Questions on Locke: Cause and Substance

1. What is Locke's answer to the Molyneux problem?

2. How are universal ideas and terms formed through abstraction?

3. How are compound and complex ideas different from simple ideas?

4. How do we form ideas of modes? substances? relations?

5. Where do we get our idea of power? Why does Locke think it ought to be considered a simple idea just as much as our ideas of figure, motion, number, or extension?

6. How does Locke's discussion of will (volition) and freedom (liberty) indicate how the question of whether we have "free will" is unintelligible?

7. How do we come to have the idea of substance? How is the idea of substance in general (as a "supposed I know not what" that supports ideas) different from the ideas of particular sorts of substances?

8. How are the secondary qualities of things based on primary qualities (which themselves are based on the "minute particles" and "real constitution") of those things?

9. "Every act of sensation, when duly considered, gives us an equal view of both parts of nature, the corporeal and spiritual"; how?

10. What does Locke mean by saying that the principle of individuation (principium individuationis) is existence itself? What accounts for the identity of a changing thing over time?

11. Why does Locke define personal identity or the self as continuity of consciousness over time (i.e., memory) instead of a mental substance (soul) or man (body)?