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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Locke say we do with ideas?
(a) Name and organize them.
(b) Eat and digest them.
(c) Doubt and hate.
(d) Aspire to them.

2. What does Locke say is his purpose in "Essay Concerning Human Understanding"?
(a) To break understanding into its parts.
(b) To define a unified theory of understanding.
(c) To reconcile the tension between modes of understanding.
(d) To pin down the mystical origins of understanding.

3. How does Locke use garlic to illustrate his argument about the qualities of things?
(a) Garlic has many different stages of development.
(b) Garlic has cleaning properties in addition to nutritional uses.
(c) The taste is different if it is cooked.
(d) Different cultures use it for different things.

4. What does Locke say was the second thing he wanted to study?
(a) How the spirit reacts to knowledge.
(b) How we form beliefs.
(c) How the body registers knowledge.
(d) How we know things.

5. Abstraction is the ability to do what, according to Locke?
(a) Deduce a meaning from a category.
(b) Contradict an idea.
(c) See a concept in a sense experience.
(d) Turn an idea into a representative.

6. What happens to a particular idea when you practice abstraction?
(a) You subtract particulars.
(b) You see it in context.
(c) You use it for religious purposes.
(d) You see the opposite of the idea.

7. What does Locke say the mind is before it has experiences?
(a) A history of turmoil.
(b) A set of dispositions.
(c) A white piece of paper.
(d) A power keg.

8. What quality does Locke say innate principles lack?
(a) Translatability.
(b) Universal consent.
(c) Variability.
(d) Presentability.

9. Where do ideas come from, according to Locke?
(a) The mind itself.
(b) History.
(c) Sense experiences.
(d) Genes.

10. Where does Locke say ideas come from?
(a) Experience.
(b) Collective unconscious.
(c) Memory.
(d) Senses.

11. How does Locke use walnuts to illustrate the qualities of things?
(a) Crushed walnuts will look different than whole walnuts.
(b) Walnuts are different at different stages of their development.
(c) Walnuts are seeds for trees but food for animals.
(d) Walnuts look different than grown walnut trees.

12. Which is NOT a category of complex ideas, according to Locke?
(a) Substances.
(b) Styles.
(c) Modes.
(d) Relations.

13. What standard would an idea have to meet to be considered innate?
(a) No one would be able to capture or limit it.
(b) It would have to be approved by a majority.
(c) Everyone would have to believe it.
(d) It would be secret and unspoken.

14. What does reflection create ideas out of?
(a) Language itself.
(b) Sensation.
(c) History.
(d) The mind's own operations.

15. How does Locke characterize perception?
(a) Complex.
(b) Incomplete.
(c) Self-aware.
(d) Basic.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Locke say justifies moral principles?

2. What idea does NOT come from sensation, according to Locke?

3. What is substance, according to Locke?

4. Composition is the ability to do what, according to Locke?

5. Whose understanding measures whether an idea is innate, according to Locke?

(see the answer keys)

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