Locke’s Theory of Knowledge, Essay Example

Locke’s theory of knowledge is that all our knowledge claims arise from experience. For this reason, Locke is an empiricist. The empiricist doctrine states that the basic unit of our knowledge claims are our senses and perceptions. Hence, the human being’s existence in a world with other objects is the pre-condition for any type of knowledge whatsoever. This has numerous effects, for example, our abstract ideas, such as justice and the good, are therefore consequences of our experiential encountering of the world.

Locke most differs from Descartes in the sense that for Locke doubt is not crucial to his theory of knowledge. In fact, Locke proposes the exact opposite thesis: it is precisely our perceptions and senses of objects which form the foundation of our knowledge. For Descartes, we have to doubt the accuracy of these perceptions and senses, because the latter may be potentially misleading: we cannot assign them any special status. Locke, in contrast, argues that all our knowledge must come from such experiences; for Locke, this is essentially all that we can ultimately rely on for our knowledge claims.

Locke has two categories of the mind’s contents: contents that are the result of direct experience and contents that are the result of reflection. In the case of the former, the fact that we say the apple is red is a result of our experience. In the case of the latter, we may say that justice is the beautiful, and this seems to be more abstract in nature. For Locke, however the first content is the foundation of the second.

For Locke, simple ideas are basic senses and perceptions. For example, when I put my hand into a fire, the feeling of heat and even pain may result. This is a simple idea of pain that is the result of a direct experience. Complex ideas are in contrast more speculative and abstract in nature. Hence, to say that every time I will put my hand in the fire it will cause pain is an abstraction based on the initial sense experience. It also employs combination: for example, combining the idea of every type of fire and every hand to the immediate simple idea of the first experience of placing one’s hand in the fire.