Intro. to Philosophy Midterm
Glaucon tries to show that compared with the seemingly unjust but actually just man, the seemingly just but actually unjust man is
Happier
Aristotle describes each virtue as
Mean or middle ground
Which best expresses the dilemma in the Trolley Problem?
Should we pick the action with the best outcome, or follow other moral principles?
Why doesn't Omelas have a military?
That kind of victory is fearful and trivial.
Socrates claims to be a _____ for Athens' sake.
Gadfly
In Kant's view, coercion is wrong because the person being coerced could not consent.
True
Aristotle divides the virtues into:
character virtues and intellectual virtues.
The doctrine of The Golden Mean states that
A virtue lies between two vices
According to the TED-ed explanation, compared to the original version of the Trolley Problem, the factor in the version involving the large man on the bridge that seems more wrong to most people is
deliberately causing someone's death.
What does Markovits say utilitarians would do in her example of The Five Doses?
divide up the drug, saving the five and allowing Needy to die
In the analogy of the Sun, the good is to the ______ world what the sun is to the_______ world:
intellectual/visible.
Socrates claimed that for the jury to sentence him to death would be to harm themselves more than him because
it would be unjust.
According to Singer, we are able to save children's lives by redirecting money we might have spent on unnecessary items like all except
mosquito nets
Rawls conceives of the parties in the original position as
mutually disinterested.
According to Aristotle, what does "living together" mean in the case of humanity, as opposed to other animals?
sharing in discussion and thought
Socrates admits
that the Oracle said he, Socrates, is wisest.
What does the sun outside the cave represent?
the idea of good
Wolf argues that meaning in life requires objective values.
True
One of the official charges against Socrates is _____.
believing in new deities
What "rational understanding of our situation in the world" does Singer identify as promoted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation?
All lives have equal value.
Glaucon's story of Gyges' ring is meant to show that
All people believe in their hearts that injustice is more profitable than justice.
Which website(s) does Singer recommend for those who want to look for effective charities?
Effective Animal Activism, GiveWell, thelifeyoucansave.com, Against Malaria Foundation, Giving What We Can. All of these.
Socrates thought that the primary occupation of a good citizen should be the pursuit of wealth and prestige.
False
Socrates wrote several classic dialogues.
False
The freed prisoner does not feel obligated to enlighten the others living in ignorance.
False
To avoid doing wrong, Kant thinks we should act to promote the happiness of as many people as possible.
False
Wolf claims that life is meaningless.
False
Wolf claims that meaning comes from what one most wants to do.
False
Wolf claims that the detached housewife is not involved in a worthwhile project.
False
Nussbaum would promote colleges' and universities' in the United States embrace of the ideal of educating students
For citizenship and life generally.
According to Plato's Lysis, how can friendship be used to further self-knowledge and philosophy?
Friends better their philosophical discussions with each other.
How does Aristotle characterize perfect friendship?
Friends mutually recognize the goodwill they bear to each other.
Which is not one of Aristotle's three forms of friendship?
Friendship based on dominance.
According to Aristotle, why would the ideal good person not live alone?
Good people delight in virtuous actions and can contemplate their friends' actions almost as if they were their own, The good person needs others to do well by, Humans are political (and more broadly social) creatures, so the good person wouldn't be lacking in that dimension, Keeping company with good people gives rise to training in virtue. All of these.
Aristotle's concept of eudaimonia means
Happiness
Why doesn't Socrates try to gain sympathy from his jury?
He believes he should only be acquitted on the basis of justice and the law.
According to Angie Hobbs, for Aristotle
Humans are naturally social animals, and thus will naturally form friendships.
What is the only animal who adopted Omelas' ceremonies?
Horse
Greek philosophers took what as basic ethical starting points, says Hobbs?
How we should live and what sort of person we should be.
The second capacity Nussbaum discusses is for seeing oneself not as citizens of a local region, but instead as
Human beings first and foremost, who recognize their own culture as one among others.
The third ability that Nussbaum discusses is that of "cultivating imagination." What does she mean by this?
Imagining yourself in the shoes of someone different from yourself.
According to Nussbaum, the capacity for seeing beyond our local region is important because
Many contemporary problems call on us to understand people who are different.
According to Nussbaum, why does education need to be different in today's world?
Many pressing problems now require cross-cultural understanding.
In Plato's Republic, after viewing the Sun, the philosopher returns to the cave
Reluctantly
A preoccupation with _____ is a clear indication, according to Socrates, that one's soul is unhealthy.
Reputation
King sought "to create ... such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to... just as ______ felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind [to] help men rise."
Socrates
According to Rawls, all social and economic advantages (opportunity, liberty, income, wealth, etc.) are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution is
To everyone's advantage
According to Socrates, the man who is worth anything considers what?
Whether he's acting rightly.
Does King advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?
Yes, and one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
According to Aristotle, happiness is:
a life lived according to virtue.
At the end of the story, the ones who walk away from Omelas go where?
a place less imaginable than Omelas, one that possibly doesn't exist
LeGuin depicts Omelas as
a place where the joy of many contrasts with the depression of the child's prison.
Rawls maintains that a society satisfying his principles of justice comes as close as a society can to being
a voluntary scheme, a place where the members are autonomous/free, fair. All of these.
According to Singer, if we're feeling bad because we haven't done as much as we think we should have on behalf of others,
we can get off the hook by donating to effective charities.
Socrates thinks that all people are corrupt.
False
According to Angie Hobbs, for Aristotle,
Humans are naturally social animals, and thus will naturally form friendships.
Rawls refers to his theory as
Justice as Fairness
The Trolley Problem forces us to think about how to choose
when there are no good options.
Singer explicitly identifies all except which as not making a "morally relevant difference"?
whether others share our interests
In 1789, utilitarian Jeremy Bentham was a defender of which of the following?
women's rights, the right to divorce, decriminalization of homosexual acts, animal rights. All of these.
According to the Rowland video-lecture, in the experience machine
you'd derive the same amount of pleasure from the mere experience of doing things as you would from in fact doing these things.
Plato's allegory reminds us that widely accepted opinions can be
Wrong
Socrates believes
he is the gift of the gods to Athens.
Socrates professes _____.
ignorance
For Socrates, an unexamined life is
not worth living
Socrates believes that it pays for a man to be perfectly unjust if he appears to be just.
False
When an enlightened one returns to the cave, Plato says such a person will be
"blind and bewildered about cave life" and "yearning to return to the upper world"
In the Apology, Socrates declares _____.
"the unexamined life is not worth living"
Socrates considers himself
A philosophical gadfly to the state
What metaphor does Axelrod use in his description of the "machinery for the evolution of cooperation"?
A rachet
According to Rawls, each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with
A similar liberty for others
According to Socrates, why does he go around examining the people of Athens?
Because he is obeying the god.
Socrates is on trial for
Being impious and corrupting the youth.
Which was not one of the general features of the successful strategies for the iterated prisoners' dilemma discussed by Axelrod and Agar?
Being understanding (i.e., allowing occasional defections to go unpunished)
One of the official charges against Socrates is _____.
Corrupting the youth
King addresses himself to
Critical clergymen.
Socrates claims that _____ is not to be feared.
Death
The examined life is important because
Democracy needs citizens who think for themselves.
According to Socrates, he has a
Divine sign that speaks to him
Socrates preferred banishment to death.
False
According to Wolf, one sign of active engagement is
Excitement
A person who is "continent," according to Aristotle, is
Experiencing conflict between actions and feelings.
According to O'Neill, to treat another rational agent as a mere means is wrong unless doing so is required to treat other rational agents as ends in themselves.
False
According to Wolf, active engagement admits of alienation.
False
According to Wolf, something is objectively valuable if someone desires it.
False
Glaucon thinks that a man's getting away with injustice makes him worse.
False
In the Republic, Plato argues that all the prisoners in the cave will eventually see daylight.
False
Kant claims that deception is wrong because it causes a lot of unhappiness.
False
Kant claims that there is no one moral principle.
False
King accepts a "mythical concept of time" according to which time itself will right all wrongs.
False
King advocates the breaking of unjust laws by any means.
False
King advocates the overthrow of the U.S. government.
False
O'Neill finds the requirements of Kant's moral theory to be excessively demanding.
False
Plato argues that the prisoners in the cave can never be enlightened.
False
Plato maintains that personal freedom is more important than wisdom.
False
Plato thinks that only the rich and powerful can be enlightened.
False
An action is wrong, according to Kant, if
Its maxim treats someone as a mere means.
According to the Rowland video-lecture, the experience machine thought experiment is intended to raise the question,
Is it better for us to do things outside of the machine, or is it just as good for us to have the mere experience of doing these things?
In "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," the child is called ________ as a pronoun.
It
Which is not a reason suggested by Hobbs in support of her claim that the ancient Greek outlook created "a lot of space for friendship"?
It celebrated friendship as an escape from ordinary duties.
According to Singer, how does the "head" (rationality) help fuel the growing movement, effective altruism?
It helps us to understand that other people, wherever they are, are like us, that they can suffer as we can, that parents grieve for the deaths of their children, as we do & It shows us that just as our lives and our well-being matter to us, it matters just as much to those who are suffering & It ensures that what you do is effective and well-directed. All of these.
T.M. Scanlon's example of Jones and the World Cup implies an objection to the idea that it's better morally to secure more of what's valuable (i.e., more happiness). How so?
It would imply that Jones should be left to suffer, but that seems wrong.
Which consideration(s) does Markovits offer favoring utilitarianism?
It's a very simple, theoretically elegant view that has universal application, It's completely egalitarian in that it counts each person's happiness for as much as anyone else's, It can promote important moral insights ahead of their time, It's built on a value, happiness, that is at least extremely widely shared. Almost everyone, in fact, values happiness. All of these.
What kind of good does Socrates agree justice is?
It's desirable both for its own sake AND for the results which flow from it.
Which does Alain de Boton not consider in his list of things we might be trying to do with the people we meet?
Learning new skills
The first capacity Nussbaum discusses is for "living the examined life." This means
Learning to think critically about one's own traditions.
At his trial, Socrates cross-examines _____.
Meletus
In research on the Trolley Problem, people from which groups were more likely to push the large man from the bridge?
Men and people who recently watched a comedy clip
Socrates claimed he did not accept _____ for teaching.
Money
How do average people's judgments about the original lever-pulling version of the Trolley Problem differ from those about the version involving the large man on the bridge?
Most people accept a utilitarian analysis of the first, but not the second.
According to Wolf, objective value depends on
None of the above
The Allegory of the Cave suggests that the truth is
Not always obvious
When would Grudger defect? (Let D indicate defection, C cooperation.)
On all of these except the "first move"
According to Alain de Boton, what is the proper relationship between friendship and purpose?
Only by recognizing the purpose of each friendship can we decide whether it fits into our lives.
When would Tit-for-tat defect? (Let D indicate defection, C cooperation.)
Opponent's last 5 moves were CCCCD
Why, according to Aristotle, do perfect friendships endure?
Perfect friendship lasts as long as the people in it are good; and goodness is an enduring thing.
A meaningful life, according to Wolf, must have
Pleasure / Active Engagement
Plato's Allegory of the Cave can be seen as a metaphor for
the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world.
In the Apology, Meletus's self-contradiction is that
Socrates is guilty of not believing in the gods, but believing in the gods.
Socrates claims that nothing is more important than caring for one's _____.
Soul
In living the examined life, one must
Test traditional beliefs for consistent reasoning and correctness of fact.
After being condemned to death, what is Socrates' prophecy?
That killing him will only bring more critics like him
Singer compares our response to "two-year old Wang Yue" with our response to what children?
The 19,000 children under five who die every day from preventable, poverty-related diseases.
The "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" starts with
The Festival of Summer
According to Aristotle, we should begin ethical inquiry by specifying:
The aim of human life
In "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," what reason does the narrator give as to why the child shouldn't be released?
The child is too imbecile to live and be happy anyway.
King believes that
The civil rights activists should be protected.
Virtue ethics is based on
The development of a person's character.
In Plato's Republic, what does the sun outside the cave represent?
The good
In "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," the happiness of many people depends on
The misery of one child
In "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," what is the child afraid of?
The mops
According to Rawls, behind the veil of ignorance, the principles of justice are
The result of a fair agreement of free and equal persons
For Socrates, an unexamined life is a tragedy because it results in harm to _____.
The soul
Which does Aristotle not say about "incidental" friendships?
They last as long as the friends are good.
Why does Socrates take himself to be wiser than the people he interviews?
They think they know things they don't actually know, and he doesn't.
According to Agar (video 1), what does the "rational agents" model of the prisoners predict about their behavior in the prisoner's dilemma?
They will defect
Why doesn't Socrates try to avoid death at his trial?
Though he doesn't know whether death will be bad, he knows abandoning his stand for philosophy would be bad, and he would rather act justly.
Which strategy won the iterated version of the prisoner's dilemma?
Tit-for-tat
According to Socrates, we should always consider in doing anything whether we are doing right or wrong.
True
Gyges uses the ring to escape the laws and morals of society and to serve his greed.
True
In "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," some people know the truth about the child's suffering and accept it eventually.
True
Kant claims that we assess the moral status of an action on the basis of the maxim it expresses.
True
Kant provides multiple formulations of the categorical imperative.
True
King admits to being an extremist.
True
King believes that no group of people will remain oppressed forever.
True
King sees himself as walking a middle path between violence and complacency.
True
Plato distinguishes between appearance and reality.
True
Plato thinks that few people have insight into what's real.
True
Plato thinks that the prisoners are deluded.
True
Socrates believes that being good is good for you.
True
Socrates thought that our main duty is the perfection of our souls.
True
The Allegory of the Cave reminds us that people will often prefer comfortable commonplace assumptions to the deeper, sometimes unsettling understanding derived from philosophy.
True
The Allegory of the Cave suggests that there is a difference between knowledge and mere belief.
True
The iterated prisoner's dilemma provides some evidence that cooperation could even emerge in a world of egoists.
True
Wolf thinks that an adequate account of meaning in life must be able to explain our intuitions about examples of meaningful lives.
True
According to Rawls, the correct principles of justice are determined by
the choice that rational individuals would make in a hypothetical situation.
Why does Nussbaum say it's very useful to learn to inquire into much more depth into at least one unfamiliar culture?
We need to learn the kind of ignorance we have.
In the interview, Nussbaum's main idea is
What a good citizen needs to know in a multicultural world.
Rawls includes in the list of basic liberties freedom of
assembly, speech, conscience. All of these.
According to Rawls, we can enter the original position
at any time, if we have cultivated the imagination and reason required to do so
In Aristotle's view, the virtues are:
acquired through habit
According to Markovits, utilitarianism is the view that
actions are morally permissible if and only if they produce at least as much net happiness as any other available action.
Which does King not identify as a concrete phenomenon in virtue of which it's difficult for the long-oppressed to accept that they should continue waiting for the political process to recognize their constitutional rights?
actually, King identifies each of these as making it difficult to continue waiting for the political process to recognize constitutional rights
Who, in Plato's Allegory of the Cave, are the people sitting in the cave?
all of us
According to Socrates, a clear sign that a person has _____ is her exclusive pursuit of social status, wealth, power, and pleasure.
an unhealthy soul
What groups in today's world might the child in Omelas plausibly represent?
animals in factory farms who endure short lives of fear and pain so we can enjoy cheap, tasty food & immigrant workers whose voices are unheard by the political process but whose work is essential to civilization & workers in "sweat shops" who manufacture the goods we enjoy. All of these.
How does Plato characterize the "good"? It
authors the being and essence of all things, imparts the power of knowing to the knower, imparts truth to the known, is more beautiful than science and truth. All of these.
Singer says that, according to Will Crouch, one of the career paths that allows one to have the biggest impact for good in the world is
banking or finance
Why, according to Kant, am I not necessarily acting immorally when I use a bank teller to cash my paycheck?
because the teller can consent in principle to being used in this way
According to Rawls, behind the veil of ignorance, people would prefer a society that would
benefit each member.
Glaucon argues that the unjust life is
better than the just life.
King's definition of civil disobedience includes
both breaking unjust laws, and accepting the penalty.
The possession of nuclear weapons by mutually hostile countries can be considered a prisoner's dilemma because
both sides benefit from not launching nuclear weapons
In the prisoner's dilemma, the most favorable outcome for the prisoners (Blue and Red) as a group is for
both to cooperate
According to King, "the very purpose of direct action" is to
create enough tension to force a return to negotiation.
Socrates employed _____ in his interactions.
cross-questioning / question and answer
Singer argues that we should compare the good of providing a guide dog for a blind person to the good of
curing up to 2,000 people in developing countries of trachoma-caused blindness.
What example(s) does Markovits provide of a commonly accepted case in which people think the morally right action is the one that maximizes value?
directing aid money into programs that target deworming, which benefits a lot of people a little, rather than programs that prevent death for a much smaller number of people, funding research into athlete's foot treatments when we could instead pay for research into the cure of some very fatal but very rare disease, raising the speed limit for the sake of minor convenience for millions of people, even though it means more deaths on the highway. All of these.
What new technologies are making Trolley Problem-type ethical analyses more important than ever? (Select all that apply)
driverless cars / military drones
Socrates hoped that death is a good thing because it is
either an opportunity to examine people, and like a deep sleep.
According to Axelrod, in the prisoner's dilemma, simple reciprocity succeeds by
eliciting cooperation from others
Rawls conceives of the original contract as one to
establish the principles of justice for the basic structure of society
King holds that one who breaks the law and accepts the penalties in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice
expresses the highest respect for law.
Rawls claims that the conditions he places on the original position are intended to
give us maximum objective knowledge while blocking knowledge of ourselves other than that we're rational beings concerned to further our own interests.
Socrates tells us
he found wisdom in neither politicians, poets, nor craftspeople, the pretenders to wisdom blame Socrates when they look foolish, rather than themselves, his wisdom is paradoxical, nourished by awareness of ignorance. All of these.
At his trial, Socrates declares that _____.
he will not stop philosophizing
Socrates says that the accusations against him arose from resentment over
his penetrating examination of people's beliefs.
Gyges did whatever he wanted because
his ring let him get away with what he did without danger of punishment.
Socrates thinks
it is better for him to die; and it's really not that bad an outcome.
In "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," the people's lives seem to be ordered according to
utilitarianism.
Rawls argues that parties in the original position would not accept utilitarianism (the "principle of utility") because
it's unlikely that equals would agree to require lesser life prospects for some simply to increase advantages for others.
Which illustrated unfairness in Alain de Boton's presentation?
life expectancy, income projections. Both of these.
Socrates claims that the people chained in the cave are
like ourselves
Socrates asks the Athenian jury to _____.
listen to his words and arguments
Socrates suggested that he be sentenced to
living expenses paid by the state.
According to Rawls, stories about people who pass from "rags to riches"
lull the populace so the powerful won't have to reform society
When Socrates searched for a man who was wiser than he was, he found that
many who thought they were wise were not wise at all
Aristotle states that if we ask what the highest good of human action is:
nearly everyone agrees that it is happiness.
According to Socrates, the Delphic oracle declared that
no one is wiser than Socrates.
The Oracle at Delphi declared _____.
no one was wiser than Socrates
Socrates accuses his judges of _____.
not attending to the health of their souls
In Aristotle's terminology, "incontinence" is when:
one knows that one's actions are wrong, but does them anyway.
Of Nozick's Utility Monster example, utilitarianism seems to imply that
ordinary people should be sacrificed for the sake of the Utility Monster since that is what would make for the most happiness on the whole.
What do the shadows on the cave wall represent?
ordinary people's ignorance-infused views of the world
Rawls' veil of ignorance is designed to
prevent exercise of bias, promote fair thinking, help you imagine what it might be like if you were not you. All of these.
The purpose of the veil of ignorance is to
prevent people from adopting principles of justice that unfairly advantage themselves.
Neurological research into the Trolley Problem reveals that in thinking through the bridge version, there is more brain activity in areas associated with (select all that apply)
processing internal conflict / emotional response
In the Trolley Problem, you're asked whether you would
sacrifice one person to save five.
At the end of the Apology, Socrates asks those who condemned him for a favor, _____.
scold his sons for neglecting important things
Glaucon says that the perfectly unjust man is one who
seems just but is unjust.
Socrates tells the Athenians
that they have been overtaken by the real difficulty, that he is satisfied to escape "the real difficulty", that the best way to dodge the coming bullet is to make themselves as good as they can. All of these.
The term "maxim" in Kant refers to
the principle underlying a decision to act in a particular way
What two components of utilitarianism does Markovits identify?
the theory of what's valuable (happiness) and the theory of right action (maximizing what's valuable)
Socrates interprets the Oracle's message to mean that _____.
the wisest are those who know that they know nothing
In his Allegory of the Cave, Plato advances the notion that ___________.
there are two realms: one of change and becoming, the other of being and eternal truth
According to Agar (video 1), when real people are put in the prisoner's dilemma, how do they behave?
they cooperate more than predicted
Singer says those who've become involved in effective altruism have experienced all except which of the following?
they had even more extra money than expected
What do the objects observed outside the cave represent?
things as they really are, grasped in the light of reason
In the "one-off" prisoner's dilemma, the most "rational" action for the prisoners as individuals is (see, e.g., Agar video 1)
to defect
In the Allegory of the Cave, the reaction of the prisoners to the enlightened one is
to revile him as ridiculous.
The Formula of the End in Itself requires that one must
treat all rational agents as ends in themselves.
For Socrates the good of the soul is attained only through an uncompromising search for _____.
truth and understanding
According to which philosophical principle is it morally correct to maximize wellbeing for the greatest number?
utilitarianism
In "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," Ursula Le Guin tells a story that seems to offer a potent criticism of
utilitarianism
