Ideas as Justifiers According to Locke

C.A. Postlethwaite

Abstract

In order to have a satisfactory theory of knowledge, it would be helpful to identify which sort of things can and which sort of things cannot serve as justifiers for beliefs.[1] A mentalist theory of justification[2] proposes that the beliefs of any given person (S) can be justified only by mental states of S. One objection against mentalism is that if justifiers were only ever mental states, then objects of the external world could never justify our beliefs about the world. This paper argues that Locke’s account of ideas[3] adequately fulfils the role of such mental states. Additionally, some Lockean ideas that are not beliefs can be seen as being justified by objects of the external world. Therefore, by accepting Lockean ideas into the mentalist framework, we advance towards a valuable way of talking about knowledge.[4] This hinges on the view that a mentalist about beliefs is not necessarily a mentalist about some other mental states such as perception. Still, opponents to mentalism may suggest that the problem is not only for objects of the external world. For externalists, other things which are not mental states -such as the rules of logic, or the truth of propositions- should be seen as justifiers. Regardless of this vulnerability, this paper’s focus will not concern mentalism’s response to threats beyond the challenge that objects of the external world should be taken to be justifiers.

Introduction

This paper evaluates whether Lockean ideas are good candidates for the justifiers that mentalism[5] requires. I will first present reasons for making an educated assumption that the paper relies on. Namely: that mentalism is plausible in its own right. Then, I evaluate whether Lockean ideas meet the requirements for the justifiers that mentalism demands.

The paper concludes that, since Lockean ideas can be considered to perfectly overlap mental states, they can be seen as justifiers in accordance with mentalism. The paper additionally concludes that there is a good way to explain how some simple Lockean ideas, such as perceptions can be about external objects.

So, introducing Lockean ideas as justifiers in mentalism allows that beliefs are justified by appealing only to mental states, as mentalism proposes. Since Lockean ideas overlap with mental states. Additionally, beliefs could be seen to connect with the external world under this view, since some simple Lockean ideas that justify beliefs are grounded on objects of the external world. Mentalism’s claims concern beliefs, not all mental states. If beliefs and their justifying mental states can be differentiated in the right way, there is a way for a mentalist about beliefs to be an externalist about some other mental states such as perception. This can solve one of the problems presented by the externalist. Still, other problems loom for mentalism, which Lockean ideas may or may not aid in solving.

Mentalism

The version of mentalism that concerns this paper is afforded with the purpose of establishing the only type of things that should count as justifiers in an adequate theory of justification of beliefs.[6] This paper subscribes to Feldman and Conee’s view that “as long as the things that are said to contribute to justification are in a person's mind, the view qualifies as a version of mentalism.”[7] Accordingly, S can be justified in believing that p[8] on the basis of S’s perception, memory, or any other mental state or mental operation however complex or stored away in S’s memory or subconscious.[9] For the mentalist, S’s belief that p can be justified only on grounds of mental state(s) of S.

Mentalism identifies that mental states are the only type of thing that S can reasonably cite as good reasons for holding her belief that p. The mentalist claim is that for any given belief, some mental state justifies it. But S’s belief might still be wrong. The fact that we know what kind of things give good reason for holding a belief does not ensure that those reasons make the belief true. Merely recognizing that beliefs are justified by mental states doesn´t provide a way to distinguish between the mental states that actually make a belief true and those that don´t. Mentalism claims that being a mental state of S is a necessary and sufficient condition to be the type of thing that justifies a belief of S’s, but not for ensuring that said belief is true.

It is important to note three things for the mentalist theory:[10] 1) S herself does not necessarily have to clearly identify the pertinent mental state(s) that justifies a particular belief of S’s. 2) S does not require actual access but mere accessibility to any mental state so that her belief that p is justified, and 3) all mental states of S must not necessarily justify a belief of S’s.

Some problems for mentalism

One claim against mentalism accuses it of offering no support that our beliefs connect to the external world. This challenge suggests that for some given belief of S, it should not be necessary that only mental states of S justify it. According to this objection, a justifier could be the object of the external world whenever a certain belief is about said object. Further ahead, I will propose that employing Lockean ideas in the mentalist framework can resolve this issue.

An externalist theory, for the purposes of this paper, is one that opposes mentalism. Thus, I will take externalism to “be the view that holds that something other than mental states of a cognizer can qualify as genuine justifiers.”[11] One of the main thrusts of externalism is its concern that justification of beliefs should avoid deception. Mentalism, in positing that the only justifiers are mental states, perhaps provides a plausible account of the type of material that constitutes beliefs, but the criteria to distinguish what counts as a mental state and what doesn´t, gives no indication of which mental states are reliable and which mental states are not to constitute a belief.[12]

The mentalist seems to be primarily concerned with giving an account of what type of things we point at when giving reasons for holding any belief, independent of whether the belief is true or false. Externalism may concede the mentalist’s claim that beliefs can be traced to mental states. But, for the externalist, mental states are still insufficient as justifiers due in part to the fact that mere identification of mental states provides no aid in distinguishing between mental states that make a belief true and those that don´t. Mentalism by itself gives no clue on how to discriminate between conflicting mental states. On a mentalist account, my perception of the sun moving through the sky may justify my belief that the sun circles the earth; just as my remembering the heliocentric account justifies the belief that it doesn’t. This does not mean that mentalism cannot establish a way to adequately discriminate without lapsing into externalism.    

A complete presentation of these competing views of justification is beyond the scope of this paper. The suggestion is merely that regarding mental states as the only adequate justifiers is plausible, despite criteria for discriminating between states needing development. The other mentalist’s shortcoming, about beliefs being about the external world, is addressed ahead.

Lockean ideas as mentalist justifiers

Locke believes that “the mind, in all its thoughts and reasonings [sic], hath no other immediate object but its own ideas.” (IV, 1, 1)[13] Locke, at times, may be seen to stipulate that all mental objects are ideas. Even sense perceptions, such as “the smell of a rose”, he considers an idea, though of the simple kind. (II, 3, 2) In the same section, Locke states that there are ideas so simple that they can remain unnamed. In Locke’s view, our minds are initially “without any ideas” and they become furnished with all the materials of reason and knowledge. (II, 1, 2 and 23) Thus, he seems to regard all the materials of thought as ideas.

Locke divides ideas into two types: simple and complex. (II, 2, 1) We have seen some examples of what he takes to be the simplest ideas above. These simple ideas are bits that may form complex ideas. But neither simple nor complex ideas necessarily have truth values. He cites “beauty [and] gratitude” as examples of complex ideas. (II, 12, 1)  But beliefs must have truth values. For, in the pertinent conception, a belief is something we consider to be true. I propose that Locke comes closest to speaking of ideas constituting beliefs in the appropriate sense in Chapter XXXII, entitled “True and False Ideas”. Here he states that “‘true’ and ‘false’ are strictly applicable only to propositions.” (II, 32, 1)[14] For our purposes, beliefs are truth evaluable in a propositional sense, and Lockean ideas that are thus evaluable will be of the most complex sort.

Locke affirms that ideas have only two sources; objects of sensation being the first of them. (II, 1, 3) For Locke, objects in the world have qualities which we acquire through sensation. In trying to explain this crucial relation between the external objects in the world and our simple ideas of them, Locke suggests that our ideas are produced on the objects’ own terms, i.e., by “impulse”. (II, 8, 11) Locke’s account of how simple ideas arrive in us through sensation seems mechanical. Perceptions are produced in us by “motion on our nerves”. (II, 8, 12) Simple ideas sensibly impressed on us will be the atomic parts of more complex ideas.

Reflection is the other source for ideas that Locke proposes, and some ideas produced by reflection can also be atomic, such as the idea of “faith”. (II, 6, 2) Simple ideas may compound to constitute other growingly complex ideas through three means: combining, comparing and abstracting. (II, 12, 1)  Eventually enough complexity produces the right sort of idea that may be assigned a truth value. That is, some complex ideas can be considered beliefs.

Mentalism requires that the justifiers for beliefs be in the mind. I have presented reasons that Lockean ideas, though they vary in complexity, can be said to always be in the mind. Thus, since Lockean ideas are all mental states, they can be said to justify our beliefs from a mentalist viewpoint. Sensations, feelings, perceptions, acts of thinking, mental images, concepts, are all Lockean ideas and seem to appropriately do the work of justifying beliefs as required by mentalism.

For mentalism, employing Lockean ideas as justifiers entails that beliefs only be justified by mental states and never by external objects in the world. But it has been proposed that some Lockean ideas of the simplest kind, like perceptions, can find their justification in the objects of the world, since they arrive in us through a ‘motion in our nerves’. (II, 8, 12) Some of these simple sensations may be so bare that they do not necessarily have names. (II, 3, 2) Also, “in bare naked perception, the mind is, for the most part, only passive; and what it perceives, it cannot avoid perceiving.” (II, 9, 1) Nonetheless, these bare ideas can build up to acquire such complexity that they eventually form ideas that qualify as beliefs. By introducing Lockean ideas as justifiers, the mentalist requirements are met and all beliefs are justified by mental states of different degrees of complexity. Also, the problem of beliefs not being about the external world is potentially averted, not by purporting that beliefs themselves are justified by the external world, but by positing atomic ideas such as passive perceptions which can even remain unnamed that are directly produced by objects in the world.

Lockean ideas and mentalist mismatch

This paper does not claim to conclusively resolve in favor of mentalism as the favored theory of justification. It only claims to have offered good reasons for assuming mentalism. This was done in order to evaluate whether Lockean ideas meet mentalism’s requirements for being justifiers if mentalism were plausible. Thus pertinent objections must claim that given mentalism, Lockean ideas do not meet mentalism’s requirements to be justifiers.

The first complaint against this paper’s thesis is that bringing in Lockean ideas as justifiers effectively brings in non-mental objects as justifiers of beliefs, thus defeating the mentalist requirements that justifiers be only mental things. Lockean ideas are externalist, disguised.

A second objection can be made on grounds that Locke’s view of ideas requires that we be aware of ideas in order for them to count as ideas in the first place. Locke therefore leaves out subconscious states, forgotten mental states and ignored mental states that should not be left out on a mentalist account. Locke thinks that states that we were never aware of cannot count as thinking, and so there are no objects of inexistent thought. There are no ideas received under such conditions. This view is stressed from II, 1, 10 to II, 1, 23. Locke clearly does not accept that we are always thinking throughout our lives. In his view we are not accumulating mental states, ideas or “the material of thought” whenever we are not thinking. But mentalism does not require awareness of mental states; only that justifiers be mental states. Mentalism should regard a mental state that was acquired say, while sleeping, as a possible justifier for any belief.[15] Locke’s position seems to exclude these types of mental states.

Response

Concerning the first objection, it helps to bring into focus the reasons that mentalism has for excluding the external world as justifier for beliefs. External objects are left out as justifiers in mentalism because the features of the world seem incompatible with the features of beliefs. Thus, there might be no way to explain a relation between things with an unbridgeable difference of degree between their features. It’s hard to see how a belief can result from an external object.

Yet perceptions have no truth value and can be passively received, according to Locke. Locke gives a mechanical account of the relation between an external object and a perception, which cannot be given for the relation between an external object and a belief. (A pin can cause a prick, but it may not as easily be seen to produce the proposition ‘there is a pin’.) We see that a distinction is thus drawn between perceptions and beliefs. This distinction, together with the compositionality of ideas that Locke proposes may present a plausible picture of how justification occurs between sufficiently similar things along increasing stages of complexity.

One good solution for the second objection above is to remove whatever is preventing Locke’s ideas from completely overlapping with mentalism’s mental states. Perhaps a way to ensure exact overlap is by stressing Locke’s commitment that all passive sensations are ideas and therefore material for knowledge. (II, 1, 3 and II, 9, 1) It seems to matter not whether these sensations are named or not named. (II, 3, 2) If Locke establishes that all received sensations are at least potential material to knowledge, and it matters not whether they are named, perhaps we can argue that Locke’s disqualification of ignored, forgotten and unconscious ideas[16] is inconsistent with these other views of his. It would appear as though Locke can be interpreted to agree that any sensation we are subject to registers as an idea, in accordance with mentalism’s mental states.

Another way to respond to this objection is to bring forth Locke’s reason for not believing that we are producing ideas all the time. Locke puts much weight on the assumption that: “to think often, and never to retain it so much as one moment, is a very useless sort of thinking.” (II, 1, 15) It seems Locke’s argument is that since it’s useless to receive unproductive ideas, then we don’t receive them. We can argue on two fronts: (1) Unperceived ideas are not useless. We could look for evidence that our subconscious states affect our beliefs and behavior. This is commonly accepted nowadays, though we would need to find credible literature as support. (2) We could also invalidate the argument by saying that uselessness is no criteria for saying what does and does not actually occur.

Conclusion

If mentalism is an adequate theory of justification, Lockean ideas may be employed as justifiers, since they can be seen to perfectly overlap with mental states. The problem of beliefs not being about the external world could be solved by making explicit the different levels of complexity and compositionality proper to Lockean ideas. If simple ideas such as perceptions can be seen to be justified by objects of the external world, then this one problem is averted. This issue is far from being solved, but we can see a way forward. Thus, in the case that mentalism was correct and Lockean ideas employed as justifiers in said theory, we would still be in need of an adequate theory for justifying perception.

Bibliography

Dancy, Jonathan. (1985) Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing).

Feldman, Richard. (2003) Epistemology (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education).  

Feldman, R., & Conee, E. (2001) Internalism defended. American Philosophical Quarterly, 38(1), 1-18. Retrieved from http://login.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/42989181?accountid=4485

Grayling, A.C. (2005) “Modern Philosophy II: The Empiricists” entry in Philosophy: A Guide Through the Subject (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Ichikawa, Jonathan Jenkins and Steup, Matthias.  (Spring 2014 Edition) "The Analysis of Knowledge", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/knowledge-analysis/>.

Locke, John (1690) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, published in: Baird, Forrest A. (2008) Modern Philosophy Volume III, Sixth Edition (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education).

McDowell, John (1996) Mind and World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).

Pappas, George. (Fall 2014 Edition) "Internalist vs. Externalist Conceptions of Epistemic Justification", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2014/entries/justep-intext/>.

Sturgeon, Scott (2005) “Epistemology” entry in Philosophy: A Guide Through the Subject (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Notes

[1] The term ‘justifier’ comes from Alston, William (1989: 189) Epistemic Justification, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, as stated by Pappas, G. (2014: §3). ‘Justifier’ will be used throughout this paper to stand for the sort of things that can serve to justify beliefs. It will appear without the words ‘of belief’ but will always imply said qualification.

[2] Hereafter: “mentalism” and “mentalist” will speak of these species of theories of justification unless otherwise noted.

[3] I will use the term “Lockean ideas” to refer to the things that Locke admits as being ideas according to his view of ideas as presented in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

[4] This paper defends the claim that Locke’s concept of ideas “provides something of value to how we think of human understanding and knowledge,” in accordance to point 5 of the ‘Exposition and Defense’ topics suggested in the Basic Instructions sheet for the PHI329 Course Paper assignment. 

[5] See footnote 2.

[6] Pappas, G. (2014: §4).

[7] Feldman, R., & Conee, E. (2001: 2)

[8] Where ‘p’ stands for any proposition.

[9] Some views in Pappas, G. (2014) to have in mind: (1) There is no reason why internalism should demand that each cognizer have the ability at any given moment to then become aware of essential justifiers for each of her justified beliefs. (2) Nothing in the internalist picture should rule that the cognizer can become aware of elements of justification at later times, after much reflection. (3) Some defenders of access internalism might object that they are not committed to the potential awareness of a contributor to justification being relevant to the appropriateness of holding the target belief. (4) Mentalism can be a somewhat broader thesis according to which all justifiers are mental states of cognizers. (5) ​Mentalism allows that the very experience may count as a justifier.

[10]Pappas, G. (2014). See footnote 8.

[11] Pappas, G. (2014: §4).

[12] Sturgeon, S. (2005: 24).

[13] I follow standard notation for the Essay, (Book, Chapter, Section.)

[14] He goes on to say that truth and falsity may also apply to ideas, but I propose that belief must be treated in a propositional sense to comply with the view of belief for the theories of justification of beliefs addressed in this paper.

[15] A distinction may be drawn between tacit and conscious beliefs, though it exceeds the limits of this effort.

[16] As in II, 1, 10 to 23.