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Basic
Assumptions
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- If we disbelieve everything because we cannot certainly
know all things we shall do . . . as wisely as he who would not use his
legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly (I: i:5 )
- I suspected [on the rationalist plan] we began at the wrong
end . . .. Thus . . . extending their enquiries beyond their capacities,
and letting their thoughts wander into those depths where they can find
no sure footing, it is no wonder that they raise questions and multiply
disputes . . . never coming to any clear resolution . . . (I:i:7)
- He that in physic shall lay down fundamental maxims,
and, from thence drawing consequences and raising disputes, shall reduce
it into the regular form of a science, has indeed done something to
enlarge the art of talking and perhaps laid a foundation for endless
disputes; but if he hopes to bring men by such a system to the knowledge
of . . . the constitution, nature, signs, changes, and history of
diseases . . . [he] takes much [the same] course with him that should
walk up and down in a thick wood, overgrown with briars and thorns, with
a design to take a view and draw a map of the country. (241)
- I thought the first step towards satisfying the several
enquiries the mind of man was very apt to run into was to take a survey
of our understandings, examine our own powers, and see to what things
they are adapted. (I:i:7)
- [Idea] being that term which, I think, best
serves to stand for whatsoever is the object of understanding when a man
thinks, I have used it to express whatever is meant by phantasm, notion,
species, or whatever it is which the mind can be employed about
in thinking . . . (I:i:8)
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Attack
on
Innate
Ideas
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- [Newton] demonstrated several propositions, which are so
many new truths before unknown to the world, and are further advances in
mathematical knowledge: but, for the discover of these it was not the
general maxims "what is is"; or "the whole is bigger than
a part," or the like that helped him. (IV:vii:11)
- [O]ur idea of sameness is not so settled and clear as to
deserve to be thought innate in us. (I:ii:4)
- No proposition [or idea] can be said to be in the mind
which it never yet knew, which it was never yet conscious of. (I:ii:5)
- It would suffice to convince unprejudiced readers of the
falseness of this supposition [innate ideas] if I should only show . . .
how men, barely by the use of their natural faculties, may attain to all
the knowledge they have without the help of any innate impressions; and
may arrive at certainty without any such original notions and or
principles. (I:ii:1)
- And if they . . . carry the notion of excellency,
greatness, or something extraordinary . . . the idea is likely to sink
the deeper, and spread the farther; especially if it be an idea . . .
naturally deducible from every part of our knowledge, as that of a God
is. (I:ii:9)
- [W]e have no such clear idea at all, and therefore
signify nothing by the word substance, but only an uncertain
supposition of we know not what, i.e., of something whereof we have no
particular and distinct positive idea, which we take to be the
substratum, or support, or those ideas we do know.
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Empiricism:
All Ideas
Derive
From
Experience
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- Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper,
void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished?
.... To this I answer in one word, from experience. (II:i:2)
- The great source of most of the ideas we have, depending
wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I call
sensation. (II:i:3)
- By reflection . . . I would be understood to mean that
notice the mind takes of its own operations, and the manner of them.
(II:i:4)
- The better to understand the nature, manner, and extent
of our knowledge, one thing is carefully to be observed concerning the
ideas that we have; and that is, that some of them are simple and
some complex. (246)
- [T]here is nothing that can be plainer to a man than the
clear and distinct perception he has of those simple ideas; which, being
each in itself uncompounded, contains in it nothing but one uniform
appearance or conception in the mind, and is not distinguishable into
different ideas. (II:ii:1)
- [I]t is plain that the ideas that [perceived things]
produce in the mind enter by the senses simple and unmixed. (II:ii:1)
- I would have anyone try to fancy any taste which had
never affected his palate; or frame the idea of a scent he had never
smelt: And when he can do this, I will also conclude that a blind man
hath ideas of colours, and a deaf man true distinct notions of sounds.
(II,ii,2)
- The two great and principle actions of the mind . . .
that everyone who pleases may take notice of . . . in himself, are these
two: perception or thinking; and volition or willing.
(II:vi:2)
- When the understanding is once stored with these simple
ideas it can, it has the power to repeat, compare, and unite them, . .
.and so can make at pleasure new complex ideas. (II:ii,2)
- The use of words then being made to stand as
outward marks of our internal ideas, and those ideas being taken from
particular things, if every particular idea that we take in should have
a distinct name, names must be endless. To prevent this, the mind makes
the particular ideas received from the particular objects to become
general; which is done by considering them as they are in the mind such
appearances, separate from all other existences and the circumstances of
real existence, as time, place, or any other concomitant ideas. This is
called abstraction whereby ideas take from particular beings
become general representatives of all of the same kind, and their names
general names, applicable to whatever exists conformable to such
abstract ideas. (II:xi:9)
- Thus the same colour, being observed today
in chalk or snow, which the mind yesterday received from milk, it
considers that appearance alone, makes it a representative of all that
kind; and having given it the name whiteness, it by that sound
signifies the same quantity wheresoever it be imagined or met with: And
thus universals, whether terms or ideas, are made." (II:xi:9)
- It is the ordinary qualities observable in
iron, or a diamond, put together, that make the true complex idea of
those substances. (II:xxiii:3)
- If anyone should be asked what is the
subject wherein colour or weight inheres, he would have nothing to say,
but the solid extended parts; and if he were demanded, what is it that
solidity and extension adhere in, he would not be in a much better case
than the Indian . . . who saying that the world was supported by a great
elephant, was asked what the elephant rested on; to which his answer was
-- a great tortoise: but being again pressed to know what gave support
to the broad-backed tortoise, replied -- something he knew not what.
(II:xxiii:2)
- The idea . . . to which we give the general
name substance [is] nothing but the supposed, but unknown, support of
those qualities we find existing, which we imagine cannot exist sine
re substante, without something to support them. (II:xxiii:2)
- [W]e have as clear a notion of the substance
of spirit, as we have of body; the one being supposed to be (without
knowing what it is) the substratum of those simple ideas we have
from without; and the other supposed (with like ignorance of what it is)
to be the substratum to those operations we experiment in ourselves
within. (II:xxiii:5)
- The idea of a beginning of motion we have
only from reflection on what passes in ourselves, where we find by
experience that barely by willing it . . . we can move the parts of our
bodies. (II:xxi: 4)
- The mind [takes] notice how one [thing]
comes to an end, and ceases to be, and another begins to exist which was
not before; . . . and [concludes] from what it has constantly observed
to have been, that the like changes will for the future be made in the
same things, by like agents, and by the like ways, . . . and so comes by
that idea we call power. (II:xxi:1)
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Theory
of
Knowledge
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- [W]e have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence,
and an internal infallible perception that we are (IV:ix:3)
- In the next place, man knows, by an intuitive certainty,
that bare nothing can no more produce any real being, than it can be
equal to two right angles. (IV:ix:3)
- If, therefore, there is some real being, and that
nonentity cannot produce any real being, it is an evident demonstration,
that from eternity there has been something . . . . And
that eternal being must be most powerful. . . . This eternal
source, then, of all being must also be the source and original of all
power; and so this eternal Being must be also the most powerful.
. . . And therefore God. (IV:x:6)
- [Regarding external existence] I have not that certainty
of it that we strictly call knowledge; though the great likelihood of it
puts me past doubt, and it be reasonable for me to do several things
upon the confidence (IV:ix:9)
- And, therefore, though it be highly probable that
millions of men do now exist, yet . . . I have not that certainty of it which
we strictly call knowledge; though the great likelihood of it puts me
past doubt, and it be reasonable for me to do several things upon the
confidence that there are men . . . now in the world: but this is but
probability, not knowledge. (IV:xi:9)
- Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself, or is the
immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding, I call idea;
and the power to produce any idea in our mind I call a quality of
the subject wherein that power is. (II:viii:8)
- These I call original or primary qualities
of bodies . . . solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number.
(II:viii:9)
- Secondly, such qualities which in truth are nothing in
the objects themselves but powers to produce various sensations in us by
their primary qualities, i.e., by the bulk, figure, texture, and motion
of their insensible parts. (II:viii:10).
- It is the first act of the mind, when it has any
sentiments or ideas at all, to perceive its ideas, and so far as it
perceives them, to know each what it is, and thereby also to perceive
their difference, and that one is not another. ... By this
the mind clearly and infallibly perceives each idea to agree with
itself, and to be what it is; and all distinct ideas to disagree.
(IV:i:4)
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