Instructor: James Woodbridge
email address: j.woodbridge@yale.edu
Course Webpage: http://pantheon.yale.edu/~jw556/yale/DS4.htm
Office Hours: TTh 4pm-5:30pm, and by appointment
Office: 406B Connecticut Hall
Office Phone: 432-1683
Dept. Phone: 432-1686

SECOND PAPER ASSIGNMENT

Pick one of the following topics, and write a 5 page paper completing the tasks assigned.

Your paper is due in my mailbox in 108 CT Hall by 11am on Friday, Feb. 24th.

Topics:

1. Leibniz and Berkeley are both considered idealists, in that they both deny that anything is fundamentally extended or material in the sense that Descartes held physical substances to be. Briefly explain their respective reasons (summarize their arguments) for rejecting the existence of material substances. Next explain how their two idealist positions differ. Of the two, which version seems better supported? Explain why. Is there anything especially problematic about each of these positions? Does either emerge as plausible, all things considered? Give reasons for your assessment.

2. Why, according to Hume, are inferences from observed matters of fact to unobserved matters of fact non-rational? Explain both why he claims they cannot be based on reason, and what he claims the basis of these inferences actually is. In Section 12 of the Enquiry, Hume warns that if Pyrrhonian skeptics acted in accordance with their views, "All discourse, all action would immediately cease; and men remain in a total lethargy, till the necessities of nature put an end to their miserable existence." Does this give Hume an argument for the rationality of induction after all? Explain why or why not.

3. In Book II, Part III of the Treatise, Hume claims, "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." What does he mean by this, that is, how do reason and the passions interact, and how do they not interact, on his view? Explain his reasons for holding this position. How does his view contrast with a rationalistic understanding of the role of reason in our lives, in particular, with respect to the generation of motives for our action? Explain some of the radical consequences of Hume's view. Which do you think has a more plausible understanding of this issue, Hume or the kind of view he rejects? Support your opinion here with reasons.