The fundamental principles of Locke's philosophy are presented in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), the culmination of twenty years of reflection on the origins of human knowledge. According to Locke, what we know is always properly understood as the relation between ideas, and he devoted much of the Essay to an extended argument that all of our ideas—simple or complex—are ultimately derived from experience. The consequence of this empiricist approach is that the knowledge of which we are capable is severely limited in its scope and certainty. Locke Our knowledge of material substances, for example, depends heavily on the secondary qualities by reference to which we name them, while their real inner natures derive from the primary qualities of their insensible parts.
Nevertheless, Locke held that we have no grounds for complaint about the limitations of our knowledge, since a proper application of our cognitive capacities is enough to guide our action in the practical conduct of life. The Essay brought great fame, and Locke spent much of the rest of his life responding to admirers and critics by making revisions in later editions of the book, including detailed accounts of human volition and moral freedom, the personal identity on which our responsibility as moral agents depends, and the dangers of religious enthusiasm. One additional section that was never included in the Essay itself is Of the Conduct of the Understanding, a practical guide to the achievement of useful beliefs about the world. Locke The bachelor philosopher's notions about childrearing appeared in Some Thoughts concerning Education (1693).
By contrast, Locke chose to avoid controversy by publishing his political writings anonymously. With the Two Treatises of Civil Government (1690) Locke established himself as a political theorist of the highest order. The First Treatise is a detailed refutation of the (now-forgotten) monarchist theories of Robert Filmer, but the Second Treatise of Government offers a systematic account of the foundations of political obligation. On Locke's view, all rights begin in the individual property interest created by an investment of labor. The social structure or commonwealth, then, depends for its formation and maintenance on the express consent of those who are governed by its political powers. Majority rule thus becomes the cornerstone of all political order, and dissatisfied citizens reserve a lasting right to revolution. Similarly, Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) argued for a broad (though not limitless) acceptance of alternative religious convictions.
The Origin of Ideas
We now leave the Continent for an extended look at philosophy in Great Britain during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Here the favored model for achieving human knowledge was not the abstract mathematical reasoning so admired by the rationalists but the more concrete observations of natural science. Heeding the call of Francis Bacon, British scientists had pursued a vigorous program of observation and experiment with great success. Isaac Newton showed that both celestial and terrestial motion could be explained by reference to a simple set of laws of motion and gravitation; Robert Boyle investigated the behavior of gasses and proposed a general theory of matter as a collection of corpuscles; and Thomas Sydenham began to use observational methods for the diagnosis and treatment of disease.
Philosopher John Locke greatly admired the achievements that these scientists (his friends in the Royal Society) had made in physics, chemistry, and medicine, and he sought to clear the ground for future developments by providing a theory of knowledge compatible with such carefully-conducted study of nature.
The goal of Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), then, is to establish epistemological foundations for the new science by examining the reliability, scope, and limitations of human knowledge in contrast with with the pretensions of uncritical belief, borrowed opinion, and mere superstition. Since the sciences had already demonstrated their practical success, Locke tried to apply their Baconian methods to the pursuit of his own philosophical aims. In order to discover how the human understanding achieves knowledge, we must trace that knowledge to its origins in our experience.
Locke's investigation into human knowledge began by asking how we acquire the basic materials out of which that knowledge is composed, our ideas. For Locke, an idea is Essay I i 8) (Note that this is an extremely broad definition: it includes concrete sensory images, abstract intellectual concepts, and everything in between. The colors and shapes I see before me right now are ideas, and so are my hunger, my memories of the ocean, my hopes for my children, the multiplication tables, and the principles of democratic government.) Ideas, then, are the immediate objects of all thought, the meaning or signification of all words, and the mental representatives of all things. Locke's question was, where do we get all of these ideas which are the content of our knowedge?
Ideas from Experience
First, Locke eliminated one bad answer to the question. Most of Book I of the Essay is devoted to a detailed refutation of the belief that any of our knowledge is innate. Against the claims of the Cambridge Platonists and Herbert of Cherbury, Locke insisted that neither the speculative principles of logic and metaphysics nor the practical principles of morality are inscribed on our minds from birth. Such propositions do not in fact have the universal consent of all human beings, Locke argued, since children and the mentally defective do not assent to them. Moreover, even if everyone did accept these principles, their universality could be better explained in terms of self-evidence or shared experience than by reference to a presumed innate origin. (Essay I ii 3-5) Innatism is the refuge of lazy intellectual dictators who wish thereby to impose their provincial notions upon others. Besides, Locke held, our knowledge cannot be innate because none of the ideas of which it is composed are innate.
As the correct answer to the question, Locke proposed the fundamental principle of empiricism: all of our knowledge and ideas arise from experience. (Essay II i 2) The initially empty room of the mind is furnished with ideas of two sorts: first, by sensation we obtain ideas of things we suppose to exist outside us in the physical world; second, by reflection we come to have ideas of our own mental operations. Thus, for example, "hard," "red," "loud," "cold," "sweet," and "aromatic" are all ideas of sensation, while "perceiving," "remembering," "abstracting," and "thinking" are all ideas of reflection. ("Pleasure," "unity," and "existence," Locke held, are ideas that come to us from both sensation and reflection.) Everything we know, everything we believe, every thought we can entertain is made up of ideas of sensation and reflection and nothing else.
But wait. It isn't true that I can think only about what I myself have experienced; I can certainly think about dinosaurs (or unicorns) even though I have never seen one for myself. So Locke's claim must be about the ultimate origin of our ideas, the source of their content. He distinguished between simple and complex ideas and acknowledged that we often employ our mental capacities in order manufacture complex ideas by conjoining simpler components. My idea of "unicorn," for example, may be compounded from the ideas of "horse" and "single spiral horn," and these ideas in turn are compounded from less complex elements. What Locke held was that every complex idea can be analyzed into component parts and that the final elements of any complete analysis must be simple ideas, each of which is derived directly from experience. Even so, the empiricist program is an ambitious one, and Locke devoted Book II of the Essay to a lengthy effort to show that every idea could, in principle, be derived from experience.
A Special Problem
Locke began his survey of our mental contents with the simple ideas of sensation, including those of colors, sounds, tastes, smells, shapes, size, and solidity. With just a little thought about specific examples of such ideas, we notice a significant difference among them: the color of the wall in front of me seems to vary widely from time to time, depending on the light in the room and the condition of my eyes, while its solidity persists independently of such factors. Following the lead of Galileo and Boyle, Locke explained this difference in corpuscularian fashion, by reference to the different ways in which the qualities of things produce our ideas of them.
The primary qualities of an object are its intrinsic features, those it really has, including the "Bulk, Figure, Texture, and Motion" of its parts. (Essay II viii 9) Since these features are inseparable from the thing even when it is divided into parts too small for us to perceive, the primary qualities are independent of our perception of them. When we do perceive the primary qualities of larger objects, Locke believed, our ideas exactly resemble the qualities as they are in things.
The secondary qualities of an object, on the other hand, are nothing in the thing itself but the power to produce in us the ideas of "Colors, Sounds, Smells, Tastes, etc." (Essay II viii 10) In these cases, our ideas do not resemble their causes, which are in fact nothing other than the primary qualities of the insensible parts of things. The powers, or tertiary qualities, of an object are just its capacities to cause perceptible changes in other things.
Thus, for example, the primary qualities of this rose include all of its quantifiable features, its mass and momentum, its chemical composition and microscopic structure; these are the features of the thing itself. The secondary qualities of the rose, on the other hand, include the ideas it produces in me, its yellow color, its delicate fragrance; these are the merely the effects of the primary qualities of its corpuscles on my eyes and nose. Like the pain I feel when I stick my finger on a thorn, the color and smell are not features of the rose itself.
Some distinction of this sort is important for any representative realist. Many instances of perceptual illusion can be explained by reference to the way secondary qualities depend upon our sensory organs, but the possibility of accurate information about the primary qualities is preserved, at least in principle. The botanical expert may be able to achieve detailed knowledge of the nature of roses, but that knowledge is not necessary for my appreciation of their beauty.
Complex Ideas
Even if the simple ideas of sensation provide us with ample material for thinking, what we make of them is largely up to us. In his survey of ideas of reflection, Locke listed a variety of mental operations that we perform upon our ideas.
Notice that in each of these sections (Essay II ix-xii), Locke defined the relevant mental operations as we experience them in ourselves, but then went on to consider carefully the extent to which other animals seem capable of performing the same activities. This procedure has different results from Descartes's doctrinal rejection of animal thinking: according to Locke, only abstraction (the operation most crucial in forming the ideas of mixed modes, on which morality depends) is utterly beyond the capacity of any animal. (Essay II xi 10)
Perception of ideas through the senses and retention of ideas in memory, Locke held, are passive powers of the mind, beyond our direct voluntary control and heavily dependent on the material conditions of the human body. The active powers of the mind include distinguishing, comparing, compounding, and abstracting. It is by employing these powers, Locke supposed, that we manufacture new, complex ideas from the simple elements provided by experience. The resulting complex ideas are of three sorts.
Modes are complex ideas that combine simpler elements to form a new whole that is assumed to be incapable of existing except as a part or feature of something else. The ideas of "three," "seventy-five," and even "infinity," for example, are all modes derived from the simple idea of "unity." We can understand these ideas and know their mathematical functions, whether or not there actually exist numbers of things to which they would apply in reality. "Mixed modes" similarly combine simple components without any presumption about their conformity to existing patterns, yielding all of our complex ideas of human actions and their value.
Substances are the complex ideas of real particular things that are supposed to exist on their own and to account for the unity and persistence of the features they exhibit. The ideas of "my only son," "the largest planet in the solar system," and "tulips," for example, are compounded from simpler ideas of sensation and reflection. Each is the idea of a thing (or kind of thing) that could really exist on its own. Since we don't understand all of the inner workings of natural objects, Locke supposed, our complex ideas of substances usually rely heavily on their secondary qualities and powers—the effects they are observed to have on ourselves and other things.
Relations are complex ideas of the ways in which other ideas may be connected with each other, in fact or in thought. The ideas of "younger," "stronger," and "cause and effect," for example, all involve some reference to the comparison of two or more other ideas.
Locke obviously could not analyze the content of every particular idea that any individual has ever had. But his defence of the empiricist principle did require him to show in principle that any complex idea can be derived from the simple ideas of sensation and reflection. The clarity, reality, adequacy, and truth of all of our ideas, Locke supposed, depend upon the success with which they fulfill their representative function. Here, we'll consider one of the most significant and difficult examples from each category:
Free Action
Among our modal ideas, Locke believed that those of mixed modes, which combine both sensory and reflective elements, are especially important, since they include the ideas of human actions and provide for their moral evaluation. Among the mixed modes, the ideas of power, volition, and liberty are the most crucial and difficult. To them Locke devoted a chapter (II xxi) that grew, with alterations in later editions, to become the longest in the Essay.
The idea of power is illustrated every time we do something. Whether we think or move, the feeling that our mental preference leads to action provides a simple instance of power. The exercise of that power is volition or will, and the action taken as a result is a voluntary one. Liberty or freedom, on Locke's view, is the power to act on our volition, whatever it may be, without any external compulsion or restraint. (Essay II xxi 7-12)
Under these definitions, the question of whether we have free will does not arise for Locke, since it involves what would later come to be called a category mistake. In particular, it does not matter whether we have control over our own preferences, whether we are free to will whatever we wish. (Essay II xxi 23-25) In fact, Locke offered a strictly hedonistic account of human motivation, according to which our preferences are invariably determined by the desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain. (Essay II vii 3) What does matter for freedom and moral responsibility is that we can act on our preferences, whatever their source, without any outside interference. If I could have done otherwise (given a different preference), then I act freely and am responsible for my action.
Personal Identity
Among our ideas of relations, the strongest is that of identity. Locke held that the criteria for identity depend upon the kind of thing we are considering. Substantial identity requires the unique spatio-temporal history that is just the existence of each substance, but this is not the only consideration in all cases.The identity of the tree outside my window, for example, does not depend on the substantial identity of its parts (in fact, they change from day to day and season to season); what matters in this case is the organization of those parts into a common life. A similar explanation, Locke held, accounts for the identity of animals and human beings. (Essay II xxvii 4-6) We recognize living bodies at different times by the organization of their material parts rather than by their substantial composition.
In analogous fashion, Locke explained personal identity independently of identity of substance. The idea of the person is that of a moral agent who can be held responsible for his or her actions. (Essay II xxvii 9) But Locke used a series of hypothetical examples to show that the identity of an underlying immaterial substance or soul is neither necessary nor sufficient for personal identity in this sense. Even the identity of the same human body (though we may rely upon that for third-person attributions of identity) is not truly relevant. The only thing that does matter, on Locke's view, is that the person self-consciously appropriates actions as its own.
This is, as Locke says, a "forensic" notion of personal identity; its aim is to secure the justice and effectiveness of moral sanctions. (Essay II xxvii 26) If, and only if, I now remember having committed a particular act in the past can I be justly punished for having done so. If, and only if, I project myself into the future can the prospect of punishment or reward influence my deliberations about how to act now. Locke's way of thinking about personal identity has shaped discussions of the issue ever since.
Knowledge and its Degrees
Having provided a thorough account of the origins of our ideas in experience, Locke opens Book IV of the Essay with a deceptively simple definition of knowledge. Knowledge is just perception of the agreement or disagreement of our ideas. (Essay IV i 2) We know the truth of a proposition when we become aware of the relation between the ideas it conjoins. This can occur in any of three distinct ways, each with its characteristic degree of certainty.
Intuitive knowledge involves direct and immediate recognition of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas. (Essay IV ii 1) It yields perfect certainty, but is only rarely available to us. I know intuitively that three is not the same as seven.
In demonstrative knowledge we perceive the agreement or disagreement only indirectly, by means of a series of intermediate ideas. (Essay IV ii 2) Since demonstration is a chain of reasoning, its certainty is no greater than its weakest link; only if each step is itself intuitively known will the demonstration as a whole be certain. If I know that A is greater than B and that B is greater than C, then I know demonstratively that A is greater than C.
Although intuition and demonstration alone satisfy the definition of knowledge, Locke held that the belief that our sensory ideas are caused by existing things deserves the name of sensitive knowledge. (Essay IV ii 14) In the presence of a powerful, present idea of sensation, we cannot doubt that it has some real cause outside us, even though we do not know what that cause may be or how it produces the idea in us. I have only sensitive knowledge that there is something producing the odor I now smell.
Intuitive knowledge involves direct and immediate recognition of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas. (Essay IV ii 1) It yields perfect certainty, but is only rarely available to us. I know intuitively that three is not the same as seven.
In demonstrative knowledge we perceive the agreement or disagreement only indirectly, by means of a series of intermediate ideas. (Essay IV ii 2) Since demonstration is a chain of reasoning, its certainty is no greater than its weakest link; only if each step is itself intuitively known will the demonstration as a whole be certain. If I know that A is greater than B and that B is greater than C, then I know demonstratively that A is greater than C.
Although intuition and demonstration alone satisfy the definition of knowledge, Locke held that the belief that our sensory ideas are caused by existing things deserves the name of sensitive knowledge. (Essay IV ii 14) In the presence of a powerful, present idea of sensation, we cannot doubt that it has some real cause outside us, even though we do not know what that cause may be or how it produces the idea in us. I have only sensitive knowledge that there is something producing the odor I now smell.
Types of Knowledge
Locke distinguished four sorts of agreement or disagreement between ideas, perception of which gives us four distinct types of knowledge: (Essay IV i 3-7)
Since knowledge of identity and diversity requires only a direct comparison of the ideas involved, it is intuitive whenever the ideas being compared are clear.
Knowledge of coexistence would provide detailed information about features of the natural world that occur together in our experience, but this scientific knowledge is restricted by our ignorance of the real essences of substances; the best we can do is to rely upon careful observations of the coincidental appearance of their secondary qualities and powers.
Mathematics and morality rest upon knowledge of relation, which Locke held to be demonstrative whenever we form clear ideas and discover the links between them.
The degree of certainty in our knowledge of real existence depends wholly upon the content of our ideas in each case. Locke agreed with Descartes that we have intuitive knowledge of our own existence, and he supposed it possible to achieve demonstrative knowledge of god as the thinking creator of everything. But we have only sensitive knowledge of the existence of other things presently before our senses.
Since knowledge of identity and diversity requires only a direct comparison of the ideas involved, it is intuitive whenever the ideas being compared are clear.
Knowledge of coexistence would provide detailed information about features of the natural world that occur together in our experience, but this scientific knowledge is restricted by our ignorance of the real essences of substances; the best we can do is to rely upon careful observations of the coincidental appearance of their secondary qualities and powers.
Mathematics and morality rest upon knowledge of relation, which Locke held to be demonstrative whenever we form clear ideas and discover the links between them.
The degree of certainty in our knowledge of real existence depends wholly upon the content of our ideas in each case. Locke agreed with Descartes that we have intuitive knowledge of our own existence, and he supposed it possible to achieve demonstrative knowledge of god as the thinking creator of everything. But we have only sensitive knowledge of the existence of other things presently before our senses.
The Extent of Knowledge
The result of all of this is that our knowledge is severely limited in its extent. On Locke's definition, we can achieve genuine knowledge only when we have clear ideas and can trace the connection between them enough to perceive their agreement or disagreement. (Essay IV iii 1-6) That doesn't happen very often, especially where substances are at issue. The truths of mathematics are demonstrable precisely because they are abstract: since my ideas of lines, angles, and triangles are formed without any necessary reference to existing things, I can prove that the interior angles of any triangle add up to a straight line.But any effort to achieve genuine knowledge of the natural world must founder on our ignorance of substances. We have "sensitive knowledge" of the existence of something that causes our present sensory ideas. But we do not have adequate ideas of the real essence of any substance, and even if we did, we would be unable to discover any demonstrative link between that real essence and the ideas it produces in us. The most careful observation can establish at best only the secondary qualities and powers that appear to coexist in our experience often enough to warrant our use of them as the nominal essence of a kind of substance. (Essay IV xi 1-7)
Locke's efforts have therefore led to a sobering conclusion. Certainty is rarely within our reach; we must often be content with probable knowledge or mere opinion. Locke ultimately recommends that we adopt significantly reduced epistemological expectations.
Civil Society
The first instance of social organization, on Locke's view, is the development of the family, a voluntary association designed to secure the propagation of the human species through successive generations. Although each individual in the state of nature has the right to enforce the natural law in defence of property interests, the formation of a civil society requires that all individuals voluntarily surrender this right to the community at large. By declaring and enforcing fixed rules for conduct—human laws—the commonwealth thus serves as "umpire" in the adjudication of property disputes among those who choose to be governed in this way. An absolute monarch, by contrast, can only remain in a state of nature with respect to the subjects under its rule.Securing social order through the formation of any government invariably requires the direct consent of those who are to be governed. Each and every individual must concur in the the original agreement to form such a government, but it would be enormously difficult to achieve unanimous consent with respect to the particular laws it promulgates. So, in practice, Locke supposed that the will expressed by the majority must be accepted as determinative over the conduct of each individual citizen who consents to be governed at all. Although he offered several historical examples of just such initial agreements to form a society, Locke reasonably maintained that this is beside the point. All people who voluntarily chooses to live within a society have implicitly or tacitly entered into its formative agreement, and thereby consented to submit themselves and their property to its governance.
The structure or form of the government so established is a matter of relatively less importance, on Locke's view. What matters is that legislative power—the ability to provide for social order and the common good by setting standing laws over the acquisition, preservation, and transfer of property—is provided for in ways to which everyone consents. Because the laws are established and applied equally to all, Locke argued, this is not merely an exercize in the arbitrary use of power, but an effort to secure the rights of all more securely than would be possible under the independence and equality of the state of nature.
Since standing laws continue in force long after they have been established, Locke pointed out that the legislative body responsible for deciding what the laws should be need only meet occasionally, but the executive branch of government, responsible for ensuring that the laws are actually obeyed, must be continuous in its operation within the society. In similar fashion, he supposed that the federative power responsible for representing this particular commonwealth in the world at large, needs a lengthy tenure. Locke's presumption is that the legislative function of government will be vested in a representative assembly, which naturally retains the supreme power over the commonwealth as a whole: whenever it assembles, the majority of its members speak jointly for everyone in the society. The executive and federative functions, then, are performed by other persons (magistrates and ministers) whose power to enforce and negotiate is wholly derived from the legislative. But since the legislature is not perpetually in session, occasions will sometimes arise for which the standing laws have made no direct provision, and then the executive will have to exercize its prerogative to deal with the situation immediately, relying upon its own counsel in the absence of legislative direction. It is the potential abuse of this prerogative, Locke supposed, that most often threatens the stability and order of a commonwealth.
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