Fill in blanks. 1 point each.
SELECT: 5

Q: __________________  is the philosopher associated with the "Copernican Revolution of Philosophy."
A. Kant
B. Immanuel Kant
C. Emmanuel Kant
ANSWER: A, Kant, B, Immanuel Kant, C, Emmanuel Kant
TYPE: FB
POINTS: 1

Q: __________________ is the radical empiricist movement in 20th-century German and Anglo-American
 philosophy. The verificationist criterion of meaningfulness is associated with this group.
A. Logical positivism
B. Logical empiricism
C. the Vienna Circle
D. phenomenalism
ANSWER: A, Logical positivism, B, Logical empiricism, C, the Vienna Circle, D, phenomenalism
TYPE: FB
POINTS: 1

Q: According to Hume,  __________________ is the "great guide of human life" that leads us to
 expect the future to resemble the past.
A. custom
B. habit
C. custom and habit
D. habit and custom
ANSWER: A, custom, B, habit, C, custom and habit, D, habit and custom
TYPE: FB
POINTS: 1

Q: ___________________ said "When we entertain ... any suspicion that a philosophical term is employed
 without any meaning or idea (as is but too frequent), we need but inquire, from what impression is that
 supposed idea derived?"
A. Hume
B. David Hume
ANSWER: A, Hume, B, David Hume
TYPE:FB
POINTS: 1

Q: The behaviorist psychologist who explained language acquisition by means of the notion of operant
 conditioning was _____________.
A. B. F. Skinner
B. BF Skinner
C. Skinner
D. B.F. Skinner
ANSWER: A, B. F. Skinner, B, BF Skinner, C, Skinner, D, B.F. Skinner
TYPE: FB
POINTS: 1

Q: ___________________ said "For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always
 stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain
 or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything
 but the perception."
A. Hume
B. David Hume
ANSWER: A, Hume, B, David Hume
TYPE: FB
POINTS: 1

Q: A statement whose truth or falsity depends on experience is called _____________________.
A. a posteriori
B. synthetic
C. synthetic a posteriori
D. empirical
ANSWER: A, a posteriori, B, synthetic, C, synthetic a posteriori, D, empirical
TYPE: FB

True or false? 1 point each.
SELECT: 3

Q: According to Hume, space, time, and the self are innate structures of the mind, which function
 like "irremovable goggles" through which we perceive the world.
A. True
B. False
ANSWER: B
TYPE: MC
POINTS: 1

Q: Chomsky's notion of "deep grammar" supports Locke's notion of the mind as a blank slate. 
A. True
B. False
ANSWER: B
TYPE: MC
POINTS: 1

Q: According to Kant, the mind is a passive receptacle of neutral sense data.  
A. True
B. False
ANSWER: B
TYPE: MC
POINTS: 1 

Q: According to logical positivism, the self is a logical construct.
A. True
B. False
ANSWER: B
TYPE: MC
POINTS: 1 

Q: Logical positivists defend most of Berkeley's philosophy, including his idealism and his 
concept of God.
A. True
B. False
ANSWER: B
TYPE: MC
POINTS: 1

Q: Berkeley thought that every existent was composed of matter and form. 
A. True
B. False
ANSWER: B
TYPE: MC
POINTS: 1 

Q: David Hume wrote the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
A. True
B. False
ANSWER: A
TYPE: MC
POINTS: 1

Q: Immanuel Kant wrote the Critique of Pure Reason.
A. True
B. False
ANSWER: A
TYPE: MC
POINTS: 1 

Essays.  2 points each.
SELECT: 2

Q: Hume claims that there is no knowledge of any necessary connection between causes and effects.
 What is Hume's argument for this claim?
TYPE: ES
ANSWER: When we look at what scientists mean when they say "A causes B", we find three elements:

(1) A happens before B
(2) A and B always happen together
(3) B MUST follow A, in accordance
 with some law of nature. (This is another way of saying there is a necessary connection between A and
 B.)
Hume claims we can't know about any necessary connections between causes and effects.  This
 conclusion is an interesting result of Hume's empiricist epistemology. According to Hume, any knowledge
 of an empirical matter (a matter of fact) must be grounded either directly in impressions or by
 reasoning from experience (past impressions).  The notion that there's a necessary connection between
 causes and effects is, according to Hume, an empirical matter. So if we know it, we must know it by
 impressions or by reasoning from past impressions.  
Look at the three components of "A causes B"
 above. There ARE impressions to support the constant conjunction of A and B, as well as impressions to
 support the temporal priority of A. But there is no immediate sense impression of any necessary
 connection between A and B -- no impression that supports the view that B MUST follow A. 
So the
 idea of necessary connection must come by inference from experience. All our inferences about matters
 of fact — all our predictions about the future on the basis of the past — are BASED on the
 idea of an orderly universe, a universe in which there are necessary connections between causes and
 effects. Laws of science are precisely the STATEMENTS of those connections. So, Hume says, we find
 ourselves in a real dilemma: 
(1) There are only two ways we could claim to know an empirical claim
 such as "There's a necessary connection between causes and effects": either by direct observation of
 some supporting impression, or by inference from past experience.
(2) There is no impression that
 supports the idea of necessary connection.
(3) Inferences from past experience PRESUPPOSE the notion
 of necessary connection.  In other words, any argument that tries to prove the necessary connection
 will commit the fallacy of begging the question.
Therefore, we can have NO knowledge of necessary
 connection between causes and effects.
POINTS: 2

Q: Explain Hume's Fork.
TYPE: ES
ANSWER: According to Hume's Fork, all knowledge is either
(1) about matters of fact, and therefore
 based on impressions, synthetic, and a posteriori;
OR
(2) about relations of ideas, and therefore
 true by definition, analytic and apriori.
All our knowledge of the world is synthetic and a
 posteriori (type 1).  Claims about relations of ideas (type 2) are all tauologies: they tell us nothing
 about the world, only about how we think.
The interesting upshot of this is that, for Hume, we don't
 "just know" anything about the world; we have to look at the world in order to know anything about it.
 In other words, no knowledge of the world is synthetic and a priori.
(Kant replies to Hume by
 defending synthetic a priori claims.)
POINTS: 2

Q: Explain the "Copernican Revolution" in philosophy. How did Kant go beyond rationalism and
 empiricism?
TYPE: ES 
ANSWER: Kant's philosophy synthesizes elements of both rationalism and empiricism. Kant thus put an end 
to the modern debate between rationalism and empiricism by showing that both views were partly correct.
 But both are incomplete.  Rationalist and empiricists basically debate the question "What do the senses
 contribute to knowledge?" Rationalists say "nothing"; empiricists say "everything". Rationalists say
 only reason reveals the Really Real; empiricists say you (normally) see the Really Real when you open
 your eyes.  Kant says the real questions are deeper: what makes any experience possible? Given the sort
 of minds we have, are there any limits to what we can experience?
Rationalists are right, according
 to Kant, when they say some mental stuff is innate and does not come from the senses.  Descartes,
 especially, was right about the self, substance, and identity — the three innate ideas he
 discovers in Meditation II.  You must exist in order to have any experiences; and you must have
 fundamental notions like "thingness" and "sameness" and "difference" to experience things and change.
 The notion of "experience" itself requires two elements: something to experience AND an experiencing
 subject. The rationalists realize that the experiencing subject must be SET UP in advance to RECEIVE
 sense data. 
The empiricists, on the other hand, emphasize the experience side. They see (correctly)
 that experience has content, and that content ultimately derives from the senses.
 
So, Kant concludes that both are partly right.  There ARE innate structures of the mind (synthetic
 apriori claims we "just know"), and these limit what we can experience. However, given these limits
 (which the rationalists notice), the empiricists' claim is also correct: once these innate limits are
 in place, all knowledge comes from the senses.
POINTS: 2

Q: Most empiricism presupposes psychological atomism, the view that any mental state can be analyzed
 into simple, discrete perceptual units (sense data), so that one's total mental state is always a
 fusion of these "atoms."  Is psychological atomism correct? Explain why or why not. Your explanation
 must use arguments in the assigned reading.
TYPE: ES
ANSWER: Psychological atomism can't be right. Cognitive psychology clearly shows that we actively
 participate in perception.  What we see is determined to a large extent by what we expect to see, what
 we hope to see, what we're paying attention to. We are simply not passive receivers of sense data bits
 -- we are not like computer monitors, for example. When we perceive something, we always select it from
 a background of other possible selections, which we then ignore.
Gestalt psychology shows that our
 brains can automatically SHIFT from one interpretation of perception to another, even though the input
 bits do not change.  (Think of the Palmer's examples in your text.)
Don't make the common mistake of
 thinking that because we interpret our perceptions, that there is no objective reality. Gestalt
 psychology does NOT imply we can perceive anything as anything. (We can't drink Drano and perceive it
 as Pepsi.) The world and our bodies limit the number of plausible interpretations of perception.
POINTS: 2