Exam 6: John Locke Free Agents

According to Foot, "it looks as if a moral agent is a man whose actions are in general determined, if determinism is involved in having a motive for what he does."

Sartre says, "There is no other universe except the human universe, the universe of human subjectivity. This relation of transcendence as constitutive of man (not in the sense that God is transcendent, but in the sense of self-surpassing) with subjectivity (in such a sense that man is not shut up in himself but forever present in a human universe)-it is this that we call ..."

Locke says, "the idea of _________ is the idea of a power in any agent to do or forbear any particular action, according to the determination or thought of the mind, whereby either of them is preferred to the other."

d'Holbach says, "if at this moment it is announced to him that the water he so ardently desires is poisoned, he will, notwithstanding his vehement thirst, abstain from drinking it: and it has, therefore, been falsely concluded that he is a free agent. The fact, however, is, that the motive in either case is exactly the same: his own conservation."

Sartre says, "Thus, there is no ______________, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing-as he wills to be after that leap towards existence."

Taylor says that the statement "This stone is so hot it can fry an egg," is a philosophically significant sense of 'can' as a "causal capacity or, better, of ..."

Explain what Foot means when she relates that "an action which is not determined cannot properly be called an action at all, being something that happened to the agent rather than something he did." Do you agree with this claim? Explain your answer.

In the reading, when God says, "Why would you wish not to have free will?" the mortal says, "Because free will means ..."

Taylor says that the statement "This stone is so hot it can fry an egg," is a philosophically significant sense of 'can' as a "causal capacity or, better, of reflective determinacy."

d'Holbach asserts that "This is a principle the truth of which no thinking being will be able to refuse accrediting: his life is a series of ___________________; his conduct, whether good or bad, virtuous or vicious, useful or prejudicial, either to himself or to others, is a concatenation of action."

Foot says, "We have now considered two suggestions: (1) that an undetermined action would not be one which could properly be attributed to an agent as something that he did and (2) that an undetermined action would not be the action of a rational agent." Do you agree with these claims? Explain your answer.

According to d'Holbach, "The faculties which are called intellectual, and those qualities which are styled moral, have been explained in a manner purely ..."

Taylor says, "What else is meant by 'can,' in addition to meaning that my moving my finger is causally contingent, is suggested by what was just said; namely, that whether or not I do move my finger is up to me." Do you agree with Taylor? Explain your answer.

Why does Spinoza believe the following: "Since everything that happens in our minds is determined by some cause, which has been itself determined by another cause, therefore, everything happens out of necessity"? Do you agree with Spinoza?

Explain Spinoza's reasoning in his claim that "In the mind there is no absolute or free will; but the mind is determined to wish this or that by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on to infinity." Do you agree with Spinoza?

Taylor says, "In the first place, then, and most obviously, a state or event is ____________________ if the description of its occurrence is self-contradictory, like 'a ball's becoming square while still spheroid.'"

Locke says that the "power which the mind has thus to order the consideration of any idea, or the forbearing to consider it; or to prefer the motion of any part of the body to its rest, and vice versa, in any particular instance, is that which we call the Will." Do you agree with Locke's definition of "Will"?

According to Foot, "it looks as if a moral agent is a man whose actions are in general determined, if determinism is involved in _________________for what he does."

In the reading, the mortal says that "Evil temptations come along, and try as I can, I cannot resist them." To which God responds, "If it is really true that you cannot resist them, then you are not sinning of your own free will and hence (at least according to me) ..."

In the reading, when God says, "Why would you wish not to have free will?" the mortal says, "Because free will means having an immaterial soul."