Quiz Reviews

[jsalbato@cnm.edu]

Reviews of the weekly quizzes…

Below are the basic elements in a good answer. Full credit requires that your answers are explained in your own clear, down-to-earth language. If the language in the lectures or readings is helpful, you can use some of it, but you will lose points if you borrow from sources outside the class. I want to see how you understand and interact with these ideas, not software or the internet.

Use these reviews to make corrections/clarifications to your reading questions answers. This will help with your exams.

• This topic was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by jsalbato@cnm.edu.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by jsalbato@cnm.edu.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by jsalbato@cnm.edu.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by jsalbato@cnm.edu.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by jsalbato@cnm.edu.

[jsalbato@cnm.edu]

Review – Quiz #1
1. The tasks for each week are listed at the top of our webpage: (1) Do the readings while (2) answering the Reading Questions, then (3) watch the videos to get further clarity in your answers, then (4) take the Friday Quiz.
2. Our readings, reading questions, and videos (schedule, discussion board, roster, and grades) are all on jeffsreadings.com (We will only use Brightspace for taking quizzes and turning in exams.)
3. Password: I can’t paste it here, because of Russian bots (I wish I was kidding), but it starts with “free” and ends with “7”
4. The best prep for the Friday quizzes is the Reading Questions, because most of the quiz comes straight from those questions. (But please be sure to read the questions carefully, because there are some subtle differences from the reading questions that I want you to think about. You can paste some of your reading questions answers straight over, but this won’t work for all of the quiz questions.)
5. The Friday quizzes cannot be made up, but there are many extra points built into the quizzes and final exam to make up for missing a quiz or two. So, if you miss a quiz or have a bad week, getting high scores on the next two quizzes will get you caught up quickly. There are no “extra credit” assignments.
6. Grades are based on earning points (not percentage; that’s way harder). For example, a “B” is earned when you get 80 points (out of the 126 possible, that is only 64%…you see, Jeff is a softy).
7. Philosophy is the study of the presuppositions in all fields of thought. (Philosophy is the home of genuine critical thinking, carefully checking the support for all of our ideas, even the ones that we assume and seem obvious.)

[jsalbato@cnm.edu]

Review – Quiz #2
1. My belief is only true if it agrees with reality. My believing it has no effect on its truth.
2. We test the basic rationality of a value claim by seeing if it is consistent with the facts and with the author’s other beliefs and values. This requires us to get to know the author of the claim to see what their values are.
3. You grow a beard (I am so ashamed of my immaturity.)
4. The Cave story mocks the “seeing is believing” mindset, because it shows the cave-dwellers (most people) staring at illusions and mistaking them for reality. If all you see is deception, then your beliefs will be delusions. And, in Plato’s view, the whole physical world of sight is deceptive.
5. Our everyday, physical world is untrustworthy for three reasons (pick two): 1. The world is always changing, 2. Our perspectives are always changing, and 3. The theories we use to interpret the world are always changing. (But, note, that doesn’t mean that objective truth doesn’t exist, it just isn’t found using everyday perception. It is found in the realm of ideals, like math and philosophy.)
6. The sailors rejected the new captain because he didn’t have “practical experience” and didn’t use his everyday perceptions like most people. Instead, his trick was to use unchanging truths (astronomy and math, in this case), instead of ordinary sight. The larger point is that theorists and philosophers are often ridiculed, but their ideas are often more sound than the changing view of the masses. (Which is why you should stop making fun of Jeff and instead give him baked goods.)
7. Philosophy is the study of presuppositions in all fields of knowledge. The Cave prisoners are us, and their stupidity and stubbornness about their assumptions should inspire us to want to study philosophy to check our assumptions so that we can escape our stupid and oppressive caves.

[jsalbato@cnm.edu]

Review Quiz #3
1. (If you were lazy and asked Professor Google, it said “human existence”, but that is not helpful at all, so make sure you never just put what Google says.) Dasein is the only entity that is concerned with its own being. It is a being that doesn’t know what it is and realizes it won’t always “be” (i.e. death). You and I, as self-conscious humans, are such entities.
2. Since I am thinking abut this crazy question, this question and thinking about and typing my answer to it are phenomenologically closest to me right now. Everything else fades into the background so that I can concentrate on this task.
3. A steering wheel normally appears as an everyday tool I can just take for granted (i.e. ready-to-hand). It barely appears at all…it is “just” a steering wheel. The other items are not normally taken for granted but are more mysterious.
4. Ready-to-hand is an experience where things barely appear at all because it is so familiar that we pay almost no attention to it so that we can focus on the task. The ready-to-hand fades from awareness, so it looks like its almost not there at all, but we know it is there, because we are using it.
5. If math or my job is directly related to my life goals (you will need this math in your career or your job is in your career field), then to concentrate on my current task I have to forget about those longer goals and let them fade into the background to concentrate on each task. This can be bad, because I might lose sight of those goals. For most people, however, math class and their job are not connected to their goals and those goals do not appear at all except when daydreaming. This is really bad because you will likely continue at these irrelevant tasks and never reach anything you seek.
6. If your death became truly present-at-hand this would mean we are studying death objectively to assess the value of our pro-jects. This is because you realize that all of our projects are ending (breaking), and this, if Jeff’s hopes are realized, would allow us to study all of the projects behind our everyday tasks and evaluate them to assess their worth. “Since I am dying (we all are, by the way), do I really want to do this task to achieve that goal? Wait, I am not even working toward any of the goals that matter. Damn it! Please help me Jeff, and here are some baked goods for bringing this life-changing fact to my attention.” (Or, you know, something like that.)
7. (This is a tough question, sorry) “a. I am” the They. Remember, the They is everyone and oneself, but always no one in particular. The They cannot be located as a definite thing, whereas the other choices are definite things. This is the worst thing about the They, that is, that it cannot be ignored or defied, because it is not definable, but we know what it thinks, because it is what we think. (spooky)
8. The They says, “Sure, death will happen to you, but not soon, so don’t think about it. You have plenty of time to take control of your life someday. For now, just keep working at the Krusty Krab to buy another companion cube.” (Note: Krusty Krab = your job/school; companion cube = your phone)

[jsalbato@cnm.edu]

Review Quiz #4
1. Hell is other people! Because we hate being so dependent on them to accept our (chosen and often delusional) social identities.
2. Garcin cannot leave because he must first convince Estelle and Inez that he is the tough guy that he thinks he is.
3. Estelle needs her mirror, because a mirror is how superficial people try to control how other people see them, and so without it her identity is up for grabs. And even if you aren’t purely superficial, we all still try to control the “self” we portray to others, whether it is Jeff’s “I’m a kind nerd” or your “I want people to see me as someone who doesn’t care what they think.” (Wicked irony, eh?)
4. We are all desperate to get other people to accept us as the person we think we are and are devastated when we fail. We want to BE that identity, but we can’t if the They won’t acknowledge it.
5. Bad Faith is a lie to oneself, where you are fully conscious of the lie and deceive yourself intentionally. These lies are used to avoid current choices or deny our responsibility for past choices. This can be done by either pretending you don’t have the transcendent ability to alter your facticity or by denying your concrete circumstances that call for a choice. (2)
6. We use these Bad Faith lies to avoid current choices and deny past choices. If I say “I’m a procrastinator”, then I can pretend I had no choice but to do poorly. This way we can pretend that it’s not our fault that our life turns out the way it does.
7. He doesn’t “have to” do any of this. He makes the choice to act like a robot for tips instead of choosing to be himself, get another job, etc. In choosing to be a fake, he is freely valuing tips and fakeness over all of the other things he could value more, like his happiness, his freedom, being authentic, being genuinely kind to others, etc.

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