109 Philosophy Trivia Questions and Answers
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Easy Philosophy Trivia Questions
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Which fallacy dismisses a claim by attacking the person making it rather than addressing the claim?
Ad hominem
An ad hominem rejects a claim by going after whoever made it instead of the claim itself. The name is Latin for "to the person".
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Whose teachings are recorded in the Analects?
Confucius
The Analects, or Lunyu, records conversations and teachings associated with Confucius and his disciples. It became a foundational text of Confucian philosophy.
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What ethical principle calls for moderation between extremes?
Golden mean
Aristotle’s golden mean describes virtue as a balanced position between extremes.
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Which philosopher developed the classical theory of the syllogism?
Aristotle
Aristotle developed the classical theory of the syllogism, a form of argument involving premises and a conclusion, in works later known as the Organon.
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Who wrote Confessions, a famous work of late-antique philosophy and theology?
Augustine of Hippo
Augustine wrote Confessions as an autobiographical spiritual and philosophical work.
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Which fallacy occurs when an argument assumes the conclusion it is supposed to prove?
Begging the question
Begging the question occurs when an argument assumes its conclusion instead of independently proving it, creating circular reasoning. The phrase originally meant “assuming the point at issue,” rather than simply raising a question.
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Which philosopher founded classical utilitarianism?
Jeremy Bentham
Bentham formulated utilitarianism around maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain.
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Which thinker is traditionally associated with the Daodejing?
Laozi
The Daodejing is traditionally associated with Laozi and is a foundational text of Daoist philosophy. Its authorship and historical composition are subjects of scholarly discussion.
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Which branch of philosophy studies knowledge and justified belief?
Epistemology
The name comes from the Greek word episteme, meaning knowledge. In a famous 1963 paper, Edmund Gettier showed that a belief can be both justified and true and still fail to count as knowledge, a puzzle that unsettled a definition philosophers had relied on since antiquity.
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What philosophical issue asks whether people can genuinely choose if every event is determined by prior causes?
Free will
Free will is the philosophical question of whether people can genuinely choose and control their actions if every event is caused by what came before. Some philosophers, called compatibilists, argue that free will can still exist even in a determined universe.
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What ethical principle asks people to treat others as they would want to be treated?
Golden Rule
The Golden Rule teaches people to treat others as they would want to be treated themselves. Similar versions of this principle appear in many religious and philosophical traditions.
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Who wrote Leviathan, a classic defense of a strong sovereign?
Thomas Hobbes
Hobbes's Leviathan argues for sovereign authority to secure peace from a state of nature.
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What phrase describes Kuhn's revolutionary change in scientific frameworks?
Paradigm shift
Kuhn describes scientific revolutions as shifts from one paradigm to another.
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What philosophical issue examines how thought relates to matter?
Mind-body problem
The mind-body problem asks how conscious experience, the felt redness of red, relates to the physical activity of a brain. Proposed answers run from Descartes' dualism, which treats mind and matter as two separate substances, to modern physicalism, which insists there is only the matter.
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Which medieval thinker is linked to the rule that unnecessary assumptions should be avoided?
William of Ockham
The principle that explanations should not multiply entities beyond necessity is known as Occam's razor, after William of Ockham, a 14th-century English Franciscan friar who argued that way repeatedly. He never wrote the sentence now quoted as the razor; that wording is a later summary, and Occam is simply the Latinised form of his Surrey village.
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What paradox arises from the sentence “This sentence is false”?
Liar paradox
The liar sentence appears true if false and false if true, producing a semantic paradox.
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What argument compares the practical stakes of believing or disbelieving in God?
Pascal's wager
Pascal's wager argues that expected practical consequences can favor belief under uncertainty.
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Which game-theory scenario shows how individually rational choices can lead to a worse result for both participants?
Prisoner's dilemma
The prisoner's dilemma shows that when each participant pursues their own best interest, both can end up worse off than if they had cooperated. The classic version involves two suspects who would each fare better if both stayed silent, yet each has an incentive to betray the other.
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What philosophical challenge examines whether divine attributes are compatible with worldly suffering?
Problem of evil
The problem of evil asks how an all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good God can coexist with the existence of evil and suffering. A classic version argues that these claims may be mutually inconsistent.
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Who wrote The Social Contract with its famous general will?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rousseau's Social Contract develops popular sovereignty and the general will.
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Which thought experiment asks whether an object remains the same thing after all its parts have been replaced?
Ship of Theseus
Plutarch records that the Athenians preserved Theseus's ship by replacing each plank as it rotted, which raises the question of whether what remained was still the same ship. Hobbes sharpened the puzzle by asking what would happen if the discarded planks were gathered up and reassembled into a second ship.
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Which feminist philosophical work was written by Simone de Beauvoir?
The Second Sex
Beauvoir's The Second Sex analyzes women's social construction and oppression.
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What fallacy attacks a weaker version of an opponent's argument instead of the argument actually made?
Straw man
A straw man fallacy misrepresents or weakens someone’s actual argument and then attacks that distorted version. The name evokes knocking down a straw figure instead of confronting the real opponent.
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The runaway trolley and the brain in a vat are examples of what?
A thought experiment
Albert Einstein used the German term Gedankenexperiment for these imagined scenarios, including picturing himself chasing a beam of light, a mental exercise that helped shape special relativity in 1905.
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Which thought experiment asks whether you should divert a runaway threat so that it kills one person instead of five?
Trolley problem
Philippa Foot set out the runaway tram case in 1967 and Judith Jarvis Thomson developed the variations that made it famous. It is used to test counting outcomes against the rule that you may not use one person as a means of saving others, which is why most people will pull a lever but refuse to push someone off a bridge.
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What uses conversation to judge whether a machine seems human?
Turing test
Alan Turing proposed it in a 1950 paper as 'the imitation game': a human judge holds text conversations with a person and a machine and tries to work out which is which.
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What ethical theory judges actions by their overall consequences for well-being?
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism evaluates actions by their consequences and seeks the greatest overall happiness or well-being.
Medium Philosophy Trivia Questions
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What kind of argument for God's existence is associated with Anselm?
Ontological argument
Anselm's ontological argument reasons from the concept of a greatest conceivable being.
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What ethical tradition is strongly associated with Thomas Aquinas?
Natural law
Thomas Aquinas is strongly associated with natural law ethics, which holds that people can use reason to understand basic moral principles rooted in human nature. He viewed natural law as humanity’s participation in the eternal law of God.
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What phrase did Hannah Arendt use about ordinary participation in terrible wrongdoing?
Banality of evil
Arendt's phrase describes how grave wrongdoing can be carried out by thoughtless ordinary bureaucratic action.
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Which thought experiment questions whether experience could come from a simulated world?
Brain in a vat
The brain-in-a-vat thought experiment asks whether someone could have normal-seeming experiences while their brain is sustained in a vat and stimulated by a computer. From the brain’s perspective, a simulated world could feel exactly like the real one.
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What outlook is central to Albert Camus's philosophical writing?
Absurdism
Camus explores the absurd tension between the human search for meaning and an indifferent world.
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What did Kant call his unconditional principle of moral duty?
Categorical imperative
Kant called the supreme principle of morality the categorical imperative: an unconditional requirement that rational agents should follow regardless of their desires.
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Which philosopher used the cogito as a starting point for knowledge?
René Descartes
René Descartes used the cogito, his conclusion that thinking confirms the thinker’s existence, as a secure starting point in his method of doubt.
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What Daoist term means effortless or non-forcing action?
Wu wei
Wu wei describes action that accords with the way rather than forcing against it.
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Which Greek philosopher is associated with ancient Cynicism?
Diogenes
Diogenes of Sinope is a central figure associated with ancient Cynicism, a school that valued a simple life in accord with nature.
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Which Greek philosopher taught that the highest good is pleasure, meaning freedom from pain and anxiety rather than indulgence?
Epicurus
Epicurus taught in a garden outside Athens from about 306 BCE, admitting women and slaves as students. The pleasure he preached was a quiet life free of pain, fear and needless desire, bread and water and good friends, close to the opposite of what the word epicurean has come to suggest.
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Which philosopher wrote Being and Nothingness?
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre published Being and Nothingness, a major work of existentialist philosophy.
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Which philosopher is most closely associated with the phrase "will to power"?
Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche used the will to power to describe a basic drive expressed in life and human striving, adapting and rejecting Schopenhauer's will to live.
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Which 1927 work introduced Heidegger's concept of Dasein?
Being and Time
Heidegger's Dasein names the kind of entity we ourselves are: already thrown into a world, dealing with things, and caring about its own existence. He planned the book in two halves and published only the first.
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What idea is Heraclitus especially associated with?
Constant change
Heraclitus emphasizes flux and change, often summarized by the phrase that everything flows.
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What philosophical issue asks how past observations justify expectations about the future?
Problem of induction
The problem of induction asks how, or whether, past observations can rationally justify expectations about unobserved future events. David Hume argued that no purely logical argument can guarantee that nature will continue to behave as it has before.
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Who wrote the Communist Manifesto with Friedrich Engels?
Karl Marx
Marx and Engels published the Communist Manifesto in London in February 1848.
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What phrase is associated with Kierkegaard's account of religious commitment?
Leap of faith
Kierkegaard uses the leap to describe a decisive commitment that cannot be reduced to objective proof.
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What phrase names Locke's view that the mind begins without innate ideas?
Tabula rasa
Locke compares the mind at birth to a blank slate shaped by experience.
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Which philosopher wrote Two Treatises of Government?
John Locke
The First Treatise refutes Robert Filmer's argument for the divine right of kings, while the Second lays out Locke's case for natural rights and government by the consent of the governed, an influence still visible in the language of the American Declaration of Independence.
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What is the title of Marcus Aurelius’s philosophical text?
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius’s philosophical text is titled Meditations. Written in Greek as a series of personal reflections, it was likely never intended for publication during his lifetime.
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What rule does J. S. Mill use to limit coercion over individuals?
Harm principle
Mill’s harm principle says coercion is justified only to prevent harm to other people, not merely to protect an individual from their own choices. It is a defense of personal liberty in self-regarding matters.
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Who wrote The Prince, a famous work on political power and leadership?
Niccolò Machiavelli
Machiavelli wrote The Prince in 1513, analysing how rulers actually gain and hold power rather than how they ought to behave.
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Which Nietzsche book introduces the Ubermensch?
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Nietzsche named his prophet after Zoroaster, the ancient Persian founder of a religion built on a strict divide between good and evil, then had this version of him preach a philosophy beyond that divide. He wrote the book in four parts between 1883 and 1885, in a deliberately biblical, prophetic style.
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What term describes the philosophical view that life has no inherent meaning or value?
Nihilism
Nihilism holds that existence, morality or value has no built-in foundation, a charge Nietzsche thought European culture would have to face.
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Which Platonic dialogue presents Socrates defending himself at trial?
Apology
Plato's Apology presents Socrates' speech at his trial in Athens.
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In which Platonic dialogue does the Allegory of the Cave appear?
Republic
Plato presents the Cave analogy in Book VII of the Republic, where prisoners mistake shadows for reality and one prisoner is led toward the light.
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Which doctrine of Plato holds that unchanging realities underlie the world we see?
The theory of Forms
Plato held that the changing things around us are imperfect copies of perfect, unchanging Forms. Every circle anyone draws is flawed, yet all of them point to one ideal Circle, and the same goes for Justice or Beauty - realities he thought reason could reach but the senses never could.
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What rulers does Plato propose for his ideal city?
Philosopher-kings
In the Republic, Plato argues that philosophers should rule because they understand the good.
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What criterion did Karl Popper emphasize for scientific theories?
Falsifiability
Karl Popper argued that scientific theories must be falsifiable, meaning they make testable predictions that could in principle be shown false by evidence. He used this criterion to distinguish science from claims that cannot be tested or refuted.
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Which paradox concerns the set of all sets that are not members of themselves?
Russell's paradox
Russell's paradox exposed a contradiction in naive set theory and influenced foundations of mathematics.
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What slogan is associated with Sartre's existentialism?
Existence precedes essence
Sartre argues that humans are not defined by a fixed essence before their choices.
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Which method probes a person's beliefs through a chain of questions until contradictions surface?
Socratic method
It is named for Socrates, who claimed to know nothing himself and simply asked. The Greek word for the technique is elenchus, meaning cross-examination: the questioner draws out what someone believes, shows that those beliefs contradict one another, and clears the ground for a better definition.
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Who founded the Stoic school of philosophy?
Zeno of Citium
The Stoic school was founded around 300 BCE by Zeno of Citium, who taught in Athens at the painted porch called the Stoa.
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What Southern African concept emphasizes personhood through relationships with others?
Ubuntu
Ubuntu is often expressed through the idea that a person becomes a person through other people.
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Aristotle asked not 'what should I do?' but 'what kind of person should I be?'. Which school of moral philosophy takes that as its starting point?
Virtue ethics
Virtue ethics, which goes back to Aristotle, asks what kind of person one should be rather than which rules to obey or which outcomes to maximise. The right action is whatever a person of good character, with practical wisdom, would do.
Hard Philosophy Trivia Questions
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In Buddhist philosophy, what does the doctrine of anatta deny?
A permanent, unchanging self
Anatta, or non-self, teaches that no fixed personal essence lies behind experience, only changing physical and mental processes.
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Which Islamic philosopher was called the Second Teacher after Aristotle?
al-Farabi
Al-Farabi's broad work in logic and philosophy earned him the title Second Teacher.
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Which distinction did Quine famously challenge in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism"?
Analytic-synthetic distinction
Quine attacked the sharp split between truths held by meaning alone and truths that depend on the world, arguing no clear line separates them.
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What term did Epicurus use for the absence of bodily pain?
Aponia
Epicurus called freedom from bodily pain aponia and freedom from mental disturbance ataraxia. Together they were his account of the highest pleasure.
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What did Aristotle call his four-part account of explanation?
The four causes
Aristotle held that a thing is fully explained only when you can give four answers about it: what it is made of (material), what shape or definition it has (formal), what brought it about (efficient), and what it is for (final). For a bronze statue that is the bronze, the figure it depicts, the sculptor, and the honour it was made to pay.
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J. L. Austin separated sentences that describe the world from sentences that, said in the right setting, change it: "I promise", "I now pronounce you married". What did he call the second kind?
Performative utterance
Austin called them performative utterances. Saying "I promise", "I bet you a pound" or "I name this ship" in the right circumstances is not a report of an act, it is the act.
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In philosophy of science, what does underdetermination mean?
Available evidence may be consistent with more than one theory
Underdetermination is the problem that the same body of evidence can fit competing theories, so the data alone cannot pick the winner.
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Which philosopher was known in Latin Europe as the Commentator on Aristotle?
Averroes
Averroes wrote influential commentaries on Aristotle that shaped medieval Latin philosophy.
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Which thought experiment argues that a person cut off from every sense would still know they exist?
Avicenna's flying man
Ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna, presented the scenario in his eleventh-century Book of Healing to argue that the soul is distinct from the body, since self-awareness does not depend on any of the senses. Scholars often compare it to Descartes' cogito argument, developed roughly six centuries later.
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Which philosopher argued that physical objects exist only insofar as they are perceived?
George Berkeley
Berkeley summed up his position as esse est percipi, to be is to be perceived. He denied that matter exists independently of minds at all, and argued that things carry on existing when nobody is looking because God perceives them continuously.
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Which work did Boethius write while awaiting execution?
The Consolation of Philosophy
Boethius's Consolation is a dialogue with Lady Philosophy written during imprisonment.
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Which ancient Indian school of philosophy denied the afterlife and held that only what the senses perceive is real?
Charvaka
Charvaka, also known as Lokayata, was ancient India's materialist tradition: it accepted direct perception as the only reliable source of knowledge and rejected the soul, rebirth and any world beyond this one. Its own texts are lost, and it survives mostly through the arguments its opponents wrote against it.
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What Confucian virtue is often translated as humaneness or benevolence?
Ren
Ren is a central Confucian virtue involving humaneness and concern for others.
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Which ancient Greek philosopher is associated with the claim that everything is made of atoms moving through the void?
Democritus
Democritus, developing his teacher Leucippus's idea, held that reality is indivisible atoms moving through empty space.
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Which Buddhist doctrine holds that nothing exists on its own, since everything comes about through causes?
Dependent origination
Dependent origination, or pratityasamutpada, says things come about through webs of conditions rather than standing on their own.
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Which Latin phrase sums up Spinoza's claim in the Ethics that there is only one infinite substance?
Deus sive Natura
Deus sive Natura means "God, or Nature". Spinoza uses it in the Ethics to say the two names pick out one and the same infinite substance.
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What Stoic idea divides life into things within our control and things outside it?
Dichotomy of control
Epictetus opens his handbook with it: our judgements and choices are up to us, external events are not.
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Dogen is associated with which Japanese Buddhist school?
Soto Zen
Dogen brought the Soto lineage back from China in the 13th century and founded the mountain monastery of Eiheiji, still one of its head temples. His teaching centres on shikantaza, or just sitting: zazen practised as an end in itself rather than as a technique for reaching enlightenment later.
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What phrase did W. E. B. Du Bois use for a divided sense of self under racism?
Double consciousness
Du Bois describes double consciousness as seeing oneself through one's own eyes and through a hostile society's gaze.
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Which short Stoic handbook is traditionally associated with Epictetus?
Enchiridion
The Enchiridion is a later compilation of practical teachings attributed to Epictetus.
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What is the name of the dilemma asking whether an act is good because a god commands it, or commanded because it is good?
Euthyphro dilemma
The Euthyphro dilemma comes from Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, where Socrates asks whether the holy is loved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because they love it. Both answers cost something: the first puts morality beyond the gods' control, the second makes it arbitrary.
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Who wrote Black Skin, White Masks?
Frantz Fanon
Fanon's 1952 book combines existential-phenomenological analysis with psychiatric and political critique of colonial racism and racialized identity.
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What cases challenge the idea that moral responsibility requires the ability to do otherwise?
Frankfurt cases
Harry Frankfurt imagined someone who would have been forced into an act anyway but chose it freely, so blame seems to survive even without alternatives.
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What problem challenges the definition of knowledge as justified true belief?
Gettier problem
Gettier cases show that justified true belief can still fall short of knowledge.
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Which philosopher defended a form of civil disobedience in the essay "Resistance to Civil Government"?
Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau published it in 1849 after a night in jail for refusing a poll tax. It was retitled "Civil Disobedience" only after his death.
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What account of the self did Hume defend?
Bundle theory
In A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Hume wrote that when he introspected he found only "a bundle or collection of different perceptions," never a constant self underlying them. He concluded that the sense of a unified self is a construction of memory and imagination.
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Who is widely regarded as the founder of phenomenology?
Edmund Husserl
Husserl established phenomenology as a method for describing structures of conscious experience.
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Which Indian tradition is associated with anekantavada, the idea that reality has many aspects?
Jainism
Anekantavada is a Jain doctrine holding that reality has many aspects and that claims may capture only some of them.
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Jeremy Bentham held that, the pleasure being equal, the simple game of push-pin is as good as poetry. Which utilitarian rejected that, ranking pleasures by quality and not just quantity?
John Stuart Mill
Mill answered Bentham by dividing higher from lower pleasures, arguing it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
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Which classical logic law is represented by P ∨ ¬P?
Law of excluded middle
The law of excluded middle says that for any proposition P, either P holds or its negation holds, with no third possibility in between. This is why P ∨ ¬P comes out true in classical logic whatever P happens to say. It is closely related to bivalence, the separate claim that every proposition carries exactly one of two truth values, and intuitionist logicians reject the excluded middle precisely because they will not assert a disjunction without being able to establish one of its halves.
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In ancient Egyptian thought, what concept combines truth, order, and justice?
Ma'at
Ma'at was an ancient Egyptian religious and ethical concept of truth, justice, order, and cosmic harmony.
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What view of human nature is associated with Mencius?
Human nature is inherently good
Mencius argues that humans have innate moral sprouts that can be cultivated.
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What theme is central to Merleau-Ponty's philosophy?
Embodied perception
Merleau-Ponty makes embodied, lived experience central to his philosophical account of perception and cognition.
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What simple, non-physical substances form the basic units of Leibniz's metaphysics?
Monads
Monads are indivisible and have no parts, and each one mirrors the whole universe from its own point of view.
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Two drivers are equally careless, but only one of them happens to hit a child who steps into the road. Which philosophical problem is raised by blaming that driver more?
Moral luck
Named by Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel in 1976, moral luck is the puzzle that we judge people for outcomes their choices did not control.
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What is Mozi’s best-known doctrine called?
Universal love
Mozi’s best-known doctrine is jian’ai, often translated as “universal love” or “impartial care.” It teaches that people should extend concern beyond family and close allies rather than showing favoritism.
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Nagarjuna founded which school of Mahayana Buddhism?
Madhyamaka
Nagarjuna, writing around the second century CE, founded Madhyamaka, the middle way school, whose central text is his Mulamadhyamakakarika. Its argument is emptiness: nothing carries a fixed, independent essence of its own, and everything that exists does so only in dependence on other things.
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What is the Stoic practice of imagining the loss of something valued in order to appreciate it more clearly?
Negative visualization
Known in Latin as praemeditatio malorum, the exercise Seneca recommends is now usually called negative visualization: rehearse the loss, and the thing stops being invisible to you.
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In The Gay Science, Nietzsche imagines a demon telling you that you must live this same life once more and innumerable times more, with nothing new in it. What did he call this idea?
Eternal recurrence
Nietzsche called it the eternal recurrence, and introduced it in The Gay Science as the heaviest weight. He used it less as a claim about how the universe works than as a test of a life: would the thought of living it again unchanged, forever, crush you, or would you welcome it?
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Robert Nozick asked whether you would plug into a device guaranteeing any pleasant experience you chose. What did he call it?
The experience machine
Nozick set out the experience machine in his 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia. It would feed you any experiences you selected, indistinguishable from real ones, for life. Most people say they would refuse, and Nozick took that refusal as evidence that we want to actually do things and be a certain kind of person, not merely to feel as though we had.
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What Wittgensteinian argument questions whether a language could be understandable to only one person?
Private-language argument
Wittgenstein argued that a language naming only private sensations would have no check on whether a word was used correctly, so it could not really have meaning.
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When two arguments seem equally strong, what do Pyrrhonists recommend?
Suspension of judgment
When opposing arguments appear equally convincing, Pyrrhonists recommend suspending judgment rather than choosing either side. This state is known as epoché.
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In Rawls's original position, what concept blocks knowledge of class, talents, or the good?
Veil of ignorance
The veil of ignorance prevents people in Rawls’s original position from knowing their class, talents, or conception of the good. This forces them to choose fair principles without tailoring them to their own accidental advantages.
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Which thought experiment challenges the idea that symbol manipulation alone is understanding?
Chinese room
Searle's Chinese room argues that following formal rules need not produce genuine understanding.
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What name is given to the four-part Epicurean remedy for anxiety?
Tetrapharmakos
The tetrapharmakos, or fourfold cure, compresses Epicurus into four lines: do not fear god, do not worry about death, what is good is easy to get, what is terrible is easy to endure.
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In Wittgenstein's later philosophy, the meaning of a word comes from its use in what?
Language games
Wittgenstein argued in his later work that a word has no meaning apart from the shared activities it appears in, such as giving orders, telling jokes, counting or greeting. He called those activities language games, and treated meaning as the part a word plays in them.
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Who is associated with the famous dream of being a butterfly?
Zhuangzi
Zhuangzi's butterfly dream questions distinctions between waking self and dreamed identity.
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