John Locke (Lost)
John Locke was born to teenager Emily Locke on May 30, 1956. In his early years he showed extreme promise in his intelligence. After being placed in government care as a ward of the state he found himself in a variety of foster homes. He was visited in one such home by Richard Alpert (Nestor Carbonell), who described Locke as "extremely special". Locke had a number of foster siblings over the years: Jeannie, who died as a child when she fell off of a set of monkey bars; Melissa, who was prone to bullying John; and an unnamed brother with whom Locke played the game Mouse Trap.
John Locke
Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers such as David Hume, Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant. Locke was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness. He postulated that, at birth, the mind was a blank slate or "tabula rasa". Contrary to Cartesian philosophy based on pre-existing concepts, he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception. This is now known as empiricism. An example of Locke's belief in empiricism can be seen in his quote, "whatever I write, as soon as I discover it not to be true, my hand shall be the forwardest to throw it into the fire." This shows the ideology of science in his observations in that something must be capable of being tested repeatedly and that nothing is exempt from being disproven. Challenging the work of others, Locke is said to have established the method of introspection, or observing the emotions and behaviours of one's self.