The text in black has been copied from the document that you prepared.

My questions are in
pink. Sorry for being a pain in the ass.

• Locke: All our knowledge comes from experience and through our senses—that
"there is nothing in the mind except what was first in the senses."

Locke was a dualist. He was a realist. Realism: “things/object are whatever they appear to
be” (I have paraphrased this) but at the same time he said ”we are immediately aware of ideas
and not objects in themselves” through his Theory of Ideas…. (Quoted from Sean Sayer’s
Reality and Reason)
What was he actually then? Empiricist/Realist/dualist?
Khurram: Locke was an empiricist who believed that mind has nothing from inside and
whatever it has is because of the experience. He rejected Descartes’ dualism that matter and
mind are different substances. He was of the opinion that it is equally possible that mind and
matter are made of the same substance.
On the other hand Locke did believe in causal realism; He was of the belief that we can
determine the existence of external world with the help of chain of cause and effect. Berkley
considered causal dualism as inconsistent to Locke’s empiricism, because we only experience
the final stage of the chain of cause and effect, and as empiricists we believe that we can only
know which we experience.

• • Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason

• o it follows that any Bible or revelation must be judged by its value for morality
and cannot itself be the judge of a moral code.
What does this mean? “Judged by its value for morality and cannot itself be the judge of a
moral code”
Khurram: In critique of practical reason Kant has argued that just as we have apriori faculties
of understanding with respect to reason, we also have apriori set of morals, which are
universal; It means that every human mind consider them as right like we should not lie. Kant
says that every external scripture whether Bible, Quran, Geeta, etc. should be judged in the
light of those morals instead of accepting the morals being preached by those scriptures.
The critique of practical reason
• • The basis in theology is too insecure; better that it should be abandoned, even
destroyed; faith must be put beyond the reach or realm of reason.
• • The moral imperative which we need as the basis of religion must be absolute,
a categorical, imperative
Is he here suggesting to rethink religion? Its values? What does it stand for etc?
Khurram: Here he is saying that religion cannot be proved by reason because even the apriori
categories of logic are structured to work on an external perceptions and there exists no
comprehensive proofs in the empirical world for the existence of God.
He further argue that God, therefore can only be proved by completely inner thoughts which
do not have anything from the outside world. He considers universal morals as the
construction of mind without any impurity of external world. Hence religion should be based
on those morals instead of anything external or any rational or empirical reason.

• • We are beyond and above the laws we make in order to understand the world
of our experience; each of us is a center of initiative force and creative power. In a way which
we feel but cannot prove, each of us is free.
I didn’t understand this…. How are we above and beyond the laws that we make? How are
we free? Can you please explain this entire point?
Khurram: Because we make laws to understand the external world but morals are something
we made purely through our own minds and we are free (from external world) to act
according to those morals which our free mind has drafted or to act worldly.

Questions Without References:

-So basically he is saying that we should re-think religion on the basis of moral values? These
moral values gotta be universal and absolute? And these morals are developed on the basis of
our feelings and the faculties of our senses?
Yes he is asking to rethink religion on the basis of inner morals which he claims are universal
and those morals are defined by only our feelings not the faculties of senses. Those morals
are pure.
He argues if morals were based on sense experience our morals would not have been what
they are because always speaking truth and being honest does not benefit one in the world
instead liars and cunning are benefiting. This means that morals are not based on the sense
experience but inner pure feelings. And moving on in this direction he suggests that these
feelings are divine and coming from God because on empirical reason such virtues never
benefits that person in the world.