LOCKE’S EPISTEMOLOGICAL SYSTEM

Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) is widely regarded as one of the most important philosophical texts of the early modern period inaugurating a century of “British Empiricism.” Yet, Locke is rarely considered a systematic thinker. Rather, most, if not all, scholars see Locke as addressing epistemological and moral issues piecemeal. In Locke’s Epistemological System, Professor Weinberg changes course and offers a comprehensive interpretation of Locke’s natural epistemology (how we have certain knowledge and justified probable beliefs about the natural world), his religious epistemology (how we have justified—or not—beliefs in revelation), and his view of intellectual and moral virtue (what we should believe and how we should act). By revealing a method of what she calls “rational regulation,” Professor Weinberg will elucidate a heretofore unrecognized and unarticulated comprehensive systematicity to Locke’s epistemology, its relation to his moral theory, and the role of education in the development of intellectual (epistemic) and moral virtue. 

As Professor Weinberg interprets it, “rational regulation” is a method consisting in two levels of justification in attaining knowledge and justified belief. First, there is an initial psychological experience or impact of what we are considering. Second, there is a reflective consideration of that first experience—which does, or does not, reveal reasons for doubt. The extent to which we have reasons for doubt calibrates Locke’s different degrees of certainty of knowledge as well as degrees of probable assent. All which helps to procedurally ensure that knowledge and justified belief—and not mere claims to such—guide our conclusions about the natural world, how to conduct our intellectual and moral lives, and what is reasonable to accept as a matter of religious faith. Taking into consideration textual evidence from his published and unpublished writings and philosophical concerns, the book reveals an unrecognized systematicity running through Locke’s corpus.