Mr Locke, Mr Scarisbrick and an introduction to Mr Hume

Today I tried to speed you up a bit. You did the following:

1. You tried to answer the very easy question, 'What is the relationship between thought and reality?'  This is what we've been trying to do all along in case you hadn't noticed. It is the question at the heart of epistemology.  The way to approach a question like this is to define your terms: what do we mean by 'relationship', 'thought' and 'reality'? 

Then think about whether there is anything anything implied by the question that might prejudice your answer? Are there assumptions built into the question? Yes. Lots of them.

Most of you had a good stab at answering it and that's the most important thing.

2. As a an anecdotal follow up to our discussion of innate ideas, I explained how Mr Scarisbrick's view of human nature informs his political stance. As mine does my own. Even though I don't think we have one. A 'human nature' that is.

3.  We read a little more of Locke on innate ideas and how he thought that experience occured in the womb. Which is interesting. Isn't it?

4.  We read some of the text book as preparation to reading some Hume, and saw how he thought that as all ideas come from experience it is possible to 'spot' pointless abstract theories by tracing their origin and seeing if they can be traced back to experience. 

His example of trying to conceive of 'a time in which nothing happens' caused some debate and confusion. and we will have to return to it, so I'll save my feeble explanations for later. 

5.  I told you about the homework which is below.