John Locke Primary Qualities

John Locke was perhaps one of the most influential political philosophers of the modern period. In the Second Treatise of Government, John Locke discusses the move from a state of nature and perfect freedom to a then governed society in which authority is given to a legislative and executive power. His major ideas included liberalism and capitalism, state of nature, state of war and the desire to protect one’s property.

These characteristics are consisted of facts. Locke argues that “These I call original or primary Qualities of Body, which I think we may observe to produce simple Ideas. Solidity Extensions, Figure, Motion, or Rest, and Number” (Locke, 49). For example, a door (body), the primary qualities of this particular body is rectangular, heavy, etc. The idea of primary qualities exists as well and it resembles the primary qualities of an object. In the example with the door, we think about the ideas of being rectangular and heavy which exists in the body therefore, the idea of the shape resembles shape of the

As an Empiricist, Locke was committed to the idea that there were no such things as innate ideas and that the best, indeed the only way, to come to know objective truth was via sensory experience.The only way to come to know the world is through sensory experience. He would agree with St. Thomas Aquinas that, nothing is in the mind without first having been in the

Hans Aarsleff claimed that John Locke’s “influence in the history of thought, on the way we think about ourselves and our relation to the world we live in, to God, nature and society, has been immense.” Locke founded the British Empiricism, which has extended through 3 centuries, studied in many different nations by multiple different philosophers. He was able to influence many great thinkers of the modern age and their works.

John Locke was a physician and an English philosopher, he was known as the “Father of Liberalism”. He believed that we are born with a clear mind and we do not hold any innate ideas at birth. He gave two examples to prove his point that innate ideas don’t exist; he used infants as one example. He thought that if there were innate ideas then the infants born should know basic things but infants don’t have any knowledge when they are born. As they grow up they learn everything as they see their parents and other people who surround them. He argued that at birth we do not hold any knowledge, any innate ideas but as we grow up our knowledge grows from our experience and from the people who we are surrounded by. John Locke’s main argument against innate ideas about the universal agreement is that if there was existence of innate ideas then everyone in the world would have knowledge about them. Locke believed that as we grow we learn from our experience and from what we see around us. Innate ideas are ideas that exist in one’s mind at birth.

The hypothesis Locke had was that matter itself, does exist. He utilized the term material substance, which subsists outside our minds and our perceptions are caused due to this matter. (Prof. Stanley, 12). This hypothesis expounds why we cannot control our own sense data. They are caused by material substances that do exist in our mind. His initial argument is that matter is real and is a component to the cause of our perceptions. Locke’s limited representationalism was that some properties of our sense data look homogeneous to properties of the matter that cause sense data. Locke also verbally expressed that not all properties of our sense data look homogeneous to the properties of matter.

The first being the “external sensible objects”, which is every sensible thing beyond one’s perception. The second being, “the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected on by ourselves” (Page 65). With these two sources being put into play; it provides accuracy upon the existence of the outside world Locke would say (Page 69). This seems faulty, for how does one truly know that their sensations are correct? Locke’s standpoint on realism does not provide enough answers, which leads his explanation to be an incomplete one. As said in Philosophical Problems, “an argument is a set of claims, one of which is the conclusion and the others of which are premises that are offered to support the conclusion” (Page 5), because of Locke’s lack of premises in terms of accurately perceiving, makes his views weak in areas that concern whether we have a correct view of reality. Nevertheless Locke had created a foundation of ideas concerning this topic, which will inspire many philosophers to fall down his pathway and address the issues that may have been

One common example is the Doppler Effect. As a siren is coming towards us it makes a different sound than when it is going away from us. Now, the properties of what is making the sound ie the vibrations and the frequency are not changing, however, the sound is changing in our perception. Thus the sound coming from the siren is not accurately representing the properties of the siren through our perception. Locke also states that secondary qualities are reducible to primary qualities in that the ideas we get from secondary qualities come from primary qualities, meaning that we would have no secondary qualities if there were no primary qualities with which to start. I find this examination incredibly fascinating. I agree with Locke that there is a distinct difference between what he calls primary and secondary qualities. I believe that Locke does a wonderful job at outlining our perceptions and the different qualities in an object, how they are different, and why that is so

During this time, Locke tried a method of tracing our thoughts to its origin through memory and imagination, abstract ideas, and even our ideas of God and have questioned how they began. There are two sources of this, which are sensation and reflection. Sensation is the experience we have with external objects and where we get the ideas of cold, hot, bitter, and sweet and reflection is what we get from doubting, thinking, perceiving, and reasoning. He claims that being realistic with our abilities, which will become useful, as we try to find certainty about things that are beyond our power to know about. Locke states that the state of nature is where there is no superiority or jurisdiction of one over another. He describes this state as a “state of equality” because everyone has the same powers as his/her neighbor, which implies a state of perfect

…the originals of all our ideas are simple elements. Because of this assumption, Locke’s method became a search for simple units of sensation (or reflection). But do we start with the ideas “red,” “sweet,” “spherical,” and compound them to get he idea “apple?” Or do we see an apple and then, by a process of selective attention, note that it is red, spherical, and so on? Surely, the latter. The world of ordinary experience is a world of objects, and Locke’s simple ideas, far from being starting points of experience, are terminals. (Jones 251)

Locke said at birth, the human mind is a sort of blank slate on which experience writes. Locke claims that ideas are the materials of knowledge and all ideas come from experience. The term idea stands for whatsoever is the object of the understanding, when a man thinks. Locke thinks we are born with a bunch of faculties to receive abilities and to process the content once we gain it. For example, the mind can engage in three different types of action in putting simple ideas together. The first of these kinds of action is to combine them into complex ideas. Complex ideas are of two kinds, ideas of substances and ideas of modes. Substances are independent existences. Beings that count as substances include God, angels, humans, animals, plants and a variety of constructed things. Modes are dependent existences. These include mathematical and moral ideas, and all the conventional language of religion, politics and culture. The second action which the mind performs is the bringing of two ideas, whether simple or complex, by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them. This gives us our ideas of relations. The third act of the mind is the production of our general ideas by abstraction from particulars, leaving out the particular circumstances of time and place, which would limit the application of an idea to a particular individual. In addition to these abilities, there are such faculties as memory which allow for the storing of

“Take a grain of wheat,” Locke says, again in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, “divide it into two parts, each part has still solidity, extension, figure, and mobility; divide it again and it retains all the same qualities.” ( VIII, 9) Locke is half correct in this situation. He is right in asserting that an object, if divided will still have all the same qualities, but they will have different versions of those qualities. Not only that, the body will change. If you take a grain of wheat and split it in two, sure, it will retain all of the same qualities, but it will be a different object. If you divide a grain of wheat in two, you will have two half-grains of wheat. Neither of these half-grains is a full grain, they can’t be. So they simply cannot have the same qualities, and the quality is not in the

John Locke published in 1690 a twenty year long masterpiece, which ultimately becomes the masterwork of this great philosopher, titled as An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. This philosophical treatise took twenty years to complete when he began his work on The Easy in 1670. Locke composed The Essay in order to formulate what it is and is not likely attainable for us to fathom and perceive. John Locke’s aim was not to establish utmost certainty, but to fathom the amount of substance we can distribute to distinctive categories of knowledge. What is knowledge according to John Locke? Locke went about answering this question by splitting up his philosophical essay into four books, where the first three provided the infrastructure for the arguments set out in Book IV. Do we enter this world with a mind that is a blank slate or is a person born into this world equipped with knowledge? Paramount to Locke’s discourse during the whole of the Essay is the notion that when an individual born into this world their mind is a blank slate. Locke argued that all of our knowledge is from information one collects from the five senses – we enter this world knowing nothing – experience is our master teacher and imparts knowledge. This is the underlying score of empiricism that is so often contributed to Locke, a philosophical theory in contrast to innatism – the theory that knowledge is inborn – and to rationalism where the attain knowledge of reality through the power of reason apart

Another problem with Locke’s insistence that innate ideas do not exist, is that necessary truths, that is, contingent propositions (2+2=4), cannot be acquired through experience alone. If necessary truths exist, that would at least infer that innate ideas exist and are merely revealed through experience for necessary truths are a priori, which implies that innate knowledge exists as a disposition. Beyond this, there is the possibility that we can form an idea without a corresponding sensory impression. While not without its flaws, the argument that one can generate an idea without first being exposed to the relevant sensory experience is illustrated in Hume’s ‘missing shade of blue’ example. Locke claims that in order for an idea to be in the mind, we must be conscious of it, which indicates that there is not much leeway allowed for memory, that is, a power of the mind to revive perceptions it once had. The question then, is whether we can know things without being conscious of them. It seems as though it is possible, but it is important to note that regardless if we can or not, what is unconscious must have once been conscious. For this reason, a potential response Locke would give to Hume with reference to the ‘missing shade of blue,’ is that even if one is able to fill it in, they would still be using their senses in some way to access that knowledge and perhaps it would be “knowledge made out of a long train of proofs,” which highlights the mental fatigue factor in play.

Philosophers have always been concerned to establish a means by which the world can be understood objectively. The problem is that it is difficult to establish the extent to which the physical world exists independently of perception (Brock and Mares, 2007, p. 34). Philosophers identify a ‘perceptual barrier’ preventing knowledge of whether or not what can be perceived is an accurate or literal representation of the true nature of reality; a barrier known in philosophical discourse as the “veil-of-perception” (Bennett, 1968, p. 98). In 1689 Locke wrote An Essay Concerning Human Understanding as a means of explaining this barrier, using a theory categorised by philosophers as “a form of representational realism” (Brock & Mares, 2007, p. 49). In order to analyse the potential (or otherwise) of this approach, a philosopher needs to understand what Locke intended by his thesis of primary, secondary and tertiary qualities and consider the extent to which these may be inherently part of an object, and thereby the degree to which that object might correspond in reality with the way it is perceived. Locke’s work has been significantly critiqued (either to extend the ideas, or to refute them) ever since its publication. Currently the technologically augmented insights of information theory responses to Locke’s Essay use scientific evidence as a basis for both accepting and refuting Locke’s theory, making it a perennially stimulating subject.