PH125-1 - Introduction to Philosophy Assignment

Assignment Task

Topics

1. Consider Bertrand Russell’s famous chapter entitled The Value of Philosophy Reading. How is Russell’s approach not dissimilar to Socrates’s view in Apology (as represented by Plato)? How does Russell differentiate between scientific progress (the value of science) and the value of philosophy? What interesting contribution does Russell make to the problem of self-identity? Incorporate insights from Schechtman Giles and possibly Taylor.

2. Pascal’s Wager is one of the most intuitive approaches to religious rationality ever conceived. It also has remarkable application to various social issues and anxieties existing today: global health crises and ‘climate change’, to name just two. Explore how Pascalian-type wagering can come to bear on one or more of these problems. This paper requires three additional non-internet, academic sources from books or journal articles.

3. John Locke is a staunch defender of natural rights and property rights. Consider the thorny political problem of the ‘Elgin Marbles’, many of which are now housed and protected in British Museums. These were taken hundreds of years ago with the (apparent) intention of preservation, not theft. Who do those relics from Socrates’s ancient Athens belong to? Who has a right to them? Does Locke help answer this question? This paper requires three additional noninternet, academic sources from books or journal articles.

4. Empiricists since Aristotle have said humans have five senses. Is this right? Are there only five? What, after all, is a sense of balance? How many other senses might there be or is this a mistake to refer to ‘balance’, etc., as independent senses? This paper requires four non-internet, academic sources from books or journal articles.

5. What is a ‘fact’? If we ask, ‘What should count as a fact?’ are we not begging the question in favour of a view that facts are simply disguised ‘values’? Consider John Searle’s analysis of facts in The Construction of Social Reality (1995). Do you think ‘social’ and ‘institutional facts’ are rightly called facts? Can we do without facts? [We Christians? We Canadians? We humans?] This paper needs three additional noninternet, academic sources from books or journal articles.

6. Some people think of endangered languages like endangered species. After numerous global extinctions, the last one being around sixty-five million years ago, scientists calculate that about 99% of all species ever alive on Earth have gone extinct. There are currently over sixty-five hundred natural languages still spoken around the world, the vast majority in isolated regions among illiterate peoples. It’s difficult to imagine how many languages have died out with the people who spoke them. Do humans have a moral responsibility to preserve endangered languages? Should Christians take a particular position on this debate?

7. The possibility and plausibility of the ‘Extended Mind’ has captured the attention of a great many philosophers.1 Are our minds genuinely ‘extended’? Does extension include certain mechanistic devices (e.g., cell phones or computer chips implanted into the brain)? Is the ‘extended mind’ argument consistent with Dennett’s argument that the ‘self’ has porous boundaries? Should we distinguish between the mind and the self? In addition to Dennett and the video provided, three additional sources of research are required.

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