Study Guide for Midterm

Study guide for Midterm

Copyrighted Material - subject to fair use exception
STUDY GUIDE FOR TEST
Reality and the self

The test will include an objective portion (matching, true-false, fill in the blank and/or multiple
choice), some short answer questions, and one essay. You will be responsible for the assigned
readings and information provided on the class site.
The following guide is not exclusive but should help in focusing your attention on key concepts.

Introduction: What is ontology? What is the difference between material and immaterial,
materialism and idealism, dualism and monism?

Lao Tzu (Laozi): Tao, Wu-wei (non-action), tai chi (yin and yang), heaven and earth, ch'i,
myriad things (many or all things), return, being and non-being.
How is the Tao analogous to water, un-carved block, valley spirit, and the female.
Why is the Tao that can be told of not the eternal Tao?
How is the Tao the source of all reality? What does it mean to say it is the mother of all things?
What does it mean to say that there is a doing that comes from not doing?
Is Taoism a monist or dualist theory of reality? (this may be a trick question).

Plato: the theory of forms (ideas), the analogy of the Sun, the form of the Good.
What is a form (idea) in Platos metaphysical theory?
Be able to explain the divided line and what it represents (diagram is contained in the footnotes
of the Plato reading)
Be able to discuss the allegory of the cave. What does it mean? What is its connection to the
divided line?
How does Platos view of reality account for both change and immutability?
Is Plato a monist or a dualist?

Descartes: Methodological doubt, Cogito (thinking Being), body.
How does Descartes arrive at certainty through doubt?
What cant be doubted?
How is the mind distinct from the body?
How does Descartes reestablish the external world?
Is Descartes a monist or a dualist?
How would Descartes answer the question Who am I?


Shankara: Atman, Brahman, Maya, eternal and non-eternal, discrimination, ignorance, five
coverings (Physical, Vital, Mental, Intellectual, Bliss).
Be able to explain the connection between atman and Brahman.
What is the relation of the body to atman?
What is the relation of the universe to Brahman?
Is Shankara a monist or a dualist?
What is the difference between Brahman and Tao? (Answer is not in the book. Think.)
How would Shankara answer the question who am I?
Berkeley and Locke: primary and secondary qualities, kinds of knowledge (ideas of sense,
reason and imagination), abstraction, perception.
Why does Berkeley insist that to be is to be perceived?
What, according to Berkeley, can we know besides our ideas and minds?
How might reality remain constant when no person perceives it?
If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there to perceive it, does it make a sound from Lockes
perspective? From Berkeleys?
Why is it an abstraction to say that an object of sense exists outside of its being perceived?
Is Berkeley a monist or a dualist?
How would Berkeley answer the question who am I?

Searle and Hinrichs: Syntax and semantics, functionalism, materialism, Ockhams razor, Chinese
Room argument, system refutation, behaviorism.
Be able to distinguish between syntax and semantics
How does the Chinese room argument make this distinction clear? Why does Searle think this
means we are not like computers?
Be familiar with the analogy Hinrichs and other functionalists make to computers. (i.e. hardware
is to software as brain is to consciousness. Sensation is to brain as data input is to computer.
Etc. )
What does this view mean for the possibility for artificial intelligence?
How does Hinrichs counter objections to the functionalist view (that is, the view that the brain is
a computer)?
Does the system (room) understand Chinese, according to Searle?
Are Hinrichs and Searle monists or dualists?
How would Searle answer the question Who am I?
How would Hinrichs answer?