Introduction to Philosophy: Comparative East & West

Final Take-home Exercise

Please write on eight of the following questions and submit your answer to your tutor before the formal examination period begins (Monday May 4, 8:00 AM).  As before, you are encouraged to get together and discuss the issues with your classmates, tutors etc.  However, you must write your own answer using what you learn from the discussions. Do not share answer outlines or formulations. If the examiners find answers that are excessively similar, all will be marked down for lack of originality.

1.      How does Zhuangzi's refutation of Mencius reflect the principle that you can not get an 'ought' from an 'is'? What other principle relates scientific fact and moral right and wrong? Do you agree with Mencius that morality is natural? Give your reasons.

2.      Zhuangzi says “Language is not blowing breath. Those who use language have language but what it languages is radically un-fixed.” And Laozi says “To dao what can be daoed is not constant dao.” Are these claims related? How?

3.      Descartes claims that the one thing we cannot doubt is that we exist as thinking things - even if we suppose that we may be dreaming or an evil demon is deceiving us. Explain why he makes this argument. Do you agree with Descartes or with Dewey’s criticism or neither? Give your reasons.

4.      Interpret Nietzsche’s aphorism, “we cannot get rid of God because we still believe in grammar” as a comment on either the Ontological argument or on the Cogito.

5.      Explain Buddhism. Imagine you're talking to a Westerner and use Nietzsche's comparison with Christianity. Do you think Zen changes anything central to Nietzsche’s analysis? Give your reasoning.  

6.       Explain Nietzsche's distinction between a slave morality and a master morality and its relation to his Will to Power. Do you think that we could treat either of the following as master moralities. Answer only one and give your reasoning.

a.      Pragmatism's favored "way of fixing beliefs"or

b.      The Zen/Chan reformation of Buddhism

7.      Zhuangzi points out that value judgments are always made from a particular perspective or in a particular context. Explain why his mild relativism does not imply that all judgments are equal. How is Zhuangzi's relativism similar and how is it different from Nietzsche's views on value?

8.      In his attack on the "Real World," what revolution did Nietzsche want to effect in Western philosophy? As part of his attack, what specific rationalist assumptions made by earlier philosophers did Nietzsche identify? Do you think Pragmatism pursues that revolution or clings to a commitment to a “real world?”  Give your reasons.

9.      Some argue that human rights and democracy presuppose a conception of humanity that China rejects. Can you use Dewey's justification of democracy to apply to Hong Kong without presupposing a Western view of human moral psychology?  Give your reasoning.

10.  Explain how Peirce's definition of 'belief' guides his revised justification of scientific method. Is his account of science the same as Dewey's evolutionary account of "inquiry?" What do you think is the correct account of science? Give your reasons.