Locke Essays (2480 words) - Empiricists, Empiricism, Epistemologists

Locke I. General Notions Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes were not truly conscious of the phenomenalistic consequences of their theory of knowledge, which was based on empiricism. Both considered sensation as phenomenal presentations and also as representations of reality. Thus they still had something upon which to build an absolute metaphysics. With Locke gnosiological phenomenalism enters its critical phase. By considering sensations merely as subjective presentations, Locke gives us a theory of knowledge of subjective data devoid of any relation with external objects. Hence Locke is the first to give us a logic for Empiricism, that is, for sensations considered as phenomena of knowledge. Such an attitude excludes any consistent metaphysics of objective reality. Locke, however, overlooking everything he has established in his solution to the problem of knowledge, gives us a metaphysics which is not greatly different from the scholastic. He even appeals to the familiar principles of Scholasticism, showing how difficult it is for man to withdraw from the philosophy of being. Berkeley, first, and then David Hume went all the way and reduced being to the status of a subjective phenomenon. In so doing, these two philosophers merely drew the logical conclusions of the gnosiological phenomenalism proposed by John Locke. II. Life and Works John Locke was born in 1632 at Wrington, Somersetshire, England. He studied philosophy and the natural sciences at Oxford, and received his doctorate in medicine. Having entered into the graces of Lord Ashley, who later became the Earl of Shaftesbury, Locke held several political offices. Thus he had the opportunity to visit France, where he made the acquaintance of the most representative men of culture. In 1683 he went into exile in Holland; there he participated in the political movement that placed William of Orange upon the throne of England. After the accession of William of Orange, he returned to England, retired to private life, and dedicated himself to his studies. He died in 1704. Locke is a representative of the English culture of his time. With a mind open to the most varied problems, Locke was a philosopher, a doctor of medicine, and educator, a politician and a man of action. Locke's principal works, in chronological order, are: Treatises on Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding (his masterpiece); Thoughts on Education. III. Epistemology: Origin of Knowledge Descartes had admitted that some some ideas are innate in the intellect. Locke dedicated the first book of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding to a refutation of Descartes' innatism. If we had innate ideas, says Locke, we would be conscious of having them. But it is an undeniable fact that children, savages, the unlearned, are not conscious of having innate ideas; they acquire knowledge during the course of a lifetime. It is impossible that anyone should have knowledge of something of which he is not conscious. Furthermore, experience teaches that certain moral principles and the notion of God, far from being innate, vary with different people and at different times. Hence there exists no innate idea; our intellect, at the first moment of its being, is a tabula rasa, a clean sheet of paper on which nothing has yet been written. All impressions we later find thereon (which for Locke are ideas) come from experience. Locke's ideas are not to be confused with Aristotle ideas, but are to be taken in the sense of representations, or better, of presentations. Locke explains that experience is twofold: external and internal. ? External experience, called sensation, gives us ideas of supposed external objects, such as color, sound, extension, motion. etc. Locke says supposed objects, since their existence has not been proved. (In a theory of knowledge limited to the experience of mental content, such as that of Locke, it is utterly impossible to prove the actual existence of these supposed objects.) ? Internal experience, called reflection, makes us understand the operation of the spirit on the objects of sensation, such as knowing, doubting, believing and so forth. In regard to the ideas furnished by sensation, it is necessary to distinguish the primary qualities (solidity, extension, figure, number, motion, etc.), which are objective, from the secondary qualities (color, sounds, etc.), which are subjective in their effect and objective in their cause. In other words the secondary qualities are powers for producing various sensations in