IB Philosophy practice questions.

Reid's brave officer case — the boy flogged for stealing becomes the officer who remembers the flogging, and later the general who remembers the officer's deeds but not the flogging — is standardly used to press which objection to Locke?

• That the memory criterion makes identity intransitive, since the general both is and is not the boy
• That memory is a fallible faculty, so any criterion resting on it yields uncertain verdicts
• That the criterion presupposes what it explains, because genuine memory already implies identity
• That the criterion cannot be applied to beings who lack the language in which to report memories

Answer: That the memory criterion makes identity intransitive, since the general both is and is not the boy

Identity is transitive, so if the general is the officer and the officer is the boy, the general must be the boy — which direct memory denies. This is not Butler's circularity objection, which attacks the criterion for presupposing identity rather than for breaking transitivity.

Two boxes look exactly alike: one is a stack in a supermarket storeroom, the other stands in a gallery as a work by an artist. Danto uses such pairs to argue that

• art must be defined by the formal arrangement of lines, colours and volumes
• an object is art only if it was made by hand rather than manufactured
• what makes something art cannot be a property that the eye can detect in the object
• the value of an artwork is fixed by how many people are willing to queue to look at it

Answer: what makes something art cannot be a property that the eye can detect in the object

If two indiscernible objects differ in status, the difference cannot lie in anything visible, so it must lie in an interpretation and a history, which Danto calls the artworld. That is a direct argument against formalists such as Bell, who locate the mark of art in perceptible form.

Locke observes that a snowball's roundness and motion belong to it whether or not anyone is looking, while its whiteness and coldness are powers in it to produce ideas in a perceiver. Which distinction is he drawing?

• Between primary qualities, which our ideas resemble, and secondary qualities, which they do not
• Between analytic judgements, which unpack a concept, and synthetic judgements, which extend it
• Between innate ideas, which the mind brings with it, and acquired ideas, which experience supplies
• Between nominal essences, which we frame, and real essences, which remain unknown to us

Answer: Between primary qualities, which our ideas resemble, and secondary qualities, which they do not

For Locke solidity, extension, figure, motion and number are in the body itself, whereas colours, sounds, tastes and temperatures are powers grounded in those qualities to produce ideas that resemble nothing in the object. The claim is about resemblance, not about illusion: secondary qualities are perfectly real powers of real bodies.

A lifeguard could save more swimmers on this occasion by abandoning a struggling swimmer she has already reached. She refuses, reasoning that lifeguards who abandon swimmers they have reached would as a standing practice produce worse results than lifeguards who never do. Her reasoning is best described as

• act utilitarian, calculating the utility of this rescue in isolation
• deontological, treating the duty to rescue as binding whatever follows
• virtue ethical, asking which action expresses a courageous character
• rule utilitarian, assessing the practice rather than the single act

Answer: rule utilitarian, assessing the practice rather than the single act

Both utilitarian variants use the same standard of value, overall welfare, but apply it to different objects: the individual act or the general rule. A deontologist could reach the same verdict here, but without any reference to consequences at all.

Which feature is shared by the cosmological and teleological arguments but not by the ontological argument?

• They begin from observed features of the world
• They define God as the greatest conceivable being
• They treat existence itself as a perfection
• They conclude that God exists as a matter of logical necessity

Answer: They begin from observed features of the world

Cosmological and design arguments are a posteriori: they start from causation or apparent order in the world and infer a cause. The ontological argument is a priori, working from the concept of God alone, so the greatest-conceivable-being definition, existence as a perfection and the claim to logical necessity all belong to it instead.

Popper's criterion of demarcation counts a theory as scientific only if it

• has been confirmed by a large and varied body of favourable instances
• rules out some observable outcome and so could be shown to be false
• can be conclusively verified by a finite set of observation reports
• is stated in a vocabulary whose terms all refer to measurable quantities

Answer: rules out some observable outcome and so could be shown to be false

Popper's criterion concerns the logical form of a theory rather than how well supported it is; confirmation by instances is the mark of the inductivist tradition, and conclusive verification is the strong criterion the early Vienna Circle aimed at, which Ayer himself gave up in favour of a weak verifiability requirement.