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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books A Guide To Locke's Essay Simple Ideas Locke used the word "idea" for the most basic unit of human thought, subsuming under this term every kind of mental content from concrete sensory impressions to abstract intellectual concepts.

Explicitly disavowing the technical terms employed by other philosophical traditions, he preferred simply to define the idea as "whatsover is the Object of the Understanding when a Man thinks." [Essay I i 8] Locke worried little about the ontological status of ideas. He did commonly refer to them as being "in the Mind," both when we are conscious of them and when they are stored in memory, he regarded this as no more than a spatial metaphor.

Locke was interested in these immediate objects of perception only because they point beyond themselves. Thus, the crucial feature of ideas for Locke was not what they are but rather what they do, and the epistemic function of an idea is to represent something else.

For since the Things, the Mind contemplates, are none of them, besides it self, present to the Understanding, 'tis necessary that something else, as a Sign or Representation of the thing it considers, should be present to it: And these are Ideas. [Essay IV xxi 4] Because we do think and must always be thinking about something or other, then, it follows that we actually do possess ideas.

[Essay II i 1] If we want to comprehend the foundations for human knowledge, Locke supposed, it is natural to begin by investigating the origins of its content. Origin in Experience Since knowledge-indeed, human thought of any sort-is mediated by ideas, it is well worth asking how we acquire them. Thus, in Book II of the Essay, Locke embarked on an extended effort to show where we get all of the ideas that we do so obviously possess.

An adequate genetic account will explain, at least in principle, how human beings acquire the ability to think about anything and everything. Let us then suppose the Mind to be, as we say, white Paper, void of all Characters, without any Ideas; How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless Fancy of Man has painted on it, with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of Reason and Knowledge?

To this I answer, in one word, From Experience: In that, all our Knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives it self.