Applied Philosophy Questions and Answers

Answer: A

In a Different Voice was written by Carol Gilligan.

Published in 1982, the book challenged Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development, arguing that women often reason in terms of care, relationships and responsibility rather than abstract rules and rights. It became a founding text of the ethics of care.

J. S. Mill wrote The Subjection of Women (1869), Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex (1949) and Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).

Answer: C

Ahurmazda is the supreme God of Zoroastrianism.

Ahura Mazda, the 'Wise Lord', is the creator and highest deity worshipped in the religion founded by Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) in ancient Iran. In its dualistic teaching he is opposed by the destructive spirit Angra Mainyu (Ahriman). The Parsis of India follow this faith.

Hinduism, Christianity and Islam have their own conceptions and names of God, and none calls the supreme deity Ahura Mazda.

Answer: B

Guru Nanak is the founder of Sikhism.

Guru Nanak (1469-1539) was the first of the ten Sikh Gurus. He taught devotion to one formless God (Ik Onkar), equality of all people and honest living, and his hymns are in the Guru Granth Sahib.

He did not found Islam, which was founded by the Prophet Muhammad, or Vaiṣṇavism, the devotion to Viṣṇu that long predates him. Since Sikhism is correct, 'none of the above' is wrong.

Answer: D

This is the cosmological argument.

The argument from contingency reasons from the existence of a world of dependent, contingent things to a necessary being that explains why anything exists at all. It is Aquinas's third way and Leibniz's argument from sufficient reason.

The ontological argument reasons from the concept of God alone, without appeal to the world. The design (teleological) argument reasons from order and purpose in nature, and the moral argument from moral law or obligation. Only the cosmological argument turns on contingency and a necessary being.

Answer: B

'Tirthankar' and 'Tathāgata' are associated with Jainism and Buddhism.

A Tīrthaṅkara, 'ford-maker', is one of the twenty-four teachers of Jainism who have crossed the stream of rebirth and show the way; Mahāvīra is the twenty-fourth. Tathāgata, 'thus gone' or 'thus come', is the title the Buddha uses of himself in the Buddhist scriptures.

Neither term belongs to Hinduism, Sikhism or Judaism, which rules out the other pairs.

Answer: B

The view is propounded by Tom Regen (Tom Regan).

In The Case for Animal Rights (1983), Tom Regan argues that animals which are 'subjects of a life', with beliefs, desires, memory and a welfare of their own, have inherent value. That value is not reducible to their usefulness to others or to the pleasure in their lives, and it grounds rights that may not be overridden for the sake of aggregate benefits.

Peter Singer argues for animals on utilitarian grounds, from their capacity to suffer, not from intrinsic value. Aldo Leopold's land ethic values the biotic community as a whole, and Arne Naess's deep ecology ascribes intrinsic value to all life, but the animal-rights view in the question is Regan's.

Answer: A

The assertion is made by the Land Ethics.

In 'The Land Ethic', the final essay of A Sand County Almanac (1949), Aldo Leopold says that the land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively the land. The community thus includes non-living (abiotic) parts as well as living ones, and a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of that biotic community.

Deep ecology stresses the intrinsic value of all life and self-realisation, shallow ecology protects the environment for human benefit, and medical ethics concerns health care.

Answer: B

The slippery slope argument states that if abortion is justified, killing the child is also justified.

A slippery slope argument claims that accepting one practice commits us, step by step, to accepting another that is clearly unacceptable. Against abortion, it says there is no non-arbitrary line between a foetus late in pregnancy and a newborn child, so if killing the foetus is justified, killing the newborn would be justified too. Since infanticide is wrong, the argument concludes, abortion is wrong.

The other options deny the link the argument depends on, or simply assert that both are justified, which is the conclusion it tries to show to be absurd.

Answer: C

The correct code is a-3, b-4, c-1, d-2.

Peter Singer wrote Practical Ethics (1979), applying utilitarianism to animals, poverty and life and death. Tom Regan (spelled 'Regen' in the paper) is the author of The Case for Animal Rights. Aldo Leopold set out the land ethic in A Sand County Almanac. Arne Naess founded the deep ecology movement in 1973.

Only the third code gives these four pairs. The first matches each thinker to the list in order, the second reverses it, and the fourth gives Singer deep ecology and Naess practical ethics.

Answer: A

The judgment related to Aadhaar (spelled 'Adhaar' in the paper) is about the Right to Privacy.

In Justice K. S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India, a nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court, hearing a reference arising from the challenge to the Aadhaar scheme, held unanimously that the right to privacy is a fundamental right protected under Article 21 and Part III of the Constitution. The judgment was delivered on 24 August 2017, a month earlier than the date printed in the question.

The case was not about a right to technology, travel or property. The later Aadhaar judgment of September 2018 applied this privacy ruling to the scheme itself.