PP111 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Empirical Evidence, Problem Set, Causal Structure
Document Summary
Unit 9: empiricist theories of knowledge: video: "does all knowledge depend on experience?" John locke viewed the mind as like blank sheet of paper, on which ideas are written" as we accumulate experience. For locke, experience meant perception by means of the five senses. When we open our eyes and ears to the world, we acquire ideas of colours, shapes, sounds, and physical objects. As did descartes, locke recognized the power of the mind to assemble a vast array of new ideas from the ideas we receive directly through our senses. But unlike descartes, locke did not think that the mind had any ideas that were not entirely constructed out of the materials of sense experience. Whatever lies beyond the powers of our sense to perceive, or beyond the mind"s power to construct from the materials of sense perception, we have no knowledge of, and no ideas about.
