John Locke

This page contains discussion notes for John Locke and a few links that will provide you with some background information about Locke.

Internet Links to John Locke:

http://www.epistemelinks.com/pers/lockpers.htm

Notes on the selections from Locke's Essay (Glen Helman, 1/99)

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Although the most obvious division of this material is the four books of Locke's Essay, it may be more useful for the purposes of discussion to think of it as having three parts.

1) Locke begins with an attack on the notion of innate principles. He says his aim is to counter prejudice against his positive views. Although innateness was a central tenet of Descartes and his followers, who are often Locke's target in the Essay, it is thought that he here has in mind more popular views, found in ethical and religious pamphlets of his day (and elsewhere in book I, he emphasizes the importance of subjecting received wisdom to critical examination). The heart of his argument against innateness is the absence of universal assent to even the most basic principles of either knowledge or morality. In the case of the former, I.i.2-5 (C-2f) provide a sample of his argument. The remainder of the selections from book I (C-3f) indicate his own view of the source of knowledge of such principles. The metaphor of the empty cabinet (in I.i.15, C-3), is one of the places in the Essay where Locke comes closest to the idea of the mind as initially a tabula rasa (or blank tablet), an ancient metaphor which is often associated with his work. In a reply to Locke, Leibniz provided an opposing metaphor. He suggested that the mind has innate tendencies, like a block of marble whose veins can guide the way a sculptor shapes it.

2) The initial selections from book II (II.i-ii, C-4ff) constitute the heart of Locke's empiricism. All our ideas come from sensation and reflection, sensory awareness and the awareness of our own mental activity. These sources provide conceptual atoms that we can only separate and recombine in various ways.

3) The rest of the selections (from II.vii.7, C-6, on) indicate some of the consequences of these views. Locke's discussion follows out the consequences of two key distinctions.

i) The first is between ideas that correspond to actual properties of external objects, primary qualities, and ideas that reflect their power to affect us in certain ways, secondary qualities. Locke compares the latter to the powers of bodies to affect one another in various ways, the "third sort" he mentions in II.viii.10 (C-7). The primary qualities are roughly the properties of matter studied by physics (but also roughly the traditional objects of a "common sense"). The distinction can be traced back at least to Galileo and is important also for Descartes, so it might be seen as the really crucial idea of 17th century philosophy. (Although Locke's use of preservation under division as a test for primary qualities may seem not to work in the case of color, he has that case in mind; elsewhere he cites the example of almonds changing both color and taste when pulverized.)

ii) Most of our ideas are not simple and Locke distinguishes two sorts of compounds according to the grounds for the combination. In mixed modes the combination is stipulative, is made for the convenience of communication, and varies from society to society and through history (see II.xxii, C-7f, and III.v, C-9f). On the other hand, our ideas of various substances rest on the assumption that the simple ideas combined in them coexist naturally (see II.xxiii, C-8f, and III.vi, C-10f). We have no direct access to external objects (and have at best a confused idea of substance in general) and we do not know how primary qualities give rise to our ideas, so our understanding of substances rests on a nominal essence, the meaning of the term we use, which need not coincide with the real essence, the nature of the objects in which the qualities making up the nominal essence are supposed to coexist. In the case of mixed modes, there is no distinct real essence and this makes for a significant difference for the possibility of knowledge. Our genuine knowledge of general laws governing substances is very limited (IV.iii.9-14, C-12f, and IV.xii.9-10, C-14); experience is crucial here but cannot produce genuine scientific knowledge. However, mixed modes leave open the possibility of genuine demonstrative knowledge, and Locke even compares morality to geometry (IV.iii.18, C-13f).

Groups of people often naturally divide into supporters and opponents of innateness, so that is a natural point to discuss. The assumptions behind Locke's positive program are also worth looking at critically. The third group of selections may be seen as providing further material for these two discussions.