Final Exam — Instructions

Overview

This is the scored final exam for Introduction to Philosophy. It is cumulative: its questions reach all nine course objectives, from what philosophy is and how the Socratic method tests a definition in Week 1 to existentialism, the meaning of life, and the course synthesis in Week 15. It is given in Week 16, the finals week, which has no new module and no new material.

The final has 40 questions, and every question counts the same. Thirty-six ask you to pick the one option that fits, three ask you to judge a statement true or false, and one asks you to select every option that fits. Seventeen questions are on the easier side, 22 are of medium difficulty, and 1 is harder. Every argument, quotation, or short scene a question uses is written out in words inside the question, so nothing depends on reading a chart or a picture. One or two questions turn on a dated work, and the only arithmetic anywhere on the form is a single subtraction between two years the course pinned, which scratch paper covers.

Every question practices a skill you have already used in the weekly quizzes, lecture tutorials, and Philosophy Workshops. Many open with a short illustrative scene, invented for the question and attributed to no real person, and ask which position, distinction, or argument form fits it. Others ask who wrote, said, or devised what, in the course's own words. No question keys an answer to an open question: none says whether God exists, which ethical or political theory is right, or how a thought experiment comes out.

Coverage and scope

The course plan weights the final toward the second half of the course while still drawing on every first-half objective. The questions were drawn from the course's question bank, and this form leans that way strongly. All 40 questions come from the material of Weeks 9 to 15, and every one of the nine objectives appears at least once.

Thirty-three questions check Objectives 5 to 9, the objectives Weeks 9 to 15 introduce. The other 7 check Objectives 1 to 4, and each of those sits inside a later week's material, the way that week called an early tool back. Here is what this form actually contains, first by week and then by objective.

No question is drawn directly from the material of Weeks 1 to 8.

Each question checks exactly one objective, so the objective column adds to 40, the same as the week column.

Read the two tables together. Week 12 carries the most questions, 8, so Kant's two quoted formulas, the two kinds of imperative, Aristotle's virtues and the mean, and the runaway trolley deserve the most review time. Week 9 comes next with 7, then Weeks 10 and 14 with 6 each, Weeks 11 and 13 with 5 each, and Week 15 with 3. By objective, the ethical theories and the challenges to morality (Objective 6) are by far the heaviest, with 17 questions across Weeks 10 to 13. The arguments about God (Objective 5) and the traditions beyond Europe (Objective 8) follow with 5 each.

Here is the ground each week taught. These are the topics the questions come from, not the questions themselves:

• Week 9: theism, atheism, and agnosticism; Anselm's ontological argument and the greatest-possible-island objection; Aquinas's first three ways, which make up his cosmological case; Paley's watch on the heath, the design argument, and Hume's objections; the logical and evidential problems of evil, the free will defense, and soul-making; faith and reason, with Pascal's wager recalled.
• Week 10: descriptive and normative questions and Hume's is-ought problem; cultural relativism in its descriptive and normative forms, and the reformer objection; divine command theory and the Euthyphro dilemma; psychological and ethical egoism; the ring of Gyges as the question of why to be moral.
• Week 11: consequentialism and utilitarianism; Bentham's opening sentence and Mill's Greatest Happiness Principle; Mill's higher and lower pleasures; act and rule utilitarianism; the justice, rights, and demandingness objections; Singer's drowning child.
• Week 12: duty, maxims, and the hypothetical and categorical imperatives; Kant's universal-law and humanity formulas in Abbott's translation, and how the first differs from the golden rule; Aristotle's eudaimonia, the virtues, the mean, and habituation; the runaway trolley, from Foot's case and Thomson's name for it.
• Week 13: legitimacy and social contract theory; Hobbes's state of nature and sovereign; Locke's natural rights and consent; Rousseau's general will; Mill's harm principle; Rawls's original position, veil of ignorance, and two principles; Nozick's entitlement theory, minimal state, and experience machine.
• Week 14: Confucian ethics from the Analects; Daoism from the Daodejing; the Buddha's Four Noble Truths and no-self, with the chariot as the week's roster case; ubuntu and its Zulu maxim; the traditions compared with European views, with none ranked.
• Week 15: Sartre's existence precedes essence; Camus' absurd and Sisyphus imagined happy; Beauvoir on freedom in a situation; the three answers on where a life's meaning comes from; the course synthesis and the reasoned position.

The early objectives still count. Seven questions check Objectives 1 to 4 inside a later week's material, the way those weeks called them back. Weeks 9, 10, 12, and 13 each put an argument in standard form and keyed it for validity, the Week 2 skill. Week 9 sorted the arguments about God as a priori or a posteriori, the line Week 5 drew. Week 10 read Socrates through Plato's Euthyphro, the Week 1 method. Week 14 set the chariot beside the ship of Theseus and Locke's memory theory from Week 7. No question comes from Week 8's own material, though Pascal's wager from that week returns in Week 9's list of the arguments about God.

These notes map the skills the final checks. The questions themselves are drawn from the course's question bank and are not listed here.

Instructions

• Attempts: one. The final is a single scored attempt.
• Time limit: there is no time limit. Take the time you need, as long as you submit before the exam closes.
• Window: the final opens in Week 16 and closes at the due time your instructor sets. Start early enough to finish comfortably inside that window.
• Navigation: the questions appear one at a time, and once you move on you cannot go back to an earlier question. Settle each one before you move to the next.
• Materials: every argument, quotation, and scene a question uses is written out in the question, and scratch paper is enough for the one subtraction you may need. The syllabus sets no rule on notes, so follow what your instructor announces before the final opens.
• After you submit: Canvas shows your result. The keyed options stay hidden so the final stays fair for every student.

Academic integrity

The final is an individual, scored assessment, and it is closed to AI. Do not use a chatbot or any other AI tool, do not get help from another person, and do not share or post the questions during or after your attempt. The course syllabus closes the final to AI, requires it to be entirely your own work, and names using AI on the final as one of the three violations that matter most in this course. The final confirms that you personally can identify an argument's premises and conclusion, judge its validity, state each position accurately, and match a thinker, a work, a thought experiment, or a concept to its source.

The honest way to prepare is open to you. The study guide, the practice final, and the exam-prep tutorial rehearse the same skills with fresh variants, and nothing on them appears on the final word for word.

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