The document discusses John Locke's views on ideas and knowledge. It explains that for Locke, ideas are either simple or complex. Simple ideas are basic perceptions, while complex ideas are combinations of simple ideas or ideas of relations. Locke also distinguishes between primary qualities that are inherent in objects, like shape, and secondary qualities, like color, that are subjective perceptions. Knowledge comes from perceiving the relationships between ideas through intuition, demonstration, or sensory experience.

3. John Locke

8. Connection and agreement,
or disagreement and
repugnancy,
of the ideas humans form.

9. ---fundamental questions
about how we think and
perceive, and it even
touches on how we express
ourselves through
language, logic, and
religious practices--

10. -to discover where our ideas
come from, to ascertain what it
means to have these ideas and
what an idea essentially is, and
to examine issues of faith and
opinion to determine how we
should proceed logically when

11. - human beings cannot have
ideas in their minds of which they
are not aware, so that people
cannot be said to possess even
the most basic principles until
they are taught them or think
them through for themselves.

12. - human beings differ greatly in
their moral ideas, moral
knowledge must not be innate.

13. - God is not a universally
accepted idea and that his
existence cannot therefore be
innate human knowledge.

14. • Simple Ideas are those that cannot
be further analyzed into simpler
components
• For example, if your friend does not
know what the color green is, you
would have to show them a green
object, because you cannot further
define green.
• These simple ideas are generally

15. • Complex Ideas are:
1. Compounds of simple ideas
2. Ideas of relations
3. Abstractions

16. • Primary qualities are characteristics that are
necessarily contained within objects
• Such as: solidity, extension, figure, motion/rest, and
number
• Secondary qualities are qualities that are not
contained within objects, but are sensations
produced by the primary qualities
• Such as: color, sound, taste, smell, etc.

17. • According to Locke, our ideas of primary
qualities are correct ideas. That is, the
ideas in our mind correctly represent the
way the world is.
• My perception that the desk in front of me is
a rectangle is correct, because the idea of a
rectangle in my head lines up with how the
atoms (or corpuscles for Locke) are arranged
to make up that desk – in the shape of a
rectangle. Reality matches the idea in my

18. • On the other hand, the ideas we have of
secondary qualities are not “correct” in the same
way primary qualities are “correct:” they do not
necessarily match the external world.
• Locke says, “The ideas of primary qualities of bodies
are resemblances of them, and their patterns do
really exist in the bodies themselves, but the ideas
produced in us by these secondary qualities have no
resemblance to them at all. There is nothing like our
ideas existing in the bodies themselves.” John
Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

19. • In other words, we may see grass as being
“green,” but there is no “greenness” innate in the
substance [atoms/corpuscles] that makes up the
grass. There are patterns that create the idea of
“greenness” in our minds, but the matter itself is
colorless.

20. - proposes that knowledge is built
up from ideas, either simple or
complex. Simple ideas combine
in various ways to form complex
ideas.

21. There are two types of
experience,
1. Sensation- the mind
experiences the world outside
the body through the five
senses.
2. Reflection - the mind turns

22. Locke divides simple ideas
into four categories:
1. Ideas we get from a single
sense, such as sight or taste;
2. Ideas created from more than
one sense, such as shape and
size;

23. 3. Ideas emerging from
reflection; and
4. Ideas arising from a
combination of sensation and
reflection, such as
unity, existence, pleasure, pai
n, and substance.

24. Locke divides complex ideas
into four basic types:
1. modes, which are ideas that
do not exist in and of
themselves, such as
qualities, numbers, and other
abstract concepts;

25. 2. substances, either selfsubsisting things (such as a
particular man or a sheep) or
collections of such things (an
army of men or a flock of sheep);

26. 3. relations, such
as father, bigger, and morally
good; and
4. abstract generals, such as
“man” or “sheep” in general.

28. Everything that exists in the
world is a particular “thing.”
(Abstract General Ideas)

29. - it would be too hard to
remember a different word for
every particular thing that
exists, having a different word for
everything that exists would
obstruct communication, and the
goal of science is to generalize

30. Natural Weaknesses of
Language
1. A word may imply a very
complex idea.
2. The ideas that words stand
for may have no constant
standard anywhere in nature

31. 3. The standard that ideas refer
to may not be easily known
4. The meaning of a word and
the real nature of the thing
referred to by the word may not
be exactly the same.

32. Abuses of language
1. People often use words
without really knowing what
these words mean
2. People use words
inconsistently

33. 3. People purposefully make
terms obscure by using old
words for new and unusual uses
or by introducing new terms
without defining them.
4. People mistakenly believe that
words refer to things rather than

34. 5. People try to use words
incorrectly to change their
meaning
6. People assume that others
know what they are saying when
they are not really being clear.

35. 1. Never use a word without
having a clear idea of what it
means
2. Try to recognize the same
meaning for words as others
do so that we can
communicate with a common

36. 3. If there is the slightest chance
that the meaning of your words
will be unclear, define your terms
4. Always use words consistently.

37. Knowledge is what the mind is
able to perceive through
reasoning out the connection, or
lack of connection, between any
two or more of our ideas.

38. Agreement and Disagreement
that reason can perceive to
produce knowledge:
1. identity (blue is blue) and
diversity (blue is not yellow)

39. 2. relation (two triangles with
equal bases located between the
same two parallel lines are equal
triangles)
3. coexistence (iron is always
susceptible to magnets)

40. 4. realization that existence
belongs to the ideas themselves
and is not in the mind (the idea of
God and of the self).

41. Degrees of Knowledge
1. Intuition, when we
immediately perceive an
agreement or disagreement the
moment the ideas are
understood.

42. 2. Demonstration, which
requires some sort of proof.
3. Sensitive knowledge, which
is about the existence of an
external world, roughly
resembling the world as we
perceive it.

43. Degrees of Knowledge
1. Intuition, when we
immediately perceive an
agreement or disagreement the
moment the ideas are
understood.