We need to look at the attributes of the God of Classical Theism, and write ourselves a list so that we can name, explain and illustrate these attributes. For each term we need to know what it means and be able to provide a little bit of discussion, including, for example, the thoughts of a philosopher and a quote from The Bible. This needs to be laid out in a table ready for revision.

Couple of things to remember:

Each list will vary a bit in terms of the attributes it lists - make sure you stick to the list of attributes that they use in the first section of 'The Idea of God' on the specification.

Also, remember to maintain an awareness of the perspective that each site is coming from.

Do you know who the pictures are by? We can talk a little bit about these images of God in lessons.

The Nature of God (including list of attributes)

The attributes of God (use links at top of page for each attribute)

More on the attributes of God (scroll down a bit for links)

Another list (nicely laid-out with good scripture quotes)

Huge list of quotes

Pick a fight with Socrates

Visit the Socrates Argument Clinic

Thought it was time we had a closer look at Leibniz and his veins...

Here's some details on his key text "New Essays on Human Understanding"

Nice short discussion of the 'veins' metaphor and innate ideas in general

Clear discussion and evaluation of the Leibniz / Locke debate

STUDENT WORK:

What is that whole 'veins in marble' thing about?

The ‘doctrine of innate ideas’ is an epistemological approach that holds the idea that the mind is born with certain innate ideas.

Gotfried Wilhelm Leibniz (an 18th century rationalist philosopher, a polymath, and mathematician) agreed with this idea, and developed this view by using the analogy of our mind as a block of marble. Leibniz suggested that the naturally occurring veins and fissures contained within this marble are predisposed to a certain shape even before the sculptor has begun chiselling working at it to make a statue. Following this analogy, the sculptor does not create a statue of Hercules, he simply ‘releases it’ from the block.

Leibniz uses this metaphor to illustrate the idea that the mind has predisposed, innate knowledge of the world; and the physical world simply ‘releases’ this knowledge in the same way as the statue is released from the marble.

Leibniz & Locke’s Views on Innate Ideas

Both Leibniz and Locke have very different views on innate ideas. Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz being a German Rationalist philosopher, and John Locke being an English Empiricist philosopher.

In his book 'New Essays on Human Understanding' Leibniz makes an argument for the existence of innate ideas. He does this in the form of a dialogue using two characters Theophilus and Philalethes, the first represents Leibniz, so is a rationalist. The second represents Locke, so is an empiricist.

What kind of things did Leibniz think were innate?

Mathematical truths

Leibniz suggested that we are born with certain innate ideas, the most identifiable of these being mathematical truth. The idea that 1 + 1 = 2 is evident to us without empirical evidence. Leibniz argues, we require an innate idea, as we are talking about things we have not yet witnessed.Leibniz calls such concepts mathematical or necessary truths.

Necessary Truths

Another example of such may be the phrase, ‘what is, is’ or ‘it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be.’ Leibniz argues that such truths are universally assented to acknowledge by all to be true and, this being the case, it must be due to their status as innate ideas.. Leibniz argues that empirical evidence can serve to bring to the surface certain principles that are already innately embedded in our minds. This is rather like needing to hear only the first few notes in order to recall the rest of the melody.

This is an essay about the comparison of Leibniz and Locke’s approach to innate ideas.

Locke, who is an empiricist philosopher, knows that there is no innate knowledge and that all of our knowledge is gained through sensory experience and we can’t know anything before birth. Locke denies all innate ideas and principles and says you can have no innate knowledge. Leibniz, a rationalist philosopher, disagrees with this and not only does he accept accepts innate ideas e.g. Descartes’ innate knowledge of God, he knows that all thoughts and actions comes from within us so he strongly believes in innate ideas.

Leibniz argues that geometry and arithmetic are innate ideas but it is not the actual knowledge that is innate it is the potential knowledge that is innate. Leibniz uses the idea of veins in marble which basically means there is a statue already in the stone before the sculptor has discovered it.

Locke counter argues innate ideas by saying if we have innate knowledge then why do “children, idiots and savages” have no knowledge of these innate ideas. Leibniz argues that innate principles only appear when you pay attention to them and the reason why people (“children, idiots and savages”) don’t have these innate principles is because they don’t pay attention to them. He goes on to say that innate principles lie within us dormant within us and it is up to us to pay attention to them and to draw them out.

(Big thanks to everyone who contributed!)

Kant reading links

Squashed versions of Critique of Pure & Practical Reason - worth a skim through at least! (Pure reason is the one we're interested in)

A nice little summary of Kant on space and time - worth spending some time on.

buy the shirt

Plato's Analogy of The Cave

Various student versions (thanks folks!)

"You may be wondering why exactly, I should need these trendy new shades. It is because, I have experienced ‘The Sun’, with all ‘The Good’ I could possibly desire. I have finally ceased the everyday monotony of trying to make sense of the fickle, vague and shadowed shapes that make up the physical world, and have experienced the sun in all its glory! Peace out".

Plato’s cave

His analogy is a metaphor for the way in which he believes we perceive our world. He believes that the world in which we believe to be “true” is merely reflections of the actual world we are yet to experience.
In his analogy, he depicts an image of prisoners chained inside a cave with their heads unable to move left or right, forcing them to look ahead at a wall only. He explains how there is a fire behind the prisoners and in between the fire and the prisoners are men who carry various objects. These objects then cast shadows on the wall in front of the prisoners and when the men speak, the prisoners believe it is the shadows in which they see on the wall.
Plato’s analogy suggests that the human condition and human life needs to be escaped from. He feels that we are trapped by “reflections” of the ‘real’ world and that we need to break free of this to allow us to see the world as it really is.

This is Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.

In the allegory he says that there are people inside the cave , tied in a way that they can only see the back wall of the cave. Behind them there is a fire with shapes moved across in front of it, thus casting shadows on the wall. The people in the cave however, do not know these things to be shadows, and accept them as the world itself. Someone who could foresee the next shadow would be considered clever in that society.

Now, says Socrates, imagine that one man is freed.
He would turn around, and see the fire and the men casting the shadows but as he has never seen things like this before he would not have a name for them. And if he were to climb all the way out of the cave he would be blinded by the sun. After some time he would become acclimatised and see that this world was the source of all the things that he and his companions had been seeing.

So he returns to the cave, to tell the others of what he has seen, but his eyes are unused to the shadows, and as he cannot foresee the order of shadows, they think his eyes corrupted and it not worth the journey to see then sun.

Socrates says that if the other people in the cave could reach the other man, they would kill him.

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

People live in a cave, strapped to benches, watching shadows being cast upon the wall from shapes being held by a fire behind them. This is Plato’s view of how we look at the world. Our views of it are foggy and vague. Our knowledge is based upon the shadows of the good, not the good itself.


Someone could break free from the chains holding them to the benches, and attempt to escape of the cave. Plato’s allegory described this journey as the “ascent of the soul into the intellectual world”. This is a person’s journey through finding knowledge, breaking away from what they know in an attempt to find the good.

If they escape the cave they are greeted with the light and the knowledge “that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision”. They will have come to the revelation that their view of the world had be distorted and that his previous knowledge was false. They will have found the good.


However, if he was to return to the cave, with his new understanding of the good, those who had remained prisoners and never left the cave “would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes”. They would see his new knowledge as folly and remain with the belief that they have the true knowledge of the good. Yet the man who left the cave, and saw the light “would rather suffer anything than entertain these false notions and live in this miserable manner”