Understanding Objectivism Test (03)

1) Dr. Peikoff maintains that rationalism is not only a profoundly mistaken method, it’s in and of itself evil. [p.210]

2) According to Dr. Peikoff: Rationalism is an automatized, imperfect way of coping with confusion; it does not reflect on your seriousness or on your character. [p.210]

3) Rationalism or empiricism can govern you without you even knowing that you subscribe to them. [p.210]

4) A rationalist (as Dr. Peikoff uses the term) regards ideas as a means of knowing the physical world. [p.211]

5) If you have a single floating abstraction, then you are a rationalist. [p.211]

6) Dr. Peikoff identifies a list of seven symptoms of rationalism. Which point is not part of that list? [p.211-238]

7) There’s really only one axiom, the law of identity, because if you deny existence you’re contradicting yourself, and if you deny consciousness you’re contradicting yourself, so we can literally prove existence and consciousness. Therefore, we’re just down to one, and that’s the law of identity. [p.224]

8) One must cover everything involved in a subjected before one can claim real certainty. [p.225]

9) In regard to thinking, if any one point is not fully clear to you, your certainty about the entire issue is destroyed. [p.226]

10) If you are going to try to know everything about any one thing, you have to know everything about everything. [p.227]

11) Fill in the blank:________________ is basically antagonism, on principle, to integration. [p.229]

12) In practice, in many cases, you cannot tell the rationalist from the empiricist. [p.232]

13) Selflessness is inherent to rationalism [p.237]

14) What is the essential philosophic base, the metaphysics and epistemology that rationalism rests on? [p.245]

15) One can be an intrinsicist without necessarily being a rationalist. [p.245]

16) A person can be rationalist in one area of his life and empiricist in another area of his life. [p.246]

17) Pragmatism is simply a modern form of intrinsicism. [p.249]

18) Deduction is the primary cognitive process according to empiricism. [p.252]

19) Fill in the blank: The ____________ maintains that everything is inevitable and can be explained by reference to certain principles and that nothing could be different. [p.256]

20) Like the rationalists, the empiricist approach to axioms usually resolves itself into one axiom, so they too become monists. [p.257]

21) Chaos in writing indicates empiricism. [p.260]

22) Unlike the rationalists, the empiricists characteristically do not feel vulnerable in the face of disagreement. [p.261]

23) The philosophy at the base of the empiricist approach is subjectivism. [p.262]

24) According to Dr. Peikoff a person can be rationalist in one area and Objectivist in another, for example, one could be very rationalist in writing but not in teaching. [p.263]

25) Everybody is a rationalist, an empiricist, or an Objectivist. [p.264]