Cumulative level test: Epistemology, the self, and the reach of reason: knowledge, mind, freedom, and value

Check understanding, separately from reading

12 questions · 80% to pass · no timer. This longer test revisits both units in the level. These authored questions assess recognition and application of the taught distinctions, not professional qualification. You may review the lessons and retry. Repeat attempts reuse the question bank; a remembered answer is not proof of transfer to a new situation.

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Question 1

A laboratory reports a true result from an instrument that, unknown to everyone, happened to display the correct figure while malfunctioning. Compare this with the Smith disjunction case and state the best verdict and the reason.Both are cases of an accidentally true belief whose warrant does not connect to the truth-maker, so knowledge is lacking in the same wayThe instrument case is knowledge because instruments are usually reliable, whereas the disjunction case is not because testimony is weaker

Question 2

Explain why a coherentist need not claim that truth is coherence, using the isolation problem as your starting point.Coherentism does equate truth with coherence, and the isolation objection therefore leaves it untouchedJustification can be a matter of fit within a system while truth remains a correspondence relation, precisely so that the system must have adequate input

Question 3

A politician says that because we cannot know for certain that a rumour is false, we must act as though it were true. Using the lessons on scepticism and on argument evaluation, identify the defects.It treats a bare possibility as decisive and slides from lacking certainty about something to accepting a different claim, which the closure argument does not licenseIt is refuted because the rumour is about the past, and knowledge of the past always rests on testimony

Question 4

A hospital must decide whether an advance directive binds a patient whose memory and personality have changed almost completely. Which theory would say the directive binds because the patient is the same individual, and what is its cost?Psychological continuity theory, which preserves the individual’s continuity by counting the patient as the same person throughoutAnimalism, which preserves the individual’s continuity but must explain why it subsumes the present person’s autonomy under an earlier decision

Question 5

An agent acts exactly as she wanted to, but a hidden device would have compelled the same act had she wavered. What do compatibilists take from this case, and what remains contested?It suggests that alternative possibilities are not necessary for responsibility, though it is contested whether manipulation of the agent’s history defeats responsibilityIt shows determinism is false, since a possible intervention means the future was never fixed in advance

Question 6

A debater claims a machine cannot be conscious because its states are only functional. Reconstruct this as an argument and identify the premise a physicalist would deny.The suppressed premise that machines cannot exist, which is plainly false and so the argument fails immediatelyThe suppressed premise that whatever is functionally analysable lacks felt character, which the non-reductive physicalist and the functionalist both contest

Question 7

Two philosophers agree that torture for amusement is objectively wrong but disagree about whether this truth exists independently of all practical reasoning. Which distinction are they drawing, and which positions do they occupy?The distinction between objectivity, secured by a procedure, and stance-independence, so one is a constructivist and the other a robust realistThe distinction between cognitivism and non-cognitivism, so one thinks moral sentences are truth-apt and the other does not

Question 8

Use the particularity problem to explain why a general duty to support just institutions cannot by itself justify a state punishing a citizen who has refused to obey a just law.The duty is incoherent, so it cannot support any punishment, just or unjustThe duty may support compliance with just institutions wherever they are, but it does not single out this state’s claim on this citizen, which is what punishment presupposes

Question 9

A speaker says an argument is unsound because it is invalid. What is wrong, and how would you repair the criticism?Soundness requires validity plus true premises, so showing validly-with-false-premise is the right target; state which premise fails insteadNothing is wrong, since invalid arguments can never be sound and so the criticism is automatically sufficient

Question 10

A critic refutes a claim by deriving a consequence that she personally finds distasteful, even though its defenders would accept it. Using the reductio standard, evaluate the criticism.The reductio succeeds, because showing that a claim has unattractive implications is sufficient to refute itThe reductio fails as stated, because the derived consequence must be untenable by the defenders’ own commitments, not merely unwelcome to the critic

Question 11

A student is told to steelman an opponent before replying. Explain what this requires and why it is a method rather than mere politeness.Reconstruct the strongest reasonable version using only premises the opponent accepts; otherwise the criticism refutes nothing that was claimedAgree with the opponent’s conclusion first, then raise any objection that comes to mind, so that no reply is ruled out

Question 12

Integrate the level: how should a careful reader handle a dispute where one side attacks a premise and the other asserts that the position is simply false?Invoke the fallacy names available for the opponent’s move, since a defect in the argument defeats the positionStandardise the argument, mark supplied premises, keep attacks on premises separate from attacks on inference, and then identify which contested premise carries the disagreement

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