Reference no: EM133549511

Reading: Descartes

1. Give one of John Locke's arguments against either the simple or subtle doctrine of innate ideas.

2. What is the Cogito Belief Descartes advances in the second meditation, and how is it justified?

3. If you were a brain in a vat, whose "experience" is entirely generated by data fed to it by a fancy computer through electrodes implanted in your cortex, how, according to Descartes, could you nonetheless go about proving the existence of God (hint: there are two ways...give the general strategy of at least one of these proofs)?

4. There are two problems generated by Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities (and the corresponding distinction between ideas of primary and ideas of secondary qualities). State one of these two problems in your own words.

5. How does Descartes solve the 'problem of error' in Meditation IV (you can focus on any of the distinct problems of error I outlined in class or are outlined in the Powerpoint Slideshow for that meditation)?

6. Explain the origins of the mind-body problem in Descartes' Meditations, give Descartes' solution to this problem, and then offer a critique of this solution. At some point in the essay, you should indicate how Leibniz' philosophy avoids the mind-body problem, and what new problem emerges for Leibniz given his way of avoiding it.