John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding
In John Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding", he makes a distinction between the sorts of ideas we can conceive of in the perception of objects. Locke separates these perceptions into primary and secondary qualities. Regardless of any criticism of such a distinction, it is a necessary one in that, without it, perception would be a haphazard affair. To illustrate this, an examination of Locke's definition of primary and secondary qualities is necessary.
Starting from common-sense notions of perception, namely that there must be something in order to perceive something, Locke continues by arguing that ideas in the mind correspond to qualities in the object being perceived. Locke states that:
Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself, or is in the immediate object of perception, thought or understanding, that I call idea; and the power to produce any idea in our mind, I call quality of the subject wherein that power is. 11
Primary qualities are those aspects of an object that are in and of the object being perceived. Anything that must actually be in an object in order for any object to exist is a primary quality. These, Locke stated, are inseparable from an object. Qualities such as mass, solidity, and extension in three dimensions are all primary qualities. To say that an object has mass and solidity but no shape or extension in three dimensions is inconceivable if not outright ridiculous. So, primary qualities are necessary for an object to be considered an object. If something does not have primary qualities, then it cannot be considered an object but must be considered to be something else.
Secondary qualities, according to Locke,...
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...ere God creates substance and everything associated with it. Conversely, without a belief in God, Berkeley's position cannot be put forth, as there would be nothing to create the perceptions, and Locke's position becomes more likely. And if your faith leads you to the conclusion that there is no God, then you must put your faith in a material world for there is no other consistent world of which you could conceive.
Endnotes
1 Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. The Empiricists. (New York: DoubleDay, 1974) p.24 [Back]
2 Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. The Empiricists. (New York: DoubleDay, 1974) p.25 [Back]
3 Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. The Empiricists. (New York: DoubleDay, 1974) p.166 [Back]
4 Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. The Empiricists. (New York: DoubleDay, 1974) p.168 [Back]
5 Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. The Empiricists. (New York: DoubleDay, 1974) p.168 [Back]
These women can be compared to Sirens. Everett and his men fall under the spell of these sirens. The sirens make the men drink whiskey until they pass out. When they wake up they discover that Pete is nowhere to be found. All they discover is his clothes and a frog in them; Delmar is convinced that that was in fact Pete himself. The fact that Delmar believes that the sirens turned Pete into a frog resembles the scene when Circe turns Odysseus’ men into pigs. Although Pete was not really turned into a frog, it symbolizes how they are punished for being on a journey with Everett. Same can be said of Odysseus’ men. They are punished for being on this grand journey with a man that has many faults including pride. Everett and Delmar then meet Big Daniel Teague. Daniel Teague is a big man with only one functioning eye. Polyphemus and Daniel go hand in hand. Though, Daniel is a salesman and his is also very good at oratory like Everett. This is completely different than Polyphemus in The Odyssey. Polyphemus is supposed to be a monster and nothing like a civilized person. Daniel is a civilized but he does have animalistic tendencies. He kills the frog with his hands and beats up Everett and Delmar. Daniel killed what was supposedly one of Everett’s men. This is pretty close to what Polyphemus
In the story “War Dances” the narrator portrays the life of an American Indian who has lost his father, “my father, a part-time blue-collar, worker, dies of full-time alcoholism in March 2003.” (Page 611) He also is dealing with a mysterious brain tumor that he concerns himself with death. “I had to stare at a tombstone with my name on it” (Page611). The narrator is pessimistic with the idea of death, his father’s death, and now maybe himself. In the story he travels through a lonely hospital in search of a blanket for his father who is cold, but instead runs into an irritated, unhelpful nurse who makes this difficult. After collecting “the world’s biggest coffee filter” better known as a hospital blanket the...
The purpose of this chapter is to put a light on some main events in Temujin or Genghis Khan’s life and his main achievements. Weatherford want to g...
Hartog, Leo de. Genghis Khan: Conqueror Of The World. London: Taurisparke Paperbacks, 2004. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 22 Feb. 2014.
O Brother, Where Art Though? by Joel and Ethan Coen is a film, made in 2000, that was based on the Odyssey in many ways. The movie is about a guy, Ulysses Everett, who is on this long journey to find the “treasure” which he tells his two friends, Delmar and Pete. He is actually tricking them about the treasure because he knows that they would not go on this elongated journey, which they are escaping prison for, if they knew the truth. He was actually going to try to stop the marraige of his wife with her new fiance. On the long journey they face many challenges that try to stop them from getting to the town his wife is in. Everett and Odysseus both have similar call to actions which, were to come home to stop their wives from marrying
he comes to term with three certainties: the existence of the mind as the thing that thinks,
Furthermore, both Odysseus and Everett use their quick wits and deceptions to get out of tight situations. Then, in the Odyssey Odysseus also had a crew that accompanied him on his journey. Pete and Delmar represent the crew in the film. The very first scene that takes place shows Everett and his crew escaping from jail, this can be compared to when Odysseus escapes from Calypso and other monsters. After they escape they first meet a railroad homeless man who is blind and tells them they will not seek their treasure. This man represents Teiresias who is a blind fortune teller in the Odyssey.
Hartog, L. D. (2004). Genghis Khan: conqueror of the world (vii ed.). [eBook Collection (EBSCOhost)]. http://dx.doi.org/AN 112269
Temujin, who later took the name Genghis Khan, came from humble beginnings which helped to form the foundations of the type of leader he became later in life. After his warlord father was killed by a rival tribe, Temujin and his family were exiled to the steppes and into poverty. Temujin’s “personal magnetism and courage and his inclination to rely on trusted friends rather than kinship allowed him to build up a small following and to ally with a more powerful tribal leader” (Strayer, 2009). From an early age, his charismatic form of leadership brought many warriors into his fold, including warriors from defeated enemies, where they were rewarded for their skill and loyalty as opposed to their bloodlines. The warriors were all accountable to one another “by the provision that should one or two members of a unit desert in battle, all were subject to the death penalty” (Strayer, 2009). This system of punishment and rewards helped hold the Empire armies together and contributed to its success.
Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience (Locke, 1690/1947, bk. II, chap. 1, p.26).
John Locke’s Views on Property and Liberty, as Outlined in His Second Treatise of Government
So the mind at birth is a tabula rasa, a blank slate, and is informed only by “experience,” that is, by sense experience and acts of reflection. Locke built from this an epistemology beginning with a pair of distinctions: one between SIMPLE and COMPLEX ideas and another between PRIMARY and SECONDARY qualities. Simple ideas originate in any one sense (though some of them, like “motion,” can derive either from the sense of sight or the sense of touch). These ideas are simple in the sense that they cannot be further broken down into yet simpler entities. (If a person does not understand the idea of “yellow,” you can’t explain it to him. All you can do is point to a sample and say, yellow.) These simple ideas are Locke’s primary data, his psychological atoms. All knowledge is in one way or another built up out of them.
Locke first splits substances of which we have ideas into three groups; God, finite intelligences, and bodies. Locke writes that identity is ascertained by a comparison between the idea of an object at one moment in one place, and the idea of the object at another time and place. If these two ideas match up, that is to say that they are exactly the same, then the object itself is the same. God’s identity is indubitable, as he is eternal and unchanging. Finite intelligences and Bodies each have an exact beginning, and when you compare the current finite intelligence or body to its beginning you can understand its identity. An object cannot have two distinct beginnings in time and space, and two objects cannot share in one beginning. As such, finite intelligences and bodies each have unique beginnings which identify them. Locke’s idea of personal identity is based on the same principal of continued comparison as the identities of the three substances.
This story can be summarized by dividing the story into three major sections that represent a genealogy of the Genghis Khan ancestors, the lifestyle of Genghis Khan and the story of Genghis son and Ogodei his successor. This piece of early time’s literature was translated and edited by Jack Weatherford and it was not released until 16th February, 2010. The piece of work restores early history’s most prominent figures to the positions they rightfully deserves. It clears the picture of the nomadic lifestyle of the Mongols and it is rich with information regarding the society of the Mongols in the 12th and the 13th centuries” (Kahn, 2005).
Locke and Descartes were two different philosophers however they had certain similarities as well. Locke had written an essay “Concerning Human Understanding”. In his essay he derived a lot of information from Descartes and tried to give his own explanation using Descartes theory. Locke explains about IDEA in his essay and derives this very term from Descartes. According to Locke an idea is that which “the mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding” Similarly Descartes explains this