Answer 1 question from set A and 1 question from set B. The response to each questions must be about 2 pages long.
Refrain from using sources other than the ones that are attached in this order unless absolutely needed. Indicate precisely which question is being answered at the beginning of each essay.
Each essay should be structured like a normal paper, focused essentially on reconstructing and explaining one philosophical argument, and the philosophical theories relevant to that argument.
You need to state those theories precisely and explain them in as much detail. The same goes for the premises of the argument explain if it’s a good argument and why.
Reconstructing the argument: describe the structure of the reasoning, what motivates each step, and how each step leads to the next.
Have proper references throughout the essays for everything you use in any way and a bibliography at the end
Set A: pick one:
1) Explain why Relativists about truth have to believe that relativism about truth is false, according to Plato’s Argument from Falsity.
2) Explain Descartes’s Dreaming Argument for Epistemic Skepticism and why Descartes finds it wanting as a skeptical argument.
3) Explain Descartes’ Evil Demon Argument and how it succeeds in undermining all knowledge.
Set B: pick one:
1) Given Putnam’s Semantic Externalism about the meaning of words, the words you use now have different meanings than if you were to use these same words while being the victim of an Evil Demon, and this can help rule out that you are deceived by an Evil Demon. Explain how this is supposed to work, and why it doesn’t.
2) Explain the fallibilist criticism of Descartes’s use of Skeptical arguments such as the Evil Demon argument.
3) If scientific reasoning mainly relies on inference to the best explanation, explain how this blocks Hume’s argument for Inductive Skepticism. Explain inference to the best explanation and why Hume’s argument doesn’t work against it.
