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John Locke (1632-1704)

John Locke (1632-1704). Second Lecture. Beginnings of Human Knowledge. Perception (passive) Retention (passive and active) Operations of the mind (active). Perception. The first level or most rudimentary aspect of thinking. Here the mind is passive.

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John Locke (1632-1704)

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  1. John Locke (1632-1704) Second Lecture

  2. Beginnings of Human Knowledge Perception (passive) Retention (passive and active) Operations of the mind (active)

  3. Perception The first level or most rudimentary aspect of thinking. Here the mind is passive. The 1st operation of all our intellectual faculties and the inlet of all knowledge of our minds.

  4. Perception Perception takes place in the mind and not in the exterior body. An impulse on an organ is not enough for perception. Understanding is required.

  5. Perception Sensation can be altered by judgment. For instance, consider the perception of a globe (flat circle) as convex figure.

  6. Thought Experiment The blind man who can distinguish through touch between a sphere and a cube. Now give the man sight and ask him, without touching, which is the cube and which is the sphere. He would not be able to tell, because experience has not made the connection between what he sees and touches.

  7. Retention Contemplation Memory: ideas in the repository of memory means that the mind has a power in many cases to revive perceptions which it has once had (in the past).

  8. Operations of the Mind Discernment and distinguishing: distinct ideas Comparing Compounding (enlarging) Naming (signs) Abstraction (general representative, e.g., whiteness)

  9. Complex Ideas Powers of the mind: (1) Combining simple ideas. (2) Relating ideas. (3) Separating them from other ideas that accompany them in their real existence (abstraction): General Ideas

  10. Complexes Simple ideas observed to exists in several combinations existing together, e.g., an army, a team, the universe.

  11. Complex Ideas Complex ideas are made voluntarily. We have control of what we can create and do with the complex ideas (infinitely?). We do not have control over the simple ideas.

  12. Complex Ideas All complex ideas are one of the following: (1) Modes (2) Substances (3) Relations

  13. Modes Complex ideas that are dependent on a substance. 1) Simple Modes: A variations or different combination of the same simple substance. 2) Mixed Modes: there are others compounded of simple ideas of several kinds.

  14. Substances Combinations of simple ideas as are taken to represent distinct particular things subsisting by themselves. 1) Single 2) Collective

  15. Relation Consideration and comparing one idea with another.

  16. Power-Change The mind observes change or alterations. “… that the like changes will for the future be made in the same things, by the same agent, and by like ways, --considers in one thing the possibility of having any of its simple ideas changed [potentiality], and in another the possibility of making that change [cause]” (41). Active: creates change Passive: is changed

  17. Power-Perception “For we cannot observe any alteration to be made in, or operation upon anything, but by the observable change of its sensible ideas; nor conceive any alterations to be made, but by conceiving a change of some of its ideas” (41).

  18. Power Relating to Action 1) Thinking and 2) Motion Neither of these comes from Bodies. Bodies exhibit the transfer of power. “The idea of the beginning of motion we have only from reflection on what passes in ourselves.”

  19. Powers in the Mind 1) Will or volition (verses Necessity) Voluntary (verses Involuntary) 2) Understanding Perception of ideas Perception of signification of signs. Perception of connection or repugnancy (agreement and disagreement) between ideas.

  20. Liberty Free: so far as a man has power to think or not to think, to move or not to move, according to the preference or direction of his own mind.

  21. Necessity Not Free: wherever any performance or forbearance are not equally in a man’s power; wherever doing or not doing will not equally follow upon the preference of his mind directing it. Even if the action is voluntary. Something might be voluntary but not free.

  22. Necessary Acts Tennis-ball not a free agent. A man falling in the water not a free agent. A man’s convulsive motion not free.

  23. Liberty, Volition and Will Liberty requires thought, will and volition. But thought, will and volition do not require liberty. “So that liberty cannot be where there is no thought, no volition, no will; but there may be thought, there may be will, there may be volition, where there is no liberty” (43-44).

  24. The Person in the Locked Room Imagine someone is placed in a locked room while he is sleeping. When he wakes up he notices that in the room with him is someone he really wants to talk to and be with. He stays in the room voluntarily. Unbeknownst to him, the room is locked and if decided to get out he would no be able to do so. Is this person’s voluntary act of staying in the room a free act? Is this person free?

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