The exam will cover the odd-numbered, single-digit questions (1, 3, 5, 7, 9) in March and April, from Sick Souls , Healthy Minds, Why Grow Up, and Fantasyland, and will include bonus questions from Little History of Philosophy, How the World Thinks, and the final report presentations.
Remember William James’s advice on how to prepare for an examination (but this only works if you get started studying several days before the exam):
If you want really to do your best in an examination, fling away the book the day before, say to yourself, "I won't waste another minute on this miserable thing, and I don't care an iota whether I succeed or not." Say this sincerely, and feel it; and go out and play, or go to bed and sleep, and I am sure the results next day will encourage you to use the method permanently.
K ch6; WJ "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings"; "A Pluralistic Mystic"
1. The greatest use of life is what, according to WJ?
2. What did WJ write to Benjamin Blood about education?
3. What was WJ's final entreaty in "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings"?
4. What does WJ say is the difference between resignation and hope?
5. What would we lose, if we were without feeling?
6. When does a life become "genuinely significant"?
7. "To miss ___ ___ is to miss all."
8. "Life is always worth living" if you have responsive sensibilities like ____'s.
9. What is distinctive about B.P. Blood's version of mysticism?
10. What's WJ's last word in philosophy?
K ch5; WJ Pragmatism Lec VI, "Pragmatism's Conception of Truth"; "The Gospel of Relaxation"
1. What "vectors of meaning" saved James's life?
2. Embracing the pragmatic theory of truth is a commitment to what?
3. As a professional academic philosopher, Kaag has trouble remembering what?
4. James's hallway (corridor) metaphor, treating pragmatism primarily as a method in philosophy, reminds Kaag of what?
5. What's the difference between truth and facts, for WJ?
6. Embracing free will is the first step in what?
7. What is Binnenleben?
8. Where does "zest" come from, according to WJ, and what is it?
9. For James pragmatism was a protest against what proposition about salvation?
K ch 4 Consciousness and Transcendence; Principles of Psychology ch IX The Stream of Thought
1. Tragedies that befell him in his 40s led to James's quest for ___.
2. What experience led James to "the taste of the intolerable mysteriousness" of existence?
3. What did James think is sacrificed when we study the mind in objective analytic terms?
4. What did Thoreau say at the end of Walden?
5. His experiments with nitrous oxide gave James what warning?
6. What did James say about his house in Chocorua?
7. What does James mean by "continuous," when he says consciousness is continuous?
8. What metaphors most naturally describe consciousness?
9. We all split the universe into what two great halves?
FL
1. What are Unicorns (in the tech-finance sense)?
2. How does Nick Paumgarten define magical thinking?
3. What's been a "paramount fetish on the right for years"?
4. What did Trump understand "better than almost everybody"?
5. How did the Internet enable and empower Trump and Fantasyland?
6. What is "the most disturbing power of contradiction"?
7. What good news does Andersen hope is true?
K ch3-Psychology and the Healthy Mind; Principles of Psychology ch9-Habit; K ch 4 Consciousness and Transcendence; Principles of Psychology ch IX The Stream of Thought; FL 45-46;
1. James wrote Principles of Psychology to answer what question?
2. What did Aristotle say about habit?
3. What realization would make young people give more heed to their conduct?
4. James complained in 1884 that what devoured his time?
5. James thought everybody should do what each day?
6. How is habit "the enormous fly-wheel of society"?
7. There is "no more miserable human being" than ...
8. There is "no more contemptible type of human character" than ...
K ch2; FL 43-44; The Moral Equivalent of War
1. "Anhedonia" is what?
2. What was Renouvier's definition of free will?
3. Renouvier said an individual's will could break what?
4. What must one frequently do, according to James, to establish reciprocity in a relationship?
5. "Looking on the bright side," though often not objectively warranted, is nonetheless what?
6. Why did James think most of his contemporaries would not have preferred to "expunge" the Civil War?
7. Readiness for war is the essence of what, according to General Lea?
8. James says he devoutly believes in what, and in a future that has outlawed what?
9. Non-military conscription of our "gilded youth" would do what for them, according to James?
FL
1. What gives Andersen "the heebie-jeebies"?
2. What does Disneyfication denote?
3. A third of people at theme parks are what?
4. Andersen thinks we've become more like what?
5. Andersen argues that Americans are not just exceptionally religious, but that what?
K ch1; WJ, The Dilemma of Determinism; FL 41-42
1. Calvinism set out, for Henry James Sr., what impossible task?
2. Kaag thinks the Civil War gave WJ his first intimation that what?
3. WJ's entire life had been premised on what expectation?
4. What did WJ say (in 1906, to H.G. Wells) about "SUCCESS"?
5. What Stoic hope did young WJ share with his friend Tom Ward?
6. What thought seeded "the dilemma of determinism" for WJ?
7. As WJ explicated determinism in 1884, the future has no what?
8. WJ found what in Huxley's evolutionary materialism alarming?
9. Determinism has antipathy to the idea of what?
10. To the "sick soul," what seems blind and shallow?
FL 41-42
1. What became of the 1998 study that promoted the false belief that vaccines cause autism?
2. How many people refusing vaccines can lead to the collapse of herd immunity?
3. What do experts say about most mass killers?
4. Who wrote a "demented" letter on behalf of gun rights in 1995?
Kaag, Sick Souls (K) Prologue; William James (WJ), Is Life Worth Living? (link to full text below*); FL 39-40
1. Young William James's problem, as he felt "pulled in too many directions" and worried that we might be nothing but cogs in a machine, was ____.
2. What is distinctive about "our age" that makes James particularly relevant?
3. What happened on Feb. 6, 2014 that prompted Kaag to write this book?
4. "Too much questioning and too little active responsibility lead" to what?
5. Human history is "one long commentary on" what?
6. A "wider world... unseen by us" may exist, just as our world does for ___.
7. The "deepest thing in our nature," which deals with possibilities rather than finished facts, is a "dumb region of the heart" called (in German) ___.
FL 39-40
1. Who's the (former-fringe) freak and Sandy Hook "truther" who nonetheless draws the line at shape-shifting reptilian humanoids?
2. Where did the reptilian conspiracy idea begin?
3. What started to happen with "unhinged" people in the 90s?
4. What fictional work and author influenced libertarian/conservative politicians like Paul Ryan?
5. What has the GOP become, besides a distinctly Christian political party?
6. What two states "require officeholders to believe in Heaven and Hell"?
7. What did H.L. Mencken say about "civilized Tennesseans"?
WGU -p.234. FL 37-38
1. What mixed messages keep us in states of immaturity?
2. The older you get, the more you know what?
3. What does the U-bend tell us about aging?
4. Growing up means realizing what?
5. Philosophy is an attempt to wrestle with what three questions, according to Kant?
6. The young have only vague and erroneous notions of what, according to de Beauvoir?
7. Shakespeare's As You Like It is a gloss on what modern message?
8. Philosophers seek answers to children's questions such as what?
FL
1. What was the message of The Courage to Heal?
2. What happened in Bakesfield CA in the early '80s?
3. A line of "consequential synergy" extends from flying saucers to what?
4. What's important to recognize about the Branch Davidian cult in Texas in the '90s?
5. What tv-radio"symbiosis" stoked conspiracism in the '90s?
WGU -p.192. FL 35-36
1. What hallmark of modernity reversed Plato's and Aristotle's judgment?
2. What gives life meaning, for Kant?
3. In a truly human society, according to Marx, how would our capacities to work develop?
4. Most jobs involve what, according to Paul Goodman?
5. People were certain, as late as 2008, that what?
6. What alternatives to consumerism have small groups begun to develop?
FL
1. What are "squishies"?
2. Who (who should have been defenders of reason) instead became enablers of Fantasyland?
3. Who is Jodi Dean?
4. What is Responsive Ed?
5. Why did Jefferson say America should neither ban nor embrace any particular religion?
MAR 24 WGU -p.165. FL 33-34.
1. Kant's definition of maturity is what?
2. Education, travel, and work share what common purpose, ideally?
3. You're not grown-up if you've not rejected what?
4. Why should languages and music be learned as early as possible?
5. What is the message of Rousseau's Emile?
6. What does it mean to love a book?
7. The internet, says Nick Carr, is a machine geared for what?
8. If you don't travel you're likely to suppose what?
9. What did Rousseau say about those who do not walk?
10. What is travel's greatest gift?
FL
1. Who was Mary Baker Eddy, and what was her basic idea?
2. How is Oprah like Ronald Reagan?
3. What's the "law of attraction"?
WGU -p.122. FL 31-32
1. "The miracle that saves the world," said Hannah Arendt, is ____.
2. For Kant the most important fact about us is what?
3. What is "the metaphysical wound at the heart of the universe"?
4. How did David Hume dispel "this philosophical melancholy and delirium"?
5. What did Kant say we must take seriously, in order to grow up?
6. What must reason find intolerable about the world?
FL
1. What percentage of evangelicals believe "Jesus will return no later than he year 2050"?
2. Who's "the most prominent blame-the-victims horror-storyteller"?
3. How many Americans say they believe in the devil or demonic possession?
4. How many people in the U.K. said they have no religion?
5. What's the latest scholarly consensus about America's exceptional religiosity?
Rawls, Turing & Searle, Singer-LH 38-40, FL 29-30, WGU -p.79.
1. What did John Rawls call the thought experiment he believed would yield fair and just principles, and what was its primary device?
2. Under what circumstances would Rawls' theory permit huge inequalities of wealth between people?
3. What was the Imitation Game, and who devised a thought experiment to oppose it?
4. What, according to Searle, is involved in truly understanding something?
5. How do some philosophers think we might use computers to achieve immortality?
6. What does Peter Singer say we should sacrifice, to help strangers?
7. Why did Singer first become famous?
8. How does Singer represent the best tradition in philosophy?
FL
1. What historical "rhyme" resulted when the legal end of white supremacy was in sight in the early 1960s?
2. What fabricated story did President Reagan tell the Israeli Prime Minister?
3. What "reversion" occurred after the Fairness Doctrine was eliminated?
4. What has the Internet done for the proponents of unreason?
5. 80% of Americans say they never doubt what?
6. What did Pope John Paul II say about evolution in 1996? What did Pope Francis say about Genesis in 2014?
WGU
1. After Plato, the next philosopher to turn his attention to the details of child-rearing was who?
2. What's the first step of human reason, according to Kant?
3. If we have hope for moral progress, what do we want for the next generation?
4. What was Orwell's nightmare?
5. What "perfidious reversal leaves us permanently confused"?
6. What are you committed to, if you're committed to Enlightenment?
7. What is freedom, according to Rousseau and Kant?
8. What's the key to whether or not we grow up?
Wittgenstein, Arendt, Popper & Kuhn, Foot & Thomson-LH 34-37, FL 27-28, WGU Introduction-p.35.
LH
1. What did John Rawls call the thought experiment he believed would yield fair and just principles, and what was its primary device?
2. Under what circumstances would Rawls' theory permit huge inequalities of wealth between people?
3. What was the Imitation Game, and who devised a thought experiment to oppose it?
4. What, according to Searle, is involved in truly understanding something?
5. How do some philosophers think we might use computers to achieve immortality?
6. What does Peter Singer say we should sacrifice, to help strangers?
7. Why did Singer first become famous?
8. How does Singer represent the best tradition in philosophy
Susan Neiman, Why Grow Up? Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age (WGU -p.35)
1. Being grown-up is widely considered to be what?
2. Why did Kant say we choose immaturity?
3. Why is judgement important?
4. What is "the most pernicious bit of idealization"?
5. What is philosophy's greatest task?
FL
1. What changed for pro wrestling in the 1980s?
2. What happened in the 1980s to make dressing up for Halloween a "thing"?
3. What former child star had a ranch called Neverland in middle age?
4. How did the advent of home video, cable, and the Internet make adults more childlike?
Peirce & James, Nietzsche, Freud-LH 28-30, FL 23-24, HWT 25-26.
1. What's the point of James's squirrel story?
2. Who said truth is what we would end up with if we could run all the experiments and investigations we'd like to? (And what's a word his name rhymes with?)
3. What did Bertrand Russell say about James's theory of truth?
4. What 20th century philosopher carried on the pragmatist tradition? What did he say about the way words work?
5. What did Nietzsche mean by "God is dead"? (And what's a word his name rhymes with?)
6. Where did Nietzsche think Christian values come from?
7. What is an Ubermensch, and why does Nigel find it "a bit worrying"?
8. How did Nietzsche differ from Kant but anticipate Freud?
9. What were the three great revolutions in thought, according to Freud?
10. The "talking cure" gave birth to what?
11. Why did Freud think people believe in God?
12. What was Karl Popper's criticism of Freudian psychoanalysis?
HWT
1. What really distinguishes utilitarianism, for Baggini?
2. How did Mozi's maxim resemble J.ZS. Mill's principle of utility?
3. Each item of Jonathan Israel's key principles of Enlightenment concerns what?
4. Pluralism is often mistaken for what?
FL
1. What are paradigm shiftds? When do they occur?
2. Charles Tart devoted his career to proving what?
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