Spiritual Health Learning Community Center Exploring Life's Horizons   Philosophy - A Discursive Search For Truth and Wisdom Section 1 - Locke and Innate Ideas In the opening pages of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, one quickly encounters the focus of Locke's critical analysis in Book I: "It is an established opinion amongst some men that there are in the understanding certain innate principles, some primary notions, characters, as it were, stamped upon the mind of man, which the soul receives in its very first being and brings into the world with it."1 By attacking the notion of innate ideas, Locke hopes to lay the groundwork for the main thesis of the Essay's second book: "Our observation, employed either about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected on by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. These two are the foundations of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring."2 In this campaign which he mounts against the notion of innateness, Locke devises a number of arguments that he feels are (both individually and collectively) triumphant - demonstrating, beyond any shadow of doubt - or so he supposes, the weakness of the forces which can be rallied in defense of innateness. One argument in Locke's arsenal focuses on the use of reason with respect to allegedly innate principles and/or ideas. He questions why reason should be necessary to uncover such principles/ideas. Indeed, if these "truths" are imprinted on the mind from the beginning, Locke argues that one is using reason to discover what one, in fact, already knows; one is using reason: "... to make the understanding see what is originally engraven in it, and cannot be in the understanding before it be perceived by it."3 From this perspective, Locke accuses the 'Innatists' of adopting an argument which he feels is palpably absurd - namely, that a person should both know and not know at the same time. Moreover, he marvels at the seemingly inexplicable problem of why nature would imprint something on our minds as a "foundation and guide" for the exercise of reason and, yet, still require reason to reveal these very foundations. Locke's attack contains at least one questionable assumption concerning the notion of innateness. More specifically, innateness does not imply, necessarily, that a person 'know', in any active sense of the word, certain truths or principles from the very beginning or that such truths, etc., must be in the understanding right from the start. Conceivably, such truths/ principles might be elicited or triggered under the appropriate circumstances or at a given stage in maturational development. Consequently, while the eliciting mechanism or medium may be external, the 'idea/truth/principle' which is uncovered may have existed in some form before the eliciting occurred - but not necessarily in some known, conscious and understood form. Furthermore, beside the dubious legitimacy of Locke's using his own ignorance as a criterial basis for 'illuminating' the issue under consideration, there is no inherent contradiction in, on the one hand, Nature's imprinting something which acts as a 'foundation and guide' for some aspects of the reasoning process, yet, on the other hand, still requiring other aspects of the reasoning process to reveal the presence of such a 'foundation and guide'. Some of the potential (when properly exercised) working principles inherent in reason's structural character may be inclined toward uncovering various innate principles - that is, one set of innate principles may be activated - however this may happen - to 'seek out' other innate principles. Simply because we do not know why or how this occurs is no more of an argument against such a possibility than is Locke's confessed puzzlement of why Nature would behave in this manner. Nature is under no a priori obligation to reveal its mysteries or even to make sense to human understanding; rather, we project our hopes onto 'reality', often taking the former to be the latter. In a foreshadowing of the main thesis of Book II, Locke says: "The knowledge of some truths, I confess, is very early in the mind, but in a way that shows them not to be innate. For if we will observe, we shall find it still to be about ideas, not innate, but acquired: it being about those first which are imprinted by external things, with which infants have earliest to do, which makes the most fre-quent impressions on their sense. In ideas thus got, the mind discovers that some agree and others differ..."4 Shortly thereafter, he contends: "... but the truth as it appears to him (the child) as soon as he has settled in his mind the clear and distinct ideas that these names stand for."5 And again, a few sentences further down: "... the later it is before anyone comes to have those general ideas about which these maxims are, or to know the signification of those general terms that stand for them, or to put together in his mind the ideas they stand for, the later also will it be before he comes to assent to those maxims; whose terms, with the ideas they stand for, being no more innate than those of a cat or weasel, he must stay till time and observation have acquainted him with them;"6 In the three quotes noted above, Locke refers to thinking in three different, but, related ways: (1) "the mind discovers that some (ideas) agree and others differ"; (2) ideas become "settled in his mind", and (3) ideas are "put together". This manner of describing thinking is fairly typical of Locke, and, generally, throughout the Essays, one does not find anything much more complex than this. In Chapter XI of Book II, he is somewhat more formal in his presentation, listing 'discerning,'composition' and' abstraction' as aspects of thinking. In Chapter XIX of Book II (Of the Modes of Thinking) he talks of 'reasoning', 'judging', 'volition', and 'knowledge' as the more prominent operations of the mind. And, of course, in the opening chapter of Book II, Locke speaks of 'reflection'. However, invariably, these 'technical' terms are defined in terms similar to: 'agreeing and disagreeing', becoming 'settled in the mind', and being 'put together'. Furthermore, in all these instances, thinking tends to be depicted as a rather linear, somewhat neutral process. Thinking takes the givens (i.e., ideas) and combines them with other ideas in an additive fashion, or subtracts various particulars of an idea to yield the general, abstract idea. Rarely, is there even a suggestion of anything resembling dialectical interaction of ideas - interaction which does not just involve adding to ideas or taking away from them but which shows how juxtaposing different ideas creates meaning fields where the whole represents something more than the cumulative total of the individual ideas. In addition, with respect to the innatism issue, Locke appears not to consider the possibility that 'agreement' (or any of the other words Locke uses to designate thinking) may be determined according to criteria which themselves are innate principles. In other words, such criteria are not necessarily either passively neutral or even learned but may represent categories and/or principles which shape the contours and content of experience, and, therefore, the nature and extent of our knowledge - perhaps, somewhat analogously to the way the cones of the retina color one's vision and, thereby, gives expression to one of the many dimensions that shapes or helps structure experience through hardwired or semi-hardwired neurological networks. Even on the level of simple ideas connected with substances, understanding is not necessarily a straightforward function of primary qualities directly giving rise to ideas or of secondary powers affecting our constitutions in certain ways to give rise to certain other sensations and subsequent ideas. Rather, the receiving organism must have a certain predisposition or sensitization toward a given phenomena. Locke, himself, gives indirect support to this when he discusses (in sections 12 and 13 of Chapter XXIII in Book II) the possibility of beings with a wider range of sensory faculties than humans possess. Differences in 'perceived reality' correspond with differences in faculties. Thus, simple ideas are not just a matter of an object acting upon a passive organism, but involve the capability and predisposition of a being's sensory equipment to receive such impressions, and, consequently, this leaves open the question concerning the degree to which the organism acts upon the incoming, data. To some extent, Locke indirectly refers to the dialectical relationship between an organism's internal constitution and the secondary characteristics associated with a given substance in the sections of Book II concerning secondary powers (e.g., sections 13-22 of Chapter VIII). He notes how when we are well, certain substances have a particular taste, and when we are ill, this same substance may either lose its 'familiar' taste or acquire a somewhat different one. Moreover, Locke argues that, for example, sweetness is not in the substance per se but is a power of the substance, supported by the substance's unknown internal constitution, which acts on our faculties, giving rise to our sensation of sweetness. However, just as Locke wonders: "... why the pain and sickness, ideas that are the effects of manna, should be thought to be nowhere, when they are not felt: and yet the sweetness and whiteness, effects of the same manna on other parts of the body by ways equally as unknown, should be thought to exist in the man, when they are not seen nor tasted, would need some reason to explain"7 , one also might ask Locke why one couldn't assume the given secondary quality associated with sweetness to be in the substance while, simultaneously, stressing the contributing role which is played by an organism's condition and how that condition influences perceived reality. One should not infer that what is being suggested here positions the sweetness in the substance. Rather, substances may have a quality which, under the appropriate circumstances, can be interpreted as sweet. Like Locke, this argument holds that sweetness is an experience which results from the interaction of organism and object. Unlike Locke, the foregoing argument does not contend that the secondary quality is somehow absent from the substance yet still supported by the object's internal constitution - i.e., the powers that act upon the mind to give rise to the experience of secondary qualities. Locke never explains what the relationship is between the unknown substratum and the powers associated with or residing in the primary qualities, or how it is possible for such powers to produce the experience of secondary qualities such as color, taste, smell, etc. Of course, Locke says he is not interested in exploring the physical mechanism of the mind and, therefore, doesn't feel compelled to offer such explanations. Thus, one finds Locke stipulating very early in Book I: "This, therefore, being my purpose, to inquire into the original certainty and extent of human knowledge, together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion and assent. I shall not at present meddle with the physical consideration of the mind; or trouble myself to examine wherein its essence consists; or by what motions of our spirits or alterations of our bodies we come to have any... ideas in our understandings; and whether those ideas do in their formation, any of them, depend on matter or no." 8 Nonetheless, one must question exactly what it is that Locke has provided in the way of explanation. One wonders whether Locke can inquire, with any degree of success, legitimacy and/or significance, into the original certainty and extent of human knowledge without investigating the essence of mind from whence the understanding comes. With respect to outlining the relationship among primary qualitites, powers and secondary qualities, one might be on philosophically more tenable grounds - both in terms of consistency and simplicity - to place secondary qualities in the objects themselves. Certainly, Locke’s arguments explaining why this cannot be so are easily countered by positing a dialectical interaction between the organism and the substance similar to the presented in this essay previously. And, in point of fact, Locke’s whole use of "powers" can be reduced, for the most part, to such a dialectical relationship in which secondary qualities are as much a function of the properties of a given object as they are a function of an individual's sensory equipment. Implicit in the foregoing is the question of the extent to which an organism's internal constitution interprets, alters or distorts information supplied by physical/material objects. To some degree, Locke raises this issue when he says: "Nature, I confess, has put into man a desire of happiness and an aversion to misery: these indeed are innate practical principles which do continue constantly to operate and influence all our inclinations of the appetites to good, not impressions of truth on the understanding. I deny not that there are natural tendencies imprinted on the minds of men."9 In other words, Locke allows for innate, "natural" principles which provide a contextual setting from which certain kinds of behavior emerge. Such principles are general guidelines or tendencies generated by an organism's internal constitution. Something (a person in this case) is what it is because that is how Nature designed it. However, according to Locke, such proclivities make: "... nothing for innate characters on the mind, which are to be the principles of knowledge."10 Yet, just as there is a sort of dialectical relationship between an organism's internal constitution (in the form of certain appetites or biological inclinations) and the environment (in the form of some particular substance), there may be a similar relationship between the mind's intellectual rational, and judgmental faculties and the so-called 'real'. As outlined previously, understanding need not be a world. linear simple matter of ideas strung fashion. Such principles may in which ideas are function in which the principles of knowledge are a simple matter of ideas strung together in some additive fashion. Such principles may result from the way the medium in which ideas are often suspended (namely, reason itself) arranges or structures the pattern of ideas - which may not be strictly equivalent to, or reducible to, an additive or subtractive process. The point to emphasize here, however, is not entirely a matter of any failure on Locke's part to provide some explanatory framework - general as this might be - concerning the different aspects of mental functioning. Instead, the point to be highlighted is Locke's continual oversight concerning the very essence of such functioning - that is, his failure, among other things, to ask questions focusing on the nature of reason itself. He assumes that if he can successfully attack the notion of 'innate characters of the mind', he is done with the issue of innateness. He does not appear to realize that the very tools of his philosophical trade - reason, judgement, analysis, abstraction, etc. - may, themselves, be governed, in varying degrees, by specific innate principles. Locke continues to push his belief in the untenableness of innateness during his discussion of self-evident propositions. Such principles are considered not to be the result of innate impressions, but are: "... because the consideration of the nature of the things contained in those words (i.e., of the self-evident pro-position) would not suffer him to think otherwise..."11 Seemingly, Locke is indicating that the meanings of the individual words used necessitates the logical force of a given proposition. Once one learns the meaning of the individual words, then, the learned meanings - taken as a collective, cumulative total - provide the logical necessity of the given 'self-evident' proposition - for Locke, nothing innate is involved at all. Again, Locke is avoiding the real issue. He has not really explained why or how 'meaning', of itself, should be able to be at all. Of course, he presupposes that the various faculties of the mind receive the 'correct' meaning, once learned, of any given word that may be used by another person. For Locke, understanding a proposition is nothing more than knowing what all the individual words mean. Thus, once the words of a statement are received and understood in terms of their given definitions, the mind cannot do anything but assent to, or deny, the truth of such a statement. However, even if one were to grant Locke that particular ideas are not innate (which in the case of ‘mixed modes’ is open to question since, according to Locke, these are entirely creatures of the mind - bearing little, or no, resemblance to actual patterns of ideas in current existence), the relationships existing among the various ideas, and from which the collective or overall meaning of the proposition is drawn, may be innate - that is, the pathways of logic (or reason, or judgement or abstraction or reflection) which engage, analyze, question and reflect on the given meanings of a statement may, themselves, be innate. Another approach taken by Locke, which has bearing on the foregoing, revolves around the argument from universal consent. As Locke states it: "There is nothing more commonly taken for granted than that there are certain principles, both speculative and practical, universally agreed upon by all mankind: which therefore, they argue, must needs be constant impressions which the souls of men receive in their first beings and which they bring into the world with them..."12 At one point, through his discussion of self-evident truths (touched on above), Locke hopes to show that even if there were principles which were universally agreed upon, this would not prove the existence of innate principles, per se. By attempting to give an account of self-evident maxims based entirely on a combination of learned meanings, experience, time and understanding, Locke feels he has countered the innatist's argument at this point. First, however, he tries to build-up his case by pointing out the lack of any evidence indicating the existence of principles to which the whole of mankind give their consent. In fact, Locke reports, the evidence is precisely the opposite; there are large portions of mankind to whom so-called 'innate principles' are not even known. He lists children, savages, idiots and illiterate people as obvious counter-examples to the universal consent argument. Indeed, Locke argues that amongst his list of counter-examples are those who are the: "... least corrupted by custom or borrowed opinion."13 and who, consequently, should manifest most clearly innate impressions; yet: "... alas, amongst children, idiots, savages and the grossly illiterate, what general maxims are to be found? What universal principles of knowledge?"14 There does not seem to be any necessity, however, which requires that innate ideas/principles must have universal assent or that they must be in more than one individual. This point is directed as much to those supporting an innatist position who subscribe to the universal consent argument as it is to Locke for incorporating it into his critical attack. Why should one suppose that if innate ideas exist that, therefore, everyone should have the same sort of innate ideas? Only certain people are artistically gifted, or musically talented, or intellectually creative, or inventively imaginative; only certain people have blond hair, or are tall, or have a multiple language ability (i.e., people who have an 'ear' for languages and pick them up relatively easily). We do not consider such differences odd. To some extent, man's diversity might seem to favor an argument (by no means conclusive, however) against the necessary universality of any given innate principle or idea. Moreover, as intimated previously, throughout Book I, Locke seems to feel innate principles and ideas are entities which should be obvious to everyone, that they should be radiating with such certainty that the mind cannot deny them. In a manner which is typical of his position on this point, Locke says: "... if there were certain characteristics imprinted by nature on the understanding, as the principles of knowledge, we could not but perceive them constantly operate in us and influence our knowledge." 15 Apparently, it has never occurred to him we may have to struggle to get any clear impression of these innate principles or ideas. Perhaps, part of the reason for the 'oversight' is his belief that innate principles must necessarily be implanted in our minds, rather than inn some other faculty of understanding. For example, spiritually speaking, moral precepts and other related principles may metaphorically speaking, be imprinted on our hearts (spiritual hearts). Yet, our minds may be responsible for putting veils between reflection or consciousness and such innate ideas. Both the mind and heart may be faculties of understanding, each with its own appropriate jurisdiction and sphere of influence. However, in certain instances, the mind may interfere with the individual's gaining a clear vision of what is innately present "in the heart". As a result, the person may have to struggle to subdue the mind's tendency to usurp certain areas of jurisdiction which are inappropriate to it (e.g., which may belong within the province of the heart's sphere of operations) in order for the individual to be able to come to know what has been present "in the heart" from the beginning - though, perhaps, greatly obscured. Contrary to Locke's contention: "But in truth, were there any such innate principles, there would be no need to teach them." 16 one still might have to be taught how to discover what has been present from the moment of birth or earlier. For thousands of years, the mystics have been suggesting precisely this. Curiously enough, Locke outlines a position in Chapter XXIII of Book II which very closely parallels some of the foregoing. At one point during his discussion of how the complex ideas of substances are formed, he admits: "The same thing happens concerning the operations of the mind, v.z., thinking, reasoning, fearing, etc., which we are concluding do not subsist of themselves, nor apprehending how they can belong to body or be produced by it, we are apt to think these the actions of some other substance, which we call spirit; ... by supposing a substance wherein thinking, knowing, doubting and a power of moving, etc., do subsist, we have as clear a notion of the substance of spirit as we have of body - the one being supposed to be without knowing what it is the substratum to those simple ideas we have from without; and the other supposed (with a like ignorance of what it is) to be the substratum to those operations which we experiment in ourselves within." 17 In short, Locke has, by his own admission, no more understanding of the basis of mental activity than he has of the basis of activity in the external world. Each seems to presuppose a substratum he 'knows not what'. This position when juxtaposed with the intent of his efforts in Book I is somewhat ironic. In his attempt to dispense with innateness and rid man of those systems which would tend to constrain one from continuing further examination, exploration and the exercise of critical reason, Locke has argued a position which cuts him off from certain kinds of investigation. If he truly believes he lacks guidance in his attempted penetration of the 'real' essence of mind and matter, one might think he wouldn't be eager to close out his options. Or, at least, one might suppose he would temper his judgement and reconsider some of the issues which emerge in Book I, given his avowed realization that he paints his picture of the unknown with a brush of self-professed ignorance. Section 2 - Empiricism, Rationalism And Innatism At this juncture, one may find value in taking a look at an article by Douglas Greenlee, entitled: "Locke and the Controversy Over Innate Ideas". An analysis of Greenlee's position might help to clarify, and expand upon, a few issues already introduced in the preceding discussion of Locke and the latter's rejection of innate ideas. According to Greenlee: "The standard picture of Locke, the arch-empiricist, battling rationalist adversaries across the channel, is spoiled by a close look at the facts ..." 18 Among the facts Greenlee cites are several which are intended to dispel the notion that Locke believed there was "nothing... in the mind which was not first in the senses". In other words, these ‘facts’ are intended to dispel the idea that Locke entertained a philosophical position which could be characterized as a naive empiricism. For example, Greenlee points out that in Book IV of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke contends that knowledge is not a function of the senses but a creation of the mind or understanding "as it goes about its business of relating ideas". Consequently, in Greenlee's view, since Locke is completely willing to acknowledge the existence of innate capacities which play a fundamental role in the generation of knowledge, such an acknowledgment undermines the position of anyone who would attribute to Locke a passive epistemology that depicts man as merely the recipient of what comes to him via the senses. Who Greenlee has in mind as instances of those who have a mistaken conception of Locke's position and, therefore, in need of his comments, is obscure. Certainly, as Chomsky and Katz point out ("On Innateness: A Reply to Cooper", Philosophical Review, January 1975, p.70) - and as many others have pointed out during their discussions of Locke's view on these matter (e.g., see Anthony Savile's article "Leibnitz's Contribution to the Theory of Innate Ideas", pp. 113-114, as well as John Harris' article "Leibnitz and Locke on Innate Ideas', p. 228.) - it is not a question of innatism versus non-innatism, because Locke, obviously, did believe that the human being came equipped with a certain amount of sensory equipment, with certain predispositions concerning pain and pleasure as well as with certain mental capacities such as reflection, abstraction, understanding, etc. Rather, a more important question concerns exactly what Locke is willing to build into these faculties, capacities, and predispositions. As the previous section's discussion of Locke pointed out, Locke is very vague as to how "understanding", "reflection", and so on, actually operate. They represent a kind of black- box in which sensory data go in one side and 'knowledge' comes out the other, but very little is said about what goes on in between and, therefore, very little is said about what really constitutes "understanding" or "reflection". Locke seems to rely on the readers' being able to phenomenologically identify with what he is saying (i.e., we all have had experiences of reflecting or understanding). Therefore, he is able to create the illusion (whether consciously or unintentionally, onr id unsure) of having understood, for example, "understanding" without having explained anything at all. In any event, one has difficulty agreeing with Greenlee when he contends that: "As one looks further into the controversy, it becomes increasingly difficult to make out a genuine issue, until eventually it appears that, after all, there was no real issue."19 This is because Greenlee has not shown in his article how - if Locke is willing to admit that the mechanisms of 'reflection', 'reason', 'understanding', and so on, are innate - the presence of such innate capacities does, or does not, predispose an individual to structure ideas according to specific, pre-established principles and patterns of logic. In other words, that Locke believes we structure ideas - in the sense of combining them in different ways - is clear, but the various modes, cited by Locke, for producing compound, complex and mixed ideas are rather simplistic, linear and generally (though not always) tied, directly or indirectly, to the simple ideas emanating from the sensory order. Although one might agree with Greenlee's implication that Locke is certainly not a naive empiricist, the acknowledgment of certain innate capacities and dispositions does not automatically exclude Locke from the empiricist camp and place him on the rationalist side of the river. Locke believes that the nature of external reality is known by its impressing itself on our mental capacities and sensory faculties. Reason is not what penetrates the nature of reality as a rationalist would argue. Rather, reality is what penetrates to the mind of the individual through the way in which our sensory and rational faculties are receptive to what reality will imprint on our - more or less - tabula rasa. In comparing rationalism and empiricism, there is not only a difference in emphasis on the degree of passivity (or activity) of the knowing subject, there also is a difference in emphasis on the degree of specificity which is to be associated with mental capacities, etc. However, as his previous quote indicates, Greenlee tends to dismiss, prematurely, the underlying issues of innatism, without having come to grips with what is really at stake. There is, of course, a reason why Greenlee wishes to minimize the basic differences between Locke and those advocating some more rigorous form of innatism than might be acceptable to Locke. Greenlee wants to contend that the whole series of arguments appearing in Book I of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is not directed so much toward disproving the existence of innate ideas as aimed at disproving the existence of innate truths as represented by various moral principles and maxims. According to Greenlee, Locke wants to demonstrate there is a manner of accounting for our assent to various principles which is not a function of innate truths but merely a function of our general capacity to understand the meanings conveyed by the ideas which constitute the principle. Greenlee comments further by proposing that it is Locke's intention to undermine: (a) the scholastic method of relying on authority, and (b) the scholastic belief that certain moral truths are innate and, thereby, to break the dogmatic and, in Locke's opinion, unhealthy hold which various doctrines of the Church have upon the minds of men such that the common man will not question the value or truth of certain doctrines and the associated principles and maxims. In short, Greenlee believes that Locke objects to the thesis of innatism being advocated in the seventeenth century because: "... its close-ended methodology is essentially based on its recommendation that certain principles, those said, to be innate, be accepted without thinking and without understanding." 20 Since Greenlee sees the foregoing as the main focus and intention of Book I of the Essay, he considers Locke's concern with innate ideas as secondary to the main purpose of arguing against the notion of innate truths, maxims and principles. Thus: "What, then, Locke disagrees with in the controversy over innate ideas turns upon the right way of discovering truth. To grasp Locke's position on the issue requires the realization that the target of his philosophic ire is not a wrong psychology, which holds that men are born with ideas and truths imprinted upon the mind, but is rather a wrong methodology." 21 1 Consequently, in the view of Greenlee, it seems to follow that if Locke wishes to (a) discredit the scholastic practice of determining conclusions prior to inquiry, or to search for the means of evidentially supporting the predetermined conclusions, and, furthermore, if Locke wants to (b) encourage the practice of deriving conclusions which are solidly rooted in the available evidence and reasons, then, Locke's most pressing concerns in the Essay are, according to Greenlee, primarily methodological, and not epistemological, in character. In other words, Locke, supposedly, is more concerned with a proper method of discovery than he is with the nature of man as a knowing subject. One might agree that among Locke’s goals is the one which Greenlee outlines in the latter’s paper (and which is summarized above). Nevertheles, Greenlee's arguments tend to oversimplify and obscure certain themes which are, given the entire context of the Essay, more fundamental than Greenlee would have one believe. First of all, although one can agree with Locke's attack upon dogmatism (in the sense of unthinking acceptance - certainly one must consider the evidence on its particular merits with respect to a given set of circumstances), this does not constitute a tenable argument against innate ideas. Instead, it may merely serve as a cautionary note against too easy acceptance of something as innate. If a given principle or maxim is true and is somehow related to innate structures, refusal to accept that principle as an expression of truth, is as dogmatic and problematic as accepting something as innate and true without reflection. As we shall see later on, only a naive form of innatism requires one to be able to recognize innate truths without effort - mental or otherwise. Secondly, Locke's concern with the issue of innatism in Book I is not just a matter of methodology of discovery - although this is certainly a basic concern of Locke's brand of empiricism (Greenlee's disavowal of Locke's empiricist leanings notwithstanding). Locke's methodology of discovery is derived from his conception of human understanding which does not operate according to innate truths, principles, ideas, beliefs, disposition, etc., but according to a mysterious, generalized capacity to somehow grasp different sorts of meaning. Locke is attempting to develop a framework for the understanding of human understanding. He is also attempting to give an account of: where our ideas come from; how they are combined; and, how they provide one with an understanding of reality. As such, he has a number of targets in mind simultaneously - one of which is, no doubt, the one for which Greenlee argues. Locke, however, is also attacking any notion of innatism which might be construed in terms other than that of a 'generalized capacity for understanding' - whatever this ultimately means. Under such circumstances, the question of methodology is necessarily secondary because there can be no way of approaching such an issue until one knows how human understanding operates - for, it is human understanding that determines the nature and possibility of methodological form and technique. What lies outside of, or beyond, such capabilities represents the boundary conditions of methodology and influences the general sort of shapes one 's methodological approach can assume. If one treats methodology as primary, then, one runs a serious risk of confusing the structure of one's methodology with the structure of reality, or of limiting one's modes of investigating the nature of reality by supposing that the methodology one has is all that is or could be. At one point Greenlee argues that: "... Locke throughout his attack maintains staunchly the position that there are self-evident truths or principles and that often what are called "innate" are really only "self-evident" truths. ... To put the matter another way, Locke is attacking innate principles, while embracing self-evident truths. These self-evident truths, according to Locke's epistemology, constitute a part of human knowledge, and that part they compose is not 'based on experience', at least, not if "based on experience" means "known on the basis of observational evidence." In his polemic, then, Locke is not in the usual sense an "empiricist" objecting to a rationalist doctrine of non-empirical knowledge. Rather, he is a methodologist..."22 Aside from the dubiousness of Greenlee's accuracy concerning the "usual sense" of empiricism, his conception of Locke's position seems to be flawed, seriously, in a number of ways. For example, to say Locke staunchly maintains there are self-evident truths and that what are called 'innate ideas' are really only self-evident truths, this does not, at all, align Locke with the rationalists. According to Locke's definition, self-evident truth is that which our general capacity for understanding is immediately capable of recognizing as true. As a result, self-evident truths do not necessarily imply any innate structures that specifically shape what we recognize as true or right. Moreover, the following question also arises. If these self-evident truths are not to be based on observational experience, from whence do they come? - from reflections on the operations of the mind? Clearly, Locke's account of what he means by 'reflection' and what he means by the 'operations' of the mind do not come close to providing a means of explaining how we recognize self-evident truths. Seemingly, for Locke, self-evident truths must be 'built-into', in some sense of this term, the 'understanding', or built-into the structure of 'reflection'. If this is not the case, then, Locke has no way of accounting for such truths. He has not explained: either (1) what it means to say that a 'general capacity to understand' is capable of recognizing self-evident truths, or (2) how such a general capacity to recognize such truths is possible. Presumably, his only alternative is to concede the innatist's point concerning the specific dispositional nature of our understanding toward such truths. Consequently, Locke's position tends to reduce to an innatist position. This is not because he is, as Greenlee suggests, consciously adopting and advocating a position that is similar to that of the innatists but because Locke’s position has lacunae for which Locke has no adequate means of conceptually filling except by means of something approaching an innatist position. FOOTNOTES 1). John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Abridged and edited by John W. Yolton (Don Mills, Ontario: M. M. Dent & Sons (Canada) Limited, 1965), p. 9. Return to Essay 2). Ibid., p. 58 Return to Essay 3). Ibid., p. 13 Return to Essay 4). Ibid., p. 16 Return to Essay 5). Ibid. Return to Essay 6). Ibid., pp. 16-17. Return to Essay 7). Ibid., p. 75. Return to Essay 8). Ibid., p. 5. Return to Essay 9). Ibid., p. 27. Return to Essay 10). Ibid. Return to Essay 11). Ibid., p. 20. Return to Essay 12). Ibid., p. 10. Return to Essay 13). Ibid., p. 24. Return to Essay 14). Ibid. Return to Essay 15). Ibid., p. 27. Return to Essay 16). Ibid., p. 33. Return to Essay 17). Ibid., p. 134. Return to Essay 18). Douglas Greenlee, "Locke and the Controversy Over Innate Ideas", Journal of the History of Ideas: 33 (April-June, 1972), p. 253. Return to Essay 19). Ibid., p. 252. Return to Essay 20). Ibid., p.263 Return to Essay 21). Ibid., p. 260 Return to Essay 22). Ibid., p. 263-263. Return to Essay | Return to Philosophy Menu | Copyright © 2004 Interrogative Imperative Insitute. All Rights Reserved.