Here is a list of possible topics for the literature review. If you have another topic you would like to do instead, please clear it with me first. Note that topics must be reasonably focused -- for example, "Descartes' Meditations" would not be a suitable topic!
(You might well want to refine some of these topics further. For instance, if you wanted to focus this narrowly, instead of surveying treatments of Kant's views of space and time in general, you could survey the literature on one specific argument, e.g. the argument from incongruent counterparts.)
| Descartes: | |
|
the dreaming argument |
|
|
the evil demon argument |
Nico Mesa |
|
the cogito |
Daniel Townley |
|
causal argument for God's existence |
Eric Friedrich |
|
ontological argument |
Ryan Cahill |
|
the Cartesian Circle |
|
|
mind-body dualism |
Brian Fearn |
| Spinoza: | |
|
the argument that there is only one substance |
Louis Andrade |
|
relation between mind and body |
Sarah Stec |
|
freedom and/or free will |
Caryn Jack |
| Leibniz: | |
|
principle of sufficient reason |
Eric Washburn |
|
monads |
|
|
Leibniz's theodicy |
|
| Locke: | |
|
primary and secondary qualities |
David Mathisen |
|
substance as substratum |
|
|
theory of ideas (origin, simple vs. complex, etc.) |
Morgan Hines |
|
personal identity |
Drew De Los Santos |
|
idea of power |
Happy Comly |
|
real and nominal essences |
|
| Berkeley: | |
|
argument for immaterialism |
Alex Balotskiy |
|
critique of abstract ideas |
|
| Hume: | |
|
induction |
Charlie Mitchell |
|
causation |
Rachel Johnson |
|
personal identity |
Tyler Sanders |
|
skepticism |
Karan Sarode |
| Kant: | |
|
space and time (forms of intuition) |
|
|
the Categories (especially substance and/or causation) |
|
|
the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories |
|
|
Second Analogy: |
|
|
synthetic a priori judgments |
Nick Shockey |
|
personal identity |
Morgan Kern |
|
appearances and things in themselves |
|
|
phenomena and noumena |
|
|
freedom (esp. Third Antinomy) |
Nick Burr |
|
God (Fourth Antinomy and/or Ideal of Pure Reason) |
|
|
critique of the ontological argument |
Last update: February 16, 2009.
Curtis Brown |
Classical Modern Philosophy | Philosophy Department
| Trinity University
cbrown@trinity.edu