Locke, Van Gogh is A Starry Night, and Origin in Experience

Locke, in Book 2, takes it upon himself to show where we get all our ides of knowledge. According to Locke, the mind is a blank slate, an empty piece of white paper, void of any ideas whatsoever. He says that, since the mind enters this world as an empty slate, all our ides regarding the world emanate from experience. This all knowledge is a result of our experiences. All that occurs to us comes to us directly through experience. If it is not as direct, it results from a past experience, or is in some way the result of some experience. For example, Locke might say that our concept of asthetics or beauty is not imprinted in the mind of a child as soon as the child comes out of the mothers womb, but rather it is in itself the very product of our experiences. We experience things that society considers to be beautiful and thus attribute beauty to anything possessing such characteristics and call that object beautiful.

Lets take the example further, just to prove the point. Take the example of painting. One of the most notable paintings today is Vincent Van Gogh's "A Starry Night." Now, people might say that the painting is beautiful. To Locke, this does not mean that the concept of beauty existsrt within all mankind, or for that matter the same concept of beauty exists in all human beings. He would say something like that this is a product of our experience. We experience that our society has certain concepts of beauty with regards to art and we impose these ideas on all paintings and by them judge the paintings to be beautiful or not. This is a product of society, and since societies can have differing notions of what it means to be a beautiful painting, some societies might consider this painting to be ugly.

Although I agree with Locke that there are ideas that are constructions of our experiences, I do not believe that this is always the case. There are certain ideas that exist throughout societies that I do not think can be doubted. Take for example the concept of the beautiful painting. It might be true that societies have differing concepts of beauty, and that says something about how society effects us, the fact that all societies have some concept of beauty would, to me, prove that there are at least some basic concepts that are common to all humans.