The Functional Versus the Representational Theories of Knowledge in Locke's Essay

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University of Chicago Press, 1902 - Knowledge, Theory of - 67 pages
 

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Page 11 - I entreat men to believe that it is not an opinion to be held, but a work to be done ; and to be well assured that I am labouring to lay the foundation, not of any sect or doctrine, but of human utility and power.
Page 15 - Our business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our conduct. If we can find out those measures, whereby a rational creature, put in that state...
Page 46 - For when we know that white is not black, what do we else but perceive that these two ideas do not agree? When we possess ourselves with the utmost security of the demonstration, that the three angles of a triangle...
Page 53 - The reason whereof is, that the simple ideas whereof our complex ideas of substances are made up are, for the most part, such as carry with them, in their own nature, no visible necessary connexion or inconsistency with any other simple ideas, whose co-existence with them we would inform ourselves about.
Page 40 - ... of the same real essence of a circle should have different properties. But were there no other reason against it, yet the supposition of essences that cannot be known, and the making of them nevertheless to be that which distinguishes the species of things, is so wholly useless, and unserviceable to any part of our. knowledge, that that alone were sufficient to make us lay it by...
Page 15 - We shall not have much reason to complain of the narrowness of our minds, if we will but employ them about what may be of use to us...
Page 46 - ... that equality to two right ones does necessarily agree to, and is inseparable from, the three angles of a triangle?
Page 37 - Thirdly, our complex ideas of substances being made all of them in reference to things existing without us, and intended to be representations of substances, as they really are, are no farther real than as they are such combinations of simple ideas as are really united, and co-exist in things without us.
Page 25 - And if considered in the things themselves, do they not depend on the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of the parts? All which include some kind of relation in them. Our idea therefore of power, I think, may well have a place amongst other simple ideas, and be considered as one of them, being one of those that make a principal ingredient in our complex ideas of substances, as we shall hereafter have occasion to observe.
Page 43 - It is necessary for me to be as I am; God and nature has made me so ; but there is nothing I have is essential to me. An accident or disease may very much alter my colour or shape ; a fever or fall may take away my reason or memory, or both, and an apoplexy leave neither sense nor understanding, no, nor life.

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