John Locke Essays (1296 words) - Philosophy, Epistemology

John Locke John Locke (1632-1704) was born in Wrington, England to Puritan parents who fostered his education in theology and politics. He attended the Westminster school, and then entered Christ Church, Oxford, where he received a scholarship. Locke studied classical languages, metaphysics, logic, and rhetoric there. He developed friendships with Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton, both of whom influenced his views. In 1690, he wrote An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, this is considered his greatest work. The essay tries to set limits on human understanding. Locke attempts to answer two questions. The first question is where we get our ideas from. The second question is whether we can rely on what our senses tell us. The Essay also classifies knowledge into three degrees. These are the intuitive, demonstrative, and the sensitive. Finally, the Essay divides the ways ideas can be related into four categories: identity or diversity, relation, coexistence, and finally real existence. Part of Locke's theory is that women are equal to men, this will be discussed in the second part of my paper. To understand why Locke wanted to explain where we get our ideas from, it is important to understand what sect of philosophy he was a part of. Locke belonged to an eighteenth century group of British philosophers which included George Berkeley and David Hume. These three philosophers shared a view called empiricism. Empiricism is the belief that all knowledge and ideas come from the senses. Thus, a new born baby is a blank slate until its first sensory experience with the world. Aristotle was the originator of the empiricist way of thinking. Empiricism directly conflicts with Plato, and the rationalist way of thinking which states that humans are born with a set of innate ideas about the world. As Locke explains in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, humans gain all ideas and knowledge by interacting with the external world with their senses, and by reflecting their new gained knowledge. By senses, Locke is referring to the five senses: sight, sound, taste, feeling, and hearing. Locke's definition of reflection is the way the mind actively processes the information given to it by sensation. In reflection, the mind continues to analyze what it has sensed. This analization includes trusting, not trusting, or rationalizing the sensory experience and thereby parlaying even more knowledge and ideas out of the experience. Locke believed that simple sensations of something eventually led to a complex idea of that thing. He thought that we could only perceive simple parts of the whole which would eventually lead up to the entire thing. Locke writes, Combining several simple ideas into one compound one; and thus all complex ideas are made. An example of this could be a child's first experience with a chocolate chip cookie. The child sees that the cookie is round, she notices the brown color, and the dark chocolate spots that make up the chips. The child is really not capable of understanding a cookie yet, though. In another experience with the cookie, the child reflects upon her past experience and builds upon it. This time, she feels the rough texture, and tastes the sweet confection. Only after the child experiences all the sum of the cookies parts is she able to own the idea of cookie. One aspect of knowledge that Locke was concerned with is what can be called false knowledge. This is knowledge that can not be traced back to simple sensations. Even the words God and eternity are being misused and misconcepted because nobody has experienced these things. Locke does not totally disbelieve that there is a God and eternity though, because he later reasons in the Essay that, Nothing cannot produce a Being; therefore Something must have existed from Eternity. The second question Locke attempts to tackle is whether we can rely on what our senses tell us, or is the world the way we perceive it. To help answer this question he divided sensations into primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities are described as those that do not change when the substance is divided. This includes solidity, extension, figure, and mobility. Secondary qualities are those that are subject to change in a substance, such as colors, sounds, and tastes. Thus, all people see primary qualities in the same way, but not everyone views the secondary qualities in the same way. For example, although two children see the same round cookie, one might think that it tastes good and the other may despise the taste of it. It is through these qualities that Locke attempted to judge whether we can rely on our senses to correctly perceive the world. After Locke established how ideas are formed,