Phil. of Religion
What is the argument from evil?
1. If God were to exist, then that being would be all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good (all-PKG)
2. If an all-PKG being existed, then there would be no evil
3.There is evil
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Thus there is no God
What are the three necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for knowledge, according to the JTB theory of knowledge?
Belief, truth, and justification. S knows that P iff (if and only if):
1. S believes that P
2. P is true
3. S is justified in believing that P
What constitutes knowledge, according to the reliability theory of knowledge?
According to the RTK, S knows P if and only if:
1) S believes P
2) P is true
3) S is reliable about P (in the circumstances that S occupies, if S believes that P, then P must be true)
What is the mind/body problem? What problems does it pose for dualism?
The mind/body problem is concerned with the relationship between the mental and the physical.
It poses a problem for dualism in the following way: if the mind is immaterial and the body material, how do the mind and body interact? Drinking alcohol (a physical cause) clearly affects my moods (mental states), and my desires and beliefs can move my limbs. How?
What is the core thesis of the mind/brain identity theory, and how does it deal with the mind/body problem?
The mind is identical to the brain; mental states are identical to brain states. This is something science will prove, just as it has proved that water is H2O.
If the mind, like the body, is physical, then it is easy to understand how the mind and the body interact.
Reconstruct Pascal's Wager by filling in the blanks:
EU(Believe) = (Probability 1)(Value 1) + (Probability 2)(Value 2)
EU(Don't believe) = (Probability 1)(Value 1) + (Probability 2)(Value 2)
Probability 1 = probability of God existing
Probability 2 = probability of God not existing
One example:
EU(Believe) = (0.1)(infinity) + (0.9)(-10)
= infinity
EU(Don't believe) = (0.1)(-infinity) + (0.9)(10)
= -infinity
What is Descartes' method of doubt? Give an example of a commonly held belief that doesn't pass this test.
The method of doubt involves setting aside any belief that admits of even the slightest possibility of falsehood.
Example of a belief that doesn't pass this test: Donald Trump is the President of the United States (Maybe I was hallucinating the whole time)
According to Sober, the reliability theory of knowledge implies that knowledge is relative: whether one knows something depends on how one's circumstances are described. Explain what he means by this, and illustrate your answer with an example.
Hint: fool's barn
Imagine that I am driving through the U.S. countryside, and I say, "there's a barn in the field". In these circumstances (the U.S. countryside) nothing but a real barn could have produced my belief that there is a barn in the field. In these circumstances, I am a reliable barn spotter.
But what if I'm driving through Hollywood instead, where there are fool's barns that look just like the real thing? In these circumstances I am not a reliable barn spotter.
So whether I know that there is a barn in the field depends on how you describe my circumstances. If you describe them narrowly (e.g. the U.S. countryside) then I do know this. If you describe them broadly (e.g. the U.S.) then I don't.
Explain Descartes's first argument for dualism (the indubitable existence argument). Where does it go wrong?
Hint: Superman
The argument:
1. I can doubt that I have a body
2. I cannot doubt that I have a mind
Therefore, my mind and body are not identical
The counterexample:
1. Lois Lane wants to marry Superman
2. Lois Lane does not want to marry Clark Kent
Therefore Superman is not Clark Kent
The problem: whether Lois Lane wants to marry Superman or Clark Kent is a property of Lois Lane, not of Superman. Likewise, whether I can doubt that I have a mind or a body is a property of me, not of the mind or the body.
The methodological behaviourist thinks that we can explain one's behaviour without referring to one's inner mental states. Instead, he/she believes that we can explain one's behaviour in terms of two things:
1) The past environments one has occupied and the behaviours one has produced in them
2) One's present environment
Explain.
According to Skinner, our behaviours can be explained by appealing to our history of stimulus conditioning. For example:
If a chicken pecks when the light is on in its cage, it is rewarded with a pellet of food. If it pecks when the light is off, it gets nothing. After a while the chicken will have been conditioned to peck only when the light is on.
Given this history, the methodological behaviourist thinks that we have all we need to explain why the chicken is now pecking:
1) In the past, the chicken was conditioned to peck when the light was on.
2) The light is on.
Thus, the chicken pecks.
Give one objection to the following premise of the argument from evil:
3. There is evil
One attempt: the categories of good and bad are merely products of our minds that we impose on the world.
Show using the lottery example (or another example, if you prefer) that the JTB theory of knowledge is inadequate.
Lottery example:
I buy a lottery ticket. I have a 1 in 20 million chance of winning the jackpot. I believe that I will not win the jackpot. My belief turns out to be true; I do not win the jackpot. My belief was also very well justified; it only had a 1 in 20 million chance of being false.
And yet I can't say that I knew I wouldn't win the jackpot, despite having a justified true belief that I wouldn't.
What is the problem of other minds, and how does it inform the logical behaviorist's agenda?
The problem concerns how and whether we know that other sentient beings have minds, given that we only have direct access to our own minds. I cannot observe the minds of other people; I can only observe their behaviour.
It seems to follow that we can't know anything about the mental states of other people. This, however, seems false. I seem to be able to know when my friend is angry, sad, happy, etc. But if such mental states are all internal, then I wouldn't be able to know anything about them. The logical behaviourist thinks that this can't be right, and thus that when we speak of so-called "inner" mental states we are really speaking of things that are discernible in someone's behaviour.
Explain Descartes's second argument for dualism (the divisibility and spatial extension argument). How would the materialist respond?
Descartes's second argument goes as follows:
1. Physical things, such as the body, have spatial properties; they can be divided, have colour, shape, length, weight, etc.
2. The mind does not have spatial properties. Consider how odd it would be to ask such questions as: How many millimetres long is that desire? What is the colour of sadness?
Moreover, what would it even mean for one to cut a belief in half?
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Therefore, the mind ≠ the body.
The materialist: it sounds weird now, but a lot of scientific theses sounded weird back in the day (e.g. the earth revolves around the sun).
Say we probe a subject's brain and discover that "c-fibers" (whatever those are) fire every time he feels pain; in other words, that there is a perfect correlation between c-fiber firings and the subject's experiences of pain. Is this enough to prove that the mind/brain identity theory is true and dualism false? Why or why not?
No. Dualism also maintains that there is a correlation between mental states and brain states; that, say, if I am feeling a certain emotion my brain will exhibit a certain activity.
Correlation is not identity. Here's an even more obvious example: my USB flashes whenever the computer is copying files to it. This doesn't mean that the flashing of the light is the copying process.
This question is twofold.
1) What is the "soul-building evils" objection to the argument from evil?
2) How would a proponent of the argument from evil respond to this objection?
1) God allows evil to exist because evil is necessary to building our character.
2) There exists far more evil than is necessary for soul-building.
What is Hume's problem of induction?
Hint: PUN
Every inductive argument assumes the truth of PUN (the principle of the uniformity of nature). PUN cannot be known a priori (we can imagine it being wrong). It can only be known a posteriori, if it is to be known at all.
PUN cannot be observed, because it concerns events in the future. Can it be proven inductively? But since every inductive argument assumes PUN, an inductive argument in favour of PUN would be assuming in the premises the very thing it is supposed to prove!
Conclusion: PUN cannot be rationally justified.
Logical Behaviourism:
Here's a dispositional analysis of the sentence "X is soluble":
X is soluble in water = If X were immersed in water, then X would dissolve
Now provide a dispositional analysis of the following sentence that does not refer to inner mental states (there are several ways to do this): "S wants to drink water"
One example:
S wants to drink water = if someone asks S if they want to drink water, they say "yes"
Note the absence of "wants"
Science has revealed that there is a correlation between mental states and brain states (e.g. c-fibres are firing whenever I am experiencing pain). But even dualism maintains this; mind/brain identity theorists need to do more to show that mental states are identical with brain states. What is the principle they use to take this additional step, and how do they use it?
The Principle of Parsimony, also known as Ockham's razor. It states that, given two theories that explain the data equally well, we should settle on the simpler one -- the one that involves fewer entities, concepts, processes, events, and so on. In short: "don't multiply entities beyond necessity".
This principle may seem quite strange at first. Here's one way to make it more intuitive.
Take two scientific theories, T1 and T2. T1 includes the usual stuff of physics -- F = MA, E = MC^2, atoms, electrons, and so on. T2 has exactly everything that T1 has -- with the addition of fairies. It is nothing more or less than T1 + fairies. It seems, then, that we should take T1 over T2 on account of the former's simplicity.
It's important to note that we can only do this because the two theories explain the data equally well. If the fairies in T2 explain things T1 can't, then they are no longer unnecessary, and Ockham's razor can't be wielded against them.
Give one of the following:
1) The "novel behaviours" objection to the stimulus conditioning theory
2) The "environmental determinism" objection to the stimulus conditioning theory
1. The novel behaviours objection:
Sober's example: a robber threatens you at gunpoint, saying, "your money or your life". You hand over your wallet.
You have never been robbed before; thus it seems we would have a hard time explaining your behaviour in this case. Your present situation would need to resemble some situation you've been in before. But it resembles many such situations, none of which induced you to hand over your wallet. As a child somebody may have pointed a water gun at you; that induced you not to hand over your wallet, but to giggle and run away.
2. The "environmental determinism" objection:
Note: Sober (apparently) doesn't get everything right here.
According to the textbook: the stimulus conditioning theory places too much emphasis on nurture and too little on nature. Not everything we do can be explained in terms of past conditioning. What about genes? Human beings and chickens would respond very differently even if they were raised in the same environment (e.g. one would learn to speak English, the other would not).
What is the "free will" objection to the argument from evil?
God made us free because a world in which there is free will is better than a world in which there is not. Evil stems from the existence of free will: human beings, not God, will evil into the world.
According to Descartes, how does the premise that God exists and is no deceiver guarantee the truth of our clear and distinct ideas?
If we do everything in our power to acquire true beliefs, and these beliefs nonetheless turn out to be false, then that is not our fault. Someone must be deceiving us -- it'd be like playing a game that is impossible to win.
But God is no deceiver. Thus, if we use our minds carefully, and our ideas are clear and distinct, they are guaranteed to be true. If our beliefs are false, that is because we have not applied our minds properly to the acquisition of knowledge.
Example: I see what appears to be a snake on the ground, and therefore believe there is a snake on the ground. This object turns out to be a rope. But God didn't deceive me into thinking it was a snake -- I simply didn't do everything in my power to ascertain the truth; I should have inspected the object more carefully.
Show why the following dispositional analysis is incomplete (there are many ways you can do this):
S believes apples are good for you = S is disposed to eat apples
One attempt:
What if S doesn't want to be healthy; what if S wants to die tomorrow? Then you would have to add the following condition:
S believes apples are good for you = S is disposed to eat apples unless S wants to be unhealthy
But we are making use of a mentalistic term ("wants") in our analysis, when our purpose was to analyze such terms away! As Sober says, "attributing a single mentalistic property to an agent does not, by itself, have implications concerning how the agent will behave. What has such implications are batches of mentalistic properties" (218).
What does the functionalist mean when he/she says that mental states are "multiply realizable"? Why does multiple realizability give functionalism an advantage over the mind/brain identity theory?
Hint: there are many different types of mousetraps.
The functionalist means that mental states can be generated in more than one way. The mind/brain identity theorist claims that mental states are physical states; that pain is, for example, the firing of c-fibres. But this would mean that anything lacking c-fibres (whatever those are) cannot feel pain; likewise, that anything without our physical structure cannot feel pain.
This seems obviously false. Dogs have a quite different physical structure from human beings, but they seem to be able to feel pain as well. It also seems plausible that there can be computers that can think and feel, despite lacking brains and being physically very unlike us. It follows, then, according to the functionalist, that mental states can be realized in different ways, just as there are different ways and materials one can use to build a mousetrap.
Cups can take many different forms. Some have handles, others don't; some are ceramic, others glass; some are narrow, others wide. What is common to all these different cups, and indeed what makes them all cups, is their function of holding liquid.
The functionalist argues that the same can be said of mental states. The function of a mental state is characterized by its causal connection to other aspects of the subject -- her behaviours, beliefs, desires and other mental states.
Now, consider any mental state (e.g. the desire to drink water) and give an example of at least one aspect of its function.
One attempt:
The desire to drink water causes a certain behaviour. Take Sober's example: "When someone believes that there is water in a cup in front of her and the individual is in state X, she drinks from the cup" (240).
If we assume that that is all there is to the desire to drink water, then anything that makes one behave so is the mental state of the desire to drink water.