Essay on Locke’s Logical Plain Method

Berkeley's attempt to popularize his pro-mind conception of the external world, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, serves to undermine Locke's distinctions between primary and secondary qualities of the external world. In his publication, Berkeley uses dialogue between Hylas and Philnous, which consists of a series of arguments, to determine the most sound theory. Ground rules of the debate consists of: whoever of the two's position avoids skepticism about knowledge of physical objects wins and that if one position can be shown to entail that we cannot know anything about physical objects, consequently that position should be dismissed as absurd (Kelly, 2013). Throughout the arguments, Berkeley weakens Locke's theory of Limited Representationalism by counteracting Locke's with the possibility that instead of “matter” that comprises physical objects in the external world, these objects are simply ideas. Drawing back on Berkeley's catchy motto, “to be is to be perceived”, he proposes three arguments that support his idealist view that the motto encapsulates. The three pieces of support also importantly shed skepticism upon Lockes primary and secondary distinctions involving “matter”. The three statements of support include: The argument that physical

John Locke's theory of knowledge stated that all knowledge is derived from the senses, that are converted into impressions, that are then made into ideas, either simple or complex. Simple ideas are ones that involve only one sense, whereas complex ideas consist of multiple simple ideas being combined to create a vivid one. Ideas have two qualities, primary qualities, and secondary qualities. Primary qualities are things that are perceived the same for everyone, and secondary qualities are the individual perceptions of

John Locke thought that the ideas or perceptions which we have of objects in the world partially represent the objects as they are in themselves, and so whether they are being perceived. This view of Locke’s is called representative realism. The term realism refers to the view that objects are real or exist apart from perception. And representative means that some of our perceptions accurately represent an object as the thing which it is in itself apart from perception. Locke thought that only some of our ideas or perceptions are accurate representations of the object itself, and that

Locke argued that just the discovery of knowledge alone through believes could put forth a justification that knowledge “requires only reasonably high probability”. When Descartes talks about his solution when he states “what we directly see, feel, hear, touch…are our own sense data that ultimately exists in our minds” Descartes that by using our senses we interpret things that are certain. And so we have to use our senses in order to prove certainty, whereas Locke states that certainty only has to do with a reasonably high probability. If we were not able to use our senses, just through our prior knowledge of what we know we wouldn’t know if something was for certain. An example I can illustrate, if someone shows us an exotic fruit in part of the jungle which we have never traveled but, we are familiar with oranges and apples and such other fruits, but we only see the fruit, can we tell what color is on the inside? Or how tough the rind is? Through Descartes method we will be able to see the rind and based on our knowledge fruit come to a conclusion about it. Through Locke’s method we only need knowledge of the fruit we already are familiar with in order to formulate both how tough the rind is and what color is on the

During his years in college, Johnathon was introduced to John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke’s work had a great impact on his studies in college, as he started writing journals and

John Locke, an influential English philosopher, has been considered one of the greatest thinkers during the Enlightenment. Well-known for his fundamental role in developing political philosophy, John Locke is widely regarded as “the Father of Liberalism”. Furthermore, being a pioneer empiricist, his famous theory of the human mind as containing non-innate ideas is often seen as an inspiration for contemporary empiricists. He also contributed to the social contract theory. This theory states that: individuals in a society consent to surrender some of their freedoms in exchange for protection of their other rights. Due to his contributions, many people believe that he influenced a great number of thinkers in history, including Thomas Jefferson, the main author of the Declaration of Independence. In this essay, I will be focusing on John Locke’s liberal theory. Furthermore, I will discuss how his thinking influenced the composition of The Declaration of Independence, a statement by which the thirteen American colonies announced that they were not a part of Great Britain. And I will discuss whether he did carry out his liberal theory or he lived by different standards.

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,

In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke dismisses Descartes’ Cartesian dualism and instead writes about his belief that the mind is a blank slate. Galileo, Descartes, and Locke, being some of the greatest thinkers in the history of humanity, employ their own methods of reason to explore the ways humans acquire knowledge.

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 was the most influential philosopher for the 17th Century whose ideas in the scope of political philosophy are still relevant today. Locke is an important figure of the early European Enlightenment, and certainly many of his ideas had a considerable influence on later major Enlightenment thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Since he was a brilliant thinker he had a broad range of interests to include epistemology, political philosophy and religious tolerance. Epistemology is a study of the knowledge of nature and the grounds of knowledge. Locke, who followed the teachings of Francis Bacon, was an empiricist. In “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” Locke defends empiricism which concerns itself

John Locke’s (1632-1704) concept of the mind as a tabula rasa was introduced in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). The term tabula rasa is a Latin phrase directly translated as “scraped tablet”, but is more commonly understood to be translated as meaning “blank slate”. John Locke believed man is born as a blank slate and learns from external forces acting upon him and his surroundings. Locke alleged “[o]ur observation employed either about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking” (Locke, 108). To put it simply, we learn from our experiences and compound our experience with reflection.

John Locke in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding argues that there can be made a distinction between ideas in the mind and qualities in bodies. Ideas are “whatsoever the mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding” (Locke II.8 §8). The power to produce any idea in our mind is what Locke calls the quality of a subject in which that power is. A snowball has the power to produce in us the ideas of round, white, and cold as they are in a snowball, which is its quality. The sensations and perceptions in our understanding is what Locke calls ideas.

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

According to Locke, ideas are derive from experience. His main argument in this Book is to argue against the idea that there is some knowledge that arises prior to experience, that is, the idea that some of our ideas or knowledge is in born or natural. While his attack on the theory that human beings are born knowing certain things, Locke explains this could be in two forms. These forms are theory about principle or about ideas. Book 1 first three chapters are about Locke focusing on principles. Three of his goals are in Book I. They are: 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

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