display all the ideas for this combination of texts
39 ideas
| 12498 | Particular substances are coexisting ideas that seem to flow from a hidden essence [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke, by Jones,J-E] |
| 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 [Locke, by Jolley] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 12510 | Not all identity is unity of substance [Locke] |
| 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?]. |
| 11155 | Essence is the very being of any thing, whereby it is what it is [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 12560 | We can only slightly know necessary co-existence of qualities, if they are primary [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke, by Pasnau] |
| 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 [Locke, by Jones,J-E] |
| 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 [Locke, by Copi] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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? [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke, by Jones,J-E] |
| 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' [Locke, by Eagle] |
| 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 [Locke, by Copi] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 15644 | In nominal essence, Locke confuses the set of properties with the abstracted idea of them [Eagle on Locke] |
| 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. |
| 12537 | To be a nominal essence, a complex idea must exhibit unity [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 16029 | Locke's real and nominal essence refers back to Aristotle's real and nominal definitions [Locke, by Jones,J-E] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke, by Jolley] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |