John Locke's Definition Of Sensitive Knowledge

John Locke, a philosopher that published a book, titled “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” in this book Locke talks about sensitive knowledge. What is sensitive knowledge? Locke definition of sensitive knowledge is “Knowledge is the perception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas” (IV, I, 2) knowledge is the agreement or disagreement of two ideas that you are aware of. The “ideas” Locke mention in this definition are things that you immediately perceived, things that you immediately became aware of. For example, a person sees a chair in front of them, they are perceiving the chair directly and those thing you are perceiving are your ideas (the chair). In this paper, I am going to show how Locke successfully defends himself

In this book, Locke talked about knowledge, Locke points out that there are three degrees of knowledge: intuitive, demonstrative and sensitive. Intuitive knowledge were thing that you see are as they are, there are no intervention. For example, the sun, the sun shine so brightly in front of you that you have no doubts or even questioned that it was not the sun. Demonstrative knowledge is the opposite of intuitive knowledge, demonstrative knowledge has interventions or the connection of one idea to another Locke also mentions that demonstrative knowledge can also be called reasoning. Lastly, which is the focus of this paper is sensitivity knowledge which Locke defines sensitive knowledge as a perception of agreement or disagreement of two ideas. The “ideas” that Locke mentions these definitions are the object that you are perceiving, the object or thing that you are seeing in front of you. Sensitive knowledge in Locke definition is that external things exist because of sensory ideas. So, the proof that external objects exist is because of our sense (ex: smell, taste, feel ... etc.). Locke mentions that there is a limit to sensitive knowledge, this limit is that, a person can only confirm if an object exist, if they are within their field of vision. A consideration that sensory idea are produced by external object, Locke mention that sensory ideas con against our will. For example, pain, if you are hit, you feel pain and you have no control or choice to not feel pain. Descartes is another philosopher like Locke, he also talked about the proof for external objects existing. Unlike Locke, Descartes believes that pure intellect is the best proof, while Locke believes that sensitive knowledge is the best proof. I agree with Locke because even though Descartes object Locke’s theory and says that Locke is relying on sensory idea to heavily, Descartes theory also relies a bit