier’s argument against the JTB account of knowledge. Come up with your own “Gettier case,” where a subject, S, has a sufficiently warranted true belief that p, for some proposition p, but does (in actuality) not know that p. Make sure you give a very detailed account of why p is true, what justifies S’s belief that p, and how that justification is adequate. Then explain why in your case S lacks knowledge that p. Finally, offer and solution which would eliminate cases of the kind you have developed and explain how well you think it would work.
4) Give two accounts of how we can come to know “triangle.” For this, you should reproduce the explanations of both Descartes and Locke. Finish by giving an argument for why you prefer one over the other.
5) For Locke:
- Explain his account of the state of nature
- Explain why people leave the state of nature
- Explain what, if any, restrictions are placed on the Sovereign.
6) Explain the path of argument in the Theaetetus (ie: how Theaetetus would present one account, how Socrates would question it, and how Theaetetus would then present another account, which Socrates would then attack, etc.) Give a detailed account of what Plato ultimately thinks knowledge is. Come up with examples that illustrate what kinds of objects or concepts we can have knowledge of and what kind of objects or concepts we cannot have knowledge of (feel free to include concepts from both the Theaetetus and Republic here.) Is Plato’s account successful? Why or why not.
7) Give an exegesis of the different accounts of metaphysics offered in Armstrong (make sure to include at least realism, class nominalism, predicate nominalism, and resemblance nominalism). Then consider Richard Ankrom’s freeway signs (Google it.) Explain how each account of metaphysics would explain why this is art. Present a metaphysical argument that best captures your view on whether it is or is not art.
