How Are Locke and Berkeley Similar and Different in Regard to Their Empiricist Commitments?

How are Locke and Berkeley similar and different in regard to their empiricist commitments?

Philosophers John Locke and Bishop George Berkeley present empiricist insights that are both similar and dissimilar. Locke claims that the mind at birth is an empty slate, rejects innate ideas and promotes empiricist thoughts based on Newton’s scientific theories. While Berkeley was also an empiricist and thus rejected the innateness of a concept, he critiqued Locke’s (and Newton’s) model of knowledge. His views can be best understood as immaterialism, for he rejected the objectiveness of primary qualities and claimed that if scientific explanation can explain all aspects of reality there is no need to credit the concept of God. As this essay will show, Berkeley’s immaterial empiricism is created to overcome the materialistic issues embedded in Locke’s and Newton’s empiricist commitments.

Locke applies Newton’s Rule of Simplicity to the notion of innate ideas and provides several reasons for discrediting them. In Book I of the Essay, he first claims that universal consent does not necessarily mean that an idea is innate. He argues that if we had innate ideas, knowledge that derives from experience, then all beings with a mind should be aware of them. Moreover, if it is possible for a human mind to exist without being conscious of an idea, then that idea cannot be innate. Second, he argues that it is impossible for everyone to agree on the rules of logic. If one person believes that this knowledge is dormant, then all truths can be said to exist in the mind which we may never get to understand. Third, there is moral divergence and, lastly, atheism generates the idea that God is not innate. In Book II, Locke argues that we have two types of experiences, sensations, which stimulate sense experience, and reflections, which result from our mind’s experience. Even though the powers of the mind are innate to a certain extent, Locke does not intend to contradict his belief that innate ideas should be rejected, and instead, he simply discredits the innate conceptual theory from which they derive. Lastly, Locke explains the difference between primary and secondary qualities of ideas. He says that primary qualities are objective qualities which exist independently from the mind and cannot be separated from the body (i.e. size, shape, solidity, motion, etc.). Secondary qualities are subjective qualities which depend on the mind (i.e. scent, taste, color, etc.). The taste of candy, for example, is not in the candy, and our perception of it results from a combination of the primary qualities and our unique sensorial and mental perception.

Bishop George Berkeley, as aforementioned, held empiricist beliefs which refute Locke’s ideas. His main argument holds that it is impossible for something to exist without it being perceived first. While Locke distinguishes between primary and secondary

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