Descartes Explain Descartes' Cogito (in Term Paper

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Explain why science is of central importance to Locke's theory of knowledge. (Make sure that you explain Primary and Secondary qualities... And their relation to science and knowledge.)

Science, and scientific knowledge gleaned from empirical observation is key to Locke's theory. Locke did not believe all things were or could be subject to doubt. Unlike Descartes, who believed that the truth of existence was manifest in the human mind, and the ability of the human mind to think, Locke believed in the truth of exterior, scientific observation and empirical knowledge, and thus the scientific method had validity as a source of real, certain knowledge.

But Locke, conversely, did not take a position on the opposite extreme of Descartes and state that merely because observations and truth outside of the realm of the self and the mind was verifiable as knowledge, there was no such thing as subjective perception. There were aspects of existence called primary qualities, such as an object's state of matter, shape, amount, direction the object was heading, etc., that could be objectively determined and observed, and recorded as a piece of data. A primary quality of a horse might be that it is solid, has four legs, is singular in nature, and is heading in the direction of the viewer.

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Secondary qualities, such as color or sounds are subjective in their effect upon the perceiver, although they may be objective in their origin and cause. Music is an excellent example. One can agree that the origin of the music in the room comes from a violin, but whether the music is pleasing or not pleasing is entirely dependant upon the subjective taste, background, trained ear, and physiology of the listener, and so musical criticism thus is not the same thing as scientific observation. Likewise, with color, a blind person cannot see if a coat is blue, even though he or she can determine that it is solid matter......

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