PhD Doctor of Philosophy Philosophy and You 4 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: You apply a utilitarian calculus to a policy decision and conclude that harming one person to benefit thousands is justified. A critic argues this violates the one person's rights. This tension is central to:
- The is-ought gap
- The conflict between consequentialism and deontology (Correct answer)
- The problem of free will
- The analytic-synthetic distinction
Correct answer: The conflict between consequentialism and deontology
The classic tension between consequentialist maximization of aggregate welfare and deontological constraints that protect individuals regardless of aggregate outcomes is a foundational debate in normative ethics.
Question 2: The Gettier problem undermines the classical tripartite definition of knowledge as justified true belief by showing that:
- Justification is unnecessary for knowledge
- One can have justified true belief without knowledge (Correct answer)
- Truth is subjective
- Belief is always reliable
Correct answer: One can have justified true belief without knowledge
Gettier's 1963 counterexamples demonstrate cases where a person has a justified true belief that still intuitively does not count as knowledge, due to epistemic luck.
Question 3: Philosophers who study 'epistemic injustice' are primarily concerned with:
- Determining the correct theory of knowledge
- Ways in which social identity affects the credibility and capacity granted to knowers (Correct answer)
- Mathematical proofs of logical systems
- The reliability of sensory perception
Correct answer: Ways in which social identity affects the credibility and capacity granted to knowers
Miranda Fricker's concept of epistemic injustice focuses on harms done to people in their capacity as knowers—testimonial injustice (credibility deficits) and hermeneutical injustice (conceptual gaps).
Question 4: Which philosophical position claims that scientific theories are merely useful instruments for prediction and do not describe an underlying reality?
- Scientific realism
- Instrumentalism (anti-realism) (Correct answer)
- Naturalism
- Rationalism
Correct answer: Instrumentalism (anti-realism)
Instrumentalism holds that scientific theories are tools for organizing and predicting experience rather than literal descriptions of unobservable entities.
Question 5: When comparing your philosophical views with a colleague and finding you disagree despite sharing the same evidence, the literature calls this situation:
- A category mistake
- Peer disagreement (Correct answer)
- An analytic-synthetic conflict
- Conceptual confusion
Correct answer: Peer disagreement
The problem of peer disagreement asks whether epistemic peers who share evidence and diverge in belief should suspend judgment, conciliate, or maintain their positions.
Question 6: The phenomenological method developed by Husserl involves 'bracketing' assumptions about the external world—a procedure he called:
- Dialectical synthesis
- Epoché (phenomenological reduction) (Correct answer)
- Transcendental deduction
- Deflationism
Correct answer: Epoché (phenomenological reduction)
The phenomenological epoché suspends the 'natural attitude' toward the existence of the external world to focus purely on the structure of conscious experience.
Question 7: A philosopher argues that language does not simply describe reality but actively shapes and constitutes our experience of it. This position is most consistent with:
- Naive realism
- Linguistic idealism or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in philosophy of language (Correct answer)
- Logical atomism
- Eliminative materialism
Correct answer: Linguistic idealism or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in philosophy of language
The view that linguistic structure shapes thought and experience—ranging from Wittgenstein's later work to strong versions of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis—challenges the picture theory of language.
PhD Doctor of Philosophy Philosophy and You 4
You apply a utilitarian calculus to a policy decision and conclude that harming one person to benefit thousands is justified.
A critic argues this violates the one person's rights.
This tension is central to: