Locke; Truth, Reason, Evidence and the King of Siam

Love of Truth
In Bertrand Russell’s “History of Western Philosophy”, he examines John Locke’s theory of knowledge. Locke, Russell declares “must be treated as the founder of philosophical liberalism as much as of empiricism in the theory of knowledge.” Russell also says that,

“No one has yet succeeded is inventing a philosophy at once credible and self-consistent”.

Locke he maintains, was credible at the expense of consistency. Yet Locke’s influence is still maintained in the pursuit of empiricism, and Locke is awarded the title of First Empiricist. Locke laid the foundation for the modern concepts of “truth, love of” , and reason:

“Love of truth, which Locke considers essential, is a very different thing from love of some particular doctrine which is proclaimed as truth. One unerring mark of love of truth, he says, is ‘not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant’. ‘Forwardness to dictate’, he says, ‘shows failure of love of truth.’”

“Reason, as Locke uses the term, consists of two parts: first, an inquiry as to what things we know with certainty; second, an investigation of propositions which it is wise to accept in practice, although they have only probability and not certainty in their favor. ‘The grounds of probability,’ he says, are two: conformity to our own experience, or the testimony of others’ experience.’ The King of Siam , he remarks, ceased to believe what Europeans told him when they mentioned ice.”

These concepts have carried through into modern justice definitions of evidence, where testimony is frequently given more evidentiary weight than current scientific input. Science, after all, is subject to paradigm shifts not to mention revolutionary theory overthrow (Big Bang vs. static universe). Our own experience is probabilistic, and is not certain. So dictating the truth (as a scientific fact) is a failure of love of truth.

Yet knowledge is made out of ideas, and ideas come from personal experiences. And personal experiences which generate knowledge are threefold.

Russell:
“Again, [according to Locke] we can have no knowledge except (1) by intuition, (2) by reason, examining the agreement or disagreement of two ideas, (3) by sensation, perceiving the existence of particular things” (Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, 1690, Book IV, chap iii, sec 2)(Russell, p558).

Russell fails to develop the second source of knowledge, the examination and comparison faculty. It is this innate, a priori faculty of discrimination that gives reasonableness to the mental objects obtained in the search for knowledge through (1) intuition, and (3) sensation. Russell also fails to pursue the “things we know with certainty”, which would be the First Principles, known intuitively and innately to be true, incorrigibly.

Given these caveats, Locke has developed a remarkable understanding of knowledge and its attainment. From this we can see the inadequacy of the metaphysical naturalist's comprehension of truth. The metaphysical naturalist, especially one who denies free will, cannot accept two out of three of Locke’s sources of knowledge. If the entire universe is physical only, then both intuition and reason, being non-physical, are deniable; only sensory input is valid. So the denial is one of rejecting the internal experience of intuition and reason. There is no empirical, physical, material justification for this rejection; in fact there is evidence for the existence of both. The evidence for reason is found in the logic circuitry and plasticity found in neurons and the brain. The evidence for intuition is found in the undeniable, incorrigible First Principles.

Deniability of metaphysical intuition and reason is a wish, not a fact. Deniability is essential for the pursuit of metaphysical naturalism, and metaphysical naturalism is essential for the support structure of metaphysical Atheism. The conclusion, Atheism, drives the necessity of its “axioms”. This demonstrates the fallacy side of abductive reasoning – creative story telling fabricated in backward support of a wishful conclusion.

Russell does away with Metaphysical Naturalism (Ibid, p 743):

"There remains, however, a vast field, traditionally included in philosophy, where scientific methods are inadequate. This field includes ultimate questions of value; science alone, for example, cannot prove that it is bad to enjoy the infliction of cruelty. Whatever can be known, can be known by means of science; but things which are legitimately matters of feeling lie outside its province".

"Morally, a philosopher who uses his professional competence for anything but a disinterested search for truth is guilty of a kind of treachery. And when he assumes, in advance of his inquiry, that certain beliefs, whether true or false, are such as to promote good behavior, he is so limiting the scope of philosophical speculation as to make philosophy trivial; the true philosopher is prepared to examine all preconceptions. When any limits are placed, consciously or unconsciously, upon the pursuit of truth, philosophy becomes paralysed by fear, and the ground is prepared for a government censorship punishing those who utter 'dangerous thoughts' - in fact, the philosopher has already placed such a censorship over his investigations." (Ibid, p 743)

Russell has adequately predicted the rush toward "hate crimes" thought legislation, certainly a kind of treachery. Under such totalitarian mind control, the love of truth does, in fact, become trivial.