Question: As a lexical definition, H. L. Mencken’s definition “Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage” may be criticized as:
Answer Choices:
a. Being too narrow.
b. Being circular.
c. Being too broad.
d. Being negative.
e. Being figurative.
Answer: e. Being figurative.
Question: As a lexical definition, Ambrose Bierce’s definition “Historian: A broad-gauge gossip” may be criticized as:
Answer Choices:
a. Being obscure.
b. Being affective.
c. Being negative.
d. Failing to indicate the context to which the definiens pertains.
e. Being ambiguous.
Answer: b. Being affective.
Question: As a lexical definition, the definition “Honey means a naturally produced mixture of proline, fructose, and gluconic acid” may be criticized as:
Answer Choices:
a. Being vague.
b. Being too narrow.
c. Being obscure.
d. Being too broad.
e. Being negative.
Answer: c. Being obscure.
Question: Which of the following words or group of words is not a term?
Answer Choices:
a. Author of Evangeline.
b. Easily readable.
c. Most expensive bottle of wine.
d. New Guinea.
e. Agility.
Answer: b. Easily readable.
Question: Words and statements that have cognitive meaning are those that:
Answer Choices:
a. Convey information.
b. Convey opinions.
c. Express arguments.
d. Express rational connections between statements.
e. Evoke feelings.
Answer: a. Convey information.
Question: The primary danger of emotively charged words is that they:
Answer Choices:
a. Cause arguments to be invalid.
b. Lead us to confuse premises with conclusions.
c. Cause arguments to be unsound.
d. Prompt us to leap to unjustified conclusions.
e. Incline us to confuse inductive arguments with deductive arguments.
Answer: d. Prompt us to leap to unjustified conclusions.
Question: Words such as “excessive,” “fresh,” and “normal” tend to be:
Answer Choices:
a. Emotive.
b. Ambiguous.
c. Vague.
d. Factual.
e. Extensional.
Answer: c. Vague.
Question: A claim that something is good, bad, right, or wrong is called a(n):
Answer Choices:
a. Traditional claim.
b. Factual claim.
c. Vague claim.
d. Ambiguous claim.
e. Value claim.
Answer: e. Value claim.
Question: The newspaper headline “Farmer Bill Dies in House” is primarily:
Answer Choices:
a. Vague.
b. Ambiguous.
c. Evocative.
d. Analytic.
e. Conventional.
Answer: b. Ambiguous.
Question: The intension of a term consists of:
Answer Choices:
a. The members of the class that the term denotes.
b. The objectives to be accomplished by using the term.
c. The qualities or attributes that the term connotes.
d. The subjective feelings in the mind of the speaker or writer.
e. The class of definitions that a term may have.
Answer: c. The qualities or attributes that the term connotes.
Question: Which of the following are all connoted by the term “novelist”?
Answer Choices:
a. Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, Gone With the Wind.
b. Melville, Hawthorne, Mitchell.
c. Creative, literary, imaginative.
d. Melville, Moby Dick, adventure story.
e. Love story, horror story, adventure story.
Answer: c. Creative, literary, imaginative.
Question: Denotation means roughly the same thing as:
Answer Choices:
a. Extension.
b. Difference.
c. Intension.
d. Connotation.
e. Species.
Answer: a. Extension.
Question: Which of the following are all denoted by the term “novelist”?
Answer Choices:
a. Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, Gone With the Wind.
b. Melville, Hawthorne, Mitchell.
c. Love story, horror story, adventure story.
d. Creative, literary, imaginative.
e. Melville, Moby Dick, adventure story.
Answer: b. Melville, Hawthorne, Mitchell.
Question: Conventional connotation is introduced to deal with the problem that arises because:
Answer Choices:
a. Proper names have no intension.
b. Intension determines extension.
c. Some words have empty extension.
d. Increasing intension does not always correspond to decreasing extension.
e. Words mean different things to different people.
Answer: e. Words mean different things to different people.
Question: Which of the following pairs of terms have the same extension?
Answer Choices:
a. Frog, toad.
b. Triangle, figure.
c. Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush.
d. Unicorn, elephant.
e. Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon.
Answer: a. Frog, toad.
Question: The term “currently living dinosaur” has:
Answer Choices:
a. Closed extension.
b. Empty intension.
c. Empty extension.
d. Meaningless connotation.
e. Ambiguous extension.
Answer: c. Empty extension.
Question: Which of the following groups of terms is in the order of decreasing extension?
Answer Choices:
a. Tuna, fish, albacore, ocean fish.
b. Albacore, tuna, ocean fish, fish.
c. Fish, tuna, ocean fish, albacore.
d. Fish, ocean fish, tuna, albacore.
e. Ocean fish, tuna, albacore, fish.
Answer: d. Fish, ocean fish, tuna, albacore.
Question: Which of the following groups of terms is in the order of decreasing intension?
Answer Choices:
a. Daisy, flower, plant, living thing.
b. Flower, plant, living thing, daisy.
c. Living thing, daisy, plant, flower.
d. Plant, flower, daisy, living thing.
e. Living thing, plant, flower, daisy.
Answer: e. Living thing, plant, flower, daisy.
Question: In the definition “Mandolin means a twelve-stringed lute,” the words “a twelve-stringed lute” are the:
Answer Choices:
a. Explanandum.
b. Definiendum.
c. Explanans.
d. Definiens.
e. Explicandum.
Answer: d. Definiens.
Question: In the definition “Placid means tranquil,” the word “placid” is the:
Answer Choices:
a. Definiens.
b. Definiendum.
c. Genus.
d. Difference.
e. Species.
Answer: b. Definiendum.