John Locke

philosophy

light bulb joke

Thomas Hobbes

social contract

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

famous last word

is a materialist in that since only material things can effect our sense, we can know nothing but matter.

All of which seemed to lead to the startling conclusion that since only material things can effect our sense, we know nothing but matter, and must accept a materialistic philosophy. If sensations are the stuff of thought, the hasty argued, matter must be the material of mind.

argued that the mind is a clean sheet at birth, a tabula rasa; and sense-experience writes upon it in a thousand ways, until sensation begets memory and memory begets ideas.

But Locke, good Christian, though he was, ready to argue most eloquently for "The Reasonableness of Christianity," could not accept these suppositions; he announced, quietly, that all our knowledge comes from experience and through our senses—that "there is nothing in the mind except what was first in the senses." The mind is at birth a clean sheet, a tabula rasa; and sense-experience writes upon it in a thousand ways, until sensation begets memory and memory begets ideas.

is wrong. The mind is not passive wax upon which experience and sensation write their absolute and yet whimsical will. Rather, the mind molds and coordinates.

For the mind of man (and here at last is the great thesis of Kant) is not passive wax upon which experience and sensation write their absolute and yet whimsical will; nor is it a mere abstract name for the series or group of mental states; it is an active organ which moulds and coordinates sensations into ideas, an organ which transforms the chaotic multiplicity of experience into the ordered unity of thought. But how?

had proposed to apply to psychology the inductive tests and methods of Francis Bacon

in his great Essay on Human Understanding (1689) reason, for the first time in modern thought, had turned in upon itself, and philosophy had begun to scrutinize the instrument which it so long had trusted.

, for the first time in modern thought, had turned reason in upon itself, and philosophy had begun to scrutinize the instrument which it so long had trusted.

is wrong when he said that there is nothing in the intellect except what was first in the senses.

Locke was wrong when he said, "There is nothing in the intellect except what was first in the senses";

John Locke, n.All

John Locke