Locke’s Epistemology Empiricism: Epistemological school that maintains that, ultimately, all knowledge is rooted in sense experience. John Locke Seventeenth Century English Philosopher

Most famous for his Second Treatise on Government (1678). – Inspired England’s “Glorious Revolution” in – One of the theoretical foundations of the American Declaration of Independence (1776) and Constitution (1787). Locke’s epistemology greatly influenced by the rise of modern science in the 17 th Century.

– Science progresses through observation and experimentation. – Locke maintained all knowledge was gained in this way Tabula Rasa – Locke’s image for the human mind, literally it means blank slate. – “Let us 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; in that all our knowledge is founded, and, from that, it ultimately derives itself” An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

Locke maintained there are no innate ideas, i. e. ideas with which people are born, e.g. Descartes’ innate idea of perfection. – “For... it is evident, that all children and idiots have not the least apprehension or thought of [innate ideas]: And the want of that is enough to destroy that universal assent, which must needs be the necessary concomitant of all innate truths.” An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

– All human ideas come, ultimately, from experience. Representative Theory of Perception – Humans do NOT directly perceive material objects. – Material objects cause ideas to arise in the minds of humans. – These ideas are representations (copies) of material objects. – Plato inverted: The intelligible is a copy of the material.

Primary Qualities – Qualities that exist in material objects themselves, independent of any perceiver. – Shape, extension, position, and motion. – Since these qualities exist in material objects themselves, every human being’s perception of them is the same, i. e. they produce exactly the same copies of themselves in every human mind.

Secondary Qualities – The primary qualities of objects act upon human sense organs and generate secondary qualities in the mental representations of material objects that exist in perceivers’ minds. – Secondary qualities exist only in the mental copies of material objects. – Colors, sounds, tastes, textures, and smells.

– Since they exist only in the mental copies of material objects, secondary qualities can differ from person to person. For example: One person may perceive a slice of apple pie as sweet, while another might perceive the same slice of pie as tart. One person may perceive teal as a shade of green, another as a shade of blue.

Egocentric Predicament – Problem that arises from the Representative Theory of Perception. – On this theory, like Plato’s, there are two worlds. – Also, like Plato, one world – the mental world – is supposed to be a copy of the other world – the material world. – Humans really live in the mental, not the material world.

– If humans directly know only their ideas, how can they be sure that the mental world in which they live really does accurately represent the world of material objects? – Indeed, how can they even be sure there is a world of material objects in the first place? – In different ways, both George Berkeley and David Hume answer “They can’t” to the questions above.