Questions on Locke: Ideas

1. What is Locke's main purpose in writing the Essay, and what are the three steps in the "historical, plain method" he uses to achieve that purpose?

2. How are the principles developed in Locke's Essay intended to avoid the extremes of dogmatism and skepticism in morality, politics, and religion?

3. What does Locke mean by idea?

4. What are Locke's two main arguments against innate ideas?

5. What is the difference between the two kinds of experience from which we get our ideas?

6. What are "simple" ideas? Why can the mind neither create nor destroy them?

7. What does it mean to say that our ideas of space, extension, figure, rest, and motion are simple ideas of more than one sense?

8. What does it mean to say that our ideas of pleasure, pain, existence, unity, power, and succession are simple ideas of both sensation and reflection?

9. What are qualities? How are secondary qualities different from, but dependent on, primary qualities? Give examples of each.

10. How can the motion of imperceptible bodies produce in us an idea (e.g., of color or scent) which is not another motion? What role does resemblance play in this?