John Locke Human Understanding Essay - 1802 Words

When considering knowledge, Locke is interested in the ability for us to know something, the capacity of gathering and using information and understanding the limits of what we know. He believes this also leads him to realise what we perhaps, cannot know. [1] He wants to find out about the origin of our ideas. His main stand-point is that we don’t have innate ideas and he aims to get rid of the sceptical doubt about what we know. The innate ideas which Locke sets out to argue against are those which â€Å"the soul receives in its very first being, and brings into the world with it†. [2] â€Å"Let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters†. [3] This quote depicts the idea of the â€Å"Tabula Rasa†, that at birth are minds†¦show more content†¦The problem he has with us thinking like this is that all sorts of things would end up being defined as innate. Locke thought that we had the capacity to recognise â€Å"self e vident† truths and that we do have an innate capacity allowing us to recognise things, however they are not actually innate ideas within us, but ideas we gain from experience which our innate capacity allows us to understand. He was of the opinion that ideas are material of thinking and that there was no thinking before perception. While the mind has the capacity to think, it is not actually constantly thinking. For example, if you are asleep but not dreaming, then according to Locke, your mind isn’t actually thinking. All ideas we experience derive from sensations and perception. Sensation obviously uses the bodily senses to receive ideas, whereas reflection uses the body’s own procedures to receive ideas like thinking, believing and doubting. [4] Both of these processes are passive. The corpuscular hypothesis, which Locke expanded on from Boyle’s original thoughts, seems to suggest that everything in existence are colourless, tasteless, soundless and odourless corpuscles of matter. By looking at the bits of matter and their motions, it is possible for us to explain the sensations we gain from primary and secondaryShow MoreRelatedJohn Locke And David Locke : Human Nature Of Human Understanding1409 Words   |  6 PagesHuman nature of understanding is a widely world concept that is strangely adapted throughout the centuries. These concepts of human understanding were introduced in different by philosophers. These philosophers, John Locke and David Hume, documented in their treatises how human nature of understanding works. In many arguments of reasoning, Locke reasons that human should be on the same level of thinking and knowledge in order to argue about an idea. 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Lockes monumental An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) is one of the first great defenses of empiricism and concerns itself with determining the limits of human understanding in respect to a wide spectrum of topics. It thus tells us in some detail what one can legitimately claim to know and what one cannot. Lockes association with Anthony Ashley Cooper (later the First Earl of Shaftesbury)