An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

According to Locke, two things cannot have one beginning of existence, and one thing cannot have to beginnings of existence

Locke sees there as being an important distinction between the persistence of a man and the persistence of a person

According to Locke, something is a person if and only if it has an immaterial soul

According to Locke, a plant or animal is the same as an earlier one if it participates in the same life

According to Locke, a person is a the same as an earlier one if and only if it is constituted by the same immaterial substance

In Locke’s chapter on identity, he uses the example of a dog with two heads

In Locke’s chapter on identity, he uses the example of a prince who swaps souls with a commoner

In Locke’s chapter on identity, he mentions a man who thought that his head was a pumpkin

In Locke’s chapter on identity, he mentions a man who thought that he an Socrates shared the same soul

According to Locke, the real essence of a thing is its real internal constitution, which is what causes it to have the observable features that it does

An essential feature is one that a thing couldn’t exists without

Essentialism is the view that all of each thing’s features are essential to it

A nominal essence, as Locke uses the term, is an abstract idea associated with a term

Locke is an essentialist

Locke argues that we are ignorant of the real essences that give rise to the observable features of bodies

According to Locke, knowledge is the perception of the agreement and disagreement of ideas

According to Locke, we have intuitive knowledge, but no demonstrative knowledge

Locke claims that there’s an obvious difference between dreams and reality

Locke is a substance dualist

Locke allows that human beings may be wholly material

Hume sets out to discover which impression is the source of our idea of essence

According to Hume, we can see a necessary connection between a thing’s sensible qualities and its causal powers

Hume asserts that external objects give us impressions of causal power

Hume asserts that our own minds give us impressions of causal power

According to Hume, we call one object a \”cause\” and another an \”effect,\” when others like them have been conjoined in the past

Hume thinks that he can quickly solve the age old problem of free will

According to Hume, inanimate objects are predictable, but human beings are not

Hume offers the example of a prisoner who thinks it is more likely that he’ll be able to break the the bars of his cell than that he’ll be able to persuade the jailor to release him

Hume offers the example of an angel who can predict all that will happen to each baby that is born

According to Hume, liberty and necessity are incompatible

Reid says it is important to define every term you use in a philosophical argument

Reid agrees with Descartes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume that we are immediately acquainted with out own ideas

Reid accuses some of his philosophical predecessors, including Hume, of abusing language by giving ordinary words vague, ambiguous and obscure meanings

Reid says that we cannot prove that sensation and memory are reliable

Reid is a skeptic about the reliability of sensation and memory

Reid confesses at one point he was a convinced Leibnizian

Reid claims that if we accept that we are immediately acquainted only with our own ideas, then we should endorse Berkley’s immaterialism

Reid allows that Berkeley can accommodate \”vulgar\” opinions about the independent existence of bodies and other people

Like Berkeley and Hume, Reid rejects Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities

Reid says that it is important to distinguish between sensation and perception

Reid agrees with Hume that we do not have experiences of power

Reid argues with Berkeley that we experience power when we reflect on our own doings

Reid allows that we can conceive of power, relative to its effects

Reid says that every change must be produced by the active power of some agent

Reid claims that certain plants such as venus fly traps are agents

Reid claims that magnets are agents

Reid says that an act is a free one just in case the agent was free to will as he did, and free to will otherwise

Reid says that only rational creatures can be moral agents

Reid is widely held as being a hard determinalist

Reid says that Hume’s attempt at redefining \”cause\” is a failure

A critique of \”pure reason\” is a critique of empiricism and scientism

Kant thinks that metaphysics is securely on track as a science

Kant compares metaphysics to tennis, whist and chess

Kant contrasts that progress made in metaphysics with that made in logic and mathematics

Kant uses intuition to mean a feeling you cant justify but nevertheless believe

Kant gives the example of a farmer’s intuition that bad weather is coming

Kant proposes a revolutionary approach to metaphysics, one that he compares to the Copernican revolution in astronomy

For Kant, a synthetic judgement is one in which the concept of the predicate is contained within the concept of the subject

Kant offers \”all bodies are extended\” as an example of an analytic judgement

Kant claims that mathematical judgements are all synthetic

An intuition, for Kant, is a mental representation that acquaints one with a particular thing

Sensibility, for Kant, is the mind’s faculty for passively receiving intuitions

The Transcendental Aesthetic is a part of the Critique of Pure Reason devoted to giving an account of the nature of art

A concept, for Kant, is a faded copy of a previously received impression

Kant marks a distinction between sensation and introspection as sources of knowledge

Space, according to Kant, is an a priori form that necessarily characterizes the objects of outer sense

Time, according to Kant, is a real feature of things as they are in themselves

According to Kant, we cannot conceive of there being more than one space

In the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant argues the travel backwards in time is not only possible, but actual

Kant denies that inner sense provides us with intuitions of our own souls