Study questions--English 4/4H Ideas

Study Questions

Overview

Study questions are used to

• promote working in small groups
• encourage more productive class discussions
• provide a change of pace

Sample

The following questions were used to stimulate analysis and then discussion about an article (Between Science and Religion: Modern Philosophy and the Enlightenment) used as introductory material to the course.

Questions

• Section 1:
  • How is “modernity” simultaneously subjective and objective? What are the advantages to the practitioner of these apparently mutually exclusive perspectives?
  • How does science fit into the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment view of the world and people’s place in it?
• Section 2:
  • What are the claims of Descartes to being the “father of modern philosophy”?
  • Why does the handout argue instead for Montaigne?
• Section 3:
  • What are the basic themes of Descartes’ philosophy that “have come to define much if not most of philosophy”?
  • What context is necessary to understand Descartes, and how does this context show up in his work?
  • Descartes’ most famous statement is probably the cogito. What are its implications?
  • “ ‘Two plus two equals four’ is just as certainly true in a dream as it is in waking life. Not everything can be doubted.” Criticize this statement, in part by deconstructing it. (For the latter exercise, think what the statement “2+2=4” actually means a) abstractly and b) in terms of “the real world”.)
  • Does the assertion (we can accept it as fact for the purposes of this discussion) that “God is necessarily good and ‘the fountain of truth’” require that God not be deceiving Descartes “in such a way that he could never discover the truth”?
  • What is the difference between deduction and induction? Give a non-trivial example of each kind of inference.
  • What points does the article raise against Descartes’ argument flowing from the cogito (p 183)?
  • What is the problem with transferring Descartes’ “clear and distinct ideas” from the arithmetical/geometrical examples given (“two plus two equals four”, “a triangle has three sides”) to philosophical/theological claims (“God must exist,” “there is a real external world independent of our perceptions of it”)?
  • What, according to the article, was “so tremendously new and important about Descartes”?
  • What does the article give as the primary characteristics of subjectivity as Descartes used it?
  • What were the practical advantages to “natural philosophy” (which came to be what we now consider as “science”) of the doctrine of Cartesian dualism?
  • Explain and then critique the last sentence of the section.

Terms:

These terms need to be identified well enough that the references to them in the article make sense. I’ll do the first one as an example. The sentence in which it appears starts off “From the bloody violence of the Thirty Years’ War…” Thirty Years’ War: A long war that started from religious causes but that quickly involved significant political disputes and consequences. It resulted in casualties of about 15-20% of the entire population in the lands in which it was fought, both directly from war and from associated diseased spread by the various armies. It changed the political power structure of the entire continent in which it was fought (Europe) and had lasting consequences in terms of the way Westerners began to think of the nation-state.”

Response:'

The scope of the casualties is important to mention because of the phrase “the bloody violence”; and it’s important to mention the religious aspect because one of the subjects of this section is religion and science; finally, it’s necessary to mention the political aspects and consequences because the context of the paragraph, which gives the sentences that “the story of modern philosophy…is also a story of power and politics.” While you’re welcome to add in the major participants in the war, for the purposes of the context of this citation, one doesn’t really need to know that it was fought mostly on German soil and that the big losers in the war were Spain and the Holy Roman Empire with the political “winners” being ultimately France and, to a lesser extent, Sweden.

• Thirty Years’ War
• Erasmus
• Greek/Roman Skeptics
• Rousseau
• Hesiod
• Thales
• Martin Luther
• Hobbes
• Bacon
• Scholasticism
• Anselm
• Aquinas
• Doctrine of substance
• Cartesian dualism

Groups for the project:

Group 1

Alsup DeLuca Hamel Holz Shouse

Group 2

Carver Flowers Helfenstein Kolandjian Youts

Group 3

Cooper Fuchs Higbie Mauel

--Draulston 11:21, 19 August 2008 (CDT)