Classical Western Epistemology and Metaphysics Questions and Answers

Answer: C

Hume's standpoint is empirical and agnostic (sceptical), so statements I and III are correct. He bases all knowledge on impressions and ideas drawn from experience, and he is agnostic about God, the self and necessary connection, questioning what reason can establish.

The key does not count II, 'positivistic', as correct, since positivism as a school came later (Comte) and Hume's thought is described as empiricism and scepticism. Option A includes II; option B includes II without I; option D claims all of them. Only option C matches the key.

Answer: A

Both statements are true and the reason explains the assertion. Locke held that at birth the mind is a tabula rasa, a blank sheet, and that is true. It is true because he rejected innate ideas in Book I of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding: if no ideas are inborn, the mind starts empty and all content comes from sensation and reflection.

Option B would say R fails to explain A, but the denial of innate ideas is exactly why the mind is blank. Options C and D wrongly treat one of the statements as false.

Answer: A

The chronologically correct sequence is Thales (about 600 BC), Protagoras (fifth century BC), Plato (427 to 347 BC) and Thomas Aquinas (13th century AD). Option A is therefore right.

Option B puts Leibniz before Spinoza and Descartes, but their order is Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz. Option C puts Locke and Berkeley before Hume and Descartes, which is wrong because Descartes came earlier. Option D has Descartes, Kant, Hegel and Locke, but Locke (1632-1704) precedes Kant and Hegel.

Answer: B

The correct pairs are Descartes with the doctrine of innate ideas (iv), Berkeley with 'esse est percipi' (iii), Leibniz with the doctrine of monads (ii), and Spinoza with the doctrine of modes (i). The code a-iv, b-iii, c-ii, d-i is option B.

Berkeley's immaterialism holds that to be is to be perceived. Leibniz's reality is made of monads. In Spinoza's single substance, finite things are modes. Options A, C and D each assign at least one doctrine to the wrong thinker.

Answer: C

In Plato's dialogue Parmenides, the young Socrates meets and is questioned by the philosopher Parmenides, with Zeno also present, and his theory of Forms is examined. So the philosopher who interviewed young Socrates was Parmenides. Heraclitus did not appear in the dialogue, and Plato is the author, not a speaker. Zeno was present but is not the one who questions Socrates at length. The answer is Parmenides. The dialogue is one of Plato's later dialogues, in which the elderly Parmenides and Zeno visit Athens and a very young Socrates puts forward the theory of Forms for examination.

Answer: C

The theory of Becoming, that all things are in constant flux, was established by Heraclitus, whose saying is that one cannot step twice into the same river. Parmenides held the opposite, that Being is one and unchanging, Plato placed true reality in the changeless Forms and treated the sensible world as becoming, and St. Anselm is a medieval philosopher known for the ontological argument. The answer is Heraclitus. The theory is contrasted with the theory of Being of the Eleatic school, and Plato's attempt to join the two is the key to his own metaphysics.

Answer: C

'Man is the measure of all things' was said by Protagoras, the Sophist, who meant that truth and value are relative to the individual or the community. Plato discussed and attacked the saying in the Theaetetus, so he is not its author. Anaximenes held that air is the first principle, and Zeno of Elea is known for his paradoxes against motion. The answer is Protagoras. The saying is taken to mean that there is no truth beyond what individuals judge, which is why it is called relativism.

Answer: B

The belief that good and ill are one comes from Heraclitus, who held that opposites are united, so that the way up and the way down are one and the same. Thales named water as the first principle, Anaximenes named air, and Aristotle set out a theory of virtue and of the four causes; none of them taught the unity of good and ill. The answer is Heraclitus. The fragment is usually cited with others on the unity of opposites, such as 'the path up and down is one and the same'.

Answer: D

Aristotle's four causes are the material, formal, efficient and final causes. He ultimately reduced them to two, matter and form, because the formal, efficient and final causes often coincide in the form of a thing. Parmenides, Pythagoras and Plato did not work with a fourfold scheme of causes, so they could not have reduced it. The answer is Aristotle. Aristotle's four causes are set out in the Physics and the Metaphysics, and the reduction to matter and form follows from his hylomorphism.

Answer: B

For Plato what is real is the Ideas, or Forms: unchanging, eternal patterns of which sensible objects are only imperfect copies. Objects of the senses are in flux and belong to the realm of opinion, not of knowledge. The soul is important in his thought, but it is not the real in the sense the question asks, and 'None of the above' is false. The answer is Ideas. Sense objects are called shadows or copies, and the philosopher's task is to turn from them to the Forms, as the allegory of the cave shows.