Flanagan: Test Questions

Flanagan Test Questions 

1. What does Flanagan think is the "hardest question"? A: Living meaningfully (p. xi)

2. What general attitude towards the search for truth and meaning does Flanagan recommend?  A: Philosophical naturalism (p. 3)

3. What is eudaimonics? (OR: What does Flanagan refer to as the empirical-normative inquiry into the nature, causes, and conditions of human flourishing? A: Eudaimonistic scientia (p. 1)

4. Name one of Flanagan's sextet of "meaning spaces.” A: art, science, technology, ethics, politics, spirituality (p. 7)

5. What did Edmund Husserl call the individual instantiation of life among the spaces constituting a Space of Meaning?  A: Lebenswelt (p. 15)

6. Flanagan argues that we cannot live fully meaningfully_________.  A: off the grid (p. 37)

7. Name one of the High Six virtues that are mandatory for eudaimonia proposed by Peterson and Seligman.  A: justice, humaneness, temperance, wisdom, transcendence, courage. (p. 51)

8. In Dennett's attitude and terminology, apparently shared by Flanagan, God is a _______ and natural selection is a ________.  A: skyhook, crane—respectively. (p. 45)

9. Flourishing can't be achieved unless _______ is.  A: fitness (p. 55)

10. In Einstein’s view, what religion offers the best conciliation between science and spirituality?  A:  Buddhism (p. 65)

11. (T/F) The Dalia Lama, in his book The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality, said that if science proved religious claims in Buddhism false, then one must abandon those religious claims. A: True (p. 67)

12. Does Buddhism reject a creator God and a permanent self or soul?  Yes (p. 68)

13. What is the view that mental states lack causal efficacy?  A: epiphenomenalism (p. 68)

14. What can one use to mark off paths that lead to flourishing or paths that don't, while also acknowledging the beauty of what is? A: Eudaimonistic Scientia (p. 108)

15. What two ancient examples of Eudaimonistic Scientia does Flanagan give?  A: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and the Buddhist Abhidhamma (p. 110)

16. According to the Dalai Lama, what is the aim of Buddhist Psychology? A: overcome suffering (p. 113)

17. What do some psychologists mean by "positive illusion"? A: False belief (p. 149)

18. What is the branch of psychology that deals with pleasurable or unpleasurable states of consciousness?  A: Hedonics (p. 150)

19. How many of us are happy according to most positive psychology books? A: 80-88% (p. 152)

20. How do positive psychologists typically distinguish illusion from delusion?  A: feedback  (p. 168)

21. (T/F) Flanagan thinks we should discourage false belief and the idea that positive illusions make people happy.  A: True (p. 181)

22. What sort of traditional theism can seem to coexist with the scientific image of persons? A: deism  (p. 190)

23. What's OF's view of theistic epistemologists?  A: disgraceful  (p. 192)

24. What is the most important factor in determining one’s religious beliefs?  A: location (p. 195)

25. What Latin word means “to unite or bind together”?  A religio (p. 205)

26. What's the main message of Mill's utilitarianism? The Golden Rule  (p. 215)

27. Happiness, flourishing, and meaning reside in the vicinity of embodying ideals of the human good that connect me to a goal beyond my own personal desires, which, in turn, makes us all “spiritually naturalized”  humans at home here on Earth and the greater cosmos.  This is what Flanagan calls _______________________.   A: The Good News  (p. last)