display all the ideas for this combination of texts
6 ideas
| 12499 | Bodies distinctively have cohesion of parts, and power to communicate motion [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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' [Locke] |
| 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) |