PHI 114 – Graham – Third Essay Set.
Instructions
Below you will find three (3) essay questions. Write answers of at least 500 words each to two (2) questions. Be sure to indicate, in your answer, that you understand the question being asked. Be sure to address each aspect of a question. While there is no upper bound to the number of words that an essay may contain, there should be no impulse to reach much past 600 words, provided each essay stays focused on its question. Return the completed set in class on M 3 December.
Two Special Notes
* If you wish your graded third set returned, or any other as yet not retrieved graded material returned, please include with your submission of this third set an envelope with your mailing address and sufficient postage. I shall put the set in the mail for you. Please note: This is the only way in which to retrieve your set, since the class is not meeting again as a class after the set has been graded. Grades will not be posted. Final course grades will be available from the Registrar.
* Below you will also find a bonus essay question that is worth anywhere from 1-5 points for this set depending upon the quality of the answer. If you answer the question you should refer to at least one of the bonus-options identified for this course. (You may refer to more than one if the options with which you were engaged were more than one and such reference, you believe, will affect the quality of your response). The total point score will not be a direct function of the number of options mentioned but will depend upon the quality of your discussion. The options were/are
Eric Olson’s lecture on ‘When do we begin and end?’.
Terence Cuneo’s lecture on ‘Conditional moral vegetarianism’.
Ingmar Bergman’s movie ‘Through a glass darkly’.
Ingmar Bergman’s movie ‘Winter light’.
Number One. Suppose you are a parent and you are trying to decide where to send your son or daughter to college. You have two options. Wake Forest University (WFU). Midwest Southeastern Northend State University (MSNSU). They differ drastically in price and reputation. You believe that MSNSU offers a quite decent education. You yourself are one of its graduates. But your son or daughter is begging you to send them to Wake. And you want to please them. From a Kantian point of view, what should you decide if your reasons constitute a hypothetical imperative? What should you decide if you are worried about what morality requires of you and you wish your reasons to conform to a categorical imperative? From Sartre’s point of view, what would make this decision (whichever one you make) free? Defend your answers to each of these sub-questions.
Number Two. Defend the following claim. “The belief that snow is white cannot be a state of the brain because the brain is a physical object with nothing but physical states, but the belief that snow is white isn’t a physical state.” In your answer tell why Intentionality (the aboutness of the mental) appears to be something that isn’t physical.
Number Three. Neurological and behavioral similarities between humans and various non-human animals (especially mammals and vertebrates, more generally) have been taken to suggest that we may share the same specific sorts of mental states with them. So, for example, if I believe that snow is white, a polar bear might also believe that snow is white. Is it worth putting our faith in science to confirm that hypothesis (viz. that we and nonhuman animals share the same specific sorts of mental states)? Or is this topic (of the minds of animals as compared with those of human beings) one of those gray areas of human curiosity in which science should not be expected to hold the answer? “We just cannot know with any reasonable degree of scientific certainty what’s going on in the mind of a non-human animal.” Do you agree or disagree?
Bonus Question. This whole course has been about what it means to be a human being and to have a human nature. Hopefully much has been learned through our class sessions. However, learning that is relevant to a course may also take place outside the classroom. Pick one or more of the bonus options and write an essay in which you describe what can be learned about some of topics in this course from that option (or those options).