Week 1-Locke and Gottfried Leibnitz: The Empiricist-Nativist Tension

Question 1

What was Locke’s ideas of the human mind?

Answer 1

Blank Slate- All knowledge comes from EXPERIENCE
Complex abstract ideas from sensory experience and learning.
PASSIVE NATURE
Empiricism: All is learned from experience

Question 2

What was the “Enlightenment” period?

Answer 2

What it means to be human/man?
(A period of growth in European philosophy (especially in France), building on the scientific revolution, leading up to the ideas of rational self-government that prompted the French (and American) revolutions.)

Question 3

What is the Philosophy of the Mind?

Answer 3

Rationality-Independent thinkers- Removing authority of monarchs; religious beliefs
Individual minds are capable of reasoning and doing science

Question 4

What did Kant say in 1784?

Answer 4

Self-incurred immaturity; “immaturity in the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another.”

Question 5

What did Leibnitz say about the human mind?

Answer 5

ACTIVE NATURE
Nativist theory (Nativism-inborn,innate ideas)-: We are born active and rational
Multiple forces that cause things to happen in the world (not just God).

Question 6

What is Leibnitz Monadology?

What are the 4 kinds of Monards? Explain them

Answer 6

Bare-Seeing Bodies
Sentient-conscious sensation and perception, memory. and of voluntary focusing of attention
Rational-Capable of appreciation(reasoning, explaining), rational thought
Humans have this, animals don’t
Supreme-Mind of God

Question 7

Name Locke’s 2 major works

Answer 7

1) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
2) Two Treatises of Government.
- Democratic Nations state
- Natural rights (born with rights, liberty and estate)
- Social Contract
- Influence on Independence

Virtual Witnessing-free of politics
Matters of Fact-Establish firm knowledge

Question 8

Explain Leibnitz and the infinitesimal

Answer 8

Argues against Locke-is not a blank slate but a “veined block of marble.”

Belief in necessary truths that are not proven by experience

Question 9

Explain Locke’s concept of the “Association of Ideas”

Answer 9

Complex abstract ideas from sensory experience and learning

1) Continguity(experience things together)
2) Similarity
3) Custom (Prior knowledge)

Question 10

Explain the Molyneux Problem (Locke)

Answer 10

Blocks, shapes, visual input and past experiences

Illusions-our senses be fooled-We can “impute” secondary qualities in error