terial to work on (33-34).Just as sensation is an “internal sense”, Locke says there is another. This other “internal sense” he calls reflection. Reflection is the ideas created by the mind while reflecting on its own operations. He says that it is either sensation or reflection, the only two origins, from where ideas are created. External objects furnish the mind with ideas based on our senses (sensation), and the mind furnishes the understanding of ideas based on the operations it carries out (reflection) (34). Descartes has a much different view on the origins of ideas. He believes that people have innate ideas, or instincts that every person is born with. From these innate ideas we must use intellect and reason to form ideas. It is not the senses and experiences that allow us to gain ideas and knowledge, but our mind and the powers within it. Descartes displays this view in meditation two on page 23:“For since I now know that even bodies are not, properly speaking, perceived by the senses or by the faculty of imagination, but by the intellect alone, and that they are not perceived through their being touched or seen, but only through their being understood, I manifestly know that nothing can be perceived more easily and more evidently than my own mind.” The two opposing views on the origins of ideas by Locke and Descartes reflect their different approaches to philosophy. Locke is an empiricist. He believes that all concepts and knowledge are based on and can only be justified by experiences. Empiricism claims that knowledge derived by reasoning does not exist or is confined to “analytical truths”, which have no content. This basically says there can be no “rational” method, and the nature of the world can not be discovered through pure reason or reflection. Descartes is a rationalist. He believes in reason and intellect as the primary source and test of knowl...
