NOTE:  I DID NOT INCLUDE ANY QUESTIONS FROM THE FIRST HALF OF THE COURSE.  I SHOULD CONSIDER WHETHER I NEED TO.

 

PHIL 350:  FINAL EXAM REVIEW QUESTIONS

 

The final exam will take place in SAV 343 at 2:30 pm on Fri., Dec. 15.  PLEASE BRING ONE OR MORE BLANK EXAM BOOKS AND A PEN TO THE EXAM.  EXAM BOOKS WITH NOTES WRITTEN ON THEM OR WITH PAGES MISSING WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.  To relieve the time pressure, I will allow an extra half-hour at the end of the exam.  Please answer all questions completely, but concisely.  Answer in complete sentences.  In preparing for the exam, you are encouraged to discuss these questions with other members of the class, and to discuss what the relevant considerations would be in answering them.  However, each student is expected to develop his/her own answers to the questions.  You should not discuss the wording of an answer or attempt to come up with an agreed upon answer.  If you draft answers to the questions, you should not show your draft answers to others, nor should you read or copy someone else's draft answers. 

The final exams exam will be available for pick-up in the Philosophy Department Office, Savery 345, during the first week of winter quarter.  If you would like your exam mailed to you, please provide me with a sufficiently large, stamped, self-addressed envelope.

 

            1.  Explain the following distinctions as they are used in this course (you may use examples):

(a) internalism/externalism with respect to epistemic justification

(b) separable/non-separable sources of beliefs

(c) linear/non-linear model of justification

(d) habit memory/episodic memory/factual memory

(e) reliabilism/virtue reliabilism/virtue perspectivism

(f) knowledge/justification skepticism

(g) global/local skepticism

(h) methodological/substantive skepticism

 

            2.  What is internalism with respect to justification?  If internalism is true, do animals and children have justified beliefs?  Explain.

 

            3.  If internalism with respect to justification is true, do normal human beings have justified beliefs about the past or future of justified beliefs about the external world)?  Explain.  What about epistemology students and epistemology professors?  Explain. 

 

            4.   What is reliabilism?  Explain the following problems for reliabilism:  (a) the Evil Genius; (b) Mr. Truetemp; (c) the generality problem.

 

            5.  Pojman claims that his belief that he had cereal with banana for breakfast is a basic belief for him.  What does it mean to say that the belief is basic?  Would BonJour agree that Pojman's belief about what he had for breakfast is basic?  Explain.  What would BonJour identify as the basic belief that supports Pojman's belief about what he had for breakfast?   Which position on memory beliefs is more plausible, Pojman or BonJour's?  Explain. 

 

            6.  What is the argument from analogy for other minds?  What are the problems for it?

 

            7.  What is logical behaviorism?  What is the logical behaviorist solution to the problem of other minds?  What are the problems for it?

 

            8.  What is the inference-to-the-best-explanation solution to the problem of other minds?  What are the problems for it?

 

            9.  What is the evolutionary solution to the problem of other minds?  Why is it an externalist account?  What are the problems for it?

 

            10.  Is testimony a non-separable source of belief for you?  Explain. 

 

            11.  What is psychologism in epistemology?  BonJour identifies three roles for psychology in epistemology that are unobjectionable.  He refers to them as minimal psychologism, conceptual psychologism, and the meliorative epistemological project.  Explain each.  Why would BonJour regard the use of psychology to reply to a skeptic as question-begging?  How might the naturalistic epistemologist reply to this objection?

 

            12.  What is the metaphor of Neurath's raft?  Why does it apply to Quine's epistemology?  Is Quine a coherentist about justification? 

 

            13.  Quine regards skepticism as "an offshoot of science"?   What does he mean by this?

 

            14.  BonJour argues that naturalized epistemology can say nothing to distinguish science from occult beliefs such as astrology.  Is this true?  How would Quine reply? 

 

            15.  BonJour claims that if naturalized epistemology includes arguments for its positions, it is self-referentially inconsistent.  What does this mean?  Why does BonJour think that it is true?  How would the naturalized epistemologist reply?

 

            16.  According to a virtue reliabilist, what are the intellectual virtues?  Give a definition and then illustrate it with two examples and explain why they are intellectual virtues.  Can those without intellectual virtues still have justified perceptual and memory beliefs?  Explain.

 

            18.  What are the Principles of Cartesian Epistemology?

 

            19.  What is the problem of the criterion?  What are the two ways of solving the problem?

 

            20.  Explain each of the following responses to justification skepticism concerning our beliefs about the external world and for each one, explain why BonJour finds it unsatisfactory:

(a)  Descartes's Response

(b) The Particularist's Response

(c) The Contextualist's Response

(d) The Coherentist's Response

(e) The Reliabilist-Externalist's Response

(f) The Naturalist's Response

(g) The Pragmatist's Response

(h) Rorty's Response

(i) Your Response (either explain why Bonjour would find it unsatisfactory or explain why he would not).

 

            21.  What is the crucial presumption about justification that BonJour shares with the skeptic?

What are the three kinds of justification skepticism that anyone who accepts the crucial presumption, including BonJour, must surrender to?   Explain why each one is unanswerable.

 

            22.  What is BonJour's Anti-Skeptical Project?  If BonJour's Anti-Skeptical Project succeeds will it satisfy a global justification skeptic?  Explain.  If the Anti-Skeptical Project fails, is that the end of epistemology?  Explain.  Whatever answer you give to this question, make sure you consider and reply to the strongest objection to your answer. 

 

            23.  What reasons does Talbott offer for giving up the crucial presumption about justification that BonJour shares with the skeptic?  What kind of reasons are they?  BonJour would see them as question-begging.  Why?  Are they question-begging?  Explain.

 

            24.  In the terms used in this course, how would you classify your epistemological view?  Explain your view and your reasons for holding it.