Locke and Berkeley Philosophy
Write a 5-6 page critical essay that addresses the question below. Your paper should not only exposit the relevant arguments from the text along with appropriate evidence and citations, but also you are required to provide some critical evaluation. The difficulty will be in limiting what you include to those arguments relevant to answering the question. So, think about what’s really important, structure your essay appropriately, include sufficient explanation, and be concise so that you can include everything necessary within the page limit. Question: In Book 2, Chapter 8, section 8 of the Essay concerning Human Understanding, Locke explains the difference between ideas in the mind and qualities in an object: “Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding, that I call idea; and the power to produce any idea in our mind, I call quality of the subject wherein that power is. Thus a snowball having the power to produce in us the ideas of white, cold, and round, the powers to produce those ideas in us, as they are in the snowball, I call qualities; and as they are sensations, or perceptions, in our understandings, I call them ideas, if I speak of sometimes, as in the things themselves, I would be understood to mean those qualities in the objects which produce them in us” (2.8.8).
Locke and Berkeley Philosophy
In the passage above, Locke points to the difference between our ideas and the powers of objects to produce those ideas in our minds. In what follows this passage, what further distinction does Locke draw between the different kinds of qualities, and how does he argue for that distinction? (Make sure to give a specific argument in each case for the distinction.) On what basis does Locke conclude that the distinction between kinds of qualities also supports that material substance exists as the causes of our ideas even though all we perceive are our own ideas? How does Berkeley argue against this distinction between qualities? Why does Berkeley also think that we can’t infer the existence of material objects on the basis of our experience? In the end, why does Berkeley conclude that it’s a “downright contradiction” to claim that material objects exist? In light of Berkeley’s conclusions about the existence of material objects, what is his explanation for the how we have ideas of an external world and the regularity with which we have them? Given both Locke’s and Berkeley’s arguments concerning the existence of material objects, what do you think we can justifiably conclude about the existence of material objects? Make sure to fully explain why you have drawn your conclusion. APA.