Chapter 25 Self-Quiz

1. Peirce recommends the method of science for "fixing" belief because it

is more likely than other methods to get us true beliefs.

is the only way we can get certainty about the nature of reality.

is more precise than the others.

attempts to improve our beliefs by testing them against something independent of ourselves.

2. What is it to believe something, according to Peirce?

To have a firm conviction about something.

To possess a habit of acting in certain ways, given certain circumstances.

To have a habit that always makes you act in the same way.

To be disposed to say yes, if someone asks you if the world is round.

3. With respect to Descartes' procedure of methodical doubt, Peirce says,

you can't really do that.

it's a good way to get the deck cleared for some serious intellectual work.

you don't need it to get to Constantinople and back.

it's a good mental exercise and prevents dogmatism and superstition.

4. As Peirce understands truth, it involves

noting the correspondence between what we say and what is real.

finding out what is real and then matching our beliefs to that.

a community of inquirers.

the absolute certainty of knowledge.

5. In Peirce's theory of meaning,

signs always have a triadic structure.

indexes are conventional signs.

pragmatics deals with the word-world relationship.

each sign must have a meaning independent of the meaning of every other sign, lest an infinite regress ensue.

6. Dewey offers us a naturalistic perspective in philosophy. By this he means:

Human nature is unique in the world, and we have to study it to understand ourselves.

Physics, the basic science of nature, gives us the only true picture of things.

We are not spectators of the world, but involved participants in it.

Values are naturally different from and opposed to facts.

7. Dewey's instrumentalism means that

the instruments science uses are necessary to get the results it aims at.

ideas are tools in the service of practical ends.

actions are means to ends.

we may use other people as instruments to gain the satisfaction of our own desires only with their consent.

8. Dewey says that the life of the intellect is

worth more than all the actions about which we usually busy ourselves.

basically one of problem solving.

devoted to finding the eternal truths.

an end unto itself.

9. According to Dewey, values are

subject to appraisal by scientific methods.

not subject to appraisal by scientific methods.

purely subjective and individual, so that we all have our own values.

things we just like.

10. What is Dewey's account of the relation of ends and means?

The ends justify the means.

The means justify the ends.

There is a continuum of ends and means.

Ends in themselves are the only things that can justify means to them.

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