PROJECT REPORT ON

THE JOHN LOCKES THEORY OF PERCEPTION

Submitted To: Submitted By:

Vaishali Singh Priyanshu kumar
(Faculty of law) Ul21BA035
XLS, Bhubaneswar
 CONTENT

 INTRODUCTION

 THE MAN JOHN LOCKE

 JOHN LOCKE EMPIRICSM

 PERCEPTION

 THEORY OF PERCEPTION

 PROBLEM OF PERCEPTION

……..
 INTRODUCTION
The primary goal of this essay is to examine Locke's theory of perception critically. This
perception theory is more akin to a theory of knowledge in which sense experience, rather
than reason, is the true source. It is derived from the philosophical branch known as
'epistemology,' which is derived from the Greek word 'episteme,' which means knowledge.
Knowledge is expressed in propositions, but before we can understand any proposition, even
if it is false, we need concepts. Understanding the meaning of a word requires the presence
of a concept. Understanding the meaning of a word requires the presence of a concept. So,
how did we come to have the concepts that we do? Some of our concepts were once thought
to be innate. However, if concepts were innate, we would have them without ever
encountering any instances. It appears too obvious that no sensory property concept is innate.
Some concepts, such as the concept of cause and the concept of God, were thought to be
innate. For example, consider the concepts of cause and God. If the concept of cause is
innate, we would know what it means and be fully aware of it despite never having observed
causes in action. This appears to be implausible. Perhaps the God example is more plausible,
because God, if he exists, cannot be seen or otherwise perceived, and yet we appear to have
the concept (though this too has been denied). How can we have the concept of God if we
are unable to perceive Him? Is it genetic? We believe in John Locke's alternative theory,
which states that concepts are formed through experience. However, despite its merits, it has
a flaw that this essay will address. John Locke aimed to clear the path to knowledge by
removing some of the debris that lay in its path. Locke devised a daring and original
interpretation of how the mind works, describing the type and extent of knowledge we can
expect from the human mind. 'The scope of our knowledge is limited to, and by, our
experience,' Locke said (Stumpf, 1977: 273).
To some extent, Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes could be called empiricists because they
believe that knowledge should be built on observation. They both agreed that the mind is
capable of producing certainty in natural knowledge if the proper method is used. Similarly,
Rene Descartes (1594-1650) assumed that no problem could be solved by human reason if
the proper method was used. This was the assumption Locke questioned, namely, the
assumption that the human mind has the ability to discover the true nature of the universe.
David Hume pushed this critical point even further, questioning whether any secure
knowledge is possible at all.
Instead of the word 'concepts,' these philosophers all used the word 'ideas,' and the problem
they set out to solve was: How do we get the ideas we have or will have in the future? They
claimed that all ideas we have or will have come from experience. Some ideas come from the
outer senses, such as sight, hearing, and touch, and all our concepts involving the physical
world are drawn from these; and some ideas come from the inner senses, such as pain and
pleasure experiences, feelings of love and hate, pride and remorse, and experiences of
thinking and willing. All of our ideas are based on similar experiences.
This is the core of Locke's empiricism, and other issues, such as his refutation of innate
ideas, simple and complex ideas, and primary and secondary qualities, will require further
elucidation in the following chapters. It is also critical to consider Locke's analysis of
substance and degrees of knowledge. However, it is necessary to write a brief biography of
John Locke, Locke's empiricism, the meaning of perception, and, most importantly, the
problem of perception because other chapters will be useful only after the problems have
been stated.

THE MAN JOHN LOCKE

John Locke was born in 1632 in Wrington, Somerset, and died in 1709 at the age of 72. He
grew up in a Puritan household, where he was taught the virtues of hard work and a love of
simplicity. After receiving a thorough classical education at the West Minister School, Locke
enrolled at Oxford University, where he earned Bachelor's and Master's degrees and was
appointed Senior Student and later censor of Moral Philosophy. He spent thirty years of his
life studying Aristotle's logic and metaphysics; he was gradually drawn towards the newly
developing experimental sciences, particularly by Sir Robert Boyle. His scientific interests
led him to study medicine, and he received his medical degree in 1674. He also dabbled in
diplomacy. He actually served in a variety of capacities, eventually becoming the personal
physician and confidential adviser to the Earl of Shaftesbury, one of London's most powerful
politicians. However, earlier influences, such as his reading of Descartes' works while at
Oxford, confirmed his desire to devote his creative abilities to developing a philosophical
understanding of certain problems that perplexed his generation. He wrote on a variety of
topics, including The Reasonability of Christianity, An Essay Concerning Toleration, and the
Consequences of Lowering Interest and Raising the Value of Money, demonstrating his
active participation in the public affairs of his day. In 1690, when he was fifty seven-years
old, Locke published two books, which were to make him famous as a philosopher and a
political theorist: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises of Civil
Government. Although other philosophers before him had written about human knowledge,
Locke was the first to produce a full length inquiry into the scope and limits of the human
mind. Similarly, others had written important works on political theory, but Locke’s second
of the two treatises came at a time when it could shape the thoughts of an era and later affect
the course of events. It indicates Locke’s way of combining his practical and theoretical
interests and abilities.

JOHN LOCKE EMPIRICISM

Locke decided that before delving into such topics as moral principles and revealed religion,
we should examine our own abilities and see what our understandings were or were not
equipped to deal with. Following this investigation, Locke wrote his Essay on Human
Understanding, which became the foundation of British empiricism. According to Locke,
knowledge is limited to ideas, not platonic ideas or forms, but ideas generated by objects we
experience, refuting rationalists' claim that reason is the primary source of knowledge
(Copleston, 1964: 72). Experience is the source of ideas, and experience comes in two
flavours: sensation and reflection. All of our ideas, without exception, come to us through the
senses, through which we experience the world around us, and through reflection on these
ideas, which is an internal experience. He attempted to clarify that we cannot experience the
world outside of ourselves, but only through reflection on these ideas, which is an internal
experience. He clarifies that we cannot have the experience of reflection without first having
the experience of sensation. For reflection simply means that the mind is paying attention to
its own operations, but these operations begin when the mind is given ideas, which come
through the senses (Locke, 1985: 182).

PERCEPTION
In humans, perception is the process by which sensory stimulation is translated into
organised experience. That experience, or percept, is a result of both the stimulation and the
process itself. Relationships discovered between various types of stimulation (e.g., light
waves and sound waves) and their associated precepts suggest inferences about the
properties of the perceptual process; these inferences can then be used to develop theories of
perception. Because the perceptual process is not directly observable or public (except to the
perceiver himself, whose percepts are given directly in experience), the validity of perceptual
theories can only be checked indirectly. In other words, predictions derived from theory are
often compared to appropriate empirical data through experimental research. Historically,
philosophy was the domain of systematic thought about perception. Indeed, philosophers
continue to be interested in perception, and many of the issues raised by philosophers about
the process are still of current concern. However, as a scientific endeavour, the study of
perception has developed particularly as part of the larger discipline of psychology.
Philosophical interest in perception stems primarily from concerns about the origins and
validity of what is referred to as human knowledge (see epistemology). Epistemologists
investigate whether a real, physical world exists apart from human experience and, if so, how
its properties can be learned and the truth or accuracy of that experience determined. They
also wonder if there are innate ideas or if all experience stems from contact with the physical
world, as mediated by the sense organs. Psychology, for the most part, avoids such questions
in favour of problems that can be solved using its specialised methods. However, some
philosophical questions persist; for example, researchers are still interested in the relative
contributions of innate and learned factors to the perceptual process. The existence of a
physical world, on the other hand, is taken for granted by the majority of those who study
perception from a scientific standpoint. Perception researchers typically accept the apparent
physical world as described in the branches of physics concerned with electromagnetic
energy, optics, and mechanics. The issues they consider are related to the process by which
percepts are formed as a result of physical energy (for example, light) interacting with the
perceiving organism. The degree of correspondence between percepts and the physical
objects to which they normally relate is also of interest. How well, for example, does an
object's visually perceived size correspond to its physical size as measured
Questions of this type imply that perceptual experiences have external referents and are
meaningfully organised, most commonly as objects. Meaningful objects, such as trees, faces,
books, tables, and dogs, are normally perceived as a whole rather than as a collection of dots,
lines, colours, and other elements. Gestalt psychologists refer to immediate human
experience as organised wholes (Gestalten), not collections of elements. A major goal of
Gestalt theory in the twentieth century was to specify the brain processes that could account
for perception organisation. Gestalt theorists, most notably the German-American
psychologist and philosopher Max Wertheimer, as well as the German-American
psychologists Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler, rejected the earlier assumption that
perceptual organisation was the result of learned relationships (associations), the constituent
elements of which were referred to as simple sensations. Although Gestaltists agreed that
simple sensations could be logically understood to be organised percepts, they argued that
percepts were fundamental to experience. For example, one does not perceive many discrete
dots (as simple sensations); the percept is that of a dotted line.

THEORY OF PERCEPTION
JOHN LOCKE, who was born three hundred years ago this August, was primarily interested
in the problem of knowledge. As a result, I propose to honour him here through a clear
statement of certain epistemological propositions he believed, rather than a biographical
account of his intellectual life.to be significant and correct. Such commemoration would
have been preferred by Locke, who frequently stated while alive that the Truth, not John
Locke, should be our concern.
The propositions that I will present are concerned with perception. Perception, as defined by
Locke, is a broad concept. In Locke's usage, the term "perception" has many different
meanings. The phrase "the most general designation for all the activities of the intellect" is
not all that it is. or the Seeing a patch of blue, recalling yesterday, contemplating the square
root of two, or envisioning a unicorn are examples of mental operations of the mind. There
are also immediate objects of various mental operations. So, a theory of perception in this
broad sense would involve a thorough examination of all theories of knowledge, and Locke
makes just such an endeavour in the Essay. But, we won't use perception in this broad sense
as the focus of this discussion. In twentieth-century theory, perception knowledge often
refers to sensory perception. I'm going to offer Locke's theory of sensation, which purports to
explain some of the physical and mental processes involved, in his own words while keeping
an eye out for its flaws. But, we won't use perception in this broad sense as the focus of this
discussion. In twentieth-century theory, perception knowledge often refers to sensory
perception. I'm going to offer Locke's theory of sensation, which purports to explain some of
the physical and mental processes involved, in his own words while keeping an eye out for
its flaws. Significantly more than half of the volume that appears to be filled is actually
empty. What you actually have in your hand is a cosmos of particles vibrating quickly. So,
common sense is asked to extend the idea of apparent-but-not-real qualification to the white
of the marble itself at this moment, as well as for seemingly the the same factors that led to
the marble's fast oscillation.
I use the word "apparently" for the same causes. Indeed, not all of the causes are the same. In
the first instance, we suggested that a moving white marble was to blame for the seeming
whiteness that pervaded an area of space that was greater than the marble itself, and we held
that the visible white was never more than that. Yet in the second scenario, it is no longer
possible to speak of white particles moving quickly to provide the impression of a
continuous white area. It would be erroneous to claim that a blade of grass is green simply
because its atoms are green because the fundamental building blocks of matter are
colourless. Now that we know that, whether the marble is moving or at rest, the perceived
white is not even in the general area of the stone. This conclusion, which implies a rejection
of the existence of white anyplace in the real world and highlights the perception issue, is
one that Locke would adore. If qualities may appear to be present in material substances
under normal conditions without actually being there, as we have seen,

PROBLEM OF PERCEPTION
In his theory of knowledge, John Locke emphasised experience as the primary source of
unquestionable knowledge. However, Locke overlooked the fact that objects of experience
are dynamic and fallible. According to Heraclitus of Ephesus, an ancient Greek philosopher,
"things in this world are in flux, constantly changing" (Armstrong, 1977: 23).In light of
Heraclitus' postulation, how can our experience or senses grasp reality or true knowledge, as
the case may be, in a constantly changing world? Following in the footsteps of Heraclitus,
Socrates discovered through dialectics that true knowledge cannot be derived from
perception. This is aptly captured in his statement that 'Perception does not give us true
knowledge; therefore, knowledge cannot be acquired through perception' (Armstrong, 1977:
24).When one examines Locke's theory of knowledge, one will notice that it has a number of
issues to deal with, including perception and appearance and reality issues. Despite the fact
that the former and latter appear to be similar. The perception problem can be said to arise as
a result of the human state of affairs in a material time. Perceiving a green table in a room
may give different impressions, in different thoughts, depending on their current state. To
put it another way, a green table may appear yellow in the eyes of a man suffering from
jaundice. Furthermore, the amount and type of light focused on the same green table may
cause an onlooker to refer to it as purple. Similarly, the colour of the green table may be
affected by the timing of its perception. For example, if the green table is perceived at night
around 10.00pm with moonlight, it may appear black or brown. As a result, true and
infallible knowledge cannot be obtained through this method.
On the subject of appearance and reality, it is important to note that appearance is
fundamentally different from reality; thus, seeing something as it appears is not sufficient to
conclude that one has knowledge of that thing. When a straight stick or ruler is placed inside
a bowl of water, it appears bent, giving the onlooker the wrong impression, but in reality,
neither the stick nor the ruler is bent, because they look straight again after being removed
from the bowl of water.
Locke's conception and origin of ideas were founded on the foundation and background of
empiricists; those ideas are derived from sensation. He understands the importance of
sensation, as evidenced by his second work. He thought that knowledge comes from two
sources: sensation and reflection. In addition, he claims that knowledge is a process of
compounding, repeating, comparing, and uniting sensations. But he ran into a major problem
when he was unable to maintain his thoroughly atomic theory of mind. It is a theory that
externalises all relationships; they are, as he puts it, super-induced upon facts. This makes
any appearance of idea unity and convention impossible to account for.
He introduces certain inherent relations into the structure of the ideas quietly and without
any awareness of the contradictions involved, thereby further discussing the objective
character of sensation in relation to the object that produces it. Locke distinguished simple
and complex ideas because he believed that distinguishing them would make it easier to
discuss ideas intelligently, as they are matter in the bodies that cause them.
As a result, Locke tends to establish sensation as passivity and simplicity as the real element
in knowledge, whereas Leibniz denies or accepts them in a different way. 'Reality for
Leibniz is not a supernatural yoking of naturally opposed things, nor is it a mere accident,'
writes Russell.

REFERENCES
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2. Copleston F. (1964), A History Of Philosophy, vol 5 New York, Image Books

3.John Locke, (1975), Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Ed. By Peter H. Niddith,
Oxford: Claredon Press.

4. Popkin, R (1969), Philosophy Made Simple, New York, Heinemann Publishers.

5. Russell, B (1971), A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz, London, Routledge

Publishing Co.

6.Stumpf E.S (1964), Philosophy: History and Problems, New York, Mc Graw-Hill Book
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7. Whitehead, A.N (1982), Western Political Thought, Ivor Belere (Ed), London, George
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8. www.wikipedia.com