John Locke (1632-1704)

John Locke was one of the greatest philosophers in Europe at the end of the
seventeenth century. His work is characterized by opposition to authoritarianism; this
opposition is both on the level of the individual person and of institutions such as
government and church. On the level of the individual, Locke wants us to use reason to
search after the truth rather than simply accept the opinion of authorities or be subject to
superstition. For the institution, it is important to distinguish the legitimate from the
illegitimate functions of institutions and to make the corresponding distinction for the
uses of force by these institutions. He believes that using reason to try to grasp the truth
and determining legitimate functions of institutions will optimize human flourishing for
the individual and society both in respect to its material and spiritual welfare.

In a way to discuss more of the natural law and the fulfillment of the divine
purpose for humanity, he wrote a variety of important political, religious and educational
works including the Two Treatises of Government, the Letters Concerning Toleration,
The Reasonableness of Christianity and Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Lastly,
Lockes monumental An Essay Concerning Human Understanding which concerns in
determining the limits of human understanding in respect to God, the self, natural kinds,
and artifacts, as well as a variety of different kinds of ideas. He considers the sources
and nature of human knowledge. He also suggested that it would be good to find the
limits of understanding. Locke had also been involved in writing about religious
toleration.

In Book I of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he argues that we do

not have innate knowledge. At birth, the human mind is a blank slate on which
experience writes. Locke defined the term idea as the Object of the Understanding
which stands for whatsoever, when a man thinks. Experience is of two kinds, sensation
and reflection. Sensation tells us about things and processes in the external world. And
what tells us about the operations of our own minds is the reflection. Locke believes that
some ideas we get only from sensation, some only from reflection and some from both.

Locke also wrote in Book I of the Essay that being innate is not a way of
absorbing principles and ideas into our understanding. It is an empirical hypothesis,
when received by the Soul is brought into the world. He rejects the claim that we have
innate principles, practical innate moral principles or that we have innate ideas of God,
identity or impossibility. Also that the doctrine of innate principles is used to avoid the
search for truth and that it is used by teachers and masters to illegitimately gain control
of the minds of their students to stop them from inquiring the truth. This attack of Locke
on innate principles is part of his anti-authoritarianism.
 In Book II, he focuses on how we acquire the materials of knowledge claiming
that ideas are the materials of knowledge and all ideas come from experience. Locke
holds that the mind is a tabula rasa or blank sheet until experience in the form of
sensation and reflection provide the basic materialsideasout of which most of our
more complex knowledge is constructed. Even though the mind maybe in blank slate in
regard to content, it has the ability to receive and manipulate the content it acquired. In
the 4th book, Locke holds that we only have knowledge of limited number of things and
that we can judge the truth or falsity of many propositions in addition to those we can
legitimately claim to know. An argument that provides us evidence that leads the mind to
judge a proposition of true and false but without a guarantee that the judgment is
correct.

Locke distinguishes two sorts of probable propositions. The first is the particular
existences or matters of fact, and the second are the things beyond the testimony of our
senses. Matters of facts are open to observation and experience, so testing them to
determine rational assent to propositions about them are available to us. Things that are
beyond the testimony of the senses includes the knowledge of finite immaterial spirits
such as angels or things such as atoms that are too small to be sensed, or the plants,
animals or inhabitants of other planets that are beyond our range of sensation because
of their distance from us. Locke said that we must depend on analogy as the only help
for our reasoning.