Locke And Descartes Similarities

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Although, the philosophies of Descartes and Locke are contrasting, their views does include some similarities. In Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding there is a contrast from Descartes’ views, but he also liberates some of Descartes’ philosophical concepts and objections and selected much of his terminology. The similarities that highlights Locke and Descartes consists of their notions of ideas and attributes, the significance of language and reason, God and his will, and universals classification. For example, Locke’s definition of idea is a term adopted form Descartes. For Locke, an idea is where “…the mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding, that I call idea...” (Chapter 8, Book …show more content…

Descartes’ distinction is similar to the ideas of Locke, but his is based on size, shape, number, motion, substance, and so forth. The comparison of Descartes and Locke views of setting man apart from machines and animals. Descartes speaks that even though machines appear to be more superficial than man, they still are observed from real-life men with certainty. He quotes, “…could never use words or other signs arranged in such a manner as is competent to us in order to declare our thoughts to others…” (Part 5, Paragraph 9). In addition, “This shows not merely that the beasts have less reason than me, but that they have no reason at all” (Descartes 28). The comparison of Locke’s statement that “brutes” as he calls them “…have not the faculty of abstracting, or making general ideas, since they have no use of words, or any other general signs” (Chapter 11, Of Discerning, and other operations of the

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