Definitions

Locke, John (1632-1704): Probably the greatest, and certainly the most influential, English philosopher, whose thought became the foundation both for classical British empiricism and for liberal democracy.

The Essay Concerning Human Understanding is a critical assessment of the origins, nature, and limits of human reason... Book I is an attack on the then widely held doctrine that men have inate knowledge of some truths, either moral or speculative, which supply us with the foundations of knowledge... Locke argues in detail in Book II, [that] we can account for all of the ideas in our minds by experience. Experience is of two sorts. There are ideas of sensation, derived from the outer senses, and ideas of reflection, which are those ideas of which we become aware by introspection, for example, thinking, believing, and willing. ...In the fourth and last book of the Essay Locke gives his positive account of knowledge... Locke sees the fundamental unit of knowledge to be that of intuition. We have immediate intuitive knowledge of our own existence. We can also know things by deduction or demonstration, for example, in mathematical calculation, where each step in the argument is intuitively certain. ...He also held that we have certain knowledge through our senses of the existence of particular physical objects that we can see, touch, etc. Where Locke differed from Descarte was in his view that we could have no certain knowledge of general truths about the world. The natural sciences could never aspire to be other than highly probable.

A Dictionary Of Philosophy. Second edition. (Pan Books 1984).