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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 5 page report discusses English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) and how he carefully reviews the characteristics of the human mind and the course by which it is aware of the world outside and around it. Arguing against the long-established proposition of intrinsic ideas, Locke believed that the mind is born blank, a tabula rasa upon which the world describes itself through the experience of the five senses. Knowledge arising from sensation is perfected by reflection, thus enabling humans to arrive at such ideas as space, time, and infinity. Bibliography lists 3 sources.
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5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_BWideas.rtf
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of the world outside and around it. Arguing against the long-established proposition of intrinsic ideas, Locke believed that the mind is born blank, a tabula rasa upon which the world
describes itself through the experience of the five senses. Knowledge arising from sensation is perfected by reflection, thus enabling humans to arrive at such ideas as space, time, and infinity.
Locke emphasizes the importance of the experience of the senses in pursuit of knowledge rather than intuitive speculation or deduction. In fact, his entire mindset relates to issues, ideas,
and sensations, and their occupation in the relationship of primary and secondary qualities and the distinctions between the two. In Book II, Chapter XXIII, Section 16, he notes:
"No idea of abstract substance either in body or spirit. By the complex idea of extended, figured, coloured, and all other sensible qualities, which is all that we know of
it, we are as far from the idea of the substance of body, as if we knew nothing at all: nor after all the acquaintance and familiarity which we imagine
we have with matter, and the many qualities men assure themselves they perceive and know in bodies, will it perhaps upon examination be found, that they have any more or
clearer primary ideas belonging to body, than they have belonging to immaterial spirit." He also made every effort to distinguish the primary qualities of things (e.g., solidity, extension, number)
from their secondary qualities (e.g., color, sound, taste). These latter qualities he held to be produced by the impact of the world on the sense organs. Behind this curtain of
sensation the world itself is colorless and silent. An individual person, for example, would fall into the category of substance since the idea of substance is "that of certain simple
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