DB 5: What is Experience?

Part 1: Locke argues for an “Empiricist Principle” in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding that one must have a sensation of a quality before we can have a thought about that quality. Do you agree that we can only have thoughts about things once we have had experiences of those things (and not before)? Provide either an example or a counter example that supports your conclusion.

Part II: As a thought experiment that may directly address this abstract question, let us consider the “Molyneux Problem”:

• Suppose a man is born blind and taught by his touch to distinguish a cube from a sphere.
• Now suppose that the cube and sphere are placed on a table and through a new laser surgery technique, the blind man is made to see.
• Could this man by his sight alone (and without touching any other object momentarily) distinguish which object is the cube and which is the sphere? Why or why not?

DB 5: What is Experience? Answer

Descartes firmly asserts that an individual’s structure of belief is foundational, wherein it should start somewhere. However, as Locke has put it, humans naturally wrestle with the concepts of thinking and perceiving. When we wonder about the reality of things around us, we are entering the philosophical thinking realm. Our natural tendency is to discover where an idea comes from, what it means to have such an idea and what it means to us, and how we must approach this idea more so when our knowledge is limited. The last statement is also why we need to create knowledge around that idea so that we know what to do about it.