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1.
- “The senses at first let in particular ideas, and furnish the yet empty
cabinet: and the mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they
are lodged in the memory, and names got to them. Afterwards the mind
proceeding further abstracts them, and by degrees learns the use of general
names. In this manner the mind comes to be furnished with ideas and
language” (I.ii.15, p. 65). (Hint: what kind of ideas do the senses let in?
Would a good example be “mama” or would it rather be something like
“warm”? Or, in a slightly different direction: which comes first, general names
or abstract ideas?)
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2.
- “For if those innate ideas, are not clear and distinct, so as to be universally
known, and naturally agreed on, they cannot be subjects of universal,
and undoubted truths, but will be the unavoidable occassion of perpetual
uncertainty. For, I suppose, everyone’s idea of identity, will not be the same,
that Pythagoras, and thousands others of his followers, have, and which then
shall be the true? Which innate? Or are there two different ideas of identity,
both innate?” (I.iv.4, p. 92). (Hint: is an unclear innate idea impossible?
Why? Or is there something else wrong with it?)
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3.
- “By this idea of solidity, is the extension of body distinguished from the
extension of space. The extension of body being nothing but the cohesion or
continuity of solid, separable, moveable parts, and the extension of space, the
continuity of unsolid, inseparable, and immovable parts. Upon the solidity
of bodies also depends their mutual impulse, reistance, and protrusion. . . . If
there be others, that have not these two ideas distinct but confound them
… I know not, how men, who have the same idea, under different names,
or different ideas, under the same name, can, in that case, talk with one
another, any more than a man, who not being blind, or deaf, has distinct
ideas of the colour of scarlet, and the sound of a trumpet, could discourse
concerning scarlet-colour with the blind man … who fancied that the idea of
scarlet was like the sound of a trumpet” (II.iv.5, p. 127). (Hint: what could
we say to the blind man, in explaining scarlet, that would be analogous to
“upon the solidity of bodies also depends, etc.,” as an explanation of solidity?
If the answer is: nothing, then how are the two cases still supposed to be
analogous? In other words: how can something like solidity, which has such
specific relations to other ideas, be simple and indefinable?)
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4.
- “For division (which is all that a mill or pestle, or any other body, does
upon another, in reducing it to insensible parts) can never take away either
solidity, extension, figure, or mobility from any body, but only makes two, or
more distinct separate masses of matter, of that which was but one before;
all which distinct masses, reckoned as so many distinct bodies, after division
make a certain number” (II.viii.9, p. 135). (Hint: how do we know so much,
in advance, about what one body can or cannot do to another?)
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5.
- “To prevent [the need for endless particular names], the mind makes the
particular ideas, received from particular objects, to become general, which is
done by considering them as they are in the mind such appearances, separate
from all other existences, and the circumstances of real existence, as time,
place, or any other concomitant ideas … Thus the same colour being observed
today in chalk or snow, which the mind yesterday received from milk, it
considers that appearance alone, makes it a representative of all of that
kind, and having given it the name whiteness, it by that sound signifies the
same quality wheresoever to be imagined or met with” (II.xi.9, pp. 155–6).
(Hint: what idea(s) does the name “whiteness” signify? Is the abstract idea
of whitenss the same as idea the simple idea, white, or is it a different idea,
and if so how is it different? What two ideas are combined in the proposition,
that snow is white?)
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6.
- “And I believe we shall find, if we warily observe the originals of our
notions, that even the most abstruse ideas, how remote soever they may seem
from sense, or from any operation of our own minds, are yet only such, as
the understanding frames to itself, by repeating and joining together ideas,
that it had either from objects of sense, or from its own operations about
them” (II.xii.8, p. 161). (Hint: what operation(s) of the mind is/are involved
in “warily observing the originals of our notions”?)
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7.
- “For the several modes of numbers, being in our minds, but so many
combinations of units, which have no variety, nor are capable of any other
difference, but more or less, names or marks for each distinct combination,
seem more necessary, than in any other sort of ideas” (II.xvi.5, p. 196). (Hint:
so do we really have clear and distinct ideas of very large numbers?)
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8.
- “By pleasure and pain, delight and uneasiness, I must all along be
understood … to mean, not only bodily pain and pleasure, but whatsoever
delight or uneasiness is felt by us, whether arising from any grateful, or
unacceptable sensation or reflection” (II.xx.15, p. 218). (Hint: is this a
definition of pleasure and pain? But I thought simple ideas could not be
defined.)