SECTION A
1. Socrates claims of the virtues that, ‘even if they are of many kinds, they still
have one and the same form in virtue of which they are virtues’ (PLATO).
Should we agree with him?
2. Is Socrates right to deny that there is anyone who knows that bad things are
bad but nevertheless desires them?
3. ‘Should something have neither teachers nor students, we’d be right to
conjecture that it isn’t teachable’ (PLATO). Is there any way to make such a
conjecture reasonable? Explain your answer.
4. Explain and evaluate Socrates’ claim that true beliefs are like the statues of
Daedalus.
SECTION B
5. ‘How often, asleep at night, am I convinced of just such familiar events—that I am
here in my dressing-gown, sitting by the fire—when in fact I am lying undressed
in bed! … I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which
being awake can be distinguished from being asleep’ (DESCARTES). Explain
and evaluate the argument from dreaming in the First Meditation.
6. ‘I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it’ (DESCARTES). Explain
and evaluate the argument for this ‘real distinction’ in the Sixth Meditation.
7. What is Descartes’s argument for the existence of the self as a thinking thing?
Is the argument successful?
8. ‘I now seem to be able to lay it down as a general rule that whatever I perceive
very clearly and distinctly is true’ (DESCARTES). How does Descartes argue for
this ‘general rule’, and what role does it play in his account of knowledge?
SECTION C
9. ‘There are many acts which, being directly injurious only to the agents
themselves, ought not to be legally interdicted, but which, if done publicly, are a
violation of good manners, and coming thus within the category of offences
against others, may rightly be prohibited’ (MILL). Discuss.
10.EITHER: (a) Why does Mill stipulate that the liberty principle should ‘apply only
to human beings in the maturity of their faculties’? Is he right to make this
stipulation?
OR: (b) Critically assess the role of individuality in Mill’s theory.
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11.‘The family, justly constituted, would be the real school of the virtues of freedom’
(MILL). Discuss.
12.What is the relevance of observable gender differences to Mill’s theory?