Doc Yoder's Notes
Essay concerning Human Understanding
by John Locke (1690, 1694,
1695, 1700, 1706, 1710)
Page numbers are keyed to Peter H. Nidditch's edition of the Essay (1975)
Outline of how John Locke thinks understanding works:
Locke operates with three basic principles:
- There are no innate ideas; the mind is blank at birth.
- The mind's most basic function is to receive ideas, which it does passively through the senses;
these "simple ideas" are irreducible.
- The mind has the power to construct new "complex" ideas by reflecting on its simple ideas
and on its own operations.
Mental functions and their components:
Locke's general method is to move from particular/simple to general/complex in various hierarchies.
- perception (NOT the same as sensation)
- retention
--pleasure/pain
--contemplation
--memory (secondary perception, p152)
- --attention
- --repetition --renewing memories (cf. Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey") (152-3)
- discerning
--wit recognizes likeness/similarity (156)
--judgment recognizes difference (156)
- comparing (157)
- composition (158)
- enlarging (158)
- abstraction (159) -- very important
3 actions of the mind on simple ideas
- COMBINING into complex ideas
- setting in RELATION
- ABSTRACTION -- separating the idea from its actual existence (163)
3 kinds of complex ideas (164-66)
- modes -- objects not in material reality
- substances -- objects w/ material reality
- relation -- considering one object w/ another
Locke's idea of how the mind apprehends reality.
The PERCEPTIBLE WORLD is made up of SUBSTANCES.
SUBSTANCES are only detectable through their QUALITIES which might be understood
as a sort of cloud that surrounds the SUBSTANCE.
The mind NEVER has access to the SUBSTANCE, but only to its QUALITIES.
SUBSTANCES have QUALITIES (sometimes called POWERS)
- QUALITIES are detected by the body as SENSATIONS
- once SENSATIONS reach the brain, they create PERCEPTIONS
- PERCEPTIONS are assigned NAMES
- RETENTION of the NAMED IDEAS is facilitated by:
- pleasure/pain
- contemplation
- memory or "secondary perception"
enhanced by
The mind also works / reflects upon ideas by
- discerning
- "wit" identifies likeness
- "judgment" identifies difference
- comparing
- composition
- enlarging
- abstraction
The hierarchy of moral relations
- divine law: the most binding, revealed by
- light of nature, most reliable revealed by natural perceptions and tradition
Locke asserts that God will not contradict the laws of nature
- voice of revelation, least reliable
Locke asks, "What is more likely, that you are insane, or that God has spoken to you alone?"
- civil law
- law of opinion or reputation
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