Ph103 Short Answer Questions
2013-2014

The 2013-2014 exam for Ph103 will include a short-answer section, in which 10 questions will be randomly selected from the list of 55 questions below. You will be asked to answer all 10 of these questions. Answers in this short-answer section need only be 1-3 sentences long (whatever is needed to answer correctly). So, to prepare for this portion of the test, it is advisable to write down your short answers answers to each of these 55 questions, and then study those answers.

Michaelmas Term

Week 1

  1. What is odd about Tolstoy's assumption that if he is unhappy and unlikely ever to be happy again he might as well kill himself?
  2. Life might be "meaningless" in two different ways. Explain.
  3. Camus "cannot conceive that a skeptical metaphysics can be joined to an ethics of renunciation." What does he mean by this and why does he think so?

Week 2

  1. What gives rise to the Absurd, according to Nagel?
  2. What, according to Frankfurt, is the relation between concern and importance?
  3. Wolf says that meaningful activity "occurs where subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness." What does she mean?

Week 3

  1. Explain the distinction between a logical possibility and a logical impossibility.
  2. What is a theodicy? What is its general structure?
  3. Explain the distinction between the theodicist and the anti-theodicist. Can an atheist be a theodicist?

Week 4

  1. What is natural evil?
  2. What is gratuitous evil?
  3. What is Occam's razor?

Week 5

  1. Define and explain the Divine Command Theory's (DCT's) Theory of the Right.
  2. Define and explain the Euthyphro Dilemma.
  3. Define and explain the distinction between a criterion of rightness and a decision procedure.

Week 6

  1. Explain the distinction between moral relativism and moral objectivism.
  2. Explain the distinction between a fundamental moral norm and a derivative moral norm.
  3. Explain the distinction between moral absolutism and moral non-absolutism.

Week 7

  1. What is the Moral Diversity Thesis?
  2. Explain the problem of formulation that moral relativism faces.
  3. Explain the moral reformer problem that moral relativism faces.

Week 8

  1. Explain the distinction between determinism and indeterminism.
  2. Explain the distinction between determinism and fatalism.
  3. Explain the distinction between compatibilism and incompatibilism.

Week 9

  1. What is the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP)?
  2. Explain Frankfurt's distinction between first-order desires and the will.
  3. Explain Frankfurt's distinction between second-order desires and second-order volitions.

Week 10

No short-answer questions for this week.




Lent Term

Week 11

  1. What is the Lewis definition of time travel?
  2. Formulate the grandfather paradox as a valid argument in premise-conclusion form, in which the conclusion is the contradictory statement, "you exist and you do not exist."
  3. Explain two ways that one can escape the contradiction of the grandfather paradox.

Week 12

  1. Explain why Arntzenius says that the Lewis definition of time travel (in terms of personal and external time) "ain't quite right." How does Arntzenius recommend we correct the definition?
  2. What is Arntzenius' "simple argument" that time travel is unlikely to occur in our universe?

Week 13

  1. What is the difference between the ordinary and the "regressive" form of Zeno's Dichotomy Paradox? What did Zeno conclude from these arguments?
  2. How does Salmon argue that Zeno's Paradox of the Arrow can be overcome?
  3. Explain Weyl's "tile argument" that our space is note discrete. Draw diagram to illustrate.

Week 14

  1. Given an example of a supertask, and explain how the example satisfies the definition.
  2. Explain one way to "complete" the description of Thomson's lamp so as to avoid the paradox.
  3. If we assume that the balls in the jar in Ross' Paradox have continuous worldlines, then how many balls are in the jar at the end of Ross' procedure?

Week 15

  1. What is scientific realism?
  2. Give an example of underdetermination of theory by evidence.
  3. How does underdetermination undermine the No Miracles argument?

Week 16

  1. How does the pessimistic meta-induction provide an argument against realism?
  2. What is the "divide and conquer" reply to the pessimistic meta-induction? (Chang calls this view "Preservative Realism.")

Week 17

  1. How does one obtain knowledge, according to the empiricist view of epistemology?
  2. Give an example off enumerative induction.
  3. What is the Problem of Induction?

Week 18

  1. Describe two different responses to Hume's problem of induction.
  2. What is the difference between an emerald that is green and an object that is "grue"?
  3. How does Popper distinguish science from "pseudoscience"?

Week 19

  1. What roles do a 1km gold sphere and a 1km uranium sphere play in helping us describe laws?
  2. Summarize John Roberts' argument that there are no laws in the social sciences.
  3. What is a hedged law?

Week 20

  1. What is mathematical Platonism?
  2. What is mathematical antirealism?
  3. Explain the difference between a priori and a posteriori knowledge, and why the former poses a challenge for empiricism.