PHILOS 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Deductive Reasoning, Retina, Sensory System
Document Summary
Locke"s four justifications of the epistemic power of sensory experience. Locke claims that our beliefs about the external world are justified by our ideas of sense. We can know that sensory ideas are produced in us by external causes by observing that those lacking a particular sense organ can never have the corresponding sensory ideas. A particular kind of sensory ideas (ex. Visual sensory experience) requires a particular sensory organ (ex. Eye balls are a necessary condition for visual sensory ideas because sensory ideas require external causes of retina images. Eyes work on the basis of causal reaction. Therefore, sensory ideas justify the existence of the external world. Objection to the sensory organ argument by bonjour. This begs the question because the claim that sensory organs invoke ideas of the external world depends on the fact that they have the kind of epistemic power under consideration.
