John Locke and Metaphysics Essay example

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.

We are blinded, only see shadows, hear echoes, and the world around us is a mere shadow of what truly exists “Hence, the only way to believe oneself to have knowledge is to be simpleminded; those sophisticated enough to see the relativity of everything, but still not wise enough to turn their faces toward the light, can only despair, or delight, in the lack of real knowledge” (BS). In relation to his beliefs are the ideas of the famous Rene Descartes. He doubted the certainty of the external world and came to the conclusion that our senses can’t be trusted. Additionally, Descartes ' stated that you can’t trust your senses because there has been times when you are dreaming or imagining what you have experienced rather than it being real. Certainly it becomes questionable whether in fact we can believe if any of our principles are true. In The Matrix, Neo finds out the truth and answer to his question. The Matrix is just an illusion of the world around and the humans are plugged in by a computer program. Those who are plugged in have never truly saw the world for what is. Similar to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the humans are prisoners forced to see shadows which are copies of things in the real world. When Neo is finally confronted with the truth he can’t imagine the thought of ever going back. Instead he plans on exposing the truth by revealing how the world they live in truly looks.

The Founding Fathers of the United States relied heavily on many of the principles taught by John Locke. Many of the principles of Locke’s Second Treatise of Government may easily be discovered in the Declaration of Independence with some minor differences in wording and order. Many of the ideas of the proper role of government, as found in the Constitution of the United States, may be discovered in the study of Locke. In order to understand the foundation of the United States, it is vital that one studies Locke. A few ideas from Hume may be found but the real influence was from Locke. Rousseau, on the other hand, had none.

The methods of empiricism continued to spread with little restraint. An Irish bishop and philosopher, George Berkeley, contributed to the empirical movement in the early eighteenth century. He deduced that the arguments employed by Locke supporting that secondary qualities exist only in the mind of the

As the plot of The Matrix advances, this “reality” is explained. Neo eventually wakes up, and witnesses the truth – a world controlled, by machines. As he awakens to a dark desolate world, towers taller than sky scrapers surround him, loaded with humans – in a cocooned state. Machines monitor these sleeping humans - who are unaware of the truth. One of these machines quickly scans Neo, and realizes things aren’t quite right with him, and so he is released down a tube leading to a body disposal, and his possible demise. They (the machines) obviously don’t want him

George Berkeley believed that nothing is real but minds and their ideas. Ideas do not exist without the mind. Through a complicated line of reasoning he concluded that “to be is to be perceived.” Something exists only if someone has the idea of it. George Berkeley stated that if a tree fell in the forest and there was no one there to hear it, not only would it not make a sound, but there would be no tree. According to George Berkeley, that the mind of God always perceives everything.

With the exception of Native Americans, there is no race of people that originated in America. Yet today, we all come together under the colors of red, white and blue, sing the National Anthem and call ourselves "Americans". Despite our differences in religion, norms, values, national origins, our pasts, and our creeds, we all combine under one common denominator. Alain Locke addresses this issue of cultural pluralism in his article, "Who and What is `Negro'?" In this article, Locke states that, "There is, in brief, no `The Negro'. " By this, he means that blacks are not a uniform and unchanging body of people. He emphasizes that we, as Americans, need to mentally mature to a point where we do not view

When looking at the Declaration of Independence and the justifications which Jefferson used in order to encourage the dissolve of the ties between the United Colonies and Great Britain, it becomes apparent how much of the theories of John Locke that Jefferson used as the basis for his argument. Focusing particularly on the second paragraph of the Declaration, the arguments for the equality of each man and the formation and destruction of governments come almost directly from Locke's Second Treatise of Government. The other arguments in the Declaration of Independence deal primarily with each citizen's rights and the natural freedoms of all men, two areas that Locke also spent

Cyberspace was a digital rendering of reality and so is the Matrix. Case used rods to inserts himself into the cyberspace, Neo too used somewhat similar technology to return to matrix. Both of these conceptual world allowed characters to move freely and do what they would do in a normal world. Even the supporting characters were quite similar. While Molly locates Case in Neuromancer, it is Trinity who finds Neo in a club. Both of these women are reporting to a higher authority, Trinity to Morpheus and Molly to Armitage. Still, the difference between Neuromancer and “The Matrix” overshadows any similarity quite easily. Though the universe of Neuromancer is heavily penetrated with technology, the one in matrix is penetrated with technology on steroids. In “The Matrix” everything including the reality is a function of

Secondly, George Berkeley, a representational idealist, believes that knowledge comes from experience, but he perceives his thoughts in a different way then Locke. He doesn't believe that things from your senses can be reality. Berkeley believes that if our minds did not produce an idea, then God delivered and perceived his experiences to us, but he also says that empiricism and Christianity cannot be used together. We have a small role to play out and God makes sure that everything gets done. Berkeley was very mind dependent; he had faith that there is no world without a mind. With this in mind, he felt that all objects we encounter in experience are nothing more than mind-dependent collections of ideas. This is known as Esse est percipi, or "To be is to be perceived." He also believed that reality is nonphysical and everything that exists is either minds or the ideas they perceive.

Primary qualities, however, are objective and include aspects such as an object’s height and weight (Paquette 212). Through this, Locke claimed that the existence of objects can be made certain due to the primary qualities it possesses (Paquette 212). Similar to Descartes, Locke believed in a sense of existence. However, in his view, the facts from the primary qualities proved the object exists because the object exists within itself (Paquette 212).

Like Descartes, Locke also believed in an external world. As an empiricist, Locke relied heavily on the senses to provide true knowledge (Moore 2002). He shared Aristotle’s belief that the mind is a blank slate, also known as tabula rasa, at birth (Paquette 211). Our sense experiences thereafter provide us with knowledge to fill in those slates (Paquette 211). In Locke’s “Representative Theory of Perception,” also known as Epistemological Dualism, he stated that material objects exist and are separate entities from human beings (Paquette 227). However, he also believed that objects exist in the mind as psychological entities (Paquette 227). Locke concluded that people can taste, smell, touch, and see the external world which, in turn, becomes impressions in our minds (Paquette 227). Descartes and Locke are thus seen to be similar in the sense that they both believed in an external world.

John Locke starts off his treatise with the thesis that ideas spring from two fountainheads--sensation and reflection. The former, man acquires from external sensible objects that affect man's five senses--those same senses endowed upon all men by the Creator. Material things outside man's being are the objects of sensation. Through experiencing sensation, man's thinking process gives rise to ideas thereby gaining for the thinking being a certain amount of

Locke discards the suggestion of innate ideas. Locke believes that if we always had innate ideas, it would be impossible for us not to perceive or be aware of them. He believes that if there were innate ideas then they would be universal ideas present

All ideas we experience derive from sensations and perception. Sensation obviously uses the bodily senses to receive ideas, whereas reflection uses the body’s own procedures to receive ideas like thinking, believing and doubting. [4] Both of these processes are passive. The corpuscular hypothesis, which Locke expanded on from Boyle’s original thoughts, seems to suggest that everything in existence are colourless, tasteless, soundless and odourless corpuscles of matter. By looking at the bits of matter and their motions, it is possible for us to explain the sensations we gain from primary and secondary