Locke

Question 1

1. The explanation for why Lock is interested in studying our capacity for understanding.

Answer 1

Locke’s purpose is to enquire into the origin, certainty, and extent of human knowledge, and also into *the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent.

Locke is an empiricist, and was concerned with skepticism—the view that we might not be able to know anything for certain. He sought to investigate how much knowledge we can have and where the limits of human understanding lie.

Question 2

2. Locke’s interest in why people have different opinions.
   * And why does this motivate him to study where our ideas come from.

Answer 2

the fact people disagreed so much, could mean truth was relative, or that humans simply couldn’t know the truth?

“Someone observing human opinions from the outside …. might have reason to suspect that either there isn’t any such thing as truth or that mankind isn’t equipped to come to know it.”

Locke’s empiricist approach contends all ideas come from experience—either sensory input or reflection on the mind’s operations—and that differences in these experiences explain the variety of opinions people hold.

Question 3

3. Why Locke argues against the existence of innate ideas.

Answer 3

if ‘imprinting’ means anything it means making something be perceived: to imprint anything on the mind without the mind’s perceiving it seems to me hardly intelligible

‘to be in the understanding’ are used properly, they mean ‘to be understood’
… Locke’s argument agains innatism: to be in the understanding and not be understood—to be in the mind and never be perceived—amounts to saying that something is and is not in the mind or understanding.

Question 4

4. The distinction between his arguments for innate ideas and his arguments for thinking that we get our ideas from sensation and reflection.
   * (Remember that his arguments are different!)

Answer 4

Empiricism
Sense experience is the ultimate source of knowledge and concepts
- Our senses reveal to us all we know

sensation (our direct sensory experiences) gives us impressions of external objects

and reflection (our internal thoughts, emotions, and mental processes) gives us impressions of our internal states (e.g., pain, desire, memory, etc.).

these are the two sources of all impressions, and therefore all ideas. ideas come from experience, specifically from impressions, which are our direct experiences of the world through sensation and reflection. Both types of impressions generate ideas.

Question 5

5. The definition of primary and secondary qualities.

Answer 5

Primary qualities
Things that are essential to an object
- E.g., size, shape and movement through space
- These things can produce ideas in us, owing to their space

Secondary qualities
The power of objects to produce sensations in us
Colours, tastes, sounds, smells - some tactile properties