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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Which predecessor is Locke attacking with his discussion of understanding?
(a) Erasmus.
(b) Milton.
(c) Descartes.
(d) Leibniz.

2. What does Locke say number indicate about a thing?
(a) That it has the ability to replicate itself.
(b) How frequently it occurs.
(c) That it takes on a different shape in the aggregate.
(d) That it cannot be split without being a different thing.

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

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

5. How would you characterize Locke's description of knowledge in his introduction?
(a) Relativist.
(b) Idealist.
(c) Absolutist.
(d) Pragmatic.

6. Which concept was beyond the sphere of Locke's inquiry?
(a) Why we should or should not believe certain things.
(b) What the mind is.
(c) Why some beliefs are better than others.
(d) Where our beliefs come from.

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

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

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

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

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

12. How does Locke define perception?
(a) Passive.
(b) Absolute.
(c) Synthetic.
(d) Syncretic.

13. How does Locke describe reflection?
(a) As the mind's sensation of itself.
(b) As the engine for language.
(c) As the patterns sense experiences make.
(d) As the history of sense experiences.

14. What does Locke say is another word for retention?
(a) Intelligence.
(b) Memory.
(c) Ego.
(d) Wit.

15. What limitation does Locke describe in human faculties?
(a) Language is never more than self-referential.
(b) Compassion is removed from understanding.
(c) Envy is bound to the passions.
(d) Reason is closed to direct perception.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Locke say retention allows us to do?

2. Who proposed the notion that knowledge begins in doubt?

3. For whom does Locke say national principles are natural?

4. Which is NOT a method Locke describes for forming a complex idea?

5. Where does understanding originate, according to Locke?

(see the answer keys)

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