PHL 221 CRITICAL THINKING
FINAL EXAM STUDY GUIDE
There will be 75 questions on the exam. To guide your study, answer
the review questions below. You may want to actually write out the
answers as a way of preparing for the exam.
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
According to class materials and podcast lecture/discussion, is the
news media slanted, and, if so, in what direction?