Cover page and title of BA Thesis in Philosphy

DON BOSCO COLLEGE
OF PHILOSOPHY AND EDUCATION
MOSHI – TANZANIA
(An Affiliate College of Catholic University of Eastern Africa, Nairobi)



A CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE IN JOHN LOCKE’S PHILOSOPHY


By
Wanjala Moses

Under the Guidance of Br. Anastasio Nyaga Kiura Sdb





A Paper Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy and Education



February 2006

Declaration, Acknowledgements and Dedication of BA Thesis in Philsophy

DECLARATION

THESIS TITLE
A CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE IN JOHN LOCKE’S PHILOSOPHY


I, the undersigned declare that this is my original thesis and has not been submitted to any College or University for academic credit. Any information from other sources has been dully acknowledged.


Signed________________________________________________
Wanjala Moses

Date__________________________________________________

Supervisor_____________________________________________
Br. Anastasio Nyaga Kiura Sdb

Date__________________________________________________

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
All for now is ‘a big thanks.’ I convey my gratitude, to God for the immeasurable blessings on me. Close at heart is the Egesa Family and friends for nurturing me. I appreciate your wisdom, generosity, love, unity and genuine friendship.
I am indebted to Fr. Ferrington – the Rector, and the Don Bosco College of Philosophy and Education, Moshi, Tanzania for all the help that I have received – viz – reflective atmosphere, equipped and updated library facilities, internet, computers for research etc. Distinctively, are my able lecturers, many of whom are from backgrounds – viz – Zambia, England, India, Spain, Kenya, Tanzania, USA, Ireland, Venezuela, Italy, Nigeria, Germany, Sweden…. You enabled me to make a new experience in life. I highly consider Fr. Eustace Siame, our Dean of Studies. It has been pleasant philosophising with us. You triggered my love for wisdom, due to your well-presented lectures.
Br. Anastasio Nyaga has been my guide. I am aware of the time you reserved to read and correct my paper so that there is a systematic flow of thought. Sincerely, I admire your love and commitment. You also availed yourself whole-heartedly to me whenever I came to share and plan with you – the various programs of the community.
I recognize the minds of Fr. Selvam G. Sahaya from Don Bosco Oysterbay in Dar-es-salam, Brs. Okonkwo Emeka from Nigeria and Louis Figo from Malawi. It was your sacrifice as proof readers that enabled me to have my paper sound with grammatical and systematic flow of thought. Fr. Philip. Massawe – Rector of Njiro Institute in Arusha and Br. Alex Mulongo – Utume, Nairobi, for having given the initial kickoff to my topic. Mr. Mike Ssegawa – Makerere University, Kampala and Mr. Martin Mwangi – Nairobi Universtity, for having introduced me to the intellectual world of philosophical thought.
It was such a brilliant journey with my fellow finalist intellectuals – viz – Mwenda, Chinyala, Koduol, Wambua, Tartisio, Bamie, Chiemeka, Okonkwo, Igbokwe, Morba and Airoboman. I cherish a lot from experiences of cultural settings with my fellow students from Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, The Sudan, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Liberia, Ghana, Malawi, Zambia, South-Africa – The Kingdom of Lesotho, Zimbabwe etc. Besides, I admire your trust in me as your representative, taking me as I am. Working together with my common saying, ‘shall we’ often gave me an assurance of your support in discerning the needs of the College. As for the Student’s Council, I am proud of your tireless, qualitative and industrious contributions to the smooth running of the Institute.
I have a high regard for Fr. Jozwiak Richard – now in Poland, for your fatherly understanding, as well as your material and spiritual packages. Br. John Njuguna, for being there for me whenever I was besides you at various moments in my life. Yours is an immensity of a listening and generous heart. My family remembers you all.
Mr. Bagalana Katalish Mathias - now, a teacher at Bombo. I value your spirit of friendship to me and the Egesa family. We often remember your family too. ‘Asante’ to the families of Machary, and Nicholas Massawe. It was such a warm reception that you offered me during my four years stay in Tanzania. A high regard to the family of Bernie Fernandes from Kenya for the support provided. I esteem Agunga and Mushe’s spirit of sacrifice and love in photocopying. ‘Shukrani gezira’ to Charles Taban for an examplery personality and creative involvement in the Music lessons. It was pleasant being together purifying our souls. Grateful to Brs. Sokuu and Annan (Ghana), Mtui (Tanzania), Madessery (India), Hawaria and Weldu (Eritrea) for the gesture of friendship and love. To the countless contributors, we pray for actuality of each one’s dreams. God Bless us.









DEDICATION

To my Parents – Egesa Jane Florence and Egesa Charles;
My Sisters – Nantabo Mary and Taaka Christine;
My Brothers – Egesa Anthony, Egesa Emmanuel,
Wandera Joseph and Wabwire John;
And Friends.

PHILOSOPHY BA. COMPREHENSIVE PROPOSITIONS, 2006

Introductory Remarks: Reflecting on my own life, I have come to appreciate the unique consciousness of man, among other creatures. Flashing back to my three years of philosophical research and studies, I am pleased about the form in which my worldview of reality has resulted into – I mean my way of exploring and looking at reality. Undoubtedly, human beings are often affected and hence shaped by the environment in which they find themselves; be it positively or negatively. In stating my worldview, therefore, there are components, which require no justication in order to be or exist i.e. my own existence, existence of the world and that of God. These 3 are undeniable facts indeed.
In talking about man, I have been reflecting on my own reality but with a reference to Gabriel Marcel, who presents man as comprising of the notions of problem – having – and mystery – being. He says that man is a mystery because in defining the human person, he is defining himself. This is a difficult task. Man is even a bundle of antinomies. It is noted that the more man strives to understand himself, the more reality enfolds to him, lest these paradoxes remain obscure to man himself and others.
Man is a rational animal – His rationality goes beyond animality. Man’s reason makes him recognize himself as a paradox. St. Augustine says that man is endowed with intellect and will. This makes him recognize his creator and the other beings in the world. In the midst of reality, man knows and yet does not know. Although man has this power of knowing, Freud through his Psychoanalysis tells us that there is an aspect in ourselves that is yet to be discovered i.e. the unconscious. C. Jung says that our unconsciousness comprises of: Inherited – collective consciousness and Acquired – individual consciousness. Man’s rationality through the mind flashes or moves from back (memories) through (now) to the future, unlike the animals. Such a fact enables man to deliberate on instances with the guide of his conscience so as to make true meaning in life.
Man is a life-meaning giver – The fact that man is a knower distinguishes him from other beings in the world. He recognizes them and relates with them. The wonderful things that I perceive and experience make me wonder of my own being and that of other beings around me. Man knows that he knows and being conscious of his existence in the world, he knows that he is part of the world with other beings. He therefore strives to give reason and meaning to whatever he encounters in life. If one may imagine a world without man, a question calls to my mind as to whether such a world could be called a world, any way. It is man who calls himself man, talks of the world…, assigns meaning, purpose, names etc to things. Otherwise, things would exist unnoticed or with no body to attach value to them.
St. Augustine says that man truly belongs to this material world and he is subject to its limitations of material nature; pains, sufferings, joy, time and space. Having recognized that man is aware that he also shares in the spiritual world besides the physical world, he is the only creature that knows how to love and to choose among options.
Man is individual yet a social animal – Though an individual, man is born in a family
in order to realize himself. But to love applies to man and the other. In describing man, Aristotle says that man lives in the society and in the society, he becomes more human by interacting with fellow men. It is in the society that man finds fulfillment and develops his potentials because no man is an island. Some philosophers have looked on social aspect of man from different perspectives: Camus considers the other as his hell because he threatens his existence, while Marcel looks at the other as part of him. The more one sees the other, the more he sees and realises himself. Nonetheless, one notices that the ‘I’ does not exist independent of the ‘We’ – as in the African Philosophy, where Mbiti says, “I am because you are and since you’re therefore I am.” One ought to note that socialization should enable man to gain more experiences from fellow man, for left to himself as an individual, he is bound to be narrow and limited in his approach to reality. In the African context, outside the social life (community life), the individual is not fully understood.
Man is free and yet limited – Man is free even in oppressive conditions, just as Victor Frankl would testify after his experience in the concentration camp with the Nazi’s in Germany. Man is dynamic and he can make choices. He is free morally, spiritually, politically etc., but we do not claim absolute freedom. Our freedom is limited by some external or internal factors. Human freedom is conditioned by situation as in religion, society, culture, economics, politics, training. Rousseau in his book Social Contract says: “Man is born free and he is everywhere in chains i.e. he is born tied on the umbrical cord of the mother.” In talking about freedom, does this mean that man can do whatever he wishes whenever and wherever he likes? Rather his conscience reminds him of the conscious responsibility of his every act and thought in the world before his God.
Man is Subsistent and yet a Task – As a human being, a person is a complete whole in body structure and alignment but at the same time, he is a task – something to be completed – a potency to be actualized, whilst considering his human responsibility. Every other time, man always has something to accomplish. He normally looks forward to something, for instance as a student, I am in potency of being a lecturer, psychologist, priest etc. Even in life, one is in potency of after life. The whole concept goes up to infinity, culminating in the Supreme Being - God. There are a number of tasks e.g. freedom, beauty, good. Though these tasks are part of man, he strives to achieve them in full, so as to complete himself. Now how do I complete these tasks? I realize that one has to start by a positive attitude of self-consciousness and a revised relationship with the society in which he lives. The society therefore helps man to complete himself as he continues living in this world. In the Christian perspective we could say that man is already (subsistent) but not yet (a task).
The world and Man – Philosophers ponder on the question as to whether it is an
illusion or reality that man is in the world. Some see man as just being there in the world – Dasein – throwness. One notices that man in the world is not just by chance as existentialists have claimed. I tend to believe that man has a mission to fulfill in the world, just as Leibnitz would say: “if a thing exists and does not have to exist, it exists because there is a sufficient reason for it to exist.” Similarly, the world does not choose to exist but it exists because there is a reason for its existence. We bear in mind that the world is moving towards certain perfection and fulfillment in the Omega point on which the entire world depends, as Telhard would hold. It is on this dependency that the world attains meaning in its situatedness.
The world that exists – In Genesis, it is written that the world was created by God for man to live in. In this world, man strives to discover himself and other created things of which man dominates over all. Since man is conscious in the world, it is upon him to coordinate and benefit reciprocally from the world. Philosophers have different opinions as to whether the world was created or it evolved. Creationists – claim creation of the world, while the evolutionists oppose it as they hold that everything evolved through stages. Phenomenologists claim that the world has no independent existence out of the mind. These are just ideas where as the realists affirm that there is a physical world existing apart from our mind. Nonetheless, one notices that the basic thing is that the world was initiated by a certain Supreme power and hence did not come to be by itself.
The world as finite – owing to the fact that the supreme brings things into existence, those that he creates are finite. The world is 2-fold as Martin Bubber says i.e. the world of things and the world of man. There are things in the world for man in the world. The world is a prey for man. Because the world is caused by a Creator, it is said to be limited. Things in the world, because of their nature, come to an end, though they may take another form of existence. They are not perpetual in their existence. They are limited by their nature as opposed to the infinity of the Supreme Being.
The contingency of the world – because it is created. It is not necessary for the world to exist. God remains God without the created world. All things in the world are contingent because nothing is permanent. The phenomenon of birth life and death of worldly things give an impression that there must be something somewhere that is solely responsible for all the fleeting world things. The world does not choose to be what it is. The world is all dependant on the one that brought it into existence – God
The world as a participating unity – The world is a manifestation of God who is one and undivided. What makes up the world is so vast that we cannot comprehend and accommodate. The world therefore leaves man in a state of wonder! That is why in the state of wonder, the early cosmologists in their innocence of reality started contemplating on the world stuff – some saying water, air etc. whatever exists in the world is a unique individual entity that is for the service for the other beings. In being, there is a communication of interior unity. There is an interconnectivity of the things in the world. The particular existent things in the world therefore participate in unity of being. No particular existent could call itself complete and perfect unity, since every individual thing participates in the one complete Being. Man for example participates in the nature and unity of his Creator. Therefore the world by itself is an imperfect unity unless it participates in the unity of man and God.
God is invisible but real – the world’s imperfection makes man to refer to his God in man’s own inadequate comprehension. God’s existence is attributed to the unmoved mover of Aristotle in the ancient philosophy. He is a spiritual in nature and because we cannot see him empirically, we easily attribute him through the existence of the visible realities around us. God’s existence – related to ‘MANGO’ of St. Thomas, that is; Motion, Action, Necessity, Grade and Order of how things appear. This implies that when we see the coordination of the material things, we learn that they cannot come to be out of nothing, for, from nothing, nothing comes. Hence there is a power that transcends the material and cause things to move. The unmoved mover in this case is one God, though others refer to him with different names as in their own dialects.
God transcends the world (creation) and man in particular. Regardless of the attributes of man, God remains God. God is not created, immutable and he is unchangeable. Considering the nature of God, he is a divine being. He makes things happen in the universe. Man just notices them happen and the immediate thing for him to do with his reason is to wonder. God is an undivided being for he is perfect and lacks nothing. He is not limited to a place, space or time. He transcends all that is and that is not as man’s mind can imagine.
The mysterious and omnipresent God – the way things happen in the world, man cannot easily understand e.g. orderliness of things of the universe, e.g. stars, sun etc. it is a battle of the mind. The mysterious God –human knowledge on God is so limited. Man cannot easily understand God’s plan. We look at things happening in the world as mysteries that we cannot explain. However, God being a mystery for man in the world does not presuppose that man cannot speak about him., that is he is present everywhere and is not limited by space and time as other beings are. He is an unlimited God – in knowledge and power. It is a no wonder that in the Old Testament times, he discloses himself to the early prophets such as Abraham and Moses as ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ No one needs to question God’s being. God cannot be located, because to locate him means to limit him. Because he is the one who made whatever he made and positioned it wherever he put it, God is the only Being that has total access to the visible and the invisible realities that exist.
God is eternal and infinite – Man is limited and is in potency but God is pure act. His existence is equal to his essence. He did not start somewhere. He is alpha and omega. God is the source and end of reality and truth. Everything begins and ought to culminate in God. God’s essence is to be hence his existence is equal to his essence. When everything else has perished, God alone is, was and will be without end. This is because he was not created, just as the world and man are.
God is omniscient – God has an enormous power and is all-knowing. Humanly speaking, one can say that everything is from and is in the mind of God and there is nothing that escapes his immeasurable mind. God’s knowledge is so vast that man’s mind cannot comprehend it easily except through revelation, which comes from God himself. He is a necessary being as contrasted to the contingency of man. For instance it is stated in the Holy Bible that the peak of the wisdom of man is the foolishness of God or the beginning of God’s wisdom. Man, unlike other things in the world, is the only creature that shares in God’s unlimited knowledge through his consciousness. God stands out as one who cannot be known fully for to know him, man has to be knowledgeable like God.

BA. PHILOSOPHY SYNOPSIS FOR WANJALA MOSES, MAY 2006

The Dean of Studies – Fr. Eustace – My worthy guide – Br. Anastasio – Honorable Board of Examiners – distinguished audience – and my fellow students – a very good afternoon to you all! I welcome you all to this short exposition of my paper entitled: “The Critical Appraisal of Empirical Knowledge in John Locke’s Philosophy,” as my partial contribution to the field of Epistemology.
John Locke, a 17th century first English Philosopher of the Scientific Revolution, was highly an influential founder of the British Empiricism. He was born of a royal family in England in 1632 and died in 1704. His father was a lawyer, captain in the army, and a Parliamentarian in the civil war. Locke’s mother was pious and affectionate. However, she died and left her young sons without mother’s care. In such a chaotic experience, Locke writes: “I had no sooner perceived myself in the world, but I found myself in a storm which had lasted almost hitherto.”
Locke’s Epistemology is seen as a response to a general cultural crisis, the breaking of textual tradition, bitterness and bloodshed of militaristic religious factions in Europe. During his 15 years of scholarship at Oxford, Locke showed his love for facts than abstractions.
Locke’s principle works are: Two Treatises on Government, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding – his masterpiece, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, The Reasonableness of Christianity, and the First Letter on Toleration. Locke felt that rationalists were biting more than they could chew i.e. they held that the power of reason could do more than was actually the case. However, let us not think that Locke necessarily pretends to solve purely speculative problems of knowledge. He rather aims at encouraging useful intellectual training in the daily life of man’s experience, but in concrete terms.
As regards to the choice of my paper, I venture into the above topic because of the relevance of the man’s empirical thought, which is a response to our everyday confrontation of the Why? What? How etc. questions about life and knowledge in particular. My target as I take up this research is to know. We often say that we know things because we can see, touch, smell or hear them. Does this imply that as long as we do not have such an experience of the senses, the existence of unperceived things is an illusion? I thus investigate on reality not only from an empirical stance, but also from an assessed critical perspective of knowledge.
It is said that the search for knowledge is as old as man himself. Knowledge is a moving power in man, who knows that he knows; knows that he does not know, and even yearns to know more of what is. The Socratic quotation: ‘There is only one good – knowledge, and one evil – ignorance,’ stimulates me further, to dig into the faculties of knowledge so as to have the right knowledge. I do not think empirical knowledge has all answers to reality.
Content: “No man’s knowledge goes beyond his experience.” This phrase is very Lockean. We cannot imagine having no experience at all. Man’s existence itself is necessarily an experience. For example, my knowledge that I am now at my desk holding a paper is perceptually gained through my sight on the audience before me, and my touch of the paper as I read and speak out in defense of it. Locke lays out a theory of ideas, proves them empirically and rejects innate ideas. In any case, Locke would confirm that the mind is empty at childbirth, and it is just ready to swallow any ideas from several channels of man’s senses. However, psychologists affirm that experience is not only from birth, but right from the moment of conception.
My work therefore has 4 chapters. In the first chapter, we deal with the general understanding of knowledge. Knowledge is so dynamic that our minds cannot grasp it completely. We are often left in wonder of such a complexity! However, it is not enough that we wonder. I schemed into man’s structure of knowing and how he knows that he knows what he knows. Since knowledge aims at truth, I have made a link between knowledge and truth. I have tackled the postmodern perspective on knowledge in brief.

Chapter two treats the life and times of John Locke, his works especially his ‘Essay’ which I closely made reference to. Other concerns include the circumstances surrounding Locke, his central project, influence from his predecessors, and finally the influence of his thoughts on a contemporary situation. We bear in mind that the context of Locke helps us to understand his empiricism.
I have treated John Locke’s concept of empirical knowledge, as the heart of Locke’s philosophy in the third chapter. This chapter covers areas of human understanding in the Lockean view; highlights some kinds of experiences of man plus the foundations and divisions of the Lockean ideas; empiricism and the tabula rasa concept of Locke; why a rejection of innate ideas. Besides questioning the certainty of empirical knowledge, I have treated Locke’s empirical knowledge as viewed in concepts on morality, abstraction, substance, knowledge of existence etc. In his empiricism, Locke says that the mind perceives nothing except its own internal states. At this point, he seems to develop an idealistic tendency. Yet by wiping out the distinction between sense images and concepts, he landed into sensationalism and materialism. Locke confirms that anything that is outside these empirical ideas is outside our knowledge. Since substance stands outside, it is indefinable – that which I know not!
Chapter four is a critique of Locke’s empirical knowledge. It entails the lights and limitations of his theory of knowledge, extent of human knowledge, relevance of his knowledge to philosophy. We have attempted to question as to whether Africans can find a place in the notion of Locke’s empiricism! I observed that when you say to an African, ‘here is something for you,’ he hears you and normally responds by extending his hand and uttering with his mouth, ‘may I see, smell or touch it?’ This shows the interconnectivity of the senses of an African man.
However, Locke’s empiricism is like a drop of water in the ocean of knowledge. It is not enough that we become satisfied with what appears for it may not be what it is essentially. Locke’s empiricism lacks depth and speculative boldness. Imagine! Intellectual knowledge seems to be reduced to sensation! But we must serve ourselves with empiricism as a starter, lest we fall in a total skepticism. It would be absurd for instance, to give up our legs to walk, for the fact that we have no wings to fly. It would equally be unreasonable to give up our scarce knowledge, because of not being able to reach full knowledge! Reflecting about myself, a question comes to mind, ‘after all, if we just exist, what is the difference between us and the empirical objects out there?’ A conscious openness to situations, plus a combination of the sources of knowledge should bring us closer to the knowledge of truth, which ends in God.
Conclusively, I have treasured the empirical contributions of Locke in a world of philosophy. Even in glorifying his empiricism, Locke would remark that all the sublime thoughts, which tower above the clouds, take their rise and footing here on the empirical ground. We should acknowledge the role of the senses in our lives, for they are a stimulant to man’s action and being. My conviction is that Locke’s philosophy facilitates us to reflect more of the vast knowledge as a means to penetrate into the world of the unknown. It is still my dream that this work of transcending empirical knowledge stimulates readers to journey together towards discovering and assimilating the means of a true quest for knowledge oriented towards a holistic formation of man in his search for truth and happiness – the end of life.

Wanjala Moses.
27th May, 2006,

A CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE IN JOHN LOCKE’S PHILOSOPHY

INTRODUCTION
“No man’s knowledge goes beyond his experience.” This phrase is Lockean in nature. Talking about knowledge presupposes understanding the nature of man and his relationship with the world in which he lives. Incidentally, I am enticed to research on ‘The Critical Appraisal of Empirical Knowledge in John Locke’s Philosophy.’ We notice that in the realm of reality, man is capable of knowing. There is no doubt that we naturally find ourselves striving to acquire even more knowledge. At times, we hunt for knowledge because of either the inner or outer demands.
Fortunately enough, a lot of knowledge is empirically delivered to us from the roots of authority, our own experiences, testimony of others as in our own homes, neighborhood, schools, churches, places of work etc. But where is such knowledge leading us to? Is empirical knowledge sufficient for man? Such knowledge is an intellectual source or input that expresses the need for a deeper search into the ultimate meaning of the knowledge of reality as presented in philosophy.
0.1 Why this Paper
As a conscious being, it is the natural desire to know the Whatness? Whereness? Whenness? Whyness? Whoness? and Howness? of things that has provoked me to venture into knowledge, but from an empirical point of view. Like any other man, I am often confronted with the above questions. As I take up this research, my target is to know. We often say that we know things simply because we can see them, touch them, smell them or hear them. To a few, this may signify that as long as we do not have such an experience of the senses, the existence of unperceived things is put to question! What often comes to peoples’ minds when one says, ‘I know this?’ My inquiry holds as to whether there is a possibility of going beyond the empirical idea that Locke brings about!
In any situation, Locke would confirm that the mind is empty at childbirth, and it is just ready to swallow any ideas from various channels of man’s senses. It is fed with what it did not know before. In this regard, one recognises and appreciates that knowledge can be dished out from any situation as long as one experiences it. We shall learn from the psychologists’ affirmation that experience is not only from birth, but also from the moment of conception.
Besides, should we assimilate every type of knowledge that our minds receive? Is such an empirical knowledge sufficient for the holistic formation of man? Probably we need to understand knowledge from a wide perspective, before understanding Locke!
It is said that the search for knowledge is as old as man himself. Well, each era has its own dream that dies off or one that comes to birth. Whether it is dying or being born, the fact remains that such a dream has to be manifested at a particular moment, place etc., and its fruit is achieved when it is viewed as a reality in its entirety.
Knowledge is a moving power in man, who knows that he knows; knows that he does not know and still yearns to know more. The aspect of awareness and daily evaluation of ourselves helps man to create and actualize a true meaning in life just as Socrates would say that ‘an unexamined life is not worth living.’ To evaluate life means to view oneself in all aspects of life. Reading about Locke, I have always found it necessary to analyse things or situations in their entirety, question the surrounding rather than be contented with mere sense experience, which is only an aspect of reality, anyway.
Various attempts have been made by philosophers at respective eras to investigate what real knowledge is. Such an inquiry is a pointer towards a daily review and better understanding of ourselves in the world in which we live and act. It is with such a background that one asks himself as to whether knowledge is acquired only by experience! What is the position of our own convictions? Is there a possibility to assess the diverse bombardments that we encounter? One way to counteract the knowledge of all sorts that we receive is by being critical consumers of not only whatever we know, but also that which we are in potency of knowing, as we search for the pure act.
Prominent thinkers like Aristotle affirm that all men by nature desire to know. Man persistently experiences an inner drive that haunts him to question things encircling him. Amidst this force, he gradually comes in touch with himself and seeks to understand himself better by what he encounters. The Socratic quotation, ‘There is only one good – knowledge, and one evil – ignorance,’ stimulates me further, to dig into the faculties of knowledge and learn more about not only how to know the empirical world, but also to have the right knowledge. I do not think empirical knowledge has all the answers to reality. Locke says that it is the mind that has access to the objects for knowledge. I tend to back him up by adding that since we are rational beings that are endowed with intellect and will, it is the thinking that gives meaning to what we encounter and makes it fully ours.
Cosmology affirms that the law of cause and effect governs everything that happens about nature. The more knowledge we have, the more reality enfolds to us, as an effect. Locke says that our knowledge is real in so far as there is conformity between our ideas and the reality of things. But the sensitive knowledge, of which we have easy access to, appears to be limited in its scope and certainty. According to Plato, man is in a continuous search for something, which he has not yet acquired, though without it, he may not be at peace with himself. The good for man is that, which makes his life happy, if only he realises it. Does Locke’s empirical knowledge lead us towards such a good? Yet philosophy aims at leading man into a sure and unshakable knowledge of the good.
As a perennial problem, knowledge as such has several questions that it brings forth, no matter the form it takes. With such questions in mind, we shall, in this paper, attempt to respond to the empirical knowledge as presented in the various chapters.
0.2 Division of the Chapters
In the first chapter, we have dealt with the general understanding of knowledge. I noticed that knowledge is so dynamic that man’s mind cannot grasp it completely. Man is often left in wonder of such a complexity of knowledge! But knowledge applies to human beings. Before jotting down some types and sources of knowledge, we have ventured into man’s structure of knowing and how he knows that he knows what he knows. Since knowledge aims at the truth, I have made a link between knowledge and truth. Bearing in mind that we are living in a contemporary period, I have tackled in brief the postmodern perspective on knowledge.
Chapter two treats the life and times of John Locke, his works, circumstances surrounding him, his central project, influence from his predecessors, and finally the influence of his thoughts on a contemporary situation. Knowing Locke and his environment helps us to understand his empiricism.
I have treated John Locke’s concept of empirical knowledge, as the heart of Locke’s philosophy in the third chapter. This chapter covers areas of human understanding in the Lockean view; highlights some kinds of experiences of man plus the foundations and divisions of the Lockean ideas. Talking about empirical knowledge and the concept of tabula rasa of Locke, I have further presented why there is a rejection of innate ideas. Besides questioning the certainty of empirical knowledge, I have treated Locke’s empirical knowledge as viewed in diverse concepts on morality, abstraction, substance and knowledge of existence.
Chapter four is a critique of Locke’s empirical knowledge. It entails the lights and limitations of Locke’s theory of knowledge, extent of human knowledge, relevance of his knowledge to philosophy as seen in various fields like morality, society and education. We have attempted to expose some African responses to Locke’s empirical knowledge.
In the conclusion, I have given a general synthesis between sensation and other sources of knowledge plus my own stands on Locke’s empirical knowledge. I have treasured the empirical contributions of Locke in a world of philosophy, and integrated with a way forward in his theory of knowledge.
I trust that this work will help us to dream big in order to transcend mere empirical knowledge, which in a way is limited. It is my conviction that Locke’s philosophy facilitates us to reflect more of the vast knowledge that is manifest and still remains to be fully discovered and utilised for the betterment of man.

CHAPTER 1
GENERAL CONCEPT OF KNOWLEDGE
Knowledge is quite extensive by its nature. Practically, everything pertaining to man’s faculty of the mind is contained in the umbrella of knowledge. It may be within our own reach or even far-fetched but the fact is that there is pretty much more stuff to be comprehended and discovered ‘out there,’ than whatever merely strikes our minds!
1.1 Understanding of Knowledge
1.1.1 What is Knowledge?
In the Greek period, the ‘Gettier Problem’ was the problem of defining knowledge.’ In this regard, Epistemology as a tool guides us to understand knowledge as a whole. Epistemology comes from Greek words: ‘Episteme’ – science and ‘logos’ – word. Epistemology deals with the nature, origin and scope of knowledge coupled with a justification of beliefs. Its main project is: Can we know anything with certainty? Usually, we refer to knowledge as the awareness and comprehension of facts, truths or information gained in the form of experience, learning or introspection. Knowledge is the state of apprehending truth, fact or reality immediately with the senses to the mind.
In his Theaetetus account, Plato maintains that knowledge consists of justified true belief. Nonetheless, because of knowledge, human consciousness comes out into the light of being. Knowledge may be factual – based on direct observation but not free of uncertainty and deception – or inferential – founded on reasoning from facts or other deducted knowledge. Usually, individuals in their own societies gain knowledge through experience, observation and inference.
1.1.2 Knowledge and Being
‘Being’ is defined as ‘reality’ – ‘that which exists’ – ‘what is.’ It is the first concept formed by the mind. If man knows anything at all, he knows being. But what does it mean to know? The recognition of the ‘thereness’ of what is initially grasped in sense experience underlies the formation of the concept of what exist, and is thus present to the senses. As a consequent, the mind embraces in a mixed or universal manner whatever can be known in perception. Concepts reveal to man the least about anything, but also something of everything. We bear in mind that reality is one and universal.
As a starting point of our inquiry, we thus affirm that knowledge is openness to reality. Logs of wood or stones, for instance, have no knowledge as such. They are ‘shut up in themselves’ and are unaware of the surrounding reality. On contrary, we notice that the responsive beings like plants are endowed with instinctive knowledge in their own context of being open to reality, just like, the sunflower or a rose plant. However, man with his conscience is aware that there is reality but still yearns to know more of that reality. Even then, man knows that our doubts and perplexities – with regard to commonsense knowledge reveal to us that what we know may not be the same as what is. There is a gap between what one knows and the reality as it is. Often times, we know appearances and not reality as it is.
Undoubtedly, there is always an objective desire for man to know. This includes all that is known and that which remains to be known. Man’s quest to know is an attempt to express to himself his attachment to Being as a whole. His existence is not yet accomplished. He is an unfinished being who is in the process of making himself, just as Sartre and Kierkegaard hold, “Man is not what he is; he must become what he is.”
1.1.3 Knowledge as ‘Wonder!’ and ‘Power’
Plato says that philosophy begins with wonder: Whoever lacks this capacity may not attain philosophical insights. I exemplify this with a reference to the ancient search for the world-stuff of Thales, Anaximander etc. that started with ‘wonder.’ Wonder has a strange double effect of inquisitively placing one before his own experience. The hunt to express the richness of reality is always associated with an effort to choose what man knows in any given area at a particular moment.
Philosophy is essentially reflection, which is critical in nature, but wonders at itself. In this case, man’s question turns back to him, that is, how do I know that I know? Now, knowledge becomes a problem. The goal of wondering is to know. In the process, man encounters problems in knowing. The approaches differ. St. Thomas says that because human intellect is active, one is able to think and even abstract ideas. Donceel in his response to man’s constant quest for knowledge explains that as long as one lives in a finite world, he will never stop to wonder, and will never be satisfied with the finite.
Francis Bacon optimistically illustrates the idea, ‘Knowledge is power’ in order to advertise the importance of human scientific knowledge. He says, “Human knowledge and human power meet in one. This is because, where cause is not known, the effect can not be produced.” Human life today ought to aim at new discoveries and powers. The truth is that there must be a necessary being that is infinite and is the source of all knowledge. Aristotle says, “The reason for which all philosophers are in search is the knowledge of the first principles and causes of things. Man has a glimpse of this. When one claims to know something, he has to clarify whether he means knowing the physical appearances - accidents, which Kant calls Phenomena or rather, the thing in itself - substance or Noumena. All in all, I notice that to wonder is good but one should not only stop at the level of surprise or marvel but should instead aim at discovering and understanding the being of things, more entirely.
1.1.4 Relationship Between Knowledge and Truth
Aristotle says that all men by nature desire not only to know, but also to know the truth. Truth is said to be the only object or criterion for knowledge. For him, the concept of practical reasoning deliberates not about ends, but instead the means. Someone once remarked that if at all we are to know, we should know the truth. Aristotle, as opposed to Plato, linked truth with knowledge, and not with being. He was the first to expound the common-sense realist view of truth. “To say of what is, that it is, or of what is not, that it is not, that is the truth.” Truth is thus a quality of our judgments, based on knowledge. Judgments that correspond to facts are true. Thomistic epistemology adopts this notion of truth that was defined as ‘adaequatio rei et intellectus,’ a relationship of conformity of mind to reality. This view is “the correspondence theory of truth.”
Locke says that we have knowledge of our own existence by intuition; of the existence of God by demonstration; and of other things by sensation. As regards our own existence, we perceive it so plainly that it does not need any proof because nothing can be evident to us than our own existence. Man knows that something must have existed from eternity. By intuitive certainty, he knows that bare nothing can no more produce any real being. Of all beings, the Supreme Being must thus be the most powerful since he is the origin and end of all and the source of knowledge and truth itself.
1.2 Structure of Knowing
1.2.1 Operations of the Human Mind
The mind is the seat of consciousness, thought, volition and feeling. It is composed of intellect and will. Added to the fact that the mind is immaterial in nature, it defines each person’s mental events. Like Descartes, the mind claims a mental ‘ghost’ in the machine of the body. Psychologists affirm the fact that though the mind is one, it develops gradually and not at once and for all. Its growth is facilitated by the experience of the environment encircling it – be it conducive or not.
1.2.2 Contents of the Human Mind
According to Russell Ackoff – a system theorist professor of organizational change – the content of the human mind is classified into data, information, knowledge, understanding and wisdom, respectively. He points out that the first four relate to the past, dealing with what is known. It is only wisdom that transcends the past and the present, but deals with the future because it integrates vision and design. It is an evaluated understanding that enables us to discern or judge between right and wrong. Man ought to understand reality as. In addition, his mind has a natural tendency towards the ultimate meaning of reality.
1.2.3 How the Human Intellect Operates
Ordinarily, man’s intellect derives all of its concepts from the original sense impression and it is fully dependent on them. By illumination, the intellect extracts the nature or quiddity of the object from the phantasm. This leads to intelligible species that are impressed on the possible intellect, giving rise to the universal idea of the object.
By analysis, knowledge arises in experience, emerges from reflection, develops through inference and displays a distinctive structure. In his book – ‘Knowing: According to Bernard Lonergan,’ Lonergan clearly says that human knowing is a whole, whose parts are activities. It consists of vital elements of: ‘Experiencing’ through sense organs plus imagination – ‘Understanding’ which includes inquiring, conceiving, insight, formulation of concepts and hypothesis – and finally, ‘Judging’ which entails reflecting, weighing of evidence and affirming. Human knowing is self-assembling and self-constituting and does not need any external agent to form it. Lonergan therefore writes:
Experience stimulates inquiry. Inquiry is intelligence bringing itself to act; it leads from experience through imagination to insight, and from insight to the concepts that combine in single objects both what has been grasped by insight and what in experience or imagination is relevant to insight. In turn, concepts stimulate reflection and reflection is the conscious necessity of rationality; it marshals the evidence and weighs it both to judge or else to doubt and so renew inquiry.

Man is in some way persuaded by a natural certitude that he is able to get a true knowledge or essence of things by use of his own faculties. Well, it is in the faculty of knowing that man’s chief glory is found. The intellect becomes everything in some way. Man is a microcosm chiefly because of his intellect. No matter the number of species of things in the world, they can all find a place in man’s intellect ‘intentionally.’
1.3 How Man Knows
Knowledge is a lifelong process that is known only to man directly from his own consciousness. The lowest level of known facts is data, for it has no essential meaning. Data must be sorted, grouped, analyzed, and interpreted. When data is processed, it becomes information that has purpose. Should the information combine with context and experience in a conscious mind, it then becomes knowledge. Knowing is an ultimate event that cannot be conveyed in terms more original than itself. It is ‘awareness.’ There is a familiar contention that the only real knowledge is that, which is available to all and publicly verifiable – universal. One may ask, ‘Is empirical knowledge a party to this?’ Perhaps it is, but may not be the only reliable source of knowledge!
In knowledge, the knower – subject, possesses the known – object, in an active unity. Knowledge is the growth fact that the knower is not only present in the midst of other existents, but he is clear, conscious and hence present to himself. He even goes out of himself, when he reflects the other in him and so in a certain sense becomes, all things – just as Aristotle claims. As a knowing creature, man often looks forward to the highest goal – happiness, which gives true meaning to his life. He should strive towards having more knowledge of the truth, which has its roots, stems or peak in the Supreme Being. Man makes meaning in life if he knows what life really or truly entails.
1.4 Types of Knowledge
Knowledge enfolds itself in various forms such as experience, reasoning, self-awareness, mystical, connatural, testimony, and belief. Analogically, we make out specific modes of knowing, such as the knowledge proper to animals and human beings, science and ordinary knowledge, philosophy and religion, theologians and that of simple believers, adult knowledge and children’s knowledge etc.
As a caution, we should not belittle the essential means of knowledge, with their adverse consequences for their understanding of reality. Permenides exalted reason alone and eliminated the other ways of knowledge which he called ‘opinions.’ Hume admitted only sense-experience. According to Krishnamurti, in Hinduism, self-knowledge is the only guide to the truth. Since it is man who gives meaning to the world, various forms of knowledge would be well interpreted if he were wholly in touch with himself amidst realities that surround him.
1.5 Sources of Knowledge
Knowledge is obtained from a number of sources like tradition, sensation, authority, reason and intuition. Philosophers, scientists, artists, religionists and others from various cultures, have claimed many other sources of knowledge. There is need for a critical evaluation in this regard. Others present, Rationalism, Empiricism and Innatism, as the forms of knowledge. Rationalism stresses the role of reason. Empiricism emphasises sensory experience. Innatism clings onto in-born notions. Traditional epistemology found in Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Kant and Rousseau among others, recommends a philosophical study of the nature, sources and limits of knowledge. But others like W.V. Quine and Richard Rorty reject this epistemology and replace it with naturalism and pragmatism. In analysing the various channels of acquiring knowledge, there is a base on truth and acceptance – the objective method.
1.5.1 Tradition and Commonsense Knowledge
Tradition is the knowledge acquired from well-known sources, usually of a historical nature. It comprises of values that are accepted as true, by many people within a particular setting. Such knowledge is passed on from generation to generation, so as to ensure its continuity. The African tradition is an example where elders could share their wisdom in form of stories and evening gatherings. People in the African traditional setting often based themselves on the wisdom of nature and the events of daily life.
Commonsense is the starting point of knowing. It helps us function in a usual manner. It holds that our senses are the sources of the entries into our minds, which initially were empty. Actually, Locke will expound this idea later in his approach to empirical knowledge. In human understanding, each of the senses gives input, which eventually combines into a single impression. Common sense often occurs spontaneously and without much thought.
1.5.2 Sensation and Perception Knowledge
Many philosophers agree that we acquire knowledge through sense experience. Naturally, sensation as a part of perception is a direct experience. It is the simplest cognitive response of an organism to its environment. This act of sensation is achieved through several stages – viz. ‘physical stage’ – outside stimulus from objects that invade the sense organ, ‘physiological stage’ – whose modification is produced by the stimulus in the sense organ, ‘psychic stage’ – where by the results produced are in the intentional form. Whether passive or receptive, the object is known by the sense power. The final stage is the ‘active psychological’ – that grasps a thing and knows it. It is only after this level that we call this, sense knowledge.
Therefore, sense knowledge is the kind in whose production bodily organs are immediately involved in terms of object. But sense knowledge, as an instrument of the intellect achieves its highest significance in a way that it supplies most of the materials necessary for the formation of the most abstract thinking in connection with the senses.
Besides, perception applies to any immediate experience of objects obtained through senses. Human perceptions comprise of both intellectual and sensory elements. Perception is a unitary and an instant awareness of the material object in a sensory way.
1.5.3 Authority as a Source of Knowledge
It is not possible to experience everything in the world and further still, to have an extensive knowledge of all kinds. We view knowledge not in a scattered pursuit of any random piece of information, but always within a structured overall search for significant truth, which has been attempted on perennially or time and again. In authority, one gets knowledge by appealing to books and materials of various thinkers, from ordinary sources, or even from prominent thinkers who may be still alive.
The center of authority is a person’s basic philosophy of life that is substantiated by consistency in living, just as exemplified by some of the past and even the present philosophers. Authority has different applications in various disciplines of knowledge, like the individualistic, materialistic, scientific and theistic outlook on human existence.
1.5.4 Reason and Reflection
Reason is man’s mental knowing power in contrast to his sensibility. It strictly applies to the higher activities of the mind that strive for order and positive unity in thought and action. Reason is higher than instinct. It collects, generalizes and analyses facts from – cause to effect – premises to conclusions – propositions to proofs. Reason decides, concludes and comes to final judgment. Reasoning takes two forms; Inductive reasoning, which moves from particular cases to general conclusions; and deductive reasoning that goes from true premise to a particular instance. Both types yield knowledge that goes beyond sensation, even though they may be indirectly based on it.
Reflection means a thoughtful examination. It is deliberation as contrasted to a simple perception or to immediate involuntary judgments about an object. Reflection could be the awareness of the self in relation to the other in a broad point of view. The knowledge of God is a source of reason, which is above intuition. Reflection transcends the causal body and is the highest form of knowledge. It is the only reality.
1.5.5 Intuition as a Source of Knowledge
Intuition has no reasoning process at all. It is a direct perception. It transcends reason, but does not contradict it. Spiritual flashes and glimpses of truth, inspiration, revelation and insight come through intuition. It is a special faculty of perception, with a theoretical feeling that something is or is not the case. Philosophers and religionists claim this knowledge. It is a direct and immediate perception of knowledge and insight.
Man actually experiences intuition in form of: Clairvoyance – clear vision, Clairaudience – clear hearing, Clairsentience – clear sensing, through hunches, gut feelings or sense of knowing. Intuition is thus the source of visions and ideas that have the power to uplift consciousness and inspire enlightened progress. It reveals the oneness of life and the presence of the sacred in every human experience.

1.6 Postmodern View on Knowledge
Postmodernism is concerned with questions of the organization of knowledge. It is a concept that appears in a wide variety of disciplines of knowledge such as art, architecture, music, literature, communications, and technology. Postmodern thought favors reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity, ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the restructured, decentred and dehumanized subject.
In a postmodern world, the application of knowledge in the respective fields like in the educational policies, puts a stress on work skills as a methodology of merging acquired knowledge with the person’s life. But such work skills are in most cases said to be empirical and practical in nature. Knowledge is seen as functional, that is, one learns not only to know, but to use that knowledge in a particular field.
Although many modernists hold that knowledge can be based on physical or sense experience, postmodernists refute this claim as they hold that knowledge goes beyond our senses. Postmodernism celebrates irrationality, emotionism and mystical knowledge.
Nevertheless, man in one way or another has an empirical glimpse of knowledge. However, the application of the sensual aspects of man to the world caused differs from one person to another and at different moments. In order for one to appreciate Locke’s philosophy of knowledge in the empirical perspective – at any given moment in time, it is important that we go back to the roots of knowing the situation of the person of Locke; lest we run a risk of misinterpreting his thoughts.
CHAPTER II
THE MAN JOHN LOCKE
2.1 Life and Works
John Locke, a 17th century first English Philosopher of the Scientific Revolution, was a highly influential founder of the British Empiricism. He was born in Wrington, Somerset in England on August 29, 1632 and died on October 28, 1704. He was the elder of the two sons, in a respectable family of Roundhead and Puritan sympathies, as an early member of the royal society. He was a son of a lawyer and captain in the army, who had been a parliamentarian in the civil war. Locke’s mother was pious and affectionate. However, she died and left her young sons without mother’s care. At this point, we notice a delicate and slender Locke living in the chaotic drama in which his father was an actor, himself. In the year of restoration, Locke writes; “I had no sooner perceived myself in the world but I found myself in a storm which had lasted almost hitherto.”
After his college studies at Oxford, Locke got more interested in reading modern philosophers like Descartes, than what the classical materialists taught at the university. With time, he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1656, a master’s degree in 1658, and also a bachelor of Medicine in 1674. He is mainly concerned with epistemology and society. Furthermore, Locke is considered as the vital character of empiricism – the ‘blank slate’ theory, which states that people start knowing absolutely out of nothing. He says that man only learns from experience, trial and error. This is the basis of behaviorism in man.
In his seminal works, John Locke’s published writings were occasional. They intended to overcome existing obstacles to civil, religious and intellectual liberty. He studied and wrote on philosophical, scientific and political matters throughout his life. Chronologically Locke’s principle works are: Two Treatises on Government, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding – his masterpiece, which was the result of twenty years of reflection on the origin of human knowledge, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, The Reasonableness of Christianity, and the First Letter on Toleration. There were other posthumous works as well. Much of the other works were in harmony with Locke’s intellectual taste, but not suitably validated, though they have been published under his name. From his works, it is evident that Locke was a man of moderation.
2.1.1 Situating Locke’s Life and Works
To understand his works, one must consider Locke’s personality and the circumstances of his life. Locke’s works are associated with the mysteries of existence of which religion seems to promise a practical solution. His epistemology is seen as a response to a general cultural crisis, the breaking of textual tradition, bitterness and bloodshed of militaristic religious factions of the time in Europe. The modern attitude to a free inquiry, after the death of Locke’s father was finding its way into oxford, and self-education was thus encouraged.
During his scholarship of 15 years at Oxford, Locke discovered that what was called freedom was bondage instead. The popular claimers of liberty were rather the greatest absorbers of it. Locke earlier on showed his love for facts rather than abstractions and preferred intercourse with persons to intercourse with books as such. His writings were occasional but often intended to prevail over the obstacles to civil, religious and intellectual liberty. He suspected abstract sayings and empty phrases, the offspring of a vain pride of innate knowledge. He insisted on the reliance of human understanding upon experience by inquiring into the qualities and behaviors of the substances – material or spiritual – those that make up the universe.
2.1.2 A Comment on Locke’s Essay
‘Locke’s correspondent, William Molyneux – an eminent member of the Trinity College – Dublin, writes about Locke’s works with reference to logic as he says:
To none do we owe more for a greater advancement of this part of philosophy than to incomparable Mr. Locke, who in his ‘Essay’ has rectified more received mistakes and delivered more profound truths, established on experience and observation, for the direction of man’s mind in the prosecution of knowledge. He has clearly overthrown all those metaphysical whimsies, which infected men’s brains with a spice of madness, where by they feigned knowledge when they had none, by making a noise with sounds, without clear and distinct significations.

Undoubtedly, Locke’s most important treatises in his Essay is divided into four books: Attack upon the Doctrine of Innate Ideas, Ideas are Dependent upon Experience, Confusion in Words, and A Careful Analysis of the Types of Knowledge and Sets forth the Limits of Human Understanding.
Since it is the understanding that sets man above empirical things and gives him all the advantages over other beings, knowledge is certainly a subject, even for its dignity, worth our labor to inquire into. Understanding is like the eye, which makes us see all other things but takes no notice of itself. But whatever the difficulties that lie in the way of this inquiry, man himself has the ability and choice to let the light upon his own mind or not to. All the contacts that we make with our own empirical understanding ought to direct our thoughts in the search of other realities on the things that are.
2.2 Locke’s Central Project
Locke’s works especially the Essay, deal with epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of the mind and language. He attempts to discover from an examination of the works of the human mind, what we are capable of knowing, and also to understand the universe in which we live. Locke wishes to show that human beings are born with ‘blank’ minds.
Locke aims at proving that it is only through experience that a person begins to form ideas in the mind. In his approach to philosophy, Locke, unlike the continental thinkers, relies on analytical observations. His conclusions are held in a watchful spirit. To him, skepticism is not an end in itself. It is an opening to a more scientific philosophy. He aims at destroying the idols of his time, to bring about intellectual clarity, to remove confusion, and to contribute to the flowering of physical sciences. With a down to earth philosophical approach, he reaches out to others by offering pieces of advice to his restless perplexed fellow citizens on how to overcome cultural crisis engulfing them.
Locke’s target is also to inquire into the original certainty and extent of human knowledge plus the grounds or degrees of belief, opinion and assent. He intends to clear the ground and remove some refuse that lay in the way to knowledge. He uses experience in his approach.
Locke feels that rationalism had allowed that the power of reason could do far more than was actually the case. Consequently, this provoked a skeptical ecstasy that was equally excessive. Some one can think that rationalists are biting more than they can chew. Moreover, philosophy ought to move systematically from known to unknown.
However, let us not think that Locke necessarily pretends to solve purely speculative problems of knowing and being. He aims at encouraging useful intellectual training in the daily life of man’s experience.
2.3 Influence from Predecessors
Locke, like other philosophers, was great as Kant says, because he stood on the shoulders of the giants. Certainly, the ancient philosophers like Socrates, Aristotle, Plato etc., were a stimulant to his life and works. I will thus make a reference to a few of them. Thomas Hobbes and Francis Bacon and other philosophers before, were like John the Baptist. They prepared the way for Locke.
During Locke’s own days, his chief philosophical opponents were the Cartesians and Leibniz. In the mean time, Locke was in close contact with the outstanding scientists of the time like Boyle, Sydenham, who motivated Locke’s thinking by attacking older traditions in science and stressing the value of observation. Quite illogically, the victory of Locke’s philosophy in England and France was due to the reputation of Isaac Newton, whose theories excited Locke’s imagination. Locke’s conclusions are drawn from a broad survey of many facts. As for Leibniz, when a huge structure of deductions is valid, all is well – but such a formation is unstable.
The question about knowledge has been exercised by thinkers from Aristotle to Maimonides, Plato to Aquinas, Locke to Russell, Hume to Moore. Among these, some philosophers who implicitly or explicitly influenced Locke deserve to be mentioned:
Aristotle is said to have paved way for Locke’s notion on ideas with his famous saying that there is nothing in the intellect except first of all in the senses. As for Socrates, his questioning technique called ‘dialectic’ has greatly influenced Western Philosophy, of which Locke is a part. Socrates is alleged to have said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” No wonder, Locke ventures into the understanding of the human person and the society as a response to the search for the meaning of life.
Besides, Plato’s views on cosmology strongly influenced the next 2000 years of scientific thinking. Plato refers to the world of ideas and that of shadows. This stimulated Locke’s mind because Locke often avoided abstract notions.
In the modern era, just like in Locke’s time, priority has been assigned to the epistemological problem. We see Descartes and Locke, on the rationalistic and empiricist side, respectively – giving new momentum to philosophical inquiry into the grounds of human knowledge and understanding. Above all, Kant investigates the limits and validity of our knowledge with his approach in a search for clear and distinct knowledge.
Descartes, in his search for certainty, rejects the medieval appeal to authority and begins the ‘universal doubt.’ For him, the only thing that cannot be doubted is his own thinking. The result is his famous ‘Cogito ergo sum.’ Locke and Descartes agree that we do not know reality directly but rather our minds know the ideas directly. It is only when it comes to innate ideas that they differ.
Kant says that though all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of experience. He also holds that all impressions of the senses is a priori and distinguished from empirical, which has its sources a posteriori. Interestingly, Locke’s idea that reincarnated in Hume, awoke Kant from the dogmatic slumber and influenced Kant’s philosophy with a contrast on empiricism, which seemed a threat to the metaphysical philosophy of the time.
2.4 Influence of Locke’s Idea on a Contemporary Situation
When asked, “What can man know?” an empiricist answers: Particular beings and the relationships among them. To the query, “How does man know?” he responds: Through physical senses. Regarding the inquiry on “ Why should man want to know?” the reply is: For the sake of power, specifically power to transform natural and social environment. Right from the infant days of Francis Bacon to the mature days of David Hume, empiricism survived its vitality even to the present day. All the important philosophical movements in the 20th century in England and America – pragmatism, positivism, phenomenalism, and the more recent one – analytic philosophy – are among the empirical offspring.
William James, an American philosopher and psychologist, one of the founders of pragmatism, is an immediate example. Pragmatic thinkers are readily influenced by physical science. James viewed consciousness as shaping reality. He held that ideas are tools for guiding our future actions rather than reproductions of our past experiences. It is interesting to note that James resembled Locke in many ways and this prompted him to the study of physiology. James says that true ideas are those that we assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. In his world-view of radical empiricism, James adds that an empiricist must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.
In the modern period, the development of empirical sciences seems to be advancing more than that of speculative philosophy. Nevertheless, in some cases, speculative philosophers have suggested theories, which have later been empirically verified, at least in some form. In such situations, the truth of the hypothesis has been established not by philosophical speculation, which often resembles brilliant guesswork, but by the empirical methods of scientists who have been able to prove hypothesis immediately or mediately.
Locke insists, “All those sublime thoughts which tower above the clouds, reach as high as heaven itself, take their rise and footing here on the empirical ground.”
Gradually, we are moving towards the being of things as viewed in the empirical eyes of Locke. Incidentally, external objects appeal to Locke’s mind and produce in it sensation. More over, man wishes to know more of what lies ‘out-there,’ in relation to his own mind.

CHAPTER III
LOCKE’S CONCEPT OF EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE
3.1 Human Understanding of Locke
Man as a whole, is the central focus in Locke’s empirical knowledge. Locke gives the world a new interpretation of man. He begins his idea with questions: How does man know? Is there a real world that corresponds to our ideas? How can we, who have ideas, prove the existence of ideas? Locke concludes that our senses – which are caused, give us the knowledge of this world. We experience it and justify its existence.
Our understanding of the universe and the degree of penetrating into reality, is for Locke a solid problem, that has to be determined in a well-considered experience of the real behavior of the human mind. It refers to the knowledge and source of things that men are capable of. Our understanding is not an endless knowledge, which Locke calls blind obedience to human authority. Locke feels that rationalism had allowed that the power of reason could do more than was actually the case. For him, to discover the extent of the mind’s powers in knowledge is to interfere with things that exceed the mind’s grasp.
Locke’s view on empirical knowledge was to reduce the various diseases of human understanding, stop their useless pretensions, their slow surrender to maxims of human authority, their own prejudices and finally to blow up the empty verbalism that passes in the name of knowledge.
3.2 Locke’s Theory of Knowledge
Locke presents ideas as the first element in knowledge. Whether received, retained, or elaborated – ideas are phenomena presented by external realities. They appeal to immediate realisation. Often, ideas and thoughts are what we meet when we look into ourselves. Idea, for Locke stands for whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks. It is also the phantasm, notions, species or anything that the mind works about in thinking.
Usually, real knowledge is obtained when there is a correspondence between our ideas and the reality of things ‘out there.’ Our knowledge of reality comes from our ideas on particular manifested objects to our understanding. Locke therefore narrates the nature of his empirical knowledge:
True knowledge grew first in the world of experience and rational observations; but proud man, not content with the knowledge he was capable of, and which was useful to him, needed to break in the hidden causes of things, lay down principles, and establish concepts about the operations of nature….. It was with this modest ideal of knowledge and sense of the dependence of our ideas of things, on our experience of what things are, and not on innate resources of our own, that Locke proposed by a historical assessment of what human understanding is fit to compass, when it tries to understand existing things – to guard men against unnecessary assumptions and verbal abstraction made to the duty for a real knowledge of the actual attributes and powers of things.

Locke says, it is the nature of thinking that directs the mind towards something – to have subject matter. An object, for Locke, is a required target for empirical knowledge. According to him, every idea is an object of some action of perception or thinking. Locke’s view is that one perceives as of an object when he thinks of it. All our knowledge of the external world is mediated by ideas. We do not have direct access to things as they are in themselves – a point that appears in Locke, long before Kant’s thought. What one has inside his head is not the object, but a visual image of the object. Therefore, the mind perceives an object and transforms it into a thought or an idea.
3.3 Kinds of Experiences
Locke’s stand is that all our ideas, simple or complex, are in the final analysis got from experience. They are obtained by means of sensation or reflection. One may ask that if the mind is tabula rasa as Locke affirms, how come it has material content? Does it have all the materials of reason and knowledge? Locke finds the answer in experience, from where all our knowledge is founded. Locke admits that the mind has an innate capacity to know, but what it knows depends totally on what experience supplies to it.
3.3.1 Sensation
Sensation is the external perception. It is the knowledge obtained from the well-known five senses. Incidentally, sensation is synonymously used with empirical knowledge. Locke insists that the objects of sensation are sources of ideas. When our senses are familiar with particular sensible objects, they communicate several distinct perceptions of things into the mind.

3.3.2 Reflection
Reflection is the internal perceptions or operations of the mind within the knower himself. Locke affirms that what comes out of sensation and reflections are the ideas in our minds. Simple ideas are therefore operations of the mind about its ideas. The idea of perception is the idea of willing which we have from reflection. The two basic actions of the mind are thinking and willing. The power of thinking is understanding, and that of volition is will. Some of the modes of these simple ideas of reflection brought forth by Locke are resemblance, discernment, reasoning, judging, knowledge, etc.
Locke affirms that the knowledge, which arises from sensation, is perfected by reflection. Man as a servant is an interpreter of nature, just as Locke would say, “I have always thought the actions of men as the best interpreters of their thoughts.” Man only acts and understands no further than he has observed the method and order of nature. Locke explains that sensation and reflection provide the materials of our understanding. He expresses how language either helps or hinders the communication of our ideas.
3.4 Foundation and Degrees of Ideas
3.4.1 Intuition
Intuition is an experience of the self. It is the most certain form of knowledge. It is evident and the most difficult to doubt. For instance, man is not a tree, is so obvious that we accept such statements without needing to ask. Locke’s idea of intuitive knowledge seems very similar to Descartes concept of clear and distinct ideas.
Intuition is the clearest and most certain form of knowledge that even human limitation itself is capable of. It is irresistible and like bright sunshine, forces itself immediately to be perceived as soon as even the mind turns its view that way. All the certainty and evidence of all our knowledge depends on intuition.
3.4.2 Demonstration
In demonstration, the mind perceives the agreement or disagreement of ideas, though not immediately. Through this method, we come up with the idea of God. Whatever is has to be caused by some being. For instance, a seed turning into a tree; of course a seed could not have come from no where, but from a being that is uncaused – God. When the mind cannot bring ideas together, reason directs its position.
3.4.3 Sensation
Sensation is the experience of things outside us. It is the source of new knowledge. Even in intuition, there should be sensation because Locke affirms that the mind is tabula rasa. Sensation is the experience of particular external objects from which we have actual access to the perception and consciousness. Locke attests that things are registered only after appealing to senses. We need intuition, demonstration and sensation, but the one giving the spring is sensation. Eventually the mind comes to reflect on its own operations about the ideas got by sensation. It then stores itself with a new set of ideas, which Locke calls ideas of reflection.

3.5 Locke’s Division of Ideas
Empiricism, and its partner - experimental science, is active in the conception of knowledge. Locke says that what we know is always properly understood as the relation between ideas. Whether simple or complex, all ideas flow from experience. Empiricists often show what is inferred and revealed directly in sense experience.
3.5.1 Simple Ideas
Locke understands simple ideas as those, which cannot be broken further into simpler entities. The qualities that affect our senses are in the things themselves so united that there is no separation and no distance between them. However, the ideas they produce in the mind enter by the senses in a simple and unmixed manner. Nothing can be plainer to man than the clear and distinct perceptions he has of the simple ideas. The simpler ideas are Locke’s primary data – his psychological atoms. All knowledge is in one way or another built from simple ideas.
3.5.2 Complex Ideas
The acts of the mind exert its powers over simple ideas by combining several simple ideas into one compound idea. Complex ideas comprise of memory and abstraction. They include modes, substances and relations. In a scholastic language, we refer to modes as accidents. Locke says that we get substance by understanding that modes have to be supposed. Substance cannot be conceived without modes. We get relations from modifications of simple ideas e.g. when one talks of the idea of a son, there must be a father and mother; otherwise the son cannot be.
3.6 Certainty of Empirical Knowledge
Knowing about evidence concerns a difficult question regarding the objectivity of our judgments. A great deal of knowledge of the world is gained by perceptual faculties of sight, hearing, touch, etc. For example, my knowledge that I am now at my computer writing my paper is itself perceptually gained through my sight of the computer before me, and my touch on the keyboard as I type etc.
Locke’s aim like Descartes was to carry thought back to its own foundations, yet he does not accept the elevation of the intelligible over the sensible. Locke regards all intelligible as derivative from the sensible. We know nothing that has not been derived from the senses.
Locke associates his empiricism with a degree of pessimism about the extent of our ability to acquire knowledge. He says that our understanding is limited by its power, and man has an incomplete range of sensory capacities of the ideas to be acquired. Nevertheless, Locke finally says that even the abstract thoughts, which many thinkers hold onto, cannot be, without having recourse to the empirical data as a starting point.


3.7 Empirical Knowledge and the Concept of Tabula rasa
Basically Locke laid out a theory of how we come to know about the world around us. He asserts that at birth, the human mind is blank. The mind only waits for bombardment by sense data from outside the human body. When experiencing things, it is as if the mind is being written on. As a result, this data triggers the action of the mind, which man conceives basically as a machine designed to manipulate the data into structure called ideas. The mind learns to do this as a result of experience.
According to Locke, ideas come from external stimulation and not from sources internal to the human mind. The mind cannot know the fact or truth of anything except by the sensory channels. For Locke, the object of awareness is idea, which comes to light after empirical experience.
3.8 Locke’s Rejection of Innate Ideas
In line with the Tabula rasa concept, Locke states that since the contacts with the surroundings stimulate the senses and causes impressions, the mind receives and organizes these into ideas. In his Essay, Locke denies innatism, hence fighting against Descartes. He threatens with Ocham’s razor – the principle of simplification derived from William of Ocham with a caution, “do not multiply entities beyond necessity.”
It is noted that the British Empiricists deny innate ideas in the place of ideas from experience. However, empiricists did not reject the notion of instinct or innateness in general. Surely, we have inborn tendencies which regulate our bodily functions, produce emotions and even direct our thinking. What they deny is the claim that we are born with detailed picture line concepts of God, causality and transcendence of things.
Besides, Locke’s main argument against innate knowledge is that the various supposed innate truths like, ‘God exists,’ and ‘whatever is, is’ are not in fact universally assented to. Since there are no innate ideas, the ideas have only to have origin in the sense experience. He says that if reason is necessary to discover these ideas, there is no need for them to be innate. Locke insists that innate concepts without experience are insufficient to explain the phenomena of human knowledge.
3.8.1 A Footnote to Aristotle
Locke, in eliminating innate ideas, repeats the three arguments of Aristotle against Plato on innate ideas. Plato had said that when one came into this world, he came with ideas from another world. Plato continues that as each person gives birth to ideas, he is just reminding himself of what he already has. Whatever we experience is a reminder, or a shadow of what is in the world of form, from where we were before being born.
Aristotle had this argument that Locke takes up to refute innatism: Firstly, we see children’s knowledge beginning with the most concrete things. If they have ideas, why do they need to start with concrete things e.g. 1+1 = 2? Secondly, we – who are grown up – cannot think of abstract concepts without appealing to images. Every time we think of a concept, we think of an image immediately. Thirdly, we are not aware of any previous knowledge that is knowledge before existence or knowing things as they are in the world of ideas, as Plato holds. No one can prove that he is aware of any previous knowledge.
Locke adds a new argument of his own especially against the common notions of the Cambridge Platonists. He says that there is no consensus among men on fundamental issues; that is, my ideas are never the same as the others’ and we cannot agree at the same pace or have a common understanding on issues. Even if there were such consent, it can be explained by reason other than innatism. Regarding morality, Locke says there is no single rule we can discover that is accepted by all societies, thus there cannot be any moral principle that is innate.
3.9 Locke’s Knowledge as Viewed in Diverse Concepts
3.9.1 The Knowledge of Existence
The existence of the world is not knowable with certainty but with probability. What we know about the world is very little. There are certain things that may not be presented but they are probable. The problem now is, what can we know about the world? Locke stresses that since there are no innate ideas, the ideas have to have their origin in sensitive experience, from that, which we can easily perceive as ideas of reality.
But God’s existence must be demonstrated. Locke continues to say that God has given us no innate ideas of himself so that we can read his being. He only set for us those faculties our minds are capable of. He has not left himself without witness. We have sense, perception and reason.
Besides, we have cosmological arguments like in motion. For instance, whatever is moved is moved by another; but the movement has not to be definite except in the unmoved mover, says Aristotle and then later St. Thomas Aquinas with his proofs of ‘Motion, Action, Necessity, Grade and Order’ on God’s existence. By studying the world and its operation, one comes to realize that it must have been made.
‘Man,’ says Locke, ‘knows that he exists.’ Man knows by intuitive certainty that bare nothing cannot produce any real being, hence something must have existed from eternity. That eternal being must be most powerful and omniscient hence the existence of God, though our senses have not yet immediately revealed to us such a reality.
Locke therefore says that the world was created by higher being – God. Whatever we consider as one thing, whether real being or idea, suggest the understanding of idea of unity and not isolation. He concludes that we have knowledge of our own existence by intuition; of the existence of God by demonstration; and of other things by sensation.
3.9.2 Real Beings
A real object, for Locke has size, shape and color. Locke defines real ideas as those that have a base in a natural world. He holds that concepts are shaped by reflection on the data of experience. ‘Our ideas are real,’ he asserts, when they have a base in nature – match with the actual character of things. In this case, simple ideas are real since they result from real events and experience of things. Locke says that science can study such ‘Phenomena,’ but not philosophy, because philosophy aims at essence of things, which Locke is against. The only necessary and real knowledge for Locke is idea.
3.9.3 Substance
Locke accepts that substance exists. We believe in qualities that have to rest on something - substance itself. He adds that we cannot know what substance is. At this point, Locke puts Metaphysics to question. He says that to ask an Indian: Who supports the world? He will say that it is an elephant; who supports the elephant? – A tortoise; who supports a tortoise – something else does, but we do not know what it is.
For Locke, the ‘forms’ – substance is an ‘I do not know what.’ We only imagine it as the support of the object’s qualities. But one would ask as to why Locke speaks of substance if it is unknown! Our inability to obtain clear ideas about substance, therefore, prevents us from gaining genuine knowledge about the real nature of things. Locke understands substance as particular bodies in space e.g. the idea of causality – God – that cannot be objects of direct experience.
3.9.4 Quality
Locke recognizes primary and secondary qualities. He borrowed these ideas from Descartes and Galileo, who had in turn borrowed from Democritus. Primary qualities are characteristics of external objects, for instance, extension – weight, dimension, shape and location. They are inseparable from the body regardless of the changes, which that body undergoes. Whether you burn all things, extension and motion remain. There is no shapelessness as such.
Besides, the secondary qualities are characteristics, which we often attribute to external objects, but which in fact exist only in the mind. They are caused by real features of external objects, for example, color, smell and other sensations. Color as an accident for instance helps one to see an object as extended. It is contained in an extended object. Color is not a thing – it is a quality. This view of the mind is known as representative realism. We can do without the secondary qualities.
3.9.5 Causality
Cause is that which produces any idea in a person, be it simple or complex in nature. The idea produced is an effect. Every reality outside man is a cause and what he has known is an effect. Locke says that very often we know the effect by empirical means and not the cause as such.
3.9.6 Abstraction
Locke recognizes abstraction as the third kind of mental operation on ideas, after sensation and reflection. He describes abstraction as an action in which the mind takes particular ideas received from particular objects and considers them as they are in the mind. Such appearances are separate from all other existences and the circumstances of real existence as time, place or any other related ideas. He says that abstraction is the act of separating ideas that are already in the mind’s possession from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence. Strictly speaking, Locke does not deal with abstraction, but abstract ideas that are its products. The ideas of Locke are not from abstraction but from sensation.
3.9.7 Moral and Social Doctrine
Locke talks of a state of Nature as opposed to the state of war of Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes asserts that there exists a repeated war with man against every man – a time of no arts, no letters, no society. Man is also in a constant fear or danger of violent death, in that his life is said to be lonely, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
Whilst referring to knowledge in the ethical and political eyes, Locke appeals for the ‘state of nature.’ Consistent with his philosophy, he views man as naturally moral. Locke’s original state is characterized by reason and tolerance, peace, good will, mutual assistance and preservation. His argument is that the civil government gets its power from the consent of its members, so as to defend the individual liberty and property. All men possess the natural rights to life, health, liberty and possession.
It is a no wonder that Locke notices that any one who sees the good and does not pursue it has not reflected enough. Man is often bombarded with a lot of empirical stuff in his daily encounters, be it good or bad. In such a situation, he is challenged to evaluate all experiences that come to mind, so as to respond actively to the search of a true knowledge of reality. In the next chapter therefore, I will assess empirical knowledge –knowledge, which is easily accessible to man in any society.
CHAPTER IV
A CRITIQUE OF LOCKE’S EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE
As noted earlier, the works of the empirical world are deduced from particular facts and sense experience. Although sensation is said to be of a low grade, it is a factual knowledge. Empirical knowledge is an intended ownership of some aspects of reality. Sensation is the first move towards reality. Since the senses do not tell us the why of things, we cannot regard them as full knowledge. For instance, they only tell us that fire is hot, but not why it is hot. A critique of empirical knowledge is thus required.
4.1 Lights of Locke’s Theory of Knowledge
Locke was moved by a deep desire to start human thought not on rationalistic ideas, which he saw, could be destructive, but on facts that stood in favour of human operations. If he could cause people to see the truth as arising from something objective ‘out there,’ then he would easily contribute and discuss about reality of man, the world and God.
Although Locke depended more on psychological analysis than on metaphysical constructions, the impact of his reflection on knowledge was felt not merely in the circle of technical philosophy, but also in epistemology, ethics, politics, education and religion. He avoided any cause of dogmatisation and was not a blind follower to any cause. Moderation was a keynote to his character and his intellectual interests. He insisted that knowledge should aim at practical training in order for man to fit in the society. He always considered education a continuous process right from an early age to maturity.
Be it in philosophy or in any field, part of Locke’s message always was, “Don’t blindly follow convention or authority. Look at the facts and think for yourselves.” He affirmed that human intelligence is oriented towards truth. In this case, Locke’s theory of knowledge demands a high appreciation. He employs man to think and make an experience of himself – from whatever he comes into contact with.
4.2 Limitations from Locke’s Theory of Knowledge
In referring to empiricism of Locke, we bear in mind the possibility of certain errors that do not conform to reality. The effectiveness of empirical knowledge is thus under question! Sensation leads us to error when it presents a thing to man’s mind in a way different from what it is in reality. Appearances may be deceptive if they are left unexamined. One realizes that the problem here, is not the failure of perception, but the unstable mind that receives the perception.
However, modern psychologists counteract the empirical claim of innatism, in reference to empirical knowledge. They affirm that the embryo starts its formation in the mother’s womb right after the moment of conception. Throughout the time that the child spends in the womb, the external or internal environment of the mother affects the child psychologically. Such an experience could be stored in the sub conscious mind of the child. As a result, psychologists would not agree to Locke’s notion that the mind is void at childbirth. Locke should have instead consented that there are already some ideas at childbirth – only that they are in the process of developing – after more experience.
Locke’s system of knowledge lacks the depth and the speculative boldness. Imagine, intellectual knowledge seems to be reduced to sensible perceptions. An empiricist is said to be limited because he has nothing to do with the universal and necessary laws, which sensible data as such do not prove. But, shall we progress in knowledge with mere sensations? Besides, Locke seems to reduce nature to concrete facts, empirically exposed. One would ask, ‘is it the case that because a person has not yet sensed that an object exists in a country, like in Uganda where he has never been to, such an object does not exist at all?’ Well, such a being is, whether one notices it or not.
Concerning simple ideas of sensation, Locke errs because this is only a single sensation not a holistic view of reality. He blunders because the complex ideas like the Socratic notions of truth, kindness, beauty, causality, that are obtained by combined association, are achieved by abstraction. But Locke is against transcendental ideas.
The question that is bound to arise in relation to Locke’s theory is: If all we know are ideas and not the things in themselves, how can we know that there is a link between our ideas and reality? To prove such a correspondence, we would need to step outside our perceptions so as to compare them with what causes them. Locke’s critical fault in his account of our situation was to present a world we could only know through ideas, and consisting of things held together by a mysterious unknowable substance. In doing so, not only had he left himself open to the inevitable questions as to how he could know what was unknowable, but as to how he could know that such a thing, substance exists at all.

4.2.1 Extent of Human Knowledge
Locke says that we have no knowledge more than perception either by intuition, reason or sensation. Intuitive knowledge does not extend to all the relations of ideas. The fact is that we cannot study and perceive all the relations. Moreover, our rational knowledge cannot reach to the whole extent of our ideas. Sensitive knowledge reaches no further than existence of things present to our senses. Sensation is even narrower than the other forms of knowledge. It is not enough to sense, but to examine every sensual act.
It is noted that empirical philosophy tends to negate the power of philosophy. In accepting the value of natural sciences, it does not find their accuracy. Consequently, by not recognizing an independent and cognitive sphere for their intelligence, thought is reduced to language. Eventually, empiricism upon negating every universal certain truth, moves towards skepticism. Since all our thoughts about the world is restricted to the concepts that we have acquired through senses and given meaning by the power of our own minds, even our speculations are restricted. In this case, Locke was like a modified skeptic – we know that the world is there, but we do not know what it really is like.
In giving a causal foundation to the empirical world, Locke repeats that we can only know the observable and experimentable. In this case, our empirical knowledge is bound to be faulty and incomplete. But we must serve ourselves with it lest we fall in a total skepticism. All in all, it would be absurd for instance, to give up our legs to walk, for the fact that we have no wings to fly. It would equally be absurd to give up our scarce knowledge, for the fact of not being able to reach full and perfect knowledge!
4.3 Relevance of the Lockean Theory of Knowledge
4.3.1 Ethics and Morality
By nature, man is a moral being. Philosophers with an ethical background are conscious of what ought to or not to be done in every conduct of life. Similarly, Ethics guides the stand of our consciences in the aspect of building morality for a healthy holistic growth. In his ethics therefore, Locke says that since there are no innate ideas, moral, religious and political values must obey the natural law – based on experience.
As a utilitarian, Locke holds that happiness is the greatest good and thus obedience to the moral law results in happiness. I have observed that if at all men should live or even act, they ought to be happy with their own choices because life should not only be lived, but also lived well and to the full. But such a reality is actualised if one has knowledge of the life he embraces, starting with that of the available senses.
Optimistically, Locke thinks of man as being naturally good or moral. He also affirms that man has a right to be free as long as he does not interfere with the freedom of others. For instance, ‘the law – do not kill’ is a guideline that is felt as bad, and is present in all normal persons of all cultures and all times. Besides, man also has a natural right on private property – to possess the tangible fruits of his own work. Man often counts himself successful when he partakes of the outcomes of his own efforts in any sector that he finds himself.

4.3.2 Society and Politics
Bertrand Russell describes John Locke as “the most fortunate of philosophers” because of the relevance of his philosophical and political views. Political power is exercised by a social responsibility. The intention of the political activity is the ‘social good’ for all. Locke appeals to the consent of all his fellow citizens in discerning the needs of the society and working together towards a common goal of enhancing the rights and duties of humanity, which are verified by the practical outcome of those in power.
Locke maintains that the original state of nature was characterized by reason and tolerance. All men were equal and free to pursue life, health, liberty, and possessions as undeniable rights. Pre-social man as a moral being surrendered his personal power to the rulers in a civil society, so as to secure natural morality more efficiently. To Locke, natural justice exists.
Today’s societies are not exceptional with Locke’s point of view. Bearing in mind that everyone wishes to live a good life, it is worth searching for the best in a life lived in and for the society. We should not close ourselves away from the realities of life. Thanks to John Mbiti who says, ‘I am because you are; and because you are, therefore I am.’ Similarly, we should often have a place and a connection to the mind of ‘the other’ and together as one, we find a way out to our various societal and empirical problems, many of which are as a result of our own fictitious making.

4.3.3 Education
Due to a high increment in knowledge and technology, a couple of today’s societies are geared towards educated and practical personalities. Locke’s influence touched many fields of thought as testified by Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, who read and accepted as their guide, Locke’s Essay. The Essay opened up diverse fields of contemplation in philosophy and psychology for his successors.
Locke broke free from medieval scholasticism, but put forward an advanced theory of education built not around the transmission of information, but the practical shaping of habits and character around wisdom and virtue. In referring to the empty minds of the newborn children, he says that our minds are only written on by training and circumstances. He stressed the inculcation of good manners and virtuous habits of the mind as being the main aim of education. Locke makes a point that the only solution to today’s world is a thorough knowledge of it.
Although knowledge brings new insights, it brings new unknowns as well. It leads us to discover the treasures awaiting us in the world of the unknown. Locke proposes a modest inquiry into the relation between human understanding and the empirical realities of existence. Locke uses the historical plain method to investigate actual facts: Under what setting does knowledge becomes a fact in the consciousness of man? To what extent can human understanding break in and cover up reality? etc. He assumes that in coming to know something, we move from simple to complex by a process of addition. Yet we can also move from complex to simple by clarification.
Locke is aware that knowledge should not only be restricted to schools, or few learned men, rather it should benefit the society. Sharing of knowledge among people of different backgrounds widens our personal worldview. In the course of my research, I interacted with samples of people from all the continents, many nationalities, several tribes, various families or further still, of different personalities. I learnt that consciously and without bias, we should allow experiences to offer what it has in store for us, before we act or even respond. Experience has a lot to teach us, indeed!
4.4 An African Response to Locke
Society is made up of persons who have a common style of life that brings them together. This is typical of African culture. A question that comes to mind is whether Africans can find a place in the notion of Locke’s empiricism! Whilst learning from the wisdom and contributions of traditionalists, one can infer that Africans were in the ‘state of nature’ by then. There is a lot of wisdom and knowledge associated with the African ways of life. When you say to an African, ‘here is something for you,’ he hears you and normally responds by extending his hand and uttering with his mouth, ‘may I see or touch it?’ This shows the involvement and interconnectivity of the senses. Many Africans will often find it easier to know whatever appeals to their senses before they shift to the theoretical or abstract notions. No wonder most of their attributes to the Supreme Being are first expressed in an empirical form by objects of big mountains, forests, etc.
African knowledge today, in the viewpoint of the African educational thought and practices ought to be characterised not only by their concern with the person’s empirical bias, but by their interweaving of social, economic, political, cultural and educational threads into a common tapestry. Locke was in support of such an integral education. Thabo Mbeki underlines the need for a separate African knowledge system that aims at recovering the humanistic and ethical values rooted in African philosophy and culture. He adds that Africans should participate, master and direct the course of change by fulfilling the vision of learning to know, to do, to be and to live together as equals.
My experience in the Turkana land in Kenya gave me another stance of looking at things. It triggered my knowledge about reality. I learnt not to take things for granted. A simple and communal style was manifest in the Turkana’s daily life. For instance, each one’s only single cloth, which they always wore, acted multi-purposely as their trouser, skirt, shirt, bed, bed sheet, towel etc. ‘Probably there were hidden reasons for such a lifestyle,’ I inquired! I was right! I realised, there was a cultural richness displayed. Incidentally, it was not enough for me to be satisfied with mere appearances of the Turkana life. I would have instead made wrong empirical judgements, as many often do!
Empirical happenings need to be questioned, so as to clear off doubts and gain ground for genuine knowledge. The problem is that we have always been satisfied by the way things emerge to our senses without analysing their occurrence. In noticing that knowledge starts from known to unknown, we perhaps need to appreciate and become convinced of our own ‘already acquired knowledge – be it sensational or not.’
In the spirit of taking things for granted, events in myths and traditions have come and gone, sometimes without much reflection. Locke reminds us that the physical actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts. Man ought to always pay attention to the operation of his own senses, in relation to the world and the Creator.

CONCLUSION
It has been our task to investigate empirical knowledge as expounded by John Locke. Locke’s theory of knowledge was that of ideas. He proves them empirically and rejects innate ideas. Locke’s concern for man in understanding human knowledge is in line with our day-to-day understanding of knowledge, freedom, and responsibility. His empirical philosophy is thus of great worth. Locke aims at making knowledge a guide and more tangible reality in life by experience.
Locke affirms that ideas are the sole objects of thinking. By ideas, he means sense images. Ideas are the same as concepts. In his empirical knowledge, Locke starts with external before appealing to the internal sensation, in which he finally says that the mind perceives nothing except its own internal states. At this point, he seems to develop an idealistic tendency of appealing to ideas in the mind. By wiping out the distinction between sense images and concepts, he directly led the way to sensationalism and materialism. This implies that at the end of it all, we do not have spiritualism as such, since everything is physical matter.
By asserting that our internal mental states – ideas – are the sole objects of thought, Locke excludes from our knowledge all things of the physical world except by a mediate inference from our ideas. The only world is that we perceive. There is no other world. I do not perceive any object; I only perceive the image of that object. Therefore, this implies that anything that is outside these ideas is outside our knowledge. Even the issue of substance stands outside and as such, it is indefinable. He accepts that there is substance, but he declares that it is unknowable.
We get the true meaning of facts by seeing things, not in isolation, but as linked to a whole. Seeing things in a whole is to see them in proper perspective. Philosophy helps us to make use of any material at our disposal so as to dream and venture into the world of reality. Empirical material therefore, ought to lead us to a further discovery, contemplation and action towards truth – the end of philosophy.
Currently, knowledge is projected as the engine for value-creation. The future seems to be grounded in competencies and the quality of relationships. Such values are achieved by gaining proper knowledge. It is good to have theories and thoughts, but it is better to lay the values on the ground and act out in a concrete manner. In our inquiry, we affirmed that man’s knowledge is a guide of behavior. It is a key aspect in the openness to reality. Should man fully open himself to his society, the society in turn creates more conducive possibilities for a better and developed knowledge. Locke’s empirical philosophy therefore, investigates and moves towards making life a reality.
We are exposed to all sorts of experiences, as Locke holds. If it is true that curiosity killed the cat, then the lack of interest may as well kill man. After my reflection on knowledge, I have learnt that a person who does not ask questions or entertain doubts and reflect on life has not yet lived well. He has merely existed. Life has a lot to present to whoever makes a step of attempting to address whichever issue that calls to mind. We only need to be objective in our every approach. We pursue philosophical inquiry because we wish to understand the nature and meaning of life as a whole.
Alternatively, Locke’s empiricism is like a drop of water in the ocean of knowledge. It is not enough that we get stuck with what appears, since what we perceive by the senses may not give us the full knowledge of whatever is. We are yet to know more of the unknown. Man should rise above the shallow level of knowledge by listening to his inner promptings in relation to the reality ‘out there.’ Through a daily evaluation of our knowledge, we should search for reasons for what we do and what we are in life.
It is beyond doubt that Locke reminds us of the sensible world. But, is that world enough to be contented with? Plato, in describing the allegory of the cave, underlines the need to go out of the chains, after experiencing the light. He points to the world of ideas as opposed to that of shadows – which could be sensations in this case. It is good to first ‘be aware’ of the sensations before we can penetrate into the world as it is in reality. We cannot make a leap or climb a tree from the leaves. We have the will and power to raise our spirits high by rectifying the misleading perceptual impressions whenever they occur.
It is clear that philosophy searches for meaning. Reflecting about myself, a question comes to my mind, ‘after all, if we just exist, what is the difference between us as human beings and other empirical objects out there?’ Nietzsche says, whoever has a why to live for, can live anyhow. Since empiricism does not cater for the ‘why’ as in this case, it is better to use it as one of the means to reach the truth and not as an end in itself.
Throughout our study of philosophy, we learn that philosophers are curious about the perceived world. They wonder about the nature and meaning of such a perception! ‘They are fond of speculating.’ Usually, some questions that arise are, ‘if it is difficult to understand the physical world in which we live, how much harder it must be to comprehend the mental – immaterial world.’ To know that external objects exist, man’s choice of things should comply with his thought. We discover that our knowledge of reality is limited by the nature of our environment. Locke argues that we have no reason to complain about the limitations of our knowledge. A proper application of our cognition capacities is enough to guide our actions in the practical conduct of life.
In a nutshell, all our ideas should lead us to the isness or reality of things. Empirical knowledge should be a stepping-stone towards attaining the rich discoveries from the vast unknown world. Sensation alone does not suffice. A conscious openness to situations, plus a combination of several other sources of knowledge, bring us closer to the knowledge of truth, which culminates in God.
It is still my dream that this work of transcending empirical knowledge will stimulate readers to journey together with me towards discovering and assimilating the means of a true quest for knowledge in view of making life worth living and for a holistic formation of man in his search for a true happiness – the end of life.

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C. ARTICLES
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION……………………………….…………………….....…….i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………….……………..…..……ii
DEDICATION…………………………………………………………..……iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS……………………...……………………..……….v
INTRODUCTION 1

0.1 WHY THIS PAPER 1
0.2 DIVISION OF THE CHAPTERS 4

CHAPTER 1 6
GENERAL CONCEPT OF KNOWLEDGE 6
1.1 UNDERSTANDING OF KNOWLEDGE 6
1.1.1 What is Knowledge? 6
1.1.2 Knowledge and Being 7
1.1.3 Knowledge as ‘Wonder!’ and ‘Power’ 8
1.1.4 Relationship Between Knowledge and Truth 9

1.2 STRUCTURE OF KNOWING…………………………………………….10
1.2.1 Operations of the Human Mind 10
1.2.2 Contents of the Human Mind 11
1.2.3 How the Human Intellect Operates 11

1.3 HOW MAN KNOWS 12
1.4 TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE 13
1.5 SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE 14
1.5.1 Tradition and Commonsense Knowledge 14
1.5.2 Sensation and Perception Knowledge 15
1.5.3 Authority as a Source of Knowledge 16
1.5.4 Reason and Reflection 16
1.5.5 Intuition as a Source of Knowledge 17

1.6 POSTMODERN VIEW ON KNOWLEDGE 18


CHAPTER II 19
THE MAN JOHN LOCKE 19
2.1 LIFE AND WORKS 19
2.1.1 Situating Locke’s Life and Works 20
2.1.2 A Comment on Locke’s Essay 21

2.2 LOCKE’S CENTRAL PROJECT 22
2.3 INFLUENCE FROM PREDECESSORS 23
2.4 INFLUENCE OF LOCKE’S IDEA ON A CONTEMPORARY SITUATION 25

CHAPTER III 28
LOCKE’S CONCEPT OF EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE 28
3.1 HUMAN UNDERSTANDING OF LOCKE 28
3.2 LOCKE’S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 29
3.3 KINDS OF EXPERIENCES 30
3.3.1 Sensation 30
3.3.2 Reflection 31

3.4 FOUNDATION AND DEGREES OF IDEAS 31
3.4.1 Intuition 31
3.4.2 Demonstration 32
3.4.3. Sensation 32

3.5 LOCKE’S DIVISION OF IDEAS 33
3.5.1 Simple Ideas 33
3.5.2. Complex Ideas 33

3.6 CERTAINTY OF EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE 34
3.7 EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE AND THE CONCEPT OF TABULA RASA 35
3.8 LOCKE’S REJECTION OF INNATE IDEAS 35
3.8.1 A Footnote to Aristotle 36

3.9 LOCKE’S KNOWLEDGE AS VIEWED IN DIVERSE CONCEPTS 37
3.9.1 The Knowledge of Existence 37
3.9.2 Real Beings 38
3.9.3 Substance 39
3.9.4 Quality 39
3.9.5 Causality 40
3.9.6 Abstraction 40
3.9.7 Moral and Social Doctrine 41
CHAPTER IV 42
A CRITIQUE OF LOCKE’S EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE 42
4.1 LIGHTS OF LOCKE’S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 42
4.2 LIMITATIONS FROM LOCKE’S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 43
4.2.1 Extent of Human Knowledge 45

4.3 RELEVANCE OF THE LOCKEAN THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 46
4.3.1 Ethics and Morality 46
4.3.2 Society and Politics 47
4.3.3 Education 48

4.4 AN AFRICAN RESPONSE TO LOCKE 49

CONCLUSION 51

BIBLIOGRAPHY 55