PHL 221 CRITICAL THINKING
FINAL EXAM STUDY GUIDE

Go over your notes from class videos, the readings and take the two sets of practice questions. There will be 50 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?

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 videos, 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? What did John Locke mean when he said, "Whatever God hath revealed is certainly true: no doubt can be made of it. This is the proper object of faith: but whether it be a divine revelation or no, reason must judge"?

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 the problem of religious pluralism? What are some differences between Eastern and Western religions? What does the phrase “There are many roads to God” mean? According to arguments presented in class videos, is there any reason to adopt this as an a priori assumption? According to information presented in class videos, is it possible to “grade” religions as to their truth value? If so, how would we do this?

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?

ETHICS

What are some problems with cultural relativism? If cultural relativism is true, what does this imply for the concept of moral progress? What does evolutionary psychology suggest about morality?

ACADEMIA

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 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 class and other provided 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? 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?

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 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?

GOVERNMENT
 
What definition of government was offered in class videos? How is it different from culture or civil society? In the traditional view of the political spectrum, what characterizes the conservative or right wing side and the liberal, left wing or progressive side of American politics?

According to Stefan Molyneux, what inconsistency do most people have in their attitudes about "anarchy?" What explains this conflict?