Q 01/05

Which thought experiment from Philippa Foot asks whether to steer a runaway vehicle away from five people and onto one?

A) The Chinese room

B) The trolley problem

C) The ticking time bomb

D) The ship of Theseus

Answer · why

B) The trolley problem

The trolley problem began as an aside in a 1967 essay on abortion and the doctrine of double effect. Foot's tram driver had to choose between five wor...

Q 02/05

In Plato's Republic, the Ring of Gyges tests whether anyone would stay just by granting its wearer which power?

A) Immortality

B) Mind reading

C) Invisibility

D) Shape-shifting

Answer · why

C) Invisibility

Invisibility lets the shepherd in the tale seduce a queen, murder the king and take the throne of Lydia. Glaucon tells it to ask whether anyone would ...

Q 03/05

Which NBC comedy stars William Jackson Harper as Chidi, a dead professor of ethics and moral philosophy?

A) Superstore

B) Parks and Recreation

C) Brooklyn Nine-Nine

D) The Good Place

Answer · why

D) The Good Place

The Good Place kept two real philosophy professors, Pamela Hieronymi of UCLA and Todd May of Clemson, as consultants so that its afterlife lessons wou...

Q 04/05

Which philosopher's preserved body, called his 'auto-icon', is on public display at University College London?

A) Jeremy Bentham

B) Francis Bacon

C) Bertrand Russell

D) Herbert Spencer

Answer · why

A) Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham left orders to be dissected and then kept as his own memorial. His guiding axiom was that the greatest happiness of the greatest number...

Q 05/05

In Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments at Yale, what did volunteers believe they were giving a fellow volunteer?

A) Sleeping pills

B) Electric shocks

C) Truth serum doses

D) Ice-water baths

Answer · why

B) Electric shocks

Electric shocks were what the volunteers thought they gave, and 65% went all the way to 450 volts when told to carry on. In reality there were no shoc...