JOHN LOCKE (PHILOSOPHY TEST)

Part 2 of the other test review

Shaftesburys conversion of Locke (Before and After)

• Before Shaftesbury, Locke supported absolutist monarchy.
  • Shaftesbury convinced him to embrace a more liberal view, which included the view that Parliament was supreme.
  • Locke became Shaftesbury’s secretary, and followed him into government.

Empiricism

• Empiricism is the epistemological view that experience
  sets the boundaries for, and provides the justification
  for, our knowledge claims.

Lockes Belief

• we should emulate the physical scientist, emphasizing empirical observation, as the starting point of inquiry.

• Math and geometry are not the right standard.

Lockes Modest Program

• Locke was interested in determining the legitimate scope of human understanding.

  • If we can know the boundaries of our cognition, then we can be reconciled to our ignorance of what goes beyond those boundaries.

• This is important in an age of religious violence.

Source of Human Knowledge (Lockes Idea)

• all of our ideas are ultimately derived from experience.

  • experience must be the source of all knowledge.

• Empirical knowledge is the only sort of knowledge that is possible for a human being.

Is Locke against Innate Ideas?

• To prove that all ideas originate in experience, Locke has to refute the possibility of innate ideas.

• Locke argues that an innate idea would have to be universally present in all minds.

Why does he reject Innate ideas?

• basic logical principles would not be universally held in the minds of all people.

• universality would only demonstrate innateness if there was no other way for such ideas to be acquired

2 sources of experience (Definitions + Names)

• Sensation

  • The experience of external objects through the senses

• Reflection

  • Reflecting upon our own personal mental operations

What are actual innate ideas?

• Mental powers and operations

• Why?

  • The mind, for example, has the powers of combination and abstraction

  • enables us to refine and extend our simple
    ideas.

  • e.g combining ideas of a Horse + Horn = Unicorn

Powers the mind has

1. Distinguish one idea from another.

2. Compare ideas.

3. Combine ideas.

4. Name ideas.

5. Make abstractions (to produce universal ideas).

The Blank Slate

• at birth, there is no material for these powers to work on. This must come from experience.

• We are born with a mind that resembles a “blank slate” or a “tabula rasa.”

Simple Ideas

• basic units or building blocks of all thought like little mental atoms.

• contains nothing but one conception in the mind, and is not distinguishable into different ideas

Complex Ideas

• Simple ideas can be put together to form complex ideas

• There are three types of complex ideas:
  1. Modes (modifications of substance)
  2. Relations (like temporal order of cause and effect)
  3. Substances

Where does the idea of substances come from?

• When we experience a certain number of simple ideas that constantly go together

• we infer that there must be some underlying framework in which these ideas exist.

Lockes definition of Substances

1. An entity of a certain kind

   • e.g Man, Sheep, Gold etc

2. Unknown support of qualities of things

Substances Powers

• The power to affect the human mind by producing ideas in it.

  • e.g Gold has the power to produce in our minds the ideas of yellowness

Primary Qualities

• properties that belong to the substance itself

• e.g shape, motion, extension

Secondary Qualities

• Dont belong to the substance itself

  • Tastes, smells, and colours have no independent or objective existences

Lockes Tepid Dualism

• there must be some underlying substance that is doing the thinking, doubting, and remembering.

• we can infer that there are immaterial substances, but we cannot know what their ultimate nature is like
  nature is like.

Lockes views vs Hobbes/ Descartes

• Unlike Hobbes, Locke does believe in an immaterial
  mind or soul

• Unlike Descartes, the nature of this soul is not that which
  I can know more clearly than anything else.

Locke and Personal Identity

• Personal identity cannot be grounded on the sameness of substance across time

• personal identity is based on nothing more solid than my consciousness of myself.

  • e.g. I can claim to be the same person I was as a child only if I can remember the experiences of my former self.

• Personal identity thus has a psychological rather than a
  metaphysical basis.

Locke’s State of Nature

• Is not a “war of all against all”

• the state of nature is already governed by rules of conduct, prior to the establishment of any actual government.

Natural Law

• principles of justice, and an understanding of right and wrong, already exist independently of any humanly made laws.

• Comes from god and is universally binding

• Creates “Inconveniences” when

  • Theres violations to the law

  • The universal right to punish the violators

Lockes Social Contract

• his was made between members of the community

• Each member of the community gives up the right to punish violations of natural law, so long as all the others do this too.

  • This task will be carried out by the government.

  • They also agree to abide by majority rule.

Lockes Commercial Republic

• Locke states that God created the world to be cultivated and improved by giving it to the hard working and the rational

Lockes beliefs on Government

• The government should be limited and representative on behalf of the people

• Only 2 branches

  • A legislative branch to make law

  • An executive branch to carry out and enforce the law

The RIght To Revolution

• If a government abuses its power, or fails to act on behalf
  of the citizens, the people can replace it.

Locke and Religion

• persecution based on religion is contrary to the teaching of the Christian Gospels.

• The state must be tolerant of religion, and should not involve itself in the saving of souls.

• the church shouldn’t interfere with the civil affairs of the state.

State

• society of men who established only for the obtaining, preserving and advancing of their own civil interests

Church

• voluntary society of men joining themselves together voluntarily to the public to worshipping god that’s acceptable by him for the salvation of their souls

Reducing Religious Conflict

• Locke opposes civil interference in religious affairs

• If the state stopped oppressing people for their beliefs, life would be more peaceful, and the state itself be more secure.

Locke and Atheists

• He doesn’t extend his tolerance to atheists

  • Non-believers will likely break their contracts without fear of divine retribution

  • Only morally “good” people refrain from killing, stealing etc from fear of hellfire in death

Property Rights to Locke

- property rights existed prior to the establishment of government
- the government seeks to protect what already exists in a state of nature

how is private property acquired?

through the "labour theory" of property rights
- if I mix my labour with nature, then the fruits of my labour belong to me

do we have an unlimited right to property?

- no
1) I cannot take common stock any more than I can use (pick too much fruit and sit all spoils)
2) I must leave behind "as much and as good" for those who come after me

what does Lockes letter advocate?

he advocates religious and civil liberty, regardless of which god one worships
- this opposed English law which denied freedom of worship to unorthodox believers