I’ve called this a reading guide because your only assignment for Monday’s class is to read the selections from Descartes and Locke and think about them. You will spend part of the time in class discussing ideas from the reading in small groups, and you can prepare for that by thinking about the parts of the reading these groups will focus on.
• Descartes descibes two tests for distinguishing between people and machines that imitated people and a corresponding two methods for distinguishing people and animals (which he regarded as machines). Think about his rationales for each of these and how someone might doubt or otherwise object to them.
• Descartes thought that a person had something, a thinking substance, that animals lacked. Locke agreed that there was thinking substance found in people but held that this did not represent who they were, what their identity was. You should consider the two sorts of identity he distinguishes from identity of substance—namely, identity as an animal (described sections 6 and 8) and identity as a person (described in sections 9 and 26). (Section 7 is relevant to both since that is there where he distinguishes different sorts of identity.)
These two ideas from Descartes and two ideas from Locke will be the focus of our discussion Monday; but there will time to discuss to other things you find in the selections, so watch for others and be ready to direct people’s attention to them.