Locke vs. Knowledge Innatism

The second epistemological question is; does reason provide us with knowledge of the world independently of experience? John Locke says the answer to this question is no. He uses arguments discussed in the third anchor point of empiricism to support this idea. Locke does not believe that reason alone can provide knowledge because we do not possess innate knowledge that we are not aware of. To best describe this Locke proposes this model: "Suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? When man has painted on it with endless variety, how does it have all the materials of reason and knowledge to this question I answer, in one word, from experience. In that all our knowledge is founded, and from that, it ultimately drives itself" (p94). Therefore, without these experiences Locke believes that we would not possess the concept of reason and because of that reason alone cannot provide us knowledge of the world.

After reading the analysis of innate ideas of the two philosophers. I tend to agree with Locke’s argument that there is no such innate ideas. First, Descartes does not proving enough about how can we born with innate ideas? This major flaw eventually get to Locke’s tension and give us a strong evident of the young children should aware of truth if they have innate ideas in them. Second, I believe in Locke’s criticism about ideas only gain through our experiences and situations. Thus the more experience we have, the vivid picture about our external world we can perceived.

Locke’s states that “All knowledge comes from the senses through experience” interpreted when Locke’s “blank slate” idea to when we are kids we know nothing. Our brains have to make connections to things and these connections are gained through experience and continues

In Locke’s essay, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he explains where and how one’s knowledge was formed. He reiterates that “Whatsoever the Mind perceives in it self, or is the immediate object of Perception, Thought, or Understanding, that I call Idea; and the Power to produce in any Idea

Locke argued that all ideas came from experience. The debate over nature versus nurture could be spanned back to when philosophy was predominantly the way of explaining the acquisition of knowledge and continues in more recent times with scientific evidence consisting of facts and numbers giving support to one side or the other. Both the recent and historical back and forth between great scholars helps each one individually to come to their own conclusions of whether nature or nurture is the more dominant factor contributing to a person’s knowledge and intelligence.

Locke's first reason for disproving innate ideas is that just because an idea is agreed upon by everyone in the world doesn't prove that it's innate. He writes, "If it were true in

Mr. Replogle, you have a strong point of view. John Locke did dispute that we are all born into this world in ignorance but to remain in ignorance is a choice. He acknowledged that human beings are moral and rational decision-making creature. At each stage of one life, they are responsible for that choice and the decision they make throughout life. The problem at hand is by trial and errors knowledge is developed and erases

Indeed, Locke’s approach on human knowledge as an external obtained asset is closely linked to his view on ethics. According to Locke, ethics is learned by example coming from the external environment. Certainly, such examples can derive from teachers or other influential individuals who have had the chance to experience life on a broader extent. Due to such transcending thinking, Locke was perceived as a “‘culturally engaged’ philosopher responding to the cultural crises of the Modern Europe, in which a fracture of tradition and warfare had created a need to define the nature and scope of knowledge” (Marshall 468). His contribution was important because it provided people at that time with an alternative system of ethics that took into account reason and was not solely based on what others held ethical and/or unethical. It is this notion of reason, the factor

Locke’s second point in his argument is that knowledge comes from the senses and how we perceive the world. This means that all the knowledge society has acquired comes from the observations and reasoning people have made based on their perceptions. In his essay, Locke presents the idea of two fountains of knowledge. These fountains of knowledge is where all the ideas that we can have have come from. The first fountain of knowledge is sensation, which involves all the five senses of the human body. It is because of sensation we have ideas such as hot, the color orange, sweet, and bright. The second fountain of knowledge is experience, which helps explain the things we perceive from the first sense, such as reasoning, thinking, and knowing. Locke then separates experience into two categories, primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities are qualities that an object can have without us needing to sense it such as size of an object or the way it is moving. An object will already have these qualities regardless if a person recognizes them or not. Secondary qualities are the “other” qualities such as color, or the sound an object makes when it hits the floor. These our qualities that exist in our mind, not qualities that an object has already on its own. A great example is wine. When it comes to wine many people have different experiences on how a wine tastes. Imagine one bottle of wine that is sampled by two different

John Locke, an empiricist belonging to seventeenth century philosophy, is well-known today for his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In chapter ii of Book I of this work, Locke firmly rejects the theory of nativism that proposes innate ideas in humans. An important disclaimer to be noted before continuing is that Locke makes his case by first interpreting nativism in its simplest form (occurrent nativism) -- as opposed to the dispositional nativism that requires a sophisticated process of discovering the content of one’s mind. This distinction is significant since it is the latter definition of nativism that most of Locke’s opponents use to weaken An Essay. In any case, however, the nativist individual would claim that innate ideas are present in man from birth, with senses beginning in the womb, and that these primary ideas meet the soul as soon as they come into existence in the world. It is possible that Locke could accept the presence of innate capacities that make it possible to acquire knowledge, but he could not agree that the innate principles exist in an imprinted manner independent of sensory experience. He arrives at the hypothesis that the human mind is a tabula rasa upon which true knowledge can only be formed from empirical experience. The most convincing defense that Locke makes against the doctrine of innate ideas is a rebuttal to the argument that stems from universal consent. If Locke’s criticizers wanted to best dispute Book I of An Essay, they

Plato and Locke have opposite opinions on the matter of innate ideas. Plato argues that the recognition of truth in reality is derived from the "recollection" of truth in the soul. A necessary part of Plato's argument is that "recollection" of Truth depends upon the existence of an immortal soul. Locke, on the other hand, rejects Plato's argument by stating that the recognition of truth is not dependent on "recollection" but is rather "self-evident." In other words, Locke argues that one does not need to "understand" truth to know it or admit of the existence of an immortal soul, for truth according to Locke reveals itself by virtue of its being true. This paper will analyze the arguments of each philosopher and show why I believe Plato to have the better argument on the matter of "recollection" and innate ideas in the soul.

Locke then goes further into his theory by stating that all knowledge begins with sensory experiences. Locke states that everything that is learned from our experience with objects. Since we are born as a Tabula Rasa we know nothing, so knowledge is the most valuable key. Locke

In his work A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), George Berkeley is presenting a theory of perception and knowledge which is both a counter to and development of John Locke’s own theory as set out in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689). Both Locke and Berkeley are empiricists, that is to say that they believe that all important truths and knowledge can be found out through attention to the senses and as such, having a valid theory of perception is crucial to them and their work. However, their theories are very different. Locke devised a causal theory of perception, that sense data that we receive from the outside world then causes us to have ideas of objects and it is these ideas that we perceive. Berkeley, on the other hand, has a theory called subjective idealism which will be discussed here.

Locke’s rebuttal of Descartes argument of innateness is that universal assent does not prove innateness because everyone could have had the same experiences.”(Weatherston 2014) “Implicit knowledge is meaningless because you are either aware of something or not.” (Weatherston 2014) Within this section of notes we talked about children and how they don’t understand some of the principals like the sky is blue, they don’t understand this principal because they are implicitly known. Locke believed that if “principles were known when we reach a certain age, “the age of reason”, then this would not prove innateness unless knowing the principles and the ability to reason were simultaneous.” (Weatherston 2014) Locke also believed that when a child is born their mind is “tabula rasa”: a blank slate. He also believed in two different kinds of experience inner experience, which is reflection and the outer experience, which is sensation. There are four ways of getting ideas according to Locke: the first way is that some ideas can only come from the senses. The second way of getting ideas is that you can get ideas from more than one sense at a time, the example given in the lecture was being able to see things move and feeling them move. The third way of getting ideas is that they come from reflection only, like emotions happy, sad or angry. The final way of

Moreover, Locke contest against the idea that deductive reasoning can amount to any knowledge by itself. According to Locke, all knowledge is acquired through active interaction with the environment and constituent environmental factors. Locke contends that inductive reasoning from an empirical standpoint proves to be the primary source of acquiring knowledge. He disputes Descartes argument by saying that no one is born with any knowledge or conception of the world innately, a condition he calls tabula rasa “blank slate.” It is the environment that constitutes to the writing of events and cognition in the minds of people. Lock asserts that objects in the environment create meaning and impression of their nature and existence and consequently communicate the same to the mind of through the senses. Therefore, there is no discourse to doubt in the beginning since it does not