BRITISH EMPIRICISM

JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704)

Background:

Life

Writings: Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

Against innate ideas (Essay, Book 1)

No speculative innate principles

Theory of innate ideas is an unnatural way of explaining the origin of our ideas

Ideas of colors aren't innately implanted in our minds; no reason to think that other ideas are

Argument from universal consent for innate ideas

We are born with both speculative and practical principles

Crit: this argument fails if we can show that we come by them in another way

Two popular speculative principles:

Law of identity and law of contradiction

Crit: absense of innate ideas in children and idiots refutes this theory

Crit: If an idea is truly in one's mind, then it must be understood; some humans do not understand these ideas, hence they are not in their minds

Dormancy theory: they are in us, but we do not comprehend them until we get our reason

Interpretation 2: reason assists in discovering them

Crit: The function of reason is to infer one idea from another. Thus, if reason assists in discovering any idea, then that idea is inferred, and cannot be innate.

Interpretation 1: we know innate ideas once we come to the use of reason

Crit: Illiterate people and savages don't have these ideas

Crit: Aristotle's laws of thought are known empirically, and we don't gain knowledge of them until we gain the appropriate experience and reason about that experience

No innate practical principles

e.g. morality and God (Lord Herbert's five common notions)

Simple and Complex ideas (Essay, Book 2)

Of ideas in general and their origin

Locke's use of the term "idea" includes all mental events, including perceptions, memories, emotions, and thoughts

Mind is a white paper from birth

All of our ideas come from experience (either from sensation or by reflection)

Sensation: five senses

Reflection: reflecting on the operations of our minds

Proof: for any idea we examine, we will be able to trace it to either sensation or reflection (or a combination of both)

e.g. a child raised in an environment with only black and white: he would have no ideas of color

Child development

Simple ideas

Gained purely mechanically

First sensory idea

Influx of raw ideas

Minds instinctively process them, e.g. through memory

Repeated sensory experiences gives him knowledge about the objects behind the experiences

Our minds can neither create nor destroy simple ideas

Of sensation: restricted to the five senses

By one sense: color, taste, smells, tactile solidity (while, red, scarlet, various noises, tones)

Most don't have names

Simple ideas of diverse senses

By more than one sense (sight and touch): space, extension, figure, rest, motion

Solidity: resistance we feel in a body, and extension which we can see

Simple ideas of reflection

Reflecting on the memory process

Two main mental actions: (1) perception, or thinking; (2) volition, or willing

Simple ideas of both sensation and reflection

Pleasure/pain, power, existence, unity, succession

Primary and Secondary Qualities

Qualities of objects are either primary or secondary

Complex ideas

Require an active effort

Simple ideas are amplified (enlarging, compoinding, and abstracting)

Three ways of getting complex ideas

Combining: mixing a few ideas together

Comparing: bringing two ideas together without compounding them

Abstracting: taking an idea (the apple on my desk) and removing the idea of existence from that notion