Last week we considered Locke's negative argument against innatism. Locke takes innatism to be opposed to, or at least in the way of, empiricism. This week we are moving forward into Locke's positive elaboration of an empiricist philosophy of knowledge and (time permitting) philosophy of morality.
Write a brief response to just one of the following two questions (and begin your response indicating which one you are responding to, e.g. "Q1 or Question 1:").
Question 1
Locke's empiricism holds that all our knowledge (of both science and morality) comes from experience. In Book II of the Essay he will argue that there are two fountains or sources of experience: sensation and reflection (II, i, 2). It is fairly easy to see why Locke might think that sensations are only experiential. Yet his idea that reflections are experiential might strike you as strange. Or it might seem obvious to you. Briefly, in one paragraph, explain whether you agree or disagree with Locke and why.
Question 2
Concerning Locke's seemingly more unobjectionable claim that sensations come to us only from experience, we may still have questions for Locke regarding his account. That sensations are experiential helps us establish a causal story about how certain ideas come into the head from the outside world. But does this causal story help us fashion an epistemological story about how certain of our ideas are justified? In other words, does mere causation really get us all that far if what we are looking for is justification?
Those in the (b) group should click on 'comments' below to comment to this as per the class syllabus. Email me, or your TA, with any questions.
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I agree that reflections are experience because thinking seems to be a sense just like the other five, as opposed to something we 'do'. If it was something we did, we would be able to report what our next thought will be--but we can't, because it hasn't arrived yet. The only real 'doing' we seem capable of is tuning into a specific thought frequency (kinda like a radio does) such as "elephants" or "what is 2 x 4 + 5 - 1?" and observing the thought stream that comes to us.
ReplyDeleteAlthough thoughts are experience, a danger lies in equating thoughts about reality with reality itself. Obviously, someone who thinks about falling in love will still have a longing in his heart, so someone who has a thirst for wisdom can't quench it through merely thinking about profound truth.
Oops that was Q1
ReplyDeleteQ1 Just because reflections require a queue doesn't mean that they are learned through experiences. Obviously through time your perceptions become more refined because of knowledge of reality, but there is no way we could survive if it took us experiences to learn reflections. If i wasn't able to perceive or think about my environment (my reality) there is no way I could learn anything. Sure you need to train your mind to think in accordance with your experience, but retaining information is innate, unless I don't understand the meaning of reflection. Maybe I should have waited until tomorrow to post...
ReplyDeleteQ1: I agree that the two sources of experience are sensation and reflection because upon looking at my thoughts and understanding, I see that all of my original ideas are either 'objects of my senses', or 'operations of my mind.' As hard as I try, I cannot come up with a third source. For sensation to manifest itself in my mind a priori seems an absurdity because I have never had a sensation 100% accurately in my mind without experiencing it first. That reflection is the other means of experience seems obvious, but not as obvious as sensation. Getting to something by thinking alone is an experience. Descartes concluded that all he truly knew was that he was a 'thinking thing.' However, the reflection that caused him to arrive at this conclusion required certain sensations. The sensation of dreaming for instance led him to the idea that his life could be a dream and that his body might not be real. Reflection is never wholly in the present and independent of past experiences. Therefore, past actions of reflecting (and reflections in general) are obviously experiences.
ReplyDeleteBut we have those capacities for learning (perception, thinking) so that our experiences will be evaluated. We don't learn the capacities
ReplyDeleteGoing off of question two, i think Locke's complex ideas help us to justify our ideas. After we have acquired some simple ideas, such as this rock is hard and this hostess ding dong is soft, we can probably conclude that our idea that the rock can smash the ding dong is justified based on our knowledge of the properties of the two objects. Our experience also can act as a justification. Say for example i have seen, in a multitude of different occasions, what happens when something hard is put up against something soft. If the result is more in favor of the harder object smashing the softer object, i have reason to believe that my idea holds true. I can have knowledge that this causal relationship between hard and soft does not hold for any two objects sharing these properties. Through experience with hundreds of sponges, i know that even though i have the simple idea that this object is soft, i have another simple idea that a sponge is amazing and can, even after dropping a bowling ball on it, revert back to it's original shape, unlike the ding dong. Simple ideas alone may not help us justify an idea, but the reflection process after our sensory experience does enable us to piece together these simple ideas into more complex ideas so that we can arise at some form of justification for our ideas, even if at most we can say that we got these ideas from observing causal relationships between objects.
ReplyDeleteQ1: I have to agree with Locke that reflections are experiential on the basis that if we accept his belief that senses are experiential, then our reflections on those senses must be as well. As Locke says, our reflections come from the mental reworking of data in our mind. The data we are working is a result of our brains coding and storing sensory information. To me, it seems that a reflection resembles a "matured sense", in that it arose from a sense or series of senses, more than some secondary power of deduction that can act independent of coded information. That is, without the initial sensory input, we could never have arrived at a point of abstraction. The two ideas are one in the same, where the senses are the building blocks and the complex ideas that arise from them are the building itself.
ReplyDeleteIn response to what jsokolski said, i don't think we would die if we did not learn anything, which is what i assume you mean when you say "there is no way we could survive if it took us experiences to learn reflections." Other creatures in the world who lack rational thought are surviving fine, even though they do not learn. They may survive off instinct, but i think that we have already established that instinct is not learned. Why couldn't we survive off instinct alone?
ReplyDeleteAnother thought, with regards to Mike's post, i might have missed your connection between thinking and it being a sense. I do agree that thinking can be like a sense because thought and senses are something we have and both tend to be going on simultaneously without ceasing. I say this because without interference from some physical event or object, like plugging my nose or getting knocked out, sensation and reflection are always going on. I cannot tell myself to completely stop thinking, there is always something being reflected upon. But i do not understand your justification for saying thinking seems like a sense by saying that if thinking was something we did, we would know what our next thought would be. How is this so?
Q1: i agree with Locke that sensations are experiential because sensations derive from our own personal experiences. I also agree with Locke that reflections are experiential. Experience comes from things we do, making it a verb. Reflections are things we have often and sporadically. Because reflecting is a verb, I believe it to be an experience as well, a mental experience. Just because it is not a outwardly physical action does not mean it is not experiential. I see it that sensations are physical stimulations and reflections are mental stimulations, both of which are experiences.
ReplyDeleteThis is a response to Mike Elias’s post. While there are some notable similarities between Locke’s notions of “sensation” and “reflection”, we ought not be too hasty in our categorizations. This is not to say that there is no sense in which sensation is experiential. What I am suggesting is that we often times are too quick in making hard and fast distinctions, only to be confronted with deep problems and counterexamples later.
ReplyDeleteWhat Mike says is true to some extent—it does sometimes seem that we are “observers” in our thought processes. But I think most would agree that there is some important difference between what are traditionally called the “five senses” and thought—in particular, as regards “content”: there is an aspect of control there, that I think is absent with the senses. To use his example, the act of “tuning in” to a thought frequency: even if one were to grant that, after tuning in, it is a process of “observation”, the act of “tuning in”, or the decision to tune in to anything in particular, seems to be under our control in a way that it isn’t with “sensation”. At the very least, there is something more going on there that we need to pay attention to when we theorize.
Q1: Reflections in themselves are experiential because in order to have a reflection, one must come to have some sort of knowledge in what they are reflecting on. Since all knowledge is based off of some sort of experience, one might link past sensations with others to form a reflection. This process I would think would be an experience in itself because you are combining previous knowledge and your reactions to that knowledge to create newfound knowledge. Therefore, one cannot come to instigate a reflection without having previous knowledge according to previous experience. Reflections must be categorized under experiences because if they weren't experiences themselves, they couldn't be accounted for in future reflections.
ReplyDeleteQ2
ReplyDeleteAlthough I'm happy to concede to Locke's belief that sensations come to us from experience, I am worried that there is no manner in which we can verify the truth of the ideas we hold. Having recently studied relativity theory in a class on spirituality I am unable to shake the idea that the ways in which the world presents itself to the senses may vary drastically based on one's position in time and space. If one is to concede that the basic properties (specifics such as location or motion) of any physical object are relative, then the search for knowledge which can be justified universally seems that much more daunting. Although one may be able to form an understanding of on object from one's own perspective, to claim that the understanding is justified is to deny all other relative considerations of that entity.
Q1 I can't say that I completely agree with Locke, I think I agree with Mike on this one. The idea of reflection as experience seems to have some reservations about it. Reflecting on something can be an experience but they can't be equated to reality itself.
ReplyDeleteBut then it seems our unconscious has the ability to make us believe we are actually experiencing something, like in vivid dreams. We seem to "feel" the sensations. But were I to sit and try and force myself to remember what something feels like, I'd have a hard time making it as vivid as actually feeling it.
In response to Joe: "But i do not understand your justification for saying thinking seems like a sense by saying that if thinking was something we did, we would know what our next thought would be. How is this so?"
ReplyDeleteWhen thinking, you're basically aware of one thought at a time, a particular sentence for instance. Since you're only aware of one at a time, you can't tell what the next one is gonna be until it arrives. Kinda like listening to music. It's only possible to be aware of what's there at the moment, whereas if you were CREATING the thoughts, then you would know what your next thought is before you think it.
On another note, Miles's point about us being able to exercise some semblance of control over our thoughts in a more definite way than our other senses is very cool and I agree that we have control over what we focus our attention on.
(I'd even say that's THE ONLY thing over which we have control.)
:)
Q1: I'd like to begin this post by apologizing for my necessary use of terribly ambiguous terms: language is no fault of my own!
ReplyDeleteThat being said I'd like to throw my hat in with what Miles H. said and in regards to reflection being more like a sensation. It seems perfectly reasonable to describe 'reflection' or "perception of the operation of our own mind" [as B. Russell (re)described it] as an experience. But I am finding it hard to put my finger on a certain example. I blame philosophers for aiding my hesitation: for in what way is a 'reflection' like a sensation? When someone uses the word 'experience' my mind instantly holds to (figuratively speaking) the more common phenomenal understanding of sense experience. But what if I were to tell you a story: That the first time I was charged with watching a child I found myself in the position of 'Dad' adjudicating him/her for doing something 'wrong.' In a flash I charged that if he/she did not stop what he/she was doing and come inside by the time I counted to three...!!!! "Holy shit" I thought, "Did I just say that! Did I just become my dad?!" I would not hesitate in telling you that I had had two new experiences. The unbelievably trying and terrifying task of taking care of a four year old (hats off to all parents in the class) but, moreover, for the first time I had begun to consider and reflect on the conditions of my thought which lead me to play the counting-to-three game like my father (who I'm convinced cannot count to three...and if he can, I assure you, I've never heard it!). This is where I appreciate Miles careful language. Regardless of conversation on the ability to "control" "reflection" (indeed a topic all its own), the phrase "At the very least, there is something more going on there that we need to pay attention to when we theorize," captures my feelings on the matter. I want to say that 'reflection' is/can be experiential much like my ability to "sense" an "external reality," but am not willing to lump sensation and reflection together so quickly. (all pardons to Miles should I have misinterpreted his meaning)(and sorry this is so long!)
Q1: I agree with Locke that reflection is an experiential but I think that reflection is dependent upon sensation to an extent. If sensations were not present in someone at birth, what would their reflections be based on? It seems that if this was the case the mind would be unable to reflect upon anything at all.
ReplyDeleteAside such an extreme example, reflection seems to become less dependent on sensations as the “blank slate” is being filled in.
The internal operations of our minds cannot be experienced because of the lack of distance. The problem with claiming that reflection is an experience, as sensation is an experience, is that it assumes that there is an mind distant from the internal operations of the mind. [Claiming this mind inside the mind is a soul, one step removed from the mind has many problems which I do not have the time for here.] If there exists no distance between the mind and the operations of the mind, then what is happening is not an experiences but simply a re-arrangement, a mutation, an evolution of the mind. Take the example of a red ball and a blue ball colliding, now remove the idea of ‘you’ an observing, experiencing, subject from the two balls colliding, for you are the blue ball, the red ball, the space which this action happens, and even the laws that govern the collision. Everything that is happening is happening inside of you and cannot be perceived unless it is removed from you. To claim that a reflection is an experience under the same category as sensation is to claim a witnessing that is an impossibility without sufficient space.
ReplyDeleteoops... That last post was in responce to Question 1
ReplyDeleteQ1
ReplyDeleteI am inclined to agree with Locke that both sensations and reflections are experiential. While we establish some set of fundamental experiences via the senses, we can synthesize these experiences in our mind. More specifically, when two or more experiences are reflected upon, one may perform some experiment with the senses to either verify or dispel that derived notion. I think there is a very good example provided by psychology that those who are able to daydream (or otherwise manifest an alternative outcome in a form other than actually carrying it out) can have that “experience” and deal with their unresolved feelings, without having actually experienced. Given the definitions that Locke lays out for the reader, I would thus agree with him that reflection is also experiential.
Q2: Locke's claims in his epistemology that through demonstrative knowledge we can justify certainty through proofs. But as far as I can tell this only shows us we can be certain of our ideas. Ideas which are in the mind are separate from reality. It is not clear to me through Locke's causal story that is dependent on sensation and experience, which are subjective to human faculties before they can be reflected upon in the mind can lead to any certain Knowledge of the real physical world. It seems unnecessary for survival to be certain about anything. We just have to know what will probably happen when I put something in fire or water. But for Locke's foundationalist project I would think he needs to find a strong link between our ideas and the physical world. I'll assume he comes up with something further in the reading.
ReplyDeleteQuestion 1:
ReplyDeleteI am wholly convinced by Locke’s ideas of how both sensations and reflections are experiential. The ideas and thoughts that we have are of objects of our senses and/or of the operations of our mind. If we all just take a step back and ask ourselves what a liger looks like, how does it feel to sleep in, what does a rotten apple taste like, or even how we have derived the opinion that we have for Locke’s idea, then there is a good chance that our past experiences have helped us answered those questions. Without previous experience we would not be able to claim that we know the number of heads that a liger has, what a rotten apple taste like, why we have the opinions that we have, etcetera…Therefore, we gain understanding and have ideas in our heads through experiences. Through these understandings and ideas, we are able to reflect on them and derive more complex ideas.
Q1
ReplyDeleteIn response to Zach P.,
I reflected, no pun intended, on the idea of reflection (object of observation) lacking the distance to the mind (subject of observation)to qualify reflection as experiential, and it occurred to that to understand this experiential relationship better, I would take a linguistic approach and look up the word introspection, which I assume to be the type of self reflection we are discussing.
Introspection - observation or examination of one's own mental and emotional state, mental processes, etc.; the act of looking within oneself. (Oxford Online Dictionary)
Certainly different definitions of reflection exist, but the way I interpret it and I believe Locke might is that the nature of reflection is that, when reflecting, our mind divides itself into 2 realms of imagination: a realm of the abstract observer and a realm of the object of reflection. This division of the mind is necessary to create that lack of distance that you mention. The nature of reflecting itself (if everyone's minds work alike), is to set aside the object of reflection from the analytical (abstract observer) part of our minds and "look upon" it from that analytical part, making observations and inferences. It's abstract observation and abstract distance between subject and observer, but observation and distance nonetheless I believe.
Although at the end of this post I just realized that I used my own experiential knowledge of reflection as evidence for an experiential idea which makes me want to believe that to me that the faculty of reflection itself is a product of experience o_0
sorry I mean to say "This division of the mind is necessary to --COUNTERACT-- that lack of distance that you mention"
ReplyDeleteIn Response to Casey Sinclair,
ReplyDeleteI believe you are speaking to the idea of witnesser. I believe creating this abstract separation of the mind quickly lends itself to an infinite rabbit whole. If we are to say that there is a divide in the mind in which on one side there exists the objects that are ‘reflecting’ and on the other side there exists a witnesser of the objects, then we must realize that this divide must be invisible to the objects, or at least the witnesser must be invisible. The witnesser cannot be said to control, alter, or change what is happening on the side of the object, for if she does then the witnesser is no longer a witnesser and becomes one of the object and the wall is destroyed. Grant me this and I will take you deeper down the rabbit whole. So now the witnesser is invisible during the reflection. But what about the initiation of the reflection. Who puts the objects, the idea into this separate room? As soon as we claim a controlling force we give rights to that force to be witnessed. The problem is this unless the walls are both invisible and permanent you can have no witnesser. It is only with the creation of a duality that you can have a witnessing, and that witnessing is limited to that duality. For example, a mind may witness the body but the body may not witness the body or the mind witness the mind. Causality only exists in a non-holistic world.
There are a lot of big jumps there…
With regards to the simple ideas produced by the sensation and reflection, I believe that Locke might mean something much more simple than what some of us might be thinking. The products of sensation are the most basic products of our senses, even simpler than the concept of an object itself. For, the production of the concept of the object seems to be contingent upon these most simple of ideas. The components of the object independently 'sensed' through each of our five senses, does not even necessarily create our concept of the object itself. What Locke seems to mean by 'reflection' is that faculty by which we become aware of these independent senses (of which he says most do not even have names) to form a simple idea in the mind. Locke states that the first simple idea of reflection is 'perception,' and that it is 'for the most part, only passive.' Although one might want to attach a certain amount of personal action to our more broad or general use of the concept of perception (perhaps, as Locke puts it, 'thinking in general,'), it seems that when Locke states that perception is the process by which 'the mind receives an impression,' and that the only action necessary in order to do so is to pay 'attention,' the faculty of our reflection becomes much more easy to interpret as experiential.
ReplyDelete-Saskia Salm
p.s. Sorry if it's a little dense, I tried to keep it brief.
Oh sorry, if it wasn't obvious that was a response to Q 1.
ReplyDeleteQ1
ReplyDeleteLocke's claim that reflection is some how a foundation for experiential knowledge perplexes me, perhaps because I am unfamiliar with his jargon. If someone wants to straighten me out after I attempt to criticize his claim feel free to do so.
I've reread II,i,4 a few times and I am still confusedly unconvinced of his claim that perception is somehow different from sensation. My reasoning is how can one perceive something without first sensing it? Reflections can be experiential, however, to reflect on something wouldn't one first need to sense it? This is why his argument confuses me; because I think reflection is just a tangent to sensation, therefore it should not be its own category or 'foundation'.
I meant fountain in my above post.
ReplyDeleteQuestion 1: I'm not convinced of Locke's argument that reflection is experiential. It seems that he's defining reflection as a kind of awareness of our mind's operations in thinking, reasoning, etc. Apparently, these functions are always working in relation to some external stimulus, and so, it follows that reflection indirectly depends on experience. If this is so, then what guarantees that reflection, as an innate capacity, owes its existence to the outside world. How do we know that we aren't just drawing a causal connection that doesn't really exist? I think Locke correlates their existences when they may as well be coincidental. How can we prove otherwise?
ReplyDeleteQ1: It seems to me that everything in experiential. I cannot think of an example of something that we would know innately—that is to say, that everything that we DO know is based on experience. 1+1=2, for example. We only know the answer to that because we were taught basic mathematics when we were developing cognitively. Going off on what Doug said about external stimuli: these reflections, while based on what some would consider "innate knowledge" (i.e., "things" that we just simply know, without having been explicitly taught), require the experience of life. Life is nothing if not a series of experiences. I don't believe that we know anything without having experienced something that allows us to actually draw a conclusion.
ReplyDeleteQ2: For note, sensation is when external objects convey into the mind a certain perception. While it may hold according to Locke, that sensation comes to us from experience, I disagree and refute any claim Locke makes about the certainty of our perceptions. Taking into consideration his assertion about secondary qualities and the example of heat (or warmth). If say, fire does not actually have the quality of heat in any way, yet it produces in us the perception, where is the perception coming from? Is it a figment of imagination? For that matter, where does heat even come from if not from the actual cause; since nothing actually retains the quality of heat, it can only be experienced and in saying this, it seems as though heat exists only as an effect. There does not seem to be a fully understandable cause and effect relationship and if there is, Locke would benefit to explain it. If warmth somehow, miraculously, OCCURS somewhere in between the cause and effect, how could the perception (our ideas!) at all be certain? And how did we come to know it? If it never exists in anything except as an effect of something, how did we come to understand it if the reality of its cause does not seem to be a real or certain as the reality of its effect? (Almost as if to say... there could possibly be an innate characteristic here?) Thus, how can our ideas (sensations) be justified?
ReplyDeleteQ1: It doesn't seem too surprising to me that Locke would conclude reflections, along with sensations, are experiential. When I consider reflecting as an aspect of thought, it seems like it could only be acquired through experience. How can one merely think of anything that they have not in some way already experienced? Reflection requires thinking about something you've already experienced either through the senses or through other thoughts. Yet just as everything you perceive using the senses is an experience, each thought you have also comes and can only come from those experiences. Therefore relfecting (or reworking, understanding, or re-considering) on such thoughts, which come from experiences, must then also be an experience itself because that upon reflecting one is creating a new understanding or thought that would therefore also be an experience.
ReplyDeleteQ1: I agree with Locke that both sensations and reflections are experiential. It seems intuitive to think sensations are experiential because it is extremely hard to know what something feels like to your senses without actually having gone through the experience. For example it’s extremely hard to imagine what an orange smells, tastes, and feels like without actually having eaten an orange. Since reflection comes from comparing and revisiting sensation experiences, I don’t think it would be possible to reflect, without having any previous experiences gained through sensation to reflect upon.
ReplyDeleteQ1: Reflections are experiential because they are comprised of experiences (or sensations.) There is nothing else that goes into your reflections except experiences themselves. Without experience, reflection would be impossible. The act of reflecting is also an experience in itself. Reflecting upon your own thoughts is experiencing your thoughts about your sensations as they come about. You are consciously intellectualizing your sensations to create more complex ideas from your simple ideas.
ReplyDelete-Brandi Gratis
Q1- I think that we can equivocate sensation with reflecting in the sense that they are both activities of observing. Either observing impulses on the human body of ideas conjured in the mind related to sense experiences or observing cognitive processes within the mind based on sensations. “... When the soul comes to reflect on, and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set of ideas, which could not be had from things without: and such are, perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own minds; which we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings, as distinct ideas, as we do from bodies affecting our senses.” ( II, II,4) Reflection and sensation share a similar characteristic insofar as they are both verbs.
ReplyDeleteQ1: Sensation can be considered receiving external input from the senses, but without reflection these senses are incomplete. Our sight, smell, touch, etc are all ways in which we encounter objects of experience, yet we still must register these sensations in our minds before fully conceiving them. Although sensation seems immediate and complete, such as when we see and smell a rose we know a rose, reflection is necessary for grasping understanding of what we received through the senses. Reflection need not be a complex interpretation of our experiences; it may simply be a way in which we code our experiences and name the experience and its characteristics as we sense them (such as calling a flower a "rose", and relating its parts to that name). Furthermore, sensation without reflection is incomplete, as we can see through a mentally disabled person, who can hear things but does not process such information, or reflect upon that information, in a way that helps he or she understand the nature of the experience as someone with more complete reflective capacities does.
ReplyDeleteq1
ReplyDeleteReflections occur after the fact, and are thus a posteriori. You cannot reflect on something to which you have had no initial contact or experience. It is certainly evident that reflections, like sensations, are experiential. I could not reflect upon this question if I had no experience of Locke, and likewise could not reflect upon the idea of a door if I had never seen one before. Experience is certainly crucial if you ever hope to reflect on anything - for that which can be reflected upon must have been previously noted or sensed.