Philosophy 1020 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Tabula Rasa, Treaties Of The European Union
20 Mar 2016
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John locke (1632-1704) (cid:1) author of the letter on toleration . Empiricism (cid:1) greek : empeiria (cid:1) everything we know is based upon experience (cid:1) there is nothing in the mind that did not get there through the senses . The overall project of empiricism is to figure out how all knowledge arises through sensation or sense-perception. Before sense perception happens, the mind is a tabula rasa (a blank slate) (cid:1) 2. The meaning of idea (cid:1) phantasm > things we imagine (cid:1) notion (cid:1) species (cid:1) what it is which the mind an be employed about in thinking (cid:1) 3. It was commonly thought that there were some innate ideas. Descartes for example though that the idea of god was innate. His argument: the idea of god is the idea of an infinite being, and we have no experience of infinite beings, so the idea of god must be innate.
