Philosophy 1301
Response Paper #3
To say that all meaningful ideas originate in sense experience implies many things, but
specifically it implies that all of the ideas that each individual has originates in sensation and
reflection. In order to be able to conjure an idea about something, we need to have experienced it
in some way and have sensed it with our own senses. So what that means is, that we must use the
five senses for which taste, touch, sound, smell, and vision are able to collect data and transform
that data into experience or memory. By that standard, it would also imply that two different
individuals can experience the exact same incident, but also have two completely different ideas
or sensations from the experience altogether. One person might have a pleasant experience with
an incident, whereas another person may have a very unpleasant experience with the very same
incident. It is intriguing how the mind at birth is, as Locke puts it “tabula rasa” or clean slate, and
from there we learn everything that we know from our experience. From birth, we are just “blank
slates” accumulating information that we know to be the truth, and eventually make those into
our experiences. Makes us who we are, and what we know as individuals. It also implies that
everything that each of us has learned is subjective, and the things that we believe to be true exist
independently in the mind of the perceiver. What that also is stating implicitly is the idea that
God cannot be experienced or sensed, therefore God cannot exist which is very tough for me to
understand. To think of any ideas that would no longer be meaningful, I suppose all ideas must
trace back to some sort of sense experience of some kind. Even dreams according to Hume, are
based from sense experience since the ideas are derived from experiences that we have had at
some point in our lives, or have at least experienced at one point or another. I do not agree with
Berkeley and the theory that he has, that only ideas exist and the rest is just purely fiction. That
Response Paper #3
To say that all meaningful ideas originate in sense experience implies many things, but
specifically it implies that all of the ideas that each individual has originates in sensation and
reflection. In order to be able to conjure an idea about something, we need to have experienced it
in some way and have sensed it with our own senses. So what that means is, that we must use the
five senses for which taste, touch, sound, smell, and vision are able to collect data and transform
that data into experience or memory. By that standard, it would also imply that two different
individuals can experience the exact same incident, but also have two completely different ideas
or sensations from the experience altogether. One person might have a pleasant experience with
an incident, whereas another person may have a very unpleasant experience with the very same
incident. It is intriguing how the mind at birth is, as Locke puts it “tabula rasa” or clean slate, and
from there we learn everything that we know from our experience. From birth, we are just “blank
slates” accumulating information that we know to be the truth, and eventually make those into
our experiences. Makes us who we are, and what we know as individuals. It also implies that
everything that each of us has learned is subjective, and the things that we believe to be true exist
independently in the mind of the perceiver. What that also is stating implicitly is the idea that
God cannot be experienced or sensed, therefore God cannot exist which is very tough for me to
understand. To think of any ideas that would no longer be meaningful, I suppose all ideas must
trace back to some sort of sense experience of some kind. Even dreams according to Hume, are
based from sense experience since the ideas are derived from experiences that we have had at
some point in our lives, or have at least experienced at one point or another. I do not agree with
Berkeley and the theory that he has, that only ideas exist and the rest is just purely fiction. That
