MODERN PHILOSOPHY___________________________________________________________________________
0. Some background terminology
1. Be able to define the following notions: (a) necessary truth; (b) contingent truth; (c) analytic truth; (d) synthetic truth; (e) relations of ideas; (f) matters of fact; (g) a priori knowledge; (h) a posteriori knowledge.
I. Rationalism
1. What is a natural philosopher?
2. What is radical skepticism?
3. Explain how Descartes reasons from radical skepticism to knowledge of cogito ergo sum and from the cogito back to knowledge about the external, material world.
4. What is Descartes’ clear and distinct criterion of truth? If P is true, its denial at any point creates a contradiction. (necessary truths)
5. Explain Descartes’ substance dualism.
6. What are the characteristics that Descartes attributes to minds?
7. What are the characteristics that Descartes attributes to matter?
8. What is interactionism, and why does it face the mind-body problem?
9. Be able to describe the representational theory of mind.
10. Be able to give the dream argument for RTM as well as the relativity of perception argument.
11. What is the theory known as mechanical philosophy?
12. What is Descartes’ plenum?
13. What is Spinoza’s argument that the plenum is infinite? Space is filled with matter
14. What is Spinoza’s argument that the plenum is a mode/attribute of God? Space is god because there can’t be two infinite things
15. How many substances exist according to Spinoza? Infinite for god, 2 that we are aware of
16. What is the definition of a substance? God
17. Be able to explain how Spinoza’s pantheism differs from Descartes’ dualism.
18. What is necessitarianism in Spinoza’s metaphysic? How does it lead to determinism?
19. What is Spinoza’s notion of the intellectual love of God and how does that relate to blessedness.
20. Be able to explain the salient features of Leibniz’s monads.
21. What is Leibniz’s doctrine of pre-established harmony?
22. What is Leibniz’s truth argument for pre-established harmony?
23. How would Leibniz respond to the mind-body problem?
24. What is Malebranche’s occasionalism?
25. How does the doctrine of continuous creation entail occasionalism?
26. What is Malebranche’s know-how argument?
27. What is Malebranche’s necessary connection argument for occasionalism?
28. Be able to explain how Malebranche responds to the mind-body problem.
29. How do Spinoza’s, Leibniz’s, and Malebranche’s views compare with Descartes interactionism.
30. What assumptions do rationalists make that empiricists reject?
II. Empiricism
1. Explain John Locke’s attack of nativism and the ramifications of this attack on rationalism.
2. What did Locke mean when he calls the mind a “tabula rasa” at birth?
3. What are ideas of sensations? What are ideas of reflection?
4. What are simple ideas v. complex ideas?
5. What is Locke’s notion of a substratum?
6. Explain the distinction between primary and secondary qualities.
7. Be able to give the following arguments for the primary v. secondary quality distinction: (a) the science argument; (b) the almond argument; (c) the analogy argument; (d) relativity of perception arguments (including the two-hands in a bucket case).
8. What does Berkeley call materialism and how does it differ from idealism?
9. Be aware of the three arguments against materialism and for idealism (one of these arguments is the inconceivability argument).
10. What does the phrase esse est percipi mean?
11. What are some problems for Berkeley’s idealism?
12. What is Hume’s conceivability argument against necessary connection?
13. What is Hume’s deducibility argument against necessary connection?
14. What is Hume’s “no idea” argument against necessary connection?
15. What is the distinction between deductive reasoning v. inductive reasoning?
16. What is the assumption called the unity of nature?
17. Be able to re-write Hume’s critique of induction.
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