John Locke

Thomas Hobbes wrote one of his most famous works, called Leviathan in 1651. Through his pessimistic point of view, he is comparable to John Calvin in the sense that he tends to point out all kinds of things that are wrong with society. He believes that “man is a wolf to man” and he is “here to protect everyone against everyone” through Levianthan (Zunjic). By portraying people as wolves, he makes us out to be undomesticated animals that live in disorder. He says, “humans are egoists who are relentlessly after their own goals. They aggressively pursue their ends” (Zunjic). It is easily seen that he is against us ruling for ourselves, since we are selfish; therefore, he believes in a strong monarch. “Without a common power there is no propriety and property (mine or thine), for in the state of war everything belongs to anyone who can take it and for so long as they can keep it.

Even our body stands out for grabs” (Zunjic). Basically what Hobbes is saying is that humans want for themselves, and have the tendency to want what other people have. This causes violence that Dr. Zunjic, a professor of philosophy at the University of Rhode Island, refers to as the state of war. Hobbes has little belief in human kind as individuals, and although it is not ideal to have a monarch, there has to be one. This caused controversy among those who were pro-monarch and anti-monarch. Hobbes is so pessimistic that he goes against monarchy with his ideas, but asserts that he is, indeed, pro-monarch; however, it only seems that he favors the monarch because there has to be some amount of order among humans. Having a strong monarch is the lesser of the evils. On the opposite spectrum of Hobbes, is John Locke. Author of the Second Treatise of Government published in 1690, his ideals battled those of Hobbes.

He followed more of a religious take, with the idea that as humanity, we begin with a blank slate and make what we want of our lives. He goes against the thought of an authority, but mostly in the sense that he believes we are all good, so we do not need a ruler, since the ruler will cause us to hurt each other; “sharing in all one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination amongus, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses” (Locke. Sect 6). He points to the notion that humans have common sense; that we know things and can do things for ourselves.

It is society and all of humanity put together that causes dysfunction. Locke likely does not believe that there should be no order among us, but we are better left along. He says, “And if any one in the state of nature may punish another for any evil he has done, every one may do so: for in that state of perfect equality, where naturally there is no superiority or jurisdiction of one over another, what any may do in prosecution of that law, every one must needs have a right to do” (Sect 7). He is incredibly optimistic in the sense that he truly believes we are, and should remain to be, entirely equal among each other. If someone threatens that equality, that is when we may punish him or her. John Milton, another outspoken author of his time, likely falls somewhere in between Locke and Hobbes. In some ways, they are poor examples to compare him to; however, with their extreme ideas, we can relate some of Milton’s thoughts to them and decide whether or not Locke and Hobbes would agree with them. For some background, Milton’s Areopagitica, as he states, is a “speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing to the parliament of England” (Milton 1).

He takes a bit of a more religious approach in his argument of peoples’ freedom. He asserts that books are alive, just as we are, and are productive. He says, “who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye” (3). These are a strong couple of lines. Here, Milton intertwines Church and State, which is likely part of the reason this work was banned. If State restricts written work in any way, it goes against the Church, because it goes against God. This is incredibly controversial, but most people would probably agree it is true.

Milton asserts that we are all bodies of God and our thoughts and ideas are part of His creation. Milton’s notion that our writing is a part of God likely goes against Hobbes’ idea that humans, by nature, are bad and will not ever change. Hobbes would likely disagree with Milton’s objection to restricted press. This is because Milton notes that books, whether written of good or evil, are all important. He says, “best books to a naughty mind are not inapplicable to occasions of evil […] the difference is of bad books, that they to a discreet and judicious reader serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate” (8). Books throw out ideas to the public, and they are all important in some way. They allow for progression and learning. Hobbes would probably assume that these “bad books” Milton talks about only have a poor intention, and do not provide lessons, rather, they are just asserting his notion that humans are terrible and need to be restricted. In the same way, Milton and Locke would agree more on this idea. Locke, too, believes in progression and freedom of speech; therefore, he would probably back Milton up here.

In contrast, Milton seems to agree with Hobbes on the pessimist idea that humans have evil intentions. While Milton believes that the publishing of bad books does not make much of a difference, he does say that “evil manners are as perfectly learnt without books a thousand other ways which cannot be stopped, and evil doctrine not with books can propagate, except a teacher guide, which he might also do without writing, and so beyond prohibiting, I am not able to unfold, how this cautelous enterprise of licensing can be exempted from the number of vain and impossible attempts” (10-11). In a way, it sounds as if Milton is saying that even if restriction is put on publishing, it will not work. He proves himself right through Areopagitica in a sense, because it was banned, but now is his most famous work. Milton touches on the reality of evil among humanity here, which is something Hobbes would proudly back him on. Locke, however, would probably disagree; or he may say that society and restriction is what makes us more inclined to break the rules or push the limits.

In the sense of religion, Milton leans more towards the ideals of Locke; he does not seem to believe that we are born in evil, yet he does recognize the evil among us (which may or may not be caused by society). He points to the notion that restrictions do not matter, and only cause us to want to break those restrictions. Hobbes believes more in the idea that people are born in sin, while Locke believes humans are born with a blank slate and make what they will of it. It is unclear how Milton believes people are born, but he seems to go against the thought of Hobbes that people are born in sin. This is evident through his statement above that peoples’ thoughts are all products of God, just as their bodies are. Hobbes could easily defend his ideas by bringing about the topic of the devil and evil in the world, but that could be another argument entirely. In the grand scheme of things, Hobbes believes in press restriction; Locke does not. Milton falls in between Hobbes and Locke because he thinks that we will not progress without throwing ideas out. The restriction of these ideas will cause chaos, and even if we did restrict peoples’ writing, they would just try to go against it anyways. He is more like Locke in a religious perspective, because he does not seem to believe that humans are incapable of living for themselves and we are all important. On the contrary, Milton is more like Hobbes in a scientific/natural perspective, because there is evil among us, and some of us are likely to go against rule and order no matter what.

In 1642 England was starting to seek for changes in the way their government was set up. John Locke and Samuel Rutherford were the leaders of this change, calling for the removal of an absolute monarch. Their works would be opposed by the ideas of Thomas Hobbes, during this eighteen-year civil war in England. The ideas represented in this period would heavily influence the way England’s government would be set up in the eighteenth century. In 1644 Bishop Ross, also known as John Maxwell, published Sacro-Sancta Regum Majestas. The article’s ideas centered on Calvinist resistance theory and the political theory of Spanish neo-scholastics.

In response Samuel Rutherford came out with his publication, Lex Rex, which translates to “Law is King”. This was the first document proposing rule by law and consisted of 44 questions. In Rutherford’s opinion, power was immediately from God in root. With that being his focus he concluded that not only should the king not be above the law but should also be subject to it. Lex Rex is the “Greatest work on the foundation, nature and constitutional government, the Civil Magistrate, and the separate but mutual relationship of Church and State” (Ford).

The contents of Lex Rex develop the idea of a separation of powers between legislative, executive and judicial functions. They are to balance one another in no particular order to combine the best features of monarchic, aristocratic and democratic forms of government. He believes that the real sovereign is the people and that all government officials, including the monarch, should be subject to the rule of law and the rule of men as well. A monarch is contrary to God’s will because it requires subjects to surrender total control to a fallible ruler.

The position of an absolute ruler is an intoxicating and corruptive force that would potentially lead to negative outcomes. The implementation of laws and government serving as a check upon the ruler would be in the best interest of the people (Auchter). In his preferred government the King’s power would be lost when he violates the law because it is a right and even more a duty for the people to resist such an infraction. The ideas contributed in Lex Rex provided a bridge between early natural law philosophers and those who would further develop these ideas. The ublication planted the seeds to the type of government that would be laid not only in England but in America as well. Shortly into his reign as king, Charles II made it illegal to own a copy of the publication and had them all burned. There are only four confirmed copies left today. John Locke was a philosopher and political theorist from England. He is greatly known for his contributions to liberalism and empiricism. His faith relied in that of human reasoning and believed that just societies were those, which infringed minimally on natural rights and freedoms of its subjects.

He claimed that a legitimate government depended on the consent of those being governed. This philosophy was taken greatly into consideration when the founding fathers were drawing up the United States’ Declaration of Independence. Locke was known to preach private property and limited government. Locke’s association with Anthony Cooper (First Earl of Shaftesbury) led him to become successively a government official charged with collecting information about trade and colonies, economic writer, opposition political activist, and and finally a revolutionary whose cause ultimately triumphed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 (Uzgalis).

Locke’s two major contributiong pieces of work are Two Treatises of Government and Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In Two Treatises of Government, Locke claims that the sovereignty resides in the people and he explains that humans naturally lived in a state of absolute freedom and quality with no government of any sorts. The earliest form of humans only had to follow the law of Nature. During this time individuals allowed themselves to follow their own rights to life, liberty and property. It was soon realized that the contrary outweighed the productive.

From this, a civil society was established based on absolute equality and set up a government to settle disputes that would arise in their type of society. The government’s power, however, was not made to be absolute. The power of the government was meant to be surrendered to the people themselves and its authority was contractual with applied conditions. If these conditions were overstepped or abused society has the right to rid of it and create another. With Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke offered the first great defense to empiricism.

The publication has to do with determining the limits of human understanding in respect to a wide variety of topics. The main focuses, however, is sensation and reflection. With sensation our senses focus toward the world and subconsciously receive information. Within reflection the focus is on our mind itself and how it passively receives ideas. This all originates back to our sense of perception. He felt as if our minds were a black tablet, tabula rasa, and that only when we, as infants, start to experience things do our senses to perceive the external world register in our minds.

This focus reflected upon the goodness and perfectibility of humanity. His theory had radical implications that, if all humans were capable of reason, education may be able to spread to level of hierarchies of status, race or sex. Much of Locke’s other works had to do with opposition to authority, while his main focus was to use reason to search after truth rather than simply accept the opinion of authority or be subject to suspicion. Thomas Hobbes was the young contemporary of Jean Bodin, though he had contrasting views than him.

He was in support of absolute monarchy as he heavily thought that a king was absolutely necessary to protect the subjects of his land. He, like Locke and Rutherford, wrote many great pieces during his life. The two that relate are Elements of Law Natural and Political and Leviathan, his most major piece. Hobbes’ Elements of Law Natural and Political was a direct product of the intellectual and political conflict going on during the seventeenth century.

During the time it was written, Parliament was fighting for power against King Charles I. In this writing he claims that society could only function if it is submitted to the governance of an absolute sovereign. His work was accepted with hostility causing him to flee to Paris where he would use this work as the basis to Leviathan. After the execution of Charles I, Hobbes started writing Leviathan. It is composed into four books; “Of Man”, “Of Common-wealth”, “Of a Christian Common-wealth” and “Of the Kingdome of Darkness”.

No differently than Elements of Law Natural and Political, his work was received with hostility as it offended both Loyalists and Parliamentarians. Even the exiled Prince Charles, who Hobbes had tutored, refused to read the document after seeing how the general public reacted to it. The method in Leviathan is modeled after a geometric proof, founded up principles of; each step of argument makes conclusions based upon the previous step. Conclusions derived by Geometry are indisputable because each step itself is indisputable.

In Leviathan he wanted to base his philosophy off of irrefutable evidence [, therefore, making it fact] (Sparknotes). Hobbes believed that any form of government capable of protecting its subjects’ lives and property might act as an all-powerful sovereign. The state exists to rule over individuals and is thus licensed to trample over both liberty and property if the government’s survival was at stake. The people must surrender their liberties to a sovereign ruler in exchange for his obligations to keep the peace since man naturally “behaves like a wolf”.

Now, having traded away their liberties, subjects have no right to win them back and the sovereign could rule as he pleased, free to oppress his subjects in any way except to kill them. The sovereign’s main purpose would be to preserve the people of their rights. He felt that if the king could not protect his subjects they were to be free from obedience. While Locke and Rutherford’s ideas are centered toward a limited monarchy contrasts with Hobbes’ beliefs of an absolute monarchy is the way to go, there is one thing they all agree upon.

None of them believes that the King should be in one hundred percent control. Rutherford suggests that the executive’s (the king’s) decision have to go through a system of checks and balances with a judicial and legislative branch before it can be made permanent. Locke did not believe in a king at all, but rather than total control of a government. He did, however, agrees that if the government were to overstep its boundaries the people could rid of it in order to create another.

While Hobbes’ case is a stretch, due to his strong belief in an absolute sovereign, he believed that if a king could not protect his subjects they were to be free from his obedience. Shortly after these documents were presented King Charles I was beheaded. Cromwell became in control as a monarch until his death when his generals seized power, calling for election of a new parliament. Charles II was soon restored to the throne but did not take on absolute authority. He agreed to follow the Petition of Right, agreeing that Parliament would meet at least once every three years.

England had thus emerged from this great civil war as a limited monarch which were the ideas suggested by Locke and Rutherford. The works of these three men had a great effect on England’s government. After King Charles I was executed, Hobbes came out with Leviathan pleading for an absolute sovereign, which was immediately taken up by Oliver Cromwell. However, it was the words of John Locke and Samuel Rutherford that prevailed in setting up the limited monarchy that came after and still exists in England and also ended up being the bases to the ideas that the United States constitution was based on.

Daniel Dwyer Mykytyn, N. January 11, 2013 HZT 4U1-01 John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education John Locke, famous sixteenth century philosopher and “Father of Classical Liberalism” wrote a work based on the human mind and learning methods entitled Some Thoughts Concerning Education. This work outlines Locke’s views on how the brain absorbs and remembers new ideas through a theory known as the “tabula rasa” or blank slate. This theory constitutes that humans are born with a blank mind and that as we are taught new concepts, they are inscribed into this blank slate and remain there until we pass on.

According to Locke, the goal of education is not to create a scholar, but to create a virtuous man. He believes that learning morals is more important than any other kind of learning. He believes that education should create a person who obeys reason instead of passion. One of the most emphasized points in Locke’s work is that children should enjoy learning and that there is no good reason that they should dislike learning and love playing. This idea covers almost two thirds of his work on education as Locke believes that we should begin teaching humans correctly from a young age.

All together, John Locke’s work emphasizes three base ideas, the concept of the tabula rasa, moral learning is more important than any other kind of learning, and that children should enjoy learning. The first subject being covered is the subject of the tabula rasa or blank slate that allows humans to think freely in a sense. The concept of the tabula rasa, as told by John Locke, delves into the human mind deeper than one could simply comprehend by studying the surface of the human mind. Locke explains part of a pre-established concept introduced by Aristotle, known as priori and posteriori knowledge.

His work places more emphasis on posteriori knowledge in that this learning method imposes that humans are born with a blank slate in their mind and that as they learn, subjects and ideas are essentially burned into their minds. This is based off of the basic “nature versus nurture” concept in that humans learn in one of two ways. These are either through nature, in which we are born with knowledge and that we are basically unlocking it through experience and all learning is basically recollection.

The other method emphasized by Locke is nurturing, humans are taught through action and all learning is just the basic collection of new ideas. Locke held firmly the idea that with the tabula rasa, one is given the ability to bend their mind and tailor themselves to certain ways of learning. This is an important point in Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education because it is the basis for the entirety of this work. This lets people define who they are, or, their character. If every human were to learn through recollection then truly we have no freedom as this means our character and mind are virtually predestined for us.

Tabula rasa gives humans the freedom to learn on our own and shape our own characters without having to worry about what might come in our predetermined fates. This also slightly mixes in a single quality of priori knowledge in that once we learn something, it is permanently engraved into our minds, and as we grow older, lose our knowledge as we might, it is simply because we can not recall it. It is held within the library of knowledge that is our brain, but we simply can not remember it. The second argument I would like to introduce is John Locke’s personal views on virtues.

Locke was a general liberal Protestant Christian, meaning he held very strong his values and ethics. This is apparent when he explains that moral learning is more important than any other kind of learning. Locke believed that the goal of education was not to raise a man of passion, but to raise one of reason and morals. He also held that another goal of education was not to create a scholarly man, but to create a virtuous man, much like Locke himself. Normally, on the standpoint of religion, philosophers were men of science and logic.

Locke directly opposed these earlier ideas by stating that morals, virtues, and ethics were a more important section of learning than any variety of math, algebra, chemistry, etcetera. More specifically, Locke wanted the educational system to instill what he named, the Principle of Virtue. This was an idea that Locke wished to impose that would divert a child’s mental attention from their appetites and desires to reason. Locke deeply rooted his philosophies in his devout dedication to Christianity. Locke strongly supports moral learning because e believes that one who holds strong morals and implements them in their daily lives can improve the quality of society as a whole. He believes that society looks well upon the virtuous because society profits from virtuous acts. Locke wanted to teach these values to young people still going through earlier stages of development so that they would be passed down through generations as the ideal behaviours. The third and final point is Locke’s strong emphasis on the teaching methods implemented on young children. He held a strong belief that children were the future of our society, and he was correct.

This is why he disliked the educational system of his time. He did not like the concept of children being taught languages, mathematics, and science because he knew and he understood that children dislike learning these subjects. He believed that children could have fun learning due to his theory that children hate learning and love playing because they are forced to learn and they are not forced to play. Children enjoy playing because it is an instinct for children to prefer having fun and playing games than being forced to learn the difficult new concepts held within mathematics, algebra, science and languages.

He says that children should be nurtured and taken seriously regardless of their behaviour or situation. In saying this, what he means to say is that children should not be beaten, or scolded, and that behaviour, good or bad, should be taken lightly and that children should not be punished for causing trouble due to their age. Locke also puts emphasis on the point that every child’s mind is different, and that teachers should tailor their education towards certain students’ characters.

Locke stresses that all children should learn a manual skill such as carpentry, painting, or playing an instrument as it offers relief from the stressful hours spent learning in school. The point of Locke’s essay is to take a stand against schools in a sense. He does this by criticizing their teaching methods and offering ideas on how children should learn and how they should grow. He implements his own opinion by utilizing a strong Christian background and by analyzing the minds of young children.

He argues many points and opinions in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, but the most strongly emphasized are the concept of the tabula rasa, that moral learning is the most important form of learning, and that children should be taught through less strict methods of teaching. He believes that people grow through development of the mind, rather than recollection of complicated ideas. In the nature versus nurture argument, Locke strongly supports the notion of nurturing the brain and makes that a strongly opinionated statement through one of his most influential works, Some Thoughts Concerning Education.

Locke vs Hobbes John Locke’s belief in natural rights are correct in terms of natural rights because he believes in freedom, in every sense of the word, equality and is a firm supporter in Democracy. Locke and Hobbes conflicting views are at their most basic form, to believe man or not. Locke believes that men will, with given freedom be perpetually good. Hobbes believes otherwise, saying that men, in the state of nature will fight all of the time.

Corny as it sounds, their conflicting viewpoints remind me of the age old struggle between good and evil. John Locke with his new enlightened sense of thinking in Democracy and Hobbes with his belief in more of an Autocracy, or an absolute monarchy, stuck in the thinking of the dark ages. That is why Locke’s views on all men being equal, everyone being born into freedom, democracy at its most basic form and the general goodness in human beings are inherently, right.

Reading excerpts from John Locke’s book, you will find lots of his arguments on equality and freedom of mans basic rights, are eerily similar to the foundation of which American government was formed, in the declaration of Independence. If some of the greatest men in our countries history believed so much in Locke’s points on equality and liberty that they decided to copy these ideas into the document from which they would create one of the most successful countries in the history of the world, then shouldn’t it bear in ones mind that these ideas are important?

That they are too a certain degree right? These are just examples of the power Locke’s book has on those who truly read it. He proves, again and again that with the belief in the genuine good in men, there will be little conflict as long as everyone is equal. I personally believe that is one hundred percent correct. As much as there are plenty of bad people on this earth, the petty crimes and small infractions of the law, with full equality and freedom to all rights, the good of men would overcome these small difficulties, and be better for it.

Throughout the 17th century, John Locke presented society with his teachings and theories that clarified the order of natural law and fulfilled humanity’s divine purpose for living. It all began in 1647, as a young boy when he attended the prestigious Westminster School in London under the sponsorship of Alexander Popham. During his years at the Westminster School, he found the work of modern philosophers more interesting than the material being taught at the university.

Much of Locke’s influence and later work was characterized by opposition to authoritarianism, which focused on both the level of the individual person and on the level of institutions such as government and church. Locke wanted each of us to use reason to search after truth rather than simply accept the opinion of authorities or be subject to superstition. He wanted us to proportion go along with the proposition to the evidence for them. Locke came to the conclusion that there must be a balance and mutual understanding between individuality and social institutions where society will not feel suppressed under man made law and restrictions.

John Locke believed that all knowledge comes from experience. Experience is composed of two parts: external and internal. External experiences are ideas of supposed external objects. These objects enter our minds through sensation. Examples of sensations would be hot, cold, red, yellow, hard, soft, sweet and bitter. Internal experiences are reflections that make us understand the operation on the objects of sensation. Examples of reflections are thinking, willing, believing, doubting, affirming, denying, and comparing.

Once again Locke goes back to his foundation of principles by reaffirming that in order to achieve success and sensation there must be a working relationship between individual goals and the law of society. Sensation and reflection are called the two fountains of knowledge. All of our ideas we can naturally have or have so already come from these two experiences. Sensible qualities convey into the mind, and they produce most of the perceptions and most of the great sources of ideas we have.

Sensation and reflection differ from each other because sensation is what happens outside the body, and reflection has to do what happens inside the body with our mind. Also reflection has to do with the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself, the mind takes over its own operations and the manner of them. Besides having sensible qualities one also contains primary and secondary qualities. Locke explains that these qualities are two kinds of properties that an object could have.

Primary qualities contain solidity, figure, extension, motion and number. They are properties that are objective and independent on senses. On the other hand, secondary qualities consist of color, smell, taste, sound and touch. They are properties that are subjectively perceived. In Locke’s, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he states, “sensible qualities; which, whatever reality we by mistake attribute to them, are in truth nothing in the objects themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in us…” (John Locke, 77).

In other words, secondary qualities are dependent on the primary qualities. According to Locke, ideas are anything that is “the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding” (William Lawhead, 91). Locke states that sensation and reflection are classified as simple and complex ideas. Simple ideas are red, yellow, hard, soft, etc and for example, you touch an ice cube, your mind is telling you its cold and it’s hard, you learn that from experience. Locke believed that the mind cannot know an inexperienced idea or create a new simple idea.

Although the mind cannot create simple ideas, it can process them into complex ideas. Complex ideas are made up of several simple ideas, such as beauty, gratitude, a man, an army, the universe. Complex ideas are also broken down into three parts: ideas of substance which is a constant collection of simple ideas, ideas of mode which is a combination of several ideas, which form a mode, like a triangle, last but not least ideas of relationship, which is a comparison of one idea to another.

From experience it goes to sensation and reflection, and those are based on simple ideas and that’s all contained in the passive mind, after simple ideas it goes to complex ideas and that’s located in the active mind. Overall in Locke’s theory he uses epistemological dualism, which is the mind that consists of knowing and its ideas. He also states the object in the external world is known by ideas, and our ideas represent those objects. After researching about Locke’s theory of knowledge I would have to agree with what he has stated.

Locke states that you go through an internal and external experience and I feel that today’s youth do go through the motions of the internal and external experiences. As a result the youth are able to gain the knowledge from those experiences by allowing the mind to willingly accept these new ideas. For example, when I was younger I put my hand near a hot stove and from the heat irritating and pressuring my hand my mind told me it was a negative stimuli and it was essential to remove my hand from the stove and to keep that memory as a basic instinct.

Society goes through experiences throughout life of internal and external and eventually gains knowledge through these experiences. John Locke also stated that the mind does all the knowing and its ideas are known. I agree with what he is saying because your mind is always working, it’s always active, we receive ideas internally through our mind and we receive ideas from the outside that goes into our mind. The balance is necessary between internal and external factors to keep society and individuals stable and yet progressive to adapt to new changes that rise up.

Locke, Berkeley & Hume Enlightenment began with an unparalleled confidence in human reason. The new science’s success in making clear the natural world through Locke, Berkeley, and Hume affected the efforts of philosophy in two ways. The first is by locating the basis of human knowledge in the human mind and its encounter with the physical world. Second is by directing philosophy’s attention to an analysis of the mind that was capable of such cognitive success.

John Locke set the tone for enlightenment by affirming the foundational principle of empiricism: There is nothing in the intellect that was not previously in the senses. Locke could not accept the Cartesian rationalist belief in innate ideas. According to Locke, all knowledge of the world must ultimately rest on man’s sensory experience. The mind arrives at sound conclusions through reflection after sensation. In other words the mind combines and compounds sensory impressions or ideas into more complex concepts building it’s conceptual understanding.

There was skepticism in the empiricist position mainly from the rationalist orientation. Locke recognized there was no guarantee that all human ideas of things genuinely resembled the external objects they were suppose to represent. He also realized he could not reduce all complex ideas, such as substance, to sensations. He did know there were three factors in the process of human knowledge: the mind, the physical object, and the perception or idea in the mind that represents that object. Locke, however, attempted a partial solution to such problems.

He did this by making the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities produce ideas that are simply consequences of the subject’s perceptual apparatus. With focusing on the Primary qualities it is thought that science can gain reliable knowledge of the material world. Locke fought off skepticism with the argument that in the end both types of qualities must be regarded as experiences of the mind. Lockes Doctrine of Representation was therefore undefendable. According to Berkley’s analysis all human experience is phenomenal, limited to appearances in the mind.

One’s perception of nature is one’s mental experience of nature, making all sense data objects for the mind and not representations of material substances. In effect while Locke had reduced all mental contents to an ultimate basis in sensation, Berkeley now further reduced all sense data to mental contents. The distinction, by Locke, between qualities that belong to the mind and qualities that belong to matter could not be sustained. Berkeley sought to overcome the contemporary tendency toward atheistic Materialism which he felt arose without just cause with modern science.

The empiricist correctly aims that all knowledge rests on experience. In the end, however, Berkeley pointed out that experience is nothing more than experience. All representations, mentally, of supposed substances, materially, are as a final result ideas in the mind presuming that the existence of a material world external to the mind as an unwarranted assumption. The idea is that to be does not mean to be a material substance; rather to be means to be perceived by a mind. Through this Berkeley held that the individual mind does not subjectively determine its experience of the world.

The reason that different individuals continually percieve a similar world and that a reliable order inheres in that world is that the world and its order depend on a mind that transcends individual minds and is universal (God’s mind). The universal mind produces sensory ideas in individual minds according to certain regularities such as the laws of nature. Berkeley strived to preserve the empiricist orientation and solve Lockes representation problems, while also preserving a spiritual foundation for human experience. Just as Berkeley followed Locke, so did David Hume of Berkeley.

Hume drove the empiricist epistemological critique to its final extreme by using Berkeley’s insight only turning it in a direction more characteristic of the modern mind. Being an empiricist who grounded all human knowledge in sense experience, Hume agreed with Lockes general idea, and too with Berkeley’s criticism of Lockes theory of representation, but disagreed with Berkeley’s idealist solution. Behind Hume’s analysis is this thought: Human experience was indeed of the phenomenal only, of sense impressions, but there was no way to ascertain what was beyond the sense impressions, spiritual or otherwise.

To start his analysis, Hume distinguished between sensory impressions and ideas. Sensory impressions being the basis of any knowledge coming with a force of liveliness and ideas being faint copies of those impressions. The question is then asked, What causes the sensory impression? Hume answered None. If the mind analyzes it’s experience without preconception, it must recognize that in fact all its supposed knowledge is based on a continuous chaotic volley of discrete sensations, and that on these sensations the mind imposes an order of its own.

The mind can’t really know what causes the sensations because it never experiences cause as a sensation. What the mind does experience is simple impressions, through an association of ideas the mind assumes a causal relation that really has no basis in a sensory impression. Man can not assume to know what exists beyond the impressions in his mind that his knowledge is based on. Part of Hume’s intention was to disprove the metaphysical claims of philosophical rationalism and its deductive logic. According to Hume, two kinds of propositions are possible.

One view is based purely on sensation while the other purely on intellect. Propositions based on sensation are always with matters of concrete fact that can also be contingent. It is raining outside is a proposition based on sensation because it is concrete in that it is in fact raining out and contingent in the fact that it could be different outside like sunny, but it is not. In contrast to that a proposition based on intellect concerns relations between concepts that are always necessary like all squares have four equal sides.

But the truths of pure reason are necessary only because they exist in a self contained system with no mandatory reference to the external world. Only logical definition makes them true by making explicit what is implicit in their own terms, and these can claim no necessary relation to the nature of things. So, the only truths of which pure reason is capable are redundant. Truth cannot be asserted by reason alone for the ultimate nature of things. For Hume, metaphysics was just an exalted form of mythology, of no relevance to the real world. A more disturbing consequence of Hume’s analysis was its undermining of empirical science itself.

The mind’s logical progress from many particulars to a universal certainty could never be absolutely legitimated. Just because event B has always been seen to follow event A in the past, that does not mean it will always do so in the future. Any acceptance of that law is only an ingrained psychological persuasion, not a logical certainty. The causal necessity that is apparent in phenomena is the necessity only of conviction subjectively, of human imagination controlled by its regular association of ideas. It has no objective basis. The regularity of events can be perceived, however, there necessity can not.

The result is nothing more than a subjective feeling brought on by the experience of apparent regularity. Science is possible, but of the phenomenal only, determined by human psychology. With Hume, the festering empiricist stress on sense perception was brought to its ultimate extreme, in which only the volley and chaos of those perceptions exist, and any order imposed on those perceptions was arbitrary, human, and without objective foundation. For Hume all human knowledge had to be regarded as opinion and he held that ideas were faint copies of sensory impressions instead of vice – versa.

Not only was the human mind less than perfect, it could never claim access to the world’s order, which could not be said to exist apart from the mind. Locke had retained a certain faith in the capacity of the human mind to grasp, however imperfectly, the general outlines of an external world by means of combining operations. With Berkeley, there had been no necessary material basis for experience, though the mind had retained a certain independent spiritual power derived from God’s mind, and the world experienced by the mind derived its order from the same source. Word Count: 1374