HKB
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Often appears with: reason and the intellect · perception and the senses · language, naming, and meaning · logic, method, and demonstration · sensation and reflection · mixed modes · limits of human knowledge · education and the training of the young · doubt, skepticism, and certainty · complex ideas · words and disputes · the heavens and the stars
Usually: argument (12) · detachment (5) · skepticism (3) · crisis of belief (2) · curiosity (2) · reflection (1)
“The ideas we have belonging and PECULIAR TO SPIRIT, are THINKING, and WILL, or A POWER OF PUTTING BODY INTO MOTION BY THOUGHT, AND, WHICH IS CONSEQUENT TO IT, LIBERTY.” John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 · precept
“Which we are not at all to wonder at, since we having but some few superficial ideas of things, discovered to us only by the senses from without, or by the mind, reflecting on what it experiments in itself within, have no knowledge beyond that, much less of the internal constitution, and true nature of things, being destitute of faculties to attain it.” John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 · insight
“For a man to be undisturbed in danger, sedately to consider what is fittest to be done, and to execute it steadily, is a mixed mode.” John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 · vivid
“To know whether his idea of ADULTERY or INCEST be right, will a man seek it anywhere amongst things existing? Or is it true because any one has been witness to such an action? No: but it suffices here, that men have put together such a collection into one complex idea, that makes the archetype and specific idea; whether ever any such action were committed in rerum natura or no.” John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 2 · insight
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 argues that extension and duration both consist of parts yet remain “simple” in thought, so we conceive them via common measures and clear numerical repetition.
9. All the Parts of Extension are Extension, and all the Parts of Duration are Duration. There is one thing more wherein space and duration have a great conformity, and that is, though they are justly reckoned amongst our SIMPLE IDEAS, yet none of the distinct ideas we have of either is without all manner of composition: it is the very nature of both of them to consist of parts: but their parts being all of the same…
Locke defines “specific ideas of substances” as collections of simple ideas united as one thing, illustrated with the complex idea of an Englishman’s “swan.”
noise, and perhaps, to a man who has long observed this kind of birds, some other properties: which all terminate in sensible simple ideas, all united in one common subject. 15. Our Ideas of spiritual Substances, as clear as of bodily Substances. Besides the complex ideas we have of material sensible substances, of which I have last spoken,—by the simple ideas we have taken from those operations of our own minds, w…
Locke argues that we can know nothing beyond simple ideas gained from sensation and reflection, so even body, immaterial spirits, and God are known only through those limited ideas.
32. We know nothing of things beyond our simple Ideas of them. Which we are not at all to wonder at, since we having but some few superficial ideas of things, discovered to us only by the senses from without, or by the mind, reflecting on what it experiments in itself within, have no knowledge beyond that, much less of the internal constitution, and true nature of things, being destitute of faculties to attain it. A…
Locke distinguishes real from fantastical ideas by whether they match natural reality and archetypes, then argues simple ideas are always real appearances produced by powers in things.
4. Mixed Modes and Relations, made of consistent Ideas, are real. Secondly, MIXED MODES and RELATIONS, having no other reality but what they have in the minds of men, there is nothing more required to this kind of ideas to make them real, but that they be so framed, that there be a possibility of existing conformable to them. These ideas themselves, being archetypes, cannot differ from their archetypes, and so canno…
Locke distinguishes three kinds of abstract ideas—simple ideas as adequate copies of sensory powers, substance ideas as inadequate ectypes, and modes/relations as adequate archetypes built by the mind.
Thus the mind has three sorts of abstract ideas or nominal essences: First, SIMPLE ideas, which are [word in Greek] or copies; but yet certainly adequate. Because, being intended to express nothing but the power in things to produce in the mind such a sensation, that sensation, when it is produced, cannot but be the effect of that power. So the paper I write on, having the power in the light (I speak according to th…
He claims simple ideas rarely err when checked against common names, but complex ideas—especially mixed modes—are more liable to be false because their “essences” are voluntary human constructions.
9. Simple Ideas may be false, in reference to others of the same Name, but are least liable to be so. First, then, I say, that when the truth of our ideas is judged of by the conformity they have to the ideas which other men have, and commonly signify by the same name, they may be any of them false. But yet SIMPLE IDEAS are least of all liable to be so mistaken. Because a man, by his senses and every day’s observati…
Locke argues that when truth is measured by real existence, only ideas of substances can be false, while simple ideas correspond to the powers in external objects that produce them.
13. As referred to Real Existence, none of our Ideas can be false but those of Substances. Secondly, as to the truth and falsehood of our ideas, in reference to the real existence of things. When that is made the standard of their truth, none of them can be termed false but only our complex ideas of substances. 14. First, Simple Ideas in this Sense not false and why. First, our simple ideas, being barely such perc…
Locke argues that complex ideas are definable only when their constituent simple ideas have been obtained through experience, and that terms for unknown simple ideas cannot have their meaning made known by words.
14. Complex Ideas definable only when the simple ideas of which they consist have been got from experience. Simple ideas, as has been shown, can only be got by experience from those objects which are proper to produce in us those perceptions. When, by this means, we have our minds stored with them, and know the names for them, then we are in a condition to define, and by definition to understand, the names of comple…
Locke explains that simple ideas have few classificatory steps because their lowest species contain a single simple idea, so genus and common names arise once differences are removed.
OF THE NAMES OF MIXED MODES AND RELATIONS. 1. Mixed modes stand for abstract Ideas, as other general Names. The names of MIXED MODES, being general, they stand, as has been shewed, for sorts or species of things, each of which has its peculiar essence. The essences of these species also, as has been shewed, are nothing but the abstract ideas in the mind, to which the name is annexed. Thus far the names and essences…
Locke illustrates that the word “man” answers to its nominal essence: animals may resemble humans in shape and lack or have traits like language and reason, yet only the nominal definition decides whether we call them men.
22. Our Abstract Ideas are to us the Measures of the Species we make in instance in that of Man. There are creatures in the world that have shapes like ours, but are hairy, and want language and reason. There are naturals amongst us that have perfectly our shape, but want reason, and some of them language too. There are creatures, as it is said, (sit fides penes authorem, but there appears no contradiction that ther…
Locke claims that names of simple ideas are least doubtful because they refer to single, easily grasped perceptions, unlike complex names for substances and mixed modes where hearers may mean different collections.
18. The Names of simple Ideas the least doubtful. From what has been said, it is easy to observe what has been before remarked, viz. that the NAMES OF SIMPLE IDEAS are, of all others, the least liable to mistakes, and that for these reasons. First, Because the ideas they stand for, being each but one single perception, are much easier got, and more clearly retained, than the more complex ones, and therefore are not …
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…