What is john locke theory of knowledge

Plenist theorists deny the void and assert a plenum of matter, as Descartes does by identifying matter with extension, and though these theorists speak of particles, their particles are not atoms, being infinitely or at least indefinitely divisible.

2.2.2 Scientia in natural philosophy

What would be required for scientia in natural philosophy?

Where we have few or no ideas for reason to contradict or confirm, these are the proper matters for faith.

…that Part of the Angels rebelled against GOD, and thereby lost their first happy state: and that the dead shall rise, and live again: These and the like, being Beyond the Discovery of Reason, are purely matters of Faith; with which Reason has nothing to do.

Locke writes:

The Understanding Faculties being given to Man, not barely for Speculation, but also for the Conduct of his Life, Man would be at a great loss, if he had nothing to direct him, but what has the Certainty of true Knowledge… Therefore, as God has set some Things in broad day-light; as he has given us some certain Knowledge…So in the greater part of our Concernment, he has afforded us only the twilight, as I may say so, of Probability, suitable, I presume, to that State of Mediocrity and Probationership, he has been pleased to place us in here, wherein to check our over-confidence and presumption, we might by every day’s Experience be made sensible of our short sightedness and liableness to Error… (IV.14.1–2, N: 652)

So, apart from the few important things that we can know for certain, e.g.

This is the proper original signification of the Word, as is evident from the formation of it; Essentia, in its primary notation signifying properly Being. But these analogies may not get us very far in grasping the necessary connections between qualities in nature. In 1647 Locke went to Westminster School in London.

From Westminster school he went to Christ Church, Oxford, in the autumn of 1652 at the age of twenty.

The above-quoted passage mentioned three of these phenomena— the production of sensation, the communication of motion, and cohesion.^[19] Locke discusses the fourth, gravity, only outside the Essay.

3.2.1 Sensation

As we saw in passages discussed earlier, in connection with scientia’s impossibility, Locke finds the production of sensation to be utterly obscure.

The answer is that there is something about Locke’s project which pushes him strongly in the direction of the social contract. These serve as sorts under which we rank all the vast multitude of particular existences. According to the Aristotelian conception, scientific knowledge—scientia—is certain knowledge of necessary truths, which can be expressed in syllogistic form, the conclusion following from self-evident premises.

This group included Benjamin Furly, a quaker with whom Locke lived for a while, the noted philosopher Pierre Bayle, several Dutch theologians, and many others. Because they do not believe in God, atheists, on Locke’s account: “Promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist” (Mendus 1991: 47).

As the above-quoted passage’s discussion of finite spirits continues, he remarks more generally on the possibility of co-presence: “These three sorts of substances, as we term them, do not exclude one another out of the same place” (ibid.). Thus, skepticism about the possibility of religious knowledge is central to Locke’s argument for religious toleration.

Finally, for an account of the influence of Locke’s works, see the supplementary document: Supplement on the Influence of Locke’s Works