Reading questions. 

 

Descartes Meditation 1

1.           Just from reading the first paragraph, what do you think that Descartes goal is in writing the meditations?

2.           Why does Descartes not need to show that all of his opinions are false?

3.           What reason does Descartes give for doubting the information that he gains from his senses?

4.           In what circumstances does he trust his sense information?

5.           Does Descartes take seriously the possibility that he might be crazy?  Should he?

6.           Have you ever had difficulty telling if an experience was a dream or if it really happened?  Why is the difficulty between distinguishing between dream experiences and real experiences a difficulty for Descartes?

7.           Descartes makes an argument that dreams are like paintings, what is the conclusion of this argument?  What kind of knowledge does Descartes end up doubting at the end of the dream argument?

8.           What does the possibility of the evil genius cause Descartes to doubt? Why does Descartes try to convince himself the evil genius is continually deceiving him?

 

Descartes Meditation 2

1.           Why does Descartes want to find one thing that is “certain and indubitable”?

2.           How does the deceiver, the evil genius, actually let Descartes be certain about something? What is he certain of?

3.           Why is “I exist” true when ever I think it or say it?

 

Malcolm

1.           What are two arguments that Malcolm say that philosophers often give to support a skeptical position?

2.           What the three ways that Malcolm thinks that we can justify saying that we know something? Give an example of each.  Which of these ways of knowing does Malcolm think that we can be skeptical of?

3.           Try to figure out what the following sentence means: “In order for it to be possible that any statements about physical things should turn out to be false it is necessary that some statements about physical things cannot turn out to be false.”

4.           Do you think that Malcolm’s argument can be used to respond to Descartes’ evil genius or dream arguments?

5.           Does Malcolm appeal to your common sense ideas about how you know things?

 

Carroll

1.           If Alice were wrong, would she be able to know it?  What could she do to test whether or not she was right?

2.           If you were Alice, would you wake up the King?

 

Borges

1.           What is the difference between the two attempts at creation that the magician makes?  Why do you think that only one of them works?

2.           What becomes apparent at the end of the story?

3.           Once you know the ending of the story, read it again. What hints are there throughout the story, of the way that the story ends?

4.           At the end of the story the magician reports feeling relief, humiliation and terror, why do you think that he experiences each of these emotions?

5.           How does this story contribute to your understanding of Descartes?

 

Locke

1.           Note:  Try not to be put off by the language, pretend that you are figuring out Shakespeare. If you treat semicolons like periods, the sentences will look less daunting.  Do your best to figure out what Locke means by the following terms:

a.       “simple idea of sensation”

b.      “idea”

c.       “quality”

d.      “primary quality”

e.       “secondary quality”

2.           What is the cause of our ideas of primary qualities?

3.           What is the cause of our ideas of secondary qualities?

4.           Are our ideas like the things that are in the world that our ideas are representations of?

5.           Compare and contrast Locke and Descartes.

 

Berkeley

1.           What do you think Berkeley means by the following terms: (a) “objects of our knowledge” (there are three of them), (b) “thing” and (c) “mind”?

2.           What would Berkeley say about the old saw ”If a tree fell in the forest and no one was there to hear it, did it make a sound”?

3.           What is the argument in paragraph 5?

4.           Can you think of something existing without being perceived? Explain.

5.           If Berkeley is correct and ‘an idea can be like nothing but an idea’, what does this mean for a representational theory of mind?

6.           In paragraphs 9 and 10 and 14 and 15 Berkeley is talking about Locke, in fact “they” means “Locke” and “we” means “Berkeley”.  How is Berkeley disagreeing with Locke in these paragraphs?

7.           Look up the word ‘parsimony’ in the dictionary. How could the concept of parsimony help us to figure out the last section of paragraph 18?

8.           If you had to choose between following the philosophy of Descartes, Locke or Berkeley, which one would you choose? Why?

 

Popper

1.                             Why does Popper think that Astrology, Marxist theories of history and Freudian psychoanalysis should not count as scientific?

2.                             Why did Popper think that the work of Einstein and Eddington did count as scientific?

3.                             How does Popper tell the difference between theories that are scientific and theories that are not scientific?

4.                             According to Popper, how do scientists test hypotheses?

5.                             Why does Popper think that scientists should try to shoe that their hypotheses are false rather than try to show that their hypotheses are true?

6.                             How does Popper think scientists come up with hypotheses in the first place?

Kuhn

1.                                                     Look up “Phlogiston” in a good dictionary and note the definition of the term.

2.                                                     Why does Kuhn think that there is no answer to the question “When was Oxygen discovered?”

3.                                                     Try to explain the following quotation from page 101 of the text:
”Any attempt to date the discovery [of oxygen] must inevitably be arbitrary because discovering a new sort of phenomenon is necessarily a complex event, one which involves recognizing both that something is and what something is.”

 

Fox Keller

1.      What does the term “feminist” mean to you?

2.      What does it mean to Keller when you say that a particular feminist criticism of science is liberal?

3.      What does it mean to Keller when you say that a particular feminist criticism of science is radical?

4.      Make a list of the different kinds of criticisms that Keller mentions.