Long answer

Question 1

In the Third Meditation, Descartes puts forward the Reality Principle, according to which there must be at least as much reality in a cause as there is in its effect. How does Descartes draw on this principle to prove the existence of God?

Answer 1

• Descartes’ Principle in the Third Meditation puts forward that there must be at least as much reality in the efficient total cause as the effects of that cause. In other words, that every cause must have at least as much reality as its effect.
• He then goes on to claim that if there is an idea so great within you that the idea could not possibly have originated in you, then there must exist another being in which is the cause of that idea.
• To Descartes, the only idea that we have within us that has so much objective reality that it could not have originated within us is God (in essence, that our idea of God has more objective reality than we have formal reality).
• This means that we can’t be the cause of our own idea of God, that another being must have caused in us the idea of God, and given that no infinite regress is permitted, that God must have caused our idea of God. Therefore, God exists.

Question 2

Why does Descartes try, in the First Meditation, to doubt as many of his former beliefs as possible? What is the final and most general ground for doubt that he adopts in that Meditation?

Answer 2

• Descartes uses methodological doubt to try to reach knowledge through reason as opposed to faith. The fact that, up until this point, most proofs for the existence of God (and thus for other sorts of knowledge) were circular for non-believers, Descartes believed that doubt needed to be used to reach a certain truth.
• In his First Meditation, Descartes uses three levels of doubt. Firstly, the doubt of whether or not he is asleep, secondly the doubt of whether or not he is a madman, and finally the deceiver level of doubt, in which he imagines that an evil demon is constantly deceiving him at all times.
• He adopts this final and most general ground for doubt because it is the most extreme level of doubt - and therefore if despite that doubt he can still reach something certain, then he can be absolutely convinced of its truthfulness.

Question 3

Summarize Spinoza’s views about substance. How does Spinoza’s view of substance differ from Descartes’?

Answer 3

• Spinoza defines substance as every thing in which what we perceive resides, and is entirely independent, requiring nothing else to be understood. Each substance has two primary attributes (or essential qualities): in the case of a mind, the essential quality is thought and in the case of a body, the essential quality is extension.
• However, he reaches the conclusion that one substance cannot be distinguished from another, and therefore that there cannot be two or more substances of the same nature.
• Next, he determines that, since substances are their own causes, that it must pertain to a substance to exist. Since God is a substance consisting of infinite attributes, then it follows that God must exist and that there must only be one substance.
• On the other hand, Descartes distinguishes between different types of substances as opposed to the existence of just one. Primarily, he distinguishes between the mind (a thinking substance) and the body (an extended substance).

Question 4

What is Leibniz’s doctrine of pre-established harmony? How does Leibniz draw on this doctrine to solve the problem of mind-body interaction?

Answer 4

• Leibniz argues that the state of the world conforms to pre-established harmony, or that every state of being is pre-established based on preceding thoughts and actions.
• Leibniz believes every substance exists independent of any other substance, and further that no substance can exert a metaphysical influence on any other substance.
• Thus, each individual substance exists perfectly planned out by God in a way that makes all substances align but not need to directly interact (similarly to two clocks showing the same time without interacting with each other).
• For example, when a monad that constitutes a human mind wills to move an arm, the monads that make up the body move accordingly, even though there is no direct causal interaction between mind and body.
• This solves the problem of mind-body interaction, in which it was unclear how the mind could ever affect the body.
• We can instead determine that the mind and body both operate perfectly in sync based on the pre-established without needing to directly interact with one another.
• Leibniz’s pre-established harmony offers a solution by eliminating the need for direct causal interaction between mind and body. According to Leibniz, mind and body do not need to interact directly because they are perfectly synchronized by God’s pre-established harmony.

Question 5

What, in Locke’s view, is the difference between the identity of humans (as living beings) and the identity of persons? What is an example he uses to illustrate this difference?

Answer 5

• Locke defines a living being as the continued organization of parts suitable for sustaining life, and more specifically defines a human being as the continued organization of parts suitable for sustaining human life, generally including a soul.
• He then defines the identity of a person as a thinking, intelligent being that can reason and reflect and considers itself itself regardless of time or place. More specifically, personhood requires a sameness of consciousness.
• To illustrate a living being, Locke references a sapling growing into a tree, that despite physically changing has a continuity which makes both the sapling and the tree the same living being.
• This is different from his example of the prince and the cobbler, which instead shows where the identity of a person stems from.
• If the soul of a prince were to inhabit the body of a cobbler, with all of the same consciousness and memories, despite the cobbler being a different man from the prince, would indeed be the same person as the prince.

Question 6

What are monads, and how does Leibniz argue for their existence in the Monadology?

Answer 6

• A monad is defined by Leibniz as a simple substance which makes up composites. They are indivisible, and are the fundamental building blocks of the universe.
• This follows the principle of Leibniz that if there are composites, then there must be simples.
• Monads cannot be created or destroyed by anything other than God, primarily because destruction amounts to the dissolution of parts and creation amounts to the bringing together of parts and monads do not have parts.
• Monads have perceptions and appetitions, but only some monads allow for consciousness and memory while the vast majority of monads are unconscious and called entelechies

Question 7

How does Berkeley use his immaterialism to establish the existence of god? (Note: Berkeley offers two distinct proofs for the existence of God; you can reconstruct either one.)

Answer 7

• Immaterialism refers to the belief that there are no material things and that everything merely exists within our mind.
• Furthermore, the existence of a sensible thing does not depend on the specific perception of an individual person.
• Thus, since sensible qualities only exist in a mind, there must be some other mind in which sensible things exist.
• Therefore, there must be an infinite, omnipresent spirit that contains and supports the sensible world through the perception within that spirit’s mind.
• This allows Berkeley to explain why things may continue existing even if we are not constantly perceiving them–because God is constantly perceiving them which allows them to continue existing.
• If using the second argument: this is a proof using the involuntariness of perception.
• The basic idea is that you do not control what you sense, and that therefore your ideas and senses are outside of your control.
• However, ideas can only exist in and be produced by a mind, which implies that there must be some other mind that your ideas exist in, that mind being God.
• Finally, since our ideas have a remarkable order and variety to them, God not only must exist but also must be good and wise beyond comprehension.

Question 8

Briefly explain Hume’s distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact. How is that distinction relevant to his famous argument for the “negative” conclusion that “even after we have experience of the operations of cause and effect, our conclusions from that experience are not founded on reasoning or any process of the understanding?”

Answer 8

• Hume’s distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact is referred to as Hume’s fork.
• Relations of ideas form the basis of mathematics and geometry and their denial involves contradiction.
• These are a priori, can be reached through thought alone, and do not depend on anything else in the universe, such as the statement that 2 + 2 = 4.
• Matters of fact on the other hand tend to form the basics of science and concern the existence of things, and their denial does not involve a contradiction. These are a posteriori. For example, the statement “the sun will rise tomorrow” is based on experience, but the denial of that statement is not inherently a contradiction in the same way that denying 2 + 2 = 4 would be.
• He believes that the way we reach knowledge of matters of fact is through cause and effect, or past experiences of similar causal relations.
• This relates to Hume’s negative conclusion that knowledge from experience cannot be founded on any reasoning or understanding, and more specifically on his famous argument regarding induction.
• Hume believes that conclusions from experience (i.e. going from observed cases to unobserved cases) could either be reached through demonstrative reasoning or probable reasoning.
• However, it cannot be demonstrative reasoning (or a proof) because the denial of the laws of nature (or experience) does not involve a contradiction.
• Similarly, it cannot be probable reasoning because probable reasoning can solely be used based on past experiences, and thus would require nature to be uniform, which is what we were trying to determine in the first place and is circular.
• Therefore, matters of fact cannot be founded on demonstrative or or probable reasoning, which is Hume’s negative conclusion.

Question 9

In section VII of the Enquiry, Hume sets out to identify the source for our idea of necessary connection. What is the principle driving Hume’s search? (Hint: it is a principle he puts forward early on, when he introduces the distinction between impressions andideas.) What conclusion does Hume land on regarding the source of our idea of necessary connection?

Answer 9

• Early on, Hume identifies two types of perceptions. Firstly, he identifies impressions (or feeling), which are more lively and include sensations such as heat or color and passions which include anger or love.
• Secondly, he identifies ideas (or thinking), which are less lively and include memory and imagination.
• Hume believes, through the Copy Principle, that all of our simple ideas are copies of our impressions.
• Hume then wonders what the grounds are for necessary connection; for example, if I sneeze and a building collapses, one event may have followed the other but there needn’t have been a necessary connection between the two events.
• Hume believes that there are three possible sources of necessary connection.
• Firstly, it could be through body-body interaction, however he argues that this can’t be the case because no single instance of bodies interacting produces in us the idea of necessary connection.
• Secondly, it could be through mind-body interaction, however Hume argues that we don’t really understand the connection between body and mind, and that we only understand this connection through experience, which doesn’t produce the idea of necessary connection.
• Finally, it could be through mind-mind interaction, but Hume argues that we also don’t really understand our control over our own minds and that we only understand this through experience.
• Therefore, Hume believes that no single experience can form in us the idea of necessary connection, and instead that we can only understand necessary connection through repeated experiences of one event following another (or the customary transition of the mind) which gives us new internal impressions on the idea of necessity.
• This reflects Hume’s Copy Principle, because similarly to how our ideas are copies of our impressions, our understanding of necessary connection can only be formed through repeated instances of our copied impressions.