Exam 6: John Locke Free Agents

Sartre says, "Nor, on the other hand, if God does not exist, are we provided with any values or commands that could legitimize our behavior. Thus we have neither behind us, nor before us in a luminous realm of values, any means of justification or excuse. We are left alone, without excuse. That is what I mean when I say that man is ..."

Locke says, "the idea of liberty 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."

Explain Taylor's criticism of the position that says, "that 'I can' expresses the idea of a causal relationship in which a very special kind of mental event fills the role of the cause-namely, a certain kind of mental thrust or internal urging, well known to metaphysicians and philosophers of the mind as an act of will or a volition."

Locke says, "All the actions that we have any idea of reducing themselves, as has been said, to these two, namely, thinking and motion; so far as a man has power to think or not to think, to move or not to move, according to the preference or direction of his own mind, so far is a man ..."

In the reading, God says, "I'll remove your abhorrence of sinning. You will joyfully and merrily sin away, you will have no regrets, no abhorrence and I still promise you will never be punished by me, or yourself, or by any source whatever. You will be blissful for all eternity." In order to bring this about the mortal is offered ...

In the reading, God says that "sinning is not the real issue! The important thing is that people as well as other sentient beings ..."

Explain God's meaning in this passage: "I could no more choose to give you free will than I could choose to make an equilateral triangle equiangular. I could choose to make or not to make an equilateral triangle in the first place, but having chosen to make one, I would then have no choice but to make it equiangular." To this the mortal responds, "I thought you could do anything!" To which God says, "Only things which are logically possible."

In the reading, God tells the mortal that he has created a new universe in which a being just like the mortal may or may not have free will. God then asks the mortal what he hopes God chose to do. God says, "Remember now, the responsibility for the decision falls entirely on my shoulders, not yours. So you can tell me perfectly honestly and without any fear, which way do you hope I have decided?" To which the mortal says ...

In the reading, the mortal says, "I know people who have openly claimed to have hated you. At times I have hated you!" To this God replies, "You mean you have hated your ____________. That is not the same thing as hating me as I really am."

d'Holbach says, "Man is said to ____________, when the action of the will is suspended; this happens when two opposite motives act alternately upon him."

Taylor says, "an ______________ contingent state or event is therefore one concerning which it is not known whether it occurred, or will occur, or not."

According to Locke, "The power of perception is that which we call the Will."

Explain what Spinoza means when he says, "there is in the mind no absolute faculty of understanding, desiring, loving, etc. Whence it follows, that these and similar faculties are either entirely fictitious, or are merely abstract and general terms, such as we are accustomed to put together from particular things." Do you agree with Spinoza?

Sartre says, "We can begin by saying that _______________, in our sense of the word, is a doctrine that does render human life possible; a doctrine, also, which affirms that every truth and every action imply both an environment and a human subjectivity."

In the reading, God says, "I'll remove your abhorrence of sinning. You will joyfully and merrily sin away, you will have no regrets, no abhorrence and I still promise you will never be punished by me, or yourself, or by any source whatever. You will be blissful for all eternity." In order to bring this about the mortal is offered a guardian angel.

Taylor says that his examples show that "the relation expressed in the hypothetical 'I will move my finger if I want to' is, if the hypothetical is true at all, a fictional relationship between concepts, resting only on a conventional equivalence of meaning, and as such cannot be a causal relationship between states or events."

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 ..."

d'Holbach says, "Man is said to equivocate, when the action of the will is suspended; this happens when two opposite motives act alternately upon him."

Explain how the following passage offers a definition of the concept of determinism: "If human action is subject to a universal law of causation [then] there will be for any action a set of sufficient conditions which can be traced back to factors outside the control of the agent."

In the reading, God says, "I could no more choose to give you free will than I could choose to make an equilateral triangle equiangular. I could choose to make or not to make an equilateral triangle in the first place, but having chosen to make one, I would then have no choice but to make it equiangular." To this the mortal responds, "I thought you could do anything!" To which God says, "Only things which are ..."