Essay Concerning Human Understanding Seminar

The second seminar was based around John Locke's ' Essay Concerning Human Understanding' and as a group we focused on particular chapters in the essay. We discussed chapter 2 of the essay and debated whether Locke's theory that "All ideas come from sensation or reflection " was relevant in today's society and whether everything that we experience in life came from our five senses.The general opinion of the group was that we agreed with what Locke said as we can only learn from experiences we face in life or by our five senses of sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing. For example, if we smell the scent of roses we learn that that is what roses smell like and next time we smell the scent of roses we instantly associate it with roses. After analysing and discussing chapters 10 and 22 we came up with the conclusion that as a whole we agreed with the theories of Locke but there were some aspects that we did not agree with. One area in which we disagreed with Locke was that human beings are like a blank canvas and are born with no knowledge until they begin their journey through life. The group as a whole believed that everyone has knowledge from the minute they are born as babies have feelings and emotions such as laughter and crying and they do not learn these skills from their senses or parents.