Exam 6: John Locke Free Agents

In the reading, God says, "All I have said is that from the fact that you are talking to yourself one cannot possibly infer my nonexistence, let alone the weaker fact that you are not talking to me." What does God mean by this statement?

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 "I hope you have decided to give him free will."

Spinoza says, "Thus the _________ and the ________ stand in the same relation to this or that idea, or this or that volition, as 'man' to Peter and Paul."

According to Locke, "a man falling into the water (a bridge breaking under him) has not herein liberty, is not a free agent." Do you agree with Locke's definition of a "free agent"?

Explain what d'Holbach means when he says, "This is a principle the truth of which no thinking being will be able to refuse accrediting: his life is a series of necessary moments; his conduct, whether good or bad, virtuous or vicious, useful or prejudicial, either to himself or to others, is a concatenation of action."

What is Sartre's definition of "Atheistic existentialism"?

Taylor says, "I conclude, then, that 'can,' in the statement 'I can move my finger,' does not mean what it ever means when applied to ..."

Explain what d'Holbach means when he says, "Action always being the effect of his will once determined, and as his will cannot be determined but by a motive which is not in his own power, it follows that he is never the master of the determination of his own peculiar will; that consequently he never acts as a free agent."

Sartre asserts, "that God does not exist, and that it is necessary to draw the consequences of his absence right to the end. The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain type of secular moralism which seeks to suppress God at the least possible expense." For Sartre, this defines the concept of anguish.

According to d'Holbach, "Society has been believed interested in this system; because an idea has gone abroad, that if all the actions of man were to be contemplated as isomorphic, the right of punishing those who injure their associates would no longer exist."

Foot says, "Assigning a motive to an action is not bringing it under any law; it is rather saying something about the kind of action it was, the direction in which it was tending, or what it was done without forethought."

Explain what Spinoza means when he says, "The mind is a fixed and definite mode of thought, therefore it cannot be the free cause of its actions; in other words, it cannot have an absolute faculty of positive or negative volition." Do you agree with Spinoza?

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 image of me. That is not the same thing as hating me as I really am."

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 ..."

Explain what d'Holbach means when he says, "It is, then, for want of recurring to the causes that move him; for want of being able to analyze, from not being competent to decompose the complicated motion of his machine, that man believes himself a free agent: it is only upon his own ignorance that he founds the profound yet deceitful notion he has of his free agency; that he builds those opinions which he brings forward as a striking proof of his pretended freedom of action."

Explain what Taylor means when he says, "that there is an essential difference between my moving my finger, and my finger merely moving, and, hence, that 'I can move my finger' expresses not merely the idea that any motions of my finger are causally contingent but, rather, that it is causally contingent whether I produce them."

d'Holbach says, "It has been believed that man was a free agent because he had a will with the power of choosing; but attention has not been paid to the fact that even his will is moved by causes ____________ of himself; is owing to that which is inherent in his own organization, or which belongs to the nature of the beings acting on him."

According to Locke, "a man falling into the water (a bridge breaking under him) has not herein liberty, is not a ..."

Taylor says, "I conclude, then, that 'can,' in the statement 'I can move my finger,' does not mean what it ever means when applied to physical things."

In the Spinoza reading we find the claim that "In the mind there is no absolute or __________; 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."