1632-1704

John Locke
Being vs. Knowing

Metaphysics:
the nature of being

Epistemology:
the nature of being known
Empiricism vs. Rationalism
 a priori beliefs are formed
independent of sense experience
…and some
Latin
a posteriori beliefs are formed on
the basis of sense experience
John Locke
 Rejecting a priori Concepts: Locke’s Argument

1. If an idea is innate (a priori), then it is held in all minds. (premise)

2. No idea is held in all minds. (premise)
3. No idea is innate (a priori). (from 1,2)
4. An idea is either innate (a priori) or it comes from experience
(a posteriori). (premise)
5. All ideas come from experience (a posteriori). (from 3,4)
 “…not imagining how these simple
ideas can subsist by themselves, we
accustom ourselves to suppose some
substratum wherein they do subsist,
and from which they do result, which
Substance? therefore we call substance…”
“If any one should be asked, what is
the subject wherein colour or weight
inheres, he would have nothing to say,
but the solid and extended parts;”
Qualities: Primary and Secondary

• Color
• Shape
• Size (extension)
• Taste
• Smell
• Direction of motion
Qualities: Primary and Secondary

• Color
• Shape
• Size (extension)
• Taste
• Smell
• Direction of motion
 A thing’s essence or nature is
Essences the combination of its
defining features/properties.
 Locke on Language
“…it was necessary that man should find out some external sensible
sign, whereof those invisible ideas, which his thoughts are made up of,
might be made known to others…Thus we may conceive [understand]
how words…came to be made use of by men as the signs of their
ideas…by a voluntary imposition, whereby such a word is made
arbitrarily the mark of such an idea.
The use, then, of words, is to be sensible marks of ideas; and the ideas
they stand for are their proper and immediate signification.”
 Locke on Essence
“And if this be so, it is plain that our distinct species are nothing but distinct
complex ideas, with distinct names annexed to them.

…the ranking of things into species (which is nothing but sorting them under
several titles) is done by us according to the ideas that we have of them;”

“Nature makes many particular things, which do agree one with another in
many sensible qualities…, but it is not this real essence that distinguishes
them into species; it is men who, taking occasion from the qualities they find
united in them…range them into sorts”
Grouping Species
George Berkeley

1685-1753
 George Berkeley (1710)
“Everyone will agree that our thoughts, emotions, and ideas of the imagination exist only in the mind. You
can know this…by attending to what is meant by the term ‘exist’ when it is applied to perceptible things. The
table that I am writing on exists, that is, I see and feel it; and if I were out of my study I would still say that it
existed, meaning that if I were in my study I would perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does
perceive it.
“Similarly,
‘there was an odour’—i.e. it was smelled;
‘there was a sound’—it was heard;
‘there was a colour or shape’—it was seen or felt.

This is all that I can understand by such expressions as these. For unthinking things, to exist is to be
perceived; so they couldn’t possibly exist out of the minds or thinking things that perceive them (emphasis
added).” (Principles of Human Knowledge, Sec. 3)
 Berkeley’s Argument Formalized

1. When one refers to an object of understanding, or to one of its properties

(i.e. color, shape, etc.), one is referring to one’s perception of it. (premise)
2. A perception, by definition, exists only if it is being perceived. (premise)
3. Our objects of understanding exist only if they are perceived. (from 1,2)
4. An object which exists only if it’s perceived is only a perception. (premise)
5. The objects we refer to in speech are only perceptions. (from 3,4)
6. Something that is only a perception isn’t real. (premise)
7. Our objects of understanding aren’t real. (from 5,6)
 Realism:
ordinary objects exist independent of being
perceived or thought about
Metaphysical (mind-independently)

Categories Idealism:
ordinary objects exist as perceptions or thought
(mind-dependently)