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Locke As An Empiricist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Douglas Odegard
Affiliation:
Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Extract

John Loke is often referred to as the first of a triumvirate of major British Empiricists, and sometimes even as the father of British Empiricism. In many cases the reference is extremely guarded, and at times the word ‘empiricist’ is being used merely as a convenient label for organising university courses, amounting to little more than a synonym for ‘Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, and to some extent Bacon, Hobbes, Reid, and Mill’. Given that ‘empiricist’ is being used in a philosophically interesting way, however, there is some question as to just how guarded its application to Locke should be

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1965

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References

page 185 note 1 i.e., An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Chapter i, sections 5 and 24. References are made to Fraser's, A. C.. two-volume edition, Oxford, 1894.Google Scholar

page 185 note 2 This is complicated by the problem, for Locke, of grounding the idea of substance in experience. For the most part, however, such a complication is incidental to this discussion.

page 186 note 1 cf. his implied distinction between sensing and having sensations on the one hand, and perceiving or making rapid ‘perceptual judgments’ on the other hand, in E II, ix.

page 187 note 1 In the general context of his philosophy, the notion of an idea which is derived from experience occasionally seems to carry more with it than is allowed for here—notably, in the case of abstract ideas, where the notion of being derived from suggests the process of being ‘abstracted from’, as well as the processes of being combined and recombined after being isolated via abstraction. Generally speaking, I ignore this complication because (a) the exact nature of abstraction, i.e. the ‘stripping down’ of particular ideas to form general ideas, and of related processes, is not all that clear in Locke, and (b) whether or not a philosopher subscribes to the process of abstraction (as distinct from simply allowing abstract, in the sense of general, ideas) does not seem to mark a distinction between empiricism and non-empiricism in any customary, or even remotely customary, sense—or at least in any such sense in which the distinction is not merely coextensive with one marked in this paper.

page 187 note 2 For Locke's brief reference to ideas of particulars and the words used to signify them, see E III, iii, 2-5.

page 188 note 1 Admittedly, the following excerpted passage might suggest otherwise: ‘the order wherein the several ideas come at first into the mind is very various, and uncertain also; neither is it much material to know it’. (E II, ix, 7.) Nevertheless, the context makes it clear that the temporal order in which he here disclaims interest is the order in which a child first has its various sensible ideas, and not the general order of our ideas in terms of what we experience.

page 189 note 1 His investigation of the empirical origin of the relational idea of cause-effect sheds little light on this question. He strongly suggests that a relational idea need not simply terminate in experience but can also be originally provided by experience. But he has little to say as far as clarifying the general notion of termination is concerned (see E II, xxvi, 1-2; also E II, xxi, 1-2, 4).

page 189 note 2 See E I, iii, 1, where he refers to ideas as ‘the parts out of which… propositions are made’. For a brief discussion of propositions and truth, see E IV, v, 1-6.Google Scholar

page 191 note 1 He occasionally maintains that all our knowledge of particular, existential truths must at some point be based in experience (e.g. see E IV, iii, 31).Google ScholarOne problem such a view faces, however, is in connection with ‘God exists’ and the Ontological Argument.Google ScholarIn the Essay he does not use such an argument, but he also does not reject it as being invalid (see E IV, x, 7; also E II, xxiii, 34-35).Google ScholarOn the other hand, in his manuscript material there is some evidence that he does reject it;Google Scholar see Aaron, R. I., John Locke (2nd edition, Oxford, 1955), p. 242.Google Scholar

page 191 note 2 For his discussion of what he calls ‘habitual’ sensitive knowledge—i.e. knowledge concerning particulars which have been actually present to the senses—see EIV, xi, 11. And for a brief discussion of habitual knowledge in general, see EIV, i, 8-9. Henceforth, I shall for the most part ignore qualifications connected with his accepting habitual knowledge.

page 193 note 1 Thus, on this view, in making his ‘judgments of probability’, a natural philosopher would often have to use ‘It is probably the case t h a t…’ in such a way that it does not imply ‘It is possibly the case that not…’, in order to be completely accurate.

page 193 note 2 In addition to geometrical propositions, he suggests the following as nonidentical, non-formal necessary truths: ‘Figure necessarily supposes extension’ (or, perhaps, ‘Extension supposes figure’), ‘Receiving or communicating motion by impulse supposes solidity’ (E IV, iii, 14), ‘No subject can simultaneously and in the same respect have more than one determinate of the same determinable—e.g. nothing can be simultaneously red and green, or square and circular, in the same respect’ (E IV, iii, 15), ‘Two bodies cannot be in exactly the same place’ (E IV, vii, 5), ‘One and the same thing cannot simultaneously occupy two different places’ (E II, xxvii, 1), ‘Whatever has a beginning has a cause’ (E IV, x, 3), and ‘Mere matter cannot create a thinUng being’ (E IV, x, 10).Google Scholar

page 194 note 1 Thus, see E IV, xi, 14, where he suggests that eternal truths, whether their forms be identical or non-identical, remain true, ‘names being supposed to stand perpetually for the same ideas’.Google Scholar

page 195 note 1 i.e. allowing for suitable qualifications in view of habitual knowledge and any knowledge concerning particulars which is deduced from necessary truths and truths concerning actual or immediate objects.