jwright82
Puritan Board Post-Graduate
Sorry, Locke is just confused. He never gives a definition of "idea" and operates under the assumption that the mind is a tabula rasa---an assumption that is completely unwarranted and rather discredited. This is one of the main points that Reid makes against empiricism: the idea that people are born without predispositions and that certain cognitive faculties have privilege to judge the others.
But his criticisms are not based on his empiricism, it is actually a very independent section of the work.
No---but reason is certainly capable to point this out. However, if you come to certain conclusions by "reason" (say, that inductive reasoning can't be trusted at all) then you have to start wondering where you went wrong in your reasoning, because you know that induction is necessary for life.
But all that means is that you need a TA to show why we can trust inductive reasoning despite its limitations. Appealing to majority rules never solves the problems but a TA can in theory.