Multiple choice question

1. Heraclitus referred to ultimate reality as:

• Fleeting and Changeable.
• Like the fluctuating flow of a river.
• An ever-lasting fire.
• All of the above.

2. For Heraclitus, underlying the opposite qualities that we can observe in things there was a unity which he called:

• The apeiron.
• Nous.
• The Logos.
• Chaerephon.

3. Parmenides based his views concerning the ultimate nature of Being on:

a. Arguments derived from careful sense observations of the world.

b. Experiments made in his own laboratory.

c. A priori arguments, that is arguments not based on sense experience.

d. All of the above.

4. Anaximander’s opinion on the boundless as an Indefinite, chaotic mixture is that:

• The universe will forever remain a chaotic mixture of undifferentiated elements.
• All will eventually burn and become a fiery plasma.
• The universe will collapse in on itself ( a sort of reverse Big Bang) and all will become earth.
• A vortex motion of elements in the Boundless produces out current ordered and sorted world.

5. Aristotle speculated that Thales viewed water as the ultimate primordial stuff because:

a. Water had no opposite element in nature.

b. Water is necessary for the nourishment of life.

c. Water was Boundless and Indefinite.

d. All of the above.

6. Thales’ theory about the ultimate nature of reality broke Western thought away from:

• An emphasis on the good life as the examined life.
• Mythological accounts of nature using divine agencies.
• Accounts of nature relying on laws and abstract generalizations.
• None of the above.

7. For Anaximander, the apeiron or primordial stuff, was just like:

• Earth.
• Air.
• Fire.
• None of the above.

8. If you were to challenge Anaxamander and say that you don’t see any layer of Fire surrounding the Earth, he would likely respond by saying:

• This layer is utterly invisible to human eyes.
• This layer can only be seen by the gods.
• Both a and b.
• An opaque covering hides most of this layer and we see only points of light—the stars—shining through holes in it.

9. “You cannot step twice in the same river” was said by ______.

a. Empedocles

b. Heraclitus

c. Thales

d. Anaximenes

10. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the part of the philosophy student is represented by:

• The shadows.
• The prisoner who was led up out of the cave.
• All of the prisoners.
• Only the prisoners wise enough to stay behind in the cave.

11. The released prisoner finally comes to realize that what he saw before was:

a. True Reality.

b. An illusion.

c. Of little or no value.

d. Both b and c.

12. Plato believed his forms ________.

a. must be real

b. must exist outside the mind

c. are inaccessible to human senses

d. All of the above

13. According to Plato, which of the following is a characteristic of a Form?

a. It is divisible.

b. It is composite.

c. It is in constant flux.

d. It is eternal.

14. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave was intended to show us that:

a. The ideal essences of things, or Forms, are like shadows compared to the real, tangible things in this world.

b. The senses are alone capable of perceiving true reality.

c. Things in this world are but a poor, shadow-like copy of things in the world of the Forms.

d. That the Forms are like shadows compared to the real things in this world.

15. According to Aristotle, a virtue is:

a. A mean between the extremes of two vices.

b. An end point, at the opposite end from a vice.

c. The high point or apex of a triangle, with vice at the bottom.

d. The white half of a circle in which the other half was black.

16. Aristotle describes the moral life of activity in accordance with virtue as:

a. A life in which one forsakes happiness in order to pursue one’s duty.

b. A life lived contrary to reason.

c. Both a and b.

d. Neither a nor b.

17. According to Anselm, the fool is:

• Someone who is stupid enough to believe in God
• Someone who is simple-minded enough to think that we can prove God’s existence by reason
• The person who denies God’s existence.
• The person who remains in the cave

18. The Argument that goes from a concept concerning the being of God to a conclusion that what fits this concept must exist is:

a. The Ontological Argument

b. The Design Argument

c. The Teleological Argument

d. The Cosmological Argument

19. To the traditional list of God’s perfections, Descartes added:

a. Foreknowledge

b. Existence

c. Compassion

d. Holiness

20. Guanilo tried to show that the reasoning in St. Anselm’s proof of the Ontological Argument is unsound because:

a. Existence is not a characteristic and, thus, not a logical predicate.

b. By the same reasoning one could just as well prove the existence of the most perfect island.

c. It requires us to know God’s essence, which we cannot know.

d. All of the above.

21. For St. Anselm, “that than which a greater cannot be thought” must exist in reality because:

a. If it did not then it would not really be “that than which a greater cannot be thought” because a greater could be thought.

b. Something which exists in reality is greater than something which exists in the mind or understanding only.

c. To try to think of “that than which a greater cannot be thought” as not existing involves a contradiction.

d. All of the above.

22. Besides the fact that God exists, the Design Argument is also supposed to prove that:

• Existence is a predicate.
• God has intelligence like human intelligence
• God is an Unmoved Mover
• Nothing can be the efficient cause of itself

23. According to Aquinas, things in nature cannot direct themselves toward an end because they:

• Simply lack the will to do so.
• They are not complex enough to do so
• They lack understanding
• All of the above.

24. The analogy that Hume (Philo) believes is strong enough to establish God’s existence:

• Compares the universe to a machine
• Compares the universe to a house
• Both a and b
• Neither a nor b

25. Philo claims that the Design Argument leaves open the possibility that:

• The Designer of the universe may be a stupid, unimaginative deity who merely copied the work of others
• The universe might have been designed and produced as a group project by several lesser deities
• The universe might be the first crude try of an infant deity
• All of the above

26. William Paley’s example of finding a watch in the heath is used to illustrate ________.

a. the ontological argument

b. the cosmological argument

c. the design argument

d. atheism

27. For Paley, what made the case of the watch different from that of the stone was that:

a. The watch was worth a great deal of money, the stone was not.

b. The watch had parts put together to serve a purpose, the stone did not.

c. The watch was metal, the stone was not

d. The watch was more perfect than the stone.

28. By rejecting the claim that a “principle of order” in nature could have produced the watch, William Paley seems to imply by analogy that:

a. No principle of order in nature could have produced, by itself, an organ like the human eye.

b. Such order in nature must proceed from intelligent design.

c. A philosopher like Hume who speculates that order in nature can just as easily come from some internal material cause must be wrong.

d. All of the above.

29. According to Hick, in a Hedonistic Paradise:

a. Nature would work by the same fixed general laws in effect now.

• No special Divine Providences would be necessary.
• Both a and b.
• Neither a nor b.

30. Of the following arguments for God’s existence, which is/are a priori?

• Cosmological Arguments
• The Ontological Argument
• Teleological Arguments
• The Design Argument

TRUE/FALSE – [2 pts. each] Answer ‘true’ or ‘false’ to the following questions by printing your answer immediately under each question.

31. For Parmenides, Being was constantly changing into Non-Being and then back again.

32. Parmenides gave us an early example of modern scientific reasoning, basing his views of the permanence of all things on careful sense observations.

33. If we accept the arguments of Parmenides, change would be a mere illusion.

34. The prisoners who never left the cave were amazed at the released prisoner’s skill in observing and measuring the shadows and realized that they could no longer compete with him in doing this.

35. Prisoners in the cave could not wait for someone to lead them up to the light after they saw what the released prisoner’s journey had done for him.

36. In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” the objects outside of the cave in the Sun represent the real things that we see around us; the shadows on the walls of the cave, of course, represent Plato’s Forms.

37. For Aristotle, the truly courageous person has no fear of anything.

38. While agreeing that various parts of our bodies have purposes, Aristotle recognized no purpose for human beings as a whole.

39. Aristotle taught that human beings could develop virtuous character traits by practicing virtuous behavior.

40. Aristotle maintained that use of reason was important for human beings to act virtuously.

41. For Aristotle, we develop virtuous character traits only through hours of private meditation.

42. Aristotle identified happiness as the final end which human beings should pursue.

43. Guanilo’s “perfect island” argument was designed to lend additional support to the ontological argument.

44. Hume admitted that the Design Argument at least proves that the universe had only one Designer.

45. Descartes believed that existence is a perfection.

46. Hume as Philo argued that all order in the universe must be the causal result of intelligent design.

47. Immanuel Kant agreed with Descartes that existence must function as a logical predicate.

48. Philo agrees with Cleanthes that human misery is no problem for God’s existence since there is more happiness than misery in the world.

49. Hick contends that virtuous character traits like courage and generosity are best developed in a world free of pain and suffering.

50. In Hick’s view, there is so little moral growth today because a world like ours, filled with dangers, difficulties and obstacles does not favor moral growth.