An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Book …

1 An Essay Concerning Human UnderstandingBook IV: KnowledgeJohn LockeCopyright Jonathan Bennett 2017. All rights reserved[Brackets]enclose editorial explanations. Small dots enclose material that has been added, but can be read asthough it were part of the original text. Occasional bullets, and also indenting of passages that are not quotations,are meant as aids to grasping the structure of a sentence or a thought. Every four-point ellipsis .. indicates theomission of a brief passage that seems to present more difficulty than it is worth. Longer omissions are reportedon, between [brackets], in normal-sized launched: 2004 ContentsChapter i: Knowledge in general196 Chapter ii: The degrees of our knowledge199 Chapter iii: The extent of Human knowledge203 Chapter iv: The reality of knowledge216 Chapter v: Truth in general221 Chapter vi: Universal propositions, their truth and certainty225 Chapter vii: Maxims231 Essay IVJohn LockeChapter viii: Trifling propositions237 Chapter ix: Knowledge of existence240 Chapter x: knowledge of the existence of a god241 Chapter xi: knowledge of the existence of other things247 Chapter xii: The improvement of our knowledge253 Chapter xiii: Some other considerations Concerning our knowledge258 Chapter xiv: Judgment260 Chapter xv: Probability261 Chapter xvi: The degrees of assent262 Chapter xvii: Reason268 Chapter xviii.

2 Faith and reason, and their distinct provinces273 Chapter xix: Enthusiasm276 Chapter xx: Wrong assent, or error281 Chapter xxi: The division of the sciences288 Essay IVJohn LockeChapter i: Knowledge in generalChapter i: Knowledge in the mind in all its thoughts and reasonings has noimmediate object other than its own ideas, which are all itcan contemplate, it is evident that our knowledge has to doonly with , then, seems to me to be nothing but theperception of the connection and agreement, or disagreementand incompatibility, of any of our ideas. That is all it this perception occurs, there is knowledge; and whereit doesn t occur, we come short ofknowledge whatever wemayfancy,guess, orbelieve. For when we know thatwhiteisn t black, what do we perceive other than that these twoideas don t agree? When we know with absolute demonstra-tive certainty thatthe three angles of a triangle are equal totwo right ones, what do we do except perceive that equalityto two right angles necessarily agrees to and is inseparablefrom the three angles of a triangle?

3 Agreement or disagreement can be better understoodthrough noting that there are four sorts of it:Identity, or , or necessary first sort of agreement or disagreement namely,identity or diversity enters into the act of the mind whenit first has any views or ideas at all. What it does thenis to perceive its ideas; and so far as it perceives them itknows each to be what it is, and thus also to perceive theirdifferences from one another perceiving of each that it isnot some other idea. This is so absolutely necessary thatwithout it there could be no knowledge, no reasoning, noimagination, no distinct thoughts, at all. In this way themind clearly and infallibly perceives each idea to agree withitself, and to be what it is; and perceives all different ideasto disagree, perceives the one not to be the other. It doesthis easily, without taking trouble over it or inferring it fromsomething else; it does it at first view, through its naturalability to perceive and distinguish.

4 And although students ofscholastic philosophy have boiled this down toWhat is, is, andIt is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be generalrules that can be applied in any case where thereis occasion to think about this it is certain that the firstexercise of this faculty concernsparticularideas. A maninfallibly knows, as soon as ever he has them, that the ideashe calls white and round are the very ideas they are, andnot others that he calls red or square . And no maxim orproposition could make him know this more clearly or surelythan he already does without the help of any such generalrule. This, then, is the first agreement or disagreement thatthe mind perceives in its ideas, and always at first there is ever any doubt about it, will always turn out toconcern the names, not the ideas.. second sort of agreement or disagreement that themind perceives in its ideas can be calledrelative.

5 It is simplyperceiving a relation between two ideas, which can be of anykind at all of substances, modes, or anything else. Forsince any two ideas must eternally be knownnotto be thesame, there would be no room forpositiveknowledge if wecouldn t perceive relations other than non-identity betweenour ideas, and find out whether they agree or disagree invarious respects of comparison that the mind brings to bear196 Essay IVJohn LockeChapter i: Knowledge in generalon them.[For Locke comparing x with y is justbringing x and ytogether in a single thought, not necessarily likening them to one use compare in that way in the expression get together to comparenotes .] third sort of agreement or disagreement that the mindcan perceive in our ideas isco-existence or non-co-existencein the same subject. This belongs particularly to we say thatgold is fixed, our knowledge of this truthamounts to no more than this: fixedness, or a power toremain in fire unconsumed, is an idea[here = quality ]thatalways accompanies and is joined to that particular sort ofyellowness, weight, fusibility, malleableness, and solubilityin aqua regia that make our complex idea signified by theword gold.

6 Fourth and last sort is an idea s agreement withactualreal existence. These four sorts of agreement or disagreementinclude, I think, all the knowledge we have or can have. Allwe can ever know or say about any idea is one of these: that it is or that it isn t the same as some other, that it does or that it doesn t always co-exist withsome other idea in the same subject, that it has this or that relation with some other idea, that something corresponding to it has a real exis-tence outside the Blue is not yellow is of identity; Two triangles on equalbases between two parallells are equal is of relation; Iron ismagnetizable is of co-existence; and God exists is of realexistence. Though identity and co-existence are themselvesrelations, they are such special kinds of agreement or dis-agreement amongst ideas that they deserve to be brought inseparately, not under relation in general.

7 Before examiningthe various degrees of our knowledge, I must first considerthe different meanings that the word knowledge can word knowledge is applied to several ways in whichthe mind can possess truth. 1. There isactual knowledge,which is the mind s view of how any two of itspresentideasagree or disagree, or of how they are related to one A man is said to know a proposition if he once hadactual knowledge of it and has kept that in his memoryso that whenever he again reflects on that proposition heimmediately and confidently assents to it again. I thinkwe might call thishabitual knowledge. We with our finiteunderstandings can think clearly and distinctly of only onething at a time; so if we had knowledge at a given time onlyof what we were actually thinking about at that time, thushaving actual but not habitual knowledge , we would all bevery ignorant; and even the person who knew most wouldknow only one habitual knowledge there are also what ordinary folkwould call two degrees.

8 In one of them, truths are laid upin the memory in such a way that whenever they occur tothe mind it again actually perceives the relation betweenthose ideas. This is the degree of habitual knowledge thatwe have of all those truths of which we have anintuitiveknowledge, where a view of the ideas immediately revealstheir agreement or disagreement one with other is knowledge of truths of which the mind wasonce convinced, and retains the memory of the conviction butdoesn t retain the demonstration[= rigorous, logical, knock-downproof ]. A man who remembers certainly that he once tookin the demonstration thatthe three angles of a triangleare equal to two right anglesis certain that he knows it,because he can t doubt its truth. It may be thought thatin a case like this, where a man adheres to a truth afterforgetting the demonstration that first led him to know it,hebelieves his memoryrather than reallyknowing the truth197 Essay IVJohn LockeChapter i: Knowledge in generalin question ; and I used to think that this way of receivinga truth lies somewhere between opinion and knowledge akind ofassurancethat surpasses merebelief, for that relieson the testimony of someone else, but not reaching as farasknowledge.

9 But on a closer look I find that it doesn t fallshort of perfect certainty, and is in effect true is apt to mislead us about this case is that in itthe agreement or disagreement of the ideas isn t per-ceived by an actual view of all the intermediate ideasthat in the first instance enabled the agreement ordisagreement of the ideas in the proposition to ,it is perceived throughotherintermediate ideas thatshow the agreement or disagreement of the ideascontained in the proposition whose certainty we for example the proposition thatthe three angles ofa triangle are equal to two right angles. Someone who hasclearly perceived the demonstration of this truthknowsitto be true even when that demonstration is gone out of hismind so that at present it isn t actually in view and he can tpossibly recollect it. But he knows it in a different way fromhow he knew it before.

10 The agreement of the two ideas joinedin that proposition is perceived through the interventionof ideas other than those that at first led him to perceivethe proposition s truth. He remembers, he knows (forremembering is just reviving some past knowledge), thathe was once certain of the truth of the proposition that thethree angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones. Ideasdon t change and so the relations between them don t changeeither; and his grasp ofthatis now the idea that shows himthat if the three angles of a trianglewere onceequal to tworight ones, theywill alwaysbe so. And so he comes to becertain that what was once true about this is always true;ideas that once agreed will always agree; and consequentlywhat heonceknew to be true he willalwaysknow to be trueas long as he can remember that he once knew is howparticulardemonstrations in mathematicsprovidegeneralknowledge.