John Locke
philosopher · 1 mention across 1 reading
In this course
Locke's epistemology and theory of the mind as a blank slate shaped by sensory experience becomes relevant to the course through debates about knowledge production and how systems (human or artificial) acquire and organize information. In the readings, Locke appears primarily as a historical reference point in economic and philosophical discourse—Barbon's 1696 response to his monetary writings suggests early modern anxieties about value, representation, and control that parallel contemporary questions about how AI systems encode and interpret data. His influence on liberal conceptions of individual consent and autonomy also provides a philosophical backdrop against which the course can examine algorithmic governance and the fiction of user choice in computational systems.
Background
John Locke was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of the Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism". His important works include A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), Two Treatises of Government (1689/90), both published anonymously, and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689/90). His writing on toleration contends that religion is a matter for the individual and that the churches are voluntary associations, ruling out religious coercion and uniformity; these lead to the idea of separation of church and state. His Two Treatises on Government argues for government based on the consent of the governed and the right to revolt against tyrannous government which has lost consent. The Two Treatises are believed to have influenced the language that Thomas Jefferson chose in his drafting the July 1776 Declaration of Independence during the War of American Independence.
Wikipedia →Mentioned in 1 reading
Appears alongside
People mentioned in the same passages — sorted by co-occurrence weight.