[Locke, E. Jonathan Lowe, 2005]
p.1 Why should we today be at all interested in the life and philosophical works of John Locke...? ...One
very good reason is that, despite his relatively obscure beginnings, Locke's influence on his own and later generations of
thinkers has been immense and is particularly strong today - so much so, in fact, that many current philosophical disputes
cannot be properly understood except in the light of his work and its impact. Another is that Locke's solutions to a number
of important philosophical problems are still, very arguably, amongst the best that we possess.
p.8 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding... is chiefly concerned with issues in what would today
be called epistemology or the theory of knowledge, metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. As
its title implies, the book's purpose is to discover, from an examination of the workings of the human mind, just what we
are capable of understanding about the universe in which we live.
p.8-9 Locke's contention is that all of the 'materials' of human knowledge arise from experience - that
is, from what he calls our ideas of sensation and reflection. Sensation provides us with ideas of external things and their
qualities, while reflection - nowadays more often called introspection - provides us with ideas of our own mental activities.
These ideas, Locke thinks, are then worked upon by our powers of abstraction and reason to produce such real knowledge as
we can hope to obtain.
p.22 Locke held that all of the 'materials' - as he put it - of human knowledge and understanding arise
from experience, in the form of what he calls 'ideas'... According to [a popular philosophical doctrine of the time, the doctrine
of innate ideas], certain fundamental components of human knowledge are inborn rather than acquired by processes of observation,
learning and reasoning - inborn because they are part of the very frame of the human mind as God designed it. In virtue of
their supposedly divine source, these components of human knowledge were not to be questioned or doubted, in the view of upholders
of the doctrine
p.54 The notice we have by our Senses, of the existing of Things without us, though it be not altogether
so certain, as our intuitive Knowledge... yet it is an assurance that deserves the name of Knowledge. If we persuade our selves,
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: For I think no body can, in earnest, be so sceptical, as to be uncertain of the Existence of those
Things which he sees and feels. [Essay, IV, XI, 3] [JLJ - Locke is saying that our sensory knowledge is true knowledge,
even if it did not arise from within us via reflection or intuition. You really have to accept the things you see and feel.]
p.54 I [Lowe] suggest... that we can only acquire knowledge of things in the physical world to the extent
that those things affect us in various ways of which we can be conscious.
p.55 His contention, thus, is that sensation can provide us with knowledge not only of the existence of
individual physical properties but also of the existence of objects possessing various combinations of those properties, at
least to the extent that it can assure us that certain combinations of properties regularly occur together in nature... Locke
is confident that his empiricist epistemology allows us to claim a genuine knowledge of the natural world which... possesses
'all the real conformity it can, or ought to have, with Things without us'
p.56 Now, according to Locke, belief or opinion - which he contrasts sharply with knowledge
- may be based on either probability or faith... he thinks that in most everyday concerns we have to rely
on probability, which is mere 'likeliness to be true' ... rather than certainty.
p.100 The great advantage of the ideational view of thought is that there is - or, at least, appears to
be - no particular problem or mystery as to how processes of imagination can be 'about' things in the world, in a way that
there clearly is as to how words can. This is because such processes are clearly akin to - and in respect of their
form and content ultimately derivative from - processes of sense perception. And processes of sense perception are
quite naturally 'about' things in the world
p.101 the things that we are primarily equipped by nature to think about are things which... are for
us essentially possible objects of perception. Consequently, these things are also essentially imaginable for
us and so thinkable for us, according to the ideationist's view of thought... our ability to conceive of
physical objects of various sorts is intimately tied to our knowledge of how such objects appear to one or more or
our sense modalities... so that in thinking of such objects we necessarily draw upon recognitional capacities whose primary
sphere of application lies in processes of sense perception.
p.104 I [Lowe] want to stress again the close kinship between imagination and perception.
p.105 What is particularly important for our present purposes is the fact that very often one may understand
a situation simply in perceiving it - and that this kind of non-discursive or intuitive understanding carries across to processes
of imagination... one may imagine... a road accident... What one is then doing is precisely 'thinking in ideas' rather
than in words.
p.105 it is somewhat unfortunate that we call imagination what we do, since it does not literally involve
the presentation of 'images' for scrutiny by an 'inner eye'. The term is, no doubt, partly the product of a mistaken conception
of the nature of the process in question - and that is why I prefer sometimes to call it 'ideation' instead, because this
is a technical term which carries little baggage in the way of misleading connotations.
p.111 And if these states of affairs can be perceived, then they can also be imagined, at least by creatures
like ourselves with a capacity for imagination.
[Locke, Michael Ayers, 1999]
p.16 The notice we have by our senses, of the existing of things without us, though it be not altogether
so certain... 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: for I think that nobody can, in earnest, be so sceptical, as to be uncertain of the existence of those things
which he sees and feels.
p.16-17 Locke is here emphatically asserting, against Descartes and others, that the senses themselves deliver
knowledge without need for ratification or interpretation by reason or intellect. The senses are basic, independent cognitive
faculties, even if the knowledge of the world that they provide is more of practical than theoretical value. Since in sensation
we are aware not only of an appearance of 'idea', but that something is acting on us, causing the idea, we are able to characterize
or identify this external cause through the idea, precisely as whatever regularly causes that idea
