PHI 2011: Philosophical Reasoning                                                              Final Exam              

Due as e-mail attachment on 12/7 by 11:59 p.m. or at my office (on a 3.5” disk or in hard copy form) on 12/7 by 4:00 p.m.

 

Answer any 3 of the following questions, but at least one from each section (i.e., one from section I, one from II, and one from III).  For a take-home exam, your answers should be approximately 2-3 pages in length per question.   Use textual references/quotations where appropriate and argue for your position.  Remember that you may turn this exam in either electronically or in hard copy format, but in either case, it is due on December 7th.   They cannot be accepted late since grades are due at the registrar’s office very soon after final exams are over.

 

I.                     Ethical Theories.

  1. Suppose there is a man who risks his life to save a drowning child.   He explains his action in the following way:   I really didn’t act selfishly, that is, I didn’t risk my own life for the sake of the drowning child.   I am the sort of person who gets satisfaction or pleasure from helping others, and I desire this sort of pleasure so much that it outweighs my desire to protect my own life.  So, I was really acting to get the future pleasure, not to save the child.  (Example adapted from Philosophical Problems and Arguments, p. 351.)

Evaluate the moral value of the action and the moral agent from the point of view of ethical egoism and from Kantian Deontology.

 

  1. (Adapted from the text, p. 353) – Suppose you want to decide whether to cheat on this (or any other) exam.   What is the maxim (rule) by which you would be acting if you cheated, and how do you evaluate your decision based on Utilitarian or Virtue Theory considerations?

 

    II.  The Critique of Reason in Lloyd’s The Man of Reason

 

1.       Focus your attention on any one of Lloyd’s arguments concerning the devaluation of the feminine with respect to what it is to be rational.  Explain the argument, and evaluate its effectiveness.  That is, choose some element of Lloyd’s book that you find particularly interesting, annoying, fascinating, right, or wrong, and then summarize the position she takes.  Next, provide your own argument in support of, or against, her position.

 

2.       Do you agree with Lloyd that Hume’s notion that reason is and ought only to be a slave to the passions is a “subtle reinforcement” of “old patterns” of thinking?  Why or why not?  Defend your answer.



III.     Oakeshott on “Rationalism in Politics” and “Rational Conduct”

 

1.       What is Oakeshott’s position regarding the classically rationalist notion of the conception of what is reasonable or rational?   Why does he claim that it fails?   Do you agree with him?  Why or why not?  Defend your answer.

 

    2.   For Oakeshott, what is rationalistic politics and why is it an incomplete and inappropriate conception of political  activity?