IQ 9
Rachel Sargent
1. "Principles can protect individuals from their own individuality" What does
this mean? Why do individuals need or want to be protected from their
individuality?
2. Nozick appears to equate useful with rational. Would you agree that it is
valid to do so? Why or why not?
3. "Someone who has been sorely tried might find principles much more useful
than someone who has had it easy all his or her life." Why would this be? Is
it necessarily true, or could the reverse happen?
Nilima
-- 1. In the second paragraph on p 1730 of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle makes
the distinction between how exact one can get when dealing with different
subject matters. He says "precision is not to be sought for alike in all
decisions" and asks his reader to take this into consideration when reading his
philosophy. Is this a copout or is he being realistic? Many of the authors
we've read attempt to use "hard science" reasoning to prove their "soft"
points. Pick a few authors we've read, Plato, Griffiths, Fish, for example and
discus how their methods compare to Aristotle in this regard.
2 Discuss Aristotle's views of knowledge. Do you agree that knowledge for its
own sake is valuable? You can tie this discussion in with his views on
happiness. Does he think tht knowledge leads to happiness?
3. Is Aristotle arrogant? He doesn't paint a very rosy picture of people in
general? Though your definitions of arrogant might differ try to determine if he is objective in his classifications of people and their motives for action.
Zuzana
1) Now days, there are types of logic which aren't like on/off (otherwise called true/false switches). One of them is fuzzy logic (fuzzy), which works like this: in on/off logic, on=1, off=0 --- so 'on' has a truth value of 1, 'off' has a truth value of 0. In fuzzy, something can have a truth value of somewhere between 0 and 1, like 3/10. In fuzzy, things don't have to be either true or false. Based on this, what would Aristotle think? Would he rework 'de Interpretatione'? If so, how?
2) From the movie 'Run, Lola, Run', are life and luck just purely timing? Do you control this timing? Could things happen in a different way from how they do?
3) Consider If you were thinking of a new way to categorize things, because before you had believed Aristotle but now you don't. You'd have to create self consistent set of causes to describe things, which had no redundancies and could stand by itself as the one way to categorize things. How would you do that and where would you start? What would be your criteria for becoming causes, or what would your causes be?
Katie Cook
1) Is Aristotle a determinist, or does he believe in free will? In one of the
senses of necessary, he seems to be a determinist, but in another sense, he
seems to believe that things could have been otherwise...
2)What does Run Lola Run have to say about determinism? It seems that if
determinism is true, we couldn't have had the three scenarios...
3)Global skepticism is in some ways uninteresting, but nonetheless, it seems
that we shouldn't believe in anything unless there is evidence for it. So what
should we do?
Joe Briggs
1. Nozick says that the ability to formulate true beliefs is evolutionarily
selected for. What would some of the first common beliefs have been that
would have helped humans to survive?
2. If there is truly degrees of belief would that lead us to believe that
nothing we believe is ever certain because there could always be something
of higher degree to override it?
3. If beliefs are a result of evolution would there be any reason to believe
in absolute morality? Wouldn't all beliefs simply be arbitrary ideas that
at some point helped man survive?
Ashley Orenberg
According to the reading, do you feel Aristotle is a determinist? Why or why not? How would he respond to the idea of free will? Does it still exist if we live in a deterministic world?
If we do live in a deterministic world, could one claim that he/she did a specific action in order to fulfill the role he/she felt was determined for them or does deterministic just mean that the action he/she did was already determined? How does the concept of blame and guilt fit into a deterministic world? If we aren¹t responsible for our actions, who is? Who is to blame when we commit a crime? Sorry about all the questions at once, but basically the question is are we responsible for our own actions in a deterministic world and if no, who is?
Line 9 on page 1558 of Aristotle¹s Metaphysics states that ³Šthe cause of all goods is the good itself.² Does this mean that good things are caused merely because good exists in the world? Or does the good in the world give more incentive to do other goods? What does this statement mean to you? Do you agree with it?
Nathan Mahany
Nathan Mahany
1) Could the movie “Thirteen conversations about one thing” be used as an
argument for determinism? Why or why not? Consider the girl who gets hit by
the car and her attitude throughout the experience.
2) I strongly believe in determinism, from television “snow”, to the particle
ejection of radioactive atoms, although the later has yet to be explained.
Although we may not yet understand how or why certain things occur, this is due
to our lack of knowledge, not a flaw in the deterministic theory. Do you
agree? If so, why? If not, prove me wrong.
3) How does Aristotle’s Metaphysics describing the four causes by which one can
describe something coincide with the Categories and their method of
categorization? Is this simply another possible method or do the two go “hand
in hand”?
Graham Budd
1. In class we discussed whether or not choice exists in a totally deterministic world. Can it? It is possible that 'choice' in this world is a restriction of the "possible" we've discussed in class? For example we said that in some sense it is possible for me to be in Hawaii right now, in another sense it is obliviously impossible because I am sitting at my computer in my dorm room typing this right now. Are these two senses of possible applicable in a deterministic world?
2. What do we mean when we say choice exists? I take it to mean that if a person were to be put into exactly the same situation multiple times (note this is as far as I can determine impossible) the outcomes would be different. Is this a fair test of choice, or free will? If not why not, and what test could be used if any?
3. Does leading a good life mean following that which is pleasurable? I cannot believe that pleasure (at least as I understand it) is a correct measure of goodness. A great many evils in our world seem to be attributable to people following pleasure. In what sense is pleasure then meant in the text?