quest3

1. Empiricism is the study of the nature, extent, origin, and justification
of knowledge.
2. "Empiricism" literally means the study of knowledge.
3. Empiricism is not a legitimate "epistemological" approach,
because it is not really concerned with the study of the nature, sources,
and limits of knowledge.
4. To say that Locke is a representational realist means that
he believes that at least some of our ideas actually represent things outside
of the mind.
5. In Locke's representationalist epistemology, our ideas are
said to represent things in the world that cause us to have the ideas we
have.
6. Even though Locke's epistemology is called representationalism
because he argues that our ideas represent things in the world, he does
not believe that things in the world cause us to have any of our ideas.
7. In Locke's representationalist theory of perception, external
objects in the world cause us to have ideas from which we infer the existence
of things.
8. In Locke's causal theory of perception, external objects
in the world cause us to have ideas from which we infer the existence of
things.
9. According to Locke, we can have knowledge of innate ideas (as opposed
to ideas of sense experience) because they are based on primary qualities
rather than secondary qualities.
10. According to Locke, ideas of sensation and reflection are
innate because they are based on primary rather than secondary qualities.
11. According to Locke's representationalist theory, our ideas
of so-called primary qualities correspond to the way things are in the
world, but our ideas of secondary qualities do not.
12. By referring to the mind as a tabula rasa, Locke emphasizes
the empiricist position that prior to experience the mind is blank or empty.
13. According to Locke, we know about abstract general ideas like
humanity or blueness because there are such general things in the world
to which such ideas correspond.
14. Primary qualities, for Locke, are ideas about things (e.g.,
being solid, taking up space, being in motion or at rest) which resemble
the way those things really are.
15. To distinguish primary and secondary qualities, Locke
assumes that we can compare those characteristics of things that exist
in objects themselves with characteristics that exist only in our minds.
16. In his critique of Locke, Berkeley argues that primary qualities
cannot legitimately be distinguished from secondary qualities because primary
qualities depend as much on perception as do secondary qualities.
17. According to Berkeley, because we can never know anything
outside of our own minds, we must conclude that there is no such thing
as a real world.
18. According to Berkeley, because we can never know anything
outside of our own minds, the only defensible philosophic position is solipsism.
19. For Berkeley, "To be is to be perceived or to perceive" means
that the only things that are real are ideas and the minds that have those
ideas.
20. Instead of saying that we often perceive what really exists, Berkeley
argues that what really exists is what we or some other minds perceive.
21. In Berkeley's phenomenalism, real physical objects are nothing
other than the ideas or collections of sense data that are experienced
by minds.
22. Berkeley recognizes that to his claim "to be is to be perceived"
he has to add "or to perceive" in order to allow for the existence of minds
(which are not perceived).
23. According to Berkeley, since only a mind can actually perceive
ideas, and ideas are not real things, then only minds really exist.
24. According to Hume, because our ideas are copies of sense impressions,
we cannot form ideas of anything (even imaginary creatures) without drawing
ultimately on sense experiences.
25. According to Hume, we know that "every event has a cause"
is true because we have never experienced an event without a cause.
26. "All human beings think clearly" is an example of a tautology.
27. For Hume causal relations are properly described by means of a
posteriori statements.
28. Hume notes that our knowledge that the sun will rise tomorrow is
necessarily certain because "the sun will rise tomorrow" is a matter
of fact, not simply a relation of ideas.
29. David Hume argues that, because things are nothing more
than clusters of ideas, there is no meaningful way to talk about an external
world which causes our ideas.
30. By characterizing objects as "permanent possibilities of sensation,"
John Stuart Mill claims that we can never know physical objects.
31. Even though J. S. Mill describes objects as "permanent possibilities
of sensation," he does not deny that physical objects exist in the world.
32. According to logical positivism, meaningful statements are either
based on sense experience or tautologies.
33. According to Popper's falsifiability criterion of science, theories
proven to be false must not really have been scientific in the first place.
34. Realists argue that we do not experience objects in the world through
our ideas--as if our ideas were intermediaries between our minds and objects;
rather, we simply experience the objects themselves.
35. Contemporary realists (e.g., Armstrong) argue that, in perceiving
we encounter the world directly (not merely our ideas), even though what
we perceive is always interpreted by the mind.
36. Unlike the representationalist or phenomenalist, the commonsense
or direct realist claims that the immediate object of perception exists
independently of our awareness of it.
37. According to naive or commonsense realism, minds and ideas are not
real because they are not immediate physical objects of perception.
38. According to G. E. Moore, it is acceptable to say that we know that
there is an external world (outside of our ideas) even if it is logically
possible that we could be dreaming or hallucinating.
39. According to G. E. Moore, it is logically impossible (i.e., inconceivable)
that we could be dreaming or hallucinating when we claim to know
that there is an external world (i.e., outside of our ideas).
40. Contemporary realists argue that, even though all we ever
know are our ideas, we still can justifiably claim to know what the external
world is like because things in the world cause us to have ideas.
41. According to cognitive realists (or "correspondence theorists")
such as Bertrand Russell, a proposition is true if it corresponds to a
fact that exists independently of its being thought by anyone.
42. Because cognitive realists and cognitive relativists differ on what
it means to say that a statement is true, they would also differ on which
statements are true and which are false.
43. Though traditional and contemporary realists disagree about the
details about how we perceive the world, they agree nonetheless that what
we perceive is the world itself and not merely our ideas.
44. Academic skepticism is the philosophic position that claims that
nothing exists.
45. According to realist critics of skepticism (e.g., Moore), there
is no way that we can really know whether there is an external world.
46. Mathematical propositions (e.g., 7+5=12) are known a priori
because their truth or falsity can be known without having to appeal to
sense experience.
47. "Unicorns have horns" is not an analytic proposition because
unicorns do not exist.
48. "Bachelors are fun-loving people" is a synthetic proposition because
the predicate is contained in the subject.
49. Because empiricists emphasize sense experience as the basis
for our knowledge of the world, they interpret all propositions as synthetic
a priori propositions.
50. Kant claims that our knowledge about things in the world depends
on how the mind structures experience.
51. Even though Kant agrees with the rationalists that the mind brings
something to experience and is not a blank slate (tabula rasa),
he agrees with the empiricists that knowledge depends also on experience.
52. According to Kant, all synthetic a priori judgments are false.
53. According to Kant, we know that all actual and possible experienced
events (even future events) have causes because that is the way that our
minds structure experience.
54. According to Kant, synthetic a priori propositions are true
because the predicates of such propositions are not contained in the subjects
of those propositions.
55. Because a priori propositions are known to be true or false
prior to experience, they are similar to analytic propositions, since analytic
propositions are true or false based solely on definitions.
56. According to the correspondence theory of truth (such as that adopted
by Russell), only facts are true.
57. According to the correspondence theory of truth, a statement is
true if it is consistent with our other beliefs.
58. According to the correspondence theory of truth, a proposition is
true if it is consistent with our other beliefs, even if those beliefs
do not represent or match facts in the world.
59. A statement is true, according to the coherence theory of
truth, if it is consistent with facts in the world that are independent
of our beliefs.
60. According to the coherence theory, the truth of a proposition consists
in its coherence with other beliefs or propositions.
61. According to the coherence theory of truth, a statement is true
if it is consistent with facts in the world that are independent of our
beliefs.
62. Because they differ on what it means to say that a statement is
true, a coherence theorist and a pragmatist would also differ on which
statements are true and which are false.
63. In William James' pragmatic theory of truth, a belief is validated,
verified, or produces satisfactory resultsin short, it worksbecause
it describes the way things really are.
64. In the pragmatic theory of truth developed by James and Dewey, a
belief is true because it "works" or produces expected results.
65. According to James's pragmatism, a proposition is true if, when
acted upon, it satisfies our expectations.
66. According to Rorty, to say that a proposition is true means that
we have no reason to doubt it.
67. According to cognitive relativism, agreement about what is true--what
Rorty calls social solidarity--is achievable because truth is independent
of human beings.
Multiple Choice
68. Aristotle says that what makes things be what they are--their essence--does not exist apart from individuals that exist in the world. So if all the members of a species were destroyed, then their essence or form:
(a) would likewise be destroyed.
(b) would be destroyed only if there were no one around to remember the species.
(c) would continue existing (as with Plato's Forms) in some other realm of being.
(d) would not be destroyed because there was no essence or form originally to be destroyed; there are only individuals, not universal essences or natures of things.
69. Empiricists charge that if claims of knowledge are limited to things
we know with logical certainty, we will never be able to know anything
about existing things in the world, because:
(a) the actual existence of things in the world is known only
through experience, not reason.
(b) simply by thinking or reasoning we can know specifically
which things exist and how.
(c) things in the world cannot be known to exist unless they
exist previously in some mind.
(d) the existence of things depends on their having been created
by some prior cause, God.
70. According to empiricists, even though the kind of information provided
by analytic a priori propositions is indubitable, it is not very
useful in expanding our knowledge about the world, because:
(a) the world is nothing other than what we experience it to
be.
(b) such propositions are concerned with the world as it is
in itself, not with how we experience the world.
(c) any information provided by such propositions is ultimately
based on someone's personal experience.
(d) such propositions are true (or false) by definition and
do not describe any facts about the world.
71. In his assault on innate ideas, Locke notes that some thinkers argue
that maybe all people (including children) have such innate ideas but simply
are not aware of knowing such truths. To this particular point Locke
responds:
(a) it makes no sense to say that we know something that we do
not know.
(b) even children know what they know only by means of experience.
(c) even if all people agreed about a belief, that would not
necessarily make it innate.
(d) because we should limit our assent to the evidence, we should
believe in innate ideas only to the extent that we have evidence for them.
72. In calling the mind a "tabula rasa," Locke wants to emphasize that
all knowledge, even knowledge of mathematical truths, is based on solely
on:
(a) innate ideas.
(b) experience.
(c) formal training or education.
(d) language.
73. "The particular bulk, number, figure, and motion of the parts of
fire or snow are really in them, whether anyone's senses perceive them
or not; and therefore they may be called real qualities, because
they really exist in those bodies. But light, heat, whiteness, or
coldness, are no more really in them than sickness or pain is in manna
[bread]." In this passage Locke locates the distinction between primary
and secondary qualities in the difference between:
(a) the parts of bodies that we cannot sense and the parts that
we can sense.
(b) qualities of bodies that exist independently of sensation
and qualities that rely on sensation.
(c) the power to perceive things in our own bodies and the power
to perceive things in other bodies.
(d) those qualities that no one ever perceives and those qualities
that we always perceive.
74. Substance, Locke claims, is that "I know not what" in which the
primary qualities of a thing inhere. Without assuming the existence
of substance and primary qualities, Locke would not be able to conclude
that his knowledge is in any way:
(a) the same as the knowledge that God has in coordinating events
in the universe.
(b) the same as the knowledge that God has in ordering our sense
data into specific things.
(c) the same as other people have when they have his experiences.
(d) based or grounded in a reality apart from experience.
75. In his critique of Locke, Berkeley notes that primary qualities
(e.g., solidity, extension, motion/rest) cannot legitimately be distinguished
from secondary qualities (e.g., colors, scents, sounds) because:
(a) primary qualities exist in the mind of God, whereas secondary
qualities exist only in human minds.
(b) primary qualities of things are known a posteriori,
whereas secondary qualities are known a priori.
(c) neither primary nor secondary qualities exist in any mind
(finite or infinite).
(d) primary qualities depend for their existence as much on
minds as do secondary qualities.
76. For Locke, all knowledge is based on ideas which represent things
that really exist outside the mind and which cause our experiences.
The problem with this "representational realism," Berkeley notes, is that:
(a) it suggests that the only thing that really exists is my
own mind.
(b) it assumes things outside our minds as causes of our ideas
even though we know only our ideas.
(c) it fails to indicate whether knowledge of things in the
world are known a posteriori or a priori.
(d) it suggests that our knowledge of the world is really based
on innate ideas instead of mental images.
77. Berkeley writes, "I ask whether those supposed originals or external
things, of which our ideas are the pictures or representations, be themselves
perceivable or not?" In answering this question, he concludes that
really existing things must be ideas, because:
(a) external things are perceivable and the only things that
are perceivable are ideas.
(b) ideas are caused in us by the external things ("supposed
originals") that our ideas represent.
(c) God cannot perceive ideas because he cannot perceive our
minds.
(d) to say that something exists means that it is perceivable,
not that it is perceived (even by God).
78. Berkeley suggests that his theory prevents the skeptic from denying
the existence of God, because in Berkeley's philosophy the existence of
God is necessary to show why:
(a) we feel that something external to us causes us to have particular
perceptions.
(b) the skeptical attitude towards knowledge undermines the doctrine
of secondary qualities but not that of primary qualities.
(c) the laws of nature are human generalizations of our experiences.
(d) our interest in perception is one which has a religious or
theological character.
79. According to Berkeley, even if you and I do not have the same mental
experiences when we think "red," we are still able to agree on what red
is because:
(a) as a secondary quality, the color red is something that is
purely private and individual.
(b) we learn to associate our experiences with words that we
agree upon intersubjectively.
(c) we in fact do have the same mental experience, even if we
don't know it.
(d) red is a simple idea, whereas redness is an abstract idea.
80. Instead of saying that we often perceive what really exists, Berkeley
argues that:
(a) what really exists is what we or some other minds perceive.
(b) that which really perceives is all that really exists.
(c) that which is perceived is that which does the perceiving.
(d) we seldom perceive what really exists; when we do, we do
not recognize it as such.
81. Berkeley expands his definition of the meaning of real things
to include perceivers as well as things perceived because:
(a) we can perceive our own minds but not the minds of others.
(b) God perceives those things which no other minds perceive.
(c) we can perceive each others' minds but not our own.
(d) nothing can be perceived without its being perceived by some
mind(s).
82. Plato's objective idealism differs from Berkeley's subjective
idealism in that:
(a) for Plato, ideas or Forms are real; for Berkeley, ideas
are mere fictions and therefore unreal.
(b) for Plato, ideas or Forms exist outside of minds; for Berkeley,
ideas exist only in minds.
(c) for Plato, ideas or Forms are immaterial entities;
for Berkeley, ideas are material entities.
(d) for Plato, ideas or Forms are conceptual generalizations;
for Berkeley, ideas are spiritual or immaterial copies of spiritual realities.
83. If all I ever know is that I exist and have ideas, but cannot be
sure about whether those ideas refer to anything outside of myself, then
I am trapped in my own consciousness. Such a position is referred
to as:
(a) conceptualism.
(b) phenomenalism.
(c) solipsism.
(d) representational realism.
84. "There is no question of importance whose decision is not comprised
in the science of man; and there is none which can be decided with any
certainty before we become acquainted with that science." Here Hume
notes that since everything is known through our ideas and reasoning, then:
(a) an empiricist epistemology is better than a rationalist
epistemology insofar as empiricism gives us knowledge of the world and
rationalism gives us knowledge of ourselves.
(b) by acknowledging that certainty is unachievable, we show
the fruitlessness of trying to develop a philosophy of human nature.
(c) to know anything about human nature with any certainty,
we first have to know about the world apart from our ideas and processes
of reasoning.
(d) by understanding human nature (which includes how our ideas
of things are ordered), we can understand everything that is knowable.
85. Hume points out that, if all knowledge is based on experience, then
our knowledge that every event has a cause has to be based on our experience
of every event. But since we have not had experiences of future events
nor even of every past event, how can we be sure that all events (including
future events) will have causes? Hume's answer:
(a) since we know that past events will be like future events,
we can be sure they will all have causes.
(b) we can't be sure: all we do is "imagine" events will have
causes, we develop that habit or custom.
(c) it is impossible even to imagine an event without imagining
it as having had a specific kind of cause.
(d) we know with certainty (innately) that no future or past
events ever had causes.
86. According to Hume, we will never be able to know anything about
whether there is a world outside of our ideas which causes those ideas
because:
(a) all of our ideas are based on sense impressions, and we
have no way of comparing those impressions with their supposed external
causes.
(b) ideas are copies of sense impressions, and since the external
world is itself a copy of an ideal world in our minds, we can never know
what the external world is like.
(c) the world outside of our ideas causes those ideas only in
regard to "matters of fact" and not in regard to "relations of ideas."
(d) the external world is the realm of matter, selves, and freedom--which
are all unknowable because we have only sensible impressions of them but
not ideas.
87. According to Hume, I cannot know (or predict with any certainty
or high probability) that things in the future will occur in particular
ways, because:
(a) the future will not resemble the past: that is what distinguishes
the future from the past.
(b) I have no experience on which to base the claim that the
future will resemble the past.
(c) knowledge of the future would require an infinite intellect;
for Hume, only God knows the future.
(d) to have an idea of the future, I would have to have an idea
of my future self (which is impossible).
88. According to Hume, I do not have an idea of my self as anything other than the bundle of my perceptions or ideas, because whenever I think of my self, all I ever perceive are:
(a) ideas of my self, not the impressions or perceptions on which those ideas are based.
(b) randomly arranged impressions or perceptions, not some person having those impressions.
(c) patterns of neuro-physiological activity, but not the behaviors that result from that activity.
(d) acts of self-consciousness, which are themselves conscious of themselves being self-conscious, and they in turn are self-conscious, in an endless regress.
89. Hume's analysis of cause and effect undermines any claim
to know that our ideas are caused by things in the world,
because (according to Hume):
(a) even though we cannot know that our ideas are caused
by things in the world, we can at least believe that things in the
world cause our ideas.
(b) even if I can know what it is that I am experiencing at
a particular moment, that does not mean that what I am experiencing actually
exists in the world as the cause of that experience or idea.
(c) we have no experience of any necessary connection between
ideas and the things outside of our ideas that supposedly cause them.
(d) the very notion of cause is unintelligible because
it is not based on any sense experience.
90. Classical empiricism exhibits a repeated use of Occam's Razor: Locke
says that we know external objects only indirectly through ideas that are
caused by objects. Berkeley denies that external objects exist at
all, claiming that real things are ideas caused in our minds by
God. Hume goes even further in saying that:
(a) external objects are created by God in such a way so as
to make us have ideas of them.
(b) God creates us so that there are minds that can be caused
to think about external objects.
(c) our minds are structured in a way that makes us think that
God causes us to have ideas.
(d) even the claim that God causes our ideas is not justified
because cause itself is questionable.
91. Which of the following IS NOT a typical objection raised
by critics against Locke's or Hume's empiricism?
(a) Our experience is a web of beliefs, not a collection of
discrete experiences.
(b) Ideas are not intermediaries through which we experience
things; we experience things themselves.
(c) Knowledge of the world, including ideas of cause-effect
and the self, is ultimately based on experience.
(d) Our natural inclinations are as philosophically respectable
as sense experience or truths by definition.
92. In his version of cognitive relativism, Richard Rorty suggests that
instead of trying to discover some truth "out there," we should recognize
that by truth we mean:
(a) what we as members of a society mutually agree on, not some
independent facts about the world.
(b) our personal beliefs, regardless of what others in our society
or those in other societies believe.
(c) a set of beliefs that are supported by a theory or an explanation.
(d) a set of facts about the world that would exist even if
we did not exist.
93. Critics of Hume's skepticism acknowledge that there is always a
purely logical or theoretical possibility that our so-called knowledge
of the external world is unjustified. But for such critics (e.g.,
Moore, Malcolm) that is irrelevant, because to say that we know things
about the external world simply means that:
(a) we have no good reason to doubt what we believe and cannot
imagine really being wrong about it.
(b) even if we were wrong about we know, we would not realize
it and so it would not matter.
(c) we believe that what we claim to know is based on all the
other things we believe about the world.
(d) our doubts about what we know about the world are based
solely on weak (vs. strong) beliefs.
94. According to Logical Positivists, only those statements that can
be tested by experience or are true by definition are meaningful.
The most that one would be able to say about ethical or religious claims
would be:
(a) they report on how we feel about something, but they do not
express any truth.
(b) such claims may be true or false; it's just that we may not
know whether our beliefs are justified.
(c) they are purely logical truths--that is, truths of reason
(or by definition), not matters of fact.
(d) they have meaning insofar as they provide the hypothetical
or theoretical bases for thought.
95. According to positivists (also known sometimes as phenomenalists),
the meaning of a sentence consists in its being either a tautology or understandable
in terms of past or predicted sense experiences. In other words,
a sentence (like "God exists") is meaningful only if:
(a) for the person who utters it, the sentence has meaning, regardless
of what others think.
(b) it represents the truth, even if we don't know which experiences
to believe.
(c) it is true by definition or is testable by appeal to sense
experience.
(d) it expresses a belief that is innate, known to all rational
beings.
96. Positivists (also known sometimes as phenomenalists) claim that
physical things are simply constructs of sense data that we talk about
in ways different from those things that we identify as mental or spiritual
things. Specifically, to say that a thing is a physical object means
that:
(a) it is proper to speak about the thing in terms of dimensionality,
size, and shape.
(b) the thing's primary qualities (extension, shape, and solidity)
do not depend on the mind.
(c) appearances of the thing, even in hallucinations or dreams,
must be accepted as real.
(d) claims about it are ultimately understandable as being tautologies.
97. According to the psychological atomism implicit in logical positivism,
our knowledge of the world is built up from discrete sensory impressions.
However, as Gestalt theorists point out, perceptions are
not simply isolated sense data, because perceptions--indeed, all experiences--are
intelligible in virtue of:
(a) other equally isolated sense data that are themselves innate
ideas.
(b) whether ideas are caused by material substances in the world
or by God directly.
(c) logical constructs of neutral (neither mental nor physical)
sense experiences.
(d) the linguistic background or social field of expectations
by which they are identified.
98. Rorty's critique of positivism ("phenomenalism") is based on his
rejection of the presupposition that knowledge requires a foundation in
either innate ideas or sense data. Instead of thinking of knowledge
as a relation between a belief and a fact about the world, we should think
of knowledge (he claims) as a relation between:
(a) what we think we know and what we actually do know.
(b) a belief and the social, historical arguments given to support
it.
(c) our sense perceptions and our innate ideas.
(d) the way the mind organizes experiences according to the surface
grammar of language and the way that language itself is structured by the
deep grammar of neurology.
99. By combining rationalism and empiricism, Kant says we can explain
how knowledge is possible in this way:
(a) sense data provide us with the content of knowledge, the
categories of reason organize that content.
(b) categories of reason provide us with sense data, which are
then organized either mentally or physically.
(c) analytic truths are a priori, synthetic truths are
a
posteriori.
(d) knowledge must be understood as a web of constantly changing
beliefs, not a static collection of ideas.
100. According to Kant, the way to respond to Hume's critique of causality
is to show that certainty about propositions like "every event has a cause"
is possible in virtue of the fact that:
(a) our experience of events itself is caused by something apart
from all experience.
(b) the "law" of causality (every event has a cause) is merely
an inductive generalization.
(c) even though every "effect" has a cause, not every "event"
has a cause.
(d) the mind (reason) structures all (even future) experiences
in determinate, unchanging ways.
101. In order to avoid Hume's conclusion that we cannot know that
things in the future will always have causes, Kant argues that we know
that all events in the future will have causes because:
(a) our belief that future events will have causes is so strong
that it alone is sufficient to guarantee that future events will, in fact,
have causes.
(b) all minds are organized in such a way that, in order for
events (including future events) to be experienced at all, they must always
be experienced as having a cause.
(c) cause-and-effect is a law of nature independent of human
experience; regardless of whether we or any other minds experience them,
events in the future will have causes.
(d) future events themselves are caused by past and present
events; so we know that if future events occur at all, they will have been
caused by something.
102. Kant's critics claim that, if we know things in the world only
insofar as they are experienced (as phenomena) and not as they are
in themselves, we will never know if our ideas really describe the
world. His reply:
(a) we can know with certainty even things supposedly
beyond our sense experience (e.g., God, soul).
(b) reason is not limited to any one set of categories; we can
always choose another culture's categories.
(c) "the world" is what we really experience; to think that
there is something else is a mistake.
(d) our knowledge depends not on experience but on the particular
language games of our culture.
103. Kant joins elements of empiricism and rationalism by suggesting
that, in addition to synthetic a posteriori propositions and analytic a
priori propositions, there is a third kind of proposition that provides
knowledge, namely, synthetic a priori propositions (such as "every event
has a cause"). In this third kind of proposition:
(a) the predicate is contained in the subject, and the truth
of the proposition is known only by appealing to experience.
(b) the predicate is not contained in the subject, and the truth
of the proposition is known only by appealing to experience.
(c) the predicate is contained in the subject, and the truth
of the proposition is not known by appealing to experience.
(d) the predicate is not contained in the subject, and the truth
of the proposition is not known by appealing to experience.
104. According to critics of foundationalist epistemology (like Richard
Rorty), evidence for one's beliefs can be conclusive without being necessarily
conclusive or based on some indubitable (undoubtable) principle such as
Descartes' cogito. That is, it is sometimes legitimate to
say that we "know" something even when:
(a) we don't believe it.
(b) what we know is not based on any evidence.
(c) all evidence contradicts our belief.
(d) we might still be wrong.
105. The three standard theories of truth discussed in epistemology
are the correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic theories. Which
of the following descriptions DOES NOT match any one of these three?
(a) A belief is true if, when acted upon, it results in the
satisfaction of expectations.
(b) A belief is true if it is consistent with other beliefs
we hold.
(c) A belief is true if it describes the way the world is.
(d) A belief is true if a person really wants it to be true.
106. In the correspondence theory of truth, the proposition "There
is a desk in this room" is true only if:
(a) I think there is a desk in this room.
(b) it is reasonable to think that there is a desk in this room.
(c) there is a desk in this room.
(d) if I try to sit on what I think is the desk, it will support
me.
107. According to Russell, to say whether two propositions are coherent,
we have to determine whether they are consistent with one another according
to laws of logic. But laws of logic (e.g., the law of contradiction,
which says that something cannot be and not be at the same time) must themselves
be true based on facts, not on their coherence with other beliefs, because:
(a) a set of propositions could be coherent with one another
even though the whole set is false.
(b) apart from such laws, we would be unable to tell whether
or not two beliefs are coherent.
(c) the truth of a proposition depends on how well it is consistent
with or "coheres" with other beliefs.
(d) although laws of logic are not true or false, they define
truth and falsity by identifying facts.
108. Critics charge that the coherence theory of truth is unable to
explain falsehood, because if truth is defined as the coherence of a proposition
or belief with other propositions or beliefs, then are not all coherent
systems of belief true? That is, if a belief is true because it is
consistent with other beliefs in a system, then:
(a) how do we tell whether a proposition is inconsistent with
other beliefs in that same system?
(b) can't a belief be false and yet the whole system with which
it is consistent still be true?
(c) why can't judgments that are consistent with many other
beliefs still be false within the same system of beliefs?
(d) couldn't the whole set of consistent beliefs be false?
109. According to the coherence theory of truth, a proposition is true
if it is consistent with a set of mutually supporting propositions.
Critics (e.g., Russell) claim that this means that false propositions could
be considered true as long as they are consistent with other propositions
in a whole set of false propositions. The coherence theorist replies
to this criticism this way:
(a) just because one proposition in a set of propositions is
false, that does not mean that the whole set of propositions is false.
(b) a proposition is false only if it is inconsistent with other
propositions.
(c) a set of propositions cannot be internally consistent without
also being consistent with all other sets of propositions.
(d) to say that a whole set of propositions is false is simply
to say that the set is inconsistent with a larger set of propositions.
110. Against those who attempt to discover some all-inclusive (capital
T) Truth "out there," Richard Rorty and other critics of foundationalist
epistemology suggest that by truth we should mean instead:
(a) what we as members of a society mutually agree on, not some
independent facts about the world.
(b) what we know in virtue of the unchanging a priori
(innate) ideas implicit in reasoning itself.
(c) a set of beliefs that are based on indubitable (undoubtable)
principles.
(d) a set of facts about the world that would exist even if
we did not exist.