Chapter Four
4.25 Exercises for Chapter Four
“Seeing that the eye and hand and foot and every one of
weight, and votes conservative. John is also an invest-
our members has an obvious function, must we not be-
ment banker, drives a Lexus, and is also overweight.
lieve that in like manner a human being has a function
John probably votes Conservative too.
over and above these particular functions?” – Aristotle. Speaking as a professional chemist, alcohol is a solution. The “Occupy Wall Street” protesters are angry about economic injustice and the excessive power of corporations.
The Mayor is a racist! At a City Council meeting last
But they are getting their message out using cellphones,
night, he said that he won’t support our proposal to
cameras, computers, and the Internet – all of which are
name a street after Nelson Mandela. How can we toler-
provided by corporations. Clearly, they’re all hypocrites.
ate elected officials who say that minorities shouldn’t have rights? 79
Geraldo says that students who cheat on exams should not automatically be expelled from school. But it’s
That is a lousy book. It didn’t sell well at all.
ridiculous to insist that students should never be punished for cheating.
I’ve never seen you get drunk. So you must be one of those Amish people.
My sweater is blue. Therefore, the atoms that make up my sweater are blue.
In the city, you can always hear the sounds of car engines and aircraft, humming in the background. There-
I’m right because I’m smarter than you. And I must be smarter than you because I’m right. Your theory of gravity doesn’t explain why the sky is blue. So it must be wrong. My uncle Homer says that eating fish makes you smarter. That’s good enough reason for me. Sure, the experts all say that it’s dangerous to ride a bicycle into the eye of a hurricane. But I have my own theory. If today we allow voluntary, physician-assisted suicide, then tomorrow we will allow non-voluntary physicianassisted suicide for unconscious or mentally incapacitated patients. Then we’ll have involuntary physicianassisted suicide on unwilling patients. Soon no hospital patient will be safe from these ‘helpful’ physicians! Either we fire this guy, or else we send a message to all the other employees that it’s okay to show up late for work. So we better fire him! Bill is an investment banker, drives a Lexus, is over-
fore, you can always hear true silence in the countryside.