HKB
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Often appears with: reason and the intellect · perception and the senses · simple ideas · space time infinity · single vs collective substances · simple vs complex ideas · other creatures’ faculties · limits of human knowledge · language, naming, and meaning · ideas of relation · fate, destiny, and necessity · complex ideas of substances
Usually: argument (2) · detachment (2) · reflection (1) · crisis of belief (1) · censure (1)
“But it is not in the power of the most exalted wit, or enlarged understanding, by any quickness or variety of thought, to INVENT or FRAME one new simple idea in the mind, not taken in by the ways before mentioned;” John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 · insight
Locke states that the mind can only be supplied with ideas through sensation and reflection; he distinguishes simple ideas from complex ones and denies we can invent new simple ideas.
OF SIMPLE IDEAS. 1. Uncompounded Appearances. The better to understand the nature, manner, and extent of our knowledge, one thing is carefully to be observed concerning the ideas we have; and that is, that some of them, are SIMPLE and some COMPLEX. Though the qualities that affect our senses are, in the things themselves, so united and blended, that there is no separation, no distance between them; yet it is plain…
Locke argues that even the most abstract ideas come from repeating and joining ideas originally obtained from sensation or reflection, and he plans to illustrate this with space, time, and infinity.
6. Ideas of Substances, single or collective. Secondly, the ideas of SUBSTANCES are such combinations of simple ideas as are taken to represent distinct PARTICULAR things subsisting by themselves; in which the supposed or confused idea of substance, such as it is, is always the first and chief. Thus if to substance be joined the simple idea of a certain dull whitish colour, with certain degrees of weight, hardness, …
Locke says people are ignorant because they lack the simple ideas they need; humans only receive ideas from sensation and reflection, which may be far less than other beings could have.
FIRST, There are some things, and those not a few, that we are ignorant of, for want of ideas. First, all the simple ideas we have are confined (as I have shown) to those we receive from corporeal objects by sensation, and from the operations of our own minds as the objects of reflection. But how much these few and narrow inlets are disproportionate to the vast whole extent of all beings, will not be hard to persuad…