Introduction to Philosophy

Quiz question one was: if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it does it make a sound? Quiz question two was: how do you know you have a persistent self? The first question is a great and famous question that arises from a study of Berkeley's philosophy - he was both an empiricist in agreement with John Locke on how we know things, but also an idealist believing that esse is percipi - or to be is to be perceived. All of reality was spirit in the mind of God (but as I interpret it in light of how the vocabulary changed - all is energy in complex relationships - though the mind of God must then also be considered the complete collection of energy in the universe. But that may very well be what he was thinking. It certainly ties in with Leibniz and his conception of the Monad. The second question comes from Hume's analysis of knowledge as an empiricist and pointing out that we can never observe the self - since the self is the observer. Good luck with that.