PHIL 240

Descartes to Hume

3 units

Fall 2022

Topics

Background: Aristotle; the rejection of Aristotelian frameworks (sense-perception, method, motion)
Descartes’s project(s) and the picture of science
Reading the Meditations: reforming our beliefs and the autonomy of the mind
Understanding mind-world connections, God, and error
Descartes and Elisabeth: back to the world and mind-body (and some criticisms from Cavendish)
Friday
What’s new about the “new science”? (Descartes, Boyle, Newton, du Châtelet)
Lockean Concept- Empiricism and its Critics
Locke on basic ideas and powers of the mind, and the notion of substance
Locke on personal identity and the limits of our ideas and knowledge
Skepticism and Hume’s empiricism
Causal reasoning & the Idea of Nec. Connexion
Hume’s Skepticisms
Monday

Descartes, René, Selected Philosophical Writings, ed. Cottingham, et al., (Cambridge)
unspecified
Leibniz, G.W., Discourse on Metaphysics & Other Essays, ed. Garber & Ariew (Hackett)
unspecified
Hume, D. Treatise on Human Nature (Oxford) The first three books are the least expensive (and in some cases, the only) editions that contain the readings
unspecified

Winter 2022

Descartes, Rene: Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies, ed. Cottingham. Cambridge. ISBN 0521558182
required
ISBN 0521558182
Spinoza, Baruch: Ethics. Tr. Samuel Shirley. Hackett. ISBN 9780872201309
required
ISBN 9780872201309
Locke, John: Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Hackett. ISBN 9780872202160
required
ISBN 9780872202160
Leibniz, Gottfried Willhelm: Philosophical Essays. ed. Ariew & Garber. Hackett paperback. ISBN 0872200620
required
ISBN 0872200620
Berkeley, George: A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. Hackett. ISBN 0915145391
required
ISBN 0915145391
Hume, David: Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Hackett paperback. ISBN 0872202291
required
ISBN 0872202291
Atherton, Margaret: Women Philosophers of the Early Modern Period. Hackett. ISBN 0872202593
required
ISBN 0872202593

Sources