Originally published anonymously in 1690. This edition is prepared for students and contains a detailed introduction, helpful annotations to the text, suggested readings, an extensive bibliography, and an index.

Locke: Identity, Persons, and Personal Identity John Locke: Identity, Persons, and Personal Identity

Hirschmann, Nancy J. (2009). Gender, Class, and Freedom in Modern Political Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p.79.Principal evidence of this theory is uncovered by examining twin pregnancies. The main argument is, if there are social behaviours that are inherited and developed before birth, then one should expect twin fetuses to engage in some form of social interaction before they are born. Thus, ten fetuses were analyzed over a period of time using ultrasound techniques. Using kinematic analysis, the results of the experiment were that the twin fetuses would interact with each other for longer periods and more often as the pregnancies went on. Researchers were able to conclude that the performance of movements between the co-twins were not accidental but specifically aimed. [18] Knowledge of relation seems to be knowledge of necessary relations. He denies we can have universal knowledge of contingent relations (4.3.29). Technically, the categories of identity and necessary connections are both necessary relations, but they are important and distinctive enough to merit their own categories (4.1.7). Knowledge of relation, then, is a catch-all category that includes knowledge of any necessary relation. One of the stated purposes of the Essay is to make clear the boundary between, on the one hand, knowledge and certainty, and, on the other hand, opinion and faith (1.1.2). For Berkeley, ostensibly physical objects like tables and chairs are really nothing more than collections of sensible ideas. Since no idea can exist outside a mind, it follows that tables and chairs, as well all the other furniture of the physical world, exist only insofar as they are in the mind of someone—i.e., only insofar as they are perceived. For any nonthinking being, esse est percipi (“to be is to be perceived”).

Locke: Natural Rights to Life, Liberty, and Property John Locke: Natural Rights to Life, Liberty, and Property

There have been claims by a minority in psychology and neurobiology, however, that the brain is tabula rasa only for certain behaviours. For instance, with respect to one's ability to acquire both general and special types of knowledge or skills, Michael Howe argued against the existence of innate talent. [16] There also have been neurological investigations into specific learning and memory functions, such as Karl Lashley's study on mass action and serial interaction mechanisms. Intuitive knowledge comes from an immediate a priori perception of a necessary connection (4.2.1). Demonstrative knowledge is based on a demonstration, which is the perception of an a priori connection that is perceived by going through multiple steps (4.2.2). For example, the intuitions that “A is B” and “B is C” can be combined into a demonstration to prove that “A is C.” Finally, the sensation of objects provides “sensitive” knowledge (or knowledge from sensation) that those objects exist and have certain properties (4.2.14).We can be confident in a testimony that conforms with our own past experience and the reported experience of others (4.16.6). As noted above, the more frequently something is observed the more likely it happened on a given occasion. For example, in our past experience fire has always been warm. When we have the testimony that, on a specific occasion, a fire was warm, then we should believe it with the utmost confidence.