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John Locke's Theory Of Mind Essay

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John Locke was a highly influential English Philosopher during the 17th century (1632-1704) and had ideas of political philosophy that happen to carry its relevance in today's time. He had a wide variety and range regarding the topics of which he discussed and was knowledgeable in such as epistemology, political philosophy, and religious philosophy. One of Locke's biggest theories, was the theory of mind which is also known as "Tabula Rasa", which translates from Latin to "blank slate" in English. In this theory, he believed that we are born as "blank slates", essentially meaning that we are nothing until we experience things and learn from those occurrences that happen in our life. The analogy I came up with while trying to mull over the definition …show more content…

The thought of things not actually existing, just the properties, gave people extreme confusion since they have never had this perspective before. The example that can be used to further explain this theory to people is to think the properties of a Granny Smith Apple: round, green, shiny, smooth, firm, and sour. Now, try to imagine the apple without any of those properties, the apple eventually goes into non-existence since there is nothing to see, feel, touch, taste, or smell. The properties simply are there because that is the way the apple projects itself into existence in the world. Hume also applied this to many other things as well, one being the existence of …show more content…

This completely opposed the famous quote from Descartes, "I think, therefor I am". This is because Hume used the same process of breaking down an object until there are no properties to prove its existence. Descartes thought that he existed because of the fact that he was thinking that he existed, but Hume used the counterargument that him having that thought did not physically prove that he existed, it only proved that he had senses; which further proved his beliefs that we only experience things through sensory

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Many of Hume’s objections to the argument may be brushed off by those who are blindly religious and take offense, but many, from the same pool of objections, are simply logical and commonsensical, while some are too rigid. This a posteriori argument for design comes from the desire to make a second case for God. The first was the ontological argument, or cosmological argument, which attempts to use pure reason to

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In a similar vein, Hume claims that ideas of relations and causes cannot be known a priori. Experience alone is

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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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In John Locke’s, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke develops an argument for the existence of God. In the the following paper, I shall first reconstruct Lockes’ argument for his claim of God’s existence. I shall then identify what I take to be the weakest premise of the argument and explain why I find it in need of justification. The following is a reconstruction of Lockes’ argument: 1) Man has a clear perception of his own being 2)

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David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

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According to Hume overall, all of our ideas and “feeble perceptions” are founded by impressions (Hume). Basically, Hume insists that all ideas can be traced back and associated with the root impression that one first had. This passage begins with Hume justifying that the mind can conceive anything that we have not previously seen and explains that nothing is beyond what we can think unless there is a complete contradiction such as a square that is circle- “To form monsters, and join incongruous shapes…costs the imagination no more trouble than to conceive the most natural and familiar objects” (Hume). These ideas are explained to be copies of the impressions we have already experienced, and ideas must proceed from our first impressions of an experience (our senses- what we see, feel, hear, desire, ect.).

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