Ethics in America DSST Study guide Questions and Answers

Ethics in America DSST Study guide Questions and Answers Ethics - correct answer ✔✔ The academic discipline of analyzing morality, based on reasoning, rules and logic. Cosmogony - correct answer ✔✔ The study of the origin of the universe. Pythagoras - correct answer ✔✔ A pre -Socratic philosopher, mathematician and cosmologist who wrote nothing himself, but is historically thought to have believed in the magic of numbers and reincarnation. Sophists - correct answer ✔✔ A group of traveling teachers from the fifth century BC who were paid to lecture on a variety of topics. They ca n be considered the first relativists, and gained a reputation for being untrustworthy thanks to their reliance on persuasion over truth. Relativism - correct answer ✔✔ The belief that every point of view and standard of behavior is equally valid. Thucydides - correct answer ✔✔ A Greek historian who wrote The History of the Peloponnesian War, which presented a mixture of facts and fact -based fictionalization. In it he raises questions of the ethics of war. He equated freedom with happiness and coura ge. Socrates - correct answer ✔✔ One of the most famous thinkers of all time, not for his beliefs, but his dialectic method of teaching. He never wrote anything himself, but was memorialized in the works of his student, Plato. For him, virtue and knowl edge were the same, and all wickedness stemmed from ignorance. The Athenian government saw him as a threat and had him executed. Dialectic - correct answer ✔✔ Also known as the Socratic Method, a method of argument in which one person asks the other qu estions to try to get them to realize their own answers or the flaws in their argument. Plato - correct answer ✔✔ Founder of the Academy and writer of the Republic. Allegory of the Cave - correct answer ✔✔ An extended metaphor created by Plato. It describes a group of prisoners in a cave, chained so their backs are to the entrance. They believe that the shadows (sensed reality) before them are reality, until someone manages to get free, turn around and see the source of the shadows (the real world, which can only be experienced intellectually). Aristotle - correct answer ✔✔ A philosopher and Plato's student who concentrated on empirical knowledge. He believed that change is necessary and natural, and everything has a purpose. He wrote Nicomachean Ethics, and that balance was the key to happiness. Stoics - correct answer ✔✔ Followers of Zeno, Greeks who believed that absolute laws and destiny ruled the universe, and that since humans could not change fate, they were happiest when they simply ac cepted it and lived with self -control. Hedonists - correct answer ✔✔ Also known as Epicureans after their original teacher, these believed that happiness was the purpose of life, and anything that reduced pain and increased happiness was therefore good . Christianity - correct answer ✔✔ A religion founded by Jesus Christ, based on the Bible, that teaches that humanity is fallen and can only find salvation through faith in Christ and his substitutiary sacrifice. Judaism - correct answer ✔✔ The oldest monotheistic religion, it is based on the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, and influenced both Christianity and Islam. It places emphasis on history, laws and religious community. Islam - correct answer ✔✔ A religion based on the Koran, which incorporates elements of Christianity and Judaism but declares itself to be the fulfillment of both through its prophet, Mohammed. Hinduism - correct answer ✔✔ A polytheistic religion in which moral guidance is based on principles l ike ahimsa (nonviolence), dharma (caste duties) and karma (consequences). It emphasizes detachment from pain and causing as little harm as possible. Buddhism - correct answer ✔✔ An offshoot of Hinduism with saints instead of gods, and which emphasizes moral behavior to achieve happiness through many cycles of reincarnation. Natural Law Theory - correct answer ✔✔ Beliefs based on the idea that moral standards originate from human nature and the universe, and that deviation from the natural norm is wr ong. Thomas Hobbes - correct answer ✔✔ An English philosopher who believed that humans live fearfully in a world full of insecurity and violence, and that submission to rulers is the only way to have harmony in a society. Wrote the Leviathan. John Loc ke - correct answer ✔✔ An English philosopher who asserted that individuals have certain natural rights, like living without being harmed by others, make their own