Kognitivní psychologie a Lockův podíl na utváření novověké filosofie

There are four major views of the formation of modern philosophy: the crucial role has been, subsequently, ascribed to Bacon, to Descartes, to Locke, and to the reception of Hellenistic philosophy (culminating in the late 16th and early 17th century). Now historical periodization is normally neither true nor false, it can be just more or less fruitful and/or misleading. Thus, it is not our task to decide which of the four periodizations is correct; rather, we look at the relative strengths and weaknesses of each of them. Bacon came with a radical gesture of discontinuity with the previous philosophy, and with an interest in science and in the origin of our notions. Descartes followed Bacon in the interest in science, thought it is important to answer scepticism, and gave a new form to ontological dualism of body and mind. But he was not interested in the problem which can be seen as paradigmatic for early modern philosophy, i.e. in the process of obtaining ideas or cogitationes. It was Locke who provided early modern philosophy with this paradigmatic problem. His contribution can be seen as putting together Bacon’s demand to study the formation of our notions and Descartes ’ emphasis on the epistemic priority of the mind (slightly earlier than by Locke, a similar point is made by Arnauld and Nicole, but Locke was more influential). Attention to the reception of Hellenistic thought opens a fascinating possibility to look at the development of modern philosophy as at a repeat (admittedly, connected with some novelties) of the turning away from the epistemologically naive positions of Plato and Aristotle to a serious study of experience and epistemology, performed for the first time nearly 2000 years earlier.