# Newton vs. Leibniz (cont.) / Locke's "Essay"

## February 17th, 2020

- Pre-class scribblings:

        ah, lovely stress and strain
        ripper and roller of
        buildings and men

- "My dissertation is done, but the amount of editing those things take is *ridiculous*"
- Announcements:
    - Group 1 should respond to Group 2's posts on John Locke before Tuesday at midnight
    - I'm dealing with a personal emergency right now that might delay grading for a week or two; I'm sorry about that, so please bear with me
    - This is *no class* next Wednesday, as a result of the emergency
    - There's a *lot* of readings for Wednesday, so don't try to get every sub-point; try to just grasp the big picture and ask, "What's Locke trying to show here?"
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- So, let's take 20 minutes or so to recap Newton and Leibniz
    - Newton said he "framed no hypotheses" as to how gravity actually worked, since he didn't understand it
    - Leibniz, on the other hand, tried to explain these mechanics (although a convincing explanation really didn't come around until Einstein's theory of relativity), and wasn't satisfied with Newton just shrugging and saying "I dunno"
        - We see Leibniz really trying to apply the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which made Newton uncomfortable (as it did many) since it seems to lead to determinism and eliminate free will if *everything* needs a reason (a la Spinoza)
        - Leibniz, though, saw Newton as accusing God of imperfection since he had to intervene and "fix" the universe from time to time (as well as him copping out by trying to not explain things)
        - Theologically, then, these 2 guys were having a debate about God
            - In a sense, then, this "determines" God, but Leibniz doesn't see this as a bad thing; he'd say God *could* have acted differently, but instead, since he's omniscient, he always does what is best instead
        - So, Newton and Leibniz fundamentally disagree on what it means to be "free"

- Alright, let's leave Newton and Leibniz squabbling and go to John Locke, a *hugely* influential political philosopher and epistemologist (some of his ideas ended up in the U.S. Constitution)
    - We've, so far, seen:
        - Bacon arguing for experimentation
        - Galileo understanding the world mechanistically (via corpuscles and astronomy)
        - Descartes using his method of doubt to ask questions and getting to 1st principles
        - Spinoza arguing for a material universe and the PSR
    - "A regular historical philosophy class would say we have 3 rationalists - Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz - fighting against 3 empiricists - Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. I don't think that's very great history."
        - These philosophers each had mixes of empiricism and rationalism and differing sympathies; it's not nearly as simple as saying it was team 1 vs team 2

- So, Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" - what's it about? Why is he writing this?
    - The whole essay is about how we can possibly know things, and in that way is similar to Descartes - it's a work of Epistemology!
    - However, Locke believes knowledge comes from experience, and especially that there are no such things as INNATE IDEAS
    - Locke also set out to show that there were limits to human knowledge, hopefully ending what he saw as meaningless debates over things we *couldn't* possibly know
        - Many people also think Locke was waging a proxy war against Catholicism by attacking Aristotle, acting as an underlying motivation for him writing this
        - "Locke was different from most others we've read; he was very matter-of-fact and wrote in English rather than Latin, and arguably tries to promote the less educated in that way. Philosophy for everyone, y'know?"

- Book II, Chpt. 1, paragraph 2 sums up Locke's view: ideas come ONLY from experience (either through your senses or by reflection on your existing ideas), and before we have experiences we have no ideas at all; when we're born, Locke thinks our mind is a "blank slate"
    - Locke earlier, though, says that we probably don't have innate ideas based on our experiences with children, idiots, and so forth - he's an empiricist
        - This doesn't give us certain knowledge, but probabilistic knowledge, which is frustrating if you're a rationalist
    - What are these arguments against innate ideas, then, in Book I?
        - In Book I, chpt. 2, paragraph 15, he maintains that even very early ideas are learned by experience
    - What does Locke mean by innate ideas, anyway? He means things that we can know without experience, like Descartes' "cogito"

- Alright, see you on Wednesday!