It
was of John Locke's philosophy that Bertrand Russell famously wrote: No one has yet succeeded in inventing a
philosophy at once credible and self- consistent. Locke aimed at credibility,
and achieved it at the expense of consistency.
Nowhere
is Locke's empiricism more inconsistent than in his ideas about God. According to Locke, the only knowledge we can
have with any certainty is the knowledge of our own existence; and the
knowledge of the existence of God.
This second
assertion is at odds with the whole push and thrust of his empiricism, however.
The Essay itself provides the
arguments and methods to refute this assertion. The Essay
exists in a state of tension between asserting certain knowledge of the existence
of God, and providing arguments to disprove that assertion. Book 4 of the Essay may with justice be regarded as a
classic example of the mess thinkers get into when they try to reconcile reason
with the unreasonable.
Let's
first look at what Locke asserts about our knowledge of God, and then look at
how The Essay Concerning Human
Understanding provides the arguments with which to refute the existence of
God.
Part 1: The
Assertion
A few words
about knowledge
Before
looking at how we have knowledge of God, a few words about knowledge. According
to Locke, we have three types of knowledge:
Intuitive
knowledge, which is the perception of the direct
and immediate agreement or disagreement of two ideas. Our knowledge of
ourselves is intuitive. This is the highest and most certain knowledge possible.
Demonstrative
knowledge, which arises as a result of the agreement or disagreement of two
ideas only with the help of (a series of) intervening
ideas. Reasoning is demonstrative knowledge. Our knowledge of God is
demonstrative.
Sensitive
knowledge, which is knowledge of the world gained through (the interaction of
mind with) sense perception. Our knowledge of the universe is sensitive.
Now,
according to Locke, knowledge of God can be arrived at in two ways.
Knowing God:
Demonstrative knowledge and revelation
The
first is through the operation of demonstrative knowledge. Here is his chain of
reasoning:
Ø we exist, we are something (we
know this through intuitive knowledge)
Ø the universe exists, it is
something (we know this through sensitive knowledge- that is, knowledge gained
through the senses)
Ø nothing cannot produce
something
Ø therefore there must be
something prior to us, prior to the universe in order to account for our
existence
Ø this prior something, which we
call 'God', and who gives rise to the
universe, must be a thinking being over,
above, and beyond the universe, as it is impossible for a non-thinking being to
produce thinking beings
Ø God is not a material being,
because matter is made up of non-thinking particles
The second
is through the operation of revelation. Locke distinguishes between two kinds
of revelation:
Original
revelation, which is the first impression made immediately by God on the mind
of man;
Traditional
revelation, which is the impressions delivered over to other men by words (presumably
in texts) sanctified by common usage and tradition as containing accounts or
reports of original revelation.
Of
these two modes of knowing God - demonstrative knowledge and revelation -,
Locke is keen to stress that demonstrative knowledge is superior. He warns that
where revelation and demonstrative knowledge conflict, it is the latter that
carries more weight, for reasons which will become clear later.
Now
let's look at how the Essay provides
methods and arguments for refuting certain knowledge of God. First, we deal
with knowledge of God gained through
revelation.
Refuting Original
Revelation
There
are several ways in which Locke refutes his own assertion that certain knowledge
of God can be gained through revelation. First, original revelation, it has to
be said, is never directly refuted by
anything in the Essay. This
notwithstanding, however, it is never made entirely clear exactly how God reveals himself to the mind, and how the mind knows
beyond a doubt that this revelation is from God and not from the left
hemisphere of the brain, for example. The Essay
is always very careful to describe the mechanics of thought by delineating the
boundaries of what (possibly) happens and what does not (possibly) happen.
Here, with regards the mechanics of original revelation, the Essay is uncharacteristically vague,
which vagueness speaks volumes.
What
Locke does say, however, is that even revelation is subordinate to reason, that
revelation can never be as strong as intuitive knowledge or demonstrative
knowledge, and that where intuitive knowledge or demonstrative knowledge
contradicts revelation, the contradiction, not the revelation must be taken as
truth:
Nothing that is contrary to and
inconsistent with the clear, the self-evident dictates of reason, has a right
to be urged or assented to as a matter of faith, wherein reason hath nothing to
do 4.18.10
In addition to this general and uncharacteristic vagueness, what is
interesting about the inclusion of original revelation as a source of knowledge
of God is the way that it lies completely outside Locke's scheme. Locke's
epistemology is systematic, which is to say every piece of it has a necessary place
in the overall design; it is entirely consistent - except in this one matter.
Original revelation lies outside the system and does not of necessity fit into
it. It is an added extra, a characteristic which can be seen again and again
even at sentence level. Here are some examples:
No existence of anything without us [but
only of God], can certainly be known further than our senses inform us. 4.11.13
But though we have those ideas in our
minds, and know we have them there, the having ideas of spirits does not make
us know that any such things do exist without us, or that there are any finite
spirits or any other spiritual being, [but the eternal God]. 4.11.12
Remove
the parts in square brackets, and the import of the rest of the sentence
remains completely unaffected.
Refuting Traditional
Revelation
Traditional
revelation is much more clearly refuted in the Essay, and in several ways. First, Locke stresses that it is a
principle that the further the report is from the original utterance, the more
it is corrupted: the oldest reports and texts are therefore the least corrupted.
Second, Locke stresses repeatedly in the Essay
that one of the chief obstacles to the discovery of the truth among men is
their propensity to be swayed by party interests, by personal ambition, by a
desire to hoodwink others for personal gain, for pride in debate and the urge
to win the argument. This casts doubt on the trustworthiness and veracity of
any documented traditional revelation, especially for very old documentation,
which has been through many stages of transmission, each stage being influenced
by the purposes and aims of the transcriber.
A
third refutation of traditional revelation is the general nature of language
that Locke discusses in Book 3 of the Essay.
There he stresses repeatedly that words are only signs of ideas in the mind,
and not signs of things that exist in the world. This means that the texts
which convey the revelation are only signs of ideas in the mind, and not signs
of an external reality. Therefore, if revelation from God exists, it only
exists as an idea in the mind, and has no external source.
Finally,
Locke asserts that knowledge of God through revelation can at best only be a
doubtful proposition, and warns us never to accept doubtful propositions over
against firm knowledge and certainty arrived at through (correct) reasoning
based on certain propositions.
This
means that the certain knowledge of God provided by demonstrative knowledge is
lifted in the scales of importance, while the certain knowledge of God provided
by revelation is downgraded. This also means that the arguments against certain
knowledge of God's existence are privileged because they are rational. To
accept knowledge based on uncertain propositions would be to
subvert the principles and foundations of all knowledge, evidence, and assent whatsoever:
and there would be left no difference between truth and falsehood, no measures
of credible and incredible in the world, if doubtful propositions shall take
place before self-evident; and what we certainly know give way to what we may
possibly be mistaken in. 4.18.5.
Refuting
demonstrative knowledge
We
turn now to the way the Essay refutes
the assertion of the certain knowledge of God gained through demonstrative
knowledge.
There
are many instances and arguments which directly refute knowledge of God through
the operation of reason, and a full account of these is beyond the scope of
this piece. Here we outline three trajectories of refutation taken primarily from
Book 4.
First
trajectory: the introduction of doubt through verbal truth: the trifling
proposition
The
first thing to note is that, contrary to what one would expect, Locke does not
say that knowledge of God is gained through intuitive knowledge, the kind of
knowledge that is the most certain. Demonstrative knowledge is a lower form of
knowledge than intuitive knowledge because it allows for the possibility of
error at each of the intervening stages. So by placing knowledge of God on this
secondary level of certainty, Locke removes it from the realm of the
irrefutable, and places it in the realm of the refutable. In Chapter 4.5 he
explicitly states: the demonstrated
conclusion is not without doubt. This is hugely important.
It is
in the chaining of the intermediate ideas, especially in the proposition: "Nothing cannot produce Something"
that the doubt and error lie. In Chapter 5 Locke addresses the problem of truth
gained through propositions. He draws a distinction between the truth of thought
and the truth of words. As soon as a truth is put into words, it becomes
distorted, and he warns against confusing the verbal truth of a proposition -
the way it appears to make sense on a verbal level- and the mental truth of a
proposition - a bare consideration of the ideas, as they are in our
minds, stripped of names. 4 5.3. (An example of
a proposition where there is no confusion between verbal truth and mental truth
is mathematics, because the formulae and algorithms of maths have no words which
can confuse the ideas.) This distinction between verbal and mental truths opens
up another possibility for error in the proposition, and introduces a further doubt
into the chain of demonstrative knowledge.
Words
are signs for things in the mind, not for signs of things in the world. In
fact, according to Locke, it is doubtful if Nothing can exist: nowhere in the
universe is Nothing found: even a vacuum is a Something, even the idea of
Nothing is a Something: an idea. His choice of the word 'produce' also
undermines the certainty of knowledge of the proposition: it is not necessary
for the universe to have been produced
by something, and if this is so, then it is possible to posit that the universe
spontaneously came into being (The Big Bang), thus destroying the proposition. Nothing
cannot produce Something, but it is not necessary for Something to be always
'produced': it is possible for Something to simply come about as the operation
of random processes without something standing behind consciously guiding it,
producing it. The proposition has all the certainty of (verbal) truth, but it
does not follow that it therefore has mental truth and leads to certainty of
knowledge. It is in fact, a trifling
proposition. (4.8)
Second
trajectory: the idea of God, God as an idea
A
second argument provided by the Essay
lies in the nature of the operation of mind itself. Locke stresses throughout
Book 4 of the Essay that the mind is
incapable of knowing anything outside itself; knowledge is restricted to the
knowledge the mind has of its own ideas only.
In
Chapter 4, Locke brings into his text another voice, a voice (the reader's?)
which raises a possible objection to this assertion that the mind is incapable
of knowing anything outside itself. In this chapter, called appropriately
enough Of The Reality of Knowledge,
an objection is made to the idea that the mind is incapable of knowledge of
things outside itself by pointing out that the mind is capable of creating all
kinds of crazy ideas, for example, about the real nature of a centaur or a harpy,
but unless those ideas can be shown to reflect real things, knowledge of this
kind is useless. That an harpy is not a centaur is by this way as
certain knowledge, and as much a truth, as that a square is not a circle. 4.4.1
Locke
addresses this objection in two ways, First, he points out the distinction
between simple ideas and complex ideas. The relationship between simple ideas
and the world is easy to see (white- gold- body) because simple ideas arrive in
the mind by means of sense perception of an external reality. Complex ideas,
however, are made up in the mind by the combination and categorisation of simple
ideas without considering any connection
they have in nature 4.4.5, and are as such one step further removed from
the reality of things in the world: they are more nearly pure products of the
mind, and less products of the interaction of mind and sense perception.
Secondly,
complex ideas conform only to the reality of their own archetypes, and in this
way abstract knowledge, such as mathematics, becomes possible. Simple ideas and
complex ideas, however, are bounded in their conformity to reality most of all by
the extent to which reason cannot go beyond them: Because in all our thoughts, reasonings, and discourses of this kind, we
intend things no further than as they are conformable to our ideas. 4.4.5.
In these ways, then, Locke, in addressing the objection that knowledge based on our
ideas may be unreal, delineates closely the limits of the overlap between our
ideas as ideas per se and as ideas of
the world.
Now, these two arguments may be applied to refuting the
demonstrative knowledge of God. At most, if God exists, then he exists only in the mind and
our knowledge of him is restricted to knowledge of this idea only, as the mind
is capable of knowing only its own ideas.
The idea of God is only that, an idea.
Is God
then, a simple idea? And if it is, from what sense perception did it enter the
mind? If God is a complex idea, it is only conformable to itself as a complex
idea, not to an external reality. To posit the existence of a God by means of
reason, is to intend things further than as they are conformable
to our ideas. By providing a refutation of the objection that knowledge
which does not address the real world is not real knowledge, Locke in effect
provides a refutation of the assertion of certain knowledge of the real
existence of God. Existence is not
required to make abstract knowledge real. 4.4.8. We can have all kinds of
ideas about God, and these ideas are real as
ideas, but the coexistence of our ideas of God with the reality of God is
not necessary and in fact goes beyond what is conformable to those ideas. The
absence of a necessary coexistence between the idea of God and the reality of
God is explicitly stated in the Essay:
For the having the idea of anything in
our mind, no more proves the existence of that thing than the picture of a man
evidences his being in the world, or the visions of a dream make thereby a true
history. 4.11.1
Third
trajectory: general proposition and particular knowledge
The
third and most general trajectory of refutation is the relationship between the
general and the particular. Locke's whole project as it were stems from the
notion that knowledge starts with observation of the particular and leads to
the formation of general concepts. It is for this reason that the more generally
certain a proposition is, the less connected it is to an external reality: General propositions that are certain concern
not existence. 4.9.1 The notion of a God is a general concept, as we have no
observable knowledge of a particular God in every instance, so every
proposition concerning the existence of a God must be a general proposition.
The more certain we are about the truth of this general proposition, the less
it conforms to reality; and the less certain we are of it, the more it conforms
to an observable reality- an absence, a non-necessity of God.
oooOOOooo
It's
worth emphasizing at this point that we are not trying to find arguments with
Locke's assertion that God exists; that we are not trying to find faults in
Locke's reasoning - far be it from us to do so-, but that we are sketching out
the arguments provided in and by the Essay
itself for refuting the assertion that we have certain knowledge that God
exists. In doing so, we hope to show the inconsistency in the work between faith
and reason, between assertion and reasoning.
What
can account for this lack of consistency? We can see two possibilities.
The
first possibility is that Locke is very well aware of what he is doing, and
that the inconsistency is deliberate
and a product of his circumstances. In the 1690s atheism was a tremendous heresy. Is it that
Locke, anxious to avoid possible charges of heresy in the uncertain political
climate of the Civil War, stressed his belief in God in order to make his new
empiricism more palatable, more credible,
to the authorities, while deliberately planting seeds within the text that can
be used to refute that belief? Locke spent much of his career arguing for the
reasonableness of Christianity, however, so we must rule that out.
The
second is that the Essay reflects a
mind caught between the certainties of the old Religion and the new Age of
Enlightenment, a mind that is blind to the inconsistencies in its own argument
and method, a mind incapable of letting go of the darling invention (4.10.7) (God) of an atavistic past, a mind
perhaps reluctant to fully admit the logical outcome of the processes of
reason. Where is the mind that has no
chimeras in it? the objector asks in Chapter 4.1. For Locke, God is the
chimera.
The mind, by proceeding upon false
principles, is often engaged in absurdities and difficulties, brought into
straits and contradictions, without knowing how to free itself, and in that
case it is in vain to implore the help of reason 4.17.12
It is one thing to show a man he is in
error, and another to put him in possession of the truth 4.7.11
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