Modern Philosophy               Second Paper Assignment                Due: Thursday, March 26

Basic assignment: Write a 5-6 page (typed, double-spaced) paper explaining and supporting your position on some issue raised by one or more of the writers we have read (or will have read) in the middle weeks of this course..

Some guidelines:

1. Your paper should contain your thoughts and opinions, not just a summary of Hume or Kant (or whoever).  Tell me what you think, not just what other people have said.
2. Do, however, address the position and the arguments of at least one of the philosophers we have studied.  Give references to the texts to support your interpretation of their views.
3. Be sure that the question or issue your paper is addressing is clear and well focused.
4. Be sure that you have provided a clear statement of your position on that issue (or your answer to that question).
5. In addition to explaining what you think, your paper should contain reasons why you take the position you do.  Your main job is to explain why a reasonable person should agree with the opinion or position you are expressing.
6. Include in your paper at least one statement of an objection to your view and a reply to that objection.  How might someone who disagreed with you criticize your argument?  And how can you respond to that criticism?
7. You are not required (or encouraged) to consult any other sources besides those already assigned for class reading.  If you do use any other sources, give them credit for whatever you take from them: list them in a bibliography at the end of your paper and give specific references for any ideas you have borrowed.  (Where you rely on Melchert, give him credit.)

Some possible topics (if you want to develop a different topic, check it out with me before you write your paper):

1. In the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Hume develops some ‘skeptical doubts’, inventing what we now call ‘the problem of induction’.  Explain and evaluate the reasons he gives for these doubts.  Explain and evaluate his ‘skeptical solution’ to the problem.
2. Explain and assess the view that Hume develops in the Enquiry about the relation of cause and effect.
3. Locke and Hume are both classified as empiricist philosophers.  Discuss what it means to be an empiricist, how well the label fits (or doesn’t fit) each of these writers, and whether or not an empiricist is a good thing to be.
4. In Section 8 of the Enquiry, Hume claims to resolve the ancient debate about ‘liberty and necessity’ – what is now more commonly called ‘the problem of free will’.  Explain and evaluate his solution.
5. In Section 10 of the Enquiry Hume argues that we should never believe in the occurrence of a miracle on the basis of testimony.  Explain and evaluate his argument.
6. Discuss the argument from (or to) design and Hume’s critique of it.  Does he succeed in showing that the argument is no good?
7. Kant said that Hume woke him from his ‘dogmatic slumbers’.  What were the dogmas he was talking about, how did Hume awaken him, and what did Kant do once he woke up?
8. Kant referred (in the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason) to his philosophical view as amounting to a ‘Copernican Revolution’ in philosophy.  Explain the analogy and evaluate its usefulness in explaining the nature of Kant’s theory of knowledge.
9. Kant says that the fundamental question a scientific metaphysics must answer is “How is synthetic a priori knowledge possible?”  What does this mean?  What is Kant’s answer? Is it a good answer?