(The actual List of Exam Topics on Wednesday, March 22, will drop one topic from each section. You will be asked to write two 25-minute essays, on topics taken from different sections.)
 

Section A (Hume):

1. Simple Ideas as Copies of Impressions

What does Hume mean by a perception of the mind? Into what classes does he divide them? On what basis? Is this bipartite classification mutually exclusive? Jointly exhaustive? What is an impression? A simple idea? A complex idea? Give examples. What is inner sense? Outer sense? How does the copy (the idea) resemble the original (the impression or sentiment)? How do they differ? What are Hume's evidence and arguments for the thesis that simple ideas are copies of impressions? Does he intend this thesis to be exceptionless, i.e., general or universal? How then might opponents challenge the thesis? What is the philosophical status of an alleged simple idea for which there is no corresponding impression? What is the relevance of the case of the missing shade of blue? What is Hume's final disposition of this case?
 

2. Hume's Fork

What does Hume mean by an object of human reason or enquiry? Formulate Hume's Fork. Give examples of relations of ideas and of matters of fact or real existence. What is the conceptual basis of Hume's Fork? Does it divide propositions into mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive classes? Which propositions are discoverable a priori? Which are discoverable a posteriori? Which contradictories are conceivable? Which propositions take us beyond the immediate deliverances of sense and of memory? When do people usually believe they have insight into causal relationships? When do they recognize that they lack such insight? What allegedly follows from the observation that cause and effect are distinct events? What is the thought experiment about Adam supposed to show? To whit is human reason limited in causal matters?
 

3. No Rational Justification of Causal Reasoning

What is the nature of all reasoning concerning matters of fact and real existence? What is the foundation of all our reasonings and conclusions concerning cause-and-effect? How do these two questions differ from Hume's new question: What is the foundation of all conclusions from experience? Formulate Hume's negative answer to this new question. What can past experience tell us about which objects follow upon which objects? On what basis do we extrapolate from past experience to the future and to unobserved cases? Is the link between past and future intuitive? Demonstrative? Do we appeal to a principle of the uniformity of nature in making such extrapolations? Can we justify this appeal in a noncircular fashion? Why don't these considerations show only that Hume isn't clever enough to find a justification for the aforesaid extrapolation?
 

Section B (Hume):

4. Causality: Single versus Multiple Cases

Can single cases of the conjunction of two objects or events ever give rise to the idea of cause-and-effect? Explain. How does a multiplicity of cases give rise to this idea? What does this show about the role of reason or the understanding in generating the idea of cause-and-effect? Could the understanding by itself ever get beyond what is immediately present to the senses or to memory? If reason does not prompt us to draw conclusions from experience, i.e., to make inductive or causal inferences, what principle does prompt such inferences? What is custom? Is it a type of instinct? How does the invocation of custom (habit) remove the difficulty about multiple-case versus single-case causal inferences? Without custom, what would the range of human knowledge be? Can we, by reasoning about it, resist custom (habit) when it prompts us to infer one thing from another thing that is present to our senses or memory when we have found the two things constantly conjoined in our experience? Is it custom or will, then, that determines what we believe about matters of fact? Was Descartes wrong to think that we have it always within our power to suspend judgment on any proposition that we do not clearly and distinctly perceive to be true? Why or why not?
 

5. Hume's Microscope

Given Hume's theory of (simple) ideas as copies of impressions, what is the obvious way or method to eliminate the obscurity and ambiguity of ideas in the moral sciences? To discredit or debunk such ideas? What does Hume take definition to be? Why does definition serve to clarify and disambiguate only complex ideas? How, then, does one clarify and disambiguate simple ideas that are obscure or ambiguous? To what is Hume referring when he speaks of a new microscope or species of optics, by which, in the moral sciences, the most minute, and most simple ideas may be so enlarged as to fall readily under our apprehension? To which ideas, as a test case of philosophical analysis, does Hume apply his new microscope? Why did he choose to investigate this particular idea? Why does he look for the impression of which this ideas is supposedly a copy, rather than try to define it by enumerating its component simple ideas?
 

6. Necessary Connection

Does Hume think that the idea of necessary connection is a copy of an impression produced by single instances of physical objects or events that stand in a causal relation? Why not? Does it arise from reflection on the operations of the mind? In particular, does it arise from the control of, or influence over, the body by the will? What makes Hume think that we come to know the influence of the will over the body only through experience? Does the idea of necessary connection arise, then, from an impression produced or felt when the mind or will operates on ideas or other mental contents, as when we will to call up ideas or propositions? What makes Hume think that we learn the influence of will over thoughts and other mental contents only from experience? What impression does Hume finally identify as the original sentiment of which the idea of necessary connection is a copy? Is necessary connection, then, a matter of projecting something mental onto the world? By finding an impression corresponding to the idea, has Hume shown that necessary connection is a philosophically legitimate idea?
 

Section C (Descartes)

7. Descartes's Sixth Meditation argument to an external world (i.e., to real bodies)

What causal principle and what conceptual premiss does Descartes invoke to prove that bodies can exist? Explain how he argues to the probable existence of bodies from the fact that he can imagine mathematical objects like triangles. On the basis of what causal principle does Descartes think that his sense ideas (sensations and sense perceptions) must come from one of four sources: himself, bodies, God, or some being intermediate in perfection between bodies and God? How does Descartes rule out himself as the source of his sense ideas? Why would God be a malicious deceiver if the source of Descartes's sense ideas was either God Himself or some being intermediate between bodies and God? What permits Descartes now to conclude that he really does have a body and that external material bodies are the sources of his adventitious sense ideas? Evaluate his position.
 

8. Good-tasting Poison, Dropsical Thirst, and God's Veracity in the Sixth Meditation

Distinguish accidental from systematic or intrinsic error? Is the fact that someone desires to eat a good-tasting but poisoned soup an example of accidental or systematic error? Does it convict God of malicious deception? Why or why not? Is the illness-induced thirst of someone who suffers from dropsy an accidental or a systematic error? If systematic, does it convict God of malicious deception? Why or why not? How does Descartes absolve God of deception in the dropsy case? Evaluate his argument in defense of God's veracity.