Spring, 2006

The midterm exam will have two parts. Part I will ask four or five questions asking you to explain in a short paragraph a key term or concept employed by one of our philosophers. In Part II I will ask you to write one longer essay.

Part I: Short Answer

For each term on the exam, I will ask you to provide a short paragraph explaining what the term means. (If Descartes and Spinoza use the term differently, explain how.) Answers should be specific and clear, but need not be long. 

• formal reality
• objective reality
• evil demon
• Cartesian Circle
• ontological argument
• substance (Descartes)
• substance (Spinoza)
• mode
• essence
• reality
• imagination
• natural light
• clear and distinct idea (Descartes)
• adequate idea (Spinoza)
• knowledge of the first kind
• knowledge of the second kind
• knowledge of the third kind (intuitive knowledge)
• attribute (Spinoza)
• monad (Leibniz)
• preestablished harmony (Leibniz)
• principle of sufficient reason (Leibniz)
• principle of noncontradiction (Leibniz)

Part II

Since we have a 50-minute period, I will give you only one essay question. (Most likely I will list two of the following questions on the exam and allow you to choose one.) You should take pains to make your essay as complete, carefully organized, and clearly written as possible. Grades on the exam will be based not simply on whether your claims about the text are true or false, but on the detail, clarity, and completeness of your essay.

1. Give an overview of the role of skepticism in the Meditations. Include discussion of the following: (a) what arguments does Descartes offer to make us doubt what we had previously believed? How does each call into question more of our beliefs than its predecessor? (b) How does Descartes think he can overcome skepticism? (Explain the role of the cogito argument and the role of the proof of God's existence.) (c) Explain why Descartes's response to skepticism seems to involve arguing in a circle, and (d) explain why Descartes thinks that the argument is not circular, and whether you find his reason convincing. Finally, consider (e) to what extent to Spinoza and Leibniz worry about skepticism? Why do you suppose this is?

2. The concept of substance is central to the thought of Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza all three. Discuss and compare their views about substance, including the following: (a) what does "substance" mean? (b) how many kinds of substance are there? How many substances of each kind? (c) is interaction between different substances possible? between substances of different types? If yes, how; if not, why not?

3. Compare Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza on the nature of the mind, the nature of the body, and the relationship between the two. Consider such issues as (a) is the mind a substance? (b) is the body a substance? (c) are mind and body distinct from one another? (d) Do mind and body have causal influences on one another?

4. Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz all think they can prove the existence of God. Explain the similarities and differences between their attempts. Include a discussion of (a) Descartes's argument in Meditation Three that God must exist in order to explain my having the idea of God; (b) Descartes's version of the ontological argument in Meditation Five; (c) Spinoza's version of the ontological argument (in Part I, proposition 11, which in turn rests in part on proposition 7); (d) the difference between Spinoza's ontological argument and Descartes's; (e) Leibniz's version of the ontological argument (Monadology 44-45), and how it differs from Descartes'; (f) Leibniz's a posteriori argument for God's existence (see especially Monadology 36-38).

5. Discuss the relation between Descartes and Spinoza on the possibility of error. Include discussion of: (a) why Descartes needs an explanation of the possibility of error; (b) what his explanation is (in Meditation 4); (c) why Spinoza thinks Descartes's explanation does not work; (d) what Spinoza means by saying that the will and the intellect are one, and why he says this. (On (c) and (d) see especially Part II, propositions 48 and 49 and the accompanying demonstrations, notes, etc.) Leibniz does not specifically address the issue in the texts we read. What might he say about it given his views in the texts we have read?

6. Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz all respond in different ways to versions of the problem of evil (i.e. the problem of why the world contains bad things if there is a God who is all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful). Descartes discusses a specifically epistemological version of the problem of evil: how is error possible if God is not a deceiver? Spinoza discusses both the epistemological version and also the more traditional version. (The traditional version comes up in his discussion of whether there are purposes in nature in the Appendix to Part I.) And Leibniz considers the traditional version of the problem. Explain the answers the three philosophers provide and how they are related to one another.