Philosophy 1000: Midterm Study Sheet

I. Definitions:

1. A priori knowledge
2. A posteriori knowledge
3. Abductive (Hypothetico-Deductive) Argument
4. Atheist
5. Dilemma
6. Epistemology
7. Equivocation
8. Inductive Argument
9. Principle of Sufficient Reason
10. Theist 
11. Theodicy
12. Valid argument

II. Questions:

1. In order to make an (ideally) convincing argument, what two features must the argument have?

2. Which of the three proofs for the existence of God use a posteriori knowledge?  (May be more than one of them.)

3. Which of the three proofs for the existence of God is an argument appealing to existence and perfection?

4. When Hume criticizes the Teleological Argument, he claims that even if the argument did work, it wouldn’t give us the kind of God we wanted.  What kind of higher power would the argument give us, according to Hume?

5. According to Hick, what unhappy results would occur if we lived in a universe without any “evil” (pain and suffering)?

6. Aquinas and Clarke both make versions of the Cosmological Argument. How are their two versions different – specifically, what does Aquinas assume, which Clarke does not?

7. What is the natural weakness of of an Abductive argument (an “Inference to the Best Explanation”) – that is, if I make an abductive argument to support my views, what could a critic naturally say in response? 

8. The evidentialist says we must follow the following principle of rational belief:

Evidentialist Principle: It is only rational to believe something if it is known from the senses, or is immediately obvious (like facts of math and logic), or else can be deduced from some other data which does come from those sources.

According to Alvin Plantinga, what is the problem with this Evidentialist Principle?

9.  Clifford says it is only rational to believe a claim if we have compelling evidence for that claim (in other words, only if the evidence ‘forces’ our intellects to admit that the claim is true).  (i) According to James, what is the ultimate reason Clifford has for holding this ‘rule of rationality’?  (ii) What is an example James gives of a case where we have to act on a belief, before we can have (“compelling”) evidence for it?   

10. Does van Fraassen think Pascal’s views lean more toward the ‘obligation’ model of knowledge, like Clifford, or more toward the ‘permission’ model of James?

III. Short Essays:

1. Briefly state the Cosmological Argument for the existence of God; then state one traditional criticism of the argument.

2. Briefly state Pascal's Wager argument; then state one traditional criticism of the argument.

3. Briefly state the atheistic Argument from the Existence of Evil; then state one traditional criticism (response) to it.