PHL 302: World Philosophy

Fall 2005

Review for the first hour-exam

You will be asked to write an essay on a topic similar to one of those sketched below (50%). You will also be tested on terms listed on the first glossary as well as the required reading (50%).

1. Compare Plato's account of knowledge in the Meno with the "sources" approach of the Indian Nyaya school.  What is knowledge according to each?  What is "justification" for a belief, and do the two differ on this question?  Are there considerations that favor the one or the other view?  Explain.  Optionally, address the question of skepticism.  Is either of these views subject to the charge that if it were true we wouldn't know anything?

2. Explain at least three views on the self and consciousness that we have studied: Advaita Vedanta, theistic Vedanta, Yoga (Samkhya), Taoism, Plato, the Buddhist "no-self" theory (early Buddhism), Nyaya, Mahayana (the Bodhisattva).  If you have time and opportunity, you may mention more than three.  What are the best arguments pro and con--the weightiest considerations for and against--the positions you have identified?

3. Jainas argue that an ethics of ahimsa, "non-injury," follows from appreciating that other people and animals are like oneself in disliking being harmed.  So, from appreciating moral worth (moral pull) should we be vegetarians?  Reconstruct the Jaina argument.  Is it cogent?  Somewhere in your essay take up the view of Kant on moral worth, namely, that moral worth is grounded in our shared autonomy and ability to appreciate, indeed legislate for ourselves, moral law.  Does the Kantian position show a fallacy in the Jaina argument?