A Guide To Locke's Essay

Probable Knowledge

Although the degree to which we assent to a probable proposition ought to depend upon the strength of the evidence in its favor, Locke granted that we often regulate our judgment merely be reference to our faulty memories of past experience.

It is both natural and (in a practical snese) necessary to rely upon the retention of past experience rather that developing our beliefs anew in every moment, it is a dangerous practice, because the propositions we acquire through exercise of the faculty of judgment are bound to remain genuinely uncertain.

Since the supposed relation between the ideas is founded only upon our present estimation of the available evidence, it is always possible in principle that the discovery of additional information in the future may lead us to overthrow or abandon a past judgment, as can never happen with truly demonstrative knowledge.

The difficulty of applying judgment successfully, Locke suggested, should encourage us to be patient and tolerant of those who disagree with us on matters about which neither side can claim anything more sure than probable opinion. [Essay IV xvi 1-4]

The highest possible degree of probable knowledge will occur in cases where the general consent of all human beings happens to coincide with my own invariable experience of some particular matter of fact. This, Locke supposed, will produce a level of assurance virtually indistinguishible from that of demonstrative certainty, and this explains our willingness to act without hesitation upon our conviction that such beliefs truly capture the nature of reality, even though we remain ignorant of the inner constitution of things themselves.

In cases that exhibit a less striking regularity in my own experience and that of others, the degree of my confidence in the probable proposition will be suitable reduced, Locke held, and even in the absence of any direct observation regularity, I am likely to accept the unanimous testimony of impartial witnesses with respect to any specific matter of fact. [Essay IV xvi 6-8]

When experience and testimony do not so clearly agree, Locke supposed, other methods may serve to guide the dictates of judgment. In legal and quasi-legal contexts, we develop a great deal of skill in evaluating the relative merits of conflicting testimony from distinct sources. In the natural sciences, we commonly employ analogical models in an effort to comprehend the real essences of which we are constitutionally ignorant. [Essay IV xvi 10-12]

In addition to all of these legitimate grounds for guidance, the faculty of judgment commonly falls victim to unworthy and unsupported claims to its assent. Someone may demand that I assent to the truth of a proposition only because it is defended by some putative authority, in the absence of any proof of its falsity, or solely because it agrees with other opinions I already hold.

But since all of these matters are formally irrelevant to the truth of the proposition in question, Locke supposed, they should have no bearing on my assent. The only legitimate grounds for agreeing with someone are demonstrative knowledge and probable judgment, both of which ultimately rest only upon "the nature of Things themselves." [Essay IV xvii 19-22]

©1999-2002 Garth Kemerling.Last modified 27 October 2001.Questions, comments, and suggestions may be sent to:

God

Like many of his English contemporaries, Locke was deeply interested in matters of faith and religion. Keenly aware of the theological controversies of the day, he developed and defended views of his own that proved influential on the Deists of the next generation. Although knowledge of God is vital for human life and practical conduct, on Locke's view, it cannot be grounded legitimately on the supposedly universal possession of an innate idea. [Essay I iv 8-9]

Although he claimed to demonstrate the existence of God as the only reasonable explanation for the emergence of thought in an otherwise material world, Locke warned against an excessive reliance upon non-rational considerations in the defense of particular religious doctrines.

Thinking Substances

We form our complex ideas of spirits, Locke held, by adding the notions of a variety of cognitive powers (themselves acquired, as ideas of reflection, from careful observation of our own mental operations) to the abstract idea of substance in general. Since this is perfectly analogous to the way we form complex ideas of bodies from our ideas of sensation, the results are perfectly comparable: although we are familiar with both bodies and spirits in our ordinary experience, the real essences of thinking and moving substances alike remain forever unknowable. [Essay II xxiii 22-25]

It is easy enough to employ an empiricist version of Descarte's cogito ergo sum as a demonstration of my own existence, of course. Thinking of any sort, feeling pleasure and pain, even the act of doubting itself, are all experiences that carry with them a full assurance of my own existence as a thinking thing. [Essay IV ix 3] Notice, however, that Locke declined the further implications of the Cartesian inference to sum res cogitans.

Thinking, he argued, is merely an activity of the soul, not its essence; so the continued existence of an individual thinking thing does not necessarily entail its continuous consciousness. [Essay II i 10-16] Locke frequently expressed significant reservations about the demonstrability-if not the very truth-of Cartesian dualism.

Given our widespread ignorance of the inner constitution and operation of substances generally, Locke notoriously suggested that, for all we know, the power of thinking could be providentially superadded to an organic human body as easily as separate thinking and material substances could be combined. [Essay IV iii 6] But the ultimate origin of thinking itself is another matter.

The Existence of God

According to Locke, the existence of God is an instance of demonstrable knowledge in any reasoning being. Since I know intuitively that I exist as a thinking thing, and since nothing can be made to exist except by something else which both exists and has powers at least equal to those of each of its creations, it follows that from all eternity there must have existed an all-powerful cogitative being. [Essay IV x 3-6]

This amounts to a variation on the Aristotelean / Thomistic cosmological argument for God's existence: there is an instance of thinking; every thinking thing proceeds from some other thinking thing; but there cannot be an infinite regress; so there must have been a first thinking thing, or God.

What most interested Locke in this argument was its emphasis on thinking. Willing though he was to contemplate the possibility that individual human beings are animal bodies that have the power to think, Locke insisted that mere matter-with its primary qualities of solidity, mass, and motion-could never on its own give rise to cogitative activity of any kind. Although it may not strictly be inert, matter is most definitely unthinking. [Essay IV x 9-10]

Materialism can never account for the emergence of thought in a universe containing only senseless matter. Thus, from the fact that there is now thinking in the universe, it follows that there always has been thinking in the universe; the first eternal being from which all else flows must itself be a thinking thing.

What is more, Locke argued, it is likely (though not, technically, demonstrably certain) that this first eternal being is actually immaterial. Whether the original being were a single atom, or an eternal system of many parts, or whether every material thing thinks, Locke thought the possibility of a material thinking being at the start difficult to defend.

On his view, we don't even have respectable grounds for supposing that a separate material reality is co-eternal with the necessarily cogitative first being. [Essay IV x 13-18] Locke's insistence on this point fits nicely with his frequent assertions that atheism amounts to nothing more than the supposition that matter is itself eternal, an objection to the views defended by Hobbes.

So God exists, but what is God? Here, as always, Locke depended upon the formation of ideas on empirical foundations. Although we have no direct experience of God, we do have ideas of reflection from experience of our own mental activity, and we have an idea of infinity as a simple mode derived from the idea of number, indefinitely expanded: put these together,

and each of us develops an abstract complex idea of God as a being that possesses all cognitive abilities to an infinite degree. [Essay II xxiii 33-35] In principle, this idea differs from any of our other ideas of thinking things only in the infinity of the divine attributes. God is abolutely perfect in every conceivable respect, and this is ample provision for a deduction of the moral law.

Faith and Reason

Locke was also interested in traditional issues about the relation between faith (assent to revealed truth) and reason (discovery of demonstrative truth) as alternative sources of human conviction. For propositions about which the certainty of demonstrative knowledge is unavailable, our assent may be grounded upon faith in revelation; but Locke argued that the degree of our confidence in the truth of such a proposition can never exceed our assurance that the revelation is of genuinely divine origin, and this itself is subject to careful rational evaluation. [Essay IV xvi 14]

Since God has provided both avenues of belief for the benefit of human achievement, Locke supposed, they can never conflict with each other if properly used. Faith is appropriate, but only with respect to vital issues that lie beyond the reach of reason; to allow any further extent to non-rational religious convictions would leave us at the mercy of foolish and harmful speculations.

In any case where revelation (understood as an extraordinary communication from God) and ordinary human reason coincide in support of the same truth, Locke argued, it is reason that provides the superior ground, since our assurance of the reliability of the revelation itself can never exceed the perfection of demonstrative certainty. [Essay IV xviii 4-11]

Divorcing the (properly complementary) resources of revelation and reason, Locke supposed, is dangerous because it tends to encourage the promulgation of reckless claims of the revealed origin of otherwise incredible propositions. "Enthusiasm," as Locke and many of his contemporaries feared, rests solely upon the emotional strength of persuasion as grounds for assent, and this is formally independent of the objective likelihood of its purportedly divine origin. [Essay IV xix 4-9]

In a sense, then, reason emerges from Locke's discussion as the ultimate arbiter of all legitimate human assent: either it discovers the demonstrative connections through which the truth of an individual proposition can be established with certainty, or it plays the most crucial role in certifying the legitimacy of a revealed proposition as divine rather than merely delusive. [Essay IV xix 12-16] Even though faith can play a role in human life, reason remains the most important basis for genuine human knowledge.

Morality

From the early essays on the obligatory force of natural law to the careful revisions of later editions of the Essay, Locke continually displayed an intense interest in problems of moral philosophy. The proper aim of human knowledge, he supposed, lies not in the satisfaction of attaining abstract speculative truth, but rather in its application to practical conduct, upon which our happiness in this world and the next ultimately depends.

[King, p. 86-88] Ethical knowledge is a variety of what he called Praktikh, The Skill of Right applying our own Powers and Actions, for the Attainment of Things good and useful. The most considerable under this Head, is Ethicks, which is the seeking out those Rules, and Measures of humane Actions, which lead to Happiness, and the Means to practise them.

The end of this is not bare Speculation, and the Knowledge of Truth; but Right, and a Conduct suitable to it. [Essay IV xxi 3] Since our cognitive faculties are best suited for pursuing that knowledge of ourselves and God that is most likely to lead us toward the dutiful conduct by means of which we may secure eternal happiness, Locke argued, morality is the most vital aspect of study for all human agents. [Essay II xii 11] In what ways do human faculties establish the foundations of moral knowledge?