SECTION A
1. What, if anything, is wrong with Meno’s initial ‘swarm’ of answers to the
question: ‘What is virtue?’?
2. Evaluate Socrates’ rejection of the possibility of desiring something bad
knowing that it is harmful.
3. Present and evaluate Socrates’ argument for the conclusion that Meno’s
slave has recollected the answer to the geometrical puzzle.
4. Good and noble Athenians such as Themistocles and Aristides had sons
who were neither good nor noble. What conclusions should we draw from
this?
SECTION B
5. Explain and comparatively assess two sceptical arguments in the First
Meditation.
6. ‘The proposition I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward
by me or conceived in my mind’ (DESCARTES). What is the best way to
understand this claim? What is its role in the Meditations?
7. ‘Descartes’s response to the problem of error depends on an implausible
analogy between action and belief.’ Discuss.
8. Why can Descartes not allow that a thinking thing might be corporeal?
SECTION C
9. To what extent is the understanding of human flourishing in On Liberty
compatible with a commitment to utilitarianism?
10. What role does truth play in Mill’s argument for freedom of expression?
How does his argument apply to speakers who don’t care about truth?
11. Mill compared a certain belief about women to the belief ‘that the tree
grows of itself in the way [men] have made it grow, and that it would die if one
half of it were not kept in a vapour bath and the other half in the snow.’ How
does this analogy shed light on the role of nature in his argument for women’s
equality?
12. ‘The family is a school of despotism, in which the virtues of despotism, but
also its vices, are largely nourished’ (MILL). Discuss.