9 - John Locke and British Empiricism

Question 1

When was John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding written?

Answer 1

1690

Question 2

In what way did Newton’s idea of microparticles influence Locke?

Answer 2

Locke believed that thought must be composed of some elementary particle much in the same way that matter must be composed of microparticles. He called these ‘atoms of the mind’ ideas.

Question 3

How does Locke define an idea?

Answer 3

As the object of thinking or perception. “Whatever it is, which the mind can be employed about in thinking.”

Question 4

What is wrong with Locke’s defining ‘idea’ relationally (i.e. as the object of thinking)?

Answer 4

This definition fails to tell you what an idea is, only how it relates to thinking. The intrinsic properties of idea remain unknown.

Question 5

What fallacy underlies Locke’s relational definition of ‘idea’ (i.e. as the object of thinking)?

Answer 5

Fallacy of constitutive relations. Fallacy of trying to define what something is in terms
of the relation something stands in.

Question 6

What is the fallacy of constitutive relations?

Answer 6

Stating that relations are intrinsic to the items or terms which stand in those relations. A relation cannot be a property of either term in a relation.

Question 7

How does Locke explain how we perceive a snowball?

Answer 7

A snowball is a conglomeration of microparticles. These microparticles act upon our sense organs and produce sensations in our minds. These sensations are ideas. The content of the mind is ideas.

Question 8

What is the content of the mind, according to Locke?

Answer 8

Ideas.

Question 9

Why does a physical object produce the ideas it does?

Answer 9

Physical object produces the ideas it does because of primary and secondary qualities it has.

Question 10

What is the immediate object of the mind, according to Locke?

Answer 10

The idea.

Question 11

If the object of the mind is the idea, then what we know of the world is…?

Answer 11

Purely mental content. The Cartesian theatre of the mind.

Question 12

According to Locke, can we have direct knowledge of the world?

Answer 12

No, we can have knowledge only of the theatre of ideas.

Question 13

How does Locke divide the qualities of an object?

Answer 13

Into primary and secondary qualities.

Question 14

What are primary qualities of an object?

Answer 14

Qualities that are inseparable from the body of an object. E.g. Even if you took grain of wheat and crushed it and took fragment thereof, the fragment would still have these primary qualities –all of which are quantitative.

E.g. solidity; extension; figure; motion; number

Question 15

How do primary qualities act on the mind?

Answer 15

The primary qualities are what cause the idea to arise in our mind. The ideas resemble these qualities. We have a complex idea that resembles the shape, idea of extension, idea of motion of the snowball.

Question 16

What are the secondary qualities of an object?

Answer 16

Sensations produced by the powers of the primary qualities. These are NOT present in the object. Primary qualities of an object produce these secondary qualities.

A snowball might have sensation of whiteness, coldness – these aren’t in the snowball –just ideas of secondary qualities. Ideas of these secondary qualities do NOT resemble the secondary qualities of snowball –because the snowball does not HAVE secondary qualities.

e.g colour; taste; temperature; odour; texture; sound.

Question 17

What produces secondary qualities?

Answer 17

Primary qualities in their interaction with the mind.

Question 18

Primary qualities are mind-____________.

Secondary qualities are mind-____________.

Answer 18

Primary qualities are mind-independent.

Secondary qualities are mind-dependent.

Question 19

What are the two premises of Locke’s epistemology?

Answer 19

P1: All that I immediately experience are ideas.

P2: I know that some of these ideas resemble the relevant qualities in the objects (viz. the ideas of primary qualities) and that other ideas do not (viz. the ideas of secondary qualities.

Question 20

What is the fallacy undermining Locke’s epistemology?

Answer 20

If all we can experience is ideas (P1) then we could never know that some ideas resemble qualities in the objects and that others do not (P2). Can’t compare ideas with the quality out there to see if there was a resemblance –as all we can see are the ideas, not the quality.

So we can’t say there are certain qualities inherent in the snowball and others that simply arise from the snowball. This distinction (P2) is illogical given that we experience only ideas (P1).

Question 21

Why can’t we say there is something in the mind that reads the images and tells us what they are?

Answer 21

This the idea of a homunculus that can interpret ideas and say what they are. BUT this leads to infinite regress –homunculus needs pictures in its OWN head to interpret ideas.

Question 22

How is Locke’s theory of the mind similar to that of neuroscientists today?

Answer 22

Both Locke and contemporary neuroscientists believe there are neural representations in the brain that are the direct object of experience.

Question 23

What is the problem faced both by Locke and by neuroscientists in justifying the idea of mental representation?

Answer 23

If all we have direct knowledge of is mental representations, how do we know these are representations OF something in the world. We could never have direct access to the world to verify if that mental representation represents something in the world.

Question 24

According to a direct realist view, neurophysiology is used to ___________ the world, but you do not see the world through the ______ __________.

Answer 24

According to a direct realist view, neurophysiology is used to experience the world, but you do not see the world through the neural architecture.

Question 25

What is the difference between knowing something directly and indirectly?

Answer 25

In indirect knowledge, you have to know something else first.

I.e. Person X knows Y directly when and only when X’s knowing Y does not depend upon X first knowing something else, Z;

Person X knows Y indirectly when and only when X’s knowing Y depends upon X first knowing something else, Z.

Question 26

When did Newton publish his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy)?

Answer 26

In 1687, three years before Locke’s An Essay on Human Understanding.

Question 27

What is the problem with defining ‘verbal ability’ as ‘how good one is at using words or verbal concepts’?

Answer 27

Verbal ability is that feature of our cognitive machinery that causes our verbal performance. It is not that performance itself. Defining it in terms of performance defines it in terms of what it causes, not in terms of what it is. We have not defined anything until we have said what it is.

Question 28

Why is Locke called an empiricist and Descartes a rationalist?

Answer 28

Descartes thought that some of our knowledge could be obtained on the basis of rational thought alone.

Locke explicitly rejected Descartes’ doctrine of innate ideas. Locke thought that all ideas derive from experience.

Question 29

Why can a Lockean not speculate that there is a world beyond our ideas?

Answer 29

Because according to Locke all we experience are ideas. If this world existed, we could not understand it.

Question 30

If there is no homunculus, then the mind is able to recognize mental pictures directly. What problem with Locke’s representationism follows from this?

Answer 30

If mental pictures can be known directly, why can’t external objects (as common sense tells us)?

Question 31

What is the problem for Locke of having an idea OF something?

Answer 31

The idea must be an idea OF something in the physical world, which we cannot know directly. His idea, which is not defined intrinsically, only points in the direction of the physical world.

This ofness, or intentionality, can’t be an intrinsic feature of something, because it always points to something else (whatever the idea is of). So if an idea is a phenomenal entity located in the mind, then in being aware of it alone, we can only be aware of its intrinsic character. If we have no other access to physical qualities, we can never know the relationship between ideas and what they are ideas of in the real world.

Question 32

Why can’t ideas be characterised by their ofness?

Answer 32

To be so characterised would make them totally incoherent, for they would have no intrinsic character, only relations.

E.g. The Elements, for example, was the book written by Euclid. But it cannot be the case that each book has only one feature: being written by X. If that was all there was to a book, the concept of a book would not be able to be understood.