Free Essay About Epistemology

Locke states that what we know is based on our ideas about the objects we interact with but not the actual objects. Our experiences are derived from the immediate environment and internalized as ideas. The mind itself has no any immediate object other than its ideas, hence our knowledge. This is the Locke’s problem.
Bishop George Berkeley claims that Locke does not give a clear connection between the actual objects and our ideas that represents them. According to Berkeley, such a claim of sensations of actual physical objects and the objects themselves are not two different things. He claims that there is only the sensation without the physical object causing it. He proceeds to explain this through the conversation of the characters philonous and Hylas.
First, Hylas hold that objects exist independently from the knower. This is based on common sense realism that, sensible qualities such as hot, cold, fuzzy etc. exists in the objects themselves. He is however persuaded by philonous that secondary qualities are only in the mind of the knower/experimenter/perceiver. He therefore comes to agree that, secondary qualities depend on the mind rather than being the real objects.
Hylas later; feels that he was forced to accept the philonous idealism and changes his position to accept that there is no any actual object in physical state that exist outside our ideas that have or support the primary qualities. This is what Berk things shall solve Locke’s problem.
Locke did not refer to any physical substratum at any point. Descartes in his attempt to explain the relationship between the world and the ideas, that God presented at least an idea on the relationship between the ideas and the things represented by them. Berk agrees with Locke that we can only know our ideas directly. This is because when we conceive the existences of objects externally, we do so by contemplating ideas that we hold. However, Berk seeks to establish whether we can come to know reality independent from our ideas. He thus thinks of the relationship between the ideas and the objects existing in our environment.
Berk proceeds by stating that, that there is only sensation, but not external physical objects that create the sensation as Locke held. He Berk hold that the qualities exist simply because there is a perceiver, hence, the perceivers determines the existence of the qualities. Therefore, for Berk secondary and primary qualities exist alongside our perceptions and experiences and these sensible qualities exists independently from the objects. Therefore, it can be concluded based on this premise that there are no actual physical objects. Berk agrees that God is the creator of everything and things continue to exist even when out of our minds because of God’s power.
Naive’s claim is erroneous. Objects do not have in them the characteristics that are used to define them. For example, hotness is not in the object, but exists in the perceiver mind as the idea is created in the mind.
A real object is that which existed, exists or shall come to exist whether observable or comprehensible. By this, real things are not limited to human senses but also imaginations that may not be based on observable qualities.
The arguments presented by the four questions bring out clearly the differing opinions that can be advanced in explanation of reality. Existence of an object is not limited to human senses based on the objects’ interaction with the perceiver, but can exist without such interaction. Therefore, it is acceptable to perceive real things that one has not had contact with, and that, they do exist.