51. Introduction to John Locke

[Music] today I want to talk about lock a breeze already given us a pretty good introduction so I'm just going to be filling in a little bit of footnote information to his presentation but these are things that I think you should be aware of he covered all of this so just let me highlight some of the historical talking points connected with Locke I'm not going to discuss these I just want to make sure that you make the connection you think of Locke in connection politically with probably his most famous single notion it's not exclusively his but you would think Locke is best known for what's called V in political terms of an adult it's really out of the blue but you have any idea what I'm after here what do you guys do I'm sorry yeah does anybody know what is it it is they go ahead well that would be of that big high on the list that could be a right answers all I'm thinking of the social contract is a social contract guy as over against absolute monarch those are the two great theories of government in history some kind of social contract or some kind of absolute monarchy you know Hobbes versus lost so that's one point of course other people had social car even Hobbes advocated a sort of social contract to look a lot different Rousseau had a social contract that Locke is the one who's usually credited with what's called in the classical sense of the term a liberal social contract I don't be liberal the way the term is used today I mean the way it which is a quite different idea secondly he is an empiricist so we've talked about Descartes and this whole rationalist tradition and now we're looking at the other side of the ledger it begins with watt and this would be called the empiricist these two are at odds with each other and this is the same debate we've seen before who are the earliest names that we highlighted in this class that represent the great conflict between rationalism and empiricism going way back to the beginning is one of the first things we talked about and Jacob the names would be laid over there so Plato and Aristotle certainly count but I'm thinking even earlier than those two does you're right Plato would be on which side of the ledger Jacob we put Plato hair which slide that's right Aristotle goes over here even before them they call we talked about food okay with a curse where would he go is the Erasmus or do Pearce's rationalist certainly visible kind of in the same timeframe kala okay yes somebody's paying attention Thank You Kayla yes that's right so Parmenides Heraclitus would be the classic formulation of this hostile philosophical relationship where do you go to get truth do I go outside myself into the world that I'm perceiving or joy go inside myself to a world I am conceiving where is it where it's true and that debate is with us to this day and you may recall as we were kind of marching through these things I gave you what I think is the correct answer in what I call the Christian synthesis remember that you can all explain that on the final exam right because I am gonna ask you okay so it's the same debate the cart is in that tradition of Parmenides of Plato of Augustan rationalists and sound solvent down through history a part is simply the most recent expression of that that we've seen so far Locke would be on the other side I also mentioned to you that with Descartes who usually will include the names of lightness and Spinoza you should know those names I know I haven't given you anything or much about them I'm sorry for that it's just a timing issue but please have the names associated with that the names over here would first of all be Locke then blank and then blank and anybody fill in the blanks who comes after walk in the British empiricist tradition that is answering the French rationalist tradition they've been walked first and then anybody know did not do tinkers I'm not sure you've noticed Laura Hume comes he's third anybody know the guy in the middle of you know Trevor did you pick up the guy in the middle here okay his name is bar it looks like Berkeley and in fact Berkeley University was named for Berkeley but you always prove that you've taken philosophy if you just casually pronounce his name correctly it's like you prove you've studied theology if you don't say Karl Barth Barbra and it's not Berkeley it's Berkeley so just make that note to self any college professor if you just casually raise your hand to find some excuse to mention William Barclay in class and he catches that you said the name correctly and you actually said something correct about him the college prof is going to go note to self kickin went to a good high school so we will look at these we'll look at these guys later but that second thing about Locke he's an empiricist third he's probably the single most important philosopher to the founding fathers of America Locke was a huge influence during the founding era he precedes it of course but he was by far the most influential philosopher political forms so those are kind of the basic talking about Avery did a great job of covering his connects and intentions to Shaftesbury and all of that I won't cover all of that that's stuff you at least have it somewhere in your notes what I'd like to do is actually look at the fundamentals of his thought again in connection with Locke the principle work that really spells out his thought is is entitled an essay concerning concerning human understanding so please know that the the principal writing that sets forth is empiricism is called an essay concerning human understanding it is written in several books the books are simply extended chapters they're not separate volumes but one book two is more something like chapter one chapter two book one is an attack just as Descartes first meditation was an attack in the case of Descartes he's attacking things we thought we could rely on for truth right doubting everything Locke is attacking a particular idea founded Descartes and it's the idea called innate ideas so he's attacking what would be an innate or woven what was the mean Ana terminate idea Jordan what do you think I said do you believe in innate ideas number one would you know what I'm talking about number two would you say you do or don't know what you're talking about sort of sort of it's already been put in your brain it's just and it's put in your brain at what time when would we find it in your brain if it's innate yes hence innate as a Nativity your birth it's there from the beginning do you believe in innate ideas are you a playtest or our University sounds good to me this is one of those questions that even way to answer it you're probably gonna be okay you got some good people in your corner all right button it I'm not sure I didn't it well let so let's leave that in any event block attacks it does Descartes believe in the innate ideas Spencer attack all right and what this is sort of what would be an example of innate ideas that we would find in Descartes that we've talked about thus far what would be in the Nate idea sure absolutely that was the best answer you could have given but you know we have an innate idea of God and a lot of other stuff I mean Descartes would throw on a list we have innate ideas of a perfect circle we have innate ideas of beauty we have innate ideas of all kinds of stuff you know it's all there he's a plate inist Descartes is a place in us it's it's kind of a reiteration of new terms but those are all innate ideas Plato would say that Descartes would say that Locke would deny it Locke says there are no innate ideas and he attempts to demonstrate the absurdity of the notion of an it ideas and he wants to say instead they'll be coming to this world with what he Bree a mind that is known as thank you tabula rasa Raz a blank slate nothing there no innate ideas experience will light I is on that slip there's nothing on it when you first come into the world he also attacks the idea of the scepter now this is a little more subtle and slippery but it is so important I'm sure I am utterly inadequate to get over to you how important is this but the question is what is exactly the nature of the self the self each of us in this room has a sense of self I am aware of myself as a self and there's a private part of me none of you can see or know it is my personal private knowledge of myself each of you has the same thing and we all are aware of that intuitively and then you have to ask the question of what is that well for Descartes it is something it is that not extended mind but it has real sort of existence and in the unex in the non extended aspect of reality we talked about that yesterday right Locke denies that there is a self in that sense he denies it this is the heart of his empiricism he says your stints of self is just your stream of perceptions so the self insofar as it exists at all is just a stream now think about that for a minute don't try to write this down just try to get it in your head we are all here experiencing every one of us a stream of perceptions you have at least the five basic sensory faculties as far as I know they're all repeat five you're seeing things you are hearing things you are smelling things hopefully Pleasant things you are maybe tasting things maybe as you were running into the room almost late almost tardy you are throwing some what trail mix and you still have a little bit of the peanuts and M&Ms taste in your mouth I don't know you are sensing pressure you're sitting in chairs and use the chair now you feel it because I just mentioned it the pressure of the chair against your derriere is you feel the you feel the clothing on your body because I've just called attention you notice you weren't thinking about until I mentioned it right and all the sudden you're thinking about my try on your head and kind of feel your hair flop around a little bit you know depending on the length of your hair and so on in other words you are you are something and there's there's this these filters are these these switches somewhat like like little openings into your private self where all these things are flowing in hearing tasting touching feeling it's flowing in and all of that rolled together is creating what we call a stream of procession all of these perceptions are having you don't focus on all of them at once you can only focus really on about one at a time really you know but it's all happening all the time Locke says it's that stream of perception that razor-edge going through time in which you are experiencing all these perceptions taken together like a kind of kaleidoscope that is yourself that is your sense of self and he proves it by saying this imagine that all of those sensory experiences were ruled that all of a sudden you could not see you could not hear that in itself would radically alter on the originally altered your you know they do you have the what's-her-name the Ellen Keller Helen Keller situation well let's say we remove some other things let's say we will move your sense of touch your sense of taste your sense of feel could you say if you took away all of those sensory stimuli that there's actually a self left would you even have any awareness at all see that's his art you don't have to agree with that but that's kind of the way he reasons how much is your sense of self dependent on this stream of perceptions they carve famously says this is by the way one of the more famous metaphors connected with Descartes it's called the Dutch oven do you know what a Dutch oven is what is a Dutch oven Crysta what is a Dutch oven I always liked it with my wife put some stuff in the Dutch oven because it's kind of slow cooks you know and you put on all this stuff and in the beginning of the day and it looks like you come over the end of the day you go mmm smells good and it's just it's like comfort food is so nice well anyway there's this Dutch oven idea connected with Descartes I have just drawn one that's the handle on the top it's not a house that is a Dutch oven the kind of the theory with Descartes was this you could put a person in a Dutch oven alone with their own thoughts and by the exercise of pure reason this person could give you back all of what we conceive of is the external universe find God find God's creation and set all inside that Dutch oven that's des cartes theory you can do it all like your reason Locke says right put somebody in a Dutch oven leave them there for 10 years coming back and asking what they thought of in 10 years and you're gonna find a person who is imbecilic beyond description you can keep them alive you could put needles in them and keep them alive keep them breathing but you put someone in a Dutch oven in the darkness there and leave them there for a while you will basically rob them of any semblance of humanity that they may ever had solitary confinement bad enough let alone a Dutch up says self depends on perception you've got to have stimulation you've got to have a world around you that is writing on that tabula rasa or else you are basically robbed of the very fundamental aspects of what we think of as being human you follow that you see that that that's the conflict so they car lock wants to argue that's our basis for knowledge or epistemology and so on cannot proceed on this notion of innate ideas that we have to indeed build the whole thing based on some notion of an external world that is writing on this planet of the law so what's always struggling is interesting and for this I'm going to give you one of my very few axioms that as far as I know is original with me in philosophies is very very very little ever give you this original with me one that's original bit of me is credit cards are from hell I said that before Dave Ramsey did so I claimed that one but that's economics that's a different class for one that does apply to philosophy is this in philosophical history you'll find two kinds of philosophers and in each case they have a problem one class of philosophers starts with the mind and loses the world the other class starts with the world and loses the mind that's the problem they always run into big cars starts with the mind but he can't give us back the world he winds up in those deep weeds of the point of interactionism and the pineal gland and all of this crap you know come on he starts with a mind he thinks he's going to give us some great be pissed of a logical breakthrough and he just leaves us in a very lonely place of the mind well what comes along and so he says okay Descartes I can see your problem I'm going to start where I know we've got something we're gonna rely on I'm gonna start with the world but ultimately if he's consistent he cannot give us back the mind the mind simply becomes a stream of consciousness and we're gonna see that again and again God will take the best-run trying to fix that problem but it still remains start with the mind lose the world start with the world lose your mind all right so let's go on basically book one is this attack on Nate ideas of the attack on the cell both to is locks now attempt to construct a theory of knowledge so you might say this is his at least beginnings of his epistemology somewhere does that's what we'll call it histology and the first notion that he gives us in this discussion of epistemology is what he calls the idea the IP he says we do have ideas in our minds those ideas are utterly dependent on something external that creates them so right here's mine hey there's a mine and I look out here I see the tree is really out there I didn't just project it imagine it's out there it is a likely thing since that it is producing its own stimulation the tree impacts which is bad by the way impact it's not a very active English language so I should not use it that way it is a noun you constantly hear it uses a program or into a verb but for those who are concerned about the pure language nothing impacts anything so the tree has an impact on my sense of sight and it generates inside a little replica of the tree and that is what he calls an idea simple enough so some people say the block is like the common sense philosopher in many ways he is in fact I heard one philosophy proc put it this way walk is the philosopher of the college freshmen because he simply tells us what we've always thought things were he say anything that surprises us we've always thought we saw a tree and we have an idea in our head of that tree so at that point he's not saying anything that shocks us the reality of the tree is outside the mind the image of the tree is inside the mind and that is the idea now he says these ideas have two qualities primary secondary and again I think this is also the way people casually think about perception think about what's going on primary qualities our qualities that are inherent in the thing being seen secondary qualities are qualities that are dependent on the perceiver example will use the example of the eraser here I have an eraser yes Spencer yes I will here it is again primary qualities are qualities that are inherent in the object itself they do not depend on the perceiver and secondary qualities are dependent on the perceiver okay here's an example I got an eraser in my hand David can you see it from there got it now based on lock's distinction would the shape of this eraser the shape of it be a primary quality or secondary quality primary and why would you say that all right it seems you can hear it then the weight of this object do you think its weight would be a primary or secondary quality its weight weighs the same thing sure we might have different if somebody is very very muscular they might think this doesn't weigh much towards a wimp they might they go out all right Matthew the color kind of a black or sort of purplish color there on one side but is the color of this thing a primary or secondary quality according to all right and why would you say that that's true that's true but I don't don't get that kind of esoteric about I just mean the color of the thing it's sort of black with the color of this via primary or secondary quality aside from colorblindness or other impairments primary jeopardy agree with that hmm you better disagree with that Avery disagrees going at a very continued color isn't like objects don't actually have color that's right that we can prove that's right so what is the color of that what is creating the impression of the blackness of this thing the absence of come that's right in this case that's right secondary well it might be easier if I use this let's say the green cap sorry man it was kind of I kind of set you up for it today the green cap is is that cabin don't get violent okay little playground fun here the green cap is that cap green answer no that cap is cap is colorless as far as we know what's happening is light is coming out of the lightbulbs and in fact some of the light is being absorbed and some of the light is being reflected you all understand that don't you from physics or something to took languages and so a certain frequency of electromagnetic radiation is bouncing off this thing and it happens to be that band that frequency band that creates in your perception a sense of green it's a different it's a different frequency from the orange which is produced on by the reflection of light off of this you'll understand that don't you color is just what your eye is receiving in terms of frequency of light and we don't know what the color of that thing is in fact fundamentally we live in a colorless world because all that's happening is light is bouncing off of things at various frequencies and creating impressions of color if for example all the light in the world all the light in the world were one narrow frequency just follow me if all the light in the world was not quite like let's say it was all kind of a dark red frequency and that's the only light in the world then would things still have the same colors now in fact things would basically be color because they're gonna be one color out there you see that did it makes the world kind of a different place than you were thinking doesn't it because we think of all this stuff is sort of being you know blue blue shirt blue tie gray hair and Locke says no that's secondary how about how about the of something sit down have some Jimmy Dean sausage Jimmy's sausage Sarah primary or secondary well it's not even matter of whether you like it or not it's just that can you say anything has taste until it has been tasted is a taste is something that depends on the taster right to have any meaning at all so block has this working distinction he says if we look at any given object that some of the some of the aspects of that objects are going to be primary they're going to be intrinsic like he would say the shape of this the weight of this and so on those are all primary but when it comes to its color is smell plus dismissed sorry smell taste whatever it takes those are all secondary because if there were no perceiver then those qualities would not exist taste wouldn't exist it's a little bit of the old question of a tree falls in the forest notice there is sure because there is Locke's answer is what so what do you think block would say if a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody here to know here the sound was there any sound no he wouldn't say that and he would have a more definitive answer than that based on what we've said so far Jordan his answer would be what yes or no was there sound no the forest is silent unless there's somebody there to hear it well he was saying that a tree may be in the forest and a tree may fall and then true that may happen as a matter of objective reality but that doesn't depend on a perceiver but the sound you see there's no sound unless there's a hero I can't think of other Roman necessarily but do you see the difference he would say there could be a free of a certain mass that falls over and so on but unless there is pretty else you say you agree with that I'm just saying that's kind of the way he approaches it yet yeah if the person is there and there's yeah then again there's no sound yeah they would feel while you're saying they they feel the vibration in the air yeah sure and the vibration in the air is not sound that's what he would say you know sound is a subjective experience vibration in the air doesn't have sound a physical I can do this and if we had ears to hear and we could hear the sound very little frequency but I'm creative sound we can't hear it well he would say there is no sound but there is my yeah yeah the mechanism like a microphone recording enters like that I think of course didn't have any idea of microphones a recording equipment but I think Locke's response would be that unless there is a person that there is no sound now I may listen to the recording later and hear a sound generated by the recording you know but that that is different than what was happening in a forest or the forest or so it's an interesting problem my you know if Locke were here how he would defend himself on that I'm not sure but he is pretty strongly committed to the idea that there are certain qualities that that do not even have any meaning except for the fact that there is someone to perceive them that's what's important I want you to get this I realize this may seem like a kind of arcane point to be puzzling over but notice the subtle shift lock is making in a sense reality depend on perception at least to some degree it's the first step I don't want to call LOC a bad guy I kind of like him but it is the first step toward a kind of subjectivism of truth so it's a baby step but it is a step truth depends on the perceiver all right I want to hold up saying any pressing this point further and just say a couple of sort of somewhat unrelated ideas about Locke just just a round out our two conversation tomorrow we're going to come back and talk about barley because he takes the next logical step beyond Locke and it takes walk where Locke didn't want to go to a very strange place but we'll save that for tomorrow but a walk is also famous and somebody said this earlier maybe then I think it was Avery when I asked what was his one of his great contributions the term natural law remember that and you should identify that with Locke Locke was a great champion of the idea that as we perceive this world around us we don't simply perceive raw sensory experience so but we perceive order in it when I look at this tree I see the tree in a context of order there's a rationality about what I'm seeing the eyes the ideas generated in my mind are being reflective of an objective orderly nests about things and that orderliness is not simply an order connected with physical laws you know gravity that kind of thing but there's a kind of orderliness about things morally so that this universe around us has a kind of natural law and he does a little bit with that he presses that point to some degree that this orderliness of life around us whether it's physical order or moral order can be perceived as we reflect on things around as we perceive that order we don't impose it this is not some kind of imposition of the mind we discover it and he would say that order has put there by God going back - yeah other people have you not dead yet right so what makes social contract reserved you might say a right of revocation hobbes did not hob said i make a social contract by which I create Leviathan and there's no turning back once you create that absolute power you don't go and say oh just kidding you know sorry once it's done it's done Locke always reserves within his social contract theory that the entire contract is subject to natural law which is really the point here so we made by social contract decide we're gonna make Spencer keen you know don't know why we do that but hey but of course implicit in our social contract is Spencer can be the king and we will respect him as such so long as he doesn't become illegal he doesn't start violating the laws that God has put in place and if he does we reserve the right to revoke his appointment is King a right of revolution I would say probably that's the most it's the own idea of a higher law under which the social contract operates that's unique you don't find that in Hobbes you don't find you know but this notion of natural law then became quite important very influential and so who are some of the people that took that ball and ran with it who were some of the other people that took the notion of natural law that they got from Locke and sort of applied in big time in various disciplines that were interested too interesting to them you know what I'm asking who took the notion of natural law and applied it to the world of economics for example name was Sydney Adam Smith so Adam Smith is following Locke who took Locke's idea of natural law and applied it in the world of jurisprudence it's a contemporary of roughly contemporary of Adam Smith his name is William Blackstone who took the idea of natural law and applied it in the world of political theory answer is medica about Montesquieu never heard of Montesquieu these are all walking in philosophers they all go back to walk for their basic idea but then they take this notion and apply it in particular disciplines Locke had a huge effect in other words on subsequent thought partly because of this natural law idea all right stop right there [Music]

Channel: Bruce Gore

Views: 4,160

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Keywords: John Locke, British Empiricism, Bruce Gore, Rationalism

Id: awl1MHwvUJk

Length: 45min 1sec (2701 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 10 2018