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Skepticism Reading Questions
Theory of Knowledge
Prof. McCormick
Choose the (one) best answer for each of these questions:
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Skepticism Reading Questions
Theory of Knowledge
Prof. McCormick
Identify the best answer to each of these questions:
Descartes
1. In the First Meditation, Descartes wants to tear down what?
A. the foundation of the sciences
B. all false opinions opposed to religion
C. any beliefs he has that are not certain and indubitable.
D. any beliefs he has that are based on sensation.
2. Why can't the senses be trusted to tell him the truth?
A. because it is possible he is dreaming everything that he senses.
B. because it is possible that he is insane and things are not what they appear.
C. because he could be the victim of a powerful deceiver.
D. all of the above.
3. When he completes the First Meditation, Descartes,
A. knows more than when he started.
B. knows less than when he started.
C. has established a firm foundation for the sciences.
D. has refuted skepticism.
4. In the Second Meditation, Descartes establishes which certainty:
A. that nothing is certain.
B. that the wax exists as a physical substance, no matter what changes it goes through.
C. that he has an immortal soul.
D. that he (a thinking substance) exists.
E. all of the above.
5. In the Second Meditation, Descartes argues that no matter how powerful the malicious deceiver might be, the deceiver cannot do what?
A. make an existing thing not exist.
B. bring it about that Descartes is nothing when he thinks that he is something.
C. make 2 + 2 = 5.
D. make a non-thinking thing that exists.
E. make it possible for a thing to both think and exist at the same time.
6. In the Third Meditation and later, when Descartes writes about things he knows "clearly and distinctly", he means:
A. truths that he perceives with the senses.
B. beliefs that he arrives at from the intellect.
C. beliefs that are the result of arguments.
D. beliefs that he is certain about.
7. Descartes concludes in the Third Meditation that God is not a deceiver. Why?
A. God is perfect, and to be a deceiver would be an imperfection.
B. God would not allow Descartes to be deceived on the grand scale that he imagined in the First and Second Meditations.
C. Descartes was deceived about being deceived.
D. It is highly unlikely that Descartes is mistaken about his sensory beliefs.
8. In the Fourth Meditation, Descartes asserts that when he employs his powers of reasoning in the right way, they can be trusted to reveal the truth to him because:
A. His faculties perform flawlessly when he is careful, and they reveal the existence of God.
B. The evil deceiver is only capable of deceiving him about what he senses, not reasoned truths like 2+3=5.
C. Error is the result of imperfection, and Descartes faculties of reasoning are perfect.
D. God has given him the powers and God insures that they can grasp the truth.
Hume
9. What's the difference between the continued existence of a body and the distinct existence of a body, for Hume?
A. Continuing bodies persist no matter what happens to them, distinct ones are readily identifiable.
B. Continued ones exist as long as someone perceives them, distinct bodies do not.
C. Continuing bodies persist even when my mind does not sense them, distinct bodies exist separate from or outside of all minds.
D. Distinct bodies exist clearly and distinctly in the mind, continuing bodies do not have distinct properties.
10. Why can't a perception produce the idea of a double existence?
A. A sensation is just a simple feeling; it doesn't indicate a distinction between what I am feeling and what might be outside of me.
B. A double existence is to exist in two places at the same time which is impossible.
C. It is not possible for a sensation to exist outside of a mind.
D. One perception cannot indicate two of anything since it is only one thing itself.
11. My impressions of my self and my impressions of objects outside of me are:
A. Fundamentally different in character.
B. On the same footing in the mind.
C. Are different in form and content when we inspect them closely.
D. Jumbled together hopelessly in the stream of consciousness.
12. Why doesn't reason allow us to infer the existence of bodies external to the mind?
A. Contrary to what many of Hume's contemporaries believed, he argued that it does.
B. Reason concerns itself with abstractions, but external bodies are particular by their nature. Reason cannot infer a particular from a universal.
C. Only principles of cause and effect can connect one impression to another, but they cannot show a connection to a cause external to the mind.
D. The vast majority of people, like children and peasants, employ reason to support their belief in external bodies.
E. The external world can only be known through the senses, not directly with reason.
Moore
13. The second thing that Moore does is make an important claim about a whole class of truisms. What does it mean?
A. People have known many propositions about their bodies and the things around them for a long time.
B. There are many propositions about our bodies and the things around us that we do not know.
C. I know many things about my body and the things around me, but not the same things that you know.
D. We all know many of the same propositions.
14. Which of these is not a truism that G.E. Moore claims to have knowledge of:
A. My body has always been in close contact with the earth.
B. There have been a large number of other people and objects that have existed outside of my experience.
C. There have frequently been people in a situation similar to mine.
D. If it is an obvious truism, then in fact I have knowledge of it.
15. Which of these best represents Moore's view when he presents the "two hands" example (pg 53 and following):
A. If I don't know that my hands exist, then I don't know anything.
B. I don't know whether external objects exist, but I am sure about my hands.
C. I don't know whether external objects exist, so I can't prove knowledge of my hands.
D. My hands would serve as a proof for external objects, but such knowledge is difficult or impossible to acquire.
16. How does he characterize the argument he has presented:
A. giving good but not certain grounds for belief in the conclusion.
B. a refutation of a knowledge claim.
C. as a rigorous proof.
D. an illustration of the strongest form of skepticism.
Putnam
17. With the ant example, Putnam intends to illustrate:
A. That an ant's drawing a complicated picture is exceeding unlikely.
B. That ants are incapable of being aware of their actions the way we are.
C. That ants cannot have intention.
D. That a picture might or might not indicate intention.
18. Suppose someone inflicted damage on a voodoo doll with the goal of hurting the person that it looks like. Putnam would say that they are making what mistake?
A. It is the intention that counts, not the damage to the representation of the person.
B. Doing damage to the doll confuses the thing with its representation.
C. There is no magical connection between a representation of a thing and the thing it represents.
D. The connection of resemblance between the doll and the person it represents is not sufficient to relay harm.
19. Putnam says, "The answer is going to be (basically) this: although the people in that possible world can think and 'say' any words we can think and say, they cannot (I claim) refer to what we can refer to. In particular, they cannot think or say that they are brains in a vat (even by thinking 'we are brains in a vat')."
What is the question?
A. Can brains in a vat speak a language?
B. Can brains in a vat be brains in a vat?
C. Can brains in a vat wonder whether or not they are brains in a vat?
D. If an evil scientist puts your brain in a vat, could you know that it had happened?
20. What's a magical theory of reference?
A. the view that symbols have some non-causal attachment to what they represent.
B. Putnam's theory.
C. the view that reference is achieved when a conscious mind intends it to occur, whatever the symbol might be.
D. the view that some causal contact with the object referred to is required for a person's representations to be able to refer to that object.
21. "I am a brain in vat" is always false because:
A. Brains in a vat cannot say it, and so it is false for anyone else who says it.
B. The vat-English sentence refers to entities inside the vat, not the vat itself.
C. Only brains in bodies can understand the sentence and they are not in vats.
D. Everything a brain in a vat says is false.
Carnap
22. Given what Carnap says, is he:
A. neither a nominalist, nor a realist
B. both a nominalist and a realist.
C. A realist and not a nominalist
D. A nominalist, but not a realist.
23. An external question, for Carnap, is:
A. a question about the existence of objects external to the mind.
B. a question about the existence of abstract entities like concepts, numbers, and propositions.
C. a question about whether or not a whole conceptual-linguistic system describes the world outside that system.
D. a question about the reality beyond the empirical world that is studied by science.
24. When we adopt new linguistic forms, we should do so:
A. on the basis of whether or not they truthfully represent reality.
B. on ontological and metaphysical grounds, not on empirical grounds.
C. on the basis of practical needs, expediency, and fruitfulness.
D. only if the empirical evidence is compelling in support.