John Locke and ideas

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  • Man has conscienceness/awareness that they have the capability to think, like describing taste, texture etc. Thus all of these are ideas since they are the result of thinking

  • John Locke now questions where do these ideas come from? Is it an innate thing for us? no its our experiences and obsevations that determine it. A great way to think of this is like an artist. Their Ideas come from their own emotions or things that they see everyday.

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  • the human mind is like a blank canvas. How is a canvas (our mind) supposed to be filled with color and drawings (ideas)  if theres no pencil or paintbrush? (experiences etc) 

  • All our knowledge derrives from our experiences. (In doctor house there was a case where the patient couldn’t feel pain has noticeable scars on her lip, which house suggested as her not knowing she was biting herself as a baby.) Hence we can say that experience is the best teacher.

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  • The things that allow us to experience these “objects” are through our senses. The information we get from those like seeing colors, feeling temperature, smelling food, tasting it, all of these things are basically transfered into our brain. kind of like how a library has archives of these books. this “Information” then becomes the basis of our knowledge, therefore the senses are the greatest source of knowledge/ideas (This is everything Descartes goes against)

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  • Theres another source of knowledge aside from our senses and that is like whats said earlier, yung “capability” of a person to know they CAN think. To summarize this its like the tree of life of artistotle, there are things we humans and animals have in common, like the senses, what differenciates us is our capacity to think, like what locke said, but unlike animals who have simple responses to senses, we have the power to create ideas from it this is human innovation.

    • So more specifically aside from our power to think, our ability to reflect, to reflect on our capability, to reason with it and to reflect on the information we get from the senses are also important

    • furthermore he differenciates these 2 things, objects, as in the one the senses pick up, and objects of our mind, which is reflection (cross referencing with past experiences)

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  • external objects and the objects within our mind perfectly complement eachother, as these objects give us information to create ideas we use our past experiences, we rationalize, we reflect based on our past experiences to come up with an idea, like how in overwatch, if you’re playing genji and you see an Ana alone in the back line, we SEE it and go “okay im going to dive her” but based on past experiences we think back to the times that ana used her sleep to shut down our ult, thus we create a new idea of “oh lets bait it before we strike”

  • These two foundations are what our knowledge comes from as stated earlier, its only up to the person to what they can do with these ideas, how they combine these things in an infinite permutation to create something innovative

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  • Basically as stated we are empty canvas’ just like babies when theyare born, theyre blank theyre without ideas and eventually as they grow older they begin to get it thats how they recognize parents faces etc, based on what they experiences see, a good example is how babies learn their first words through stuff like tv shows which they constantly see

  • However there is great emphasis on reflection, it isnt enough that we just experience it but we must reflect on the things we experience, like when someone becomes curious of a clock, we just see it but we never know how it works.

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  • When we are younger we are more drawn to the world around us, new experiences etc that we make ourselves familiar with (stock the library). It is natural for a child to be curious of things and that is already reflection. But only when they grow older do they properly try to reflect things, (similar to how older people only understand what their parents told them when they grow older, when they experience and reflect on the words told to them)

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  • Having an idea is the same as perceiving, since  in order to first have an idea we must first experience, although the soul (conscience) always thinks it relies on ideas, the ability to think, to operate like a body operates with its limbs.

Joakim Abutin Summary:
Locke is an empiricist, he believes that experiences are the building blocks and foundation of our knowledge. We are like a blank slate, and through our senses the information we get from them are reflected upon through past experiences in order to create judgement or an idea. However ideas arent something we inherit like knowledge, instead as stated we gain experience and ultimately use it as a way to reflect on newer information, thus the things we experience, external to us like objects goes hand in hand with the objects of our mind (the past experiences we use to reflect) so just experiencing isnt enough, we must actively reflect and examine the information we receive kind of like wrote memorization.