An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

John Locke

John Locke

John Locke

• Trained as a physician.• Well known for:– Contributions to early

modern scientific thought (empiricism)

John Locke

• Trained as a physician.• Well known for:– Contributions to early

modern scientific thought (empiricism)

– Political philosophy (Second Treatise on Government)

Empiricism

• “Let us suppose the mind to be white paper void of all characters. How comes it to be furnished? From experience; in that all our knowledge is founded” (not in excerpt)

Empiricism

• “Let us suppose the mind to be white paper void of all characters. How comes it to be furnished? From experience; in that all our knowledge is founded” (not in excerpt)

• The view that all of our ideas come ultimately from our senses is known as “Empiricism”

Empiricism

• “Let us suppose the mind to be white paper void of all characters. How comes it to be furnished? From experience; in that all our knowledge is founded” (not in excerpt)

• The view that all of our ideas come ultimately from our senses is known as “Empiricism”

• Its main opponent, Rationalism, is the view that at least some ideas are innate or else gained other than by the senses.

The Blank Slate

• It is important to note that Locke did not advocate the view that people have no innate abilities, tendencies, or natures, only that they have no innate ideas.

The Blank Slate

• It is important to note that Locke did not advocate the view that people have no innate abilities, tendencies, or natures, only that they have no innate ideas.

• The outright denial of human nature, and a family of views that hold that all (or nearly all) human behavior is “socially constructed” are much more recent.

The Blank Slate

• In this book, Pinker presents arguments that at least some movements in recent social science have gotten carried away with the blank slate view.

Ideas

“[We must] distinguish [ideas] as they are ideas or perceptions in our minds… [so] that we may not think (as perhaps usually is done) that they are exactly the images and resemblances of something inherent in the subject; most of those of sensation being in the mind no more the likeness of something existing [outside of us] than the names that stand for them are the likeness of our ideas.” (92)

Ideas

• Ideas are the entities that the mind deals with, NOT actual objects.

Kinds of experience:

• “First, our senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according to the various ways wherein those objects do affect them.”

• Locke calls this kind of experience ‘sensation’

Kinds of experience:

• “Secondly, the other fountain from which experience furnisheth the understanding with ideas is the perception of the operations of our own minds within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got.”

• Locke calls this kind of experience ‘reflection’

Qualities:• “Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself, …

that I call and idea…and the power to produce any idea in our mind, I call quality of the subject wherein that power is.” (92)

• Primary qualities (see §9)

Qualities:• “Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself, …

that I call and idea…and the power to produce any idea in our mind, I call quality of the subject wherein that power is.” (92)

• Primary qualities (see §9)• Secondary qualities (see §10)

Some Primary Qualities

• Solidity• Mobility• Extension

Some Secondary Qualities

• Color • Texture• Flavor• Scent• Etc…

Secondary Qualities

• Color • Texture• Flavor• Scent• Etc…• All of these can be changed, an so cannot be in

the object itself but must be a result of how the object’s “insensible parts” affect the senses.

Locke’s skeptical challenge

• “How shall the mind, when it perceives nothing but its own ideas, know that they agree with things themselves?”

Locke’s skeptical challenge

• “How shall the mind, when it perceives nothing but its own ideas, know that they agree with things themselves?”

• Short answer: It can’t.

Longer answer:

• At least the primary qualities must themselves be in the objects, right?

Longer answer:

• At least the primary qualities must themselves be in the objects, right?

• Not necessarily. Locke mentions that shadows create a distinct idea in the mind, but are the absence of a thing rather than the thing itself. Other objects may, for all we know, be like that. (see §1-4)

The problem of substance

“When we talk or think of any particular sort of corporeal substances, as horse, stone, etc., though the idea we have of either of them be but a complication or collection of those several simple ideas of sensible qualities, which we used to find united in the thing called horse or stone; yet, because we cannot conceive how they should subsist alone, nor one in another, we suppose them to be supported by some common subject; whish support we call by the name substance, though it be certain we have no clear or distinct idea of that things we suppose a support.” (95)

The problem of substance

• Remember, empiricism is all about getting ideas from experience alone, but we have no experience at all with whatever binds the sensory qualities of one thing versus another.

The problem of substance

• Remember, empiricism is all about getting ideas from experience alone, but we have no experience at all with whatever binds the sensory qualities of one thing versus another.

• If we have no experience of what contains the purpleness and roundness and separates it from what contains blueness and roundness, then we ought to have no idea of it either.

The problem of substance

“It is plain then, that the idea of corporeal substance in matter is as remote from our conceptions and apprehansions, as that of spiritual substance, or spirit: and therefore, from our not having any notion of the substance of spirit, we can no more conclude its non-existence, than we can, for the same reason, deny the existence of the body…” (96)

Locke’s skepticism

• One major assumption of science is that there exist objects outside of our minds and that our senses give us true information about the objects themselves.

Locke’s skepticism

• One major assumption of science is that there exist objects outside of our minds and that our senses give us true information about the objects themselves.

• If our senses do not necessarily give us true or certain knowledge of objects themselves, and if we can’t use experience to talk about substance, what happens to science?