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Teachers' Resource Web John Locke' Psychology in Relation to the Romantics Al Drake, UCI, English 28A, 1994 The "blank slate" metaphor implies that nobody is born with innate ideas; all our ideas are derived from sensory experience. More complex thoughts consist in sophisticated combinations and associations of perceptions. These combinations Locke describes by means of his faculty psychology--the Imagination and Reason and other faculties process sensory perceptions into ideas. Blake reviled this mechanical notion. What is an Idea? Not what Plato claims it is, not something external to us. An Idea is a mental object, one that (some students of Locke say) represents things in the world outside us. Words come under considerable suspicion in Locke. Words must be vigilantly kept in line with Ideas, lest they lead us into confusion. Words are not really connected to the outside world, and arguing over them will get us nowhere. To the things themselves, say the empiricists--or at least, to our ideas of things. This faculty psychology and Lockean epistemology is the basis of Addison's insistence upon distinguishing between True, False, and Mixed Wit. True wit has to do with delightful and clear treatment of Ideas; False Wit is mere word play that is bound to confuse readers and lead them astray from truth.
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