As Hobbes prepared the grassroots for empiricism, John Locke was the first to conceive its arguments. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke argued that all knowledge comes from experiences. Locke’s epistemology is built around a strict distinction between knowledge and mere probable opinion or belief.
Our knowledge depends on our sensory experiences. Our senses are the only source of our knowledge about reality. These senses provide us with information about the world around us. If we are born with certain faculties, then those faculties will determine what we can know. There are no innate ideas for humanity. Humans are not born with any innate ideas. When we come into the world, we have no idea of anything except our own existence. So, our mind is like a tabula rasa – a blank slate. The ideas that we acquire later in life are acquired through our experiences. The ideas that we get when we are young are the same ones that we acquire when we grow older. Not only did his theories provide a counter-argument to Descartes’s rationalism but also left an impact on Locke’s political philosophy.
