|
7570
|
Innate ideas are trivial (if they are just potentials) or absurd (if they claim infants know a lot) [Locke, by Jolley]
|
|
Full Idea:
Locke says the doctrine of innate ideas is either reduced to triviality (that we have the potential to acquire knowledge and concepts, which makes all ideas innate), or to the absurd thesis that new-born children know logic, maths and metaphysics.
|
|
From:
report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 1) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.4
|
|
A reaction:
A very effective attack. The defence would have to be the claim that there is no way for certain ideas to have entered the mind (because they are too basic, or too abstract, or too huge), so they could only arise from within the mind.
|
|
12472
|
If the only test of innateness is knowing, then all of our knowledge is innate [Locke]
|
|
Full Idea:
If the capacity of knowing be the natural Impression contended for, all the Truths a man ever comes to know, will, by this Account, be, every one of them, innate.
|
|
From:
John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 1.02.05)
|
|
A reaction:
It seems to be a nice empiricist's question, what experience involved in thinking an idea gives a hallmark that it is innate rather than acquired? Perhaps only 'I couldn't have thought of that myself', as Descartes says of several ideas.
|
|
4018
|
Innate ideas were followed up with innate doctrines, which stopped reasoning and made social control possible [Locke]
|
|
Full Idea:
Once innate ideas were established, it was necessary for their followers to receive some doctrines as such, to put them off using their own reason, so that they might be more easily governed.
|
|
From:
John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 1.03.25?), quoted by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §9.1
|
|
A reaction:
Presumably anti-Catholic, though it sounds Marxist. It is hard to challenge innate ideas, but it is hard to challenge Hume's 'natural beliefs'.
|
|
7507
|
The mind is white paper, with no writing, or ideas [Locke]
|
|
Full Idea:
Let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas.
|
|
From:
John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.01.02)
|
|
A reaction:
This is normally referred to as Locke's 'tabula rasa' idea, and is his denial of the existence of innate ideas. It is generally thought to be absurd, but note that he only 'supposes' it, presumably as a theoretical strategy, to investigate empiricism.
|
|
12474
|
The mind is a blank page, on which only experience can write [Locke]
|
|
Full Idea:
Let us then suppose the Mind to be, as we say, white Paper, void of all characters, without any Ideas; How comes it to be furnished? ..To this I answer, in one word, from Experience.
|
|
From:
John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.01.02)
|
|
A reaction:
The simple objection is that minds could make nothing of their experience if they were totally blank. But if we add principles of association, we might still say that there are no actual ideas imprinted in the original mind, only functions or faculties.
|
|
15989
|
Colours, smells and tastes are ideas; the secondary qualities have no colour, smell or taste [Locke, by Alexander,P]
|
|
Full Idea:
If I am right, colours, tastes, odours and sounds are not, for Locke secondary qualities but ideas; secondary qualities are colourless, tasteless, odourless and soundless textures of bodies.
|
|
From:
report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Peter Alexander - Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles 8
|
|
A reaction:
This the concise summary of Alexander's reading of Locke, and I find him wholly convincing.
|
|
15971
|
Secondary qualities are powers of complex primary qualities to produce sensations in us [Locke]
|
|
Full Idea:
Such qualities, which are nothing in objects but powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities i.e. by the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of their sensible parts, as colours, sounds, tastes etc. These I call secondary qualities.
|
|
From:
John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.08.10)
|
|
A reaction:
Alexander emphasises that secondary qualities are in objects. It is the ideas (here 'sensations') which are in us. This quotation shows that secondary qualities are not identical with 'textures' (which are complex primary qualities), but are 'powers'.
|
|
6725
|
Locke believes matter is an inert, senseless substance, with extension, figure and motion [Locke, by Berkeley]
|
|
Full Idea:
Some thinkers (e.g. Locke) understand by matter an inert, senseless substance, in which extension, figure and motion do actually subsist.
|
|
From:
report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by George Berkeley - The Principles of Human Knowledge §9
|
|
A reaction:
Berkeley, of course, goes on to reject this. Personally I agree with Locke, because I am a realist, and I think the seventeenth century distinction between primary and secondary qualities is a key contribution to human understanding.
|
|
12479
|
Primary qualities produce simple ideas, such as solidity, extension, motion and number [Locke]
|
|
Full Idea:
The original or 'primary' qualities of body produce simple ideas in us, viz. solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number.
|
|
From:
John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.08.09)
|
|
A reaction:
The tricky word here is 'simple', which clearly won't be enough on its own to distinguish primary from secondary qualities. Notice that there is a germ of an empirical theory of arithmetic in the word 'number'.
|
|
15973
|
In my view Locke's 'textures' are groups of corpuscles which are powers (rather than 'having' powers) [Locke, by Alexander,P]
|
|
Full Idea:
I take the unorthodox view that Locke uses the word 'texture' for the pattern of corpuscles in a group and regards the power of a body to affect our senses or another body as identical with this textures, so that powers are intrinsic properties of bodies.
|
|
From:
report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Peter Alexander - Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles 5.2
|
|
A reaction:
The disagreement is whether the textures 'have' the powers (the orthodox view), or whether they 'are' the powers (Alexander's view). To counter Idea 15971, Alexander quotes Idea 15974. He says 'a secondary quality is a texture' (121).
|
|
7724
|
All the ideas written on the white paper of the mind can only come from one place - experience [Locke]
|
|
Full Idea:
Let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from Experience.
|
|
From:
John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.01.02)
|
|
A reaction:
In the face of Kant's wonderfully rich account of the mind, this simple empiricism seems to be horribly naïve, but it could be defended by saying that all the other paraphernalia of the mind (associations, categories etc) are not in any way ideas.
|
|
12555
|
The constant link between whiteness and things that produce it is the basis of our knowledge [Locke]
|
|
Full Idea:
The idea of whiteness or bitterness, as it is in the mind, exactly answering that power which is in any body to produce it, has all the real conformity it can, or ought to have, with things without us. This conformity is sufficient for real knowledge.
|
|
From:
John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.04.05)
|
|
A reaction:
I take this to say that consistent covariation with certain things in the world is the best criterion we can find for our knowledge of secondary, and hence primary, qualities. Why they two covary is beyond our ken. Sounds right.
|
|
16637
|
The absolute boundaries of our thought are the ideas we get from senses and the mind [Locke]
|
|
Full Idea:
The simple ideas we receive from sensation and reflection are the boundaries of our thoughts; beyond which the mind, whatever efforts it would make, is not able to advance one jot.
|
|
From:
John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.23.29), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 09.3
|
|
A reaction:
My view is that this is wrong, simply because it takes no account of inference to the best explanation. We reach the boundaries of experience, and then we think about it, and penetrate beyond. His 'reflection' doesn't seem to mean that.
|
|
2793
|
It is unclear how identity, equality, perfection, God, power and cause derive from experience [Locke, by Dancy,J]
|
|
Full Idea:
Locke tried to show how all ideas were derived from experience by examining cases, but it was an uphill struggle; difficult cases include the ideas of identity, equality, perfection, God, power and cause.
|
|
From:
report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Jonathan Dancy - Intro to Contemporary Epistemology 14.2
|