Where Our Ideas Come From (PP. 214-217)

1. Where Our Ideas Come From (PP. 214-217) John Locke (1632-1704)

2. Positive Ideas and their Causes Positive Ideas Causes • A positive idea is the mental representation we have access to in the mind. • It is the thing as we see it. • A positive idea is the mental image we “perceive” in the mind. • The causes of the images in the mind are the physical particles that make up the thing as it exists in the external world. • Things in the external world can be positive or privations

3. External World Positive Things Privations • The mental images of colors (e.g., red, orange, etc.) are caused by the positive existence or presence of a given pigmentation. • The mental image of light is cause by the positive presence of a given entity, namely, certain rays or particles. • The mental images of black and white are produce by the absences of pigmentation; hence, the image is caused by a privation. • The mental image of darkness is caused by the absence of light particles; hence, it is caused by a privation.

4. Ideas • As “Perceptions in the mind” • As “matters in bodies” • Are they the same • “They are no more similar than the name is to the idea it produces in the mind” ! • The name “dog” may produce a certain image. • The thing outside the mind, existing independent of us, may produce the image of a dog. • How similar is the things outside the mind (in the external world) to the picture in the mind?

5. The Image and the Real Thing MIND Image of a dog The Real Thing ?

6. Ideas • Ideal: the immediate object of perception • The sensations and perceptions in our understanding he refers to as “IDEAS”.

7. Qualities • Quality: the power to produce any idea in our mind. • A snowball has the power to produce in us the ideas of white, cold, and round. • The powers to produce those ideas are in the snowball (or belong to the snow ball) and Locke refers to them as “QUALITIES”.

8. Primary Qualities • Qualities that are inseparable from physical bodies. • Qualities that produce in us ideas that are identical to the way they are in the bodies. • Primary qualities are: • SOLIDITY • EXTENSION • FIGURE • MOBILITY

9. Secondary Qualities • The power in objects to produce in us various sensations by the primary qualities. • The sensations they produce exist only in the sensations and not in the objects. • Examples of secondary qualities are sounds, colors, taste, warmth, cold, pain, etc.

10. A Third Quality • The power to change the primary qualities of other objects.

11. How do primary qualities produce sensations or ideas in the mind? • The motion of the primary qualities and their affect on the organ of our sensations stimulate our nerves and produce in our brain the feelings of color and smell. • These sensations do not mirror or represent anything in the object. They are as distinct as the pain is from the a piece of steel that penetrates our skin.

12. Locke says: • “And yet he that will consider that the same fire that at one distance produces in us the sensation of warmth, does at a nearer approach produces in us the far different sensation of pain, ought to be-think himself what reason he has to say, that this idea of warmth which produced in him the same way is not in the fire. Why is whiteness and cold in snow and pain not, when it produces the one and the other idea in us, and do neither but by the bulk, figure, number, and motion of its solid parts?”