Descartes’ Scientific Method and Locke’s Empiricism
Descartes’ Scientific Method
This method follows certain and easy rules, whereby the exact look that does not ever take anything false as true, and not unnecessarily using any effort of mind, but always gradually increasing knowledge, will only come to true knowledge of everything that it is capable of.
This method consists of four precepts:
- Do not receive as true what is not evidently recognized as such, carefully avoiding precipitation and prejudice, and not accepting as true but what presents to my mind so clearly and distinctly about its certainty that it could not fit doubt.
That is, doubt everything until we have something that comes in a clear and distinct way so that you cannot doubt that it exists.
- Divide each of the challenges facing intelligence to investigate the truth into as many parts as necessary to resolve them.
- Order knowledge, always starting with the simplest, rising in grades to reach the most complex, and assuming an order in those who did not by nature.
- Perform enumerations so complete and general as to give me the security of not having committed any fault.
The Existence of God
If I doubt, it is because I am imperfect; therefore, there must be a perfect being, who is God.
God exists:
- Because I am an imperfect being, and if I can raise the idea of a perfect being, that being must be God.
- If I can raise the objective idea of God, it is because it is so clear and distinct that it is indubitable; it is true.
- Res infinite: God.
- Res cogitans: I.
- Res Extensa: Reality, from a mathematical term. All those stocks that we represent mathematically are clear and distinct. Reality can only exist if it is present mathematically to me.
The triangle is as true as the idea of God.
Then God created the world along with man, to whom he gave the instrument of reason to identify the clear and distinct creation through the mathematical term.
Locke: Denial of Innate Ideas
Our ideas come from two different sources: feelings and perception of the operation of our mind. If we are only able to think with our ideas, and all ideas come from experience, it is clear that no part of knowledge precedes experience. Consequently, there are no innate ideas (including those of God, of eternity, the infinite present, the substance, the real essence, that of free will, etc.). It is denied that all ideas come from experience.
So empiricism denies that we have innate ideas; no man is born with them, but these are developed as we evolve and form our own ideas.
Simple Ideas
Men have more or fewer “simple ideas” according to the number of objects that have come in contact during their lifetime. Simple ideas are the materials of all knowledge and are suggested to the mind by sensation and reflection. The simple ideas that come from both sensation and reflection are pleasure or delight, pain or anxiety, power, existence, and unity.
Then we can say that ideas of sensation are also called simple ideas, which in turn are distinguished as simple ideas of sensation and simple ideas of reflection. So if the senses and reflection on these ideas are used as tools, the mind alone cannot form simple ideas; it needs a vehicle, mostly because the idea needs to be concrete for the mind to be able to recognize it.
Simple Ideas of Sensation
Our senses deal with individual sensible objects and give us perceptions of things, as the varied ways in which these objects affect our senses. This is how we acquire ideas, e.g., yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet, and all those we call sensible qualities.
This means that these objects are shown to our senses so we can create ourselves a sensible representation of what they are and try to interpret (half sensible) and, in this manner, create an idea of that object.
Simple Ideas of Reflection
Perception provides us with ideas; it is the internal operations of our own mind engaged in the ideas it has. The soul or mind “reflects” on these ideas—perceived internally—and then obtains the ideas we express by the words “perception,” “believe,” “doubt,” and so on. We acquire these ideas as perceived within ourselves through a sense that is not external but may well be called “internal.”
That is why the ideas of reflection are late; they require much more attention. Then we can say they are ideas of reflection when the mind turns its gaze toward itself, observes its own actions about the ideas it has, and makes other ideas that are just as capable of being subjected to its contemplation as any of those receiving external things.