Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Substance and Individuation in Leibniz', 'Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed)' and 'Implications'

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6 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 2. Imagination

7721	Locke's view that thoughts are made of ideas asserts the crucial role of imagination [Locke]
	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.

15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 4. Objectification

12476	Every external object or internal idea suggests to us the idea of unity [Locke]
	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 [Locke]
	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.

15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 5. Generalisation by mind

9083	The mind creates abstractions by generalising about appearances of objects, ignoring time or place [Locke]
	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 [Locke]
	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.

15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 8. Remembering Contiguity

12528	If a man sees a friend die in a room, he associates the pain with the room [Locke]
	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.