Locke: Probability (Essay IV.xv.1-5; xvi.1, 3-14)
1) A triangle in Euclidean plane geometry has an angle sum of 180 degrees. Either demonstrate this to me, or tell me why you believe that this is the case. In answering this question, explain to the difference between what Locke calls “demonstration” and “probability.”
2) Explain the difference between assurance and confidence. Give examples of something you assent to with assurance and something you assent to with confidence.
Locke: Reason and Faith (Essay IV.xviii.1-10)
3) Explain Locke’s distinction between original and traditional revelation. What is required of us to put faith in an original revelation? What is required of us to put faith in a traditional revelation?
4) If revelation tells us something that reason denies, which must we accept according to Locke and why? If revelation tells us something that reason tells us nothing about, which must we accept according to Locke and why?
Berkeley: Critique of Abstract Ideas (Introduction to the Principles)
5) What are the two arguments against the traditional conception of abstraction that Berkeley has to offer in Introduction, section 10?
6) According to Berkeley, how can an idea be general without being abstract?
Berkeley: Immaterialism (Principles Part I, sect. 1-24)
7) In your own words, what is the main argument presented by Berkeley for the view that there is no matter and that everything that exists is either a mind or an idea existing in a mind?
8) When Berkeley says that ideas can only exist in a mind, what does he mean exactly? Would it follow from this claim that ideas exist in the mind as modifications of the mind?
9) Why is the impossibility of abstracting ideas of primary qualities from ideas of secondary qualities (what Berkeley also calls sensible qualities) important to Berkeley’s argument in favour of immaterialism?
10) Why is the impossibility of abstracting an object from the perception of the object important to Berkley’s argument in favour of immaterialism?
11) “An idea can be like nothing but an idea.” In answer to what thesis does Berkeley introduce this principle? Why does he think he is justified in asserting this principle?
Hume’s Critique of Causal Inference-Enquiry IV
12) Why should we think that it is not possible, by simply examining and analyzing a cause, to deduce what its effect will be? Give two reasons, the second one specific to the case of those causal relations that “have become familiar to us from our first appearance in the world, bear a close analogy to the whole course of nature, and supposedly depend on simple qualities of bodies rather than an unseen microscopic constitution of parts.”
13) According to Hume, what does past experience directly and certainly inform us of? What can it not inform us of?
14) Does Hume believe that, from the proposition that an object has always been followed by a certain effect in the past, we may justly infer that similar objects will continue to be followed by similar effects in the future?
15) What is wrong with arguing that since a cause has led to a certain effect in the past, and since the future generally resembles the past, then the cause will likely continue to lead to the effect in the future?
Hume’s Naturalism-Enquiry V.i, IX
16) What makes the hypothesis that we are determined by custom to infer causes from effects superior to the hypothesis that we are determined by reason to do so?
17) What two things are necessary if we are to believe in the existence of an object that we are not now perceiving?
Explain the philosophical significance of these images in the texts examined:
18) Idiots: why are they useful to Locke’s arguments against innate ideas?
19) “Manna,” porphyry, and an almond: why does Locke mention them?
20) Why does Locke talk about a Brazilian parrot?
21) Why does Locke mention an elephant resting on a broad-backed tortoise? 37. Why does Locke talk about the Strasbourg clock?
22) What is a “drill”? What is a “gimar”? Why does Locke talk about drills and gimars?
23) Why does Locke mention men and elephants walking on water?
24) According to Berkeley, what is the philosophical conclusion to be drawn from the observation of children being able to “prate together of their sugar-plums and rattles and the rest of their little trinkets”?