2.  Heavily influenced by Aristotle and Descartes  Empiricists around his time: › Berkeley, & Hume (all Brits including Locke)  Rationalists around his time: › Descartes (french), Spinoza (dutch), & Leibniz (german ya)  Locke essentially based his philosophy off of Aristotle’s ideas and combined it with some of the rationalistic views of Descartes

3.  Believed that all humans when born have a “tabula rasa” for a mind, or an empty slate › Important because: 1.All humans are therefore created equally 2.All humans gain knowledge through experiences and senses  Empiricism – knowledge comes primarily or only from experiences involving our senses

4.  “there is nothing in the mind except what was first in the senses.” – Aristotle  Locke claimed that we cannot have a correct idea of something we have never experienced before › Example: we cannot understand God or eternity because no one has ever experienced God or eternity

5. TThis was Locke’s most famous work IIn it, he attempted to answer 2 main questions: 1. Where do we get our ideas from? 2. Can we rely o n what our senses tell us? TThis work would greatly influence Hume and Berkeley in the following years

6.  Locke divided the formation of ideas into a 2 step process: 1. Sensation  Involves simple ideas of sense such as seeing, tasting, smelling, feeling, etc.  We gather basic information of an object through senses 2. Reflection  Involves questioning, reasoning, and forming conclusions  After we gather info, we reflect on it and create a complex idea of that object

7.  Eating cake  Joe D takes a slice of cake because he obviously loves food › He first sees the cake, then smells it, then tastes it  Joe used his multiple senses to get a basic idea of the cake › After that, he thinks to himself, “I am eating a slice of cake, yummy.”  Joe has now combined his simple senses to create a more complex logical, reasonable understanding of cake. Knowledge that cannot be traced back to a simple sensation is false knowledge and must be rejected.

8.  Mainly based on Descartes’ principles  Locke once again divided it into 2 different qualities: 1. Primary qualities  Extension, weight, motion, numbers, shapes  Definite qualities that cannot change from person to person 2. Secondary qualities  Color, smell, taste, sound  May appeal to some but it may not to others

9.  Let’s use Joe as an example  Everyone can agree that Joe has one definite weight, right? (about 250… Kg ) › That’s a primary quality ; personal opinion will not have an effect on the fact  Now if I asked, “Is Joe sexy ?” › We would get different answers based on different opinions since it is a secondary quality  This shows that the world is indeed the way we perceive it with our senses.

10.  He established natural rights › Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and property › (in the Declaration )  Also, he invented the idea of division of powers 1. Legislative – elected representatives 2. Judicial – law of courts 3. Executive – government › (also in the Declaration )

11. Gaarder, Jostein, and Paulette Møller. Sophie's World: a Novel about the History of Philosophy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.