Answer 4 of the following 8 questions with complete sentences in a paragraph form, word-processed, double-spaced document with your name on the top. Be specific and concise: 6-8 nice, densely packed sentences should be sufficient for each question. You may answer the questions in any order you like, just show me which number you are working on. Staple your answer sheets together behind this question sheet.
Do not over-write this test just because you’re on a word-processor. Still use the same condense, direct and nicely packed concision as you would have in class. Use your extra time to proofread, correct and/or tweak the writing for this test. We have a right to expect more from you in a take-home setting, so show evidence of that extra time and care here.
1. What features belong to the God-idea and why do they have to belong to this idea by default?
2. If we work our chain of logic to a First Cause, then how do we explain how this First Cause “got there”? Do you think it is “evident by the natural light [of reason]” that there must be a beginning to everything? What’s your reasoning for this?
3. Why – as an argumentative strategy – is Descartes spending so much time dismissing corporeal nature and the senses as how we know things? What does the example of the wax have to do with this?
4. What is the one single, immovable point of certainty that Descartes has found? Explain what he means by it and how he uses it to support proof of God.
5. Why, out of the 4 features to the “Soul,” does Descartes dismiss 3 of them as being “tied up with the body,” and accept only one of them as part of his essential “I”?
6. What does Descartes mean when he says that “there must be at least as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in the effect of that cause”? How does he use this as a proof of God?
7. What are the 3 sources of thought, according to Descartes? Why – as argumentative strategy -does he dismiss 2 of them as sources for the thought of God and accept only one?
8. Locate any one single point of Descartes’ reasoning with which you disagree and go on to explain why and how.
* Extra consideration of your test performance if you select and answer well one of these questions
