PHIL 202 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: General Idea
4 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
History of Modern Philosophy
2.23.18 Lecture Notes – Locke
- Why care about innate principles?
- Previous rationalists have used innate ideas to build an entire metaphysics
- Locke talks about our reasoning faculty that is able to act on ideas, the raw material
- No such thing as the subconscious or the unconscious
- 1632: Locke is born
- Studies medicine
- Read Descartes = the Principles of Philosophy
- 1661-62: present at the lectures by Thomas Willis, about neuroscience
- Locke was heavily involved in empirical science
- 1667: Locke meets the Earl of Shaftesbury and the Earl brings Locke to London
- 1690: Essay on Human Understanding published
o Turning our own mental faculties on themselves to figure out what we can learn
about the way we learn
- How do ideas come to our mind?
o Interested in the scope and limits of knowledge
- Does’t ake assuptios aout what we a kow – figure out what the mind is like
and what that can tell us about knowledge
- Descartes makes assumptions about what the mind is – does’t really thik the id
has limits
o Locke says this assumption should be flipped – we should first investigate what
the mind can do and what its capacities are
- What does Locke mean by ideas?
o Object of understanding
o Whatever material is in the mind that the intellectual in the mind is acting on
o A snowball can produce ideas in us – such as white, cold, and round
o For Locke, an idea exists in a mind and in an understanding (as opposed to the
volitional part)
o Thinking and perceiving are the same thing for him
o Kind of in a representational sense
- What about principles?
o Principle of non-contradiction
o Whatever is, is
o From nothing, nothing comes
o Maybe innate moral principles – it’s wrog to urder
o Have to take a propositional form
o Ideas that are the components that make up the proposition
o Foundations of all our other knowledge
o Pg 58 – no propositions can be innate unless the ideas about which it is be innate
- What we get next is a series of arguments against innate ideas
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Previous rationalists have used innate ideas to build an entire metaphysics. No such thing as the subconscious or the unconscious. Locke talks about our reasoning faculty that is able to act on ideas, the raw material. Read descartes = the principles of philosophy. 1661-62: present at the lectures by thomas willis, about neuroscience. 1667: locke meets the earl of shaftesbury and the earl brings locke to london. Locke was heavily involved in empirical science: turning our own mental faculties on themselves to figure out what we can learn about the way we learn. Interested in the scope and limits of knowledge. Does(cid:374)"t (cid:373)ake assu(cid:373)ptio(cid:374)s a(cid:271)out what we (cid:272)a(cid:374) k(cid:374)ow figure out what the mind is like and what that can tell us about knowledge. What about principles: principle of non-contradiction, whatever is, is, from nothing, nothing comes, maybe innate moral principles it"s wro(cid:374)g to (cid:373)urder, have to take a propositional form.
