Recent Western Philosophy Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Quine is an ontological relativist because of the inscrutability of reference: a term's reference cannot be fixed uniquely by all the behaviour evidence, so what the terms of a language refer to is relative to a background language and a translation manual.

The picture theory of meaning is the early Wittgenstein's. Forms of life and family resemblances are the later Wittgenstein's ideas. The answer is A.

Answer: C

The problem of intentionality is that of understanding the relation between a mental state and the thing it is about. Beliefs, desires and fears are directed at objects, even at objects that do not exist, and it is hard to say what that directedness is.

The relation of a mental state to a physical state is the mind-body problem, and the relation of different mental states or different bodily states is not what intentionality names. The answer is C.

Answer: D

The key takes Heidegger as characterising Dasein by its affective, caring relationship with the surrounding people and objects, since Dasein is always Being-in-the-world with others and things.

Isolation of Being is the contrary view. Being-in-itself (en-soi) and Being-for-itself (pour-soi) are the terms of Sartre's ontology, not Heidegger's. The answer is D.

Answer: A

Early Wittgenstein of the Tractatus holds that language may be used to represent the world but cannot be used to represent how language represents, option (A). A proposition pictures a state of affairs by sharing its logical form with it, but that shared form cannot itself be put into words; it can only be shown. This is the distinction between saying and showing. Option (B) is wrong because it allows language to describe its own representing relation, which the saying/showing distinction denies. Option (C) reverses the claim, and option (D) is too strong because language does represent the world by picturing facts.

Answer: D

For the logical positivists, (A) is false and (R) is true, option (D). A statement is meaningful only if it can be verified in principle (or is analytic). 'God exists' is not verifiable, so (R) is true. But the positivists conclude that it is therefore meaningless, neither true nor false, so (A), which calls it a true proposition, is false. The reason does not explain the assertion, since it does not make the sentence true. Option (A) accepts both and an explanation, (B) calls the reason false, and (C) calls the assertion true; each contradicts the positivist criterion of verifiability.

Answer: A

The thinker who holds that 'beings' are the objects of our common experience is Heidegger, option (A). In Being and Time he distinguishes beings (entities, the things we meet in everyday dealings) from Being itself, the question he wants to raise. Frege (B) worked on logic and the philosophy of language. Kant (C) spoke of phenomena and noumena, and Husserl (D) of intentional consciousness and essences, so the keyed answer is Heidegger.

Answer: A

Husserl in his later works abandoned naturalism in favour of transcendental idealism, option (A). From the Ideas onward he held that the world gets its meaning through constituting consciousness, and he rejected the naturalistic view that consciousness is merely part of nature. Option (B) reverses the direction of his development. Option (C) says he held both, and option (D) says he gave up both, and neither agrees with this turn in his thought.

Answer: D

The antirepresentationalists, the pragmatist line of Rorty and those who follow him, hold that there is no picture of reality at all. Knowledge is not an inner mirror of an outside world, so the very idea of a picture that matches reality is given up. Option (A) says picture and reality are the same, which is not their view. Option (B) asserts an absolute picture, which is the representationalist position they attack. Option (C) says there is no one picture, which still allows many pictures; they deny the picture model altogether, so (D) is correct.

Answer: D

The view that a theory of truth for a formal language can serve as a theory of meaning for a natural language is Donald Davidson's. Following Tarski's definition of truth for formal languages, Davidson proposed that giving the truth conditions of each sentence of a language gives its meaning. Strawson criticised Russell's theory of descriptions and stressed use in ordinary language. Wittgenstein held that meaning is use in the later work and a picture of facts in the Tractatus. Russell sought meaning through logical analysis. None of the three proposed the Tarskian programme.

Answer: C

The statement that is not true of Heidegger's Dasein is (C), that it is always an actuality and not a possibility. For Heidegger Dasein is the being whose essence lies in its existence, its ability to be, so it is always projecting possibilities; possibility ranks higher than actuality in his phrase. That makes (D) true of Dasein and (C) false. Option (B) is true because Dasein is being-in-the-world, always engaged with things and others. Option (A) is read as true in the sense that Dasein is the being that is aware of and concerned about its own being. Hence (C) is the one that is not true.