Philosophical Topics (Philosophy of the Mind Prt. II)

Locke's Essay Concerning the Human Understanding

In Locke's eighth section of his ninth chapter "Perception" he argues that the "Idea of sensation is often changed by the judgement" in which he claims that "the ideas we receive by sensation are often in grown people altered by the judgement without our knowing it"( 32) basically saying that we as human beings have a real tendency to take something that is right in front of us and then twist it by casting judgement upon it. It's like for example when a couple goes to a concert to enjoy themselves and the guy decides to sit throughout the entire concert and not enjoy it to prove a point that the band is not all that people have cracked them up to be, yet deep down on the inside of his gut he is secretly enjoying the performance although his outside exterior shows that he really hates everything about what he sees in front of him. Another example of Locke's quote is how whenever I hear something for the first time on the radio and automatically don't like it, and then a few months or years later that same song comes on and I like it, in which my mother says "You don't like that song remember?"

Locke references his friend Mr. Molineaux in which Mr. Molineaux asks Locke if the same stance on perception and the idea of sensation applies to a blind man if he was asked to make the difference between a sphere and cube, and his answer is strictly no. His explanation to his answer of no is because "he has not obtained the experience of how a globe , how a cube affects his touch , yet he has not obtained the experience of what affects his touch or so what affects his sight." (32) In other words what Mr. Locke is saying is that because our friend here is completely blind he is actually limited in his experience to understand and perceive what is going on around him at the present in which it is pertaining to his sense of touch of the globe and the square. More so in the fact that because he cannot see what he is touching and feeling he is not fully getting the entire experience of what the globe and what the square is.

Also in the fact that according to Locke for one to fully understand and comprehend what the perception being changed in judgement one must be able to see. With that stance one can see as to why Mr Locke said that a blind man would not be able to distinguish between a globe and a square once he would gain his eyes sight being that he might not change his answer once it was revealed to him that he was correct. Basically proving his entire stance on perception wrong in the fact that people change their minds once they are shown the truth about something.