John Locke and George Berkley

John Locke and George Berkley

  • Submitted By: frank007
  • Date Submitted: 03/06/2009 12:24 AM
  • Category: Philosophy
  • Words: 555
  • Page: 3
  • Views: 721

John Locke and George Berkley are two well known philosophers who have different opposing views. John Locke believes that an idea is based on primary qualities and secondary qualities. According to John Locke it is "any kind of mental content" that can include sensations, such as blue, hot, soft, sour, and operations, such as believing, willing, and reasoning. On the other hand, George Berkley states "to be is to be perceived" and "everything exists as a perception in a mind." This means that if you have an idea, the object or thing exists only as a perception, as an idea, not as a thing in a material world. Everything exists as a perception in a mind.
Looking back to Philosophical Questions: Classical and Contemporary Reading, John Locke and George Berkeley believed it was through experience and not reasons that we have any knowledge of reality. It was soon to be clear that Berkeley differed radically with Locke concerning what sort of reality is revealed within experience. Berkeley also believed Locke had not been a consistent enough empiricist and so Berkeley resolved to carry the theory of empiricism to its logical conclusions.

John Locke believed that it was obvious that experience gives us knowledge which enables us to deal successfully with the world external to our minds. Locke argues that the ideas are typically thought to be innate, such as logical principles or ethical notions, which are actually derived from experiences. Ideas point out in a way in which we humans recognize things from the surrounding world. It has primary qualities, which would be: mass, motion or rest, number, and figure. John Locke also believed in secondary qualities that exist in the mind which would be known as our sensation. Locke also believes that we create our own ideas because we are born with no innate qualities, and a blank slate of mind. All we know is that we exist. Everything that we obtain from both qualities makes our own ideas.
According to Philosophical...

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