180042 PS Metaphysics and Ontology (2011S)

This class will focus on three representatives of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophical movement known as British empiricism—John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume. It is designed first and foremost for those students who have had a brief introduction to British empiricism in a general survey course, but have yet to engage in a more detailed study of the philosophical problems that emerge during this period. Specifically, we will focus on a group of problems that relate to and stem from the representational theory of perception that Locke develops in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Here we will examine the nature of the perceiving subject, the “ideas” that the subject is supposed to perceive, and whether these ideas adequately resemble an external world. In so doing, we will encounter perennial philosophical problems such as the nature of perception, the debate between realism and idealism, the specter of skepticism, the primary-secondary quality distinction, the problem of personal identity, and the nature, intelligibility, and/or existence of material substances.