Section A
1. ‘People know heaps of things without being able to define the terms in
which they express their knowledge, and in a given case examples may
be more useful for elucidating the meaning of a general term than a formal
definition.’ Is Socrates then wrong to demand that Meno provide a formal
definition of virtue?
2. Are the literary and dramatic elements of Plato’s Meno relevant to a
philosophical interpretation of the dialogue?
3. Is there a better solution to Meno’s paradox than the theory of
recollection?
4. ‘So too regarding virtue, since we don’t know either what it is or what sort
of thing it is, let us first make a hypothesis about it and then consider
whether or not virtue is teachable.’ (PLATO) Is this method vindicated by
its results in the dialogue?
Section B
5. ‘I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being
awake can be distinguished from being asleep.’ (DESCARTES) How does
Descartes try to distinguish being awake from being asleep? Is he
successful?
6. ‘And, when someone says, I am thinking, therefore I am, or exist, he is not
deducing existence from thought by means of a syllogism, but recognises
it as known directly by a simple intuition of the mind.’ (DESCARTES)
Discuss.
7. ‘It is quite evident that existence can no more be separated from the
essence of God than the fact that its three angles equal two right angles
can be separated from the essence of a triangle.’ (DESCARTES) Why
does Descartes compare the essence of a triangle with the essence of
God? Does his argument prove the existence of God?
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8. ‘I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it.’ (DESCARTES)
What, in your view, is the strongest objection to Descartes’s argument for
this conclusion? Does Descartes have a good reply?
Section C
9. ‘This doctrine is meant to apply only to human beings in the maturity of
their faculties. … For the same reason, we may leave out of
consideration those backward states of society in which the race itself
may be considered as in its nonage.’ (MILL) Is Mill right to place these
restrictions on the application of his ‘one very simple principle’?
10. ‘As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different
opinions, so it is that there should be different experiments of living.’
(MILL) Why?
11. Why does Mill take the pervasiveness and staying power of patriarchy to
be irrelevant to its legitimacy? Is he right to do so?
12. ‘Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no
legal slaves, except the mistress of every house.’ (MILL) How does Mill
defend this claim? To what use does he put it in the argument of The
Subjection of Women?