right, and places it as he should, who in any case or matter whatsoever, believes or
disbelieves, according as reason directs him. (IV, xvii, 24)
Note in the first place that the doxastic merit (doxa = belief, in Greek) on which Locke
has his eye here is what I called entitlement. Like a drum roll, the theme of obligation is
struck over and over again in the passage. What Locke has already argued is that we are
under obligation to our Maker to govern our belief-forming faculties, to the end of
arriving at truth and avoiding mistake and error. What he now insists on is that this also
holds when it comes to faith, that is, to beliefs comprised within what the seventeenth-
and eighteenth-century writers called “revealed religion.” We're not exempt in religion
from the obligation to govern our assent right. In particular, we must have “reason for
believing,” says Locke; we must believe or disbelieve “as reason directs” us.
The passage reads as if Locke thinks we should, in general, so discipline ourselves that
we don't believe anything at all except for good reason: “He that believes,” says Locke,
“without having any reason for believing, may be in love with his own fancies; but [does
not seek] truth as he ought.” But earlier chapters from book 4 of the Essay make clear
that that was not his view.
Some beliefs are evoked in us not by reasoning but by our “perception” of the
corresponding facts—“perception” being Locke's metaphor for the activity in question. I
don't believe the proposition that 1 + 1 = 2 on the basis of some reason for it; what could
such a reason possibly be? My belief is evoked in me by my rational intuition, as I'll call
it, of the fact that 1 + 1 = 2. So, too, I don't believe that I'm dizzy (when I am) on the
basis of some reason for it; again, what could such a reason possibly be? My belief is
evoked in me by my experience, more specifically, by my introspective experience, of the
fact that I am dizzy. Reason and introspective experience are, for Locke, modes of direct
cognitive access to certain of the facts of reality; they are what Locke calls, in the passage
I quoted, “discerning faculties.” At the same time, they are faculties of belief formation:
one's rational intuition or introspective experience of some fact typically evokes in one a
belief whose propositional content corresponds to those facts. They have these two sides
to themselves: modes of direct cognitive access and faculties of belief formation.
Whether it was Locke's view that perception—using “perception” in the ordinary sense of
the word now, not in Locke's metaphorical sense—is also a distinct mode of experiential
cognitive access to certain facts, specifically, to facts of ex
end p.251
ternal reality, and a faculty of corresponding belief formation, is not entirely clear. I think
the textual evidence tilts toward the conclusion that it is not, but that perception, on his
view, consists in introspective awareness of certain facts of inner experience plus
inferences from beliefs about those facts—these beliefs evoked in one by the
awareness—to facts about external reality. For our purposes here, we can leave this
question open, whether sensory perception is a distinct mode of experiential access to
certain facts of reality, specifically, facts of external reality, and simply say that it was
Locke's view that reason and experience both give us direct cognitive access to certain of
the facts of reality and, when working properly, evoke in us beliefs whose propositional
content corresponds to those facts: I rationally intuit that 1 + 1 = 2, and that evokes in me
the corresponding belief that 1 + 1 = 2; I introspectively experience that I am feeling