Classical Western Epistemology and Metaphysics Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The book not by Descartes is An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

The Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) is John Locke's major work, the classic statement of British empiricism, and it attacks the doctrine of innate ideas that Descartes held.

The other three are Descartes' own: the Discourse on Method (1637), the Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), printed in the paper as 'Meditation', and the Principles of Philosophy (1644).

Answer: D

The philosopher is Rene Descartes.

Descartes' cogito ergo sum, 'I think, therefore I am', infers the existence of the self from the fact of thinking. Even while doubting everything, he cannot doubt that he is doubting, and doubting is a form of thinking, so the thinker must exist.

Kant criticises this move, arguing that the 'I think' gives only a formal unity of consciousness and not knowledge of a substantial self. Locke grounds personal identity in memory and consciousness rather than in an inference from thinking, and Sartre starts from existence preceding essence, not from the cogito as proof.

Answer: C

The answer is Rene Descartes.

Descartes' rule of truth, stated in the Discourse and the third Meditation, is that whatever I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true. Clarity and distinctness are the marks by which knowledge is recognised, and the method is to accept nothing that is not presented to the mind clearly and distinctly.

Plato's criterion is knowledge of the Forms, Aristotle grounds knowledge in demonstration from first principles and in experience, and Hume traces ideas to impressions. Clarity and distinctness as the criterion of knowledge is the Cartesian doctrine.

Answer: B

The saying belongs to Spinoza.

In Part II of the Ethics, Spinoza holds that the object of the idea constituting the human mind is the body, so the mind is the idea of the body. Mind and body are the same thing understood under two attributes, thought and extension, which is his answer to Descartes' problem of interaction.

Descartes treats mind and body as two distinct substances, so he could not call one the idea of the other. Locke does not define the mind this way, and Plato treats the soul as distinct from and superior to the body.

Answer: A

The author is John Locke.

Locke's A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) was followed by further letters defending it, so the works are often referred to together as the Letters Concerning Toleration. Locke argues that the state's business is civil interests such as life, liberty and property, and that the care of souls is not entrusted to the magistrate, so religious belief should be tolerated.

Hobbes, by contrast, gave the sovereign authority over public worship. Hume wrote on religion in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and the Natural History of Religion, and Leibniz's main works are the Monadology and the Theodicy.

Answer: A

The one that is not a reason is They hate poetry.

In Book VI of the Republic, Plato lists the qualities that fit the philosophic nature to rule: a love of what truly is (being) rather than what merely becomes, a hatred of falsehood and love of truth, quickness in learning, good memory, moderation and courage.

Plato does criticise the poets elsewhere, in Books III and X, and banishes much poetry from the ideal city, but hatred of poetry is never given as a reason why philosophers should rule. The other three options are on his list.

Answer: C

The answer is (1), (3) and (4).

Heraclitus taught that everything is in flux ('you cannot step into the same river twice'), that all is becoming, and that the world is held together by the harmony and tension of opposites, governed by the Logos. These are statements 1, 3 and 4.

'Only one reality', an unchanging One that excludes becoming, is the doctrine of Parmenides, Heraclitus's great opponent. The options including (2) therefore mix the two thinkers, and (1) and (4) alone leaves out becoming.

Answer: D

The distinction was drawn by Parmenides.

In his poem, Parmenides set the Way of Truth, known by reason, against the Way of Opinion, based on the senses. Reason shows that what is cannot come to be or pass away, so the changing world the senses report is mere appearance. This was the first sharp division of appearance from reality and sense from thought in Greek philosophy.

Thales and Anaximenes looked for a single material principle (water, air) without this distinction, and Pythagoras explained reality through number.

Answer: B

The key's answer is Opposition.

The question is read as saying that, for Plato, dialectic is not confined to opposition, the clash of conflicting opinions with which it began in the Socratic debates. In his dialogues it becomes a method of examining a thesis by question and answer, of reasoning out what follows from it, and of division, the sorting of a kind into its species that the Phaedrus and the Sophist describe. Examination, reasoning and division are therefore parts of his dialectic, and the key picks opposition as the one it is not restricted to.

I could not find a source that puts the point in this form, and the wording of the item is loose, so the key is accepted as printed and this is the most natural reading of it.

Answer: A

Substance is prior because it exists separately and is not an attribute.

In the Categories and Metaphysics VII, Aristotle says primary substance, such as an individual man or horse, is neither said of a subject nor present in a subject. The other categories (quality, quantity, relation and so on) exist only in a substance. So substance can exist separately while the rest depend on it.

The options saying substance does not exist separately, or is an attribute, describe the dependent categories instead.