John Locke Paper Essay

Throughout the 17th century, John Locke presented society with his teachings and theories that pure the straddle of natural law and fulfilled humanitys miraculous purpose for living. It all began in 1647, as a young son when he attended the prestigious Westminster School in London on a lower floor the sponsorship of Alexander Popham. During his years at the Westminster School, he found the work of modern-day philosophers more interesting than the material being taught at the university.Much of Lockes influence and later work was characterized by opposition to authoritarianism, which focused on both the level of the individual person and on the level of institutions such(prenominal) as government and church. Locke wanted each of us to use reason to search after truth rather than simply accept the judgement of authorities or be subject to superstition. He wanted us to proportion go along with the proposition to the evidence for them. Locke came to the conclusion that on that po int must be a balance and mutual sagaciousness mingled with individuality and social institutions where society will non feel conquer under man made law and restrictions.John Locke believed that all noesis comes from experience. Experience is composed of two parts outer and inhering. External experiences be ideas of supposed orthogonal bearings. These objects enter our minds through sensory faculty. Examples of sensations would be acerb, coldness, red, yellow, hard, soft, sweet and bitter. internal experiences argon reprehensions that make us understand the operation on the objects of sensation. Examples of reflections atomic number 18 thinking, willing, believing, doubting, affirming, denying, and comparing.Once a shit Locke goes back to his foundation of principles by reaffirming that in order to achieve success and sensation there must be a working relationship between individual goals and the law of society. Sensation and reflection are called the two fountains of knowledge. All of our ideas we can naturally have or have so already come from these two experiences. Sensible qualities pay off into the mind, and they produce most of the perceptions and most of the great sources of ideas we have.Sensation and reflection take issue from each other because sensation is what happens outside the body, and reflection has to do what happens at heart the body with our mind. Also reflection has to do with the ideas it affords being such whole as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself, the mind takes over its own operations and the manner of them. Besides having sore qualities one also contains primary and secondary qualities. Locke explains that these qualities are two kinds of properties that an object could have.Primary qualities contain solidity, figure, extension, motion and number. They are properties that are objective and free lance on senses. On the other hand, secondary qualities consist of color, smell, taste, sound and touch. They are properties that are subjectively perceived. In Lockes, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he states, informed qualities which, whatever reality we by mistake attribute to them, are in truth nothing in the objects themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in us (John Locke, 77).In other words, secondary qualities are dependent on the primary qualities. According to Locke, ideas are anything that is the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding (William Lawhead, 91). Locke states that sensation and reflection are classified as undecomposable and daedal ideas. Simple ideas are red, yellow, hard, soft, etc and for example, you touch an ice cube, your mind is telling you its cold and its hard, you learn that from experience. Locke believed that the mind cannot know an inexperienced idea or create a new simple idea.Although the mind cannot create simple ideas, it can process them into complex ideas. Complex ideas are made up o f several(prenominal) simple ideas, such as beauty, gratitude, a man, an army, the universe. Complex ideas are also broken down into three parts ideas of substance which is a constant collection of simple ideas, ideas of mode which is a combination of several ideas, which form a mode, like a triangle, last but not least ideas of relationship, which is a comparison of one idea to another.From experience it goes to sensation and reflection, and those are based on simple ideas and thats all contained in the passive mind, after simple ideas it goes to complex ideas and thats located in the active mind. Overall in Lockes theory he uses epistemological dualism, which is the mind that consists of knowing and its ideas. He also states the object in the external world is known by ideas, and our ideas represent those objects. After researching about Lockes theory of knowledge I would have to agree with what he has tell.Locke states that you go through an internal and external experience and I feel that todays youth do go through the motions of the internal and external experiences. As a result the youth are able to gain the knowledge from those experiences by allowing the mind to willingly accept these new ideas. For example, when I was younger I put my hand near a hot stove and from the heat irritating and pressuring my hand my mind told me it was a disconfirming stimuli and it was essential to remove my hand from the stove and to keep that memory as a basic instinct.Society goes through experiences throughout life of internal and external and eventually gains knowledge through these experiences. John Locke also stated that the mind does all the knowing and its ideas are known. I agree with what he is saying because your mind is always working, its always active, we receive ideas internally through our mind and we receive ideas from the outside that goes into our mind. The balance is necessary between internal and external factors to keep society and individuals st able and yet modernized to adapt to new changes that rise up.