Locke applies the results of the earlier books to determine the nature and extent of knowledge. As ideas are the sole immediate objects of the mind, knowledge can be nothing else than "the perception of the connexion of and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy, or any of our ideas." This agreement or disagreement is said to be of four sorts: identity or diversity; relation; co-existence or necessary connection; real existence. Each of these kinds of knowledge raises its own questions; but, broadly speaking, one distinction may be taken as fundamental. In the same paragraph in which he restricts knowledge to the agreement or disagreement of our ideas, he admits one kind of knowledge which goes beyond the ideas themselves to the significance which they have for real existence. When the reference does not go beyond the ideas "in the mind," the problems that arise are of one order; when there is a further reference to real things, another problem arises.
Locke also distinguishes between two degrees of knowledge: intuition and demonstration. In the former case, the agreement or disagreement is immediately perceived; in the latter, it is perceived through the mediation of a third idea, but each step in the demonstration is itself an intuition, the agreement or disagreement between the two ideas compared being immediately perceived. He believes that mathematics and ethics are demonstrable. When ideas are together in the mind, we can discover their relation to one another; so long as they are not taken to represent archetypes outside the mind, there is no obstacle to certainty of knowledge. "All relation terminates in, and is ultimately founded on, those simple ideas we have got from sensation or reflection" (Bk. 2:28:18). but "general and certain truths, are only founded in the habitudes and relations of abstract ideas" (Bk. 4:12:7). In this way Locke vindicates the certainty of mathematics: although instructive, the science is merely idea, and its propositions do not hold of things outside the mind. He thinks also that "morality is capable of demonstration as well as mathematics." But, in spite of the request of his friend Molyneux, he never set out his ethic doctrine in detail. In Book II he reduced moral good and evil to pleasure and pain which -- as reward and punishment -- come to us from some lawgiver; thus they point to a source outside the mind. But his ground for maintaining the demonstrative character of morality is that moral ideas are "mixed modes," and therefore mental products, so that their "precise real essence ... may be perfectly known." He ventures upon two examples only of this demonstrative morality; and neither of them is more than verbal or gives any information about good or evil. Yet the doctrine is significant as showing the influence upon Locke of another type of demonstrative thought.
Thus, knowledge of mathematics and ethics may be firmly establish, particularly as these subjects involve relations between ideas, and thus make no claims about matters of real existence. When it comes to knowledge of real existence, though, ultimately there are only two certainties: the existence of ourselves (by intuition) and that of God (by demonstration).
Concerning the self, Locke agrees with Descartes that the existence of the self is implied in every state of consciousness. Every element of our experience, every idea of which we are conscious, is a certificate of our own existence, as the subject of that experience:
As for our own existence, we perceive it so plainly and so certainly, that it neither needs nor is capable of any proof. For nothing can be more evident to us than our own existence. I think, I reason, I feel pleasure and pain: can any of these be more evident to me than my own existence? If I doubt of all other things, that very doubt makes me perceive my own existence, and will not suffer me to doubt of that. For if I know I feel pain, it is evident I have as certain perception of my own existence, as of the pain I feel: or if I know I doubt, I have ascertain perception of the existence of the thing doubting, as of that thought which I call doubt.
However, Locke fails to point out how the self can be an idea and thus belong to the material of knowledge. An idea of the self cannot come from sensation; and the simple ideas of reflection are all of mental operations, and not of the subject or agent of these operations. On the other hand, when he had occasion to discuss personal identity, he followed his new way of idea, and made it depend on memory.
Concerning God's existence, his proof is a cosmological-type argument. From the certainty of our own existence that of the existence of God immediately follows. A person knows intuitively that he is "something that actually exists." Next a person knows with intuitive certainty, that "bare nothing can no more produce any real being, than it can be equal to two right angles." it is, therefore, "an evident demonstration, that from eternity there has been something. And since all the powers of all beings must be traced to this eternal Being, it follows that it is the most powerful, as well as the most knowing, that is, God. Eternal ind alone can produce "thinking, perceiving beings, such as we find ourselves to be" (Bk. 4:10). Locke here assumes, without question, the validity of the causal principle even beyond the range of possible experience.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Knowledge of Mathematics, Ethics, the Self, and God
Economic Writings
Locke's writings on economic subjects do not rank in importance with his treatises on government. They deal with particular questions raised by the necessities of the political situation. No attempt had yet been made to isolate the fact of wealth and make it the subject of a special science. The direction of industry and commerce was held to be part of the statesman's duty; but, in the seventeenth century, it began to be carried out with less thoroughness than before; and at the same time new problems were opened up by the growth of the national life. The American colonies, the enterprise of the East India Company, the planting of Ireland, the commercial rivalry with Holland and withy France, as well as questions regarding the rate of interest and the currency, occupied the attention of a crowd of writers in the second half of the century. Locke's own contributions were occasioned be the financial problems which faced the new government after the revolution. His reflections on the rate of interest show the growing disfavor with which appeals for state interference were beginning to be met. He points out the obstacles to trade that are caused when the rate of interest is fixed by law, and he argues in favor of freedom for what he calls, in words which suggest Adam Smith, "the natural interest of money." Money "turns the wheels of trade"; therefore its course should not be stopped. At the same time, he holds no general brief against the interference of the state in matters of commerce; nor is the language of the mercantilist foreign to him. Riches consist in plenty of gold and silver, for these command all the conveniences of life. Now, "in a country not furnished with mines, there are but two ways of growing rich, either conquest or commerce." For us commerce is the only way; and Locke condemns "the amazing politics of some late reigns" which had "let in other competitors with us for the sea." In the concluding portion of Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value of Money (1691), Locke laid stress on the importance of a uniform and stable measure of values; four years later, in his Further Considerations he defended his view against the proposals involving a depreciation of the standard, which William Lowndes, secretary of the treasury, had set forth in An Essay for the amendment of the silver coins (1695).
The Basis of Lockean Thought
The political philosophy of Locke's mature years stemmed from the commonly-accepted Natural Law, under which man had Natural Rights, not given to him by any ruler. Under Natural Rights the right of property is paramount. Men came together in an organized community under a Social Contract between every member in order to gain advantages they could not have individually in a state of nature.
This Contract of Society was the foundation of the Contract of Government, under which all political power is a trust for the benefit of the people, and the people themselves are at once the creators and beneficiaries of that trust. The State is based on a contract between ruler and subjects, who give him power only so that their own welfare is increased and their property protected in a way not possible in the State of Nature, where it may be taken away by unprincipled forces. They, if he keeps the contract, owe him their loyalty.
It was Thomas Jefferson's passionate belief in these ideals that made him base the powers of government on "unalienable rights." Most of his Declaration of Independence is a bill of particulars in an indictment of King George III for his failure to keep the contract with his American subjects. He had broken it, and it was therefore void. The signers agreed with him. Contract, therefore, is fundamental to our system of government.
The state, Locke maintained, was concerned only with public order. It extended solely to those aspects of behavior which had to be regulated for the protection of the public.
Locke was rather vague about the organization of government. He said that the legislative and executive power "come often to be separated." While Locke thought that the legislature should be supreme among the branches, the establishment of legislative, executive and judicial powers and their separation in our governmental tradition came from Montesquieu. Locke said that the legislative branch should provide for judges, but there was no mention of judicial review of laws. The power to make war and treaties he called "federative." He said that everyone must submit to the majority, or there would be no compact of government.
He was concerned with principles and rights, and property rights are uppermost. He wrote in "The Second Treatise of Government," . . . every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his . . . " He said that whatever is removed out of the state that nature provided and is mixed with someone's labor, becomes that person's property. James Madison later explained that "property" means "that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual . . . it embraces everything to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage."
This is a view of property that is at once practical, expansive and libertarian. It is the essence of political freedom. Who can argue that a man does not have a property in his own person? No government could take the fruits of one's labor and intellect without a compelling public need and without compensation, and then only through due process of law. A person was free to contract away his property, or any of his several rights in it, for gain. The contract with government was only to protect private contracts, and the government was not entitled to any of the gains therefrom.
The human right in property was meant by Locke and understood by the Framers of the Constitution to be the fundamental liberty. Obviously, it was not necessary to organize government to protect free speech from government or to protect freedom of assembly against government. It was only necessary to organize it to protect property and life (one's life was his property), and once organized other freedoms had to be protected against government's power. He wrote in the Second Treatise that men unite in a society "for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties, and estates, which I call by the general name 'property'." He said that the supreme power (the legislative) "cannot take from any man any part of his property without his own consent. For the preservation of property being the end of government and that for which men enter into society . . . " He noted that for the protection of government everyone should pay his share (a small, flat tax), but only with the consent of the majority.
The right to property was unquestioned in that period, and Locke influenced France as well as America. The Declaration of the Rights of Man in revolutionary France in 1789 (the year North Carolina ratified the U. S. Constitution), asserted the right of property, and successive French constitutions made it stronger. The one in 1793 read: "No one shall be deprived of the least portion of his property without his consent, except when public necessity, legally proven, evidently demands it, and then only on condition of just compensation previously made." It is very similar to the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution, which says, " . . . nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation."
The Constitution of North Carolina has an obvious heritage from Locke. The 1776 version allowed the General Assembly to choose the state executive and judicial officers. Later ones did not give the governor a veto over actions of the legislature, making the General Assembly supreme, as Locke believed it should be. In 1997 the voters granted him that power.
The current State Constitution begins with a Lockean Bill of Rights, Section 1 of which says, "We hold it to be self-evident that all persons are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, the enjoyment of the fruits of their own labor, and the pursuit of happiness."
Section 2 states that all political power is vested in and derives from the People. The State Constitution goes on to provide for the separation of powers, the right of assembly, religious liberty, freedom of speech, for other rights and for the organization of government.
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