History of Modern Philosophy Class Blog - Fall 2026

   10/22/2026   [Philosophy Club every Wednesday, 5-6 pm, in the Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences room 436 ("The Cave") Bioethics Club Tuesdays from 4:30-5:30 in CAS 436.]     If a statue is crushed to dust, does the statue still exist?   Locke thinks our ideas of artifacts, or vegetables, or animals are different from the ideas of the matter they are made from.     Locke rejects the view (largely Thomistic) that the idea of unities have substantial forms .   This is because there is no basis in sense experience for such ideas.     Locke’s account of diachronic identity for plants is: [S]omething is one plant if it has an organization of parts in one cohering body partaking of one common life, and it continues to be the same plant as long as it partakes of the same life, even if that life is passed along to new particles of matter vitally united to the living plant, in a sim...

   10/20/2026     [Philosophy Club every Wednesday, 5-6 pm, in the Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences room 436 ("The Cave") Bioethics Club Tuesdays from 4:30-5:30 in CAS 436.]   How might you go about proving that something is the same rather than merely similar ?   Where do the ideas of similarity and sameness come from?   Similarity seems for Locke to be a primitive function of the mind (idea of reflection, but that idea of similarity seems to presuppose objective similarity in the objects it considers)   Sameness, for Locke is also an idea of reflection where the mind “counts the same idea twice” (this very idea is this very idea).     When do we know that we are applying the idea of sameness vs similarity to the objects of perception?     The idea of sameness is limited initially to single acts of perception. (This very thing I am perceiving at this moment.) Sameness ...

   10/15/2026   [Philosophy Club every Wednesday, 5-6 pm, in the Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences room 436 ("The Cave") Bioethics Club Tuesdays from 4:30-5:30 in CAS 436.]     What would YOU think is an example of a substance ?         Since all ideas ultimately derive from experience, it follows that to really/properly understand our ideas, it is important to trace them back to their experiential origins (this is the “New Way of Ideas”). Conceptual clarification consists in tracing ideas back to their experiential origins. (Allows us to resolve philosophical disputes.)   Locke emphasizes the limitations of human knowledge and as a result the necessity of “epistemic humility”.   In large part this connects to (and is possibly motivated by) Newton’s approach to physics.   Newton introduces the connection between Calculus and physics.       Physics co...

   10/13/2026   [Philosophy Club every Wednesday, 5-6 pm, in the Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences room 436 ("The Cave") Bioethics Club Tuesdays from 4:30-5:30 in CAS 436.]     Descartes thought some ideas are innate. Locke thought there are no innate ideas. With whom do you think you agree?           Leibniz residua       Different views exist regarding what, exactly, L’s account of perception is .     My view:       L defines perception as “the representation of multiplicity within unity.”   I take L to be adopting a version of Descartes’ theory that perception is confused intellection. (Some of L’s own examples support this. E.g., waves on the shore.)     On my view, every perception is a confused intellection of the infinite collection of monads making up the entire universe. Parts of every percepti...