HCJ 2 - Seminar on John Locke - Tabula Rasa

Locke is adamant that all idea comes from experience, be it external stimulus or introspection. He argues that the depth and breadth of stimuli, and the amount of reflection a person performs on their collected experiences of these sensible qualities prove to 'furnish the mind with ideas about its own operation.' He rejects the idea of innateness and says that all children are born as blank slates (tabula rasa), ready to assimilate knowledge through life experience.

In this, he is suggesting that all men are born equal; it is simply your environment, and your capacity to be thoughtful, that creates difference.


It's pretty much just the same old 'nature or nurture' debate that permeates through modern psychology. 

We debated this in the seminar, and there seemed to be a split between those who agreed with Locke on the whole and those who argued that some innateness must be inherent somewhere or else things that we take for granted are unexplainable, like the emergence of language.


Language


Someone, somewhere must have had an original thought at some point to call a tree a tree for example, and although the word for 'tree' is not universal the concept of a tree is. Every language in the world would have a word for tree, and by pointing at the object and repeating the word the meaning would be understood. This however could just be arbitrary labelling - it could also be argued that language is a tool used as a means to an end, and that no label ascribed to anything has innate qualities inexorably linking it to its object, the label is simply socially agreed upon. If that is the case then the words for certain things are merely a reflection of power or social prestige and not due to an innate prompt in our mind.

Genius


Surely, the works of Michelangelo or Shakespeare are demonstrations of original thought? Thought that could not have been formed just by consequence of Locke's two paths of sensation and reflection, as the ideas of a genius seem to deviate so heavily from the general population.


Could the life experiences of a genius really be the root of their inspiration, or is it their capacity for reflection that happens to be much greater than the next man? Neither explanation was enough for everyone, and again the notion of innate brilliance came up. The developments in modern psychology certainly seem to show that levels of activity in specific parts of the brain differ from birth, which shows that nobody is born equal from an objective standpoint.


It is a fact of life that some people are predisposed to be smarter/calmer/happier than the next person, even when taking nurture out of the equation. Which brings up the question of why identical twins can sometimes be so different in their attitude towards life - they've got the same genetics, so therefore should have the same capacity for self-reflection - it is perhaps their slightly differing life experiences that makes then into completely different people. 

Personally, I believe - like most linguists when discussing language acquisition - an on-the-fence position is the only one to take.


Just like both nature and nurture play their own role in human development, so do innateness and experience in the development of the mind.

Crappy seminar notes. You're welcome.

This is a step by step breakdown of John Locke's seminal work, and what I think he meant in each instance. I could be on the mark. I could have gotten it hideously wrong. You decide!

Of Ideas in general, and their Original.

1. Idea is the object of thinking – thinking is a means to an end. Here Locke asks how we come to label certain entities and concepts. Acknowledges the theory of innate knowledge; flirts with the idea of dismissing it right out and instead opts to 'appeal to the readers own observation and experience'

2. All ideas come from sensation and reflection – Experience is how we come by 'all the furnishing' of our mind. Observation and reflection.

3. The objects of sensation one source of ideas - sensible qualities i.e. colour taste sound convey to the mind certain perceptions. This is what Locke calls sensation.

4. The operations of our minds, the other source of them – Locke describes reflection, ideas that the mind has collected that the soul considers. The source of doubt, reasoning, knowing and believing. It is just like sensation except there is no external material working on the mind.

5. All our ideas are of the one or the other of these – Ideas owe their existence to both external objects, which kit out the mind with 'sensible' qualities and self-reflection, where the mind further furnishes it with 'ideas about its own operation.' Locke inquires whether the reader can think of any idea of their own which has not came to be in this way.

6. Observable in children – Children are essentially the white paper he speaks of in the beginning. Argues that without experience, you cannot have knowledge of a concept – a child kept in a black or white room for all of their life will be unable to perceive of scarlet or green, like trying to describe what colour is to a blind person

7. Men are differently furnished with these, according to the different objects they converse with – People have a different conception of thoughts due to their interaction with external stimulus and their own capacity to reflect. To furnish their mind with a variety of ideas, men must 'converse' with a variety of objects, and have periods of self-reflection. Cogent ideas of a concept require attention or the idea will be vague – example of a man walking past a clock every single day and only having a confused idea of the pieces

8. Ideas of reflection later, because they need attention – understanding must turn inward upon itself for deep thought. Describes how lots of people walk around in a haze, not paying much attention or making time for reflection. How children take years to reach the point of profound thought due to not knowing how to reflect on their own mind's operations. He excuses this by every sensation being new and sensually demanding for children; they cannot be expected to take real notice then reflect upon these furnishings in a constantly changing landscape.

9. The soul begins to have ideas when it begins to perceive – Locke argues that perceptions and thinking are the same thing, because the soul is 'inseparable from thinking as the soul is from the body.' He also suggests that the beginning of a man's ability to perceive is the beginning of his soul.

10. The soul thinks not always; for this wants proofs – Locke just doesn't know whether you can claim that you have a soul before some organisation in the mind, and even says that he doesn't want to have anything to do with it. Fair enough. Also says that a soul that's constantly thinking is like a body constantly moving. Constant thought is a privilege reserved for Big G. Debates whether constant thought (just some, not deep) is necessary or not for a soul, and it is perhaps a matter of perception in the first place. He claims you cannot have fully formed thoughts without being sensible – that is, having concious knowledge of it.
    
    
11. It is not always concious of it – Backpedals in explaining the nature of dreams. The condition of being awake is thinking in the soul of a man. Locke rejects the notion that someone could be happy or sad in their unconscious hours purely because that's it – they're not awake, not concious to feel these internal sensations and think about them. Questions whether you are the same person when you sleep. The awake man consists of two persons, body and soul.

12. If a sleeping man thinks without knowing it, the sleeping and waking man are two persons – Locke solidifies his sentiment in the point above. Sleeping people are certainly available to the perceptions that waking people have – they just have no knowledge of this. If the soul can think, then the body has no knowledge of this while you are asleep. He poses that the soul only thinks when the body is asleep, and vice versa, and that they are almost unaware of each other, lending weight to Locke's 'the soul and body and separate persons' device. He goes on to say that identity is a big problem if you consider 'constant flux of particles in our body' and the souls attachment to them, and that it is almost impossible to claim that a man is the same man one moment to the next.
    
    
13. Impossible to convince those that sleep without dreaming, that they think – notes that you cannot wake a sleeping person and ask them what they were thinking about.
    
    
14. That men dream without remembering it, in vain urged – Locke just doesn't like the idea that the soul could busy itself with thinking and not deposit any memory of the act into the body. Again he asks how men can spend several hours 'thinking' and have no memory of it at all.
    
    
15. Upon this hypothesis, the thoughts of a sleeping man ought to be most rational – Locke compares the soul to a looking-glass; receiving a variety of images but retaining no information. He calls what the soul does a useless sort of thinking, to think so often and not aid the furnishes of the mind. Refutes the idea of separate persons. He again says that he sees it as a waste; the capability of the soul for breadth of thought and yet anything it produces will not be remembered.
    
    
16. On this hypothesis, the soul must have ideas not derived from sensation or reflection, of which there is no appearance – Locke says that the incoherent and confusing glimpses of perception you may retain from a dream are inconsistent with a perfect being. Maybe it's the body which imposes rational thought on the soul.
    
    
17. If I think when I know it not, nobody else can know it – Locke assumes that dreams are in fact a collection of waking ideas, strewn together. He questions whether or not infants, which have had no sensation can dream, and if that is the case then the scope of dream-thought would be removed from both sensation and reflection. Again he gets asks why the soul decides not to share it's musings with the waking man. He concludes that either memory is something that belongs to the material body only, and things derived from the waking world, or that the memory of the soul's musings belongs to the soul and is therefore inaccessible to the man.
    
    
18. How knows any one know that the soul always thinks? - impossible to prove that men/the soul can think without perceiving it to think. Dismisses claims that it does as simply working to serve another hypothesis, but allows the idea that the soul can think but the body cannot remember as he has mentioned before.
    
    
19. "That a man should be busy in thinking, and yet not retain it the next moment" – improbable, as Locke says. For this to be true, the soul and person would be separate and therefore two persons, which he has previously refuted. He is irritated by the semantics of the claim 'that a man thinks always, but is not always concious of it,' likens it to 'a body [being] extended without parts' and 'a man is always hungry, but does not always feel it.'
    Locke is adamant that the perception of hunger exists in the sensation, in the same way that thought exists in conciousness. To say that the soul always thinks, when everyone spends a good chunk of their lives in a state of unconsciousness is to say it without base because there is no experience of their own or anyone else's thoughts. To define the soul as 'a substance that always thinks' is to suggest to many people that they are soulless, as they spend a lot of time not thinking when they're asleep.
    
    
20. No ideas but from sensation and reflection, evident, if we observe children - rejection that the soul can think independently without the faculties and sensory information that the mind has gathered through experience.
    
    
21. State of a child in the mother's womb – new born babies don't really demonstrate much thinking or reasoning. 'It is hard to imagine that the rational soul should think so much, and not reason at all.' They spend all their time asleep, apart from tending to urgent matters like expressions of hunger or discomfort. Locke proposes that the state of a foetus is like that of a vegetable, and no need for perception or thought with very little sensory input that would be the womb.
    
    
22. The mind thinks in proportion to the matter it gets from experience to think about – 'thinks more, the more it [the child] has matter to think on' the child comes to know more about the world through repeated exposure, and experience. The mind improves and hones its ability to reason in degrees.
    
    
23. A man begins to have ideas when he first has sensation – the key of Locke's ideas here. A man cannot have an original thought without some sensory input in which to frame this thought; impressions or motion produce perception in one's understanding.
    
    
24. The original of all our knowledge – The mind gathers information through sensation. The mind organises the sensations it has experienced through rational reflection. He says that the mind is equipped to receive and perceive all sorts of information, whether it be extrinsic (outside, material stimulus) or intrinsic (the mind examining itself.) He states that without this basic groundwork of the most simple germination of a single idea, the complex ones would be impossible to conceive of.
    
    
25. In the reception of simple ideas – nobody can passively accept an idea into their mind. Perception is inevitable and natural, and understanding can be skewed from our own sensory input. The transmission of an idea is easy, but the meaning can be altered not by the act of the transmission but by the way in which we interpret it. Maybe. Not sure about this one.