Philosophy Class

Philosophy is probably the easiest class in which one can mess with the teacher. Math, History, the sciences - those are all subjects that require you to know things. But philosophy, there's a subject that doesn't require anybody to know anything. Hell, some of these nutjobs try to prove that you can't know things. Sounds like an excuse to never study to me, but I digress. Anyway, to mess with a philosophy teacher is a simple task. Here are some questions that'll usually throw them:

Question 1: If you have two things, say, A and B, and A is a necessary and sufficient condition for B, is B a necessary and sufficient condition for A?

Question 2: Doesn't the fact that bothered to write this paper, about how life is meaningless and all pursuits are equivalent to Sisyphus's plight, necessarily mean that he doesn't actually believe what he's writing?

Question 3: How can we try to define evil, when it exists only in relation to good, and vice versa? Isn't this like trying to define "left" and "right" without reference to the physical world?

Teacher: Socrates said "All that I know, is that I know nothing."
Question 4: Did anybody ask him how he figured that out? If that's the
only thing you know, there are no premises on which to base the
argument, right?

Answers after the break.

Answer 1: Yes. "Necessary and sufficient" is equivalent to the mathematical term "if and only if", which works both ways.

Answer 2: Yep. Anybody who thought life was actually meaningless would just, you know, not live. The salvation from this belief is the ability, unique to mankind, to say "Eh, screw it" and keep on living without bothering oneself with these trifling thoughts.

Answer 3: We can't. It's impossible to define explicitly terms like "good" and "evil" without referring to either observations (like saying "left is over there" while waving your arm) or the opposite term (like saying "left is like right, but the other way").

Answer 4: This is actually kind of a trick question. What Socrates meant was that he knew very little for certain - like, he couldn't ever know that there wasn't an invisible, silent duck following him. I mean, one assumes, but you can't prove it.

Of course, you should wait until you get to the relevant part of the class before you ask these questions - don't go on about left and right while you're discussing the form of a philosophical argument. If timed correctly, and if the teacher isn't that great, these questions should trip him up a little while making you seem smart. Asking questions like this works better if you don't stay in the same seat for every lecture, because otherwise the teacher will tend to ignore you.