The Limits of Knowledge Assignment

The Limits of Knowledge Assignment
The Limits of Knowledge Assignment
1. concerns the challenging claim that the contents of any
mind but one’s own can never constitute objects of knowledge.
(A) Psychological egoism
(B) Idealism
(C) Pyrrhonian skepticism
(D) Contextualism
(E) The problem of other minds
2. According to Immanuel Kant, whatever human beings can have knowledge
about resides in the phenomenal world, whereas the world,
the world of things-in-themselves, is forever beyond our cognitive grasp.
(A) noumenal
(B) real
(C) supernatural
(D) objective
(E) virtual
Epistemology ❮ 123
The Limits of Knowledge
The Limits of Knowledge Assignment
3. Which of the following is the best critical response to the claim that
one can tell that one is not dreaming by citing some experience that
distinguishes dreams from waking reality?
(A) This is not something we need to worry about, practically speaking.
(B) A benevolent God would not allow us to be so incapable of telling
the difference between dreams and waking reality in the first place.
(C) Any distinguishing experience could itself be dreamt.
(D) Waking reality is sometimes very dreamlike.
(E) There is no difference between dreams and waking reality.
4. René Descartes, in his Meditations on First Philosophy, considers several
skeptical scenarios. The contemplation of what possibility allows Descartes
to cast doubt even on mathematical knowledge?
(A) The possibility that he is just a brain in a vat
(B) The possibility that he is insane
(C) The possibility that an evil demon is deceiving him
(D) The possibility that he is dreaming
(E) The possibility that he is in the Matrix
5. Which of the following best illustrates the epistemic closure principle?
(A) If p entails q, and if p is true, then q is true.
(B) If I don’t know that I’m not just a brain in a vat, then I don’t know
that I have hands.
(C) If p entails not-q, then if I know that q is true, I know that p is false.
(D) If I know that I have hands, then I know that I’m not just a brain
in a vat.
(E) If I know that p is true, and if I know that p entails q, then I know
that q is true.
The Limits of Knowledge Assignment
6. The argument from analogy is an attempt to defuse skepticism about
.
(A) the external world
(B) abstract objects
(C) God
(D) other minds
(E) mathematical truth
124 ❯ McGraw-Hill’s 500 Philosophy Questions
7. An empiricist would most likely be skeptical about the existence
of .
(A) a posteriori knowledge
(B) objective knowledge
(C) a priori knowledge
(D) fallible knowledge
(E) subjective knowledge
8. G. E. Moore, early 20th-century defender of common sense, attacked
skepticism about the external world with these famous words:
(A) “Doubt makes sense only in a context of non-doubt.”
(B) (Uttered while kicking a rock) “I refute it thus!”
(C) “God’s perfect benevolence would not allow me to be so deceived in
belief that the external world exists.”
(D) “Here is one hand, and here is another.”
(E) “If it can be sprayed, it’s real.”
9. The kind of skepticism displayed in Descartes’s works is best described
as .
(A) scientific skepticism
(B) ordinary skepticism
(C) methodological skepticism
(D) Pyrrhonian skepticism
(E) academic skepticism
10. David Hume is famous for raising skeptical doubts about all but which
of the following?
(A) Causality
(B) The self
(C) The external world
(D) Miracles
(E) Mathematics
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