Locke Vs Descartes

Empiricist philosophers such as John Locke believe that knowledge must come from experience. Others philosophers such as Descartes believe that knowledge is innate; this way of thinking is used by rationalist. In this paper I will discuss the difference between Descartes rationalism in his essays "The Meditations" and Locke's empiricism in his essays "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding". I will then lend my understanding as to what I believe as the ultimate source of knowledge.

In Descartes Objection and Replies the idea of knowledge, how it is gained and defined, and the idea of true intellect are discussed. Through the use of the wax experiment true intellect is found, defined, and explained. With this being said he wanted to demonstrate how none of the truths we found through basic perceptive tools or senses can be relied upon and that you had to utilize deep though or knowledge to know how something is defined or even if it exists.

Socrates once said, “As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.” Several philosophers contradicted Socrates’ outlook and believed that true knowledge was in fact attainable. This epistemological view however had several stances to it, as philosophers held different beliefs in regards to the derivation of true knowledge. Rationalists believed that the mind was the source of true knowledge, while in Empiricism, true knowledge derived from the senses. Rene Descartes, a rationalist, and John Locke, an empiricist, were prime examples of epistemologists who were seen to differentiate greatly within each of their philosophies. However, although Descartes and Locke’s ideas did contrast in that sense,

Descartes defines senses as a part of the process of thinking. He also explains that we can use our senses to help us understand the true nature of things. Descartes struggled with doubt and his senses when he used his ontological proof that God existed. For example, he explains that he is aware that he is not perfect and he makes mistakes. He understands that he must know what perfect is in order to give someone the title. He knew that something perfect lead him to have these ideas and that it must exist. His definition of perfect is unique without the knowledge of anyone else and he defined it as God. For example, Descartes believes that God is perfect and deception is a sign of imperfection. Therefore, Descartes came to the conclusion that God cannot deceive. This example shows that Descartes did struggle to accept his own belief without doubting himself. His ontological argument proved, to Descartes, that through God everything

     Locke instead is an empiricist, and therefore he directly critiques Descartes epistemic system and tries to establish his own foundation of knowledge. Locke believes that our knowledge of the world comes from what our senses tell us. Locke’s theory state that we are all born with a blank slate, tabula rasa, before we

Socrates once said, “As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.” Several philosophers contradicted Socrates’ outlook and believed that true knowledge was in fact attainable. This epistemological view however had several stances to it, as philosophers held different beliefs in regards to the derivation of true knowledge. Rationalists believed that the mind was the source of true knowledge, while in Empiricism, true knowledge derived from the senses. Rene Descartes, a rationalist, and John Locke, an empiricist, were prime examples of epistemologists who were seen to differentiate greatly within each of their philosophies. However, although Descartes and Locke’s ideas did contrast in that sense,

He argues that our knowledge comes from the mind, without the senses being connected at all. In the First Meditation, Descartes starts by looking back on his life and realizes that a great number of

Rene Descartes was a rationalist who believed that knowledge of the world can be gained by the exercise of pure reason, while empiricist like Locke believed that knowledge of the world came through senses. Descartes from his meditations deduced from intuitive first principles the existence of self, of God, of the mind as a thinking substance and the extended body as a material substance whereas Locke, asserts that knowledge is acquired through perception, direct sensory of the world, reflections, the mental processes of breaking down complex impressions into simple ones and comparing them, conceptualizing them and recommending them to form new philosophies.

Renee Descartes, as a Rationalist viewed knowledge as something that we achieve through reason. Descartes begins his theory of knowledge by assuming that nothing exists. By doing this he would have to trust nothing. Not his senses, not anything that he has thought. As a Rationalist he sought to eliminate all doubt and anything else that wasn 't completely credible. Because he found that his senses were not one hundred percent reliable, as he found they sometimes deceived him, he did not trust them. Descartes believed that in order to obtain knowledge, there must be a rational method for obtaining it, and that the use of the senses, or any personal experience was not a reliable source. Finally, in Meditations on First Philosophy he concludes that he is a thinking thing: “I think, therefore I am”. He knows that this is true because he thinks, and to disprove that would require thinking and since he

Descartes makes multiple attempts to undermine the foundations of his beliefs. The process that he takes to do this, allows him to destabilize the trust we all hold with the senses. In his endeavors to do so he comes up with multiple arguments to cause mistrust, one, that the senses have deceived us before and therefore we cannot completely trust them, two, that it is a possibility that we are all like madmen and are only hallucinating the world around us, three, that god is deceiving us and making us sense things completely incorrectly, and lastly the argument he takes with him to build his knowledge upon, is the possibility that we are dreaming. Descartes quote stating that; “there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can

One way in which Descartes and Locke differ is their opinions of how knowledge is attained. Descartes ascertained that you could only gain knowledge through reasoning and not reasoning and senses together. He concluded that senses can deceive us and should not be trusted. Descartes states, “I will suppose, then, that everything I see is fictitious. I will believe that my memory tells me nothing but lies. I have no senses. Body, shape, extension, movement and place are illusions. So what remains true? Perhaps just the one fact that nothing is certain!” (Descartes). Descartes identified the mind as a thinking substance and bodies as material substances. Descartes is a rationalist, as he believed knowledge could be gained without experiencing it in the real world.

In another text of his, Descartes states famously that, "I think, therefore I am," (Cogito, ergo sum) which he reasoned from doubting everything ("Who Said"). He was trying to discover the main foundation of reality that contains definite facts that cannot be deferred at all when doubted and thinking was a process that, as he concluded, could not be doubted unlike things such as the senses or dreaming his own existence. Thinking was virtually involuntary yet remained practical despite all odds. As he tries to accomplish finding the truth, he seems to question everything he should in order to break down every aspect of life; however, he offers some of his own thoughts that contradict some of the claims he eventually makes. Either way, Descartes uses concepts, such as the Wax Argument, to express the practicality of pure intellection in every human mind that is used without inferences of any kind and his he describes at the kind of thought that is undeniable certain beyond all doubt.

Descartes’s theory of knowledge is essentially based in skepticism. He argued that in order to understand the world, first a person has to completely suspend their judgements of the world around them. This is the impression that the world makes on their mind. In this way, the physical world is not what leads to knowledge. Instead, the mind finds rationally seeks knowledge. The question is, essentially, “should we believe beyond the evidence?” (Kessler, 2013, p. 332). In this way, the ideas are rooted in the nature of doubt. This is an inherent nature of the mind, which is the result of the nature of man as made by God. In this way, the mind is guided by god towards knowledge in its infallible ability to reason about reality. In this way, the mind’s reasoning ability, even in the absence of physical reality, can ultimately lead to knowledge. I don’t fully agree with Descartes’ proposition that only the mind can produce certain knowledge and that our senses are constantly under the attack and being deceive by some evil deceiver. In order to go against Descartes propositions concerning about doubt I will use Locke to oppose it.

John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau are great political philosophers that have many similar insights about society and its political form. However, when closely examining the writings of these thinkers, one can easily discover many subtle differences among them. The two philosophers base their theories on different assumptions, which subsequently lead to dissimilar ideas about the origin of society and the constitution of governments. As a result, their views of the development of society greatly dissent from each other. Locke's and Rousseau's different versions in the development of society cause them to reach disparate conclusions concerning the legislative power, social unit, and revolution rights of the society. Locke believes that

Firstly, Descartes deals with the issue of empiricism- the theory that our knowledge is derived from our sensory experiences. Since we know from everyday errors that our senses have the ability to deceive us fairly often so making our perceptions to be something that it is not. For example, there are lots of examples of optical illusions and the fact that the train tracks may appear to converge from a distance. Consequently, we ought to