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An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Book 2 By John Locke

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Recommended: A brief summary on rationalism vs empiricism

In John Locke's essay “ An Essay Concerning Human Understandings book #2”, Locke was explaining how when us humans are born, were born with no knowledge of reality. We are born with a blank slate or white paper mind. What he means by this is when a baby is born, their understanding of the world doesn't come naturally to them, or isn't already embedded in the brain. When we’re raised were taught different things concerning where we live, who our parents are and how they act. Each person is taught their actions and understanding of things and isn't just magically thought of in the head. Our thoughts and perceptions come from experience. The philosopher John Humes agrees with Locke's theory on a blank slate mind. John humes along with other philosophers are empiricist. …show more content…

The opposite of an empiricist is a rationalist, someone that bases their opinions on facts and previous knowledge. Hume thought the rationalist argument about how the knowledge of something can be obtained without experiencing something was a bit… irrational haha. An example of rationalism is you know animals need water to survive, an elephant is an animal, therefore elephants need water to survive. You can conclude this with past facts and it be correct without having to experience it first hand. It's almost like two explicits make an implicit but with knowledge. Hume thinks we can only have two types of ideas. He thinks we can have ideas based on matters of fact and relations on ideas. Hume thinks we gain knowledge and ideas from impressions. The types of impressions we can gain knowledge from is colors, object, feelings. We get certain ideas from those impressions. And then our ideas lead to connecting things with other impressions we

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This is the idea that the mind is like blank paper without any ideas and is furnished by experience alone. While I don’t believe this is entirely true I think the ideas that stem from it are valuable as it is valuable to an extent. Education as Locke desires is a thing to improve the general capacity of the mind, not stuff it with facts or perfect it at a specific task. We see this concept in Franklin’s writing where he says “Experience keeps a dear School, but Fools will learn in no other” which means that experience is the greatest way to learn, and the way that all can learn, even the fool. The idea that education should be “a formation of character, of habits…of mind and body” (256) is one that should be paid attention to, because in the end one’s whole life is the issue, not just learning individual tasks and

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Lastly, Locke didn’t believe in material or tangible rewards, instead he believed in setting up punishments and rewards based on the parent’s approval or disapproval. He thought this would have the child either feel they let the parents down or their support. All of the ways Locke believed about educating a child are similar to 20th century behaviorists in which they both believe that a person’s behavior and mind are molded by their environments and also that based on a person’s experiences you can know alot about them. - Aylin

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When Hume describes the difference between impressions and ideas, he makes it clear that they don’t require any philosophical clarification. Based on his opinion, the difference between them is self- explanatory. According to Hume, we simply feel the difference (Grimwade 11). He suggested that when “the mind be disordered by disease or madness, they never can arrive at such a pitch of vivacity, as to render these perceptions altogether undistinguishable” (Hume 14). He means by this that only a sick person or a mad person can’t tell the difference between an impression and an idea.

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When we think of this mountain, our first thought is the words golden and mountain, where we were able to form these two words from impressions. Hume’s two arguments about the copy principle states, our simple ideas come from a feeling and man who is born with a problem are not familiar with the impressions of an object. Hume believes that through experiences, we can imitate impressions from

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These ideas were expressed in his “Tabula Rasa Theory of Human Behavior”. In his writing, Locke says,”Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas—How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted 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.”

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Locke believes that our mind is empty and this relates to the Matrix because in the movie the minds is related to the empty room that Neo goes to when he is in between the matrix and the real world. Locke states that the mind is blank slate at birth but in the movie Neo was born into reality. He had no control over anything and had no understanding at all of anything. He was just the product of his environment and was molded by the environment. Showing that Neo was taught through artificial intelligence and later in the movie learned to beat the system comes close with Locke and how he implies that all knowledge comes exclusively through experience.

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Interesting thread, "tabula rasa is the latin term for a cleaned tablet, one that has been erased and is ready for new marks" (Argumentation and Advocacy, 1994). John Locke is one of the most influential philosophers of modern times and his complete comprehension concern human understanding in the 20th century. Either way, John Locke was a philosopher who did not care for the Cartesian theory that soul accounts for personal identity, that is where empty mind a tabula rasa which is shaped by experience and sensations and reflections being that of the two ideas. Either way, the third term between soul and body that John Locke thought would be meditation would be the brain with consciousness (Finan, 2015 p. 30). The brain is that of the body

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John Locke describes a though experiment in his essay saying, Ideas according to Locke all originate from sensation or reflection. This excerpt from Locke uses senses such as sight and taste to describe the origin of the simple idea. Locke uses a “what if” tense and imagery to describe a specific scenario in order to explain what it would be like to have no knowledge of colors or to taste a certain food for the first time. When that child becomes a man, he would see the colors such as scarlet and green based off of a comparison to black and white because he would be unfamiliar of these “new” colors. For instance a normal human would see the grass as green and blood as red, but this man would see them as darker or lighter shades of black and

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Hume does, however, present a contradictory example which shows that it may be possible for thoughts to “arise independent of their correspondent impressions” (12). Hume considers the case of different shades of one particular colour. He states that like different colours, shades of the same colour are also different from one another, and cause the production of distinct impressions. Following from this, Hume creates a case whereby a person can conceive the idea of a missing shade of blue upon being presented with an array of blue shades arranged in a continuum, with a single shade missing (13). Hume holds that in such an instance, the person would indeed possess the thought of the missing shade of blue, in spite of lacking the impression.

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In contrast, Locke believes, that knowledge can only have a high degree of certainty but cannot be certain. Since he does not focus much on certainty in his works, he believes that perception can play a major part in the process of knowledge. He further reiterates that knowledge is based on observations and senses. According to his him, ideas come from reflection and sensation while knowledge is founded on experience In summary, I have covered the respective positions and views that both Locke and Descartes hold in respect with self-identity and consciousness.

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Locke also asserted that humans are blank states at birth. According to him, “All ideas come from sensation or reflection. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas” (Locke, 1690, p. 96). However, Baillargeon’s research described earlier in the paper showed that infants possess certain knowledge from birth, such as the principle of persistence. Also, Locke’s claim fell into contradiction later in his paper.

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