PHL3880 Space, Time and Deity: Themes From Leibniz and Hume
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Handbook entry - a brief description of the subject can be found in the handbook entry. The handbook also provides information about the unit leader, the semester and mode in which the unit is available, the contact hours and the assessment requirements.
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MUSO/Blackboard site - there is a MUSO/Blackboard site for this unit where assessment tasks, lecture notes and other unit resources will be posted. Once enrolled, students taking this unit are advised to check MUSO/Blackboard regularly.
Subject description:
This subject explores some major controversies between Rationalists and Empiricists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The subject is in four parts. The first concerns the debate that arose in the 17th century concerning the possibility of innate knowledge. Descartes had claimed that some of our most fundamental beliefs have their foundation in ideas innately present in the mind. That view was hotly disputed by the empiricists, especially John Locke writing near the end of the century, and defended against attack by Leibniz. The dispute between these two draws out many of the fundamental points of difference between the empiricist and rationalist movements in philosophy. Part 2 looks at another controversy in which the disagreement between the empiricist and rationalist schools was important: the debate between Leibniz and Samuel Clarke, a close associate of Newton's. Ostensibly the controversy concerns the nature of space and time; but a host of other issues arise over which the rationalists and empiricists divide. The third part leads us into the work of Hume, the most radical and influential of the British empiricists, whose Treatise of Human Nature is probably the single most important philosophical work in English. We are to look at Hume's account of causation, and at the related problem of induction. Here Hume grapples with problems that Leibniz had claimed were insoluble for the empiricists, and our concern will be to see whether there is a viable empiricist position on this most fundamental issue. The final part returns to Hume's Treatise and looks at his treatment of scepticism regarding the senses. So in this final part we come back to the issue that Descartes raised in the First Meditation and look at whether, in the end, the empiricists had a stronger position.
Why study these old guys?
Apart from the fact that they are intrinsically interesting, the topics studied in this subject set the scene for contemporary philosophical discussions of space and time, causation, innate knowledge and our knowledge of the external world. It is hardly possible to understand later work in these areas without delving back into theories and controversies which are the subject of this course.
PHL3880 is designed to be taken by students who have already completed PHL2110 Res Cogitans: Descartes on Knowledge and Mind. All the philosophers studied in PHL3880 were influenced by the work of Descartes, though most were reacting against him. If you have not completed PHL2110 and are interested in enrolling in PHL3880, please contact Aubrey Townsend.