Study Questions for Philosophy 1000: First Test Samples
Key: E means an essay question; SE means short essay; the rest require definitions or 1
to 2 sentence answers.
I.
The Ontological Argument—readings: Anselm, Guanilo, Rowe.
1. What is Anselm’s definition of God?
2. Why is our idea of God “greater” if God actually exists (does his or her actual
existence make a difference to the idea of God)? SE
3. Can you give an argument for Anselm’s claim that everything but God is such
that it can be thought not to exist? SE
4. How does Anselm explain how some people can sincerely deny God’s existence?
SE
5. Why does Guanilo think there’s a problem with a kind of existence in the mind
that automatically includes recognition of existence ‘in the world’? (Guanilo
gives two reasons here.) SE
6. What worries Guanilo about our understanding of what is meant by ‘God’?
7. What does Guanilo say must be proved first, before it will follow that this greatest
conceivable being exists?
8. Explain Guanilo’s parallel argument about the island which is “more excellent
than all other lands”. What does the parallel aim to show about Anselm’s
argument? Does it succeed? E
9. What does ‘a priori’ mean?
10. What does ‘a posteriori’ mean?
11. Do you think that any argument that begins with nothing but a concept and
concludes that something answering to that concept must exist can work (i.e. have
true premises, be valid and not beg the question)? Discuss (consider other kinds
of examples here, not just the ontological argument)! E
12. What does Rowe mean by a ‘possible thing’?
13. What do you think of ‘existing in the understanding’ as a way of describing
what’s going on when we think of something? Does this way of speaking lend
aid to Anselm’s argument? How? E
14. Why does Anselm need to claim that existence in reality is a ‘great-making
quality’?
15. Is existence always a great-making quality? What about the cruelest possible
person? Wouldn’t it be better if this person did not exist? SE
16. Does a non-existing being have any degree of greatness (or any other quality) at
all?
17. What is a reductio ad absurdam proof?
18. What does Rowe say is the main reason why philosophers in general have
rejected Anselm’s argument?
19. Does Rowe’s reply to Guanilo work? What sort of thing would an actually
existing, wonderful island be? (It would surely be a better land than a nonexisting, wonderful island!) E
20. If the greatest possible island is an impossible thing, should we also worry that the
greatest possible being of all might also be an impossible thing? SE
21. What does Kant mean by saying that ‘existence is not a predicate’?
22. What is a ‘magican’? A ‘magico’?
23. What conclusion does Rowe think Anselm is entitled to, given his premises?
How does this differ from the conclusion Anselm wants?
24. What distinguishes our usual understanding of ‘God is a possible thing’ from
what Anselm draws from it, according to Rowe’s analysis?
Study Questions on Aquinas and Clarke:
1.
2.
3.
4.
How does Aquinas describe the process of change?
Why does Aquinas think nothing can cause its own change?
Explain the difference between actuality and potentiality.
Why does Aquinas think that the occurrence of any change depends on the
occurrence of a first change?
5. Why must any series of causes have a first member?
6. Why is Aquinas content to just remark that everyone gives the first cause ‘the
name “God” ’?
7. What principle gets Aquinas from the possibility that something doesn’t exist to
the claim that there is some time (past time) at which it doesn’t exist?
8. How does Aquinas argue that there must be some necessary being that doesn’t get
its necessity from any other being?
9. Why should we regard such a necessary being as God? (What more does Aquinas
need to do to make this credible?) SE
10. What is Aquinas’ view of ‘comparatives’ like ‘hot’ and ‘hotter’?
11. What causal role does Aquinas attribute to the maximal things he invokes here?
12. What role does Aquinas attribute to God in the teleological argument?
13. What is the central principle of the teleological argument?
14. What is the ‘observation’ that starts the teleological argument?
15. Why does Clarke hold that it is impossible for there to be (only) an infinite series
of dependent beings?
16. Do you agree with Clarke that the existence of anything requires the existence of
a necessary thing? (Must all explanations terminate ultimately in necessities? Is
this how we go about our everyday explanations? Couldn’t the world, as a whole,
be contigent, rather than necessary?) Consider and discuss. E
Study Questions on the problem of the criterion and appearance and reality.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Explain the problem of the criterion or wheel.
What three responses to the problem does Chisholm consider?
What is particularism?
What is methodism?
What is Chisholm’s response to the problem?
What sort of knowledge does Russell think ‘is natural to begin with’ when we
search for certainty?
7. Why does Russell think there is ‘no reason for regarding some of (the colours we
experience when looking at a table) as more really its colour than others’?
8. What about the table’s shape? Does its ‘real’ shape have any privileged status for
Russell? Why, or why not? Do you agree with Russell? Explain your own views
here. E
9. What are ‘sense data’?
10. What does Berkeley say the ‘real’ table is, according to Russell?
11. What worries Russell about Descartes’ famous, ‘I think, therefore I am’
argument?
12. What is ‘(o)ne great reason why it is felt that we must secure a physical object in
addition to the sense data’ that Russell gives?
13. Why does Russell think that, while it’s not logically impossible, the supposition
that the whole of life is a dream is weak compared to the ‘common-sense’ view?
14. What is the only sort of reason we can have, according to Russell, for rejecting an
‘instinctive belief’?
15. How does Russell think we should go about improving our beliefs in order to
diminish the likelihood of error?
Study Questions For Descartes.
1. Why does Descartes decide to give up every belief he can find a reason to doubt?
2. What worries Descartes about the false beliefs he once held?
3. What is the source of the beliefs Descartes has accepted as ‘most true’?
4. What beliefs seem to survive the possibility that he is dreaming?
5. What possibility undermines even those beliefs for Descartes?
6. What is the point of the ‘deceiving demon’ hypothesis here? SE
7. What belief remains beyond doubt for Descartes?
8. What sort of thing does Descartes claim he is?
9. What features of the self does Descartes claim to be certain of?
10. What does Descartes’ discussion of the wax aim to show? SE
11. What rule does Descartes accept as his criterion of truth?
12. What does Descartes mean by ‘idea’?
13. Can ideas in this strict sense be true or false?
14. Do you think our ideas of external objects resemble those objects? Explain! E
15. Ideas are ‘modes of thought’; they don’t differ, for Descartes, in that respect—but
they do differ in another respect. What is that?
16. What does Descartes mean by ‘objective reality’? What are the causal principles
Descartes invokes to argue that God must exist? SE
18. Outline the final argument Descartes gives here for God’s existence. What do
you think of it? Can you identify premises you would question or reject? (Can
we accept his talk of perfections ‘he cannot grasp, but can somehow reach in [his]
thought’?) Do you agree with Descartes’ metaphor, in which our idea of God is
like the craftsman’s mark stamped on his work? E