Locke: Perception and Knowledge

"Knowledge then seems to me to be nothing but the perception of the connexion and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our Ideas. In this alone it consists. [Essay IV i 2] "
http://www.philosophypages.com/locke/g04…

For some philosophers, "idea" is that which is in the mind as a condition of sensation, or "the given".
"Given, The: Whatever is immediately present to the mind before it has been elaborated by inference, interpretation or construction."
http://www.ditext.com/runes/g.html

In other words, for those philosophers, if you sense that your hand is touching something, there is the "idea" that something exists which your hand is touching. But whether or not you call that an "idea", I know of no philosopher who doesn't also call it "the given".

Locke meant more than this. Locke meant by "perception" something that is defined in the mind beyond the mere point of the given; it had to be elaborated by inference, interpretation or construction, (induction; deduction; conceptualization).

This is easy to acknowledge when you read his words again: perception is the connection and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our Ideas. The mind's acknowledgment of "the given" will neither agree nor disagree with either previous nor future events of what is "given" to us to perceive. But a perception is the acknowledgment of the given; acknowledgment requires a correspondence between "ideas"; ideas must be that which is "elaborated by inference, interpretation or construction", because without those, ideas would remain only as perceptions about which we know nothing except that they exist.

Ayn Rand, a Lockean herself, put it this way:
"A “perception” is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism, which gives it the ability to be aware, not of single stimuli [the given], but of entities, of things....A percept is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism. It is in the form of percepts that man grasps the evidence of his senses and apprehends reality. When we speak of “direct perception” or “direct awareness,” we mean the perceptual level. Percepts, not sensations, are the given, the self-evident. The knowledge of sensations as components of percepts is not direct, it is acquired by man much later: it is a scientific, conceptual discovery."
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/percep…

Locke, therefore, meant that perceptions were separate from sensations, and as far as "knowledge" of them was concerned, we have that only when we perceive that one idea is connected to another, at which time we also see that it either agrees or disagrees with the others. If it disagrees, it or one or more of the others is "repugnant", or contrary.

Perception is not the simple acknowledgment that we have had a sensation of "the given". An infant is "given" many things at birth, and his mind is in terrible turmoil attempting to determine the nature of his new world. He must determine that "mother is good"; "food is good"; "dirty diapers are bad", etc. But even then, until he gains a language by which to identify these things, they are still nothing more than "the given". He doesn't have the conception of a dirty diaper; he only knows that something happened to him and he doesn't feel good after that, and until he is taken care of.

So for Locke, "perception" is acknowledgment--of one idea or concept either agreeing with or disagreeing with other ideas, whether conceptual or not. An infant without a language can still determine that one thing is contrary to another (such as his mother makes him happy, then she makes him sad or angry, and he must eventually learn how one person can do both.)

So the key to "perception" in the language of Locke is to understand that it means the acknowledgment of at least a pair of "ideas" which will be either in agreement with each other, or "repugnant" to each other. 

It is only from the perception of like/unlike ideas that we can come to have "knowledge", because what is not "knowledge" is literally "unacknowledged" and must be greater than "the given".

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The Right of Conscience in Public Professions

Bush-Era Abortion Rules Face Possible Reversal:
Obama Team Looks at Regulation Set to Be Finalized This Week Letting Medical Staff Refuse to Take Part in Practices They Oppose

Published on Wednesday, December 17, 2008 by The Wall Street Journal

"The outgoing Bush administration this week will finalize a regulation establishing a "right of conscience" allowing medical staff to refuse to participate in any practice they object to on moral grounds, including abortion but possibly birth control and other health care as well."

It is unconscionable that anyone engaged in enterprise such as pharmacy, nursing, anesthesiology, or anything involving health care should be forced to commit acts that are against his/her conscious.

But if we are to allow such professions to object on moral grounds, then the power of dispensing with health care needs to be given to those who can provide it without a bothered conscious.

The medical profession, from the least important, most replacable jobs in the industry, to board certified doctors, is not open to the layman. If my daughter cannot get birth control in the one-pharmacy town in which she lives, 14 miles from the next pharmacy, then she ought to be able to get them with out prescription.

Fat chance. But you see the issue, and you see that conscious cannot count in an area where only the licensed are allowed to even have such a conscious. Those out side of the licensed arena must not be allowed to be held hostage by monopoly. And the licensed professions are indeed a monopoly, though not of the sort normally thought of. They are a monopoly of educated, regulated, duty-bound individuals who are given the power to provide services and products which we, the general public, are not given open access to.

Since we do not have access to these services and products without the duty-bound licensed professionals, and since it is not against the law for us to procure them from these professionals--indeed, it is illegal to procure them without the professionals--then they cannot be allowed to let their conscience get in the way of their monopoly license.

The very fact that it is illegal for us to procure these services and products without the assistance of licensed professionals is what causes them to be "duty-bound." Ayn Rand was absolutely correct when she said: "The meaning of the term 'duty' is: the moral necessity to perform certain actions for no reason other than obedience to some higher authority, without regard to any personal goal, motive, desire or interest."

But she also said, "'Duty' destroys values: it demands that one betray or sacrifice one’s highest values for the sake of an inexplicable command..." “Causality Versus Duty,” Philosophy: Who Needs It, 95

The privilege of having a licence is no "inexplicable command," so no values are destroyed by the prevention of choosing one's conscience over one's licenced privilege. Soldiers are duty-bound to protect the lives of their fellow soldiers; doctors are duty-bound to save lives whenever possible; airline pilots are duty-bound not to be drunk while flying. These are not inexplicable.

Is the use of the word "duty" to describe the requirements of licenced professionals the wrong word? Not when Rand is using it in the social sense, when the inexplicable duty "may demand the sacrifice of his values at any moment, wiping out any long-range plan or struggle he might have undertaken to achieve them . . . ."

If the struggle and long-range plan of a licensed professional is to prevent the products and services offered by capitalism and approved for use, then he must do so from outside the strict, lawfully defined terms of his position.

It is one thing to protest, to plan, to persuade, and otherwise to struggle to achieve the goals of one's life. It is another to use one's power to prevent others from achieving their goals. They ought not need to struggle against the very people licensed to provide them with their goals.

Stop Jihad In America Now

"We are Americans opposed to the “stealth jihad” being waged in this country by those who promote Shariah - authoritative Islam’s theo-political-religious program for establishing a global theocracy. As such, Shariah and its espousal of violent and stealthy jihad constitute sedition. We are determined to resist efforts now underway to create “parallel” Muslim societies and otherwise to insinuate Shariah into this country via its mosques, prisons, campuses, media, government and financial institutions. continued

related
AIG and Sharia-Compliant Insurance

is financing jihadists' efforts to overthrow the governments of the western world. Read the article above to find out about the Federal suit brought against the Treasury Department to stop its traitorous efforts to be sharia-compliant so long as the long term goal of sharia is to overthrow the rest of the world--which has been 1400 years now, and counting.

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