The Partially Examined Life (Citizens): (Protected Content)
On Book I of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689).
How do we know things? Locke thought all knowledge comes from experience, and this might seem uncontroversial, but what are the alternatives? We consider the idea that there are some ideas we’re just born with and don’t need to learn. But what’s an “idea,” and how is it different from a principle? Clearly we have instincts (“knowhow”) but is that knowledge? We consider occurrent vs. dispositional nativism, the role of reason, and what Locke’s overall project is after.
