 So recall the project so far. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, they're all trying to explain everything. And all three of them help themselves to some kind of notion of form, or universals. Socrates started the game, Plato expanded on it and said that all universals are form and they're separately existing independent things that are more real than the particular things. Aristotle didn't quite agree with Plato. He tried to give an account where there is some kind of explanation of everything. Where Plato appealed to a form and specifically being as a form, Aristotle appealed to substance. And for him what explained everything is substance. Now there's still form and there's still matter, but the form is an independent of substance. It constitutes substance. So that's roughly what Socrates played on Aristotle were trying to do. Now there are lots of philosophers out there in history, we're going hundreds of years past them. There are lots of philosophers that try to carry on this project and are still trying to provide some kind of reality and some kind of objectivity to universals, to form, to definition, to essence. Trying to preserve some way for there to be the truth. Regardless of what people think the truth is, they want it to be out there. So one group of philosophers, they're usually called the rationalists, were also carrying on this project and they thought that the universals were innate, they somehow have them from the beginning. So Plato has some notion like this with the soul separately existing before birth and after death that is somehow merged or is in contact with the form, with all these universals. And we spend the rest of our life, after we're born, the trauma of birth causes us to forget all these forms and so we spend the rest of our life recollecting form. Remember Socrates' distinction between inspection and interpretation. You have inspection and that's what you get from the senses. And then there's interpretation, that's the essence of the definition. He thought you got this through dialectic. And he thought, you know, probably maybe he thought that somehow this was already within you. And Plato thought this was true too. So you recollect the universals. He had his four levels of knowledge. He had imagining belief and this corresponds to Socrates' inspection and that's the empirical thing. You have thinking and perfect intelligence and that's knowledge of the forms. And you get that through recollection. Aristotle didn't appeal to something quite like that. He has this mysterious phrase called recognition. So you recognize form through, you know, you start with the knowledge of the empirical. These are his categories. You have all these categories and that's knowledge of the matter. But knowledge of the form was something different. And you recognize form for Aristotle. It doesn't go to a whole lot of details what this is like. The rationalists take on this project and they say that that knowledge of the forms of these universals is innate. That means within your mind. It's already present there somehow. You have to dig it up. You may not be immediately conscious of it, but it's already there. So John Locke is rejecting any idea of innate ideas. He and several others we're going to look at are called empiricists. Empiricists claim that all knowledge, every last bit of it, is from the senses, is empirical. So where Socrates made a distinction between inspection and interpretation, Locke is going to say it's all inspection, even form. He's going to try and pull this off. Say even form or even universals in whatever shape they may be are from the empirical. And where Plato makes a distinction between imagining and belief on the one hand and thinking in perfect intelligence on the other, Locke's going to say it's all imagining and belief. It all comes from the empirical. There are no innate ideas. So to argue this point, what he tries to do is provide an alternate explanation to innate ideas. Because it is a real question where we have these knowledge of the universal, where this knowledge of the universal comes from. Because it's not empirical knowledge. Up to this point, 2 plus 2 equals 4 doesn't contain any empirical content. We did this in class. The universal of tree doesn't look like any particular tree. Universal square, the definition or essence of square is not any particular square. So Locke has a real challenge here, trying to explain knowledge of these universals without appealing to any ideas. And his approach is to try to give an account of all these universals, try to give an account of all this by starting with and ending with empirical knowledge. He thinks if he can do this, then there's no need to appeal to these strange forms that are just floating out there that are somehow part of reality but are not anything that we can interact with. And that's his project, that's his project. He's going to try to give an account of truth, of universals, essences, these sorts of things without appealing to anything non-empirical. And his metaphor for this, his starting point for this is talking about the mind. And for him, the mind is a blank slate, just like this wall. It's blank. It has nothing written on it. And Locke says through the process of experience, our mind is filled up, filled up with knowledge. So let's take a look at this step by step. And hopefully, we can fill up our blank slate. So to begin, we're going to start with a little bit of Locke's metaphysics. He doesn't do too much compared to, say, Aristotle and Plato. But he does give us a little bit about what exists. And by starting with this notion of what exists, he's going to try and fill in the details of his epistemology. Epistemology is the study of knowledge. So Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, didn't make a huge distinction between metaphysics and epistemology. It's kind of wrapped up into one. Ashleson de Peer says, do more to have this distinction between, and instead do more as far as epistemology is concerned without trying to do too much metaphysics. So for Locke, he's not going to say there's only two things that exist, but he's going to start with two things that do exist. And one is ideas, and the other is qualities. Ideas are simply what we perceive in our mind. Simply what we perceive in our mind. So you're seeing the monitor right now and you perceive images in your mind. So color, shape, you perceive the sound of my voice. And when these are taken into your mind through the senses, you are able to perceive these ideas within your mind. So that's ideas. Ideas are what you perceive in your mind. The second thing he deals with are qualities. Qualities are in objects. Qualities are in objects. So your monitor has certain qualities right now that is producing the colors that you see. And the speakers have certain qualities, or your earbuds want to do, they have certain qualities that produce the sounds that you hear. Now the qualities are in the objects. Qualities are not the ideas, the distinction between ideas and qualities. Ideas are in your mind, what you perceive in your mind. Qualities are in the objects. Now as it stands, it's a pretty minimal metaphysics, but that's not a bad thing. He's not trying to contest a whole lot about what these things are, but it's real intuitive that there is this distinction. Even going back to Socrates the Plato, this distinction was there. We start talking about the difference between particular objects and universals. Universals are in our minds, particular objects are outside our minds. So Locke's kind of carrying on this project, but ideas are what are in our minds, and qualities are what are in objects. So the question is where do ideas come from? Remember Locke is trying to say we have no ideas that are just simply in us. Now our ideas are what we perceive in our mind, and there are two sources. There's an external source and an internal source of ideas. Now don't freak out yet with the internal source, I'll get to that. So the external source of ideas is really common sense. It's what you see, what you hear, what you taste, what you touch, what you smell. This source of ideas is what Locke calls sensation. Sensation is simply what you get from your five senses. Five external senses, what you get from your external sensory organs. External in the sense that they're not in the mind. The eyes are out here, the ears are here, touch is here. Touch is here. So sensation is one source of ideas, and that's what comes from the external senses. So looking at this apple here. So we have our white paper that is our mind. And through observing this apple, I have certain ideas from sensation that come from the apple. So it's red. If I were to bite into it, it's sweet, crisp, juicy. The skin is smooth. Apples are mostly liquid. So they're a little dense, a little heavy for their size sometimes. They're certainly lighter than, say, you know, salary. I think that's right, lighter than salary. So this apple here leaves certain ideas in my mind because of my experiences with the apple. So that's one source of ideas, sensation. That's the external source of ideas. There's an internal source of ideas. This is what Locke calls reflection. Now, my ideas have a certain impact on me. I can perceive myself reacting to the ideas. So looking at this idea of an apple in my mind, I become hungry. I like apples. Apples wet my appetite. It makes me hungry. I can think about craving the apple. So the idea is causing a craving. And that craving is itself an idea. The hunger is an idea. I can think about how much I like apples. I can reflect on how much I like apples. They're crisp. They're sweet. Especially Fuji apples. Fuji apples are the best. They're crisp. They're sweet. They leave a refreshing taste in my mouth. I enjoy them. These are all reactions. Passions is what Locke calls them, two ideas. So here's this idea of the apple. And it's causing all of these reactions to me, within me. Locke calls them passions. What else? I can reason with apples. I can think about apples. So I say apples are sweet. Apples are juicy. Apples are fruit. And I can perceive that reasoning. That perception of the reasoning. The perception of my thinking. The perception of how this starts my appetite and how I'm drawn to apples and I desire apples. These are all things that are happening in my head, within my head. Within my mind, I should say. And I can reflect on them. And that reflection is the perception of my reaction, the passions, to that idea. So those are ideas. So those are the two sources of ideas. Sensation when I actually look at the apple. And reflection when I perceive what impact those ideas, those sensations have on me. So we have our source of ideas. Ideas either come from sensation or reflection. Now what you notice about these ideas is both these sources, I should say, which you notice about both these sources, is that they are from experience. You experience sensations. You experience reflection. You experience reflection. You experience the hunger from the apple. The desire for the apple. The attraction to the apple. And I experience thinking how apples are fruits. How apples are desirable, this sort of thing. So that's the source of ideas. Sensation and reflection. And the source for all of that is experience. So from this, Locke is going to try and give an account of knowledge. Because knowledge is going to include even universals. Now the next step is to make a distinction between simple ideas and complex ideas. Now simple ideas are simple. Now a simple Locke does not mean that they're necessarily easily apprehended, although they are. Simple ideas are the most basic ideas. They are those ideas that compose other ideas. So this is a sense of simple in the sense we're talking about Legos. So each Lego independent is simple. But you can't break a Lego apart anymore. It probably destroys the world of physics if you break a part of Lego. So you have that simple, most smallest part. That's the Lego. That's simple, the individual one. It's when you put together models or objects or play things with Legos that you suddenly have a complex object. Well think of each kind of sensory input as simple. So before I had my red apple, that was red. Red is a simple idea. Another simple idea is its taste. Sweet. That's another simple idea. If I had the fridge, it's cool. Cool is another simple idea. So these individual ideas by themselves are simple. Smooth, hard, pretty much any way you can start breaking apart the content of your sensations, that's a simple idea. Now that's the starting point of knowledge for content, our simple ideas. And from these pieces, we're going to get complex ideas. So I started talking about simple ideas. So now let's look at complex ideas. Now complex ideas come from the activity of the mind. You mind can do many, many things. You can draw attention to a certain object. You can draw attention to a certain part of the object. Now I said simple ideas are those ideas that can't be broken down anymore. So thinking about my apple again, I can concentrate on the red, but I can't break red down anymore. And I can think about the sweetness, but I can't break sweetness down. These ideas are what come together for the idea of apple. Now that's the first act of the mind. The first act of the mind is bringing ideas together into one object. So I combine the red of the apple, the sweetness, the juiciness, its density, even my own reflections on the apple, how much I like it, how much I like it, how much I enjoy the taste, how much I hunger for apples, this sort of thing. I put all that together in that apple. So that's the first act of the mind, is bringing these ideas together. And this is the first complex kind of idea. The first complex idea is from this act of bringing the ideas together and this complex idea is these simple ideas come from that object. So from the first act of the mind, I bring simple ideas together for one object. The second act of the mind, so the first idea is combining simple ideas. The second act of the mind is comparing two or more ideas, whether they're simple or complex. So I might think about this apple, I've been using this apple, and I might even think about another apple. Now you notice with this apple, with the second apple, it's more red. So for the second act of the mind, is comparing two ideas together. In this case that this apple, the second apple is more red than the first apple. Is more red is a relation. So by comparing these two ideas, this is the second act of the mind. Now I can compare simple ideas, I can compare complex ideas. So I might think about the idea of fruit. So I think about, not fruit, but I think about apple and orange. And I put these two ideas together. I have my simple ideas about the orange. It's the color of the orange, again it's sweet but it's tart. It has a different texture, it's still kind of heavy. The surface of the skin is still smooth but it has those little pores and little dotted little holes in it. So I have those two ideas, so I can relate the idea of apple. So I take the idea of apple and I compare it to the idea of orange. And I have this kind of relation. And that relation, even from that relation, I can start thinking about how they're similar. Not only how they're different, but how they're similar. I could do the same thing with two apples. So I can think about how the apples are similar. I can compare my apples to my orange, or oranges. And I can think about how they're similar and also how they're different. Now this is still an act of the mind. I'm still moving around these ideas on my mind. And by reflection I perceive this action. So still, even with the first act of the mind the first act of the mind by bringing together ideas from one object and the second act of the mind by putting them side by side and comparing them this is still my perception, my experience of what I'm doing with my mind to these ideas. So with luck we're still drawing upon experience. So we have a third act of the mind. First act was bringing together ideas. Second act was setting two ideas apart, two ideas next to each other and comparing them. The third act is separating ideas. So we're thinking about our apples and oranges here. We've got our apples and oranges. Like I said, when I'm put two apples side by side I notice there's similarities and there are some differences. When I put an apple next to an orange I still note some similarities. I know some differences, but there are still some similarities. The seed, the skin, the kind of juice it is, how it grows on their respective trees so on and so forth. And the tree is another idea. I gained that from experience. Seeds are an idea. I gained that from experience. Growth is an idea. I gained that from experience. But I can separate these ideas from the objects. So thinking about my fruit here, thinking about my apple here, I separate those ideas that I recognize as apple. The skin, the flesh, the seeds, the colors, the sweetness all of it. So I can separate those ideas from the individual apples that I'm looking at and I can abstract away from them to have an idea of apple. Now again, this idea is derived from experience. My mind is acting upon the idea, separating them out, but through reflection, reflection, that's when I perceive my mind acting on it. So I have my idea of apple and I create a name for that abstraction. I call it apple just like I create a name for the abstraction of red. So I have all these. So here are a bunch of different reds. And by looking at their similarity, I say I give a name to that similarity and say that's red. All of a sudden it looks like we got universals through abstraction. We got the same thing when we're dealing with fruit. So it's a bit more abstract away from the individual simple ideas of red. But we just keep pulling out our simple ideas, red, sweet, smooth. And we could pull out even more abstraction. So skin, the skin of the apple, apples have skin, apples have this kind of flesh, they have seeds. And we spot those same similarities in oranges. Oranges have flesh, oranges have skin, oranges have seeds. The seeds are on the inside. And these abstractions, we pull out these abstractions from these objects. And now we have what looks like our definitions. And this is all still from experience. Your mind is still acting on these ideas. And through reflection, you perceive yourself doing it. And very quickly, you have something like genus and species. Very quickly, you can even start pulling out maybe even numbers. So we were dealing with numbers before. We start trying to abstract away from them. Our mind is separating that out. If that is indeed what we can do through abstraction, who knows? I'll let you figure that out. So through these three acts of the mind on our ideas, and reflecting on them, we have further knowledge. By putting the ideas together, we have this complex idea of that object. The red, the sweet, the dense. That's from that object, I call it apple. I compare that object, other objects, and I find a bunch of them that are similar, really, really similar to it. Those are other apples. That's the second act of the mind. I put those ideas together to find the similarities and the differences. And from that second act, comparing them together, I find similarity. So by the third act, I abstract away from those, and I have my generalization, my general name, apple. And by comparing apples and oranges, I have fruit. From those that have food, and so on and so forth. But again, it's all from experience. My mind is acting on these ideas, sure. But the knowledge of it, that's from reflection. And reflection is an experience. So a lot has tried to provide an account where all ideas come from, they all come from experience. And what he thinks he's done is provided an account that gets us all the universals we need. And really, it's not that dissimilar from Aristotle in some really important ways, right? Aristotle started with knowledge of the, you know, he started with experiencing the individual substances and you get the matter. From the matter, you get the form. And he still thought the form was in the substance. The form is knowledge that's distinct from knowledge of the matter. That's why you have categories and then genus and species on the other end. But, you know, we still have to start with the objects. You didn't have recollection that Plato talked about. Still, there is some sense in which you recognize, for Aristotle, you recognize the form. You recognize it in the object, whatever that's supposed to mean. But that recognition, you know, when you recognize something, that means that you already have the knowledge of it prior to seeing it. So you recognize a friend in a crowd, but the reason why you recognize a friend is because you already had that knowledge of a friend. Well, if you already have knowledge of the form before you had knowledge of the matter, well, in some sense in which the idea is innate, maybe, maybe, maybe, that's a way to understand it. Well, a lot of things he can get away from this idea with all of our knowledge coming from experience. But the experience that we have with the ideas in our mind is the result of the actions of the mind. But the actions are not the ideas themselves. The ideas come from reflection, our perception of our mind acting on them. So he thinks he's provided this account of knowledge with experience only. So there's no need to include any room for innate ideas. We have our blank slate through experience, through sensation and reflection. We have our ideas, and that's our knowledge. So, you know, Locke's not going to leave it just at that. I mean, we've got the epistemology, but he still wants to provide something of an account of the metaphysics. I mean, what's actually really out there? So, we mentioned earlier on that in Locke's metaphysics we have ideas and we have qualities. Ideas all happen up here in the mind. Qualities happen out there. Qualities happen in the objects. Now, he's not going to go into too heavy an account about matter or things like that. What he simply does talk about are primary qualities and secondary qualities. Now, primary qualities are in the object itself. In the object itself. The object cannot exist without these qualities. So think about our apple again. Here we have our apple. Now, what we've been pulling out as far as our ideas, we have some ideas from primary qualities and we have some ideas from secondary qualities. Now, notice that with this apple we can do a lot of things to this apple. So, cut it in half. Cut the apple in half. What the apple still has is weight. Still has number. Still has a structure to it. I can cut up the individual slices even more and have more slices of apple but even though slices still have those primary qualities they have to do with the body itself, with the object itself, what it weighs, what its structure is, its number, its measurements with the body itself. Those are the primary qualities. Think very Pythagorean in this way. Pythagoras talked a lot about how number constitutes everything. Well, Locke's not going too far from that. Those are the primary qualities. The secondary qualities are not really in the object. So the taste, the smell. We talked about this before, how the taste, the smell, the color, that's not in that object. That's all in our minds. The primary qualities are there. Those are really in the object. Those exist whether I perceive the object or not but the secondary qualities don't exist whether I perceive the object or not. So if I never tasted that apple there would never be any sweetness to it. That's the real big distinction for Locke. You've got the primary qualities having to do with the body itself and then the secondary qualities having to do with how we experience that body. Locke is going to say the primary qualities in some way, shape or form somehow they cause the secondary qualities. Yeah, that's true. The sweetness of the apple doesn't come from something else. It comes from the primary qualities of the apple. And it's these primary qualities that are going to make the apple you know it's going to account for the apple's reality. The primary qualities are what are in the apple not in our minds. So there's still some sense of objectivity some sense of knowledge or truth and dependent of what we believe in the apple. So we have this distinction between primary qualities and secondary qualities and the primary qualities are in the thing and the secondary qualities are basically in us. So another way of thinking about this might even be the difference between a description of an element using its atomic structure and the number of protons, neutrons and electrons or even in chemistry if we describe an element or a substance in terms of its chemical composition that's one kind of knowledge and that's knowledge of its primary qualities you know it's number it's how many of the elements are in there and the elements are defined or described in terms of you know the protons, neutrons, electrons and all these other things. So those are the primary qualities think very geometric. If you put a number to it that's the primary quality. Ceremony qualities are the sensations so it wouldn't be so much what you get from physics as you get from say culinary school, right? Or even aesthetics those would be the secondary qualities. Now the secondary qualities still depend upon the primary qualities but that would be the difference between them. Well the question remains where these qualities are? So we have these qualities and they're in the object but what's there? Now log is going to appeal to Aristotle at this point he's going to say if you want to know you know you want to know an object you describe in terms of primary qualities and secondary qualities but there's still something in which these qualities have to exist in and he calls this substance. So I can look at this apple here I have my apple and I can list the primary qualities and I can list the secondary qualities but these things don't exist just independently they don't just float around they have to exist in something and he calls this substance again barring from Aristotle you might even be able to draw a parallel between form and matter with a lock you know the form would be the primary qualities the matter would be the secondary qualities strange your comparisons have been made and both these primary qualities and secondary qualities exist in substance that one so if I want to know that substance I describe it in terms of its primary qualities and secondary qualities simple so we have our knowledge of that apple and it's in that substance but what about our knowledge of apple our knowledge of substance what is that? it's an interesting problem though that lock recognizes so we have this idea that substance is what primary qualities and secondary qualities exist in but what does that mean? well we have a clear and distinct idea of something like I have my apple here I have my clear and distinct idea of my apple then I can describe it in terms of its primary qualities and secondary qualities which I had earlier I have my description here now the problem is so here's the idea if I can know something then I can describe it in terms of primary qualities and secondary qualities alright ok so what are the primary qualities and secondary qualities of substance in general? well there aren't any substance in general has no primary qualities I can give the primary qualities and secondary qualities of that apple sure but you know I can't give the primary qualities and secondary qualities of anything just all things there are all kinds of weights and measurements for all things all things have all varieties of secondary qualities so if I'm trying to give an account of substance in general I have to give an account of everything in terms of everything primary qualities and secondary qualities well I can't do that it's impossible so I don't have any clear and distinct idea of substance in general I can have a clear idea of that substance that apple but in general no can't do it and this raises an interesting question for Locke and we see this pop up with Plato and Aristotle before everybody's trying to give their account of everything everybody's trying to give their account of what really exists and when it comes to describing what really exists to give that definition of what really exists we can't do it so this leads to the same problem that Socrates, Plato and Aristotle do and Locke can't escape it either he recognizes it to his credit he recognizes it but giving an account of everything of what's really real doesn't look like Locke thinks he can do it at least he's honest