Assignment - Introduction

Instructions: Please note that the questions below are based on the Unit readings and are intended to be both an outline of the units' material and the basis for your Unit Assessment, so please give your best effort to answering them thoroughly. The task is to respond to all 30 of the questions below. Each question will be worth one point.

The format for submission is to include the questions with the replies. Example:

How does one know what the good life is?

- The good life is...

1. What do people often learn about themselves through the study of philosophy?

2. What are some of the questions we deal with in philosophy? (list 5 of them)

3. List the five or so most important questions or problems you think about.

4. If you had virtually unlimited financial resources at your disposal what would you begin doing with your life?

5. How do you use the term "philosophy"? How do others use the term "philosophy"? Give examples.

6. What value do you think philosophy has both to you as an individual and to us as a society?

7. According to the readings, there are many erroneous ways to define philosophy.  List a minimum of 5 to 7 of these erroneous attempts.

8. How is philosophy defined in the Webster's 9th New Collegiate Dictionary?

9. List the "basic problems" philosophy deals with.

10. Give a formal (dictionary) definition of Logic

11. Give a formal (dictionary) definition of Metaphysics

12. Give a formal (dictionary) definition of Ontology

13. Give a formal (dictionary) definition of Cosmology

14. Give a formal (dictionary) definition of Epistemology.

15. Give a formal (dictionary) definition of Ethics.

16. Give a formal (dictionary) definition of Axiology

17. Give a formal (dictionary) definition of Aesthetics

18. What are the 'attitudes" often associated with philosophical reflection?

19. What are some of the 'effects" of philosophical reflection?

20. What did the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle believe to be the starting point of philosophy? Why do you think he believed this?

21. What meaning does your reading give to the Santa Claus example?

22. Why do your readings suggest that the best definition of philosophy is "the most critical and comprehensive thought process devised by humans?"

23. At the time of Socrates Greek culture was undergoing a major revolution. What were some of the characteristics of that cultural shift?

24. What is the meaning behind the statement: "Philosophy arises out of a cultural background?"

25. Your reading presents some of the elements of Alfred North Whitehead's Theory of Educational Development. Please describe the elements of this theory.

26. What is the coherentist theory of truth, as described in your unit reading?

27. What are some of the developments that mark the origins of philosophical though in the West?

28. List a few of the odd combinations of beliefs, noted in the unit reading.

29. Please explain what your text means when it says, "Yet tolerance itself is a disvalue as post modernists would have promoted it." What are some of the things that those who advocate tolerance cannot be tolerant of?

30. "Most folks think very little about Philosophy.  Of those who do many have some erroneous ideas about the discipline and its history.  One of the most troublesome, for Philosophers, of these mistaken ideas is that it is about opinions." Explain why?