display all the ideas for this combination of texts
7 ideas
| 8546 | Powers are part of our idea of substances [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 23468 | Apart from the facts, there is only substance [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Substance is what remains independently of what is the case. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.024) | |
| A reaction: He sees what is the case as comprised of objects, so substance is even more basic. It seems close to Spinoza's single-substance view. |
| 1196 | We can conceive of three sorts of substance: God, finite intelligence, and bodies [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke, by Pasnau] |
| 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. |