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PAPER TITLE: EXPLORING PHILOSOPHY

DATE: Wednesday, 12 June 2019

PART 1

Question ONE

What is Hume’s view of the self? Is it convincing?

SOLUTION

According to Hume, all the nice and subtle questions concerning personal identity can never be possibly decided and should be regarded as grammatical rather than philosophical difficulties. Hume posits that identity depends upon the relations of ideas, and these relations are what produce identity by means of the easy transition which they occasion. But as the relations and the ease of the transition may diminish by insensible degrees, there are no such standards by which we can decide any dispute concerning the time they acquire or lose a title to the name of identity.

According to Hume, all the disputes concerning the identity of connected objects are merely verbal except so far as the relation of parts gives rise to some fiction or imaginary principle of union.

Hume claims that no impression is constant and invariable, whether pain or pleasure, grief or joy, passion, sensations, that none of them exist at the same time. Therefore, it cannot be from any of these impressions or any other that the idea of self is derived…

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Question TWO

Derek Parfit claims that ‘I should not be unduly concerned about the self that will be descended from the one I am now’. Why does he think so? Is he right?

PART 2

Question THREE

What is Aquinas ‘Second Way’? What, if anything, does it ultimately succeed in showing

Question FOUR

What is the problem of evil? Does it show that there is not a perfectly powerful, perfectly good God?

Question FIVE

‘Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry’ (Bentham). Discuss with reference to Mill’s distinction between higher and lower pleasures.

Question SIX

What, if anything, does the personhood or non-personhood of the fetus show about the moral permissibility of abortion?

Question SEVEN

Does Descartes successfully establish that he exists?

Question EIGHT

Compare Karl Popper’s view of the scientific method with the traditional view that he was criticising.

Question NINE

Are the mind and body distinct substances, as Descartes argued?

Question TEN

Is physicalism about the mind compatible with the phenomenon of consciousness?

Question ELEVEN

Critically assess the ‘luck egalitarian’ view of Ronald Dworkin.

Question TWELVE

What is Nozick’s libertarian response to Rawls’s theory of distributive justice, and how successful is it?

[END OF QUESTION PAPER]

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Last updated: Sep 02, 2021 12:15 PM