PHL 221 CRITICAL THINKING
FINAL EXAM STUDY GUIDE

Go over your notes from class (or audio podcasts), the readings and take the two sets of practice questions. There will be 75 questions on the actual exam. You are allowed a 3x5 card of notes (both sides). To guide your study, use the review questions below:

SCIENCE

What is the scientific method? What are the differences between science and pseudo-science? Were the theories of the people at the "Electrical Universe" conference science or pseudo-science? Why? Is microwaved water harmful to plants? Is this experiment purportedly done by someone's granddaughter in 2006 evidence that it is? What did Snopes' attempt to replicate the experiment reveal?

How should one think critically about climate change? What is the anthropogenic global warming (AWG) theory? According to Norwegian Nobel Prize winning physicist Dr. Ivar Giaever is AWG science or pseudo-science? What are some reasons to be suspicious of the thesis that human activity is causing dangerous or catastrophic warming of the planet that we need to do something about right now? Is there any evidence of non-rational or anti-scientific attitudes or forces at work in promulgating "climate change" as a scientific theory or environmental cause? Is it comparable to any past or current baseless public panics or crusades? What are some alternative theories to the AWG thesis?

RELIGION

What is modernity? What does the "God of the Gaps" refer to? How are the religiosity of a society and its economic development generally related? How religious is America for an economically developed nation and compared to Western Europe? Why? According to evidence presented in class, where did the abstract concept of God prevalent in modern societies come from? What psychological functions does religion fulfill? According to arguments presented in class, how should this affect the way we treat such beliefs?

What are some ways in which religious texts of major world religions clash with modernity? What cognitive strategies discussed in the videos do people of faith use when their own religious texts clash with modernity or to deny such a conflict even exists? What are some problems with the view that faith is the way spiritual truths are discovered whereas reason is the way we discover truths about the material world? According to Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health featured on “Big Think,” how are science and religion related? What was the debate between Jungian psychologist Jordan Peterson and humanistic philosopher Ronald de Sousa about?

How did Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich define God? According to Episcopal theologian John Dominick Crosson, did God exist in the Jurassic period? How do “mainline” liberal churches deal with Biblical teachings about demons, Satan, Hell and miracles? What do they focus on instead of these beliefs? What is the advantage to adopting liberal or metaphorical interpretations of religious text in order to reconcile them with modernity? What can be a problem with such interpretations?

What is Pascal's Wager? How does it attempt to sidestep the question of sufficient evidence for God's existence? Why does Pascal say believing in God is a bet you can't lose? Why do we need to bet in the first place? What are some criticisms of the argument?
ACADEMIA

In "Death of the West by A Thousand Cuts," (titled "Threats to Science, Objectivity, Free Thought and Free Speech on Campus"), Lebanese Jewish professor Gad Saad discusses threats to the academy. Where are these threats coming from and what are they? What is post-modern philosophy?

What does the National Association of Scholars say about replacing classic works of Western literature with works by women and minorities? What is Whiteness Studies?

According to Jonathan Haidt, how have views about political issues such as immigration changed in academia? According to Haidt, why have the attitudes of Republicans  flipped from seeing higher education as an overall benefit to seeing it as negative in the last two years? What reason do Jonathan Haidt and Frank Bruni suggest for the new crop of fragile students who require trigger warnings and won’t tolerate certain ideas?

According to information presented in class and online videos, when there was no worldwide workers revolution (due to the success in capitalism creating prosperity for average workers), how did Marxist intellectuals respond? What was the Frankfurt School and how has it affected modern academia? What are cultural Marxism, critical theory and political correctness, and how are they related to the Frankfurt School? According to Marxist-Freudian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, how should we think about political correctness? College professors are well-paid, unionized government employees with an interest in perpetuating a political system which makes their jobs possible and keeps them safe; how, if at all, should this affect how students evaluate statements professors make about politics or the funding of education, especially when students themselves also benefit from such funding?

According to class videos and the Rethinking Diversity reading (and videos in the weekly outline), what is the broad ideological orientation of institutions of higher education (i.e., the orientation of administrators and the institutional commitments as evidenced in official mission statements, core values and college policies)? What is the ideological orientation of professors who teach at these institutions? In "Missing Diversity on American Campuses," what does David Horowitz see as the biggest problem facing academia? In what way is diversity missing and how does that interfere with the proper mission of academic institutions? What does "diversity" mean when used in academic institutions? According to Peter Schwartz, how is it different from the goal of racial integration? How does Schwartz argue that the concept of diversity is actually a racist concept which divides rather than unites people?

What evidence does social psychologist Lee Jussim provide that left-wing bias is destroying the field of social psychology? What examples does he use? In studying the data on the possible negative effects of teacher stereotyping on student learning in early education (described in the Quilette interview), what did Jussim discover? In the survey of academic social psychologists described in the article from “The Week,” what percent of respondents admitted they would be “at least a little bit prejudiced” against a conservative job candidate?

How are academic "grievance studies" corrupting scholarship? How did James A. Lindsay, Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose attempt to prove this?

Who is Michael Rectenwald and what happened to him when it was discovered he was the person behind the AntiPCNYCProf Twiter account? What happened when Professor Jordan Peterson objected to a new law in Canada requiring politically correct language and phrases? Why does Peterson object to such laws?
GOVERNMENT
 
What definition of government was offered in class? How is government different from civil society and culture? Who often confuses and conflates the two?

According to Frederick Bastiat, what is the problem with the Hobbsian idea that human nature is so bad, we need a strong central government to strictly control people?

What is the liberal state? In the traditional view of the political spectrum, what characterizes the conservative or right wing side and the progressive, liberal, left wing or progressive side of American politics? According to analysis in class, what side of the spectrum does fascism or communism belong on? What was suggested that we replace the left-right paradigm with?

The first expression of the idea of a social contract by Socrates compares government to a parent which protects and nurtures its citizens in exchange for obedience to its laws. What was suggested in class about this way of looking at government? According to discussion in class, what are the predatory and the utilitarian theories of the state. Which has merit - both, neither or one of the two? Why?

What are some reasons to be suspicious of the idea that government policy actually represents the will of the people discussed in class? Assuming there were a perfect democratic process and that government policy represented the will of the majority, are there any other problems with majoritarian politics? If so, what?

According to Stefan Molyneux, what inconsistency do most people have in their attitudes toward "anarchy?" What explains this conflict? According to Molyneux, is government good, a necessary evil or an unnecessary evil? What reasons do we have to be distrustful of government? How have private markets and the much maligned "robber barons" of the 19th century actually served us better than government? What is the problem of "the commons" and why doesn't government solve it? What is Molyneux's answer as to what would replace the current functions of government?

THE MEDIA/FAKE NEWS

How, in general is the news media slanted? How have recent changes in the law and technology changed the news media? What are some ways to get around media bias?