John Locke

2019-06-08 0 views

Introduction - The Age of Enlightenment

Locke is the representative in the Enlightenment, his book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is sometimes taken to mark the beginning of the philosophical Enlightenment. The term Enlightenment refers to the right of reason, of scientific knowledge, gained by the objective scientific methods, whether inductive or deductive, with the kind of objectivity the science claimed. This was an age opposed to dogmatic systems, the system builders claims kind of knowledge which can not be established by scientific methods alone. It’s an age of criticism, criticizing the possibility of knowledge. So it’s not surprising an enlightenment thinker started to criticizing the claims of the enlightenment and of scientific knowledge. When we get to David Hume, we will find he is a philosophical skeptic, he is skeptical of the objective enlightenment knowledge and develops in its place how belief arises and how it is justified. It’s also the age of the rule of reason, not only in thinking but in our living. The idea is when we are ruled by reason, we are freed from other causal conditions. If you are acting out of emotional compulsion, you are not acting freely. It’s only when you are able to detach yourself and thinking about what you do that you are really free. Freedom is only possible under the rule of reason as we say in political freedom is possible under the rule of laws. Consequently the ethical theory develops which are concerned with knowing what is right. It is the age where the theory of individual right develops.

And in reaction to the Enlightenment, that develops Romanticism in early 19 century, where it reverts the freedom of emotion, the creative genius, who idealizes what freedom is like. Some commentators pointed out that what you get from Renaissance with political liberties is an increase of absolutization and idealization of the notion of individual freedom. Individual rights in the Enlightenment, creative self expression with Romanticist, until you get absolute freedom with some of the existentialist like Sartre.

Locke believes that we have no innate knowledge, everything we know come through our senses. One of his reasons is that it would be an affront to God who gave us our senses to suppose we can not rely on them to tell us what things are. Just as Descartes appeal to the creator who gave us the Mind so that we can trust the Mind, Locke appeal to God who gave us the sense so that we can trust the senses.

Theory of Ideas

Knowledge consists in the addition or subtraction of ideas. Where are we getting the ideas? His response is first there are no innate ideas, second, all ideas originate with the senses. Locke argues against the innate idea, it’s not clear he is referring to Plato or Descartes. It’s likely the Cambridge Platonist. It was an idealist metaphysic, which rejected the view that matter is real and has real causal powers, therefore rejected the view that causal stimulative senses can produce ideas, therefore reverted the theory of innate ideas. If ideas are innate, they will be known universally, but there are no universal ideas, therefore there is no innate ideas.

To explain the origin of ideas with reference to the senses, he offers a list of suggestions. First is the claim that consciousness is a blank tablet, on which experience leaves marks. Second, idea is mental representation. He distinguishes between simple and complex ideas. We get ideas from internal and external senses. Simple ideas must be clear and distinct. Ideas can come from one sense only or various senses. We have to distinguish idea of primary qualities and secondary qualities. Primary qualities can produce in us secondary qualities by causal effect. Out of that theory of ideas he thinks all human knowledge and belief can be built.

Locke, like Descartes, has a representational theory of knowledge. knowledge is basically ideas of immediate objects of awareness. He is opening up the question about whether we can know anything more than phenomena as distinct from reality itself. He distinguishes from simple ideas, complex ideas and abstract ideas.

Simple Ideas

Simple ideas are indivisible constituents of thought, there are simple ideas of sensation and reflection. By sensation he refers to the outer senses, the five physical senses. Reflection has to do with inner sense, the reflections on the mental states when having those ideas. If we are talking about simple idea of sensation, we need to distinguish between primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities are material qualities objectively have, e.g. the spatial occupancy. Secondary qualities are qualities of ideas that have no objective counterpart.

Complex Ideas

Complex ideas are simply the result of combining various simple ideas. The compounding is a voluntary activity, and compound ideas are a mental construct. There are no guarantees that complex ideas have objective reference. For example the idea of causal power arises as a complex idea that we suppose represents what goes on between Mind and Body. This is what David Hume is going to criticize. In the representational view, how do you know there is an external world, unless it is by a causal affect argument. But only you know is correlation, and not causal connection.

Abstract Ideas

In abstract ideas, we get into the question of universals. We observed that Bacon and Hobbes are both influenced by Ockhamist nominalism, that is to say, all we can think is particulars. In the case of Descartes, he is a rationalist, he is a conceptualist. John Locke is also a conceptualist. Having an immaterial Mind, he is not going to be tied to physical sensations, and he thinks of the power of the mind the active power of the mind that we are aware of in reflection. He points out in the end of the section that essences are the sort of things, they are not real form of transcendental thought, they are not real metaphysical entities, they are those common and recurrent qualities of all members of class. It is his conceptualism that make it possible for him to talk about Mind, Spirit and causal power.

Knowledge & Belief

Locke distinguishes between three kind of knowledge. Knowledge by intuition, by demonstration and by sensation.

Intuition is what we know by immediate awareness, for example, laws of logic, applications of laws of logic. Demonstration is what we know by logical proof. That is again not dealing with what is representational. What we have in sensation seems to be based on probability. If we want to think of some general concept, then any empirical generalization is going to be limited to probability and how large the sample we experienced. If it’s not something you know immediately or by demonstration, then the only way you know something is the way you think it is, is on the basis of experience. But he didn’t question the logical basis of probability.

Knowledge of the third kind admit only probability. Things that contributes to probability are the consistency of what I believe with my experience and the testimony of others.

In response to how do we know what we know is true, the simplest response that Locke is going to give would be the term evidence. In contemporary epistemology, Locke is known as evidentialist. You should always proportion your ascent to evidence. But there is also the self referential question of what is the evidence we get to believe this statement. The self referential argument is very telling, particularly in the light of this question: is belief voluntary? Locke is assuming that ascent to any proposition is voluntary and you can mete it out bit by bit. But we are not sure that beliefs are always voluntary.

It marks between two basic approaches of justification of belief, the evidentialist approach by John Locke and the natural belief approach by Scottish Realists. And this is crucial epistemological issues today. And this has consequences in apologetics as well, the classic example was Joseph Butler’s book: The Analogy of Religion in which he uses analogical arguments and probabilistic approach. The other view becomes more characteristic in the reformed tradition like Scottish Realists, developed by people like Alvin Plantiga.

Religion, Ethics and Social Philosophy

Revelation & Reason

The Crucial point of connection between Locke’s epistemology and other areas of thought is evidentialism, his insistence that we should proportion our beliefs according to evidence. When he come to the relationship between revelation and reason, he assumes that revelation may be regarded as the addition of further propositions to those we know by reason alone. Knowledge consists of propositions, and revelation adds to that knowledge additional propositions that are not known by reason alone. He tends to confine his thinking of divine revelation to simply added propositions, the inter-personal immediacy is not something he includes in the definition.

Moral Knowledge

There no innate moral knowledge. All of our moral knowledge must be derived from simple ideas of sensation and reflection. There are three means by which we have acquired moral knowledge, one is by demonstration, we can deduce moral knowledge from knowledge of God and knowledge of self as rational being. He tries to articulate what is proper to a rational being. His work of Essay on the law of nature is dealing with this kind of moral knowledge. The second way is from sensation and reflection, in practice, pleasure and pain tend to be our moral teachers. The third way is from biblical revelation.

Freedom

This is the age of mechanic science, so people like Hobbes becomes determinists, there are no real freedom of will or action. Descartes tries to preserve human freedom by making the mind an exception to the casual mechanisms of science, his mind body dualism is what preserves freedom. Locke follows Descartes closely. He defines freedom as freedom to act in accordance with ones choice. He regards the question of freedom of will is meaningless debate. He think this confuses the power to do and power to think. It is not the willing that is free, because it is influenced by ideas that are caused, it is rather the actions that are free.

Civil Government

It is built on the conception of moral knowledge and freedom. It builds on the state of nature and civil society. In the state of nature, we have equal freedom, therefore with equal right to act. It is translation of the creation mandate that he is aware of in his heritage. What he has is a theory of natural law, what is appropriate to rational beings rather than having a teleology and natural inclinations. To have right is also to defend the rights, and resist attempts to take away these rights. There is right to resist attempts to take away ones liberty, property. The civil society embraces all sorts of contractual relationship, including marriage, master servant relationship and government.

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