Sample Questions for Phil 4000 Midterm:
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Questions about PSIM:
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What is knowledge that? Explain how it’s different from knowledge how.
Why doesn’t philosophy have its own special subject-matter?
What is the main challenge Sellars claims philosophers face?
How does the nature of conceptual thinking support the “last stand of special creation”?
In what sense is the manifest image itself “scientific”?
What is the “perennial philosophy’s” main philosophical claim?
What does Sellars mean when he says “That a woman is a person is not something that one
can be said to believe”? Discuss! *
How does the manifest image arise out of the original image?
How does Sellars distinguish being caused from being predictable?
Why does Sellars think “the group” is so important in the development of conceptual
thinking in individuals? Discuss. *
In what sense does Sellars claim the scientific image is dependent on the manifest image?
In what sense does he regard it as independent?
Distinguish the three senses in which Sellars thinks different sciences (physics and
biochemistry, for example) might be unified. In which sense does he think we can easiliy
unify them? Why does he think the other senses are more difficult, or perhaps even
impossible? (21-2) *
In what sorts of circumstances do the explanations of behaviouristics break down? Try to
think of concrete examples here. (25)
When does Sellars think it’s unproblematic to say that systems of entities can have
properties that the entities themselves lack? Why does the pink ice cube fail to meet this
condition?
What is the difference between denying a claim within a framework, and
challenging/denying the framework itself? Discuss.
What important distinction separates what we know about our sensations/perceptions by
“introspection” and what we know about our thoughts?
Why does Sellars think it’s so much harder to fit sensation/perception into the scientific
image than it is to fit thought into it?
What features of the manifest image remain to be brought into or reconciled with the
scientific image, assuming the success of Sellars’ proposal for dealing with sensations?
What is a “community intention”? How are they related to private intentions?
How does Sellars propose (in prospect) that we unify the scientific image with our view of
ourselves and our fellows as persons and members of a community?
Questions about BBK:
What is an isomorphism?
Explain Arnauld’s analogy for the difference between different acts of thought?
What is the difference between “first” and “second” act, for Thomists?
What is the relation, for the Thomist, between the “sensitive” mental word and the
“intellectual” mental word?
Explain the analogy Sellars sees between the “whiteness” of a sensation of white and the
whiteness of a blank sheet of paper or a field of fresh snow.
What is required, before the intellect can be in “first act” with respect to any mental word?
What do you think of this sort of wholism? Discuss. *
What is the difference between ‘picturing’ and ‘signifying’?
Sellars’ robot, when described in terms of mechanics and electronic, is said to form, over
time, a better and better “map” of its environment. Do maps, in this sense, picture that
environment, or signify it?
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Why is Sellars, who claims that our talk of thoughts is modeled on overt language use, not
worried by the fact that we explain the regular relations linking overt language and the world
by appeal to inner workings of the mind/brain?
10. What does Sellars mean when he says that Descartes thought “direct knowledge must present
what is shown in propria persona”? What do you think of this principle? *
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Questions about Phenomenalism:
What does a classical phenomenalist hold?
What does Sellars call the ‘phenomenalist theme’?
Explain what direct realism says about perceptual knowledge.
Explain the difference between redp and reds.
Describe how Sellars thinks a direct realist who accepts ‘surfaces’ as the real direct objects of
our visual perceptions can end up sliding all the way to classical phenomenalism. (64-5)
How slippery do you think this slope is? *
What is the model for the first approach to sense contents that Sellars considers? (67)
What is the model for the second approach to sense contents that Sellars considers? (68)
What makes the third approach unsuitable for the classical phenomenalist? (72)
Which of the three approaches does Sellars defend?
What, roughly, does Sellars say is the ‘sense’ of ‘S has a sensation of a red triangle’? (73)
What approaches to sense contents are acceptable to the classical phenomenalist? (75-6)
Explain the challenge that Sellars poses for the classical phenomenalist. (79)
How is a theoretical framework applied to the world, according to what Sellars calls the
‘standard’ account?
Direct realism rejects what kind of mediation in ordinary perceptual knowledge of the world
around us? (Section V)
Why does the greater security of sensation-claims (e.g. ‘I’m having a sensation of a white
snowman’) NOT imply the indirectness of ordinary perceptual claims (e.g. ‘I see a white
snowman’)?
Describe the parallel resemblances and differences that link ‘red’ and ‘triangle’ as they apply
to physical objects and as they apply to sense impressions.
What distinguishes Sellars’ noumena from Kant’s?
What does Sellars mean when he says ‘Persons may ‘really be’ bundles, but the concept of a
person is not the concept of a bundle’? Discuss. (What do we need to say in order to defend
applying the concept of a person to ourselves when we have accepted a Hobbesian view of
what we ‘really are’? Can such a position be coherent?) *
What are ‘phantasms’ or ‘sensa’ in Sellars’ neo-Hobbesian view of persons?
Contrast the Aristotelian and the Hobbesian frameworks’ views on persons and their
perceptual states.