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"History of Modern Philosophy
Spring 2023
Study Questions for the Final Examination

The following questions are intended to help you prepare for the final examination.  Although these study questions may not be the actual questions on the examination, the examination questions will be based on these study questions.

Descartes

 1. What are the stages of Descartes’ doubt in the First Meditation?  How does he generate these doubts?  What is the scope of each of these doubts?

 2. Why does Descartes claim to be certain of the following claims in the Second Meditation: I think; I am a thinking thing; I seem to see a rose?

 3. What does Descartes mean by the claim that the reality of the cause must be at least as great as the reality of the effect?  How is this claim related to the Principle of Sufficient Reason?

 4. How does Descartes prove that all his clear and distinct ideas are true?  Why might Descartes’ argument here be thought to be circular?

 5. How does Descartes prove that a physical world exists?

 6. What does Descartes’ claim that the mind and body are really distinct mean?  How does he argue for this claim?

 7. How does Descartes, at the very end of the Meditations, respond to the dream argument of the First Meditation?
 
 8. What is Descartes’ view on the interaction between mind and body?  How does Princess Elisabeth criticize this account?

Malebranche

 9. What is Malebranche’s definition of “cause”?  Why does Malebranche think that, according to this definition, finite objects and their states are not genuine causes, but only occasional causes?

 10. Certain types of mental changes are regularly followed by certain types of physical changes.  How does Malebranche account for this regularity?  How does this account differ from Descartes’ account? How does it differ from Spinoza’s account? How does it differ from Leibniz’s account?  How does it differ from Berkeley’s account? How does it differ from Hume’s account? How does it differ from Kant’s account?
 
 11. Why, for Malebranche, is God the only genuine cause?  Would Spinoza agree that God is the only genuine cause?  Would Leibniz agree? Would Berkeley agree?

Spinoza

 12. What do Spinoza’s terms “substance”, “attribute”, and “mode” mean?

 13. Why does Spinoza think that there is only one substance?

 14. What is the difference between determinism and necessitarianism, and why does Spinoza hold both of these views?  What implications for human freedom do these views have?

15. How does Spinoza criticize Descartes’ views on the mind-body problem?  What solution does Spinoza propose instead?

16. What does Spinoza think is the relationship between causing and conceiving? Why must there be something self-caused? Why does the self-caused thing not depend on its modes?

Conway

17. For Conway, how do the natures of God, Christ, and creatures differ?

18. Are creatures modifications of God for Conway?  (See p. 52.)

19. How does Conway object to the Cartesian notion of matter?

20.  How would Conway criticize Spinoza’s distinction between the attributes of thought and extension?

Leibniz

 21. What is Leibniz’s cosmological argument for the existence of God?  (See, especially, Monadology, §§36-41.)

 22. On what grounds did God choose this world over all the other possible worlds?  Could God have made a different choice?

 23. What is the predicate in subject principle?  Why might it seem to threaten human freedom?

 24. What is the doctrine of pre-established harmony?  Why does Leibniz prefer this view to the occasionalism of Malebranche?  How does Leibniz’s doctrine apply to the specific case of the relation between the mind and body?

 25. Why does Leibniz think that finite substances do not causally interact?  (See, especially, Discourse on Metaphysics, sections 14-15.) Does it follow, for Leibniz, that finite substances have no causal power at all?

26. What is the nature of monads, according to Leibniz, and why are they not extended?

Du Châtelet

27. To what uses does Du Châtelet put the Principle of Sufficient Reason?

28. What is the Principle of Continuity?  How does Du Châtelet apply this principle?

Locke

29. Why does Locke think that shape and size are real features of objects, but color and taste are not?

30. What is Locke’s account of perception, and why does Berkeley think that it leads to skepticism?

Berkeley

 31. How does Berkeley avoid skepticism about the existence of the physical world?

 32. What is the relation between the mind and body, according to Berkeley?

 33. Do physical things causally interact, according to Berkeley?  If not, what accounts for the regularities we observe in the world?  Does Berkeley agree with Malebranche’s view that God is the only genuine cause?

 34. How does Berkeley argue for the existence of God?

 35. How does Berkeley attempt to preserve the commonsense claim that different people can perceive the same object?  What problems does he get into here?

 36. How does Berkeley’s version of idealism differ from Leibniz’s? How does it differ from Kant’s?

37. Why, for Berkeley, are we unable to conceive of something that is unconceived?  How, according to him, does this fact help to establish that physical objects are nothing but ideas?

Hume

 38. What is Hume’s copy principle?  Is the missing shade of blue a counterexample to this principle?

 39. What are the various ways in which ideas are associated, according to Hume?

 40. What is the difference between relations of ideas and matters of fact?

 41. Why does Hume think that we can have no reason to believe in any unobserved matter of fact?

 42. Why, in particular, can we have no reason to believe the Uniformity Principle, the principle that the future will resemble the past?

 43. How is the skeptical gap that Hume opens up between the observed and the unobserved similar to the skeptical gap that the Descartes of the First Meditation opens up between our experience and the physical world?  How is Hume’s skeptical gap similar to the Cartesian skeptical gap between clear and distinct ideas, on the one hand, and the truth, on the other?

44. What is Hume’s “skeptical solution” to his skeptical doubts about the unobserved?

45. What is the source of our idea of necessary connection, according to Hume?

46. How does Hume define “cause”?  According to this definition, can physical objects ever be causally related?

Kant

 47. What, for Kant, is the difference between analytic and synthetic claims, and between a priori and a posteriori claims?

 48. Why does Kant think that the possibility of metaphysics requires the possibility of synthetic a priori claims?

49. Why does Kant think that reason by itself cannot determine whether or not God exists?

50. What does Kant mean by saying that space and time are forms of sensibility? How does this claim lead Kant to his version of idealism?  How does Kant’s transcendental idealism differ from Berkeley’s idealism and from Leibniz’s idealism?

 51. What is Kant’s Copernican Revolution in philosophy?

 52. What is the relation between things in themselves and physical objects, according to Kant?"