John Locke

John Locke (1632-1704) was a great admirer and close friend to Isaac Newton, and this relationship will shine through in our treatment of Locke’s epistemology. While Locke’s theories of knowledge and mind may sound quaint to 21st century ears, we should not allow this to blind us to the fact that Locke’s empiricism shaped 18th century philosophy as much as any other person did. It will be the purpose of this post to explain both what Locke’s epistemological theory was, as well as how it departed from what had come before, especially Descartes.

Newton’s philosophy and physics had brought about a serious resurgence of the atomistic theory which had been advocated by the Epicureans of old. According to such a view, the physical world was composed of innumerable, invisibly small atoms or corpuscles of some kind. These corpuscles interacted in a law-like fashion according to the forces which acted upon them. Thus, physical reality was composed of two things: corpuscles and forces.

Locke took this view of the world and applied it to the mind. The corpuscles which made up the mind were individual sensations and the force which held these corpuscles together was association. Just as atoms could be held together to form molecules in Newtonian physics so too sensations or ideas could be grouped together into more complex ideas.

From this we can see that there is really only one source of knowledge, namely sensation, which can itself be distinguished into sensory perception and internal reflection. Let us first consider Locke’s views concerning reflection as a source of knowledge. Knowledge gained by reflection can be broken down into two types. The first is intuitive knowledge which consists of the things which are simply known immediately, without any deliberation, from our experience of how ideas interact with each other, both those already in the mind as well as those entering the mind by way of perception. Examples of this would be most all of the mathematical axioms which are not proven or demonstrated but are simply accepted as obviously true. The second form of reflective knowledge is demonstrative knowledge, which would consist in those things which are known to be true by way of deliberation, such as mathematical proofs and the like.

Far more important to Locke’s philosophy, however, is perception as a source of knowledge. Perhaps the most quoted passage from all of his works would be

“How comes [the mind] to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has pointed on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience.”

Perceptual experiences also come in two varieties as well, in a way very similar to Galileo’s primary and secondary qualities. First are the primary qualities such as shape, mass and hardness which are rather direct experiences of physical properties in the physical world. The secondary qualities of experience are those qualities which arise from an interaction between the physical properties of the world and the properties of our sensory apparatus, such as color, smell and taste.

Again, it must be understood that all ideas, not matter how complex, can be reduced to more simple ideas and so on until one reaches the primitive ideas which are perceptual in some way or another. This is the entire idea of empiricism, namely that nothing is in the mind unless it was first in the senses, the sense not being necessarily limited to taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing.

We can now compare and contrast Locke’s empiricism with Descartes’ rationalism. First let us acknowledge the strong similarities between the two. Descartes, we have seen advanced a form of natural science which was quite mechanistic and empirical in nature, just as Locke’s account is. Additionally, certainty as to rational truth, according to Locke, could only be judged by way of intuitive certainty, in a way not terribly dissimilar from Descartes. Another similarity between these two men may lie in the possibility that Locke was a dualist, although he was open to a materialistic theory of mind. (Locke accused those who thought it impossible that matter could think of impiously denying the omnipotence of God.)

Nevertheless, it would be irresponsible to downplay the significant differences which lie between these two systems of thought. The first of these differences lied in what each considered to be the purpose of philosophy, especially natural philosophy (science). For Descartes, the purpose of natural philosophy was to inquire into and learn about the real nature of the physical world around us. Locke, however, believed that we could never know anything at all about the world outside of our experience; knowledge of the real world was impossible for Locke.

The other significant difference between Locke and Descartes was, naturally, in their views concerning the source of our ideas and knowledge. Descartes, while not espousing the extreme form of innate ideas that is commonly attributed to him, did hold that many ideas were innate, such as the knowledge that our experience correspond to an outside world. Locke, however, denies that any of our ideas are innate, for all ideas which come to be in the mind must have first been in the senses.

Thus, it would seem that Locke’s rejection of the possibility of knowing anything about the world outside of our experience was simply follows from a different way of approaching knowledge. Since for Descartes the primary source of certainty and knowledge came from reasoning, the fact that we “clearly and distinctly” knew that our experiences correspond to a physical world, this, for him, proved that we have innate ideas. Locke’s approach, however, came from the other direction in that since we only knew what we experienced and since innate ideas are simply absurd (he gives arguments for this), then we cannot know about the outside world.

This is a clear illustration of the humility which Locke advocated for both philosophers and scientists, following Newton’s example. For instance, although Locke was probably a dualist in some form, he denied that we could know anything at all about such a dualism and that we should instead confess ignorance on the matter, which he did. He accordingly advocated the abating of philosophical claims in general, for the further we strayed from immediate sense experience, the further we accordingly strayed from certainty.

Locke’s “tabula raza” (blank slate) view of the mind had some important consequences for ethics as well. He felt that ethical ideas were acquired in a way no different from any other form of knowledge, and that which was good was simply that which was experienced to cause well-being while that which was bad was that which was experienced to cause suffering and pain. Such a view, however, would lead to a radical form of ethical relativism which would differ according to each person’s environment and their experiences in terms of rewards and punishments. Locke’s solution to this problem is that God controls that which causes well-being or suffering, and thus has constructed the world in such a way that each person develops the same form of ethics.

This problem is also closely related to Locke’s views concerning the nature of an individual mind. According to Locke, the content of one’s consciousness are all derived by way of experience, but what does this imply about the identity of a person as old ideas come to be replaced by newer ones? If a ship, while out at sea, has each of its planks replaced one at a time, by the time it returns to shore is it still the same ship? Is the person who is on trial for a crime really the same person as the one who committed the crime, even if he is the same man? What if all the ideas from one person were switched with those of another over night, would each man now be the other person?

Problems also arise by way of religion, for how can we gain empirical evidence of anything supernatural? Locke response to this was that the miracles of the Bible, which were empirically witnessed, count as such evidence. Accordingly, Locke defended a strong form of evidentialism, wherein one should not believe that which he has no empirical evidence for. Make no mistake, Locke firmly believed that experience was the one and only way to knowledge of anything.

Locke also had very important and influential political views which would greatly influence the authors of the Declaration of Independence in the United States. It was Locke who first said that “all men have a natural right to life, liberty and property” with the final right being replaced with “the pursuit of happiness” in the American version. Indeed, we will see that Locke’s views concerning rights and liberty were what set his form of social contractarianism from that of Thomas Hobbes.

We will remember that Hobbes’ social conctract was seen as man’s way of escaping the war of all against all in the state of nature. Compelled by fear of one another, man adopts a social contract, granting a potentially limitless power to the sovereign, a power which is used to protect each person from everybody else. The sovereign maintains such a power inasmuch as he is effective in his duty of protecting the people.

Locke disagrees with almost every point in Hobbes’ analysis. Focusing such power in a single person, according to Locke will only tend toward despotism and tyranny and is therefore undesirable. The primary job of the government is not to protect all from all, but rather to secure the freedoms of all under law. The state of nature, according to Locke, is not one of fear and liscense but rather one of relative freedom, equality and a certain degree of respect. Remember, it is a natural right that men have to life, liberty and property, not an artificial one created by the state.

Thus, by Locke’s account, the social contract is not one which men are compelled to enter by way of fear, but rather is an agreement which is consented to in order to secure the nature rights which he speaks of. Since government is something which must be consented to, his focues lies not in individual sovereigns, but rather in the power of laws, institutions and ordinances. In such a social setting, it is not a single individual, but rather the majority (by which he means propertied males) which decides what these laws, etc. will be.

The main component in the construction of the social contract is consent and freedom. Society agrees to a polity which protects them from the arbitrary power of any individual, for a person’s freedom consists in being subject to the laws, institutions and ordinances which they freely consent to, and nothing else. Thus, the purpose of government is to protect and enlarge freedom, rather than to constrain it by way of force as Hobbes’ would have it. In this one can clearly see the ideas which motivated America’s Founding Fathers to action.