The concurrent reasons Locke offers, then, are not intended to provide a decisive defeat of the skeptic as part of a proof of the external world. Our passivity in sensation and the coherence of our sensation seem to call out for explanation. We can know that there is an external world but not much, if anything, about the nature of the world itself. Our ideas of things, whether particular individuals or kinds of things, also represent mind-independent reality. This is an idea of reflection. John Locke's Epistemology 5 Pages. There are two kinds of experience, according to Locke: observation of external objects—i.e., sensation—and observation of the internal operations of the mind. Efforts to understand the place of sensitive knowledge in Locke’s epistemology as a whole lead to probing not only important questions about his definition of knowledge—such as whether it really does make all knowledge a priori—but also his philosophy of mind and accounts of representation and mental content. The class then goes into a mine, chips off chunks of rock, crush them up, and sift out more pieces of yellowish metal from the crushed stone. For example, anyone who has ideas of the colors white and black and compares those ideas immediately knows that white is not black. Such a skeptic doubts even the connection between a mind and its thought. Looking at the sun in the middle of a cloudless day, the idea of the sun is ‘stamped’ with the idea of actual sensation. The problem here can be made vivid by adopting a particular understanding of what it is for ideas to agree. It seems difficult to understand how sensitive knowledge could be less certain but nevertheless knowledge. Demonstrative knowledge, recall, is knowledge achieved by reasoning from premises. Such ideas are fit for knowledge of the external world because inferences from effects to causes is of sufficient reliability to count as knowledge. We can neither produce a sensory experience at will nor prevent ourselves from having a sensory experience at will. More generally, what do we know in cases of knowledge of the external world? An accessible general introduction to Locke’s theory of ideas. Third, Locke seems to think that the skeptic, at least in her stronger forms, is self-undermining. It is worth considering the complete passage: Now the two ideas that in this case are perceived to agree and do thereby produce knowledge are the idea of actual sensation (which is an action whereof I have a clear and distinct idea) and the idea of actual existence of something without me that causes that sensation. However, this kind of consideration can be regarded as a concurrent reason to our sensitive knowledge insofar as the mutual support of our senses is a point that can be part of a larger case in favor of the existence of an external world. We have other ideas besides simple ideas and ideas of substances, however. What, then, is the connection between the ideas perceived to agree in sensitive knowledge and how is such a connection perceived through sensory experience? Locke’s view could be more convincing if it were accompanied by a defense of his views about the purpose of our cognitive faculties. For Berkeley, ostensibly physical objects like tables and chairs are really nothing more than collections of sensible ideas. But knowledge of the external world is patently not a priori. Locke called the latter kind of experience, for which there is no natural word in English, “reflection.” Some examples of reflection are perceiving, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, and willing. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. Locke would say that such a person has demonstrated their conclusion. The connection between the idea of sensation and the idea of real existence is supposed to be the kind of a priori connection involved in intuitive and demonstrative knowledge. In fact, Locke responds to Stillingfleet’s charge by describing the ideas perceived to agree in sensitive knowledge. Locke seems to suggest in these passages that the skeptic is in some way self-undermining. You knew that the water fountain existed distinct from your mind. Some Locke scholars have attempted to reconcile Locke’s definition of knowledge with sensitive knowledge. ‘Locke on Ideas and Representation,’, Rickless, Samuel. Section three below will examine Locke’s replies to various skeptical worries to the effect we have no such knowledge. Locke calls this type of idea ideas of substances and they are complex ideas. He held that all ideas (except those that are “trifling”) can be explained in terms of experience. For any nonthinking being, esse est percipi (“to be is to be perceived”). The philosophical motivation for the assurance approach lies in taking Locke’s definition of knowledge to give knowledge an a priori nature. One might, for example, combine the visual appearance of a banana with the taste of a pineapple in imagining a ‘pineana.’ Or one might compare a fruit fly crawling on a pineapple to the pineapple itself to form the idea of the larger than relation. This reading of Locke makes his view more similar to that of contemporary externalist epistemologies which deny that having knowledge entails that one knows that one has knowledge (the so-called KK principle). Simple ideas, whether they are ideas of perception or ideas of reflection, may be combined or repeated to produce “compound ideas,” as when the compound idea of an apple is produced by bringing together simple ideas of a certain colour, texture, odour, and figure.

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