Transcript Locke’s Representational Realism

Locke’s Representational
Realism
Empiricist Epistemology
 Epistemology
 The study of knowledge (how and what we can know)
 Knowledge = true beliefs, thoughts, propositions
 Truth = a belief or proposition is said to be true if it corresponds to reality

Ex: The proposition “this sentence has 5 words” is true if it actually has 5 words.
 Empiricist epistemology:
 knowledge consists of ideas that are true (correspond to reality)
 Ideas are objects of cognition
 All ideas/objects of cognition are derived from either sensation or reflection
 In order for an idea to be true, it must ultimately have as its source sensory
experience with sense data and it must be verified/checked by experience
 All knowledge begins with experience and is limited to experience
Empiricist Epistemology
 Positivism: a radical 20th century empiricist position that
maintains that propositions are meaningful if and only if
they are:

Analytically true, i.e., logically true, true by definition


Empirically, factually verifiable (at least in principle)


A triangle is a three sided object with internal angles that add up to
180 degrees
This sentence has 5 words. The chalk is white
Any claims that are not true analytically or factually are meaningless
 Hume’s Fork: propositions are true if they are about


Relations of ideas: “analytic a priori” claims
Matters of fact: “synthetic a posteriori” claims
British Empiricism
 British Empiricism – a belief system that all
knowledge is based on ideas developed from sense
data or sensory experience
 John Locke (1632 – 1704) (Essay Concerning
Human Understanding, 1690)
John Locke
 John Locke (1632 – 1704) (Essay Concerning
Human Understanding, 1690)



Philosophy: empiricist epistemology
Political theory
Psychology
 Locke’s philosophy is “modern” in the sense that almost all post-
Cartesian philosophy is modern: it takes as its first and foremost task
epistemology (instead of ethics, metaphysics, political theory,
psychology, etc.)
 Locke’s Task: finding the proper foundation of knowledge by studying
the methods and content of knowledge acquisition
History of the idea (meaning) of ideas
 The problem of ideas: if knowledge consists of ideas, then what is an
idea? Where do they come from? How and when are they true?
 History of the idea of ideas:

Plato:




Reality is dualistic: Mind – ideas vs. body -- things
Ideas exist independently from the mind and transcend physical, temporal,
spatial, empirical reality while making possible the appearance of empirical
reality in its meaning to us. Ideas are immaterial, objective, intelligible
(accessible by the mind), non-sensible (not able to be perceived empirically)
Certain ideas are innate (truth, beauty, goodness, justice, love, equality,
friendship, identity, difference)
Descartes:




Reality is dualistic: Mind – ideas vs. body -- things
But, ideas do not existence independently from the mind (or the mind of God)
Ideas exist in our minds as that through and according to which we
understand reality. Ideas are the object of knowledge, and the most basic
ideas are innate ideas: A=A, perfection, self, God.
Certain ideas are innate, such as the idea of God, perfection
Locke’s theory of ideas
 Locke’s overall point: Ideas are mental representations of primary and
secondary qualities of reality and are derived from the world by human
sensation when empirical reality imprints itself on our senses/mind.
 Locke’s genealogical method (a “historical plain method”): trace ideas back
to their origin in experience
 Locke first seeks to “clear the ground” of what he believes to be the
most obfuscatory epistemological debris of past philosophies—the
doctrine of innate ideas.
 The theory of innate ideas holds that certain ideas and principles are
“hard wired” congenitally into the mind itself instead of being
acquired through experience: we are born pre-programmed with
certain ideas without which the world could not be intelligible

Examples: the principles of logic, the logic of parts/whole, the idea of
perfection, God, oneness, equality, goodness
Locke’s critique of the theory of innate ideas
 Locke’s critique of innate ideas:
 If there are any ideas that are universal, the cause of the universality
of ideas is not their innateness; rather, it is that human experience is
largely and consistently uniform
 However, certain ideas are not universal, for they are demonstrably
relative to biological and cultural determinations
 Better explanations, or accounts, can be given for how ideas that are
supposedly innate are actually constructed
 Locke’s theory of the mind as “tabula rasa”
 At birth, each individual mind is a blank slate
 Any contents of the mind are put there by experience
Representational Realism
 Epistemological position that all knowledge is based on ideas developed
from sense data from sensory experience of the world

1st
2nd
3rd
4th
The world
Body
Mind
Knowledge
Presents itself
Sensation
Cognition
Expression
Impression
Idea
True claim/belief
Primary substance
Primary & Secondary
Copy
True copy
Objective TRUTH = Accurate re-presentation of
objects in reality
The acquisition of ideas
 Two forms/functions of human experience
 Sensation:
The world impresses itself upon us via our sensations
 Analogy: the mind is like a camera:
 The senses are the lenses that passively receive sense
impressions (sensations); the external world actively imprints
itself upon the film of your mind
 The mind is analogous to film


Reflection (cognition):

mental activities/operations: thinking, deductive and inductive
inferences, judgments, decisions, analysis, criticism, evaluation,
remembering, knowing,
Simple Ideas
 Simple ideas
 The simplest impressions/sensations are “simple ideas”: the
simplest particles or atoms of thought that can’t be analyzed
into anything more simple
Simple primary sensations/ideas
 Ex. This-here-now object (Twinkie): extension, location,
duration
 Simple secondary sensations/ideas
 Ex: color, smell, touch, taste, sounds: yellow, white, hot, cold,
soft, hard, bitter, sweet, loud, quiet, etc

Complex Ideas
 Complex ideas
 Complex ideas are a constellation of ideas that are assembled
out of simple ideas to form complex objects that mirror the
world.
Example: the idea of a flower is a complex idea that is assembled
out of the experience of simple impressions (ideas) of differing
unassembled colors, textures, size, shape, and so on.
 Only after much exposure to many flowers do children actual
understand the complex idea of a flower as what all of these simple
impressions/ideas form: bright yellow + the petals + the green
stems + odor = daffodil (a complex idea).

Formation of complex ideas
 The formation of complex ideas is accomplished by three
activities of the mind



Compounding: (building particular identities) this Apple = red +
round + sweet etc
Relating: (establishing difference through comparison) this Apple ≠
this Orange; but both are fruit, which ≠ vegetables
Abstracting: (establishing abstract & general ideas—universals vs.
particulars—by ignoring individual distinctions and drawing out
commonalities): not this apple, but apples in general; not this
orange, but oranges in general; not this fruit, but fruit in general; a
bunch of flowers in a plot = flower garden

The idea of infinity (a reflective idea): we generalize our own cognitive
ability and experience of repeating something “without end”
Qualities: Primary & Secondary
 Primary qualities: the basic objective qualities of an external
object that belong properly to the object and that impress
themselves upon us and can be objectively known: extension, shape,
solidity, motion, rest, number etc


Our ideas about primary qualities can accurately “mirror” the world and be
adequate/faithful representations of how things really are in the external world
Certain Knowledge of primary qualities is accessible through
mathematical/scientific thinking
 Secondary qualities: subjective qualities of an external object
that impress themselves upon us but that do not properly belong to
the object: colors, sound, tastes, odors, warmth, etc


Our ideas about secondary qualities cannot accurately mirror reality, or be
faithful to what a thing actually is
Why? Because knowledge of secondary qualities is epistemologically relative to
the knowing subject
Representative Realism
 The mind is acquainted only with its own ideas, but these ideas are
caused by and represent (reflect) objects external to the mind
 The epistemological import of this is that the mind accesses and
understands reality through ideas that it has received from the world
and has about the world as a result of the sensations/ideas the world
impresses on the mind.
 Reality = ideas about reality, which = empirical data provided by
reality. Therefore, reality = empirical data: the real is empirical, and
rationality is secondary to and derivative of the empiricality of
reality/sensation
 As a result, the object of knowledge is not knowable in itself apart from
representational ideas that we have about it. It is only ever known
through our experience of it
Representational Realism
 Epistemological position that all knowledge is based on ideas developed
from sense data from sensory experience of the world

1st
2nd
3rd
4th
The world
Body
Mind
Knowledge
Presents itself
Sensation
Cognition
Expression
Impression
Idea
True claim/belief
Primary substance
Primary & Secondary
Copy
True copy, representation
Objective TRUTH = Accurate re-presentation of
objects in reality
The Problem of Representative Realism
 It explains how knowledge possible; but it also
explains how it is limited and even possibly
erroneous


According to Locke, all knowledge is re-presentational,
meaning that we can only have knowledge of how reality
presents itself through the re-presentations it leaves on our
senses
This is the “inner-outer” epistemological problem: If all we
know are the ideas in our minds, then our knowledge is never
knowledge of reality, since we cannot get behind the veil of our
ideas. How can we know that our ideas about reality are true if
our knowledge is limited to those ideas/sensations?
How Representational Realism leads to
Skepticism
Being
The Totality of Reality
Sensory
Experience
Ideas
Knowledge
The Empiricist Theory of the Idea of God
 The idea of God is not innate. Therefore, the idea of God must originate in
experience.
 However, there is no empirical experience of an entity or fact called “God”,
so the idea “God” must be constructed from simple, complex, and relational
ideas to build an idea that is abstract. How is this done?





1st We experience existence, knowledge, power, goodness, presence/duration, and so
on
2nd We form the ideas of existence, knowledge, power, presence, goodness
3rd via reflection we abstractly and imaginatively idealize/perfect/infinitize these ideas
to construct ideas of
 perfect knowledge
 perfect power
 perfect goodness
 perfect duration/presence
4th We unify theses into one super abstract concept: perfect being; a being which is
perfect in every conceivable way: omniscient, omnipotent, omni-benevolent & eternal
5th We assign to this unitary conglomeration of ideas the concept and name/symbol
“God”, which is an extrapolation of finite empirical experience