Lesson 3: Assignments
Required Reading
Chapter 5 in "The Science Before Science"
Written Assignment
What is the essence of an animal?
Explain how an animal could start a fire? Doesn't this take an intellect?
Is it possible for a mere animal (without intellectual capacities) to understand what justice is? Explain why or why not?
Why does something with sensorial powers probably need locomotive abilities?
What is the essence of a man?
How is it that physical, vegetative, sensorial as well as intellectual activity can all exist in one creature, man?
Explain why knowledge always precedes love; or more generally explain why the actions of the cognitive powers precede the action of the appetitive powers.
What is wrong with the following logic? The laws of nature are now known to great precision and range of validity. These laws are generally formulated as differential equations. These laws have been tested within the range of things that apply to man. Thus, ultimately these laws govern man and his behavior. More particularly, the mind (intellect) and body of man is ultimately reducible to a set of differential equations to be solved.
Why is it, in principle, possible to make a plant, but not, in the proper sense, a man?
What is an organism?
Why is man's immaterial substantial form, of itself, indestructible?
What is the principle of causality? The principle of sufficient reason, given at the end of Chapter 4, is the principle of causality viewed from the standpoint of intelligibility. Explain.
Explain why a computer's ability to beat a man at chess is not relevant to whether or not a computer is intelligent in the full sense of the word.
How does a purely immaterial creature get its ideas?
In some areas of the chapter we made use of conclusions from the specialized sciences for the first time. Catalog the conclusions that we used from the specialized sciences in this chapter.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
