Oxford Scholarship Online: Learning from Six Philosophers Volume 2

Learning from Six Philosophers Volume 2 Bennett, Jonathan retired, previously at the Universities of Cambridge and British Columbia, and at Syracuse University, New York Print publication date: 2001 (this edition) Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003 Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-825092-0
Chapter 23 Knowledge of Necessity doi:10.1093/0198250924.003.0003 Jonathan Bennett Abstract: Deals with Locke's attack on, and Leibniz's defence of, the belief in innately possessed knowledge. The debate is made more complex when Leibniz introduces the idea of innate dispositions to have knowledge. While Locke attempts to explain modal knowledge without help from innatism Leibniz attempts to explain it with that help. The debate over innately possessed ideas is hard to get into focus because ‘ideas’ is a blurry term. Keywords: disposition, innatism, knowledge, Leibniz, Locke, modal,