Early Modern Philosophy — Final Exam (Descartes to Hume)
Question 1 of 21
The core disagreement between rationalists and empiricists concerns…
Descartes' method of doubt is best described as…
Why is 'I think, therefore I am' (cogito ergo sum) indubitable for Descartes?
The 'Cartesian Circle' objection charges that Descartes…
Descartes' substance dualism is the view that…
For Spinoza there is…
How does Spinoza dissolve the mind–body problem?
Leibniz's monads are…
Leibniz's doctrine of pre-established harmony explains…
From the Principle of Sufficient Reason together with God's perfection, Leibniz concludes that…
Locke's central anti-rationalist thesis is that…
For Locke, SECONDARY qualities (colour, sound, taste)…
Locke locates a person's identity over time in…
Berkeley's principle 'esse est percipi' entails that…
In Berkeley's idealism, what makes the world orderly, shared, and persistent when no finite mind perceives it?
According to Hume, our idea of the NECESSARY CONNECTION between cause and effect derives from…
Hume's problem of induction is that inferences from observed to unobserved cases…
Hume's 'bundle theory' holds that introspection reveals…
Kant's response to Hume (the 'Copernican turn') is that…
✍️ Open answer · AI-graded
Compare the responses of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz to the mind-body problem. Given that Descartes' interactionism founders on the interaction problem, assess whether Spinoza's parallelism or Leibniz's pre-established harmony is the more satisfactory solution, and at what cost each is bought.
What to cover: Set out Descartes' dualism and the interaction problem, then Spinoza's one-substance parallelism and Leibniz's windowless monads with pre-established harmony. Compare how each avoids interaction and weigh the metaphysical price of each.
Marking your answer — PhD-level feedback takes a moment…
✍️ Open answer · AI-graded
'Empiricism, consistently applied, ends by destroying itself.' Trace the 'way of ideas' from Locke through Berkeley to Hume's scepticism, and explain how Kant attempts to answer the crisis. How far do you agree that the outcome was the self-destruction of empiricism?
What to cover: Follow the slide: Locke's representative realism and veil of ideas, Berkeley's immaterialism, Hume's scepticism about causation, induction, the external world, and the self. Then explain Kant's Copernican turn as a response, and take a reasoned position on the 'self-destruction' claim.
Marking your answer — PhD-level feedback takes a moment…