I need help with a Philosophy question. All explanations and answers will be used to help me learn.

In what follows, you shall find two essay questions. Please provide well written, detailed essays on the following topics. Each essay is worth 50% of your midterm grade. Beforehand, please attend to the following:

1. Because I am giving you your essay questions in advance, I shall request that if you use any secondary sources (refer to the text itself, or any of the handouts, or even the recorded sessions, and the transcripts from recorded sessions), please cite your sources, accurately and fulsomely. This includes any citation of any source outside of those provided in class, e.g. other books, or internet sources. I shall not abide copied work of any sort (cf. your syllabus). You are not required to use secondary sources. This is not a formal research paper. The point is that if you do appeal to sources, you MUST cite them.

you will be writing 2 essays

Essay Questions 1

Please write a well constructed and detailed essay on each of the following two topics.

1. “But… I denied that I possessed senses or a body; I hesitate, however, for what follows from that? Am I so dependent on the body and the senses that without these I cannot exist? (Descartes, Meditation 2, p. 279)

Both Plato and Descartes offer arguments for “dualism.” What is dualism? Be detailed and specific. In this essay outline the arguments from these philosophers that you take to be essential to their dualistic conclusions. What do you suppose leads these philosophers want to take a dualistic position? How do these philosophers take the body to either promote or hinder the cultivation of the soul/mind? What major philosophical problem arises from dualism?

Essay Questions 2

2. “This may shew us wherein personal identity consists, not in the Identity of Substance, but, as I have said, in the Identity of consciousness.” (John Locke, p. 312)

John Locke, as an empiricist, holds very different views from Plato and Descartes. How does Locke defend empiricism? What is the problem of personal identity? What are Locke’s views on this matter? Why does he distinguish between masses of matter, living things and persons? How, in detail, do Locke’s views differ from Plato and Descartes? What do you make of Locke’s arguments?

I also have recording of lectures that she uploads let me know if you’d like them.

Philosophy and the Human Condition: An Anthology (ed. Clack and Hower). ISBN: 9780190253585. Oxford University Press, 2018.