Locke: Nature of Knowledge

In book four Locke talks about the nature of knowledge. According to Locke knowledge is what the mind is able to percieve with a connection or without a connection between two or more of our ideas that we have. So Locke goes on to say that since we are only relating ideas that we already have the knowledge that we have cannot be knowlege of the world around us. He then talks about four arguments and disagreements about how reason can bring fourth knowledge. The first argument he talks about is identity, blue is blue and blue is not yellow. In other words blue has its own idenity of blueness and thus blue can't be yellow cause it doesn't have the identity of yellowness. The second argument deals with relation, in the case of two triangles that have the equal sides are called equal triangles. The third argument is coexistence which is fire is always going to be put out by water, things react in harmony to thier counterpart. Finally the last category he talks about is the realization that existence belongs to the idea's themselves and not to the mind.

Locke then talks about how thier are three degrees of knowledge which are intuition, demonstration and sensitive knowledge. Intuition, this is when we see a agreement or disagreement right when the argument is understood. Demonstration is the idea that we need some sort of proof to be able to understand and know that it is right and finally. Sensitive knowledge which deals with existence of an external world, basically what we percieve is the external world as we know it.