PhB Bachelor of Philosophy Metaphysics and Reality 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Causal determinism holds that every event is:
- Uncaused and random
- Caused by prior events according to laws of nature, making the future fixed (Correct answer)
- Caused by mental decisions alone
- Caused by divine intervention
Correct answer: Caused by prior events according to laws of nature, making the future fixed
Determinism asserts that the causal history of the universe plus the laws of nature logically entail every subsequent event, leaving no room for alternative futures.
Question 2: Modal realism, defended by David Lewis, is the view that:
- Only the actual world exists
- Possible worlds are abstract constructions of language
- All possible worlds are equally real and concrete (Correct answer)
- Necessity and possibility are linguistic conventions
Correct answer: All possible worlds are equally real and concrete
Lewis argued that possible worlds are not fictional or abstract but are as real as the actual world, differing only in being spatio-temporally isolated from us.
Question 3: The distinction between de dicto and de re necessity concerns:
- The difference between analytic and synthetic truths
- Whether necessity attaches to a proposition or to an object's property (Correct answer)
- The scope of modal operators in formal logic
- The relationship between essence and accident
Correct answer: Whether necessity attaches to a proposition or to an object's property
De dicto necessity is necessity of a proposition ('necessarily, all bachelors are unmarried'); de re necessity is an object having a property necessarily ('Aristotle is necessarily a human').
Question 4: Essentialism holds that objects have certain properties:
- Only relative to particular descriptions
- Necessarily—properties without which the object would not be that very object (Correct answer)
- Only in virtue of social conventions
- Contingently, with no properties being truly necessary
Correct answer: Necessarily—properties without which the object would not be that very object
Essentialists claim some properties are essential to an object's identity—it could not exist without them—while others are merely accidental.
Question 5: Which metaphysical view holds that time is an additional dimension on par with spatial dimensions (the 'block universe')?
- Presentism
- Growing block theory
- Eternalism (four-dimensionalism) (Correct answer)
- Dynamic theory of time
Correct answer: Eternalism (four-dimensionalism)
Eternalism treats past, present, and future as equally real temporal parts of a four-dimensional spacetime block, with no objective 'now.'
Question 6: Hume's problem of induction challenges the justification of:
- Deductive arguments
- Inferring universal laws from a finite set of observations (Correct answer)
- Mathematical proofs
- A priori knowledge
Correct answer: Inferring universal laws from a finite set of observations
Hume argued that no logical or experiential justification can support the assumption that the future will resemble the past, undermining inductive reasoning.
PhB Bachelor of Philosophy Metaphysics and Reality 2
Causal determinism holds that every event is: