Locke’s Human Understanding

1.“The way shown how we come by any knowledge, sufficient to prove it not innate” – The natural faculties that humans have since birth are the ones they use to attain knowledge, but do not have impressions that are innate to them. The development of this knowledge and principle is not innate in character because they evolve over time.

2.” General assent the great argument” – principles that accepted by men came from process of speculative arguments. Thus the end of this is the consent given by men towards the affirmation of a certain principle is not innate.

3. “Universal consent proves nothing innate” – given the fact that people have established the meaning of a consent, thus rendering the knowledge itself as not innate.

4.“What is, is;” and, “It is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be,” not universally assented to.” – the argument used on the debate on universal consent to prove innate principle, is likewise the same as disproving the notion of innate principle.

5.“Not on the mind naturally, imprinted, because not known to children, idiots, etc” – there things that are not known or born naturally to children, thus those have to be introduced to them, making the knowledge not naturally endowed and innate to them.

6.“If reason discovered them, that would not prove them innate.” – though by claim of use of own personal reason, humans have discovered these reasoning by universal assent, rendering the principle or the knowledge as not naturally imprinted by the human mind.

7.“It is false that reason discovers them” – it is not possible to come up with innate knowledge, because through use of own reasons, these forms of reasoning are only deductions from established theories and knowledge, thus making it not anymore original.

Reference

1690 AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING by John Locke. Retrieved October 24, 2007 from http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke1/Book1a.html#Chapter%20I