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Sensitive
Knowledge and Perception in Locke George Pappas Sensitive knowledge for Locke is that knowledge of external bodies such as chairs and tables that one gains through perception. On Locke's view, knowledge of this sort is very restricted, available only for objects presently perceived. Still, sensitive knowledge is genuine knowledge for Locke, though it falls short of the certainty putative attained by intuitive and demonstrative knowledge. A common interpretation of Locke's account of sensitive knowledge is that it is always inferential; one must infer beliefs about objects from beliefs about currently experienced ideas. Or at least this inference has to be somehow available if not actually made. This interpretation is driven by two considerations: there are, first, textual reasons for thinking that this is Locke's view; and, second, there are philosophical reasons for so interpreting Locke. Locke certainly seems to outright say that sensitive knowledge is inferential at several points in Book IV of the Essay, for instance when he seems to commit himself to the thesis that one must know that a resemblance obtains between current ideas and some features of the object if one is to have knowledge of the object. And Locke's theory of perception drives him to the inferential account of sensitive knowledge. His theory of perception, it is typically said, is a version of indirect or representative realism, and that theory permits at best inferential knowledge of external bodies. On the textual side I argue that Locke's actual view is that sensitive knowledge is non-inferential and immediate. Appearances aside, he never adopts the inferential account. On the philosophical side, I argue that nothing in Locke's account of perception drives him to the thesis that sensitive knowledge is at best inferential—not even if the theory of perception he accepts is a version of indirect realism. This is a point that some of Locke's most famous critics, including Berkeley, Hume, and Reid, simply missed. |