John Locke (1632-1704)

John Locke (1632-1704) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

The Source of all Knowledge EXPERIENCE Two forms of experience (1) Sensation, and (2) Reflection. Sensation: external sense Reflection: internal sense

Where Do Our Ideas Come From? SENSATION White Cold Yellow Sweet Bitter REFLECTION Thinking Doubting perception Knowing Willing Believing Reasoning

Soul Descartes Locke The essence of the soul is thinking and perceiving. I am a thinking thing. The operations of the soul are thinking and perceiving. These are simply operations of the mind not its essence.

Child Thought Experiment If you were to leave a child from birth in a black and white room, she could never have the idea yellow. “But it is not in the power of the most exalted wit, or enlarged understanding, by any quickness or variety of thought, to invent or frame one new simple idea in the mind, not taken in in the ways before mentioned: nor can any force of the understanding destroy those that are there” (16).

We are limited to what we can experience Only the qualities that affect the senses are imaginable. “…there may be other and different intelligent beings, of whose faculties he has as little knowledge or apprehension as a worm shut up in one drawer of a cabinet hath of the senses or understanding of a man;” (p. 17)

Simple Ideas 1) Through one sense only. 2) Through more than one sense. 3) Through reflection alone. 4) Through both sensation and reflection

1. Through One Sense Only. Light and color Sounds Smells The variety of simple ideas is so great that they do not have names.

The Most Common Idea: Solidity The faculty of touch. Solidity or impenetrability: “That which thus hinders the approach of two bodies, when they are moved one towards another, I call solidity.” Solidity fills space. It belongs to bodies or matter.

What is solidity? “The simple ideas we have, are such as experience teaches them us; but if, beyond that, we endeavour by words to make them clearer in the mind, we shall succeed no better than if we went about to clear up the darkness of a blind man’s mind by talking; and to discourse into him the ideas of light and colours” (p. 20).

2. Seeing and Touching Space Extension Figure Rest Motion

Simple Ideas of Reflection Perception or Thinking (Understanding) Volition or Willing (Will)

4. Simple Ideas of Reflection and Sensation 1. Ideas of Pleasures and Pain 2. Delight or uneasiness mix with almost all our other ideas. Motives of our actions. 3. Existence 4. Unity 5. Power 6. Succession

Simple Ideas Simple ideas are the material of all knowledge and reasoning.

Ideas of Sensations Ideas in the Mind Qualities in Bodies Caused by some quality in the body. Is something completely distinct from the quality in the body that caused it. The idea or perception exists only in the mind Cause the idea Does not resemble the idea.

Example Ideas that are caused in us. White Cold Hard Roundness Snowball Qualities are part of the snowball and have the power to cause ideas in us. Primary Qualities Secondary Qualities

Primary Qualities of Bodies These are qualities that are inseparable from the body. Moreover, our ideas resemble them. Solidity Extension Figure Mobility

Secondary Qualities of Bodies Are nothing in things. The power of primary qualities to cause in us ideas.

How do PQ Produce Ideas The motion of particles affect our organs and give rise to sensations in our minds. “It being no more impossible to conceive that God should annex such ideas to such motions, with which they have no similitude, than that he should annex the ideas of pain to the motion of a piece of steel dividing our flesh, with which that idea hath no resemblance.”

Examples Flame: hot and light Snow: white and cold Manna: white and sweet Mirror of resemblance Fire produces the sensation of warmth and pain. The former we usually say belongs to the fire. But in reality the fire is neither warm nor painful.

Mind Dependent Realities Water cold and hot. They are real and yet exist only in the mind.

John Locke (1632-1704)