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| 9438 | Maybe analysis seeks the 'nominal essence', and metaphysics seeks the 'real essence' |
| Full Idea: Locke's distinction would make the 'nominal essence' the target for conceptual analysis and the 'real essence' the target for substantive metaphysics. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Stephen Mumford - Laws in Nature 08.2 |
| 7653 | I am just an under-labourer, clearing the ground in preparation for knowledge |
| Full Idea: 'Tis ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], Epistle) | |||
| A reaction: A famous statement of the new humility of empirical philosophy, which defers to science as the great advancer of knowledge. Personally I view scientists as under-labourers, who discover the physical facts which are needed for wisdom. |
| 12526 | Opposition to reason is mad |
| Full Idea: Opposition to reason deserves the name of madness. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.33.04) | |||
| A reaction: This may just be a tautology, based on the meaning of the word 'madness', but it sounds more like a clarion call for the Englightenment. |
| 12538 | Genus is a partial conception of species, and species a partial idea of individuals |
| Full Idea: In this whole business of genera and species, the genus, or more comprehensive, but a partial conception of what is in the species, and the species but a partial idea of what is to be found in each individual. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.32) | |||
| A reaction: This is my feeling on the subject, that any definition that stops short of the individual, whence all categorisation flows, is inadequate. |
| 16797 | Maybe Locke described the real essence of a person |
| Full Idea: Locke may have gone a long way towards describing the real essence of a person. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.09) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 30.5 | |||
| A reaction: Locke resisted the idea that we could know real essences, but this idea makes the point that if you give a good definition of something you can hardly fail to be invoking its essence. |
| 12573 | Ad Hominem: press a man with the consequences of his own principle |
| Full Idea: The Argumentum ad Hominem is to press a man with consequences drawn from his own principles or concessions. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.17.21) | |||
| A reaction: This is a rather more plausible account of it than the alternative I have met, that it is just to attack to speaker instead of what they say. This version is at least an attempt to derive a contradiction, rather than mere abuse. |
| 12491 | Asking whether man's will is free is liking asking if sleep is fast or virtue is square |
| Full Idea: To ask whether man's will be free is as improper as to ask whether sleep be swift, or virtue square. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.21.14) | |||
| A reaction: Beautiful illustrations of category mistakes, long before the actual phrase was coined. |
| 12549 | Nothing is so beautiful to the eye as truth is to the mind |
| Full Idea: Nothing is so beautiful to the eye as truth is to the mind. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.20) | |||
| A reaction: This is historically interesting, if we ask whether anyone in the centuries preceding Locke would ever have written such a remark. A deep historical question is why the value of pure truth went up so sharply in the early Enlightenment. |
| 12558 | Truth only belongs to mental or verbal propositions |
| Full Idea: Truth only belongs to propositions: whereof there are two sorts, viz. mental and verbal | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.05.02) | |||
| A reaction: I think it is important to retain 'mental' propositions, so that animals are allowed to think correctly or wrongly about things. I don't think Locke gives much thought to the ontological status of propositions. |
| 12522 | It is propositions which are true or false, though it is sometimes said of ideas |
| Full Idea: Truth and falsehood belong, in propriety of speech, only to propositions; yet ideas are oftentimes termed 'true' or 'false ...though I think there is still some secret or tacit proposition. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.32.01) | |||
| A reaction: It is not quite clear, I think, what Locke means by 'proposition'. If it means sentences, then there are lots of problem cases like 'I am ill' (who is speaking?). I demand a theory of truth that allows animals to think truths. See Idea 12523. |
| 12523 | If they refer to real substances, 'man' is a true idea and 'centaur' a false one |
| Full Idea: The two ideas, of a man and a centaur, supposed to be the ideas of real substances, are the one true and the other false. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.32.05) | |||
| A reaction: Locke says (Idea 12522) that there is probably a proposition hidden behind this. We might say that 'man' has a reference and 'centaur' does not (strictly). Is successful reference a species of truth? 'Pick out the llama' - child points - 'that's right!' |
| 8084 | Syllogisms are verbal fencing, not discovery |
| Full Idea: Syllogisms are useless for discovery, and serve only for verbal fencing. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]), quoted by Keith Devlin - Goodbye Descartes Ch.3 | |||
| A reaction: This illustrates the low status of logic, and the new high status of experimental science, in Locke's time. Locke's seems to miss the point that you can infer new discoveries from old ones. |
| 12572 | Many people can reason well, yet can't make a syllogism |
| Full Idea: There are many men that reason exceeding clear and rightly, who know not how to make a syllogism | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.17.04) | |||
| A reaction: On the one hand this is just Locke's scepticism about the whole business of Aristotelian logic, but on the other hand it may be a perspicuous observation that logical thought extends far beyond what was catalogued by Aristotle. |
| 10055 | Mathematical proofs work, irrespective of whether the objects exist |
| Full Idea: All the demonstrations of mathematicians are the same, whether there be any square or circle existing in the world or no. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.04.08) | |||
| A reaction: Musgrave gives this as an early indication of the if-thenist view of mathematics. |
| 12488 | The idea of 'one' is the simplest, most obvious and most widespread idea |
| Full Idea: Among all the ideas we have, as there is none suggested to the mind by more ways, so there is none more simple than that of unity, or one; ..every idea in our understanding, every thought of our minds brings this idea along with it. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.16.01) | |||
| A reaction: What does Locke mean by 'suggested' to the mind? I take it that this phenomenon of psychology (or of reality, if you like) is the foundation of mathematics, making one clearly prior to zero. |
| 12489 | If there were real infinities, you could add two together, which is ridiculous |
| Full Idea: If a man had a positive idea of infinite, either duration or space, he could add two infinities together; nay, make one Infinite infinity bigger than another, absurdities too gross to be confuted. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.17.20) | |||
| A reaction: A beautifully heartfelt objection to everything Cantor stood for, two hundred years before Cantor got round to it. |
| 12556 | Mathematics is just about ideas, so whether circles exist is irrelevant |
| Full Idea: All the discourses of mathematicians concerning conic sections etc. concern not the existence of any of those figures, but their demonstrations, which depend on their ideas, are the same, whether there be any square or circle existing in the world or no. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.04.08) | |||
| A reaction: If the full-blown platonic circle really existed, we would have the epistemic problem not only of getting in causal contact with it, but also of knowing whether our idea of it was the correct idea. We can't know that, so we just work with our idea. |
| 7782 | Every simple idea we ever have brings the idea of unity along with it |
| Full Idea: Amongst all the ideas we have… there is none more simple, than that of unity, or one… every idea in our understanding, every thought in our minds, brings this idea along with it. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.16.01) | |||
| A reaction: If every idea we think of necessarily brings another idea along with it, that makes you suspect that the accompanying idea is innate. If I derive the concept of the sun from experience, do I also derive the idea that my concept is a unity? |
| 8910 | General and universal are not real entities, but useful inventions of the mind, concerning words or ideas |
| Full Idea: It is plain that general and universal belong not to the real existence of things; but are the inventions and creatures of the understanding, made by it for its own use, and concern only signs, whether words or ideas. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.03.11) | |||
| A reaction: Frege and Geach viciously attacked this view, and it seems to be discredited, but I think it is time for a revival, given that the alternative view seems to lead to platonism. I take the first step in mental abstractionism to be pre-verbal. |
| 12554 | Existences can only be known by experience |
| Full Idea: The existence of things is to be known only from experience. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.31) | |||
| A reaction: This is the clearest statement you could wish for of the standard empiricist view of such things. Locke might take a broad view of experience, since he unshakably infers the existence of God from merely thinking about being. |
| 12502 | Comparisons boil down to simple elements of sensation or reflection |
| Full Idea: All comparisons terminate in, and are concerned about those simple ideas, either of sensation or reflection; which I think to be the whole material of all our knowledge. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.25.09) | |||
| A reaction: This seems to be an ancestor of logical atomism. Hume is inclined to make his 'atoms' strictly empirical (as 'impressions'), but Locke also allows simples of reflection, which may be a priori conceptual atoms. |
| 12568 | God assures me of the existence of external things |
| Full Idea: God has given me assurance enough of the existence of things without me. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.11.03) | |||
| A reaction: Is Locke committing a similar crime to Descartes? Descartes was circular about what is 'clear and distinct'. Locke uses inner existence to prove God, who is then rich enough at act as guarantor for what is external. Not circular. Over-reaching. |
| 12516 | Obscure simple ideas result from poor senses, brief impressions, or poor memory |
| Full Idea: The cause of obscurity in simple ideas seems to be either dull organs, or very slight and transient impressions made by the objects, or else a weakness in memory, not able to retain them as received. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.29.03) | |||
| A reaction: This seems to give some support to the epistemological view of vagueness, with the implication that if our senses and memory were perfect, then our ideas would have perfect clarity. |
| 12517 | Ideas are uncertain when they are unnamed, because too close to other ideas |
| Full Idea: A source of confusion is when any complex idea is made up of too small a number of simple ideas, and such only as are common to other things, whereby the differences that make it deserve a different name are left out. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.29.07) | |||
| A reaction: In other words, a word covers a variety of entities, and so it cannot possibly pinpoint any of them exactly. Cats all differ, but so do small and large circles. |
| 13435 | We can't categorise things by their real essences, because these are unknown |
| Full Idea: Nor indeed can we rank and sort things, and consequently (which is the end of sorting) denominate them by their real essences, because we know them not. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.09) | |||
| A reaction: Hence he says we categorise by the nominal essence, which is the ideas we have formed from our experiences of things. If we now have experts who have mastered some real essences, Locke is wrong, if we submit to the expert categories. |
| 12535 | If we discovered real essences, we would still categorise things by the external appearance |
| Full Idea: Supposing that the real essences were discoverable, ..yet we could not reasonably think that the ranking of things under general names was regulated by those internal real constitutions, or any thing else but their obvious appearance. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.25) | |||
| A reaction: This makes Putnam's water and twater the same! I take it there is no rule here. The authority of science has gradually substitute H2O as the criterion for water, so real essence rules, but it doesn't have to. |
| 13436 | There are no gaps in the continuum of nature, and everything has something closely resembling it |
| Full Idea: In the visible corporeal world we see no chasms or gaps. All quite down from us the descent is by easy steps and a continued series of things, that in each remove differ very little from the other. There are fish that have wings, and birds inhabit water. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.12) | |||
| A reaction: This is a direct contradiction of Plato's claim that nature has joints (Idea 7953). Locke's claim doesn't sound very plausible for many cases, and the examples he gives are far from conclusive. |
| 12490 | Power is active or passive, and has a relation to actions |
| Full Idea: Power is twofold, as able to make, or able to receive any change. The one we may call 'active', and the other 'passive' power. ..And power includes in it some kind of relation (a relation to action or change). | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.21.02) | |||
| A reaction: How deep does the distinction between active and passive power go? Are they unified at some bottom level of description? |
| 12477 | We get the idea of power from our own actions, and the interaction of external bodies |
| Full Idea: Observing in ourselves that we can at pleasure move several parts of our bodies, which were at rest; the effects also that natural bodies are able to produce in one another, occurring every moment to our senses, we both these ways get the idea of power. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.07.08) | |||
| A reaction: This I take to be one of the most important concepts in our understanding of the world, a concept which died out in the eighteenth century, and has now reappeared in scientific essentialism. |
| 12521 | We can only know a thing's powers when we have combined it with many things |
| Full Idea: We can never be sure that we know all the powers that are in any one body, till we have tried what changes it is fitted to give to or receive from other substances, in their several ways of application. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.31.08) | |||
| A reaction: This must include the possibility that some combinations are never tried, in nature or by us, and so the powers remain permananently hidden. Maybe the combination of copper and element 147 produces chaffinches. |
| 15974 | The essence of whiteness in a man is nothing but the power to produce the idea of whiteness |
| Full Idea: In substances the most frequent [ideas] are of powers; v.g. 'a man is white' signifies that the thing that has the essence of a man has also in it the essence of whiteness, which is nothing but the power to produce the idea of whiteness in one with eyes. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.08.01) | |||
| A reaction: Alexander cites this to support his claim that the powers are the same as the textures, but the quotation seems neutral about what actually constitutes the powers, and Idea 15971, seems to separate powers from textures. |
| 15976 | What is the texture - the real essence - which makes substances behave in distinct ways? |
| Full Idea: What is that texture of parts, that real essence, that makes lead, and antinomy fusible; wood and stone not? | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.09) | |||
| A reaction: This quotation gives better support to Alexander's claim in Idea 15973. Locke actually says plainly that the texture (i.e. powerful combination of fine-grained corpuscles) is the essence of these substances (with, presumably, intrinsic powers). |
| 15983 | Locke explains powers, but effectively eliminates them with his talk of internal structure |
| Full Idea: I suggest that Locke has explained the power, …but there is no longer any need to talk of powers since we can go straight from the internal structure to the phenomenon. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Peter Alexander - Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles 7 | |||
| A reaction: This is rather the view of fans of categorical properties (as opposed to dispositions). If the corpuscles don't involve forces, this reading makes sense. It is, of course, wrong. |
| 6487 | Locke, Berkeley and Hume did no serious thinking about universals |
| Full Idea: None of Locke, Berkeley or Hume shows any sign of serious thinking about the relation of their concepts of quality, idea or impression to the problem of universals; it is as if they thought this issue had disappeared. | |||
| From: comment on John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Howard Robinson - Perception 1.4 | |||
| A reaction: Maybe they were right. Personally I think there is a real problem of universals, but the history of philosophy has lots of cases of deep worries about problems that don't seem to bother anyone else. |
| 7717 | All things that exist are particulars |
| Full Idea: All things that exist are particulars. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.03.01) | |||
| A reaction: This slogan is the essence of nominalism, the denial that universals exist as well as particulars. |
| 7718 | Universals do not exist, but are useful inventions of the mind, involving words or ideas |
| Full Idea: General and universal belong, not to the real existence of things, but are the inventions and creatures of the understanding, made by it for its own use, and concern only signs, whether words, or ideas. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], III.3.11) | |||
| A reaction: This places Locke as a thoroughgoing nominalist. However, while the most basic question of all is said to be 'why does anything exist?', another pretty good one is 'Why do things resemble one another?'. Maybe the universal had to come first? |
| 12499 | Bodies distinctively have cohesion of parts, and power to communicate motion |
| Full Idea: The primary ideas we have peculiar to body are the cohesion of solid, and consequently separable parts, and a power of communicating motion by impulse. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.23.17) | |||
| A reaction: Defining bodies by motion seems unusual. I would be more inclined to mention inertia and solidity before impulse to move things. Depends on your physics I suppose, and Locke was writing only a year or two after Newton's book. |
| 1211 | Viewing an object at an instant, we perceive identity when we see it must be that thing and not another |
| Full Idea: When we see anything to be in any place in any instant of time, we are sure that it is that very thing and not another, ..and in this consists identity, when the ideas it is attributed to vary not at all. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.01) | |||
| A reaction: It seems to me that Locke starts by getting it right, that we instantly perceive identities, but then confuses it with some intellectual process of comparison, and ends up thinking that idea of things is identity of ideas, which it isn't. |
| 12508 | Living things retain identity through change, by a principle of organisation |
| Full Idea: The identity of living creatures depends not on a mass of the same particles. An oak growing from a plant to a great tree, and the lopped, is still the same oak. ..the oak is the organisation of its parts to receive and distribute nourishment. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.03) | |||
| A reaction: Compare Idea 12507. The problem case is then inanimate matter which has a structure, such as a statue or a crystal. Living things seem to be individuated by function, so does that apply to statues? Suppose you hollow out a solid statue? |
| 12506 | A thing is individuated just by existing at a time and place |
| Full Idea: The principium individuationis, 'tis plain, is existence itself, which determines a being of any sort to a particular time and place incommunicable to two beings of the same kind. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.03) | |||
| A reaction: I wish I could get completely clear about what a 'principle of individuation' is supposed to do. E.J. Lowe is always banging on about them. I would have thought that being an individual had to precede any 'principle' underlying it. |
| 12563 | Obviously two bodies cannot be in the same place |
| Full Idea: I think it is a self-evident proposition that two bodies cannot be in the same place. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.07.05) | |||
| A reaction: If you accept this, and you want to define what a physical 'body' is, then clearly this condition must be implicitly or explicitly included. |
| 12529 | I speak of a 'sortal' name, from the word 'sort' |
| Full Idea: I call a name 'sortal' from 'sort', as I do 'general' from 'genus'. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.03.15) |
| 8546 | Powers are part of our idea of substances |
| Full Idea: Powers make a great part of our complex ideas of substances. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.23.08) | |||
| A reaction: This is quoted by Shoemaker, and is very important in modern thinking about properties and causation. I think it is a crucial idea, which got relegated into obscurity by Hume's unnecessarily ruthless empiricism. |
| 1196 | We can conceive of three sorts of substance: God, finite intelligence, and bodies |
| Full Idea: We have the ideas but of three sorts of substance; 1. God. 2. Finite intelligence. 3. Bodies. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.02) | |||
| A reaction: Given Locke's scepticism about our ability to know of substances, this seems a bold claim, and can only really be a report of contemporary culture and language. |
| 12536 | We sort and name substances by nominal and not by real essence |
| Full Idea: We sort and name substances by their nominal and not by their real essences. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.26) |
| 7945 | We think of substance as experienced qualities plus a presumed substratum of support |
| Full Idea: Everyone upon inquiry into his thoughts, will find that he has no other idea of any substance, but what he has barely of those sensible qualities, with a supposition of such a substratum as give support to those qualities, which he observes exist united. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.23.06) | |||
| A reaction: This is the orginal of the 'substratum' view of substances. The whole problem is captured here, because this is an empiricist trying not to extend his ontology beyond experience, but trying to explain unity, identity and continuity. |
| 12485 | We don't know what substance is, and only vaguely know what it does |
| Full Idea: Of substance, we have no idea of what it is, but only a confused obscure one of what it does. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.13.19) | |||
| A reaction: Locke seems to identityf 'substance' with 'real essence', about which he makes similar remarks. He was deeply pessimistic about our ability to unravel how the physical world works. Note that he isn't denying the existence of substance. |
| 16796 | Locke may accept coinciding material substances, such as body, man and person |
| Full Idea: The most popular reading of Locke is that he endorses multiple, coinciding, material substances. In a human being, for example, there would be a body, a man and a person. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 30.4 | |||
| A reaction: Since he says that substances can only coincide if they are of different types then this may be a misreading, as Pasnau implies. |
| 12507 | A mass consists of its atoms, so the addition or removal of one changes its identity |
| Full Idea: Whilst they exist united together, the mass consisting of the same atoms must be the same mass, ...but if one of those atoms be taken away, or one new one added, it is no longer the same mass, or the same body. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.03) | |||
| A reaction: This is clearly a 'strict and philosophical' usage, rather than a 'loose and popular' one - indeed, so strict as to be ridiculous. Knowing what we do now of quantum activity (emission of photons etc), we would abandon 'identity' totally. |
| 12559 | Complex ideas are collections of qualities we attach to an unknown substratum |
| Full Idea: The complex ideas that our names of the species of substances properly stand for are collections of qualities, as have been observed to co-exist in an unknown substratum which we call 'substance'. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.06.07) | |||
| A reaction: Locke refers to a substratum, but this is not actually a 'bare' substratum, as he believes in real essences (see other quotations), but believes we have absolutely no chance of knowing them. |
| 12498 | Particular substances are coexisting ideas that seem to flow from a hidden essence |
| Full Idea: We come to the ideas of particular sorts of substances, by collecting combinations of simple ideas that exist together, and are therefore supposed to flow from the particular internal constitution, or unknown essence of that substance. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.23.03) | |||
| A reaction: This is Locke's concept of essence, as the source which gives rise to the other properties of a thing. Locke waxes sarcastic about this 'I know not what' in things, but he never actually denies it. He just thinks it is beyond our grasp. |
| 12520 | The best I can make of real essence is figure, size and connection of solid parts |
| Full Idea: When I enquire into the real essence, from which all the properties flow, I cannot discover it: the farthest I can go, is only to presume that it being nothing but body, its essence must be the figure, size and connection of its solid parts. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.31.06) | |||
| A reaction: I say we have now discovered the essence of gold (for example), and that 'figure, size and connection' of parts is quite a good account of what we have discovered, namely the 79 protons, the neutrons, and the electron shell, with forces. |
| 13771 | Real essence is the constitution of the unknown parts of a body which produce its qualities |
| Full Idea: The real essence is the constitution of the insensible parts of that body, on which those qualities, and all the other properties of gold depend. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.02) | |||
| A reaction: This is an unequivocal commitment to the possibility of a real traditional Aristotelian essence. All of Locke's reservations, and even his scorn, are reserved for the apparently insurmountable epistemological problems. Locke needed a time machine. |
| 16038 | Locke may distinguish real essence from internal constitution, claiming the latter is knowable |
| Full Idea: It may be that for Locke 'real essences' and 'internal constitution' cannot be synonymous because, according to Locke, real essences are unknowable, but internal constitutions are knowable. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.23.12) by Jan-Erik Jones - Real Essence §4.4 | |||
| A reaction: [He cites Susanna Goodin 1998; evidence for the first half is 4.6.5 and 12, and for the second is 2.23.12] One suggestion [citing 4.6.11] is that essence includes the powers, but constitution is the material components. |
| 12810 | We can conceive an individual without assigning it to a kind |
| Full Idea: Locke assumes that one could have the concept of an individual without assigning it to any kind. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz and Locke on Essences p.205 | |||
| A reaction: I'm not sure of the evidence for this, and Jolley says that Leibniz disagrees (in the Essaies). I cling to it because I take it to be correct. Identifying a kind seems to me to be a good way for us to get at an individual essence, but that is all. |
| 16786 | You can't distinguish individuals without the species as a standard |
| Full Idea: Talk of specific differences without reference to general ideas is unintelligible. What is sufficient to make an essential difference between two particular beings without a standard of the species? Particulars alone will have all qualities essentially. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.05) | |||
| A reaction: [compressed] The last idea is now called 'superessentialism'. I don't actually understand this. Can you not distinguish between two cats before you have classified them as 'cats', and invoked generalities about cats? Just list their features. |
| 15992 | Many individuals grouped under one name vary more than some things that have different names |
| Full Idea: Anyone who observes their different qualities can hardly doubt that many of the individuals, called by the same name, are, in their internal constitution, as different from one another as several of those which are ranked under different specific names. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.10.20) | |||
| A reaction: I take this to agree with Aristotle, and disagree with the medieval scholastic view that essences pertain to species. Locke and I think that the so-called essences of natural kinds and sortal classes are just loose inductive generalisations. |
| 12530 | The less rational view of essences is that they are moulds for kinds of natural thing |
| Full Idea: There are two opinions of essence: one suppose a certain number of those essences according to which natural things are made, and wherein they do exactly every one of them partake, and so become this or that species. The other more rational opinion.... | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.03.17) | |||
| A reaction: The more rational view is essence as the inner constitution which gives rise to the other properties. The view described here views essences (he says) as 'moulds', and has problems with unusual individual animals that are misfits. |
| 12532 | Even real essence depends on a sort, since it is sorts which have the properties |
| Full Idea: Even real essence relates to a sort, and supposes a species: for being that real constitution on which the properties depend, it necessarily supposes a sort of things, properties belonging only to species and not to individuals. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.06) | |||
| A reaction: This seems a striking reversal of what Locke said about real and sortal essence in Idea 12530. I don't think I understand why 'properties belong only to species'. Surely Locke's individual 'monsters' have distinctive properties? But see Idea 12533. |
| 12539 | If every sort has its real essence, one horse, being many sorts, will have many essences |
| Full Idea: If anyone thinks that a man, a horse, an animal, a plant, are distinguished by real essences made by nature, he must think nature to be very liberal, making one for body, another for an animal, and another for a horse, all bestowed upon Bucephalus. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.32) | |||
| A reaction: This is a powerful argument in favour of individual essences, and strongly against kind essences. Locke at his best, I would say. |
| 11155 | Essence is the very being of any thing, whereby it is what it is |
| Full Idea: Essence may be taken for the very being of any thing, whereby it is, what it is. And thus the real internal, but generally in substances, unknown constitution of things, whereon their discoverable qualities depend, may be called their essence. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.03.15) | |||
| A reaction: Fine cites this as following the Aristotelian definitional account of essence, rather than the account in terms of necessities. Locke goes on to distinguish 'real' from 'nominal' essence. |
| 12510 | Not all identity is unity of substance |
| Full Idea: Unity of substance does not comprehend all sorts of identity, and will not determine it in every case. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.07) | |||
| A reaction: He has been discussing living things, and persons. If identity is seen functionally, then presumably substance can change while identity is retained. But we must not slide into equating substance [ousia?] with matter [hule?]. |
| 12560 | We can only slightly know necessary co-existence of qualities, if they are primary |
| Full Idea: What other qualities necessarily co-exist with a substance we cannot know, unless we can discover their natural dependence; which in their primary qualities we can go but a very little way in, and in secondary qualities we know no connexion at all. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.06.07) | |||
| A reaction: His concept of essence is precisely that which gives rise to the collection of a thing's properties, so his doubts here are consistent. I take the modern position to be an optimist reading of Locke, that actually we can identify the substances. |
| 16787 | Explanatory essence won't do, because it won't distinguish the accidental from the essential |
| Full Idea: There is no non-arbitrary way to pick out certain features as essential and others as purely accidental. …This argument of Locke's blocks explanatory essence. …There is a confusion of nominal with real essence. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 27.7 | |||
| A reaction: Pasnau waxes enthusiastic about this demolition of explanatory essence, and says we must fall back on kinds. It is true that you would need to compare a few tigers to get at the essence of an individual tiger. It's induction, but there are exceptions. |
| 16028 | Lockean real essence makes a thing what it is, and produces its observable qualities |
| Full Idea: For Locke, a real essence is what makes something what it is, and in the case of physical substances, it is the underlying physical cause of the object's observable qualities. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Jan-Erik Jones - Real Essence Intro | |||
| A reaction: A helpful summary from a Locke expert. Is 'what it is' its type, or its individuality? Is the 'underlying cause' sufficiently coherent, or is it just a tangle of unseen activities? |
| 12305 | Locke's essences determine the other properties, so the two will change together |
| Full Idea: For Locke the real essence of a thing is a set of properties which determine all the other properties of that thing [3.3.15], so essential properties are not retained during any change, and there is no real knowledge of the essence of things. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.03) by Irving M. Copi - Essence and Accident p.712 | |||
| A reaction: Although I like the Aristotelian view, this account of Locke's must be taken seriously. Compare Idea 12304. If Aristotelian essence founds scientific knowledge, then a thing with varying behaviour has a varying essence. |
| 15985 | It is impossible for two things with the same real essence to differ in properties |
| Full Idea: It is as impossible that two things, partaking exactly of the same real essence, should have different properties, as that two figures partaking in the same real essence of a circle, should have different properties. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.03.17) | |||
| A reaction: Two circles could be of relatively different size, so we deduce from that that size is not essential. Hence essence of gold seems to be defined as those respects in which two samples of gold never vary. But that might be superficial… |
| 12534 | We cannot know what properties are necessary to gold, unless we first know its real essence |
| Full Idea: We can never know what are the precise number of properties depending on the real essence of gold, any one of which failing, the real essence of gold, and consequently gold, would not be there, unless we knew the real essence of gold itself. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.19) | |||
| A reaction: Excellent. This is a splendid reason why we should not make the mistake of thinking that essence consists of necessary properties. |
| 13434 | In our ideas, the idea of essence is inseparable from the concept of a species |
| Full Idea: Let any one examine his own thoughts, and he will find, that as soon as he supposes or speaks of essential, the consideration of some species, or the complex idea, signified by some general name, comes into his mind. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.04) | |||
| A reaction: This wouldn't stop an individual having a distinct essence, if essences are distinctive combinations of these species qualities. Thus if my dog is particularly ferocious, it combines the species of dog and the species of ferocious in a unique way. |
| 16035 | If we based species on real essences, the individuals would be as indistinguishable as two circles |
| Full Idea: If things were distinguished into species according to real essences, it would be impossible to find different properties in two individual substances of the same species, as it is to find different properties in two circles or two equilateral triangles. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.08) | |||
| A reaction: Of course circles or triangles can differ in size. Locke was greatly impressed by individual variation in creatures ('monsters'). My cat isn't just any old cat. Species essentialism must at least acknowledge more than mere essences. |
| 16036 | Internal constitution doesn't decide a species; should a watch contain four wheels or five? |
| Full Idea: What is sufficient in the inward contrivance, to make a new species? There are some watches, that are made with four wheels, others with five. Is this a specific different to the workman…in the internal constitution of watches? | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.39) | |||
| A reaction: It so happens that most species turn out to be internally very similar, but Locke is right that it might not be the case. |
| 12540 | Artificial things like watches and pistols have distinct kinds |
| Full Idea: Artificial things are of distinct species, as well as natural. ..For why should we not think a watch and a pistol as distinct species one from another, as a horse and a dog? | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.41) | |||
| A reaction: This is the beginning of a topic which has caused a lot of modern debate in trying to assess essentialist claims. |
| 16031 | Real essence explains observable qualities, but not what kind of thing it is |
| Full Idea: Locke defines real essence as the cause of the observable qualities, and then argues that this internal constitution is not what answers the 'what is it?' question, because species is only determined by outward appearance, i.e. by nominal essence. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Jan-Erik Jones - Real Essence §2 | |||
| A reaction: Helpful. This explains why sortal essentialism and essentialism based on kinds is misguided. |
| 15646 | If essence is 'nominal', artificial gold (with its surface features) would qualify as 'gold' |
| Full Idea: For Locke, if we found out how to make some stuff which has the same nominal definition as gold, then we have found out how to make a new kind of gold. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Antony Eagle - Locke on Essences and Kinds V | |||
| A reaction: Unfair to Locke. He could see no way to get below the surface; we can do that. Obviously we will treat as gold any substance which we are utterly unable to distinguish from gold. Maybe we are doing that right now. |
| 12306 | 'Nominal essence' is everything contained in the idea of a particular sort of thing |
| Full Idea: Locke was more interested in 'nominal essences'. ...The abstract idea of various particular substances that resemble each other ..determines a sort or a species, the 'nominal essence', for "everything contained in that idea is essential to that sort". | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Irving M. Copi - Essence and Accident p.712 | |||
| A reaction: [He refers us to Locke 'Essay' 3.3, and others] This seems to be the sortals espoused by Wiggins, so is he more of a Lockean than an Aristotelian? He's a slippery fish. Knowing the sort is said by Locke to be the key to knowledge. |
| 15988 | The observable qualities are never the real essence, since they depend on real essence |
| Full Idea: Since the powers or qualities that are observable by us are not the real essence of that substance, but depend on it and flow from it, any collection whatsoever of these qualities cannot be the real essence of that thing. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.31.13) | |||
| A reaction: Of triangles he says that we can observe the real essence. Oderberg defends the view that real essences are largely observable, but I take them to largely consist of hidden features. |
| 12537 | To be a nominal essence, a complex idea must exhibit unity |
| Full Idea: To make any nominal essence, it is necessary that the ideas whereof it consists have such an union as to make but one idea, how compounded soever. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.28) | |||
| A reaction: This distinguishes nominal essences from his other 'mixed modes', which are just collocations of ideas, but not necessarily exhibiting unity. |
| 15644 | In nominal essence, Locke confuses the set of properties with the abstracted idea of them |
| Full Idea: Locke sometimes confuses the nominal essence (a set of properties) with the abstract idea that is the meaning of the general term. | |||
| From: comment on John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.03.13) by Antony Eagle - Locke on Essences and Kinds IV | |||
| A reaction: I'm a bit surprised by this view. I took Locke to be referring entirely to the abstracted ideas that give the meaning of the term. I don't take him to be referring to any set of real properties (e.g. 'secondary' ones) intrinsic to the object. |
| 16029 | Locke's real and nominal essence refers back to Aristotle's real and nominal definitions |
| Full Idea: Locke's distinction between real and nominal essences appears to be in reference to the Aristotelian distinction between real and nominal definitions. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.02) by Jan-Erik Jones - Real Essence §2 | |||
| A reaction: A revealing observation. Locke's philosophy is thoroughly Aristotelian in character, but with the addition of an empirical scepticism that blocks the more speculative (and explanatory) aspects of Aristotle. |
| 12531 | Nominal Essence is the abstract idea to which a name is attached |
| Full Idea: I call by the name of Nominal Essence what is nothing but the abstract idea to which the name is annexed. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.02) | |||
| A reaction: [compressed] Note that Locke is not saying that nominal essence is just words, the verbal definition of the name. Superfluous words in a definition would not be part of the nominal essence if they were not truly part of the idea. |
| 13433 | Essences relate to sorting words; if you replace those with names, essences vanish |
| Full Idea: Essence, in the ordinary use of the word, relates to sorts; ..take but away the abstract ideas by which we sort individuals, and rank them under common names, and then the thought of anything essential to any of them instantly vanishes. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.04) | |||
| A reaction: The claim seems to be that if you refer to 'the dog', you instantly see its doggy essence, but if you refer to 'Fido' you see no such thing. But he is confusing the name with the idea. 'Fido' reveals no essence, but my idea of my beloved dog does. |
| 12533 | Real essences are unknown, so only the nominal essence connects things to a species |
| Full Idea: We only suppose the being of real essences, without precisely knowing what they are: but that which annexes them still to the species is the nominal essence. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.06) | |||
| A reaction: Compare Idea 12532. Locke can't quite make up his mind about the role of the 'sort' in our understanding of essence. His most consistent position is (I take it) to reject it entirely, as he did at first. ...Beginning of 3.06.07 confirms this. |
| 12557 | Our ideas of substance are based on mental archetypes, but these come from the world |
| Full Idea: Our ideas of substance being supposed copies, and referred to archetypes within us, must still be taken from something that does or has existed; they must not consist of ideas put together at the pleasure of our thoughts. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.04.12) | |||
| A reaction: This is a begrudging concession from Locke, who has been rather sarcastic about our supposed knowledge of substance. His is a realist about the physical world, and rightly says that our ideas are shaped by externals. We just don't have the evidence. |
| 12561 | For 'all gold is malleable' to be necessary, it must be part of gold's nominal essence |
| Full Idea: If malleableness makes not a part of the specific essence the name 'gold' stands for, 'tis plain, 'all gold is malleable' is not a certain proposition. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.06.08) | |||
| A reaction: So why would we think that being malleable was part of the essence of gold, while being shaped like a wedding ring was not? The answer is that we are not only concerned with the 'nominal' essence. |
| 12525 | The essence of a triangle is simple; presumably substance essences are similar |
| Full Idea: The essence of a triangle lies in a very little compass, consists in a very few lines; ...so I imagine it is in substances, their real essences lie in a little compass, though the properties flowing from that internal constitution are endless. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.32.24) | |||
| A reaction: This is the clearest evidence I can find that Locke firmly believed in real essence of substances, despite all his sarcasm about anyone who claimed to know what they are. He evidently knows at least one real essence, namely that of the triangle. |
| 13431 | A space between three lines is both the nominal and real essence of a triangle, the source of its properties |
| Full Idea: A space between three lines is the real as well as nominal essence of a Triangle; it being not only the abstract idea to which the name is annexed, but the very Essentia or Being of the thing itself, that foundation from which all its properties flow. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.03.18) | |||
| A reaction: Highly significant, coming from a famous doubter of essences. It seems to me that Locke would accept that we know have the essences of innumberable physical entities, which seemed impossible in his day. |
| 13423 | The schools recognised that they don't really know essences, because they couldn't coin names for them |
| Full Idea: The schools seem to intimate the confession of all mankind, that they have no idea of the real essences and substances, since they have not names for such ideas. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.08.2) | |||
| A reaction: He observes that schools timidly coined a few abstract terms for essences, but that they never caught on. This is an interesting criticism of essentialism from ordinary language. If a term names something real, it ought to 'catch on'. |
| 12804 | There are no independent natural kinds - or our classifications have to be subjective |
| Full Idea: Locke has two forms of antiessentialism: that there are no natural kinds independently of our own minds; or (weaker) that in practice we classify things on the basis not of their real essences but of their observable properties. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz and Locke on Essences | |||
| A reaction: Having recently read Locke, I felt that his real commitment was to the second one. He keeps coming back to the thought that there are real essences out there. It is only his empirical commitment that makes him feel the quest is hopeless. |
| 12547 | We know five properties of gold, but cannot use four of them to predict the fifth one |
| Full Idea: Though we see the yellow, and upon trial find the weight, malleableness, fusibility and fixedness of gold, yet because no one of these has evident dependence or necessary connexion with the other, we cannot know if four are there, the fifth will be also. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.14) | |||
| A reaction: Thus it is that knowledge of necessary properties cannot lead us to knowledge of essence, because explanatory dependence is in the opposite direction. The point of knowing essences is to gain increased powers of prediction. |
| 12503 | Identity means that the idea of a thing remains the same over time |
| Full Idea: In this consists identity, when the ideas a thing is attributed to vary not at all from what they were at that moment, wherein we consider their former existence, and to which we compare the present. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.24.01) | |||
| A reaction: Since we recognise that we might, in odd circumstances, have the identical idea while the object has been swapped, this is wrong. It sounds like the identity of indiscernibles. Identity is a concept applied to reality, not to ideas. |
| 12505 | One thing cannot have two beginnings of existence, nor two things one beginning |
| Full Idea: One thing cannot have two beginnings of existence, nor two things one beginning. …That therefore that had one beginning is the same thing, and that which had a different beginning in time and place from that, is not the same but divers. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.01) | |||
| A reaction: Chris Hughes has a nice example of a bicycle which is dismantled, parts are swapped with another, then the originals collected up and reassembled, which appears to give the bike two beginnings. This is necessity of origin, not essentiality. |
| 16795 | Same person, man or substance are different identities, belonging to different ideas |
| Full Idea: It is one thing to be the same substance, another the same man, and a third the same person, if Person, Man and Substance are three names standing for three different ideas; for such as is the idea belonging to the name, such must be the identity. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.07) | |||
| A reaction: It might be better to say that two things can only be 'the same' in some respect. You can say 'in some respects they are the same', without citing the respects. |
| 12504 | Two things can't occupy one place and time, which leads us to the idea of self-identity |
| Full Idea: We don't conceive it possible that two things of the same kind should exist in the same place and time...When, therefore, we demand whether any thing be the same or no, it refers to something that existed at a time and place, and was the same with itself. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.01) | |||
| A reaction: I find the notion of 'self-identity' puzzling. I've always taken it to be a logicians' idea, but Locke seems to arrive at it by looking for whatever is identical with some original object, and the floating relation having to hook back onto itself. |
| 12553 | Some of our ideas contain relations which we cannot conceive to be absent |
| Full Idea: In some of our ideas there are certain relations, habitudes, and connexions, so visibly included in the nature of the ideas themselves, that we cannot conceive them separable from them, by any power whatsoever. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.29) | |||
| A reaction: This is the conceptual version of a priori necessity. The question then becomes whether this necessity can be traced back to reality, or merely to conventions which created the ideas in the first place. Analytic philosophy likes this idea. |
| 12544 | Our knowledge falls short of the extent of our own ideas |
| Full Idea: The extent of our knowledge comes not only short of the reality of things, but even of the extent of our own ideas. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.06) | |||
| A reaction: The point is that we may be unable to find the links which make the connections. Which implies that there are real connections waiting to be found. We could call this 'conceptual realism'. A job for philosophers! |
| 12574 | When two ideas agree in my mind, I cannot refuse to see and know it |
| Full Idea: When the agreement of any two ideas appears to our minds, I can no more refuse to perceive, no more avoid knowing it, than I can avoid seeing those objects which I turn my eyes to. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.20.16) | |||
| A reaction: Note that he is not just saying that we cannot resist believing what becomes evident to us, but he actually asserts that we cannot avoid 'knowing' it. This seems to imply that knowledge may be more basic than belief (as Williamson and Hossack argue). |
| 15995 | The greatest certainty is knowing our own ideas, and that two ideas are different |
| Full Idea: A man cannot conceive himself capable of a greater certainty, than to know that any idea in his mind is such as he perceives it to be; and that two ideas wherein he perceives a difference, are different, and not precisely the same. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.02.01) | |||
| A reaction: That leaves open the question of what you know when you know your ideas. Do you fully know the contents? The contingent truths expressed by some of them? Or just their meanings? |
| 12562 | General certainty is only found in ideas |
| Full Idea: General certainty is never to be found but in our ideas. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.06.16) | |||
| A reaction: This is a fairly standard empirical view of such things. The obvious opposition to it might be Moore's 'hand' example (Idea 6349), if we ask, which is more certain, this hand I hold up, or this complex proof in mathematics? |
| 12569 | Knowledge by senses is less certain than that by intuition or reason, but it is still knowledge |
| Full Idea: The notice we have by our senses of the existing of things without us, thought it be no altogether so certain as our intuitive knowledge or the deductions of our reason, ..yet it is an assurance that deserves the name of knowledge. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.11.03) | |||
| A reaction: This is a clear instance of an acceptance of fallibilism. So one would hope, I think, from an orthodox empiricist philosopher, especially a representative realist like Locke, who as lots of areas where doubts can creep in. |
| 12564 | I am as certain of the thing doubting, as I am of the doubt |
| Full Idea: If I know I doubt, I have as certain a perception of the existence of the thing doubting, as of that thought which I call doubt. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.09.03) | |||
| A reaction: The challenge to this Lockean assertion of the Cogito is what he means by a 'thing', and what grounds he has for asserting the existence of the 'thing', as opposed to some vague assertion about whatever makes doubting possible. |
| 7570 | Innate ideas are trivial (if they are just potentials) or absurd (if they claim infants know a lot) |
| Full Idea: Locke says the doctrine of innate ideas is either reduced to triviality (that we have the potential to acquire knowledge and concepts, which makes all ideas innate), or to the absurd thesis that new-born children know logic, maths and metaphysics. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 1) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.4 | |||
| A reaction: A very effective attack. The defence would have to be the claim that there is no way for certain ideas to have entered the mind (because they are too basic, or too abstract, or too huge), so they could only arise from within the mind. |
| 12472 | If the only test of innateness is knowing, then all of our knowledge is innate |
| Full Idea: If the capacity of knowing be the natural Impression contended for, all the Truths a man ever comes to know, will, by this Account, be, every one of them, innate. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 1.02.05) | |||
| A reaction: It seems to be a nice empiricist's question, what experience involved in thinking an idea gives a hallmark that it is innate rather than acquired? Perhaps only 'I couldn't have thought of that myself', as Descartes says of several ideas. |
| 7709 | A proposition can't be in the mind if we aren't conscious of it |
| Full Idea: No proposition can be said to be in the mind, which it never yet knew, which it was never yet conscious of. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 1.02.05) | |||
| A reaction: This raises an interesting question. If we believe in the influence of the unconscious, we will have to talk of unconscious beliefs which affect our behaviour. We certainly all have beliefs of which we are not conscious. "Elvis had two feet". |
| 4018 | Innate ideas were followed up with innate doctrines, which stopped reasoning and made social control possible |
| Full Idea: Once innate ideas were established, it was necessary for their followers to receive some doctrines as such, to put them off using their own reason, so that they might be more easily governed. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 1.03.25?), quoted by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §9.1 | |||
| A reaction: Presumably anti-Catholic, though it sounds Marxist. It is hard to challenge innate ideas, but it is hard to challenge Hume's 'natural beliefs'. |
| 7723 | The senses first let in particular ideas, which furnish the empty cabinet |
| Full Idea: The senses at first let in particular ideas, and furnish the yet empty cabinet. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 1.02.15) | |||
| A reaction: A nice image of Locke's famous claim that the mind is a 'tabula rasa' (blank page). The obvious objection is that a totally empty cabinet would not organise or make sense of or respond to the sense experiences that entered it. Kant spelled this out. |
| 7507 | The mind is white paper, with no writing, or ideas |
| Full Idea: Let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.01.02) | |||
| A reaction: This is normally referred to as Locke's 'tabula rasa' idea, and is his denial of the existence of innate ideas. It is generally thought to be absurd, but note that he only 'supposes' it, presumably as a theoretical strategy, to investigate empiricism. |
| 12474 | The mind is a blank page, on which only experience can write |
| Full Idea: Let us then suppose the Mind to be, as we say, white Paper, void of all characters, without any Ideas; How comes it to be furnished? ..To this I answer, in one word, from Experience. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.01.02) | |||
| A reaction: The simple objection is that minds could make nothing of their experience if they were totally blank. But if we add principles of association, we might still say that there are no actual ideas imprinted in the original mind, only functions or faculties. |
| 12518 | The mind cannot produce simple ideas |
| Full Idea: The mind has no power to produce any simple idea. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.31.02) | |||
| A reaction: These must all come from experience, implying to common empirical view (spelled out better by Hume) that that a priori concerns only combinations of ideas which we already possess. The 'conceptual' notion of a priori is consistent with this. |
| 12478 | A 'quality' is a power to produce an idea in our minds |
| Full Idea: The power to produce any idea in our mind I call 'quality' of the subject wherein that power is. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.08.08) | |||
| A reaction: This strikes me as much the most accurate way to think of properties, but then I accept Locke's distinction between primary and secondary properties. Red is a property of brains, not of tomatoes. Tomatoes have power to cause this property. |
| 15989 | Colours, smells and tastes are ideas; the secondary qualities have no colour, smell or taste |
| Full Idea: If I am right, colours, tastes, odours and sounds are not, for Locke secondary qualities but ideas; secondary qualities are colourless, tasteless, odourless and soundless textures of bodies. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Peter Alexander - Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles 8 | |||
| A reaction: This the concise summary of Alexander's reading of Locke, and I find him wholly convincing. |
| 15971 | Secondary qualities are powers of complex primary qualities to produce sensations in us |
| Full Idea: Such qualities, which are nothing in objects but powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities i.e. by the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of their sensible parts, as colours, sounds, tastes etc. These I call secondary qualities. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.08.10) | |||
| A reaction: Alexander emphasises that secondary qualities are in objects. It is the ideas (here 'sensations') which are in us. This quotation shows that secondary qualities are not identical with 'textures' (which are complex primary qualities), but are 'powers'. |
| 12481 | Hands can report conflicting temperatures, but not conflicting shapes |
| Full Idea: The same water may produce the idea of cold by one hand and of heat by the other; ...but figure never produces the idea of a square by one hand which has produced the idea of a globe by the other. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.08.21) | |||
| A reaction: I find this to be a thoroughly convincing argument in favour of the primary/secondary distinction, despite the later objects of Berkeley, Hume and Kant. One might add colour blind people reporting differently from the rest of us. |
| 12546 | We can't know how primary and secondary qualities connect together |
| Full Idea: There is no discoverable connection between any secondary quality, and those primary qualities that it depends on. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.12) | |||
| A reaction: I take this to be an accurate account of the problem, and it pinpoints what may be the single most recalcitrant mystery facing human understanding - why do red things look RED? |
| 6725 | Locke believes matter is an inert, senseless substance, with extension, figure and motion |
| Full Idea: Some thinkers (e.g. Locke) understand by matter an inert, senseless substance, in which extension, figure and motion do actually subsist. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by George Berkeley - The Principles of Human Knowledge §9 | |||
| A reaction: Berkeley, of course, goes on to reject this. Personally I agree with Locke, because I am a realist, and I think the seventeenth century distinction between primary and secondary qualities is a key contribution to human understanding. |
| 15982 | Qualities are named as primary if they are needed for scientific explanation |
| Full Idea: In Locke, the needs of scientific explanation are what determine which qualities are to be taken as primary. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Peter Alexander - Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles 6 | |||
| A reaction: Not a sharp distinction, but interesting. It must concern 'objective' explanations to cut out the secondary qualities. |
| 12479 | Primary qualities produce simple ideas, such as solidity, extension, motion and number |
| Full Idea: The original or 'primary' qualities of body produce simple ideas in us, viz. solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.08.09) | |||
| A reaction: The tricky word here is 'simple', which clearly won't be enough on its own to distinguish primary from secondary qualities. Notice that there is a germ of an empirical theory of arithmetic in the word 'number'. |
| 12480 | Ideas of primary qualities resemble their objects, but those of secondary qualities don't |
| Full Idea: The ideas of primary qualities of bodies are resemblances of them, and their pattern do really exist in the bodies themselves; but the ideas produced in us by secondary qualities have no resemblance to them at all. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.08.15) | |||
| A reaction: I think this is exactly right. More that one sense can reinforce a primary quality, because there is a 'pattern' to be detected in various ways. That things look square is explained by their squareness; things looking red is just very weird. |
| 7049 | In Locke, the primary qualities are also powers |
| Full Idea: Readers of Locke have been wrong to imagine that primary qualities are not themselves powers. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.08.15) by John Heil - From an Ontological Point of View 17.2 | |||
| A reaction: This is part of the move to connect Locke with modern essentialism about natural laws. If a disposition is a power, then clearly being hard or square will affect the dispositions, and hence be a power. Secondary qualities result from powers. |
| 15973 | In my view Locke's 'textures' are groups of corpuscles which are powers (rather than 'having' powers) |
| Full Idea: I take the unorthodox view that Locke uses the word 'texture' for the pattern of corpuscles in a group and regards the power of a body to affect our senses or another body as identical with this textures, so that powers are intrinsic properties of bodies. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Peter Alexander - Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles 5.2 | |||
| A reaction: The disagreement is whether the textures 'have' the powers (the orthodox view), or whether they 'are' the powers (Alexander's view). To counter Idea 15971, Alexander quotes Idea 15974. He says 'a secondary quality is a texture' (121). |
| 7050 | I suspect that Locke did not actually believe colours are 'in the mind' |
| Full Idea: I make no claim to being a Locke scholar, but I suspect that the position often associated with Locke - that colours are 'in the mind' - flies in the face of Locke's considered view. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.08.15) by John Heil - From an Ontological Point of View 17.3 | |||
| A reaction: A glance at Locke gives the impression that he thought secondary qualities were really 'ideas', which would presumably be in the mind. Heil is hoping that Locke will agree with his own view. Further study will be required... |
| 15979 | Secondary qualities are simply the bare powers of an object |
| Full Idea: Secondary qualities, as has been shown, are nothing but bare powers. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.23.08) | |||
| A reaction: I'm not sure here whether 'bare' means 'simple' or 'unconcealed' - probably the latter. This supports Alexander's claim that the secondary qualities are identical to the 'textures' of the object. They certainly aren't in the mind. |
| 12482 | Molyneux's Question: could a blind man distinguish cube from sphere, if he regained his sight? |
| Full Idea: Mr Molyneux's Question: a blind man, taught by touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere of the same metal and same bigness. Suppose the cube and sphere placed on a table, and the man made to see - could he distinguish them? | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.09.08) | |||
| A reaction: Both Molyneux and Locke agree that the answer is 'no', because he won't yet have learned to associate the new experiences with the old shapes. [Gareth Evans wrote on this question] |
| 7724 | All the ideas written on the white paper of the mind can only come from one place - experience |
| Full Idea: Let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from Experience. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.01.02) | |||
| A reaction: In the face of Kant's wonderfully rich account of the mind, this simple empiricism seems to be horribly naďve, but it could be defended by saying that all the other paraphernalia of the mind (associations, categories etc) are not in any way ideas. |
| 12527 | Some ideas connect together naturally, while others connect by chance or custom |
| Full Idea: Some of our ideas have a natural correspondence and connexion one with another. ...Besides this there is another connexion of ideas wholly owing to chance or custom. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.33.05) | |||
| A reaction: This strikes me as a more promising account of associations that the one offered by Hume, since Locke distinguishes the associations that seem somehow right and natural from those that seem merely conventional. |
| 12555 | The constant link between whiteness and things that produce it is the basis of our knowledge |
| Full Idea: The idea of whiteness or bitterness, as it is in the mind, exactly answering that power which is in any body to produce it, has all the real conformity it can, or ought to have, with things without us. This conformity is sufficient for real knowledge. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.04.05) | |||
| A reaction: I take this to say that consistent covariation with certain things in the world is the best criterion we can find for our knowledge of secondary, and hence primary, qualities. Why they two covary is beyond our ken. Sounds right. |
| 12542 | Knowledge is just the connection or disagreement of our ideas |
| Full Idea: Knowledge seems to me to be nothing but the perception of the connexion and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our ideas. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.01.02) |
| 16637 | The absolute boundaries of our thought are the ideas we get from senses and the mind |
| Full Idea: The simple ideas we receive from sensation and reflection are the boundaries of our thoughts; beyond which the mind, whatever efforts it would make, is not able to advance one jot. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.23.29), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 09.3 | |||
| A reaction: My view is that this is wrong, simply because it takes no account of inference to the best explanation. We reach the boundaries of experience, and then we think about it, and penetrate beyond. His 'reflection' doesn't seem to mean that. |
| 2793 | It is unclear how identity, equality, perfection, God, power and cause derive from experience |
| Full Idea: Locke tried to show how all ideas were derived from experience by examining cases, but it was an uphill struggle; difficult cases include the ideas of identity, equality, perfection, God, power and cause. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Jonathan Dancy - Intro to Contemporary Epistemology 14.2 |
| 12543 | Intuition gives us direct and certain knowledge of what is obvious |
| Full Idea: There is intuitive knowledge when the mind perceives the truth as the eye doth light (white is not black, the circle is not a triangle). This knowledge is the clearest and most certain...on this depends the certainty and evidence of all knowledge. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.02.01) | |||
| A reaction: Locke is different because he doesn't just talk of intuition, but of intuitive 'knowledge'. He has the standard problems of discriminating between good and bad intuitions, weak and strong, yours versus mine. Compare Russell's 'knowledge by acquaintance'. |
| 19517 | Believing without a reason may just be love of your own fantasies |
| Full Idea: He that believes, without having any reason for believing, may be in love with his own fancies. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.17.24) | |||
| A reaction: This comes close to Clifford's Principle, though he demands 'evidence', rather than a reason. Of course, the supposed 'reason' may be just as much of a fantasy as the belief! |
| 15977 | Facts beyond immediate experience are assessed by agreement with known truths and observations |
| Full Idea: What comes not within the scrutiny of the human senses ...can appear more or less probable only as they more or less agree to truths that are established in the our minds, and as they hold proportion to other parts of our knowledge and observation. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.16.12) | |||
| A reaction: This remark strikes me as an excellent attempt to get at what we mean by coherence in justification. It is also, note, a good account of what we would count as a best explanation. |
| 2555 | For Locke knowledge relates to objects, not to propositions |
| Full Idea: Locke didn't think of knowledge as true justified belief. …He considered "knowledge of" as prior to "knowledge that", and knowledge as a relation between persons and objects rather than persons and propositions. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Richard Rorty - Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature 3.2 | |||
| A reaction: This seems pretty close to Russell's 'knowledge by acquaintance'. You'd be a in a stronger position to build on this sort of thing if you were a direct realist about perception. |
| 10326 | Other men's opinions don't add to our knowledge - even when they are true |
| Full Idea: The floating of other Mens Opinions in our brains makes us not one jot the more knowing, though they happen to be true. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 1.04.23) | |||
| A reaction: Kusch calls this thought of Locke's 'notorious'. Locke is certainly expressing extreme individualism in epistemology, and Kusch's views are the exact opposite. I'm more with Kusch. |
| 6488 | Locke has no patience with scepticism |
| Full Idea: Locke has no patience with scepticism. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Howard Robinson - Perception 1.4 | |||
| A reaction: Neither did Hume, and Aristotle laughs at extreme scepticism, and it never really bothers Plato. It could be argued that Descartes just regards it as a strategy for getting at foundations, rather than being something that kept him awake at night. |
| 16037 | Locke seems to use real essence for scientific explanation, and substratum for the being of a thing |
| Full Idea: It seems that Locke employs the concept of a real essence when he is addressing issues of scientific explanation, and he appeals to substratum when he is discussing the general concept of what it is to be a thing (as opposed to a property or mode). | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Jan-Erik Jones - Real Essence §4.4 | |||
| A reaction: [This idea is attributed to Nicholas Jolley 1999] Locke was, of course, utterly pessimistic about the possibility of knowing real essences. For Aristotle, real essence does both jobs. |
| 16032 | To explain qualities, Locke invokes primary and secondary qualities, not real essences |
| Full Idea: When criticising the scholastic account of the explanation of qualities, Locke typically refrains from invoking real essences, and instead talks about primary, secondary and tertiary qualities. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.08.10-26) by Jan-Erik Jones - Real Essence §2 | |||
| A reaction: This is the good empiricists' response to attempts to explain by means of essences - that we must stick to what is 'nearer the surface' and more knowable, only distinguishing which bits match the reality of the object. |
| 12519 | Gold is supposed to have a real essence, from whence its detectable properties flow |
| Full Idea: The ring on my finger is supposed to have a real essence, whereby it is gold, from whence those qualities flow which I find in it, viz. its colour, weight, hardness, fusibility, fixedness, and change of colour upon a slight touch of mercury, etc. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.31.06) | |||
| A reaction: This is Locke's notion of essence, as simply the underlying cause of the detectable properties. Oderberg says real essences are not hidden, but are the macro-features we all know gold to have. Locke never denies real essences. |
| 12551 | We are satisfied that other men have minds, from their words and actions |
| Full Idea: That there are minds and thinking beings in other men as well as himself, every man has a reason, from their words and actions, to be satisfied. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.27) | |||
| A reaction: Locke is aware of the question of other minds, but is rather easily fobbed off with an answer. He hadn't thought enough about good robots, for all his imagination, and Descartes' mention of them. |
| 12483 | Unlike humans, animals cannot entertain general ideas |
| Full Idea: The having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.11.10) | |||
| A reaction: Animals were massively underestimated before the twentieth century. Animals must recognise types of things, as well as individual things. They must register that an individual animal is a dangerous or tasty species. Locke grants them 'some reason'. |
| 5002 | Consciousness is the perception of what passes in a man's own mind |
| Full Idea: Consciousness is the perception of what passes in a man's own mind. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.01.19) | |||
| A reaction: This sounds to me like one capacity of human consciousness, which is second-order awareness. I take animals to have first-order awareness (of the world), but not perception of their own awareness. Self-awareness is crucial to his concept of a 'person'. |
| 2603 | If we aren't aware that an idea is innate, the concept of innate is meaningless; if we do, all ideas seem innate |
| Full Idea: To say a notion is imprinted on the mind, but the mind is ignorant of it, is to make this impression nothing. ….But if the capacity of knowing be the test of innateness, all the truths a man ever comes to know will be every one of them innate. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 1.02.05) | |||
| A reaction: The problem is, I think, that Locke is relying wholly on introspection to decide on what is innate. If you turn to Chomsky's evidence, of children learning more language than they could possibly taught, there seems to be lots of evidence. |
| 2421 | There is nothing illogical about inverted qualia |
| Full Idea: It would not carry any implication of falsehood to our simple ideas if by the different structure of our organs it were so ordered that the same object should produce in several men's minds different ideas at the same time (e.g. the colour of a violet). | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.32.15) | |||
| A reaction: The vital point here is that it would be based on 'different structures'. I personally cannot see any objection to the possibility that someone's qualia might be inverted - by brain surgery. That is a problem for naďve realists, though. |
| 3522 | The same object might produce violet in one mind and marigold in another |
| Full Idea: By the different structure of our organs the same object could produce in several men's minds different ideas, viz. if the idea that a violet produced in one man's mind by his eyes were the same that a marigold produced in another man's. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.32.15) | |||
| A reaction: This is Locke's original proposal that inverted qualia might be possible, but note that he proposes a physical basis for the inversion, in 'different structures'. Without that, claiming qualia inversion is the same as claiming that zombies are possible. |
| 7721 | Locke's view that thoughts are made of ideas asserts the crucial role of imagination |
| Full Idea: I construe Locke's thesis that our thoughts are 'composed of ideas' as the proposal that thinking (in its central form) crucially involves processes of imagination. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]), quoted by E.J. Lowe - Locke on Human Understanding III | |||
| A reaction: I like this, because I am struck with how incredibly wrong Descartes was about imagination, proposing that it was some trivial and peripheral aspect of the mind (Idea 1399). "Thinking just is imagination" is a plausible slogan. |
| 12476 | Every external object or internal idea suggests to us the idea of unity |
| Full Idea: Existence and unity are two other ideas that are suggested to the understanding, by every object without, and every idea within. ..And whatever we can consider as one thing, whether a real being, or idea, suggests to the understanding the idea of unity. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.07.07) | |||
| A reaction: It seems to me blatantly obvious that there is a close tie between this fact of metaphysics or psychology (or both) and the notion of a 'unit' in mathematics. Without this faculty of 'identifying' things, there would be no numbers or counting. |
| 12501 | The mind can make a unity out of anything, no matter how diverse |
| Full Idea: There are no things so remote, nor so contrary, which the mind cannot, by its art of composition, bring into one idea, as is visible in that signified by the name 'Universe'. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.24.03) | |||
| A reaction: This encourages ideas like unrestricted mereological composition, and the existence of the trout-turkey, but Locke is only saying that we can think of things that way. We can still strongly resist bizarre unities, and look only for natural ones, or none. |
| 9083 | The mind creates abstractions by generalising about appearances of objects, ignoring time or place |
| Full Idea: The mind makes the particular ideas, received from particular objects, to become general,..by considering them as they are in the mind such appearances, separate from all other circumstances of real existence, as time or place. This is called ABSTRACTION. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.09.09) | |||
| A reaction: What is distinctive here is that abstraction works on 'appearances' within the mind (which might be labelled 'sense-data'), rather than on the actual properties of the objects. Presumably abstraction can work on inferred unobservable properties? |
| 7040 | General words represent general ideas, which are abstractions from immediate circumstances |
| Full Idea: Words become general by being made the signs of general Ideas; and Ideas become general by separating them from circumstances of Time and Place and other ideas; by this way of abstraction they are made capable of representing more individuals than one. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.03.06) | |||
| A reaction: Fodor says this is they key move for empiricism. You can dispense with platonic forms and pure universals, and simple show general concepts as a way the mind has of dealing with particulars, which are built from experiences. |
| 12528 | If a man sees a friend die in a room, he associates the pain with the room |
| Full Idea: A man saw his friend die in such a room, though these have in nature nothing to do one with another, yet when the idea of the place occurs to his mind it brings the pain with it. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.33.12) | |||
| A reaction: Students of Hume think the notion of contiguity of ideas was original to Hume. Well it wasn't. |
| 5512 | Locke uses 'self' for a momentary entity, and 'person' for an extended one |
| Full Idea: For the most part Locke used the word 'self' to refer to a momentary entity, and 'person' to refer to a temporally extended one. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by R Martin / J Barresi - Introduction to 'Personal Identity' p.38 | |||
| A reaction: This might be quite helpful. Compare the word 'event' with the word 'history'. Many selves make a person, and presumably they don't need to be identical to one another, but they must be significantly connected. |
| 1202 | A person is intelligent, rational, self-aware, continuous, conscious |
| Full Idea: A person is a thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places; which it does by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.09) | |||
| A reaction: Locke's famous definition of a person. Several of the terms seem redundant, and it seems to come down to 'conscious, rational, and self-aware'. But 'self-aware' also seems redundant, because you must already be a person to be aware of it… |
| 1381 | Someone mad then sane is two persons, judging by our laws and punishments |
| Full Idea: Human laws do not punish the mad man for the sober man's actions, nor the sober man for what the mad man did, thereby making them two persons. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.20) | |||
| A reaction: This may be a misinterpretation by Locke; the punishments may be based on the likelihood of the behaviour recurring, rather than on whether it is the same person. I may judge the madman as guilty of the sane action, but think punishment is pointless. |
| 1385 | 'Person' is a term used about responsibility, involving law, and happiness and misery |
| Full Idea: Person is a forensic term, appropriating actions and their merit; and so belongs only to intelligent agents capable of law, and happiness, and misery. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.26) | |||
| A reaction: This strikes me as being essentially correct, and it makes discussions of personal identity focus (at least partly) on the will, as the aspect of the mind which makes decisions, and is held responsible for them. |
| 1372 | Our personal identity must depend on something we are aware of, namely consciousness |
| Full Idea: It being the same consciousness that makes a man himself to himself, personal identity depends on that only, whether it be annexed solely to one individual substance, or can be continued in a succession of several substances. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.10) | |||
| A reaction: The counterexample would be a highly sophisticated robot that lacked consciousness. IF it could achieve 'sophisticated' behaviour, we might need personal identity to explain its utterances and doings. |
| 1378 | My little finger is part of me if I am conscious of it |
| Full Idea: Everyone finds, that, whilst comprehended under that consciousness, the little finger is as much a part of himself as what is most so. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.17) | |||
| A reaction: It seems as great a violation of someone's personhood to shave off their hair as to cut off the tip of a finger. Can I steal one of your kidneys, since you are not conscious of them? |
| 5175 | Personal identity is my perceptions, but not my memory, as I forget too much |
| Full Idea: The number of my perceptions which I can remember at any time always falls far short of the number of those which have actually occurred in my history, and those which I cannot remember are no less constitutive of my self than those which I can. | |||
| From: comment on John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by A.J. Ayer - Language,Truth and Logic Ch.7 | |||
| A reaction: Ayer is summarising Hume's criticism of Locke. It implies that Hume agrees with Locke on the 'consciousness' theory, which is a theory which should appeal to all empiricists. It is nonsense, though. I am not my awareness of some passing gnat. |
| 1363 | Locke's theory confusingly tries to unite consciousness and memory |
| Full Idea: Memory is a different experience from consciousness, and Locke should not link them together, but should admit that his theory depends on memory. | |||
| From: comment on John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.10) by Thomas Reid - Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory Ch 6 | |||
| A reaction: Interpreters of Locke over-emphasise memory. He thought that, effectively, a person IS a consciousness, and only got interested in memory as a way of extending consciousness across time. Then the epistemology of memory got him into trouble. |
| 1368 | Locke mistakes similarity of a memory to its original event for identity |
| Full Idea: Locke's mistake arises because he confuses the 'same' consciousness of past events. A memory is only the 'same' in the sense of being similar, not in the sense of complete identity. | |||
| From: comment on John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.10) by Thomas Reid - Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory Ch 6 | |||
| A reaction: cf Locke's point in Ideas 1197 and 1373. |
| 1373 | Identity over time involves remembering actions just as they happened |
| Full Idea: As far as any intelligent being can repeat the idea of any past action with the same consciousness it had of it at first, and with the same consciousness it has of any present action; so far it is the same personal self. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.10) | |||
| A reaction: Reid's criticism of 'same' (Idea 1368). |
| 1380 | Should we punish people who commit crimes in their sleep? |
| Full Idea: To punish Socrates waking for what sleeping Socrates thought, and waking Socrates was never conscious of, would be no more right, than to punish one twin for what his brother-twin did. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.19) | |||
| A reaction: Personally I would feel guilty if I had a dream in which I had behaved immorally, though I wouldn't expect to be punished. It would be shocking to deny all responsibility if you had murdered someone while you were sleep-walking. |
| 5511 | For Locke, conscious awareness unifies a person at an instant and over time |
| Full Idea: Central to Locke's account of the self is the idea that consciousness is reflexive and that it plays a dual role in self-constitution: it is what unifies a person not only over time, but also at a time. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by R Martin / J Barresi - Introduction to 'Personal Identity' p.37 | |||
| A reaction: This is a good explanation of Locke's view, and shows clearly why Locke does not hold a 'memory' theory (unless, of course, one held the view that all consciousness is memory). Consciousness unites self, or self unites consciousness? |
| 12509 | If the soul individuates a man, and souls are transferable, then a hog could be a man |
| Full Idea: If identity of soul makes the same man, and the same individual spirit may be united to different bodies, it is possible men living in distant ages may have been the same man. But if the soul of Heliogabalus is in a hog, we would not say a hog is a man. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.06) | |||
| A reaction: [compressed] Locke uses this to say that Heliogabalus remains Heliogabalus, despite being in a hog. This is a good case of conceivability being very misleading about actual possibility. If Heliogabalus is transferable, then of course he isn't physical. |
| 1376 | Identity must be in consciousness not substance, because it seems transferable |
| Full Idea: If the same consciousness can be transferred from one thinking substance to another, then two thinking substances may make but one person. For one consciousness being preserved, whether in the same or different substances, personal identity is preserved. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.13) | |||
| A reaction: I take the sensible modern view to be that the transfer of the same consciousness between two different physical substances is absurd, since consciousness is (at the very least) entailed by the physical state. Could there be mentally identical twins? |
| 12512 | If someone becomes conscious of Nestor's actions, then he is Nestor |
| Full Idea: Let a person once find himself conscious of any of the actions of Nestor, he then finds himself the same person with Nestor. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.14) | |||
| A reaction: This seems to invite the sort of response Butler offered, that it would be a given that it was YOU who was thinking Nestor's thoughts, and presumably becoming puzzled thereby. If I imagine Troy, am I thinking Nestor's thoughts? |
| 12513 | If a prince's soul entered a cobbler's body, the person would be the prince (and the man the cobbler) |
| Full Idea: Should the soul of a prince, carrying with it the consciousness of the prince's past life, enter the body of a cobbler, everyone sees he would be the same person with the prince, accountable for the prince's actions. But who would say he is the same man? | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.15) | |||
| A reaction: This is another case of conceivability being misleading about possibility. I take this transfer to be utterly (metaphysically) impossible, and hence not a good 'intuition-pump' for assessing what personal identity means. |
| 12514 | On Judgement Day, no one will be punished for actions they cannot remember |
| Full Idea: In the Great Day, wherein the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open, it may be reasonable to think no one shall be made to answer for what he knows nothing of. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.22) | |||
| A reaction: If you could persuade devout criminals of the truth of Locke's idea, you could make a fortune selling them 'forgetfulness pills', which guaranteed they couldn't remember a thing on Judgement Day. Or perhaps that's what marihuana does. |
| 1397 | Locke sees underlying substance as irrelevant to personal identity |
| Full Idea: The heart of Locke's account of personal identity is the claim that identity of substance is irrelevant. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.25) by Harold Noonan - Personal Identity 2.6 | |||
| A reaction: It is irrelevant whether a sound recording is made of wax, vinyl or CD-stuff. This is a functionalist view. A basic question is whether we consider it naturally or metaphysically possible to make a person out of anything other than brain. |
| 6139 | Locke implies that each thought has two thinkers - me, and 'my' substance |
| Full Idea: Locke's thesis about persons implies that, whenever I have a thought, two thinkers have that thought: me and 'my' thinking substance. | |||
| From: comment on John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Trenton Merricks - Objects and Persons §2.IV | |||
| A reaction: Although Locke asserts the existence of a distinct entity, the 'person', he is fairly vague about the ontology involved. Some have suggested that he is a functionalist, and we could say that the substance 'constitutes' the person. |
| 5513 | Two persons might have qualitatively identical consciousnesses, so that isn't enough |
| Full Idea: Kant thought that personal identity could not simply consist in sameness of consciousness, since someone's consciousness might be qualitatively similar to that of someone else who had existed previously. | |||
| From: comment on John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Immanuel Kant - Critique of Pure Reason | |||
| A reaction: An interesting point, which leads to the question of whether two conscious events must by type-identical or token-identical to confer identity over time. Locke implies type- (which leads to Kant's objection). He needed, but couldn't have, token-. |
| 1345 | Locke's move from substance to consciousness is a slippery slope |
| Full Idea: Because Locke says that personal identity is in consciousness rather than substance, this is a slippery slope which leads others to deny that the self exists (because consciousness is never quite the same). | |||
| From: comment on John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Joseph Butler - Analogy of Religion App.1 | |||
| A reaction: If you are hoping to have a personal identity that can last for all of eternity, the slightest change now will mean disappearance eventually. There might be boundaries, but then the boundaries would define the identity more than consciousness does. |
| 1197 | No two thoughts at different times can be the same, as they have different beginnings |
| Full Idea: No thought, considered as at different times, can be the same, each part thereof having a different beginning of existence. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.02) | |||
| A reaction: cf Reid's objection (Idea 1368). Presumably there could be type-identity? If I have a thought which is identical to the thought I had yesterday, how do I tell whether it is the same token or merely the same type? It fails Locke's introspection test. |
| 1364 | Locke confuses the test for personal identity with the thing itself |
| Full Idea: In Locke's doctrine, personal identity is confounded with the evidence which we have of our personal identity. | |||
| From: comment on John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.10) by Thomas Reid - Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory Ch 6 | |||
| A reaction: A clever criticism. Compare Idea 5424. I think I agree. If Locke says I have continuous consciousness, and Parfit says it is all I care about, this needs explaining. How do we explain the fact that I care about my past and my future? |
| 12511 | If consciousness is interrupted, and we forget our past selves, are we still the same thinking thing? |
| Full Idea: In cases of our consciousness being interrupted and we losing sight of our past selves, doubt are raised whether we are the same thinking thing, i.e. that same substance or no. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.10) | |||
| A reaction: Only Locke and Parfit, with their psychological continuity theory, need to anguish over this problem. Personally I see myself as irredeemably an animal, retaining my identity even when I can't remember my own name. |
| 1361 | If identity is consciousness, could a person move between bodies or fragment into parts? |
| Full Idea: Locke's theory implies one person could shift between twenty intelligent beings, and one intelligent being could fragment mentally into twenty different persons, which is ridiculous. | |||
| From: comment on John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.13) by Thomas Reid - Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory Ch 6 | |||
| A reaction: Locke only says that IF the person 'shifted', that would not alter our notion that one person existed here, as long as the consciousness remained the same. The notion of 'fragmenting', though, leads to Parfit saying that personal identity is unimportant. |
| 21326 | Locke's memory theory of identity confuses personal identity with the test for it |
| Full Idea: In Locke's doctrine not only is consciousness confounded with memory, but, which is still more strange, personal identity is confounded with the evidence which we have of our personal identity. | |||
| From: comment on John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.14) by Thomas Reid - Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory III.Ch 6 | |||
| A reaction: The same type of criticism as Russell's view of the coherence theory of truth (Idea 5424). I'm inclined to think that Reid has precisely identified Locke's main error. Some confuse the existence of a chair with our tests for whether the chair is there! |
| 1387 | Butler thought Locke's theory was doomed once he rejected mental substance |
| Full Idea: Butler thought that Locke's denial of the requirement of identity of substance doomed his analysis of personal identity. | |||
| From: comment on John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.25) by John Perry - Introduction to 'Personal Identity' Intro | |||
| A reaction: Butler seems to have thought that psychological criteria were a slippery slope, whereas substance gives the necessary fixed identity (such as a bishop would require). Personally I say that personal identity is the activity of a physical substance. |
| 12809 | Nothing about me is essential |
| Full Idea: 'Tis necessary for me to be as I am; God and Nature has made me so: but there is nothing I have is essential to me. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.04) | |||
| A reaction: This is the aspect of Locke's critique of essentialism which Leibniz particularly disliked. Locke's view still has plenty of defenders, but I take it to be wrong, and Pinker seems to suggest that empirical research is beginning to agree with me. |
| 3792 | We are free to decide not to follow our desires |
| Full Idea: We have a power to suspend the prosecution of this or that desire; as everyone daily may experiment in himself. This seems to me the source of all liberty, ..which is (as I think improperly) call'd 'free will'. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.21.47) | |||
| A reaction: This strikes me as a feeble defence of free will, since we have no idea of the origin of the decision not to act according to some desire. I see no sign of free will in introspection, despite what some people claim. |
| 12494 | Men are not free to will, because they cannot help willing |
| Full Idea: A man is not at liberty to will or not to will, because he cannot forbear willing. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.21.24) | |||
| A reaction: Not quite an answer to the big problem, but an interesting observation for those who have high hopes of a truly, deeply and extensively free will. |
| 12492 | Liberty is a power of agents, so can't be an attribute of wills |
| Full Idea: Liberty, which is but a power, belongs only to agents, and cannot be an attribute or modification of the will, which is also but a power. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.21.14) | |||
| A reaction: He is suggesting the 'free will' is a category mistake, but why shouldn't a power have a power? Magnetism can be strong, or focused. He is ducking the question of what ultimately controls the will. |
| 12493 | A man is free insofar as he can act according to his own preferences |
| Full Idea: So far as his power reaches, of acting or not acting, by the determination of his own thought preferring either, so far is a man free. ..We can scarcely imagine any being freer, than to be able to do what he wills. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.21.21) | |||
| A reaction: It take this approach, which Hume echoes, to be ducking the metaphysical problem, of where the act of willing originates. Locke goes on to admit this. |
| 7840 | For all we know, an omnipotent being might have enabled material beings to think |
| Full Idea: We may never be able to know whether any material being thinks; it being impossible for us, by contemplation of our own ideas to discover whether Omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter fitly disposed, a power to perceive and think. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.06) | |||
| A reaction: Leibniz attacked this vigorously, but I have to agree with Locke. We now see that it is just as mysterious for 'mental' substance to think as it is for physical substance. If in doubt, apply the Razor, and stick with the substance you know. |
| 12500 | Thinking without matter and matter that thinks are equally baffling |
| Full Idea: It is no harder to conceive how thinking should exist without matter, than how matter should think. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.23.32) | |||
| A reaction: This kind of aporia is at the heart of modern 'mysterianism', exemplified by Colin McGinn, and I find that Locke fully endorses such an attitude, and should be seen as the first Mysterian. |
| 15996 | We can't begin to conceive what would produce some particular experience within our minds |
| Full Idea: We are so far from knowing what figure, size or motion of parts produce a yellow colour, sweet taste, or sharp sound, that we cannot conceive how any size, figure or motion can produce in us the colour, taste or sound. There is no conceivable connection. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.13) | |||
| A reaction: There is a good case for naming Locke as the first mysterian, and he puts his finger here on what I think is the weirdest puzzle of the mind - why THAT experience for THAT stimulus. In the 21st century we should not give up so easily. |
| 12552 | Thoughts moving bodies, and bodies producing thoughts, are equally unknowable |
| Full Idea: How any thought should produce a motion in body is as remote from the nature of our ideas, as how any body should produce any thought in the mind. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.28) | |||
| A reaction: Compare McGinn's Idea 2540. Locke was a thoroughgoing Mysterian, but in his case it was part of a widespread pessimism about penetrating any of the inner secrets of nature. Modern Mysterians see it as the one secret we can't get. |
| 6712 | For Locke, abstract ideas are our main superiority of understanding over animals |
| Full Idea: Locke seemed to think the having abstract general ideas is what puts the widest difference in point of understanding betwixt man and beast. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by George Berkeley - The Principles of Human Knowledge Intro §11 | |||
| A reaction: I currently favour meta-thought (thought about thought) as the distinction of homo sapiens, but maybe abstraction is an aspect of that, because you have to pick out common factors amongst a variety of experiences. |
| 15967 | The word 'idea' covers thinking best, for imaginings, concepts, and basic experiences |
| Full Idea: Idea being that term which serves best to stand for the object of understanding when a man thinks, I use it to express what is meant by Phantasm, Notion, Species, or whatever it is, which the Mind can be employ'd about in thinking. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 1.01.08), quoted by Peter Alexander - Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles 04.1 | |||
| A reaction: Compare my earlier Idea 6486, which caricatures Locke. Alexanders says Phantasms are uncaused mental images, Notions are concepts, and Species is an appearance of an object or quality to the mind. Locke deliberately covered them all. |
| 6486 | Ideas are the objects of understanding when we think |
| Full Idea: Ideas are whatsoever is the object of a man's understanding whenever a man thinks. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 1.01.08) | |||
| A reaction: Robinson quotes this to show how infuriatingly vague Locke is about ideas. Obviously they can be further analysed into a variety of mental events, ranging from inputs to reactions to judgements. |
| 12496 | Complex ideas are all resolvable into simple ideas |
| Full Idea: All our complex ideas are ultimately resolvable into simple ideas, of which they are compounded and originally made up. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.22.09) | |||
| A reaction: This can certainly be challenged. I guess we form the concept of a 'bird' before we form the concept of a 'feather'. How ideas are arrived at is quite different from ways in which they can be analysed and broken down. |
| 12475 | All our ideas derive either from sensation, or from inner reflection |
| Full Idea: External material things, as the objects of sensation; and the operations of our own minds within, as the objects of reflection, are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginning. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.01.04) | |||
| A reaction: The obvious opposition comes from claims about innate ideas. That a great deal is innate is fairly obvious, but it seems very hard to demonstrate that any of it qualifies as 'ideas'. |
| 17735 | Simple ideas are produced in us by external things, and they match their appearances |
| Full Idea: Simple ideas are not fictions of our fancies, but the natural and regular productions of things without us, really operating upon us. ...They represent to us things under those appearances which they are fitted to produce in us. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.04.04) | |||
| A reaction: Quoted by Jenkins to support her arguments for empirical knowledge being encoded in our concepts (which then produce a priori knowledge). I approve. This is the sort of realism in Locke which Berkeley and Hume shy away from. |
| 12471 | Innate ideas are nothing, if they are in the mind but we are unaware of them |
| Full Idea: To say a Notion is imprinted n the Mind, and yet at the same time to say, that the mind is ignorant of it, and never yet took notice of it, is to make this Impression nothing. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 1.02.05) | |||
| A reaction: Not much of an argument, given that Locke would accept that we remember things, but have enormous difficulty recalling them. The introspective evidence of innateness I take to be the obviousness of a new idea, when it strikes. |
| 5827 | A species of thing is an abstract idea, and a word is a sign that refers to the idea |
| Full Idea: That which general words signify is a sort of things; and does it by being a sign of an abstract idea in the mind; ..so that the essences (or species) of things are nothing else but these abstract ideas. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]), quoted by Stephen P. Schwartz - Intro to Naming,Necessity and Natural Kinds §II | |||
| A reaction: This has come in for a lot of criticism, culminating in Putnam saying that meanings 'ain't in the head' (Idea 4099). Wittgenstein's 'beetle in the box' problem is also partly aimed at it (Idea 4147). Locke misses the social aspect of language. |
| 7716 | Words were devised as signs for inner ideas, and their basic meaning is those ideas |
| Full Idea: It was necessary that man should find some external sensible signs, whereby those invisible ideas might be made known to others; ..words, then, in their primary or immediate signification stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.02.01-2) | |||
| A reaction: This very unpopular theory could be defended. Note Locke's qualification about 'primary signification'. His Wittgensteinian opponents go on about community or communication, but maybe these are parasitic on the initial grunt referring to an inner idea? |
| 7308 | Words stand for the ideas in the mind of him that uses them |
| Full Idea: Words in their primary or immediate signification, stand for nothing, but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.02.02) | |||
| A reaction: This is notorious and usually dismissed contemptuously. However, if the ideas themselves 'stand for' reality, our words are not just trapped in mental space. If my mental space contains things, presumably we can name them. |
| 12524 | For the correct reference of complex ideas, we can only refer to experts |
| Full Idea: We have nothing else to refer these our ideas of mixed modes to as standard, to which we would conform them, but the ideas of those who are thought to use those names in their most proper significations. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.32.12) | |||
| A reaction: This is Putnam's thought about elm trees, that he uses the word 'elm' to refer to something the reference of which is fixed by experts on trees, and not by his ignorant self. |
| 15991 | Since words are just conventional, we can represent our own ideas with any words we please |
| Full Idea: Since sounds are voluntary and indifferent signs of any idea, a man may use what words he pleases to signify his own ideas to himself. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.09.02) | |||
| A reaction: Evidently not in tune with Wittgenstein, but it is obvious that I could invent any word I like for my favourite temperature for tomato soup. |
| 4130 | There couldn't be a moral rule of which a man could not justly demand a reason |
| Full Idea: There cannot any one moral rule be proposed, whereof a man may not justly demand a reason. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 1.03.04) | |||
| A reaction: I am more with Locke than Williams here. One can demand reasons up to the point where no one can provide them. Then we look for plan B, which probably ought to be conservative. |
| 12495 | Pursuit of happiness is the highest perfection of intellectual nature |
| Full Idea: The highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.21.51) | |||
| A reaction: A nice remark, in which the word 'intellectual' is particularly interesting. Locke is inclined to equate happiness with pleasure and the absence of pain. |
| 12541 | Morality can be demonstrated, because we know the real essences behind moral words |
| Full Idea: Morality is capable of demonstration as well as mathematics, since the precise real essence of the things moral words stand for may be perfectly known, and so the congruity or incongruity of the things themselves be certainly discovered. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.11.16) | |||
| A reaction: This is a rare case of Locke saying that we can know real essences (he apparently having said the same about triangles). I increasingly like the notion that real essences lead to true knowledge in every sphere of our activities, including the moral. |
| 12473 | We can demand a reason for any moral rule |
| Full Idea: There cannot any one moral Rule be proposed, whereof a Man may not justly demand a Reason. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 1.03.04) | |||
| A reaction: There may be some things which are indisputable duties or prohibitions, and yet people be quite bewildered when asked for the reason behind the rule. Loyalty, incest, courage. |
| 1386 | A concern for happiness is the inevitable result of consciousness |
| Full Idea: A concern for happiness is the unavoidable concomitant of consciousness; that which is conscious of pleasure and pain, desiring that that self that is conscious should be happy. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.26) | |||
| A reaction: It is an interesting question whether a being would be concerned with 'happiness' if they were conscious thinkers, but lacking pleasure and pain. Presumably they would desire eudaimonia - that their life go well, in some way. |
| 4019 | Things are good and evil only in reference to pleasure and pain |
| Full Idea: Things then are good and evil only in reference to pleasure and pain. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.20.02) | |||
| A reaction: This is presumably the seeds of utilitarianism, and is evidently at the core of empiricism. In "Gorgias" Socrates explained why it is wrong. |
| 12515 | Actions are virtuous if they are judged praiseworthy |
| Full Idea: It is not thought strange that men everywhere should give the name of virtue to those actions which amongst them are judged praiseworthy. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.28.10) | |||
| A reaction: Wrong. Being very successful in sport is considered praiseworthy, but not virtuous. We praise actions because they are virtuous, so the virtue cannot be constituted merely by the praise. |
| 12548 | It is certain that injustice requires property, since it is a violation of the right to property |
| Full Idea: Where there is no property there is no injustice, is a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid. For the idea of a property, being a right to any thing, and the idea of injustice being the invasion or violation of that right. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.18) | |||
| A reaction: This is an extraordinarily narrow notion of justice, and one which entirely depends on human convention. Does he not think that rape, for example, is an injustice? How could he label what is wrong with such a crime? |
| 15997 | We are so far from understanding the workings of natural bodies that it is pointless to even try |
| Full Idea: As to a perfect science of natural bodies (not to mention spiritual beings) we are, I think, so far from being capable of any such thing, that I conclude it lost labour to seek after it. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.28) | |||
| A reaction: It seems to me that Locke has an excellent grasp of the nature of science, except for his extraordinary and misjudged pessimism about what it might achieve. |
| 15978 | I take 'matter' to be a body, excluding its extension in space and its shape |
| Full Idea: 'Matter' is a partial and more confused conception, it seeming to me to be used for the substance and solidity of body, without taking in its extension and figure. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.10.15) | |||
| A reaction: The 'without taking in' I take to mean that matter is an abstraction (of the psychological kind) from the character of physical bodies. Matter does not exist without having an extension and figure. |
| 15170 | We distinguish species by their nominal essence, not by their real essence |
| Full Idea: Our ranking, and distinguishing natural substances into species consists in the nominal essences the mind makes, and not in the real essences to be found in things themselves. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.11) | |||
| A reaction: Note that, as far as I can see, Locke never denies the existence of real essences, or even that we might occasionally know them. He is here merely describing, fairly accurately, I think, his empiricist view of how these categories have come about. |
| 15993 | If we observe total regularity, there must be some unknown law and relationships controlling it |
| Full Idea: The things that, as far as observation reaches, we constantly find to proceed regularly, do act by a law set them; but yet by a law that we know not; ..their connections and dependencies being not discoverable in our ideas, we need experimental knowledge. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.29) | |||
| A reaction: In Idea 15992 he expressed scepticism about the amount of regularity that is actually found, with many so-called 'kinds' being quite irregular in their members. I agree. The only true natural kinds are the totally regular ones. Why a 'law'? |
| 12497 | Causes are the substances which have the powers to produce action |
| Full Idea: Power being the source from whence all action proceeds, the substances wherein these powers are, when they exert this power into act, are called 'causes'. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.22.11) | |||
| A reaction: This is causes as actual entities, rather than as conjunctions of events. Personally I find this view of Locke's very congenial, no matter how unfashionable it may be. |
| 12550 | If we knew the minute mechanics of hemlock, we could predict that it kills men |
| Full Idea: Did we know the mechanical affections of the particles of rhubarb, hemlock, opium and a man, ...we should be able to tell beforehand that rhubarb will purge, hemlock kill, and opium make a man sleep. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.25) | |||
| A reaction: Locke was adamant that we could never know such things, but I take it that we now do know them, and that this is precisely what science aims at. I'm beginning to think that the entire aim of science is to predict nature. |
| 15966 | Boyle and Locke believed corpuscular structures necessitate their powers of interaction |
| Full Idea: Both Boyle and Locke believe in necessary connections in nature; full knowledge of a corpuscular structure would enable us to deduce, without trial, particular powers of interaction. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Peter Alexander - Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles 03.3 | |||
| A reaction: I take this view to be correct. Is the necessity analytic, because that is how you define the 'structures'? If not, what is the basis for the claim? |
| 15984 | The corpuscular hypothesis is the best explanation of the necessary connection and co-existence of powers |
| Full Idea: Human understanding is scarce able to substitute better than the corpuscularian hypothesis in an explication of the qualities of bodies, which will afford us a fuller and clearer discovery of the necessary connection and co-existence of the powers. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.16) | |||
| A reaction: [considerably reworded] Locke is committed to natural necessities, in a way entirely rejected by Hume. The picture given in this remark perfectly embodies scientific essentialism, though elsewhere Locke is more cautious. |
| 15950 | We will only understand substance when we know the necessary connections between powers and qualities |
| Full Idea: Which ever hypothesis be clearest and truest, ...our knowledge concerning corporeal substances, will be very little advanced.. , till we are made see, what qualities and powers of bodies have a necessary connection or repugnancy one with another. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.16) | |||
| A reaction: A part from the emphasis on powers, this sounds a bit like Armstrong's account, that laws are the necessary connections between properties. It is scientific essentialism because Locke expects researchers to discover this stuff. |
| 7713 | We identify substances by supposing that groups of sensations arise from an essence |
| Full Idea: We come to have the ideas of particular sorts of substance, by collecting such combinations of simple ideas as are by observation of men's senses taken notice of to exist together, and are supposed to flow from the unknown essence of that substance. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.23.03) | |||
| A reaction: Locke is notoriously somewhat ambiguous and unclear about some of his views, but this remark seems to make him the father of modern scientific essentialism. Note that this is an empiricist happily referring to an unperceived best explanation. |
| 12545 | Other spirits may exceed us in knowledge, by knowing the inward constitution of things |
| Full Idea: Other spirits, who see and know the nature and inward constitution of things, how much must they exceed us in knowledge? | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.06) | |||
| A reaction: I take it that Locke was describing his own posterity, without realising it. It seems to me that modern physics has reached a place which Locke firmly pronounced impossible for human beings, and it has revealed many 'inward constitutions'. |
| 12484 | Motion is just change of distance between two things |
| Full Idea: Motion is nothing but change of distance between two things. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.13.14) | |||
| A reaction: If a thing moved steadily relative to other objects, and we then removed all other objects in the universe, would it still be moving? |
| 15986 | Boyle and Locke suspect forces of being occult |
| Full Idea: I believe that both Boyle and Locke were suspicious of forces, regarding them as occult. | |||
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Peter Alexander - Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles 7 | |||
| A reaction: I take this to be key difference between these two and Leibniz, with the latter on the side of the angels. |
| 16685 | An insurmountable force in a body keeps our hands apart when we handle it |
| Full Idea: The bodies which we daily handle make us perceive that they do by an insurmountable force hinder the approach of the parts of our hands that press them. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.04.01) | |||
| A reaction: This is interesting for a rare use of the word 'force' by Locke. I like the empiricist approach to these things, of actually contemplating handling physical objects. Empiricism keeps the feet of philosophy firmly on the ground. |
| 15980 | We can locate the parts of the universe, but not the whole thing |
| Full Idea: We have no idea of the place of the universe, though we can of all the parts of it. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.13.10) | |||
| A reaction: Locke evidently agrees with the Leibniz view of space as relative, rather than with Newton's absolute view. …But see Idea 15981. |
| 12486 | An 'instant' is where we perceive no succession, and is the time of a single idea |
| Full Idea: A part of duration wherein we perceive no succession, is that which we may call an 'instant'; and is that which takes up the time of only one idea in our minds. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.14.10) | |||
| A reaction: Given that the present appears to have zero duration (if it is where past and future meet), then this strikes me as a pretty accurate account of what we mean by an instant. |
| 12487 | We can never show that two successive periods of time were equal |
| Full Idea: Two successive lengths of duration, however measured, can never be demonstrated to be equal. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.14.21) | |||
| A reaction: Nice thought. You can't lay the durations next to one another, the way you can lengths. You can only count the clock ticks, but not be sure whether their speed remained constant. |
| 12567 | It is inconceivable that unthinking matter could produce intelligence |
| Full Idea: It is as impossible to conceive that ever bare incogitative matter should produce a thinking intelligent being, as that nothing should of itself produce matter. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.10.10) | |||
| A reaction: This is still a strongly intuitive objection that some people have to materialistic evolution. If you don't think the mind can be reduced to the physical, you still have this problem. You'll probably have to concoct an idea called 'emergence'. |
| 12570 | The finite and dependent should obey the supreme and infinite |
| Full Idea: It is certain that the inferior, finite and dependent is under an obligation to obey the supreme and infinite. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.13.03) | |||
| A reaction: Locke's liberal politics has gradually helped to undermine this view. Once an inferior and dependent person owns some property, they acquire rights and do not have to submit to anyone in that respect. Modern people would defy God if they met Him. |
| 12565 | God has given us no innate idea of himself |
| Full Idea: God has given us no innate idea of himself. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.10.01) | |||
| A reaction: This is rejection of Descartes' 'Trademark Argument' (Idea 2274). It is consistent with Locke's general assault on all innate ideas, as you might expect from an empiricist. |
| 12566 | We exist, so there is Being, which requires eternal being |
| Full Idea: Everyone's certain knowledge assures him that he is something that actually exists. ...Therefore there is some real Being, and since non-entity cannot produce any real being, it is an evident demonstration that from Eternity there has been something. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.10.03) | |||
| A reaction: This is a cosmological proof, deriving God as a necessary precondition from the observation that something exists. It is similar to, but not as good as, Aquinas's Third Way (Idea 1431). |
| 12571 | If miracles aim at producing belief, it is plausible that their events are very unusual |
| Full Idea: Where such supernatural events are suitable to ends aim'd at by him who has the power to change the course of nature, they may be fitter to procure belief by how much more they are beyond or contrary to ordinary observation. | |||
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.16.13) | |||
| A reaction: On this occasion there is flat disagreement with Hume, who produced a famous objection to the whole idea of miracles. Locke is struggling here, since he is defending events which are totally contrary to the rest of his epistemology. |