Recent Western Philosophy Questions and Answers

Answer: D

Wittgenstein wrote all four: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), Philosophical Investigations (published 1953), On Certainty (notes from his last years, published 1969) and Zettel (a collection of notes published in 1967). The correct option is therefore the one that includes I, II, III and IV.

Options A, B and C each leave out at least one of these works, so they are incomplete. The Tractatus belongs to his early thought and the others to his later thought on language-games, certainty and mind.

Answer: A

The author of Appearance and Reality is Bradley, that is, F. H. Bradley, so the answer is A.

The book (1893) is the main work of British absolute idealism. It argues that the world of ordinary experience, with its relations, space, time and the self, is mere appearance, and that Reality is a single, harmonious Absolute experience.

Hegel (B) wrote the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Science of Logic, Descartes (C) wrote the Meditations, and Hume (D) wrote the Treatise of Human Nature, so none of them wrote this book.

Answer: A

The trend in contemporary philosophical method is analytical, so the answer is A.

Twentieth-century philosophy was shaped by the analytic method: the clarification of concepts and propositions by the analysis of language and logic, developed by Moore, Russell, the logical positivists and the later Wittgenstein and Ryle and others.

Scepticism (B) is an old position, not the method of the age, and the synthetic method (C) is associated with the systematic metaphysics of earlier idealists. The key accepts A, so D, which says 'none of the above', is wrong.

Answer: D

The anthology The Linguistic Turn was edited by Richard Rorty, so the answer is D.

The collection (1967) gathers papers on philosophical method by analytic philosophers, with an introduction by Rorty, and it gave the name 'linguistic turn' to the shift of philosophy towards the analysis of language.

Moore, Russell and Wittgenstein (A, B, C) are among the philosophers whose work is part of that movement, but none of them edited the anthology.

Answer: B

Russell's theory of descriptions was challenged by P. F. Strawson, so the answer is B.

In 'On Referring' (1950) Strawson argued that a sentence such as 'The king of France is wise' does not assert the existence of a king, as Russell's analysis held, but presupposes it. When the presupposition fails, the sentence is neither true nor false and Russell's 'false' is wrong.

Ayer (A), Austin (C) and Davidson (D) did not make this the central objection to the theory.

Answer: A

The distinction between sense and reference was made by Frege, so the answer is A.

In 'On Sense and Reference' (1892) Frege separated the object a term stands for (its Bedeutung, reference) from the mode of presentation of that object (its Sinn, sense). He used the difference to explain how 'the morning star is the evening star' can be informative though both names refer to Venus.

Wittgenstein (B), Quine (C) and Dummett (D) wrote on meaning, but the distinction is Frege's.

Answer: C

The correct matching is Austin with speech acts, Wittgenstein with language games, Quine with the two dogmas of empiricism and Searle with the theory of intentionality, so the answer is C.

J. L. Austin developed the theory of speech acts in How to Do Things with Words. Wittgenstein's later work introduced language games. Quine's 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism' attacked the analytic-synthetic distinction. John Searle wrote on intentionality and developed the speech act theory further.

The other codes pair at least one philosopher with another's doctrine, for example Quine with intentionality.

Answer: B

The correct matching is Foundations of Arithmetic with Frege, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy with Russell, From a Logical Point of View with Quine and Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation with Davidson, so the answer is B.

Frege's Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik is translated as The Foundations of Arithmetic. Russell wrote the Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy in 1919, Quine's essays of 1953 are From a Logical Point of View, and Davidson's collected papers on meaning are Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation.

Each other code attributes a title to the wrong author.

Answer: D

The method of phenomenological inquiry is the technique of bracketing, so the answer is D.

Husserl's method begins with the epoche: the person sets aside, or brackets, the natural belief in the existence of the world and all theory, so that the contents of consciousness can be described just as they appear. Eidetic reduction then draws out the essences.

Dialectical (A) is the method of Hegel, intuitive (B) names an element of the process but not the method, and transcendental (C) describes the character of the resulting philosophy, not the technique of the inquiry.

Answer: A

Phenomenology is a descriptive analysis of subjective phenomena, so the answer is A.

Husserl's phenomenology describes the structures of conscious experience, as it is given to the subject, without theories of causal explanation. It is a descriptive study of experience and of the way things appear in it.

It is not a linguistic study (B), which would be the programme of analytic philosophy, and it is not a realistic study of the world (C), since it suspends judgement on the world's existence. D is therefore wrong.