Rationalism In John Locke's Argument Of Human Knowledge

Philosophers have long debated as to what is the origin and extent of human knowledge and the certainty of that knowledge. Two main branches of thought have arisen over the centuries that have tried to answer this question: Rationalists and Empiricists. The Rationalists argue that humans can acquire knowledge outside of the senses and experience; the French philosopher Descartes falls into this category. While the other branch, The Empiricists, argue that all knowledge is dependent on the senses and experience; the English Enlightenment Philosopher John Locke argues in favor of this view. The subject of Innatism, specifically innate ideas, which is the belief that the human mind is born with certain ideas. Clearly, this view favors the Rationalists
viewpoint and is in opposition to the Empiricists view that the human mind is a blank slate at birth, and that a priori knowledge is impossible for humans to acquire. In this paper, I will compare Rene Descartes and John Locke’s views on innate ideas, and I will argue that of the two, John Locke’s position, that Innate Ideas are a falsehood and that all knowledge is gained through sensory experience, is the superior one. In Book I of, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,” John Locke presents his argument against innate ideas.
His first reason for disproving innate ideas is that just because an idea is agreed upon by everyone in the world doesn’t prove that its innate. He writes, “If it were true in matter of fact that there were certain truths in which all mankind agreed, it would not prove them innate, if there can be any other way shown how men may come to that universal agreement in the things they do consent in, which I presume may be done,” (pg.319). What he means here is that just because an idea is widely (universally) agreed upon doesn’t make that idea necessarily innate because there could be another explanation as to why these ideas are so highly
promulgated. Also, he doesn’t seem to believe that ideas can even be universal. An idea can be widely known, everyone in a town or province may agree upon an idea, but can every single person in a country or continent, and across all different historical periods and cultures, all agree on the exact same idea? Locke doesn’t seem to think so. In order for Innate Ideas to be true, everyone must come to an agreement on an idea and Locke think’s that that is realistically impossible. On this, Locke writes, “This argument of universal consent, which is made use of to prove innate principles, seems to me a demonstration that there are non such, because there are none to which all mankind give a universal assent,” (pg.319). I agree with Lock on this point, I don’t think any one idea can realistically be universally agreed upon. For example, I’m sure there’s lots of people that believe in God but they all have different ways of doing so, they follow different religious practices and hold different interpretations and beliefs on the idea of God. Some may see him as kind, others as wrathful, and some may not even view god as a he. Even if we narrowed our scope down to one religion, Christianity for example, all hold the same fundamental beliefs rooted in the same religious texts, but the dozens of different subjects of this religion view and interpret the bible differently. They may all believe that Jesus is the lord and savior, but from there on their religious practices vary greatly. Another reason why Locke doubts innate ideas is that these ideas are not known to children or idiots. Children and idiots (the mentally impaired) do not have access to innate ideas, they must be taught these ideas later on, if possible. Locke writes, “The lack of that is enough to destroy that universal assent which must be the necessary concomitant of all innate truths,” (pg.319). A counter argument against this claim is that children and idiots do indeed have access to innate ideas, as the ideas are “imprinted on the soul”, they just don’t understand them yet. Locke writes that this is a contradiction, and that it doesn’t make sense to him that an idea could be imprinted on theming without the mind being able to understand it. Locke argues that, “Imprinting, if it signifies anything, being nothing else but the making certain truths to be perceived. For to imprint anything on the mind without the mind’s perceiving git seems to me hardly intelligible,” (pg.319). If children and idiots really do have access to innate ideas then they use be able to understand these ideas as well, and because they don’t understand, it further proves that these ideas don’t actually exist. I agree with this point as well, I don’t think that anyone is born with an idea in their mind, but like Locke, I also think that we’re all just blank slates that are fed information through our experiences and these experiences vary widely depending on what gender we’re assigned at birth, what country, social class, and what time period we are born into. Who I am as a person right now is highly dependent on all the information I’ve absorbed from my parents and the society that i was raised in. Locke’s views are in response to Rationalist thinkers that came before him, such as Descartes, who argue in favor of innate ideas.
According to Descartes ideas that are innate are ideas that we would believe in even if nothing else existed other than ourselves. These ideas don’t require external stimuli in order to exist and any rational mind would believe in them. He considers God to be innate, because the idea of god is one that everyone has. Descartes describes the idea of god as something that is infinitely perfect, and because he himself is not perfect he could not be the cause of the idea. Therefore, he knows that he is not the only thing that exists in the universe, there has to be something else, a god (pg.336). Descartes writes, “Since I am a thinking thing with the ideas of God in me, my cause, whatever it may be, must be a thinking thing having in it the idea of eery perfection that I attribute to God,” (pg.
334). He writes that God is the “ultimate cause” of everything. Even if some other being that wasn’t God created his existence, there would still have to be a prior cause for that beings existence, and so on and so forth, until we reach God, which Descartes writes, “It would have the power to exist on its own and hence the power actually to give itself every perfection of which it has an idea, including every perfection that I conceive of in God,” (pg. 334). He talks about where the idea of god came from, and he writes that the idea is innate and came directly from God and not from his senses or from himself. On this he writes, “The only other possibility is that the idea is innate in me, like my idea of myself,” (pg. 334).