Today’s Lecture Further comments on the assignments John Locke Preliminary comments on George Berkeley.

Today’s Lecture

• Further comments on the assignments

• John Locke

• Preliminary comments on George Berkeley

Further comments on the assignments• 1. Do make sure that you limit yourself to one direct

quote.

• 2. Do ensure that you footnote whomever you are paraphrasing in your discussion. As long as an idea was inspired by, or informed by, the ideas of someone else, you should be acknowledging this in a footnote.

• 3. Keep your discussion focused. Don’t try and cover all of the material by the relevant philosopher in our readings. Only include what is relevant to the position you are going to defend.

Further comments on the assignments• 4. Here’s a standard form of assignment (it’s only one possible

form):

• (A) Give an account of the relevant position advocated by the philosopher on whom you are focusing.

• (B) Provide your position on the matter (this may be a dispute with one of the philosopher’s premises in the argument(s) s/he provides).

• (C) (Adequately) Defend your position.

• (D) Consider whether there may be a good response to, or rebuttal of, the argument(s) you have provided.

• (E) If there is not, explain why not. If there is, respond to this response or explain why you can’t.

“Of our Complex Ideas of substances”

• This next section is a dig at those who speak vaguely of substances as property holders and yet lay claim to having clear and distinct ideas of substances.

• What Locke suggests in this section of The Essay is that our ideas of substance are largely a result of our suppositions or even linguistic habits when regarding or trying to understand the origins of our simple ideas.

• Even more radically, our ideas of substance are created by us in response to what would otherwise be unthinkable, namely that properties can exist in the world without property holders (FP, p.189).

“Of our Complex Ideas of substances”

• Locke suggests the following sequence in the origins of our ideas of substance.

• (1) The mind perceives various simple ideas.

• (2) We notice that some of these simple ideas “go constantly together” (FP, p.188).

• (3) We presume that this is because some-thing, some objective cause of our perception, possesses these qualities in the outside world.

“Of our Complex Ideas of substances”• (4) This presumption arises, according to Locke, from

the belief that the qualities we are perceiving cannot merely exist without being held up or supported by some-thing.

• (5) We may be even inclined to label this cluster of constantly conjoined simple ideas using just one term which reflects our presumption that their causal origin is a single substance, and this in time reinforces our initial presumption that there is a substance underlying these qualities, and supporting them.

“Of our Complex Ideas of substances”

• One of the paradoxes of the common view of substances, for Locke, concerns what such objects must be if, in fact, they are literally property holders or supports for properties (FP, pp.189-90).

• Is the idea of a property-less property holder coherent?

• If it isn’t coherent how can it be clear and distinct?

“Of our Complex Ideas of substances”

• Our vague idea of a property-less property holder inclines us to talk of individual substances when we perceive particular clusters of qualities being constantly conjoined.

• These individual substances, it is presumed, support the qualities we perceive, and so, by implication, are some-thing besides these qualities, though we don’t know what.

• There is, then, a proliferation of vague ideas of natural substances, though what these are exactly escapes us.

• Indeed, the very nature of how we talk about them leaves us with nothing we can say.

“Of our Complex Ideas of substances”• Note that Locke gives the same kind of treatment of our idea

of a spiritual substance (e.g. the soul) as he has of material substances (e.g. such things as humans, horses, stars and water) (FP, p.190).

• Locke concludes this discussion with the radical claim that our ideas of substance are nothing more than how we envisage simple ideas to be constantly conjoined in the outside world or underlying our mental operations (FP, p.190).

• Importantly, Locke is not denying substances per se. He seems, rather, to be saying that our ideas of substances are neither clear and distinct nor a direct mental apprehension of what lies beyond our experience.

“Of our knowledge of the existence of other things”

• Locke begins the section on knowledge with the three basic types or divisions of knowledge.

• 1. Intuitive knowledge. When we know that something is true merely by reflecting on its meaning, or when we immediately see that it follows from, or is entailed by, another idea already known to be true, we can be said to have acquired some intuitive knowledge. Locke believes that we have intuitive knowledge of our own existence. By this Locke means we know directly and immediately upon introspection that we exist. In this he clearly agrees with Descartes (FP, p.190).

“Of our knowledge of the existence of other things”

• 2. Demonstrative knowledge. When something can be seen to be true on the basis of relating ideas already known to be true and working out deductively that they entail it, we can be said to have acquired demonstrative knowledge. Locke believes that we have demonstrative knowledge that God exists. In this, again, he agrees with Descartes (FP, p.190).

“Of our knowledge of the existence of other things”

• 3. Sensitive knowledge. Sensitive knowledge concerns our knowledge of the external world. We only know that an external object exists on the basis of ideas arising from our senses. (FP, pp.190-91). Note that we cannot prove that such objects exist on the basis of our ideas (FP, p.191).

“Of our knowledge of the existence of other things”

• For Locke first hand knowledge of our own existence and knowledge about the existence of God are cases of certain knowledge.

• This certainty largely arises, for Locke, from the fact that the truth of ‘I exist’ or ‘God exists’ is necessary. In the case of ‘I exist’, I cannot understand that sentence without directly or immediately seeing that it is true. The truth of ‘God exists’ can be deduced from ideas I already intuit or know to be true. That is, given the truth of other ideas I possess, it follows, according to Locke, that ‘God exists’ must be true.

“Of our knowledge of the existence of other things”

• According to Locke, the truth of ‘I have an idea of brown’ is as certain as it can be when this idea arises as I look down at the desk in front of me.

• What’s more, suggests Locke, it is because such an idea has arisen from my senses that I can be assured that something exists outside of me that causes the idea of brown in my mind.

• Note Locke carefully avoids the suggestion that such beliefs about objects in the world are necessarily true.

“Of our knowledge of the existence of other things”

• “The notice that we have by our senses of the existing of things without us, though it be not altogether so certain as our intuitive knowledge, or the deductions of our reason, employed about clear abstract ideas of our own minds; yet it is an assurance that deserves the name of knowledge. If we persuade ourselves that our faculties act and inform us right, concerning the existence of those objects that affect them, it cannot pass for an ill-grounded confidence” (FP, p.191 [verse 3]).

“Of our knowledge of the existence of other things”

• Note that the assurance Locke talks of here regarding the reports of our senses is predicated on our having good reason to think our faculties are not defective.

• This he thinks we are already inclined to believe, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, because we could not act or even talk of knowledge without a confidence in our basic noetic faculties (that is, our sense and rational faculties) and what they report.

• What Locke seems to be saying here is that we must have confidence in the basic trustworthiness of our noetic faculties if we are to make any progress at all in the acquisition of knowledge (be it intuitive, demonstrative or sensitive).

“Of our knowledge of the existence of other things”

• Locke also gives the following additional reasons for this confidence in our sense faculties (i.e. that they reliably report the existence of objects outside of us).

• Each of these points involves an inference to the best explanation.

“Of our knowledge of the existence of other things”

• 1. (i) We cannot merely produce the ideas typically associated with a certain sense faculty if we lack it.

• (ii) What’s more it is not merely the sense faculty, or organ, that causes such ideas. After all we don’t, it seems, have the appropriate ideas even when we have the requisite sense organ until we enter the appropriate circumstances (FP, p.191).

“Of our knowledge of the existence of other things”

• 2. We are aware of a qualitative difference between ideas we can voluntarily generate through such powers as our memory and ideas that ‘come upon us’, whether we like it or not, when we are in certain circumstances (e.g. looking up into the clear summer sky at noon in the Northern Hemisphere) (FP, pp.191-92).

“Of our knowledge of the existence of other things”

• 3. There is a qualitative difference between ideas we can recall to our minds that were in the past associated with pain or pleasure and relevantly similar ideas now being experienced along with the associated pains or pleasures (FP, p.192).

• “...which would either never disturb us, or else constantly do it, as often as we thought of it, were there nothing more but ideas floating in our minds, and appearances entertaining our fancies, without the real existence of things affecting us from abroad” (FP, p.192 [verse 6]).

“Of our knowledge of the existence of other things”

• In this verse (i.e. verse 6) Locke also points out that there is something disingenuous about a mathematician using (physical) diagrams to illustrate or confirm a formal deduction, only to doubt the existence of the lines and angles in the diagrams on the paper he has used (FP, p.192).

“Of our knowledge of the existence of other things”

• 4. The reports received from one sense faculty can be tested (i.e. verified or falsified) by what is reported by another (FP, p.192).

“Of our knowledge of the existence of other things”

• Note Locke’s comments at verse 8 (FP, pp.192-93).• Even in the face of a dogged skepticism to his inferences to the

best explanation, Locke suggests that our faculties are good enough to help us avoid what gives rise to ideas of pain and acquire what gives rise to ideas of pleasure, or to help us do what is good and avoid what is evil, and this is all that really matters (FP, p.193).

• What’s more, we are as sure of such objects around us as is necessary to act, and, more importantly, we are no less certain that these objects are outside us than that we act in the world (FP, p.193).

“Of our knowledge of the existence of other things”

• Verse 9 (FP, p.193) is an important corrective to any temptation to run too far with what Locke has suggested in these last few passages.

• Locke does not believe that we can legitimately claim knowledge about that which is not presently producing simple ideas in our mind through our senses. Thus if I step out of this room I cannot legitimately claim to know that there is a desk containing various audio-visual equipment in TC 141.

• Locke is not denying that such a belief is highly probably true. Nor is he denying its usefulness in action. He is merely contending that it is not strictly known to be true (FP, p.193).

“Of our knowledge of the existence of other things”

• “... how vain, I say, it is to expect demonstration and certainty in things not capable of it, and refuse assent to very rational propositions, and act contrary to very plain and clear truths, because they cannot be made out so evident, as to surmount every the least ... pretense of doubting. He that, in the ordinary affairs of life would admit of nothing but direct plain demonstration, would be sure of nothing in this world, but of perishing quickly” (FP, p.193 [verse 10])

“Of our knowledge of the existence of other things”

• It is important to note that Locke does not limit his talk of sensitive knowledge to the present.

• He admits that those continuing memories of simple ideas that arose directly from the senses continue to provide us with sensitive knowledge, albeit indexed to the time in the past when the relevant simple ideas first arose in my mind from my senses (FP, pp.193-94).

“Of our knowledge of the existence of other things”

• Note, for reference, Locke’s defense of religious tolerance based upon what he has so far argued (verse 12 [FP, p.194]).