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Pioneering Philosophers of Mind: Descartes, Locke, and Leibniz - John Locke and the Empiricist Tradition

10 important questions on Pioneering Philosophers of Mind: Descartes, Locke, and Leibniz - John Locke and the Empiricist Tradition

In what way is Locke's view of the mind similar to Aristotle's?

Locke invoked Aristotle’s conception of the inexperienced mind as a tabula rasa—a blank slate—or, in Locke’s terms, a “white paper void of all characters.” In answer to the question “How comes this blank slate to be furnished?” he replied: “in one word, from experience; in [which] all our knowledge is founded.” Locke saw the mind essentially as a receptacle for information from the outside world, and often a passive one, which disagrees with Descartes's view who saw the mind as constantly active.

What was Locke's reason for disputing Descartes's innate ideas?

He disputed Descartes’s notion of innate ideas, arguing that such things as infinity and perfection do not occur in inexperienced or enfeebled minds, but actually result as abstractions acquired only in minds that have already had a considerable amount of experience. They seemed to Locke, in fact, the very opposite of innate.

How do the two kinds of experiences of the mind lead to memories according to Locke?

In terms of the kinds of experiences the mind has, Locke proposed there were just two: sensations of objects in the external world, and reflections of the mind’s own operations. These experiences produce representations or ideas in the mind that become recallable in the form of memories after leaving immediate consciousness.
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How do simple ideas lead to complex ideas according to Locke?

An inexperienced infant’s earliest sensations and reflections presumably produce the most basic simple ideas: notions such as redness, roundness, loudness, coldness, hardness, and sweetness from the basic senses; and of states such as wanting, seeing, liking, and disliking from inner reflections. With repeated experience, simple ideas get combined by the mind in varying ways to produce complex ideas. For example, redness, roundness, and sweetness may combine to produce the complex idea of an apple; the notions of an apple and desiring may combine to produce part of the still more complex idea of hunger.

How did Locke define knowledge?

As the perception of the connexion and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy, of any of our ideas.

Which three kinds of knowledge are there according to Locke?

Intuitive knowledge: perceptions that are immediate and irresistable, such as recognizing the difference between black and white.
Demonstrative knowledge: less immediate but equally certain; geometric or logical reasoning in which a stepwise series of deductions involving axioms results in a conclusion that is not obvious but definitely true.
Sensitive knowledge: largest proportion of human knowledge; created by particular patterns of sensory experiences people have

Which two laws are suggested to be important for how ideas come to be associated (related to the association of ideas by Locke)?

Locke did not specify exactly how ideas come to be associated. His examples, however, suggest the importance of the factors of contiguity, the experiencing of two or more ideas either simultaneously or in rapid succession, and the similarity of two or more experienced ideas. After Locke’s death, his successors introduced the terms law of association by contiguity and law of association by similarity to formalize these two principles.

Why did Thomas Hobbes support the absolute powers of the monarchy or of any other already established government?

Hobbes saw human beings as innately aggressive, self-centered, and predatory. Left on their own in the state of nature, people’s lives would inevitably be “solitary, poor, nast, brutish and short.” Self-interest thus led our ancestors to establish a social contract, joining together in groups, with supreme authority invested in centralized powers to organize defenses against other groups and to curtail wanton aggression within themselves. For Hobbes, survival itself required absolute obedience to a centralized authority, and accordingly he supported the absolute powers of the monarchy, or of any other already established government.

What does Locke mean with that he thought the social contract was reciprocal?

Locke further argued, however, that governments could and sometimes did exceed the reasonable limits of their authority. He saw the contract as being reciprocal; if an authority grossly violated its subjects’ interests, those subjects had a “natural” right to be heard and, in extreme cases, to rebel and establish a new authority.

How did Locke think education should be like?

In 1693 Locke published Some Thoughts Concerning Education, a short work advocating education based on experience and scientific observation, as opposed to the memorization of Greek and Latin.

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Pioneers of Psychology

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