- •Philosophy for International Business: examination issues / questions
- •1) Define the difference between philosophy and common sense
- •2) Define the difference between philosophy and humanities/science
- •3) Define the difference between philosophy and ideology
- •4) What are the three general branches of philosophy/what are the basic philosophical questions?
- •5) Explain the meaning and significance of “the arché question”
- •6)The being and becoming dilemma in early Greek philosophy
- •7)Explain Zeno’s paradoxes
- •8)Is total flux chaotic? Explain the nature of change in the system of Heraclitus
- •9)Define dialectic
- •10)Virtue in Greek philosophy. Explain the meaning of knowledge in Socrate’s ethics
- •11) Explain “Eutyfro dilemma”
- •13)Plato’s theory of ideas: the conception of participation
- •14)Plato’s theory of ideas: the allegory of the cave
- •15)Plato’s theory of ideas: the ideal state
- •16)Aristotle: syllogisms
- •19)Aristotle: the theory of virtue (Golden Mean)
- •20)Aristotle: what does it mean to be a political animal?
- •21)The existence of God: ontological argument as formulated by St. Anselm
- •23)The existence of God: Pascal’s wager
- •25)Descartes: the Cartesian method – its main assumptions and functions
- •26)Descartes: cogito and the mind/body problem
- •27)The theory of substance: monism and monistic theories
- •28)The theory of substance: pluralism and pluralistic theories
- •30)Locke’s tabula rasa and the critique of nativism.
- •31)Locke: primary and secondary qualities
- •34)Hume: the critique of necessary connection between cause and effect
- •35)Kant: a prori /a posteriori and analytic / synthetic judgments
- •36)Kant: forms of sensible intuition and categories and “the second Copernican revolution”
- •37)Kant: is metaphysics a science?
- •38)Kant ethics: categorical imperative
23)The existence of God: Pascal’s wager
Pascal simply stated that we do not have to proove the existence of God (since it is impossible within the framework of reason) – we can make a bet instead.
Pascal’s wager is an argument for belief in God based on probability theory
Pascal proposed that to believe in God or not constitutes a wager that he exists or does not exist. Being alive and human we cannot avoid making a bet on one side or the other.
If God exists then to believe in him is to receive eternal life, while to deny him is to suffer damnation. If he does not exist, than to either receive or refuse him is to lose nothing. Hence, the wise gambler will choose to accept God, since to win the wager is to win all, and to lose is to lose nothing.
24: Theodicy: how to explain suffering and injustice?
The term theodicy was introduced by a German XVII century philosopher Gottfreid Wilhelm Leibniz.
The word theodicy derives from Greek (theos – god, dike – justice) and can be translated as the God’s justice.
Theodicy is a vindication of the divine attributes, particularly holiness and justice, in establishing or allowing the existence of physical and moral evil
Even if we find the existence of God believeable or we just believe in Him, or we think it is problabe that he exists, there is one more problem to be confronted, namely the problem of theodicy.
In other words, very often we are troubled by the same old question:If God is good and just why the world he had created is so full of evil and suffering?
Many empirical data, for example the experience of injustice and violance may contradict the idea of an almighty and just God.
Why has the God allowed Holocaust. would a perfectly good and just do that?
Theodicies usually claim that evil and suffering are a necessary condition for the achievement of God's greater plan that is even greater God.
25)Descartes: the Cartesian method – its main assumptions and functions
Descartes began from the premise “Doubt everything” – for, as he used to say, Descartes therefore intended, as many others, to make philosophy a science and as he was a very good mathematician himself he took the pattern of mathematics to create his famous new method
The Cartesian method had four primary rules:
accept as as true only what is clear and insusceptible of doubt
divide every problem into as very parts as necessary
consider each part clearly and completely, building by accretion to knowledge as the whole
omit nothing of consideration that might be a source of error
in other words: accept only what is clear and evident.
Largely because of this method which stressed how we know what we know rather than what it is possible to know modern philosophy is often said to have begun with Descartes.
The cartesian method was outlined in his discourse of method, one of the most famous philosophical books of all times. The book was written and published in French, which was quite shocking, he wrote that in style that "even women can understand it"