PHILOS 2CT3 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Appeal To Pity, Confirmation Bias, Internalism And Externalism
8 May 2018
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PHILOS 2CT3 – TEST 1 – REVIEW
1) This review is intended to direct your study of the text and lectures and not replace
such study. 2) Only material on this exam guide may appear on the test. 3) The exam
itself will consist of 15 multiple choice questions and 2 short-answer questions and will
take place in class, Wednesday October 4.
On Bullshit
• Bullshit is not lying Lying is a form of deception that involves expressing
a falsehood
• Because the lie expresses a falsehood it must stand in relation to the truth
as its opposite the liar must know what the truth is, appreciate it for
being true, and intentionally express a falsehood in relation to what is taken
to be true
• Unlike the lie, bullshit is NOT a type of falsehood, but a type of fakery
while a false statement conveys the opposite of what is true, a phony
statement is neither true nor false
• Bullshit is:
1) a casual indifference toward truth
2) when expressed linguistically this indifference is made manifest in
statements that are neither true nor false
3) the express purpose of such statements is to minimally escape the
constraints of truth telling and maximally persuade others to adopt
the same
What Can We Know? Sensation & Perception
• Sensation: experience of the world through our senses of touch, taste, smell,
sight and hearing raw sense data
• Perception: the way we interpret the raw sense data through imagination,
memory and cognition
• For the most part we are naïve realists about experience; i.e. we believe that
the world just is as we sense and perceive it
• Some problems with this view:
1. Selective Perception: the tendency to focus on sense data we are
interested in perceiving preconceived beliefs and emotional states
can influence our perceptions of events
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
2. Constructed Perception: similarity, proximity, continuity and
closure; context dependence, relational comparison
3. Inaccurate Perception & Memory: mistaken identity, hallucination,
physical environment and physiological stress affecting perception
4. Selective Memory: ignorance of or lack of attention to important
details
5. Constructed Memory: post-event information, narrative continuity
and closure, group conformity with testimony
6. Modified Memory: post-event time lapse confuses and/or confounds
memory, transference of recent to older memories in recollection
What Can We Know? Feeling & Emotion
• When we are presented with sense stimuli, we do not simply receive a
sense impression, but are affected by it we perceive the quality of the
sensation i.e. its feeling rough, seeming red, tasting spicy, etc. AND
emotionally respond/react to it i.e. its feeling rough is painful, the spicy
food is disgusting, etc.) at the same time
• Emotion involves:
1. Physical-chemical response (e.g. increased heart rate, release of
nor/epinephrine)
2. Expressive behavior associated with feelings toward the object (e.g.
does it cause arousal or fear, excitement or anger, are we repulsed or
interested, etc.?)
• Even though emotions 1) often MOTIVATE us to make DECISIONS and engage
in ACTION 2) significantly DETERMINE the VALUES & BELIEFS we hold
and 3) often inform the JUDGMENTS we make – we need to be cautious in
relying on emotions for knowledge
Knowledge: Justified True Belief
• For philosophers, S knows that p requires that at least 3 conditions are
met: 1) the subject believes p; 2) p must be true; 3) and there must be
justification or good reason to believe p is true When these conditions are
met, this is called a Justified True Belief (JTB)
• Essentially if we are going to be justified in believing some proposition we
have to have good reason to believe that the proposition is true
• Taking-for-granted: “if it seems that p, then I infer that p, provided no reason
to the contrary occurs to me” problematic because 1) we can be wrong
about how things seem to us (perceptions and values) and 2) we can be
biased about or ignorant of contrary reasons
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
