Locke’s Knowledge of Ideas: Propositional or By Acquaintance?

Abstract

Locke seems to have conflicting commitments: we know individual ideas and all knowledge is propositional. This paper shows the conflict to be only apparent. Looking at Locke's philosophy of language in relation to the Port Royal logic, I argue, first, that Locke allows that we have non-ideational mental content that is signified only at the linguistic level. Second, I argue that this non-ideational content plays a role in what we know when we know an idea. As a result, we can see our knowledge of an idea as a form of knowledge by acquaintance: there is a direct epistemic relation between a mental object (an individual idea) and a knowing subject. But owing to Locke's logic, that knowledge has a tacit propositional structure expressing the truth of the idea, which gains full signification only linguistically.

What is Musical Knowledge? Piano Students’Perceptions of Musical Knowledge and Musical Performance in a Chinese Context

“…'Many writers on aesthetics have stressed acquaintance knowledge as being absolutely fundamental in the arts' (Swanwick, 1994, p. 17). However, Weinberg (2021), in his exploration of Locke's conceptual knowledge, suggests that Locke seems to have contradicted each other in the idea that we know what individuals think and that all knowledge is propositional. Duncan (2018) claims that certain knowledge is not constituted by propositions, but by the knowledge of properties and objects.…”