John Locke and his Essay concerning Human Understanding
Who was John Locke?
John Locke was a man of many interests. Trained as a physician at Oxford, Locke was a pivotal figure within philosophy and politics. Locke was not just one of the most prominent proponents of empiricism; he was instrumental in shaping the political tenets of America.
In this blog post, I hope to briefly introduce Locke’s book, Essay concerning Human Understanding¹. Rather than talking about the minutiae of the book, I will set out to give a general picture of Locke’s motivations and goals in this book².
How did Locke influence empiricism?
Locke’s compiled his many mullings on knowledge and sensation in a voluminous tome named “Essay concerning Human Understanding”, published in 1689.
John Locke had an agenda when in set out to write the book³. He wanted to argue against pure scepticism, the idea that all of our sensations are fallible and thus are useless in attaining objective truth. Hence, Locke’s Essay directly responds to Rene Descarte’s magnum opus, Meditations on First Philosophy. Unlike Descarte’s pure rationalism, Locke ascribed to the view that our knowledge about the world is acquired through the senses (e.g. sight and taste). Locke believed we did not need to resort to the surety of the self to determine the certainty of our knowledge; such certainty was confirmable within our understanding of sensations.
Furthermore, Locke vehemently criticised the idea that we could be born with some innate thoughts and beliefs about the world. To expand, Locke means that at the moment we are born, we won’t have any knowledge of the world other than what we experience with our perceptions (like sight). If certain beliefs — like Descarte’s belief in God — are obtained prior to experience, then we must concluded that babies would have an innate idea of God the moment they are born. Thus, Descarte’s positions leads to implausible scenarios.
In fact, Locke asserts that “If men can be ignorant of what is innate, certainty is not described by innate principles” (pg 55). Locke argues that sensory knowledge is more fundamental and certain than innate ideas. As Locke describes, the basis of our knowledge is intuition of the differences of our ideas. In Locke’s terms, intuition is the perception we have that something is not another, that a square is not a triangle, that a person is not another. He further categorises other such bases of knowledge, like proofs. Through this categorisation, we clearly see that Locke was not opposed to elements of reasoning some portray the empiricists as supporting. Instead, Locke but was opposed to the idea that we had innate ideas within us.
Locke aptly describes his goals within the introduction of Essays. In Locke’s Essay, Locke sets out to make understanding its own object (pg 22), that is, to understand understanding. The book’s purpose is to probe the origins, validity, and bounds of human knowledge (pg 22). Moreover, the book does not aim to examine the metaphysical nature of the mind, the attainment of our sensory perceptions, and the essence of the so-called “ideas” (pg 22)⁴.
Locke seeks to address three problems:
I. Locke wants to give an account of the origin of ideas and their accessibility to our understanding.
II. Locke wants to describe how knowledge is received from these sensory data, and the certainty of sensory knowledge; through this, Locke hopes to examine the argument that there is no sufficient way to attain certain knowledge, commonly held by the so-called sceptics (pg 23)⁵. Locke hoped that such an investigation would prove a cure for scepticism.
III. Locke is interested in the nature of opinion. How could we assert the truth of a proposition without certainty? Thus, Locke wants to understand the characteristics of “assent” (pg 23).
By outlining the nature of comprehension and understanding, Locke envisions that people would be less likely to default to the sceptical position.
To accomplish such goals, Locke writes about these different topics in five sections of the book. In summary:
In Book I, Locke repudiates the idea that knowledge of good, moral truths, logic, were innate and imprinted on the mind upon birth (as per the above discussion). Instead, Locke ascribed to the view of Tabula Rasa, where we are born in the world without innate ideas, and only build our understanding through experiencing the world.
In Book II, Locke gives a positive account of knowledge, sensations, reflection, and ideas. Locke creates a demarcation between so-called complex and simple ideas. Simple ideas are irreducible⁴. Complex ideas are combinations of simple ideas, so a concept like ‘Glory’.
Locke makes the further distinction between primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities are qualities which is inherent or measurable in the object. Secondary qualities are that which is not inherent to the object. For example, the color of an object (e.g. apple) that is percived by others is not a necessary property of the given object (apple), since changes in lighting may influence what we percieve.
In Book III, Locke gives a treatment of Language and semantics. This section was one of the first philosophical treatments of semantics. Furthermore, Locke gives a discussion of platonic, or general forms.
Finally, in Book IV, Locke gives a general treatment of knowledge, and how we acquire it. Importantly, Locke’s addresses Hume’s problem of induction. Locke accepts that the probabilistic hypothesis (the expectation that something will happen) has not much surety as the more analytical statements. Additionally, Locke writes that he believes God is the source of perception, similar to Descartes, although this view we can attribute as an artefact of his time
Side-note
- Page citations from online pdf: http://www.philotextes.info/spip/IMG/pdf/essay_concerning_human_understanding.pdf
- For a more detailed synopsis, do consult the John Locke SEP page. The Wikipedia page hosts an abridged synopsis.
- On a side note, the Britannica (https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Locke/An-Essay-Concerning-Human-Understanding) asserts that Locke’s other purpose was to oppose the Scholastics- neo-Aristoteleans of his century. However, the central focus of Locke’s Essay is on the rationalists and sceptics. In fact, Locke only mentions his epistemic abhorrence of such scholastics much later (pg 487).
- Also, Locke makes constant mention of “idea” in the book. As Locke describes in the introduction, “idea” just means “whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks” (26–27). For example, “phantasm, notion, species” (pg 27). Here, phantasm means the likeness of something. Notion stands for the understanding and thought of something, like “That it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be” (pg 43). Finally, species means category and type; for example, Locke talks about “sweet” and “sour” as different species (pg 104).
To put it simply, ideas are irreducible units employed in thought - Interestingly, Locke also introduces some proto-positivism in the introduction:
“We should not then perhaps be so forward, out of an affectation of a universal knowledge, to raise questions, and perplex ourselves and others with disputes about things to which our understandings are not suited; and of which we cannot frame in our minds any clear or distinct perceptions, or whereof (as it has perhaps too often happened) we have not any notions at all.” (pg 24)
