John locke rsquo s essay presents a detailed, systematic philosophy of mind and thought. The essay wrestles with fundamental questions about how we think and perceive, and it even touches on how we express ourselves through language, logic, and religious practices. In the introduction, entitled the epistle to the reader, locke describes how he became involved in his current mode of philosophical thinking. He relates an anecdote about a conversation with friends that made him realize that men often suffer in their pursuit of knowledge because they fail to determine the limits of their understanding.

In book i, locke lays out the three goals of his philosophical project: to discover where our ideas come from, to ascertain what it means to have these ideas and what an idea essentially is, and to examine issues of faith and opinion to determine how we should proceed logically when our knowledge is limited. Locke attacks previous schools of philosophy, such as those of plato and descartes, that maintain a belief in a priori, or innate, knowledge. He begins by opposing the idea that we are all born knowing certain fundamental principles, such as ldquo whatever is, is. Rdquo the usual justification for this belief in innate principles is that certain principles exist to which all human beings universally assent.

Locke contends that, on the contrary, no principle is actually accepted by every human being. Furthermore, if universal agreement did exist about something, this agreement might have come about in a way other than through innate knowledge. Locke offers another argument against innate knowledge, asserting that human beings cannot have ideas in their minds of which they are not aware, so that people cannot be said to possess even the most basic principles until they are taught them or think them through for themselves. Still another argument is that because human beings differ greatly in their moral ideas, moral knowledge must not be innate. Finally, locke confronts the theory of innate ideas along the lines of the platonic theory of forms and argues that ideas often cited as innate are so complex and confusing that much schooling and thought are required to grasp their meaning. Against the claim that god is an innate idea, locke counters that god is not a universally accepted idea and that his existence cannot therefore be innate human knowledge.

Having eliminated the possibility of innate knowledge, locke in book ii seeks to demonstrate where knowledge comes from. Therefore, the most basic units of knowledge are simple ideas, which come exclusively through experience. There are two types of experience that allow a simple idea to form in the human mind: sensation, or when the mind experiences the world outside the body through the five senses, and reflection, or when the mind turns inward, recognizing ideas about its own functions, such as thinking, willing, believing, and doubting.

Locke divides simple ideas into four categories: 1 ideas we get from a single sense, such as sight or taste 2 ideas created from more than one sense, such as shape and size 3 ideas emerging from reflection and 4 ideas arising from a combination of sensation and reflection, such as unity, existence, pleasure, pain, and substance. Ideas of primary qualities mdash such as texture, number, size, shape, and motion mdash resemble their causes. Ideas of secondary qualities do not resemble their causes, as is the case with color, sound, taste, and odor. In other words, primary qualities cannot be separated from the matter, whereas secondary qualities are only the power of an object to produce the idea of that quality in our minds. Locke devotes much of book ii to exploring various things that our minds are capable of, including making judgments about our own perceptions to refine our ideas, remembering ideas, discerning between ideas, comparing ideas to one another, composing a complex idea from two or more simple ideas, enlarging a simple idea into a complex idea by repetition, and abstracting certain simple ideas from an already complex ideas.

Locke also discusses complex ideas, breaking them down into four basic types: 1 modes, which are ideas that do not exist in and of themselves, such as qualities, numbers, and other abstract concepts 2 substances, either self subsisting things such as a particular man or a sheep or collections of such things an army of men or a flock of sheep 3 relations, such as father. And morally good and 4 abstract generals, such as ldquo man rdquo or ldquo sheep rdquo in general. Complex ideas are created through three methods: combination, comparison, and abstraction. Rdquo general ideas occur when we group similar particular ideas and take away, or abstract, the differences until we are left only with the similarities. We then use these similarities to create a general term, such as ldquo tree, rdquo which is also a general idea. We form abstract general ideas for three reasons: it would be too hard to remember a different word for every particular thing that exists, having a different word for everything that exists would obstruct communication, and the goal of science is to generalize and categorize everything. 38th edition from william tegg, london scanned in three separate excerpts from early in the work.

Ap Biology Essays

It is an established opinion among some men, that there are in the understanding certain innate principles some primarily notions, characters, as it were, stamped upon the mind of man, which the soul receives in its very first being and brings into the world with it. It would be sufficient to convince unprejudiced readers of the falseness of this supposition, if i should only show as i hope i shall in the following parts of this discourse how men, barely by the use of their natural faculties, may attain to all the knowledge they have, without the help of any innate impressions, and may arrive at certainty without any such original notions or principles. But because a man is not permitted without censure to follow his own thoughts in the search of truth, when they lead him ever so little out of the common road, i shall set down the reasons that made me doubt of the truth of that opinion as an excuse for my mistake, if i be in one which i leave to be considered by those who, with me, dispose themselves to embrace truth wherever they find it. There is nothing more commonly taken for granted, than that there are certain principles, both speculative and practical for they speak of both , universally agreed upon by all mankind which therefore they argue, must needs be constant impressions which the souls of men receive in their first beings, and which they bring into the world with them, as necessarily and really as they do any of their inherent faculties.

This argument, drawn from universal consent, has this misfortune in it, that if it were true in matter of fact that there were certain truths wherein all mankind agreed, it would not prove them innate, if there can be any other way shown, how men may come to that universal agreement in the things they do consent in which i presume may be done. What is, is and, it is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be, not universally assented to. But, which is worse, this argument of universal consent, which is made use of to prove innate principles, seems to me a demonstration that there are none such because there are none to which all mankind give an universal assent. I shall begin with the speculative, and instance in those magnified principles of demonstration: whatsoever is, is and it is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be, which, of all others, i think, have the most allowed title to innate. These have so settled a reputation of maxims universally received that it will, no doubt, be thought strange if any one should seem to question it. But yet i take liberty to say, that these propositions are so far from having an universal assent, that there are a great part of mankind to whom they are not so much as known.

Not on the mind naturally, imprinted, because not known to children, idiots, etc. For to imprint anything on the mind without the minds perceiving it, seems to me hardly intelligible. If therefore children and idiots have souls, have minds, with those impressions upon them, they must unavoidably perceive them, and necessarily know and assent to these truths which, since they do not, it is evident that there are no such impressions. For if they are not notions naturally imprinted, how can they be innate? and if they are notions imprinted, how can they he unknown? to say, a notion is imprinted on the mind, and yet at the same time to say that the mind is ignorant of it, and never yet took notice of it, is to make this impression nothing. No proposition can he said to be in the mind which it never yet knew, which it was never yet conscious of.

For if any one say, then, by the same reason, all propositions that are true, and the mind is capable ever of assenting to, may be said to be in the mind, and to the imprinted since if any one can be said to be in the mind, which it never yet knew, it must be only because it is capable of knowing it and so the mind is of all truths it ever shall know. Nay, thus truths may be imprinted on the mind which it never did, nor ever shall, know: for a man may live long and die at last in ignorance of many truths which his mind was capable of knowing, and that with certainty. So that if the capacity of knowing be the natural impression contended for, all the truths a man ever comes to know will, by this account, be every one of them innate: and this great point will amount to no more, but only to a very improper way of speaking which, whilst it pretends to assert the contrary, says nothing different from those who deny innate principles. For nobody, i think, ever denied that the mind was capable of knowing several truths. But then, to what end such contest for certain innate maxims? if truths can be imprinted on the understanding without being perceived i can see no difference there can be between any truths the mind is capable of knowing in respect of their original: they must all be innate, or all adventitious in vain shall a man go about to distinguish them.

Essay on John Locke Text

Ap Biology Essays

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