John Locke
Locke, John (1632-1704) Educated at Oxford, Locke is best known for his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which was 17 years in the making. Locke disputed Descartes’ emphasis on innate ideas. It was commonly held in Locke’s time that morality was instilled in people by God. That is, people are born with knowing right from wrong. In contrast, Locke proposed that the mind is as a blank slate (tabula rasa) and that ideas come from experience. Borrowing from his teacher Robert Boyle, Locke differentiated between primary and secondary qualities. Qualities are idea producers. Primary qualities are inseparable from the object, and generate in us ideas of solidity, shape, and movement. Secondary qualities (such as color and taste) do not correspond to the physical world but are psychological in nature. Locke was a dualist (mind and body exist separately), an empiricist (emphasized experience, and an associationist. He held that if the blind could be made to see, they would not be able to visually identify a cube because they had only experienced it by touch. They would need to learn to associate the shape with touch.
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