Final Exam

Final Exam Question Pool Tuesday 4/27, 10am-Noon

Please bring two exam books (available at the bookstore) with you for the exam.

The exam will consist of three questions chosen from the following:

1. If you stick your one hand in the freezer and the other in a warm oven and them plunge them both into the same bowl of water, the water will feel warm to one hand and cold to the other. Explain the philosophical problem this raises. Explain how Locke would attempt to solve the problem. (See II.viii.17-20). Contrast this with how Berkeley would solve the problem. (See First Dialogue). Whose solution is superior? Explain.

2. Malebranche believes that it is impossible for one body to move another body. What is his argument for this claim?

(Malbranche is a dualist who denies the mind is joined immediately to the body, that bodies hsve any causal powers, and that minds have any causal powers. The only concept of power we have is that of God’s will. Malebranche attacks the obscurity of the notion “union” in “The mind and the body are united.” The concept ‘body’ = the concept ‘extended things.’ Bodies can be moved, but cannot move themselves. They have only “passive power,” i.e., the power to undergo changes in extension/motion. They do not have “active power” i.e., the power to bring about changes in extension/motion. It is a contradiction that a body should move another body. There is only a material world because God wills that there be a material world, i.e., a world of bodies. God cannot create a body which is nowhere or does not have certain relations of distance with other bodies. That is conceptual impossibility. All existing bodies are either in rest nor in motion. Bodies at rest have a specific particular position in space. If in motion they have specific direction and velocity. All these bodies then will be given a place according to his will. So, once they are created in whatever original positions and motions God places them could he not also give to...