A History of Philosophy | 42 John Locke's Theory of Ideas

all right I'd like to pick up the discussion that we began last time of John Locke and with particular reference to Locke's theory of ideas let's try and pick up the threads by reminding ourselves that Locke like Descartes has a representational theory of knowledge that is to say that knowledge is basically of our own ideas ideas are the immediate objects of our awareness and so knowledge is at best representational the mind observes its own ideas and infers from these were what there is in the external world so when we discuss Locke's theory of ideas we're talking about those mental representations tremendously important keep that in mind because by setting the stage that way he's opening himself up to problems about whether or not we can show that there are external material bodies outside the mind whether or not there are other minds other than one's own whether or not there is an objectively real God rather than just of God whether or not there are objectively binding moral obligations rather than just our ideas of certain moral obligations in other words he's some opening himself up to the question as to whether we can know anything more than appearance since phenomena as distinct from reality in itself and in a very important way that question is still with us in contemporary debates over realism and anti-realism and so Locke in a way is setting the stage for a great deal that comes later so ideas there are mental representations he distinguishes between simple ideas complex ideas and abstract ideas so we need to say something about each of these symbol ideas are simple in the sense that they are the indivisible constituents of thought simple in the sense of indivisible atomistic simple ideas then are of two sorts simple ideas of sensation and of reflection by sensation he refers to what others call I think he does at times the outer senses the outer senses the five physical senses so simple ideas of sensation have to do with color sound smell taste and touch the five senses and you can readily come up with examples of simple ideas then of each of these simple idea of color is the sensation of Lunas a particular sensation of a particular blueness a simple idea of sound is a sensation of loudness a particular sensation of particular louts and so forth across the range of things simple ideas of reflection have to do with what he calls the inner sense that is to say introspective so that as you experience your own experiencing you reflect on those ideas yes but also on the mental states that you have in having those ideas so you have for instance a simple idea of reflection that has to do with thinking the idea of thinking the idea of doubting of wishing of hope a feeling of expecting mental acts mental states as well as particular kinds of mental feelings that may come along so these are all simple ideas then of particular sensations and reflections and if we're talking of simple ideas of sensation particularly then we have to distinguish between primary and secondary qualities because the primary qualities that we ascribe to material bodies are the qualities which those bodies themselves objectively have whether we perceive them or not and the qualities which material bodies have in the Newtonian science of the day simply the properties of spatial occupancy shape size density primary qualities secondary qualities are simply qualities of our ideas that have no objective counterpart so the rose is not red it doesn't really smell rosy it's not soft in itself but only to the touch that is to say secondary qualities are qualities produced in our experience by material bodies their external cause is the effect of the material body via our sense organs so that our ideas of secondary qualities our ideas of qualities which are purely subjective exist in the consciousness of what the sky is not blue the Rose isn't right now if you're familiar with Tennyson Tennyson in the 19th century is trying to put together something of his classical vision shaped partly with the Greeks partly by Christianity is trying to put that together with this scientific worldview of the Newtonian sort yes a and it's this world stripped of secondary qualities a world without color and sound smell of which he says can I take a thing so dead embrace it for my mortal good you can see how the Remender cyst was going to Wordsworth's heart dances with the daffodils yes he never john locke's couldn't so we have then these distinctions in his discussion of simple ideas and that's simply reviewing what we did as we left off last time comment they are questioning finding that fairly straightforward try to assimilate that because it's important to see in Locke Berkeley Hume can't in other words for the next six weeks at least it's important to realize that what you know is not sticks and stones and trees but simply ideas representations and if we do have knowledge of sticks and stones and trees it's indirectly through a cause-effect argument that we infer that there are objectively there but the immediate awareness as simply as of our own mental states our own ideas mental representations our ideas then of primary qualities are indeed representations copies of the way things are so this is sometimes called a copy theory of knowledge we have mental colors so in that sense truth is seen as correspondence between the ID and the thing but our ideas of secondary qualities are not copies on so it's a copy theory as far as primary qualities are concerned not secondary qualities okay simple ideas any comment they're complex ideas are simply the result of our compounding combining various simple ideas and he makes the point that this compounding seems to be a voluntary kind of activity so that we've somehow or other chosen to put these simple ideas together into larger composites so my idea the human body is a composite that I've constructed it's a mental construct compound ideas complex ideas yes let's put it down they are mental constructs and in as much as my mental construct is of a person with certain color to the face with perhaps a softness to the skin perhaps little fragrance particularly if you come straight from a phys ed class in insofar as it incorporates those things those compound ideas complex ideas are not exact representations because the secondary qualities are subjective they don't have objective correlates so there's no guarantee built-in guarantee that our complex ideas of bodies and houses and ships and trees have objective reference just as they are complex ideas and mental constructs he gives a number of examples and they become crucially important in the development of this tradition take for instance the example of power causal power which he discusses on 184 185 he suggests this is a complex idea most clearly derived from simple ideas of reflection on the relationships between our mental states on the relationship between my willing and then affirming something or on the relationship between my design to do something and then physically doing it because I see that there is some sort of correlation going on between willing and doing I assume this some sort of causal connection between the mind that wills and the body that does so the idea of causal power arises as a complex idea that we suppose represents what goes on between mind and body now you notice in the way I described that a distinction between their being correlations between two events and there being a connection between two events correlation if you like conjunction they are there in conjunction but is there any connection you think now says LOC the idea of a connection just arises and we voluntarily affirm it the idea of causal power now it's precisely that which David Hume is going to criticize it's crucial because in this representational view how do you know there is an external world whether it be a world of material things a world of other minds or a world in which God is included how do you know those things exist unless it is by a cause-effect argument here's the whoops here's the effect the ideas here is the the cause those external things there you can only use a cause-effect argument if you know there's a cause-effect connection you see whereas in fact all you know in your ideas is the correlation the conjunction you don't know the connection so a couple of weeks from now when you're reading David Hume you'll hear him saying there all the all there is that this idea of power is the idea of constant conjunction we have no empirical basis at all for affirming any causal connection and he becomes a sceptic about knowing anything about causal power now what's that going to do to Newtonian science where everything is understood in terms of forces pause and power what's it going to do to the possibility of knowing anything about the material world knowing anything about other minds or God if you can't have calls or arguments yes so what is doing then with complex ideas like the idea of power is crucial the idea of substance likewise as you read Locke notice carefully the way he talks about substance on pages 186 and again 189 whether it be material substance or whether it be mental substance immaterial mind spirit soul you see what we have in our simple ideas is simply ideas of certain qualities primary qualities secondary qualities where does the idea of substance come from well it's an idea of something which has those qualities you think you get the idea of material substance by putting primary quality ideas together it is something I know not what that has those qualities and the way Locke talks about material substance then is simply to call it something I know not what sickle any talks of spiritual substance mind or soul the same way it's something that has mental properties something I know not watch now obviously somebody like Hume is gonna make her out of that yeah or try again the concept of infinity we don't have the actual paragraphs that deal with that in our selection but in the full text he discusses the idea of infinity a complex idea how do we get the idea of infinity from simple ideas well if we're talking of space being infinite as Newton did what we're talking of is a point beyond this point beyond this point beyond this point and so on as we say ad infinitum the idea of infinity is a complex idea developed by that process of extrapolation an endless extrapolation and similarly with the idea of infinite time extrapolation and so that's the way the Newtonian conceptions of space and time are accounted for absolute infinite space and time complex ideas derived from simple ideas of particular points in space particular periods of time and he says that that's the way in which we get the idea of God as a spirit who is infinite I mentioned that Lots father was one of the signatories of the Westminster Confession of faith that Westminster Confession defines God as a spirit infinite in wisdom goodness love and power it defines the human person as a spirit finite in wisdom goodness love and power God is the spirit infinite in the same regards well I hope you get the idea of an infinite God how do you get the idea of God by extrapolation from our ideas of the wisdom goodness love and power which human minds exert extrapolating that to infinite wisdom infinite goodness infinite love infinite power and you have the idea of an infinite being that's how the idea of God developed complex idea so he tries to account in that way for the whole kind of mental apparatus conceptual apparatus which we have in keeping with his basic conviction that we have no innate idea of God or of anything else that all of our ideas ultimately it arrived from experience that is to say from simple ideas of sensation and reflection complex ideas comment yeah right some of them at least have yeah how do you know that what you think is correct yeah yeah could you hold on to that till we get down there because he makes a distinction that you know as a solders Plato between knowledge and opinion knowledge and belief and in effect he's going to say that there are different degrees of knowledge and the third degree that he calls opinion belief is what applies to knowledge of material things in other words you don't have certainty yeah that's right and he's willing to admit it that's a matter of opinion yeah there are things that we can know but only some things well lookie since you've raised that let's um let's jump ahead and pick that up well while it's hot what he does in talking about knowledge and belief is to distinguish three kinds of knowledge knowledge of the first kind second kind third kind and you can track this down for yourself pages 198 to 201 there abouts knowledge of the first kind is by intuition knowledge of the second kind is by demonstration demonstration demonstration knowledge of the third kind is by sensation sensory means these these three comes now intuition is what we know immediately by immediate awareness we only have knowledge where there is immediate knowledge rather than representational knowledge okay you only have intuitive knowledge when it's known immediately rather than by representation well what do we know then that's intuitive you see well what you know that is intuitive is that a equals a in other word laws of logic and applications of the laws of logic that you get for instance in mathematics where the three angles of a triangle add up to two right angles you see is that intuitive well in the final analysis it is after it's worked out comes through intuitively so the intuitive is what is immediately self-evident if you like the fact that I now have a sensation of blueness that would be intuitive but there is a blue object out there in the real world that's not intuitive demonstration knowledge by demonstration of the second kind is what we know as a result of logical demonstration logical proof with certainty in other words if you have certain intuitive premises self-evident premises first principles you can be do certain things prove it and as I indicated in the mathematical example each step in the proof must come through with intuitive certainty but gain that's not dealing with what is representational unless the proof is such as to get beyond the representation to reality itself but how in a deductive proof do you get external reality in a conclusion if it's not in one of the premises you see in no syllogism can you have in a conclusion something which is not involved in one of the premises problem so if we're talking about knowledge of the external world we are consigned to knowledge of the third kind where what we have with sensation seems to be based on probability not a matter of certainty but simply of probability if for instance we want to think of some take it back some general concept some generalization some general concept then obviously any empirical generalization is going to be limited to probability tied to how large the sample that we've experienced so you can have probability there and but the same token he would think that causal arguments in as much as the notion of causal power is at best a construct causal arguments are at best probability arguments and so that likewise leaves you with a so the the answer essentially is this if it's not something you know immediately intuitively if it's not something that can be demonstrated from what is known immediately then the only way you know that something somewhere you think it is is on the basis of experience probabilities are the best we have and I think that's characteristic of this whole empiricist tradition that if you want to know anything beyond present experience you have to go with probability now the question he's not asking is about the logical basis of probability yes a because probability assumes the uniformity of nature and it remains for David Hume to question the logical basis of probability he really does a thorough job okay mathematical theorems that's the classic example of the istening yeah yeah and he can't go much beyond that if he wants to be true to his empiricism you see because if he's gonna say you can no independently of sense experience things about the physical universe he's not going to be an empiricist did reflections can be asked images memories of original sensations or they can be simple ideas of our own mental activities of thinking doubting hoping so that the immediate sensation is one thing simple idea of sensation your subsequent reflection on that is something different get that distinction when we get to hue we'll see he adapts the terminology to make that distinction a little more clearly for Hume the immediate sensation is called an impression and then an idea that is used for your subsequent idea of the impression but the immediate sensation is an impression that language has other reasons for it but it makes the distinction rather nicely okay let me back up now to abstract ideas okay abstract ideas and here we we get into the question of universals because the term abstraction abstraction plainly is the Aristotelian and scholastic term for the way in which we gain universal concepts it is in effect where does John Locke come out on theories of universals now hark back to what we were doing last semester as we got into this period and we observed that bacon and Hobbes are both directly influenced by The Economist nominalism and take nominalist positions to say all we can think is particulars we don't even have words that stand for abstract ideas because we don't even have abstract ideas all we have is general ideas and so both bacon and Hobbes and nominalist s' know in the case of Descartes somewhat different de cartes not an empiricist on the source of our ideas he's a rationalist there are things we know independently of experiencing particular so Descartes is a conceptualist we do have abstract ideas not just empirical generalizations even though Descartes did not believe that there were real universals in the Platonic or our state arian sense take hearts the conceptual bacon and hobbes and novelists John Locke also I think is a conceptualist and it seems to be the influence of Descartes here because John Locke is going to be taking up a mind-body dualism like des cartes we'll see this later on but he agrees with Descartes Descartes cogito ergo sum I think therefore I exist I'm a thinking thing a mind to soul an immaterial entity so he follows Descartes in that regard even though he's an empiricist as simple ideas of reflection of what lead him to that and being a conceptual is then he's not going take it back having an immaterial mind he's not going to be so tied to physical sensations as was Thomas Hobbes and he thinks of the powers of the mind the active powers of the mind that were aware of in reflection and one of these mental activities mental powers we are aware of is the power of abstraction yes and so what he's doing in the section on abstract ideas is talking about our ideas of reflection of abstracting now with that in mind turn to those two passages and take a look at them the first one is on page 182 182 where it's part of chapter 11 under the title of discerning and other operations of the mind within which talking about operations of the mind yes he talks about naming as one operation of the mind at the very bottom of 181 when children have by repeated sensations God ideas fixed in their memories they begin by degrees to learn the use of signs so they learned names words okay and then the section on abstraction the use of words being to stand as outward marks of internal ideas words are outward marks physical signs written or heard seen or heard words are outward signs of internal ideas ideas taken from particular things if every particular idea that we take in should have a distinct name names would be endless so to prevent this the mind makes the particular ideas to become general ideas by considering them as separate from all existence and from the circumstances of existence separate from time place or anything else so this is called abstraction you develop abstract general ideas whereby ideas taken from particular beings become general representations with general James applicable to whatever exists conformable to such abstract ideas so we get general concepts carried by those names those words and these abstract ideas then what he's talking about and in the next paragraph Brutes abstract not he makes the point that this is one of the main distinctions between humans and animals that we have abstract ideas we think abstract ly animals do not they may have sense perception and so forth but they don't think abstract ly now that's the one passage the other passage is on page 192 where in book 3 he's talking about general words again repeats something of what he said earlier notice in the middle of the second column the end of paragraph 8 a new idea is made not by any new addition but only as before by leaving out shape and other properties are the particular properties retaining only a body with life since spontaneous motion comprehended under the name animal how do you get the general idea of animal by abstracting what is essential to all animals from the particular properties of every animal you leave aside all the particular properties and think an abstraction of just of what is essential to being an animal that is to say a body with life since spontaneous motion that's the essence of an animal and on 192 then he goes on top of the page of the complex ideas signified by the names man and horse leaving out particulars in which they differ retaining only those wherein they agree those making a new complex idea giving the name animal to it one has a more general term leave out the idea of animal sense and spontaneous motion and remaining complex idea so forth becomes a more general one under the more comprehensive category to the VINs living living things notice how he's playing with the Aristotelian things humans are rational animals what's an animal animals are living things what's a living thing you see the larger and larger Universal categories until he gets to the end of that paragraph to conclude this whole mystery of general and species the Aristotelian classification this whole mystery of general and species which make such a noise in the schools they scholastics with justice so little regarded out of them is nothing else but abstract ideas with names and next to them and if you look across the page at 193 you see a section entitled abstract ideas of the essences of general species and he he points out at the end of that section that essences of the sorts of things and consequently the sorting of things is the workmanship of the understanding that abstract and makes general ideas so what are essences well they're not real forms of a transcendent sort as in Plato they're not real metaphysical entities as in Plato and Aristotle essences are those common and recurrent quality is essential to all members of a class a conceived of abstractly in abstraction from all particular properties in our abstract ideas and referred to by abstract terms conceptualism now watch this because it's his conceptualism that makes it possible for him to talk of things like mind spirit causal power because some of these complex ideas are abstract ideas now when you get to Hume you'll find Hume is a nominalist all of our terms have to be referred to particular ideas nominalism and so because Hume is a nominalist he rejects conceptions of matter and mind as substances and of causal power and of infinite space or infinite time now not only human dit next week when we get to George Berkeley who's sort of a halfway house to you Berkeley to is a nominalist as distinct from a conceptualist so the old problem of universals is going to play a crucial role in this 18th century debate okay anything there yeah yeah yeah I'm not sure it's fair to say he classifies it with the other five he's saying we have two different kinds of simple ideas because we have two kinds of sense we have outer sense and innocence yes a in as much as its inner sense it's not classified with the five their outer sense but it's still a source of simple ideas well it is for the simple sensory ideas on which we reflect but it's not dependent on the outer sense for our reflective awareness of our own mental activities okay I see what you're saying yeah if you yeah if there had been no sensations of an external sort would I be aware of my own thinking yeah yeah if there were no sensations of an external sort about particular properties of supposedly particular things would I be developing abstract ideas would I be aware of my own abstracting yeah I think you can ask that question I'm not sure that he answers it he he might I suppose he might well say that there are mental activities which are independent thereof I'd had problems with that I'm inclined to think we're such integrals psycho physical beings that it's the physical and sensory interaction with the world which awakes self-awareness within us so I think that the hypothesis which somebody proposed in that day of a person who has all his life been encased in a coat of stone so that none of the senses have any contact with the world and then he's animated it would have no experience at all would have no consciousness at all but it's only as the stone is chipped away saved from the eyes that consciousness begins to arise there was a Frenchman the Baron de Condillac who constructed that hypothesis I I think there's something to be said for that not the kondal acts reasons he was a materialist but simply because of the way in which are psychosomatic unity functions but that's one question would reflection have anything to reflect on if there'd been no initial sensory input that's one question the origination question the other question though is here I am a functioning human being do I have anything to reflect on other than sensations yes yes I have all sorts of ideas abstract ideas general ideas of my own mental activities to reflect on enough to keep me busy quite apart from new sensations so in that sense yeah yeah that's only one function of reflection self awareness self consciousness yeah basically yeah that's that's my point that's my point yes reflection means basically introspective awareness you see but there's all sorts of things going on in introspective awareness you asked me yesterday in the office wasn't it whether whether what he means by reflection is abstraction and I said no no my reflective awareness includes awareness of abstract ik but in that sense abstracting is a mental activity that isn't just reflection you see it's an active kind of thinking of which I am reflectively aware in that case reflection is when you see I here am i abstracting and there's a background of self conscious Ness about it as it turns in on the abstracting process this sort of a reflexive activity involved in reflection reflection reflexive you see the two words are cognates all right a couple more comments about knowledge and beliefs I said that knowledge of the Third Kind sensation admits only of probability this is opinion belief those terms are kosher distinguishing as in Plato's divided line between knowledge and opinion knowledge and belief what is it that contributes to probability what contributes to probability well two things basically one is the consistency of what I believe with my experience with other things I know that is to say there can be beliefs which contradicted by other beliefs or knowledge based on experience there so there's a matter of overall consistency coherence secondly the testimony of others he admits as contributing to belief probability of belief testimony of others and obviously this would be the case if we're talking about places distant where what do you believe about those places depends largely on the testimony of others this would be the case with things that you read where what you learn it depends on the testimony of those who wrote the testimony of others that notion of the testimony of others begins to play a role in empiricism and in the whole matter of evidence for obvious reasons any one individuals experience is very very limited and it's perfectly obvious that we all of us by virtue of a very small scope of individual experience we have there all of us develop beliefs that do depend greatly draw on the experience about us that's true in the sciences it's true in everyday life and so it's recognized once empiricism begins to develop but once again David Hume has some things to say about the credibility of witnesses whose testimony we draw on and we'll see what he has to say about that subsequently all right one other comment about knowledge and belief in in in response to Esther's question about how do we know that the things we come to believe are true the the simplest response that Locke would give would be simply the term evidence there is evidence and in contemporary epistemology he is known Locke is known as an evidential in fact he's sort of the paradigm case of an evidential the way he puts it is this and it's on page 201 and it's so crucial as his conclusion at this juncture that I think we ought to underscore it page 201 well no it's not in this 201 I beg your pardon he talks about evidence there but I don't think he makes this point there okay take that back the point that he makes is this you should proportion your ass sent to the evidence you should always proportion your assent to the evidence now the first time I came across that I sort of nodded you know sent if I had enough evidence for that assertion because I think that we are conditioned in a scientific age to proportioning our ascent at least the scientific beliefs proportioning our ascent to the evidence but then I was struck when I heard a philosopher make this comment where is the evidence for that criterion of assent why should I believe Locke when he says I should proportion my assent to the evidence when he tells me that with insufficient evidence you see and I think that self referentiality argument as its called self reference the criterion applied to itself that self referential wrenchy allottee argument I think is very telling particularly in the light of this question is belief voluntary now you notice that Locke has told us that we voluntarily compound ideas we put together simple ideas voluntarily into compound ideas but by the same way he is saying that a cent to any proposition you see a knowledge and belief has to do with propositions that as you know have both subject and predicate you know propositional outlines consist of propositions which predicates something as for asserts something of an eye something truth or falsity is a proper is a quality of propositions that we believe no I'll think as so propositions beliefs but we are synced to a proposition we deny a proposition well says look we should only assent to a proposition in proportion to the evidence there are degrees of air scent he is assuming that a scent is always voluntary and you can sort of meted out bit by bit as the evidence of Cruz I wonder how did you come to believe in the existence of material bodies when did you give your assent to the proposition that material bodies exist you know if this were a second day of an introduction to philosophy course you'd think me crazy asking that question you've always believed in the existence of material bodies earlier as long as you can remember you just grew up believing it you couldn't imagine what it would be like not to believe it you know that's why trying to sell introductory students on Berkeley's idealism is such a headache yeah I'm not sure that beliefs are always voluntary you see and then there's another tradition which develops represented the Scottish realism that we'll be talking about after Hume a tradition that that speaks of the fact that we are so constituted that certain beliefs arise spontaneously naturally nowadays philosophers are talking of belief forming mechanisms which are at work in the human psyche a belief forming mechanisms and the way Thomas Reid put it in the 18th century was that some of the things which Descartes doubted those doubts and not the sort of things that philosophers could deal with I mean they need other kinds of specialists to deal with people who doubt those things there's something wrong their belief forming mechanisms aren't functioning a right they need some psychological help not philosophical help well it's interesting and it really marks the watershed between two basic approaches to the whole question of the justification of belief the evidential astir proach represented by john locke yes II and the what do you want to call it basic beliefs natural belief approach representative the Scottish realists and this is one of the crucial epistemological issues today in the late 20th century a large part of the epistemological debate is all about and of course it applies to apologetics Locke's influence was such that Christian apologetics in Britain during the 18th century was working on a mething evidence that would increase the probabilities and that probabilistic approach characterized Anglican approaches to apologetics way through into the 20th century the classic example in the 18th century was Joseph Butler's book the analogy of religion in which he used analogical arguments from phenomena in nature to the structure of things religious in arguing for the truth of things religious by analogy from the truth of things in nature you think but it's sort of a probabilistic approach the other view the belief is spontaneous has become more characteristic of the reformed tradition Scottish realists were Presbyterians of a sort but in what is currently called reformed epistemology that being developed by Alvin Plantinga people like that you get this this notion of a naturally developing belief and a discussion of belief forming mechanisms and so forth so that if somebody says to planning uh well I I just don't believe in the existence of material bodies his responses what's wrong with you yes sir and in his Gifford lectures in Scotland a few years ago that he's putting into print now you know he does the same thing with regards to the existence of God you don't believe in the existence of God what's wrong with your belief forming mechanisms you see and for a reformed theologian who thinks that our belief forming mechanisms like everything else are affected by our condition in sin or grace that's a loaded question what's wrong with your belief flowing mechanisms well this consciously and the contemporary debate goes back to to John Locke the person who raised the question in my hearing about the evidence for Locke's insistence on evidence was Nicholas Walter store who's one of the people in this development of the reforming mechanism theory okay that means that next time ethics and social philosophy but before we get to that I want to say something about reason and revelation in John Locke's thinking okay that'll wrap up the knowledge and belief sexy

Channel: wheatoncollege

Views: 41,663

Keywords: wheaton, college, illinois, Wheaton College (College/University), Idea, History (TV Genre), John Locke (Author), A History Of Philosophy, Arthur Holmes, Philosophy (Field Of Study)

Id: A_gTxt4slcE

Length: 66min 4sec (3964 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 16 2015