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Final Examination
Critical Thinking
Spring Semester 2023
Professor: Edward R. Raupp, Ph.D.
40 Points

Part A. Multiple Choice. 10 points.

Circle the letter of the best answer.
Each item is worth 1 point.

1. Who was arrested by the Nazis and imprisoned in a concentration camp for three years?
a. Albert Einstein
b. Rabbi Moshe Wiesel
c. Victor Frankl
d. Abraham Maslow

2. Who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning?

a. Albert Einstein
b. Rabbi Moshe Wiesel
c. Victor Frankl
d. Abraham Maslow

3. Who wrote that we are so constructed that we naturally press toward fuller being, realizing our
potentialities, becoming fully human, everything that you can become?
a. Albert Einstein
b. Rabbi Moshe Wiesel
c. Victor Frankl
d. Abraham Maslow

4. One psychologist concluded that “the good life” includes which of the following?
a. Having a fixed state like virtue, contentment, nirvana, and happiness.
b. Being adjusted, fulfilled, or actualized.
c. A direction rather than a destination
d. all of the above

5. When the military uses the term “soft targets,” they actually mean,
a. people to be killed
b. easily located targets
c. medical facilities
d. enemy headquarters
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6. Who wrote, “Work is a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as
cash”?
a. Aristotle
b. Studs Terkel
c. Willie Nelson
d. Barack Obama

7. Which of the following is true?

a. Freedom means simply making a choice.
b. Freedom is limited to choosing from available options.
c. Freedom means simply “Doing what you want.”
d. None of the above.

8. Who wrote, “Man is condemned to be free”?

a. Abraham Lincoln
b. Karl Marx
c. Jean-Paul Sarte
d. None of the above.

9. Who observed that, “The ultimate purpose in studying ethics…is to become good”?
a. Aristotle
b. Voltaire
c. Karl Marx
d. Immanuel Kant

10. An argument in critical thinking may be defined as

a. a dispute between followers of different religions or political parties.
b. a form of thinking in which reasons are offered to support a conclusion.
c. a false conclusion based on one or more incorrect assumptions.
d. a false conclusion based on one or more incorrect premises.

Part B. True or False. 10 points.

Circle T if you think the item is entirely true.
Circle F if you think any part of the item is false.
Each item is worth 1 point.

11. T F Most of the world’s religions offer a path to an ultimate, spiritual transformation.

12. T F Social pressures are forces in our lives whether we concede them or not.

13. T F Thinking critically is the same as living creatively.

14. T F Stanley Milgrim wrote of a dilemma in his book Obedience to Authority.

15. T F The total meaning of a word does not include perceptions of the word.

16. T F A “red herring” is the same as a “wild goose chase.”

17. T F Pragmatic meaning involves the speaker and the situation.

18. T F SAE stands for Single Actual English.

19. T F Words, like bombs and bullets, are tools of war.

20. T F An emotive statement is the same as a factual statement.

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Part C. Brief Essay. 10 points. The Gettysburg Address, by Abraham Lincoln

Write a brief essay of one-page responding to the speech below. Here are some tips:
1. Read the speech carefully. Underline or highlight words you think may be important to your essay.
2. What is Lincoln’s argument?
3. How does he build it around the evidence and the moment in time?
4. What knowledge of American culture does Lincoln assume that his audience has?
5. What does Lincoln want his audience to think and to do?

The Gettysburg Address

Delivered at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Nov. 19th, 1863

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation,
conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so
conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We
have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their
lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground.
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor
power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it
can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the
unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these
honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure
of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this
nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the
people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
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Write your essay below. Use the back of the sheet if you need more space.
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Part D. Brief Essay. 10 points. ____________

In William Shakespeare’s play, The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Scene I, the female Portia, dressed as
a male lawyer, speaks to Shylock, the Jewish money lender. Portia pleads for mercy for Antonio, who
is in jeopardy of his life.

On the attached form, write a brief essay of one-page responding to the speech below.

Here are some tips:

1. Read the speech carefully. Underline or highlight words you think may be important to your essay.
2. What is Portia’s argument? What is the evidence for the argument?
3. Is the argument credible? Is it believable?
4. What does Portia want Shylock to think?
5. What does Portia want Shylock to do?

The quality of mercy is not strained;

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence ’gainst the merchant there.
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Write your essay below. Use the back of the sheet if you need more space.
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