phil

Philosophy 105-940, Fall 2016, Exam #1.

DUE (in the Assignment Box): Friday, October 7, NOON. Value: 20 points.

NAME _____Niannu Zhou________________________________________ [you fill in]

GRADE +0 points

The main problem: Nothing that you wrote here shows me that you read the assigned material. Reading assigned material, and showing me that you have read it, is a requirement.

1. You did not name this document correctly. Please see the syllabus:

Naming your answer document: Please make sure, when you save your answer sheet, that you name the digital document in such a way that your family name [last name, surname] is included. For example, this would work well for the first exam: Soble_Phil_105_Quiz_1.docx (but use your name, not mine). You should put your surname at the beginning or at the left end of the document name, where "Soble" is.

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Directions: Answer all questions using complete and grammatically correct sentences.

Rational vs. True Beliefs [4 points each]

1. Suppose I say to you: "My belief that God exists is rational." What do I mean when I say that?

This shows that you are not skeptical about God's existence since there is no doubt of such. Even without proof that God does or does not exist and with no bias, then it is more suited to have a belief that God exist than not believing. Rationally believing that God exist is being realistic, objective, constructive and flexible. This belief is a conclusion, inference and being realistic to support survival, healthy outcome and happiness (Sternberg, 2004). By such beliefs, you are directing your efforts on the most moral and ethical path while embracing openness and tolerance to the obviously general feeling of many that is not subject to bias.

The most direct way to answer this question was by reading the document posted on BB entitled "Rationality." That document contains the material you need to answer most of these questions. Nothing else, no extra material, was necessary to answer these questions. There is no evidence here that you read the assigned reading. You should turn to extra reading (on the WWW, for example) only if there is no answer in the assigned readings. That's plain common sense. -4

Why did you try to read and understand material that is more difficult than the material given to you by your professor?

2. Suppose I say to you: "My belief that God exists is true." What do I mean when I say that?

Having a true belief that God exist means that there is a justified knowledge that can be credited to support his existence. that sentence ignores the document "Rationality" which makes a distinction between rationality (evidence) and truth(matches the world). "Justification" here is an evidence concept. Having a justified true belief shows that in order for one to be knowing that a certain proposition is true, that is Gods existence, then you not only believe in the truth aspect of the proposition but also be justified to believe so based on a proved test/experiment. I'm not sure I understand that sentence. The answer to this question is so simple…. This shows that you also know that God exist based on some evidence this question is about "truth"; if you understand the assigned material, you will see that "evidence" should not be mentioned in this answer. of supernatural being who is God in your definition. Such evidence may include; making eye balls roll back in the eyes. None of the questions ask you to discuss what is good or bad evidence, or to give examples of different kinds of evidence.

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3. Suppose I say to you: "My belief that God exists is irrational and true." What do I mean when I say that?

When you have God existence is an irrational and true belief then you hold the belief to true out of reasons you find irrational reasons that makes no sense in that they present unsound logic but a deduction that translate to reality. the rest of the sentence is just as incomprehensible. An irrational and true belief is when you don’t have a choice to term it as false as the circumstances and reasoning only leads to deducting that it can only be true. same comment When there is no logic or justified knowledge to support that Gods existence is false and you do not employ a biased reasoning then the reality is that God must be existing (Trippas, 2014).

I do not understand any of this answer. Please see the answer sheet for the straightforward answers to the questions. -4

4. Suppose I say to you: "My belief that God exists is rational and false." What do I mean when I say that?

Having a rational belief that it is false that God exists is when sound logic are producing a deduction that are not mapping onto reality. Believing that it is a false belief that God exists is about the necessity to be rational in thinking despite a stated belief that is contrary (Sternberg, 2004). Here, you are do not deliberately intend to have a false belief in Gods existence but are not stopping from engaging in intellectual effort to expose yourself to the evidence that is contradicting a true belief. This means that your false belief is purely out of well though reasons that are sensible to you

The way you write contributes to my failure to understand your thoughts. Still, nothing that you wrote here shows me that you read the assigned material. Reading assigned material, and showing me that you have read it, is a requirement. -4

5. Provide a succinct and accurate definition of what the textbook calls a "biased" belief. (Provide a definition that fits with the other concepts in this exam.)

A biased belief is when an individual tend to pick a conclusion (or premises? as in cherry-picking?) that is fitting to their current systems of belief. In such a belief, there is no challenges or deep considerations of what an individual actually agrees with. The opposite also defines a biased belief when an individual end up rejecting an assertion that is not fitting in their systems of belief, even when the assertion may be seamlessly logical and perhaps possible (Dube, 2010). You have written something inspired by Dube. You were supposed to write something inspired by the author of out textbook. Ideally, a biased belief lacks any effort to prevent fallacious reasoning and not being open to an evidence that may contradict your belief system such as holding to a belief that it is false that God exist even when presented with a logical evidence of His existence. That is closer to what the book says. -1

References

Dube, R. R. (2010). Assessing the belief bias effect with ROCs: It's a response bias effect. Psychological Review.

Sternberg, R. J. (2004). The Nature of Reasoning. Cambridge University Press.

Trippas, V. H. (2014). Using forced choice to test belief bias in syllogistic reasoning. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2014.08.009.

On the syllabus, I gave the students URLS of two reliable sources. Why did you pick these three? What makes you think they are any good, or better than the sources I gave the class?