1 Either (a) How convincingly does Avicenna argue for the necessity of the
immortality of the soul?
Or (b) According to Avicenna, what is the role of the active intellect in
the process of intellectual thought?
2 How does the understanding of the soul as being the form of the body help
Aquinas to avoid the problems of dualism?
3 Either (a) What role does ‘leading the mind away from the senses’ play in
Descartes’ Meditations?
Or (b) Is there a central role for mathematics in Descartes’ metaphysics
as well as in his physics?
4 Could Descartes have accepted any other distinction between Mind and Body
other than a real one?
5 Either (a) Is the Cartesian Circle really a circle?
Or (b) Assess Descartes’ arguments for the existence of God.
6 ‘For since the Things, the Mind contemplates, are none of them, beside it self,
present to the Understanding, ’tis necessary that something else, as a Sign or
Representation of the thing it considers, should be present to it; And these are
Ideas’ (LOCKE, Essay IV.xxi.4). Discuss.
7 Either (a) Is Locke right to claim that ‘no body can, in earnest, be so
sceptical as to be uncertain of the Existence of those Things which he sees and
feels’ (LOCKE, Essay IV.xi.3)?
Or (b) ‘But besides the assurance we have from our Senses themselves,
that they do not err in the information they give us, of the Existence of things
without us, when they are affected by them, we are farther confirmed in this
assurance, by other concurrent Reasons’ (LOCKE, Essay IV.xi.4). Discuss.
8 How would Berkeley respond to Cartesian Scepticism?
9 Can a Berkelian phenomenalist be an atheist?
10 Why do Berkeley’s arguments against material substance not apply also to mental
substance?
11 ‘Hume gives an account of the origin of our causal beliefs, not a theory of
Causation.’ Do you agree? Why would it be important for a proper understanding
of Hume’s philosophy?
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12 ‘The problem with Hume’s account of the Self is a problem with his understanding
of “identity”.’ Discuss.
13 Hume claimed that ‘it is vain to ask whether there be body or not’. Is this, in any
sense, a sceptical position?
14 ‘What is thinking?’ Do any of the philosophers on the syllabus for this paper give a
satisfactory answer to this question?
15 Do any of the philosophers you have studied for this paper make sense of
existence unperceived?