Recent Western Philosophy Questions and Answers

Answer: D

For the later Wittgenstein, the task is to look at the grammatical forms of language.

In the Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein gives up the search for a hidden logical structure. Philosophical problems arise from misunderstanding the grammar of our language, and they are dissolved by a perspicuous view of how words are actually used, which he calls a grammatical investigation.

Discovering elementary propositions and reconstructing the logical structure of language were the aims of the Tractatus, which he later criticised, and philosophy for him does not describe the world as science does.

Answer: B

According to Ryle, a category mistake is avoided by identifying the difference in logical form of expressions.

In The Concept of Mind Ryle argues that a category mistake presents facts of one logical type as if they belonged to another, as when a visitor, shown the colleges and libraries, asks where the University is. Expressions with the same grammatical form can differ in logical type, so the way to avoid the mistake is to attend to that difference in logical form.

Differences in linguistic form are exactly what can mislead, and the error is not one of meaning or of breaking syntactic rules, since the misleading sentences are grammatically correct.

Answer: C

Moore uses the phrase to prove an external world.

In 'Proof of an External World' (1939), Moore explains that to prove the existence of things outside us is to prove that there are 'things to be met with in space', and he offers his famous proof by holding up his hands: here is one hand, here is another, so at least two external objects exist.

Moore did defend common sense and argue against idealism elsewhere, but the phrase belongs to this proof. The distinction between sense and reference is Frege's.

Answer: D

The key gives to explain how the object is constituted in the knowing act.

Husserl's transcendental phenomenology studies consciousness as intentional, always consciousness of something, and seeks to show how objects, with their sense, are constituted in the acts of consciousness that intend them. Bracketing the natural attitude (the epoche) is meant to reveal this constitution.

Phenomenology is not the description of facts in the sense of empirical science, and analysing the presuppositions of knowledge or simply intuiting a relation does not capture its central task of explaining constitution.

Answer: A

For Kierkegaard, Christianity is an unreasonable life of faith.

Kierkegaard held that Christian faith cannot be reached by reason. Its central claim, that the eternal God became a man in time, is the 'absolute paradox', an offence to reason, and faith is a passionate leap made in the face of it.

So Christianity is not a rational or reasonable way of life for him, and the religious stage goes beyond the ethical rather than being the truly ethical life.

Answer: A

The key gives grounded in experience and verifiable.

In The Varieties of Religious Experience James grounds religion in personal religious experience rather than in theology or reason. As a pragmatist he holds that beliefs are verified by their consequences in life: a religious belief is justified if it works, producing fruits such as inner peace, moral energy and a more meaningful life.

He explicitly rejected the attempt to ground religion in abstract reasoning or deduction from the idea of God, which rules out the two options based on reason.

Answer: B

The statement is Richard Rorty's.

In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Rorty rejects the idea that knowledge rests on foundations that mirror reality. Justification, he argues, is a social practice: nothing counts as justification except by reference to what we already accept, so there is no stepping outside our beliefs and language to test them against the world.

William James was a pragmatist too, but the sentence is Rorty's. Nietzsche and Levinas (whose first name is Emmanuel) did not write it.

Answer: A

'Discourse on Method' is the work of Descartes, not Bertrand Russell, so it is the option that does not belong. It is the 1637 text setting out his method of doubt and the cogito.

'Our Knowledge of the External World' (1914), 'An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth' (1940) and 'Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits' (1948) are all by Russell. Options B, C and D are therefore his works, and A is the answer.

Answer: A

'God is dead' was said by Friedrich Nietzsche, notably in The Gay Science and in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. He meant that belief in the Christian God had lost its hold on European culture, which left a crisis of values and called for new ones.

Wittgenstein worked on language and logic, Heidegger on being and existence, and C.S. Peirce on pragmatism and signs. None of these made the 'death of God' declaration, so the answer is Nietzsche.

Answer: C

A.J. Ayer is the logical positivist in the list. His book Language, Truth and Logic (1936) put forward the verification principle, which says that a statement is meaningful only if it is analytic or empirically verifiable, and he used it to dismiss metaphysics.

Husserl founded phenomenology, Heidegger developed existential ontology, and C.S. Peirce was a pragmatist. All three fall outside the Vienna Circle tradition from which logical positivism arose, so the answer is C.