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An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Book 2 By John Locke

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In John Locke's essay “ An Essay Concerning Human Understandings book #2”, Locke was explaining how when us humans are born, were born with no knowledge of reality. We are born with a blank slate or white paper mind. What he means by this is when a baby is born, their understanding of the world doesn't come naturally to them, or isn't already embedded in the brain. When we’re raised were taught different things concerning where we live, who our parents are and how they act. Each person is taught their actions and understanding of things and isn't just magically thought of in the head. Our thoughts and perceptions come from experience. The philosopher John Humes agrees with Locke's theory on a blank slate mind. John humes along with other philosophers are empiricist. …show more content…

The opposite of an empiricist is a rationalist, someone that bases their opinions on facts and previous knowledge. Hume thought the rationalist argument about how the knowledge of something can be obtained without experiencing something was a bit… irrational haha. An example of rationalism is you know animals need water to survive, an elephant is an animal, therefore elephants need water to survive. You can conclude this with past facts and it be correct without having to experience it first hand. It's almost like two explicits make an implicit but with knowledge. Hume thinks we can only have two types of ideas. He thinks we can have ideas based on matters of fact and relations on ideas. Hume thinks we gain knowledge and ideas from impressions. The types of impressions we can gain knowledge from is colors, object, feelings. We get certain ideas from those impressions. And then our ideas lead to connecting things with other impressions we

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