411 ideas
| 21875 | The wisdom of a free man is a meditation on life, not on death [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation on life, not on death. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 67) | |
| A reaction: Life and death are not so easy to separate. You could hardly be wise about life if you didn't incorporate its finite duration into your wisdom. |
| 17230 | If we are not wholly wise, we should live by good rules and maxims [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The best thing we can do, so long as we lack a perfect knowledge of our feelings, is to conceive a right rule of life, or sure maxims of life - to commit these to memory, and constantly apply these to particular cases. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the role of folk wisdom - to try to plant guidance in the heads of the not-so-wise. |
| 9438 | Maybe analysis seeks the 'nominal essence', and metaphysics seeks the 'real essence' [Locke, by Mumford] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 17200 | We must be careful to keep words distinct from ideas and images [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It is necessary that we should distinguish between ideas and the words by which things are signified. ...Images, words, and ideas are by many people altogether confounded. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) |
| 17194 | Reason only explains what is universal, so it is timeless, under a certain form of eternity [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The foundations of reason are notions which explain those things which are common to all, and these things explain the essence of no individual thing, and must therefore be conceived without any relation to time, but under a certain form of eternity. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 44) | |
| A reaction: You have to be totally inspired by this even if you totally disagree with it. |
| 4840 | Reason perceives things under a certain form of eternity [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It is in the nature of reason to perceive things under a certain form of eternity ('sub quadam aeternitatis specie'). | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 44) | |
| A reaction: A wonderful, and justly famous, remark. If you don't feel the force (and poetry!) of this, you aren't a philosopher. It is not only appealing, but I don't see how it can fail to be true. Try producing good reasons which only have temporary force. |
| 17213 | In so far as men live according to reason, they will agree with one another [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men necessarily always agree with one another in so far as they live according to the guidance of reason. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: I think this was my earliest motivation for getting interested in philosophy. Oddly, the Socratic tradition of philosophy is to challenge and criticise, but the aim is agreement. I sort of believe this idea, despite its wild idealism. |
| 12526 | Opposition to reason is mad [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 4819 | There is necessarily for each existent thing a cause why it should exist [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: There is necessarily for each existent thing a cause why it should exist. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 08 n2) | |
| A reaction: The obvious response is 'how do you know that?' It has to the sort of a priori commitment we expect from a rationalist philosopher. It seems to me quite an appealing candidate for an axiom of human understanding. |
| 12538 | Genus is a partial conception of species, and species a partial idea of individuals [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke, by Pasnau] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 21864 | Truth is its own standard [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Truth is its own standard. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 43S) | |
| A reaction: A gloriously bold solution to all the problems of epistemology. Read the whole of P43S to see the context. |
| 8018 | Spinoza's life shows that love of truth which he proclaims as the highest value [MacIntyre on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza's life unites philosophy and practice; he manifests that very impersonal love of truth which he proclaims in his writings as the highest human value. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: Spinoza has become a secular saint in our times. If the big three values are Beauty, Goodness and Truth, why should the third be given top status? I once heard a philosopher say that truth was the only value. |
| 12549 | Nothing is so beautiful to the eye as truth is to the mind [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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!' |
| 5641 | For Spinoza, 'adequacy' is the intrinsic mark of truth [Spinoza, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: For Spinoza, the intrinsic mark of truth is the property which he calls 'adequacy'. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy §5.6 | |
| A reaction: This is presumably the sort of theory to which early rationalists were confined, and it seems to be no advance on Descartes' 'clear and distinct conceptions'. I take it that the coherence theory is a better account of what they were after. |
| 4816 | A true idea must correspond with its ideate or object [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A true idea must correspond with its ideate or object. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Ax 6) | |
| A reaction: Allowing for his usage of 'idea' and 'object', this seems to be a straightforward commitment to the modern correspondence theory, perhaps the earliest clear statement of it. I agree with him. |
| 8084 | Syllogisms are verbal fencing, not discovery [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 20309 | If our ideas are adequate, what follows from them is also adequate [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Whatever ideas follow in the mind from ideas which are adequate in the mind are also adequate. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 40) | |
| A reaction: This appears to be Modus Ponens, and he calls it (in Sch 1) 'the foundations of our reasoning'. If 'adequate' ideas are knowledge, then this also seems to say that knowledge is closed under known implication. |
| 10055 | Mathematical proofs work, irrespective of whether the objects exist [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 17185 | Mathematics deals with the essences and properties of forms [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Mathematics does not deal with ends, but with the essences and properties of forms (figures), …and has placed before us another rule of truth. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: Just what I need - a nice clear assertion of essentialism in mathematics. Many say maths is all necessary, so essence is irrelevant, but I say explanations occur in mathematics, and that points to essentialism. |
| 17222 | The sum of its angles follows from a triangle's nature [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It follows from the nature of a triangle that its three angles are equal to two right angles. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 57) | |
| A reaction: This is the essentialist view of mathematics, which I take to be connected to explanation, which I take to be connected to the direction of explanation. |
| 17197 | The idea of a triangle involves truths about it, so those are part of its essence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The idea of the triangle must involve the affirmation that its three angles are equal to two right angles. Therefore this affirmation pertains to the essence of the idea of a triangle. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) | |
| A reaction: This seems to say that the essence is what is inescapable when you think of something. Does that mean that brandy is part of the essence of Napoleon? (Presumably not) Spinoza is ignoring the direction of explanation here. |
| 12488 | The idea of 'one' is the simplest, most obvious and most widespread idea [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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? |
| 17174 | Outside the mind, there are just things and their properties [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Outside the intellect, there is nothing but substances and their affections. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 04) | |
| A reaction: This is pretty close to the very sparse ontology espoused by modern philosophers who take their lead from the logic. |
| 17176 | The more reality a thing has, the more attributes it has [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The more reality or being a thing possesses, the more attributes belong to it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 09) | |
| A reaction: This commitment to degrees of existence (which I find baffling) is presumably to enable God to be the thing with infinite attributes, and an infinite degree of Being. What percentage of Being would you say you've got (on a good day)? |
| 8910 | General and universal are not real entities, but useful inventions of the mind, concerning words or ideas [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 17179 | There must always be a reason or cause why some triangle does or does not exist [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If a triangle exists, there must be a reason or cause why it exists; and if it does not exist, there must be a reason or cause which hinders its existence or which negates it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 11) | |
| A reaction: Hm. Spinoza is setting up a defence of the ontological argument, which seems to require that he lower his normal high standards of argument. |
| 12554 | Existences can only be known by experience [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 17186 | Men say they prefer order, not realising that we imagine the order [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men prefer order to confusion, as if order were something in nature apart from our own imagination. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) |
| 12502 | Comparisons boil down to simple elements of sensation or reflection [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 20127 | Laws of nature are universal, so everything must be understood through those laws [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Nature's laws ....are everywhere and always the same; so that there should be one and the same method of understanding the nature of all things whatsoever, namely through nature's universal laws and rules. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pref) | |
| A reaction: Leiter calls this Methodological Naturalism, which says that the procedures and findings of philosophy should conform to those of science. I think I'm also a Substantive Naturalist, who says 'that's all there is'. |
| 12516 | Obscure simple ideas result from poor senses, brief impressions, or poor memory [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 17170 | An 'attribute' is what the intellect takes as constituting an essence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By 'attribute' I understand that which the intellect perceives of substance, as if constituting its essence. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 4) | |
| A reaction: Note that we would call these 'properties', but Spinoza has a word reserved for the properties of essences. He also has 'modes' of a thing, which are different. |
| 17171 | A 'mode' is an aspect of a substance, and conceived through that substance [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By 'mode' I understand the affections [affectiones] of substance, or that which is in another thing through which also it is conceived. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 5) | |
| A reaction: The attributes actually make up the essential consitution of the thing, and then the modes are entirely dependent on that essence. This is thoroughly Aristotelian, even though 'substantial forms' had been given up by this date. |
| 12477 | We get the idea of power from our own actions, and the interaction of external bodies [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 12490 | Power is active or passive, and has a relation to actions [Locke] |
| 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? |
| 12521 | We can only know a thing's powers when we have combined it with many things [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 17195 | Things persevere through a force which derives from God [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The force by which each thing perseveres in its existence follows from the eternal necessity of the nature of God. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 45) | |
| A reaction: This I take to be an ontology of fundamental powers, but with divine backing, similar to that found in Leibniz. Modern powers theorists leave out God, since it doesn't seem to add anything. [Is this the idea of 'conatus'?] Darwin can't explain the force. |
| 15974 | The essence of whiteness in a man is nothing but the power to produce the idea of whiteness [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 17206 | The essence of a thing is its effort to persevere [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The effort by which each thing endeavours to persevere in its own being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing itself. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 07) | |
| A reaction: This is exactly the sort of thing that Leibniz frequently said. They were much more conscious of the active power of essences than in the scholastic tradition. This is Nietzsche's will to power. Spinoza talks of 'power' in his demonstration of this. |
| 15976 | What is the texture - the real essence - which makes substances behave in distinct ways? [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke, by Alexander,P] |
| 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 [Robinson,H on Locke] |
| 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. |
| 17192 | The 'universal' term 'man' is just imagining whatever is the same in a multitude of men [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Confused notions called 'universal', such as 'man', have arisen because so many images of individual men are formed that they exceed the power of imagination, ...so it imagines that only in which all of them agree, ...expressed by the name 'man'. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 40) | |
| A reaction: [very compressed] This strikes me as correct. I don't see how you can discuss universals without bringing in the way in which human psychology operates. |
| 7717 | All things that exist are particulars [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [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) |
| 17188 | A thing is unified if its parts produce a single effect [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If a number of individuals so unite in one action that they are all simultaneously the cause of one effect, I consider them all, so far, as one individual thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Def 7) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. If a mob burn down a town, is that one effect, making the mob one thing? If a ball breaks a window, is that one effect, or a multitude of knock-on effects? Spinoza's view is very coarse-grained. |
| 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. |
| 5639 | Spinoza implies that thought is impossible without the notion of substance [Spinoza, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Without the notion of substance, according to Spinoza, thought itself becomes impossible. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy §5.2 | |
| A reaction: Spinoza's strategy here looks like the right way to approach metaphysics. To what extent is it possible to change our conceptual scheme? Quine seems to imply that there is no limit; Davidson seems to imply that it is impossible. |
| 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) |
| 21857 | Substance is the power of self-actualisation [Spinoza, by Lord] |
| Full Idea: For Spinoza a substance is not a 'thing', but the power of actualising its own existence. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 08) by Beth Lord - Spinoza's Ethics 1 P11 | |
| A reaction: Does this say anything? |
| 4813 | Substance is that of which an independent conception can be formed [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By substance I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself; in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 3) | |
| A reaction: A striking blurring of epistemology and ontology. He eventually settles for it being a concept rather than a fact of nature. It still begs a thousand questions, but it probably leads to monads and logical atoms. |
| 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. |
| 12507 | A mass consists of its atoms, so the addition or removal of one changes its identity [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 4828 | The essence of a thing is what is required for it to exist or be conceived [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Many assert that that without which a thing cannot be nor be conceived, belongs to the essence of that thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: This is one Aristotelian idea that won't go away, despite the seventeenth century onslaught. It seems obvious that natural kinds, natural objects and human artefacts have properties that can be divided into essential and non-essential. |
| 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. |
| 17187 | Essence gives existence and conception to things, and is inseparable from them [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: To the essence of anything pertains ...that without which the thing can neither be nor be conceived, and which in its turn cannot be nor be conceived without the thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Def 2) | |
| A reaction: Note that essence concerns not only what things are, but also our ability to conceive them. |
| 17191 | Nothing is essential if it is in every part, and is common to everything [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: That which is common to everything, and which is equally in the part and in the whole, forms the essence of no individual thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 37) | |
| A reaction: I like this, because treating essences as mere necessary properties threatens to include utter trivia and universal generalities, just because they are necessary. Rejecting things as 'trivial' by stipulation won't do. |
| 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. |
| 17184 | All natures of things produce some effect [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Nothing exists from whose nature an effect does not follow. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 36) | |
| A reaction: I take it that this is because it is analytic that essences produce effects, since that is the point of the concept of an essence - as the source of the explanations of the effects. |
| 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. |
| 12503 | Identity means that the idea of a thing remains the same over time [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 17205 | Only an external cause can destroy something [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing cannot be destroyed except by an external cause. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 04) |
| 16795 | Same person, man or substance are different identities, belonging to different ideas [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 17175 | There cannot be two substances with the same attributes [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: In nature there cannot be two or more substances of the same nature or attribute. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 05) | |
| A reaction: This is the Identity of Indiscernibles. |
| 17173 | Two substances can't be the same if they have different attributes [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Two substances having different attributes have nothing in common with one another. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 02) | |
| A reaction: This is the contrapositive of Leibniz's Law (i.e of the Indiscernibility of Identicals). Same things must have same attributes, so if the attributes differ they can't be the same things. |
| 17183 | Things are impossible if they imply contradiction, or their production lacks an external cause [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing is said to be impossible either because the essence of the thing itself or its definition involves a contradiction, or because no external cause exists determinate to the production of such a thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: Is the contradiction in nature or in logic? How can he be sure that there doesn't exist some causeless thing? |
| 4299 | Contingency is an illusion, resulting from our inadequate understanding [Spinoza, by Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: The common notion of 'contingency' is for Spinoza an illusion, which derives from the fact that our view of reality is often inadequate and incomplete. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by John Cottingham - The Rationalists p.8 | |
| A reaction: The crux is if there could another universe with different natural laws. Spinoza is in no position to deny the possibility. Cosmologists assume it is possible, and run computer simulations to test it. There is 'metaphysical' and 'natural' necessity. |
| 4824 | We only call things 'contingent' in relation to the imperfection of our knowledge [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing can in no respect be called contingent, save in relation to the imperfection of our knowledge. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: A very good remark. Growing up is largely a realisation of the necessity of human affairs that you thought could be otherwise. (Forgive the pessimism!) As metaphysics, I find this appealing, too. |
| 4839 | Reason naturally regards things as necessary, and only imagination considers them contingent [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It is not in the nature of reason to regard things as contingent, but as necessary; ..hence, it is only through our imagination that we consider things, whether in respect to the future or to the past, as contingent. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 44) | |
| A reaction: A very interesting claim, which seems to be central to rationalism. The empiricist response must be that imagination (which is founded on experience) is a better guide to metaphysical status than pure reason can ever be. |
| 4822 | Divine nature makes all existence and operations necessary, and nothing is contingent [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: All things are conditioned by the necessity of the divine nature, not only to exist, but also to exist and operate in a particular manner, and there is nothing that is contingent. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 29) | |
| A reaction: This obviously invites the response of the empiricist: how does he know that? Hume says he can't know it, and Leibniz says he knows it a priori. Traditionally, 'necessary' is the dubious term, but maybe it is 'contingent' which is meaningless. |
| 17182 | Necessity is in reference to essence or to cause [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing is called necessary either in reference to its essence or its cause. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: I like any proposal that necessity should be 'in reference to' something, rather than being free-standing. I like to add necessary 'for' something, which is often conceptual necessity. Roots are necessary for trees. |
| 12553 | Some of our ideas contain relations which we cannot conceive to be absent [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 4818 | People who are ignorant of true causes imagine anything can change into anything else [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Those who are ignorant of true causes make complete confusion - thinking that trees might talk just as well as men, that men might be formed from stones as well as seed, and imagine that any form might be changed into any other. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 08 n2) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza himself can be guilty of this, but it strikes me as a key idea. Humean scepticism about causation seems to me the product of eighteenth century ignorance about the mechanisms of cause and effect which have since been uncovered by science. |
| 20310 | Error does not result from imagining, but from lacking the evidence of impossibility [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind does not err from the fact that it imagines, but only insofar as it is considered to lack an idea which excludes the existence of those things which it imagines to be present to it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 17 s) | |
| A reaction: These may be the wisest words I have yet found on conceivability and possibility. My example is imagining a bonfire on the moon, which seems possible until you fully grasp what fire is. |
| 17208 | A horse would be destroyed if it were changed into a man or an insect [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A horse would as much be destroyed if it were changed into a man as if it were changed into an insect. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pref) | |
| A reaction: He has been referring to essences of things. What if a shire horse is changed into a Shetland pony? If you watched the horse transmute, it would be continuous in a way that two separate creatures are not. Some sort of sameness there. |
| 17209 | A thing is contingent if nothing in its essence determines whether or not it exists [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I call individual things contingent in so far as we discover nothing, whilst we attend to their essence alone, which necessarily posits their existence or which necessarily excludes it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Def 3) | |
| A reaction: So something could have an essence which determined that it could not exist, which is presumably a contradiction. That's a very strange sort of essence. Presumably all intrinsically contradictory essences are in some way the same. |
| 12544 | Our knowledge falls short of the extent of our own ideas [Locke] |
| 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! |
| 5640 | Spinoza's three levels of knowledge are perception/imagination, then principles, then intuitions [Spinoza, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: For Spinoza there are three levels of knowledge: first, sense perception or imagination, second, reasoned reflection leading to principles, and third (the highest), intuition, in which the adequacy of an idea is immediately known. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy §5.6 | |
| A reaction: This notion of rising levels of knowledge has an obvious background in Plato. The third level is clearly rationalist, where empiricists would probably never aspire to rise above level two. I share the empiricist suspicion of level three. |
| 17211 | Understanding is the sole aim of reason, and the only profit for the mind [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: All efforts which we make through reason are nothing but efforts to understand, and the mind, in so far as it uses reason, adjudges nothing as profitable to itself excepting that which conduces to understanding. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 26) | |
| A reaction: I wish philosophers would agree that the aim of their subject is to achieve broad and general understanding of reality - and nothing else. If you want to change the world, that isn't philosophy. If you think understanding is impossible, drop philosophy. |
| 12574 | When two ideas agree in my mind, I cannot refuse to see and know it [Locke] |
| 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). |
| 21801 | Unlike Descartes' atomism, Spinoza held a holistic view of belief [Spinoza, by Schmid] |
| Full Idea: Unlike Descartes, who held an atomist theory of belief (that we can assent to a belief quite independently of our other beliefs), Spinoza endorsed a holistic theory of belief - that our degree of affirmation is essentially determined by our other ideas. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49S) by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 3 | |
| A reaction: Since I am a fan of the coherence theory of justification, I seem obligated to accept a fairly holistic account of the acceptance of beliefs. Descartes is a foundationalist. |
| 17193 | True ideas intrinsically involve the highest degree of certainty [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: No one who has a true idea is ignorant that a true idea involves the highest certitude; to have a true idea signifying just this, to know a thing perfectly or as well as possible. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 43) | |
| A reaction: This wildly optimistic view is found in rationalists of the period. Rationalism only becomes tolerable if fallibilism is added to it. See Bonjour. |
| 21863 | You only know you are certain of something when you actually are certain of it [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Who can know that he understands some thing unless he first understands it? That is, who can know that he is certain about some thing unless he is first certain about it? | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 43S) | |
| A reaction: This seems to beg the question, which concerns how you get to the state of full understanding or certainty in the first place. Spinoza thinks only certainty counts as knowledge, which seems to derive from Descartes. I prefer Peirce. |
| 17199 | A man who assents without doubt to a falsehood is not certain, but lacks a cause to make him waver [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: When we say that a man assents to what is false and does not doubt it, we do not say that he is certain, but merely that he does not doubt, that is, that he assents to what is false, because there are no causes sufficient to make his imagination waver. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) | |
| A reaction: This is a seventeenth century rationalist desperate to say that the reason can deliver certainty, in the face of idiots who are totally certain about astrology, fairies and what not. Vain hope, I'm afraid. Fallibilist rationalism is required. |
| 15995 | The greatest certainty is knowing our own ideas, and that two ideas are different [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 5638 | 'I think' is useless, because it is contingent, and limited to the first person [Spinoza, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The proposition 'I think' was useless to Spinoza, because it expresses a merely contingent proposition, where certainty must be founded in necessity, and because it refers to the first person, when truth comes from rising above our own mentality. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: I find both of these criticisms very appealing. One might simply say that the starting point of philosophy is not the process of thinking, but the contents of thinking. Descartes' move is like astronomers becoming obsessed with telescopes. |
| 7570 | Innate ideas are trivial (if they are just potentials) or absurd (if they claim infants know a lot) [Locke, by Jolley] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 12481 | Hands can report conflicting temperatures, but not conflicting shapes [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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? |
| 15989 | Colours, smells and tastes are ideas; the secondary qualities have no colour, smell or taste [Locke, by Alexander,P] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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'. |
| 6725 | Locke believes matter is an inert, senseless substance, with extension, figure and motion [Locke, by Berkeley] |
| 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 [Locke, by Alexander,P] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke, by Heil] |
| 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) [Locke, by Alexander,P] |
| 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' [Locke, by Heil] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 4831 | If the body is affected by an external object, the mind can't help believing that the object exists [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If the human body is affected in a manner which involves the nature of any external body, the human mind will regard the said external body as actually existing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 17) | |
| A reaction: This is like one of Hume's 'natural beliefs', and seems to me a powerful idea. One of the basic questions of epistemology is, apart from the question 'which beliefs can I justify?', also 'which beliefs can I never abandon?' Skip the scepticism? |
| 12482 | Molyneux's Question: could a blind man distinguish cube from sphere, if he regained his sight? [Locke] |
| 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] |
| 4865 | The eyes of the mind are proofs [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The eyes of the mind … are none other than proofs. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 23) | |
| A reaction: A wonderful slogan for rationalists! Technically it sounds a bit dodgy, as steps seem to be required for a proof, whereas the eyes of the mind presumably offer a priori intuitions, or clear and distinct conceptions. In essence, he is right. |
| 7724 | All the ideas written on the white paper of the mind can only come from one place - experience [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 20306 | Once we have experienced two feelings together, one will always give rise to the other [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If the mind has once been affected by two affects at once, then afterwards, when it is affected by one of them, it will also be affected by the other. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr14) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as better expressed than Hume's version, which relies on examples. It is more generalised than Hume, since it will cover contiguity and resemblance and causation, all under the heading of the arising affects. |
| 12527 | Some ideas connect together naturally, while others connect by chance or custom [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke, by Dancy,J] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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! |
| 4835 | Anyone who knows, must know that they know, and even know that they know that they know.. [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If a man knows anything, he, by that very fact, knows that he knows it, and at the same time knows that he knows that he knows it, and so on to infinity. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 21) | |
| A reaction: A delightfully bold claim! This is 'super internalism', but it seems to require that we must be certain in order to know, whereas I think my own view is internalist but 'fallibilist' - I know, while admitting I could be wrong. |
| 15977 | Facts beyond immediate experience are assessed by agreement with known truths and observations [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 20308 | Encounters with things confuse the mind, and internal comparisons bring clarity [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind has only a confused knowledge of itself, its own body, and external bodies, as long as it is perceived from fortuitous encounters with things, ...and not internally, from the agreements, differences and oppositions of a number of things at once. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 29s) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is a very nice expression of the commitment to coherence as justification, typical of the rationalist view of things. Empiricists are trapped in an excessively atomistic concept of knowledge (one impression or sense datum at a time). |
| 2555 | For Locke knowledge relates to objects, not to propositions [Locke, by Rorty] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke, by Robinson,H] |
| 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. |
| 4312 | To understand a phenomenon, we must understand why it is necessary, not merely contingent [Spinoza, by Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: Adequate understanding of a phenomenon, for Spinoza, involves a complete understanding of its causes, and this in turn involves a dissolving of the illusion of contingency and a recognition of the necessity of its being thus and not otherwise. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by John Cottingham - The Rationalists p.168 | |
| A reaction: This is the appeal of the rationalist dream. We want a god-like grasp of things, not a superficial perception of what seems to be going on. |
| 16037 | Locke seems to use real essence for scientific explanation, and substratum for the being of a thing [Locke, by Jones,J-E] |
| 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 [Locke, by Jones,J-E] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 4833 | The human mind is the very idea or knowledge of the human body [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The human mind is the very idea or knowledge of the human body. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 19) | |
| A reaction: This is close to Aristotle's claim that the 'psuché' is the 'form' of the body. Spinoza is appealingly modern in his view. The mapping of the body (our prioprioceptic sense) strikes me as central to the nature of the mind. |
| 16198 | Knowledge is the essence of the mind [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The essence of our mind consists solely in knowledge. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 36 n) | |
| A reaction: This is in a context of discussing the human relation to God. See Keith Hossack's 'The Metaphysics of Knowledge' for an exploration of this idea. (@BenedictSpinoza came up with this one) |
| 17198 | Will and intellect are the same thing [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The will and the intellect are one and the same. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) |
| 17201 | The will is finite, but the intellect is infinite [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The will is distinguished from the intellect, the latter being finite, the former infinite. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) |
| 17196 | The will is not a desire, but the faculty of affirming what is true or false [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By the will I understand a faculty of affirming or denying, but not a desire; a faculty, I say, by which the mind affirms or denies that which is true or false. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 48) | |
| A reaction: This is to be compared with the empiricist tendency to say that there are nothing but desires. On the whole I'm with Spinoza here. Hobbes thinKs of actions in the world, but Spinoza sees the will as operating in the process of reasoning. |
| 12551 | We are satisfied that other men have minds, from their words and actions [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 21805 | Spinoza held that the mind is just a bundle of ideas [Spinoza, by Schmid] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza held a bundle theory of the mind, according to which our mind is but a bundle 'composed of a great many ideas'. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 15) by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 3 | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply that the mind lacks unity, and also lacks a Self. Spinoza doesn't say much about this view. |
| 17204 | Animals are often observed to be wiser than people [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Many things are observed in brutes which far surpass human sagacity. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 02) | |
| A reaction: Lovely - especially in an age when animals were being actively downgraded (e.g. by Descartes) in order to upgrade man. |
| 12483 | Unlike humans, animals cannot entertain general ideas [Locke] |
| 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'. |
| 17212 | To understand is the absolute virtue of the mind [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: To understand is the absolute virtue of the mind. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 28) | |
| A reaction: A possible epigraph for this website. Perhaps it should be required by law that this be printed on the frontispiece of every philosophy book ever published. |
| 5002 | Consciousness is the perception of what passes in a man's own mind [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 21804 | Faculties are either fictions, or the abstract universals of ideas [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Faculties are either complete fictions, or nothing but metaphysical beings or universals, which are used to forming from particulars (as 'stoneness' is to a stone). | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 48S), quoted by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 3 | |
| A reaction: So they are, at best, the sources of our concepts. Does that mean one faculty for each concept, or one huge concept-generating faculty? |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 4832 | If the body is affected by two things together, the imagining of one will conjure up the other [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If the human body has once been affected by two or more bodies at the same time, when the mind afterwards imagines any of them, it will straightway remember the other also. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 18) | |
| A reaction: Very interesting to see a great rationalist philosopher making an observation right at the heart of Hume's theory of knowledge (associationism). Clearly an associationist theory of psychology need not imply a materialist (connectionist) theory of mind. |
| 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. |
| 21869 | Our own force of persevering is nothing in comparison with external forces [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The force by which a man perserveres in existing is limited, and infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 03) | |
| A reaction: This states the obvious, but is important as a way of viewing things. I think Nietzsche's notion of Will to Power comes in here, as a unified account of both forces. |
| 20307 | As far as possible, everything tries to persevere [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its own being. ...[7] The striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 06) | |
| A reaction: This is covered by his word 'conatus'. Obviously this covers plants as well as sentient beings. Mountains have no power to persevere. Since Spinoza sees this as basic, he is not far from Nietzsche. |
| 21803 | The conatus (striving) of mind and body together is appetite, which is the essence of man [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: When striving [conatus] is related to the Mind it is called Will, but when related to the Mind and Body it is called Appetite. This Appetite is the essence of man, from whose nature there necessarily follow those things that promote this preservation. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 09S), quoted by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 3 | |
| A reaction: Spinoza seems to see 'conatus' as a fairly unified thing, where Nietzsche sees the will to power as a combination of many competing 'drives'. I think Nietzsche is closer to the truth. |
| 5512 | Locke uses 'self' for a momentary entity, and 'person' for an extended one [Locke, by Martin/Barresi] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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? |
| 4836 | The mind only knows itself by means of ideas of the modification of the body [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind does not know itself, except in so far as it perceives the ideas of the modifications of the body. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 29) | |
| A reaction: This is reminiscent of Hume's 'bundle of perceptions' report of introspection. It is in tune with a modern 'animalist' view of a person, and with a view of the mind as a map of the body and its environs. Is he a sceptic about personal identity? |
| 21861 | Self-knowledge needs perception of the affections of the body [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind does not know itself except in so far as it perceives the ideas of the affections of the body. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 23) | |
| A reaction: 'The ideas of the affections of the body' seems to be twice removed from the actual body, so I am not crystal clear what this says. The idea of knowing yourself with no involvement at all of the body seems absurd. |
| 17216 | The poet who forgot his own tragedies was no longer the same man [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Sometimes a man undergoes such changes that he cannot very well be said to be the same man, as was the case with a certain Spanish poet ...who was so oblivious of his past life that he did not believe the tales and tragedies he had composed were his own. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 39) | |
| A reaction: This seems to need Locke's distinction between 'man' and 'person', since the poor poet was clearly the same human being. Spinoza places huge emphasis on the intellect as the essence of the man. |
| 5175 | Personal identity is my perceptions, but not my memory, as I forget too much [Ayer on Locke] |
| 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 [Reid on Locke] |
| 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 [Reid on Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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? [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke, by Martin/Barresi] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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) [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke, by Noonan] |
| 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 [Merricks on Locke] |
| 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 [Kant on Locke] |
| 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 [Butler on Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Reid on Locke] |
| 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? [Locke] |
| 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? [Reid on Locke] |
| 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 [Reid on Locke] |
| 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 [Perry on Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 4814 | A thing is free if it acts by necessity of its own nature, and the act is determined by itself alone [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: That thing is called free which exists solely by the necessity of its own nature, and of which the action is determined by itself alone. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 7) | |
| A reaction: This points to the obvious thought that nothing is independent enough to achieve freedom. Our concept of nature is of almost endless interdependence. God seems the only thing that could possibly qualify, though some might say humans could. |
| 3792 | We are free to decide not to follow our desires [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 21802 | An act of will can only occur if it has been caused, which implies a regress of causes [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Each volition can neither exist nor be determined to produce an effect unless it is determined by another cause, and this cause again by another, and so on, to infinity. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 32), quoted by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 3 | |
| A reaction: Acts of will are usually responses to situations, so it seems a bit simplistic to think that they are all spontaneous sui generis causal events. That argument won't work, of course, for a random volition that is out of context. |
| 4837 | 'Free will' is a misunderstanding arising from awareness of our actions, but ignorance of their causes [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are conditioned. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: I have recently come to totally agree with this. The whole concept of free will seems to me incoherent, and Spinoza pinpoints the error. We aren't equipped to know the origins of the thoughts that arrive in our consciousnesses. |
| 4843 | Would we die if we lacked free will, and were poised between equal foods? Yes! [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It may be objected, if a man does not act from free will, what will happen if the incentives to action are equally balanced, as in the case of Buridan's ass? Will he perish of hunger and thirst. ..Personally I am ready to admit that he would die. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) | |
| A reaction: A nicely defiant way of demonstrating his rejection of free will. I have to agree with him. Even if there were such a thing as 'free will', it is hard to see how it could act as a tie-breaker. Which way would it freely decide? |
| 4844 | The mind is not free to remember or forget anything [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It is not within the free power of the mind to remember or forget a thing at will. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 02) | |
| A reaction: An interesting little corrective if you were thinking that your total control over you mind proved that you had free will. Once you face up to your lack of control of the memory process, you begin to realise how little of your mind even feels controlled. |
| 12494 | Men are not free to will, because they cannot help willing [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 4311 | We think we are free because we don't know the causes of our desires and choices [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men think themselves free because they are conscious of their volitions and their appetites, yet never give a thought to the causes which dispose them to desire or to exercise the will as they do, since they are wholly unaware of them. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) | |
| A reaction: This encapsulates the determinist idea nicely. In the end we just choose, but we have no idea why we prefer one reason to another, or simply opt for one thing rather than another. |
| 7828 | The actual world is the only one God could have created [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: Said to be a "notorious" proposition. This is a key idea in philosophy because it represents (like solipsism) one of the extremes - there is no such thing as contingency, and that all things are necessary. It is daft not to take Spinoza seriously on this. |
| 12492 | Liberty is a power of agents, so can't be an attribute of wills [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 21860 | Ideas and things have identical connections and order [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 07) | |
| A reaction: I hadn't registered until Beth Lord pointed it out that this is Spinoza's parallelism of the mental and the physicalism, which seems to be roughly the same as the views of Leibniz and Malebranche, but with a different explanation. |
| 4308 | Mind and body are one thing, seen sometimes as thought and sometimes as extension [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind and the body are one and the same individual which is conceived now under the attribute of thought, now under the attribute of extension. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) | |
| A reaction: I suppose we might now call this 'property dualism'. It is odd that when you examine one property, the other is nowhere to be seen. |
| 4846 | We are incapable of formulating an idea which excludes the existence of our body [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: An idea which excludes the existence of our body cannot be postulated in our mind, but is contrary thereto. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: A fascinating claim. At the heart of Descartes is an unspoken thought experiment exploring the possibility of a disembodied mind. This is a beautiful challenge to the very concept of such a thing, and points to a grealty superior theory of mind. |
| 7840 | For all we know, an omnipotent being might have enabled material beings to think [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 4834 | Mind and body are the same thing, sometimes seen as thought, and sometimes as extension [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The idea of body and body, that is, mind and body, are one and the same individual conceived now under the attribute of thought, now under the attribute of extension. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 21) | |
| A reaction: This is an appealingly modern view, but a bit glib. Phenomenologically, the mind seen as thought and the body seen as extension are about as wildly different as it is possible to be. This needs explanation. |
| 23951 | Emotion is a modification of bodily energy, controlling our actions [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By emotion [affectus] I understand the modification of energy of the body by which the power of action is aided or restrained. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]), quoted by Robert C. Solomon - The Passions 3.4 | |
| A reaction: [no ref given] Solomon gives this as the earliest version of the 'hydraulic' model of emotions, later found in Freud and Jung. Very unusual to give a wholly physical account of these psychic states. |
| 4849 | The three primary emotions are pleasure, pain and desire [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I recognise only three primitive or primary emotions, namely, pleasure, pain and desire. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IIIEm Df 4) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, but hard to justify. Presumably one can analyse fear as desire for no pain, and grief as desire for the return of pleasure, etc. It is a nice exercise in introspective psychology, but I don't feel much wiser for it. |
| 23990 | The three primary emotions are pleasure, pain, and desire [Spinoza, by Goldie] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza held that the three primary emotions are pleasure, pain, and desire | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III P59) by Peter Goldie - The Emotions 4 'Evidence' | |
| A reaction: If you are aiming for a minimal list, this is quite good. One active, one good passive, one bad passive. Output and input. |
| 17203 | Minds are subject to passions if they have inadequate ideas [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind is subject to passions in proportion to the number of inadequate ideas which it has. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 01) | |
| A reaction: An exceptionally intellectualist view of emotions! |
| 4864 | An emotion is only bad if it hinders us from thinking [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: An emotion is only bad or hurtful, in so far as it hinders the mind from being able to think. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 09) | |
| A reaction: This sounds sensible. It fits Spinoza's quasi-stoicism that he should be happy with emotion (as natural), but also that true 'living by nature' requires control by reason. Only a wild romantic would think emotion better than judgement as a guide. |
| 7832 | Stoics want to suppress emotions, but Spinoza overcomes them with higher emotions [Spinoza, by Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza says the only way to overcome emotions is with higher emotions, thus distinguishing himself from the Stoics, who argued that the only thing to do with the surly crowd of human emotions is to have them all shot. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: The modern view would certainly be that the Stoics were responsible for massive problems in European civilization (thought the Buddhist have similar views). Emotions are now seen as integral even to very pure reasoning. |
| 4863 | An emotion comes more under our control in proportion to how well it is known to us [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: An emotion becomes more under our control, and the mind is less passive in respect to it, in proportion as it is more known to us. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 03) | |
| A reaction: This may sound a little optimistic, but it is also obviously true, in the sense that the only proper control we have of our own behaviour is through thought and judgement, which presuppose awareness of what needs controlling. |
| 4841 | People make calculation mistakes by misjudging the figures, not calculating them wrongly [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: When men make mistakes in calculation, they have one set of figures in their mind, and another on the paper. If we could see into their minds, they do not make a mistake. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 47) | |
| A reaction: A wonderfully optimistic assertion of faith in reason! He seems to imply an infallibility in reason, which seems a bit implausible. If I make 7+6=14, MUST I have muddled the 6 with a 7? Presumably Spinoza was good at arithmetic. |
| 6712 | For Locke, abstract ideas are our main superiority of understanding over animals [Locke, by Berkeley] |
| 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. |
| 21807 | Ideas are powerful entities, which can produce further ideas [Spinoza, by Schmid] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza conceives of ideas as intrinsically powerful entities, which have a capacity to produce further ideas. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 6 | |
| A reaction: Is the idea the source of the entire philosophy of Hegel? I find Hegel's claim to infer huge chains of ideas from very simple origins quite implausible. I also rather doubt whether a wholly isolated idea can produce a further idea. |
| 4830 | An 'idea' is a mental conception which is actively formed by the mind in thinking [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By 'idea', I mean the mental conception which is formed by the mind as a thinking thing (this is not a passive perception with regard to the object, but expresses an activity of the mind). | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Def 3) | |
| A reaction: This is interesting as a seventeenth century attempt to grapple with the nature of thought. Spinoza sees it as of the essence of mind, since it is what the mind contributes, rather than what happens to the mind when it experiences. |
| 4842 | Ideas are not images formed in the brain, but are the conceptions of thought [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By ideas I do not mean images such as are formed at the back of the eye, or in the midst of the brain, but the conceptions of thought. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 48) | |
| A reaction: This appears to be equating 'ideas' with what we now call 'concepts', which presumably makes Spinoza less open to criticism than other philosophers of his time, for postulating baffling mental copies of the world. |
| 12496 | Complex ideas are all resolvable into simple ideas [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 15967 | The word 'idea' covers thinking best, for imaginings, concepts, and basic experiences [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 20311 | An idea involves affirmation or negation [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: An idea, insofar as it is an idea, involves an affirmation or negation. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49 sII) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza clearly distinguishes ideas from images, and here seems to identify ideas with propositions. Nowadays we say these are 'true or false', but Spinoza is more personal and psychological. I prefer his way of putting it. |
| 12475 | All our ideas derive either from sensation, or from inner reflection [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 4309 | Spinoza argues that in reality the will and the intellect are 'one and the same' [Spinoza, by Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza argues that in reality the will and the intellect are 'one and the same'. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by John Cottingham - The Rationalists p.159 | |
| A reaction: The 'will' is certainly a dubious concept, though it seems involved with desire and actual. In a sense, I suppose, all pursuits of reason are acts of will. |
| 4838 | Claiming that actions depend on the will is meaningless; no one knows what the will is [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Saying that human actions depend on the will is a mere phrase without any idea to correspond to. What the will is, and how it moves the body, no one knows. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: As so often, the rationalist Spinoza agrees with many empiricists about this one. If there is no such thing as the will, then there isn't much prospect of it being free, thought one might talk about 'freedom of thought' instead. |
| 20305 | Whenever we act, then desire is our very essence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Desire is man's very essence, insofar as it is agreed to be determined, from any affection of it, to do something. ...Desire is appetite, together with the consciousness of it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Def of Aff I) | |
| A reaction: [I think that is the gist of it!] This sounds a bit circular, but seems to say that actions are almost entireoy the expression of desires. |
| 21868 | We love or hate people more strongly because we think they are free [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Because men consider themselves to be free, they have a greater love or hate toward one another than toward other things. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 49S) | |
| A reaction: A very penetrating remark. If we abandon the concept of free will, I suspect that we will all become much more easy-going and tolerant, but the thought that feelings of love might also decline is a sobering one. |
| 17202 | We are the source of an action if only our nature can explain the action [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I say that we act when anything is done, either within us or without us, of which we are the adequate cause, that is to say, when from our nature anything follows which by that nature alone can be clearly and distinctly understood. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Def 2) | |
| A reaction: I like that one a lot. The point is to get a concept of responsibility that doesn't need free will, and to distinguish the thief from the kleptomaniac. Does kleptomania derive from a person's true nature? Essentialism in action. |
| 21865 | We act when it follows from our nature, and is understood in that way [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: We act when something in us or outside us follows from our nature, which can be clearly and distinctly understood through this alone. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Def2) | |
| A reaction: I like this, because it links actions to our essential natures, and because it focuses on understanding the action, which must involve explaining the action. This is the root of responsibility, not something called 'free will'. BUT SEE 17202. |
| 8122 | True works of art transmit completely new feelings [Tolstoy] |
| Full Idea: Only that is a true work of art which transmits fresh feelings not previously experienced by man. | |
| From: Leo Tolstoy (What is Art? [1898], Ch.9) | |
| A reaction: I think a great composer will probably not have any new feelings at all, but will discover new expressions which contain feelings by which even they are surprised (e.g. the Tristan chord). |
| 8121 | Art is when one man uses external signs to hand on his feelings to another man [Tolstoy] |
| Full Idea: Art is a human activity in which one man consciously by means of external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and other are infected by those feelings, and also experience them. | |
| From: Leo Tolstoy (What is Art? [1898], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Such definitions always work better for some art forms than for others. This may fit 'Anna Karenin' quite well, but probably not Bach's 'Art of Fugue'. Writing obscenities on someone's front door would fit this definition. |
| 8124 | The highest feelings of mankind can only be transmitted by art [Tolstoy] |
| Full Idea: The highest feelings to which mankind has attained can only be transmitted from man to man by art. | |
| From: Leo Tolstoy (What is Art? [1898], Ch.17) | |
| A reaction: We are much more nervous these days of talking about 'highest' feelings. Tolstoy obviously considers religion to be an ingredient of the highest feelings, but that prevents us from judging them purely as feelings. Music is the place to rank feelings. |
| 8123 | The purpose of art is to help mankind to evolve better, more socially beneficial feelings [Tolstoy] |
| Full Idea: The evolution of feeling proceeds by means of art - feelings less kind and less necessary for the well-being of mankind being replaced by others kinder and more needful for that end. That is the purpose of art. | |
| From: Leo Tolstoy (What is Art? [1898], Ch.16) | |
| A reaction: Underneath his superficially expressivist view of art, Tolstoy is really an old-fashioned moralist about it, like Dr Johnson. This is the moralism of the great age of the nineteenth century novel (which was, er, the greatest age of the novel!). |
| 22710 | People estimate art according to their moral values [Tolstoy] |
| Full Idea: The estimation of the value of art …depends on men's perception of the meaning of life; depends on what they hold to be the good and evil of life. | |
| From: Leo Tolstoy (What is Art? [1898]), quoted by Iris Murdoch - The Sublime and the Good p.206 | |
| A reaction: [No ref given] This is put to the test by the insightful depiction of wickedness. We condemn the wickedness and admire the insight. Every reading of a novel is a moral journey, though I'm not sure how the true psychopath reads a novel. |
| 8125 | The upper classes put beauty first, and thus freed themselves from morality [Tolstoy] |
| Full Idea: The people of the upper class, more and more frequently encountering the contradictions between beauty and goodness, put the ideal of beauty first, thus freeing themselves from the demands of morality. | |
| From: Leo Tolstoy (What is Art? [1898], Ch.17) | |
| A reaction: The rich are a great deal freer to pursue the demands of beauty than are the poor. They also have a tradition of 'immorality' (such as duels and adultery) which was in place long before they discovered art. |
| 8064 | We separate the concept of beauty from goodness, unlike the ancients [Tolstoy] |
| Full Idea: The ancients had not that conception of beauty separated from goodness which forms the basis and aim of aesthetics in our time. | |
| From: Leo Tolstoy (What is Art? [1898], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: This is written at around the time of the Aesthetic Movement, but Tolstoy's own novels are intensely moral. This separation makes abstract painting possible. |
| 4130 | There couldn't be a moral rule of which a man could not justly demand a reason [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 21873 | Men only agree in nature if they are guided by reason [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Only insofar as men live according to the guidance of reason, must they always agree in nature. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: A nice expression of the guiding idea of the Enlightenment - that consensus is the defining characteristic of rationality. Spinoza's politics emerges from this idea. |
| 21872 | We seek our own advantage, and virtue is doing this rationally [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Acting absolutely from virtue is nothing else in us but acting, living, and preserving our being (these three signify the same thing) by the guidance of reason, from the foundation of seeking one's own advantage. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 24) | |
| A reaction: The influence of stoicism is obvious here, that we live according to our nature, but our nature is rational. Spinoza doesn't seem to understand the pure altruism of lovers and parents. |
| 12495 | Pursuit of happiness is the highest perfection of intellectual nature [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 17189 | The essence of man is modifications of the nature of God [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The essence of man consists of certain modifications of the attributes of God. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: Not an idea you hear much these days! |
| 17207 | By 'good' I mean what brings us ever closer to our model of human nature [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By 'good' I understand everything which we are certain is a means by which we may approach nearer and nearer to the model of human nature we set before us. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pref) | |
| A reaction: Unusual, and I'm not sure I understand it. His ideal largely concerns the intellect ruling the emotion |
| 8019 | Along with his pantheism, Spinoza equates ethics with the study of human nature [Spinoza, by MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: The counterpart of understanding God as identical with Nature is understanding ethics as the study not of divine precepts but of our own nature and of what necessarily moves us. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: As stated here, this seems wrong. We should approach ethics through Aristotle, but not through Freud. That is, virtues can be inferred from human nature, but the actual facts of human nature may be grubby and unpalatable. |
| 17229 | If infancy in humans was very rare, we would consider it a pitiful natural defect [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If a number of human beings were born adult, and only a few here and there were born infants, everyone would pity the infants, because we should then consider infancy not as a thing natural and necessary, but as a defect or fault of nature. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 06) | |
| A reaction: A lovely example of the new objectivity about human beings that emerged in the Enlightenment. He could have said the same about old age. |
| 4845 | We don't want things because they are good; we judge things to be good because we want them [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: In no case do we strive for, wish for, long for, or desire anything, because we deem it to be good, but on the other hand we deem a thing to be good, because we strive for it, wish for it, long for it, or desire it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 09) | |
| A reaction: Shocking, coming from a leading rationalist philosopher. It sounds more like Hume. Surely rationalism should put our capacity for judgement centre-stage? But Spinoza was a determinist. Is Kantian freedom of judgement required? Deterministic judgement? |
| 17217 | Love is joy with an external cause [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Love is joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 44) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't seem to quite capture the pain that some people find in love. |
| 4848 | Love is nothing else but pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Love is nothing else but pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 13) | |
| A reaction: Not a definition to give us inspirational guidance! Sounds like grumpy old Hobbes. This is the 'love' of a heroin addict for a syringe. Personally I see love as having a rational aspect, which puts it 'under the aspect of eternity' (as Spinoza said!). |
| 7833 | Spinoza names self-interest as the sole source of value [Spinoza, by Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza names self-interest as the sole source of value. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: This looks like a very seventeenth century view. There was a steady move from cynicism through to the optimism of the eighteenth century. I just don't agree that self-interest is the "sole" source of value, though we should never underestimate it. |
| 17224 | If our ideas were wholly adequate, we would have no concept of evil [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If the human mind had none but adequate ideas, it would form no notion of evil. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 64) | |
| A reaction: There is some sort of notion of the wholly rational and benign community here, where living well is the single communal thought. It's sort of true. Good people don't even think about wickedness. |
| 21870 | Music is good for a melancholic, bad for a mourner, and indifferent to the deaf [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: One and the same thing can, at the same time, be good and bad, and also indifferent. For example, music is good for one who is melancholy, bad for one who is mourning, and neither good nor bad to one who is deaf. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pref) | |
| A reaction: This sounds neat and obvious, but both the mourner and the deaf person might well acknowledge that music is a good thing, while failing to appreciate it at the time. I accept that a concert was good, even if I didn't attend it. |
| 1386 | A concern for happiness is the inevitable result of consciousness [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 4860 | Man's highest happiness consists of perfecting his understanding, or reason [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: In life it is before all things useful to perfect the understanding, or reason, as far as we can, and in this alone man's highest happiness or blessedness consists. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IVApp 04) | |
| A reaction: I fear that only a highly intelligent person like Spinoza would suggest this. The genius of Jesus is to say that if you don't have a powerful intellect you can still be happy by having a pure and loving heart. The Spinoza route is better, if possible. |
| 4847 | Pleasure is a passive state in which the mind increases in perfection [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By pleasure I shall signify a passive state wherein the mind passes to a greater perfection. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 11) | |
| A reaction: A rather bizarre definition! He seems to be defining it as a state and as a process in the same sentence. It sounds to me like both a hedonist's charter, and nonsense. I'm with Plato and Aristotle, that pleasure is dangerous as it warps the mind. |
| 4859 | Pleasure is only bad in so far as it hinders a man's capability for action [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Pleasure is only bad in so far as it hinders a man's capability for action. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 59) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the incipient epicureanism found in enlightenment figures who are drifting towards atheism (of which his contemporaries accused Spinoza). Sadism? Grief is good pain. I'm too happy to be cruel. |
| 4851 | Reason demands nothing contrary to nature, and so it demands self-love [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: As reason makes no demands contrary to nature, it demands that every man should love himself, should seek that which is useful to him. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 18) | |
| A reaction: Maybe nature seems to demand self-love, but I don't see why reason should demand it, only why reason should not deny it. There is no point in denying something unavoidable. However, if we don't love ourselves, no one else is likely to. |
| 17220 | Self-satisfaction is the highest thing for which we can hope [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Self-satisfaction is the highest thing for which we can hope, for no one endeavours to preserve his being for the same of any end. [Pr 53: Humility is not a virtue] | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 52) | |
| A reaction: You can sense here that Spinoza was not a family man. |
| 4019 | Things are good and evil only in reference to pleasure and pain [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 4852 | Both virtue and happiness are based on the preservation of one's own being [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The foundation of virtue is the endeavour to preserve one's own being, and happiness consists in man's power of preserving his own being. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 18) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza never actually says so, but this seems to me to point to a Hobbesian social contract account of virtue - that is, that virtue is not an ideal, but a strategy. Personally I prefer the Aristotelian view, that it is an ideal revealed to us by nature. |
| 17214 | To act virtuously is to act rationally [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: To act in conformity to virtue is to act according to the guidance of reason. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 36) | |
| A reaction: This Kantian ideal always seems to be missing foundational values or feelings. If something is judged to be rubbish, I throw it away. |
| 21871 | The more we strive for our own advantage, the more virtuous we are [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The more each one strives, and is able, to seek his own advantage, that is, to preserve his being, the more he is endowed with virtue. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 20) | |
| A reaction: Beth Lord says this is his key ethical idea. Our conatus (striving) is the essence of our nature, and virtue is the perfect expression of our essence. Presumably the destruction of others in competition is also bad for us. |
| 12515 | Actions are virtuous if they are judged praiseworthy [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 17210 | All virtue is founded on self-preservation [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The endeavour after self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 22) | |
| A reaction: This fits in perfectly with modern evolutionary ethics. |
| 4856 | To live according to reason is to live according to the laws of human nature [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Man acts absolutely according to the laws of his nature, when he lives in obedience to reason. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: This is pure stoicism, and shows that Spinoza is in many ways the culmination of the seventeenth century stoic revival (e.g. in the art of Poussin). I love the idea that right reason and nature are in perfect harmony. I wonder why? |
| 17221 | A man ignorant of himself is ignorant of all of the virtues [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The man who is ignorant of himself is ignorant of the foundation of all the virtues, and consequently is ignorant of all the virtues. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 56) | |
| A reaction: This would appeal to Aristotle, for whom the social virtues are an aspect of one's own character, and not a calculation made about externals. |
| 17225 | In a free man, choosing flight can show as much strength of mind as fighting [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Flight at the proper time, just as well as fighting, is to be reckoned as showing strength of mind in a man who is free; that is to say, a free man chooses flight by the same strength or presence of mind as that by which he chooses battle. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 69) | |
| A reaction: I wonder why showing 'strength of mind' is a virtue? |
| 17219 | A person unmoved by either reason or pity to help others is rightly called 'inhuman' [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: He who is moved neither by reason nor pity to be of any service to others is properly called inhuman; for he seems to be unlike a man. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 50) | |
| A reaction: Calling someone 'inhuman' doesn't seem like much of a condemnation. Nietzschean aristocrats may take pride in being above the mere 'human'. We gather here that if reason failed to motivate helping others, then pity would be a good thing. |
| 4857 | Pity is a bad and useless thing, as it is a pain, and rational people perform good deeds without it [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Pity is a pain, and is therefore in itself bad; only at the dictation of reason are we able to perform any action, which we know for certain to be good; thus, in a man who lives under the guidance of reason, pity in itself is useless and bad. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 50) | |
| A reaction: This is the essence of both Kant's and Bentham's views. It is, however, unclear why a wholly rational and unfeeling person should be motivated to prevent other people's pain. It also don't think it follows that because it is painful it is bad. |
| 17223 | Pity is not a virtue, but at least it shows a desire to live uprightly [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Pity, like shame, although it is not a virtue, is nevertheless good, in so far as it shows that a desire of living uprightly is present in the man who is possessed with shame. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 58) | |
| A reaction: And yet, in so far as I am rational, it seems that I should endeavour to suppress pity and replace it with right reason. Does Spinoza feel loyalty to the human race, I wonder? |
| 17218 | People who live according to reason should avoid pity [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A man who lives according to the dictates of reason endeavours as much as possible to prevent himself from being touched by pity. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 50) | |
| A reaction: Since pity seems to give rise to some thoroughly good actions, I am not quite clear how reason would give rise to those same actions unaided. The alleviation of another's pain seems to have no pure motivation, if there is no empathy. |
| 17228 | Rational people judge money by needs, and live contented with very little [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IVApp 29) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza himself lived up to this, being incredibly austere in his personal life. |
| 4853 | Rational people are self-interested, but also desire the same goods for other people [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men who are governed by reason - that is, who seek what is useful to them in accordance with reason - desire for themselves nothing, which they do not also desire for the rest of mankind, and so are just, faithful and honourable in their conduct. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 18) | |
| A reaction: This is pulling a rather Kantian rabbit out of a very social contract hat. It chimes in with Aristotle's account of self-interest, which leads to good civic virtues. True Kantianism is self-abnegating, but Spinoza lets selfishness take the lead. |
| 4858 | A rational person will want others to have the goods he seeks for himself [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: He who lives under the guidance of reason, desires for others the good which he seeks for himself. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 51) | |
| A reaction: Obviously a very Kantian idea. It implies that all rational people desire similar goods, but it is rational to collect stamps but not want other people to do so as well. I don't think you should want what I want for Christmas. |
| 4855 | If people are obedient to reason, they will live in harmony [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men insofar as they live in obedience to reason, necessarily live always in harmony with one another. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: A beautiful slogan for a belief which has gripped me since I was a child. It embodies the frustration of philosophers from Plato onwards, and it may well be childishly idealistic. Politics is the art of the possible, said R.A.B. Butler. |
| 21874 | The ideal for human preservation is unanimity among people [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Man can wish for nothing more helpful to the preservation of his being than that all should so agree in all things that the minds and bodies of all would compose, as it were, one mind and one body. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 18S) | |
| A reaction: There has never been a more glorious vision of a unified people than this, which epitomises Enlightenment optimism. It may be a little on the optimistic side. We might at least hope that rational education encourages the convergence. |
| 8020 | Only self-knowledge can liberate us [Spinoza, by MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: In Spinoza, self-knowledge, and only self-knowledge, liberates. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: Spinoza was a determinist, as far as ultimate inner freedom is concerned. The massive continental philosophers' effort of phenomenology and deconstruction seems to be premissed on this idea. Freedom seems to be their highest value. |
| 7412 | Spinoza extended Hobbes's natural rights to cover all possible desires and actions [Spinoza, by Tuck] |
| Full Idea: It was Spinoza who extended the idea of natural rights to cover all possible desires and actions, and he did so knowing that he was transforming Hobbes's theory. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: Hobbes had stuck to self-preservation. His problem was how to draw a line, saying that was a natural right, but there wasn't a natural right to a good bottle of claret. Spinoza's drastic solutions suggests that the whole approach is wrong. |
| 17227 | Slavery is a disgraceful crime [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Slavery is a disgraceful crime. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IVApp 21) | |
| A reaction: Note the date of this - when the slave trade is just getting going, and long before it is threatened or criticised. |
| 12548 | It is certain that injustice requires property, since it is a violation of the right to property [Locke] |
| 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? |
| 17226 | The best use of talent is to teach other people to live rationally [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: There is nothing by which a person can better show how much skill and talent he possesses than by so educating men that at last they will live under the direct authority of reason. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IVApp 09) | |
| A reaction: Speaking as a retired philosophy teacher, I think this is an excellent idea, but then I would, wouldn't I? What if you turn a nice warm-hearted friendly young person into a chillingly detached heartless reasoner? |
| 4854 | It is impossible that the necessity of a person's nature should produce a desire for non-existence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: That a man, from the necessity of his own nature, should endeavour to become non-existent, is as impossible as that something should be made out of nothing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 20) | |
| A reaction: At first glance this is very paradoxical, but it fits with evolutionary theory, which seems to make it almost inconceivable to naturally desire suicide. The desire to live is universal, and only circumstances can create an artifiical contradictory desire. |
| 17215 | Animals feel, but that doesn't mean we can't use them for our pleasure and profit [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I by no means deny that brutes feel, but I do deny that on this account it is unlawful for us to consult our own profit by using them for our own pleasure and treating them as is most convenient for us, inasmuch as they do not agree in nature with us. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 37) | |
| A reaction: Something a bit chilling about this. What if I decided that some people did 'not agree with my nature'? Presumably pleasure includes hunting? What was his attitude to bear-baiting? |
| 17190 | We can easily think of nature as one individual [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: We may easily conceive the whole of nature to be one individual. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Lem 7) |
| 15997 | We are so far from understanding the workings of natural bodies that it is pointless to even try [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 4826 | Nature has no particular goal in view, and final causes are mere human figments [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Nature has no particular goal in view, and final causes are mere human figments. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: This is Spinoza's famous rejection of Aristotelian teleology, which was the last seventeenth century nail in the coffin of the great man. Spinoza substitutes God, but loss of faith in that concept then left us with no purpose at all, as in Hume. |
| 1587 | Spinoza strongly attacked teleology, which is the lifeblood of classical logos [Roochnik on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: In his 'Ethics' Spinoza shows his enormous hostility to teleology, which is the lifeblood of classical logos. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.77 |
| 1588 | For Spinoza eyes don't act for purposes, but follow mechanical necessity [Roochnik on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle would be perfectly happy with the idea that the eyes are for the purpose of seeing. Spinoza would disagree. The objects of the world, including parts of living organisms, have purposes, but obey the laws of mechanical necessity. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.79 | |
| A reaction: My view is that eyes wouldn't exist if they didn't see, which places them in a different category from inorganic matter. |
| 12731 | Final causes are figments of human imagination [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: All final causes are nothing but human fictions. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: You can see why Spinoza was rather controversial in the late seventeenth century, when he says things as bold as this, even though he is echoing Descartes. The latter's proposal (Idea 12730) is methodological, whereas this idea is metaphysical. |
| 4821 | An infinite line can be marked in feet or inches, so one infinity is twelve times the other [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If an infinite line be measured out in feet, it will consist of an infinite number of such parts; it would equally consist of an infinite number of parts, if each part was only an inch; therefore, one infinity would be twelve times as great as the other. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 15) | |
| A reaction: This seems to anticipate Cantor. Spinoza's point seemed bewildering then, but is now accepted as a standard feature of the concept of infinity. |
| 17177 | In nature there is just one infinite substance [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: In nature only one substance exists, and it is absolutely infinite. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to render the concept of 'substance' redundant, since all the interest is now in the attributes (or whatever) of this one substance, and we must work to discount the appearance of there being numerous substances (e.g. you and me). |
| 15978 | I take 'matter' to be a body, excluding its extension in space and its shape [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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'? |
| 4850 | A final cause is simply a human desire [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A cause which is called final is nothing else but human desire, in so far as it is considered as the origin or cause of anything. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pref) | |
| A reaction: A rather vicious swipe at Aristotle! It chimes in with the modern scientific view of the world (mostly associated with Hume), that nature has no intrinsic values or aims. On the large scale, Spinoza is right, but nature can still show us what has value. |
| 12497 | Causes are the substances which have the powers to produce action [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 4815 | From a definite cause an effect necessarily follows [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: From a definite cause an effect necessarily follows. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Ax 3) | |
| A reaction: This encapsulate the view against which Hume was rebelling. However, nowadays no one thinks Spinoza is self-evidently wrong. How are we to distinguish between a cause and a coincident event? We must claim natural necessity. |
| 12550 | If we knew the minute mechanics of hemlock, we could predict that it kills men [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke, by Alexander,P] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke, by Alexander,P] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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'. |
| 7835 | The key question for Spinoza is: is his God really a God? [Stewart,M on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The single most important question that can be raised about Spinoza's philosophy is: Is his God really a God? | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.13 | |
| A reaction: Novalis called Spinoza a "God-intoxicated man", but this question shows why many of Spinoza's contemporaries (and later) considered him to be an atheist. The general modern answer by commentators to the question appears to be 'No!'. |
| 17231 | God feels no emotions, of joy or sorrow [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: God is free from passions, neither is He affected with any affect of joy or sorrow. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 17) | |
| A reaction: The general Christian view is that God has great compassion for human suffering, as Jesus appears to have had. Spinoza was very very intellectual. |
| 17172 | God is a substance with infinite attributes [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By God, I understand Being absolutely infinite, that is to say, substance consisting of infinite attributes, each one of which expresses eternal and infinite essence. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 6) |
| 4823 | God does not act according to the freedom of the will [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: God does not act according to the freedom of the will. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 32) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am struck by the idea that even if God had 'free will', I can't see how He would be sure of the fact (the unperceived puppetmaster!). However, I have actually come to the conclusion that a fotally 'free' will is an incoherent concept. |
| 12928 | Spinoza's God is just power and necessity, without perfection or wisdom [Leibniz on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The Spinozist view allows God infinite power only, not granting him either perfection or wisdom, and dismisses searches for final causes and explains everything through brute necessity. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Gottfried Leibniz - New Essays on Human Understanding 73 | |
| A reaction: It takes a genius like Leibniz to explain so clearly what Spinoza was up to. Some call Spinoza 'God-intoxicated', but others say he is an incipient atheist. The latter is probably closer to the truth. |
| 7571 | Spinoza's God is not a person [Spinoza, by Jolley] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza's God is not a person. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: This will be the central reason why Spinoza was so controversial, because such a view instantly makes religion pointless, despite retaining a core of theism. |
| 4314 | God is wholly without passions, and strictly speaking does not love anyone [Spinoza, by Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: God, asserts Spinoza, is wholly without passions, and strictly speaking does not love anyone. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by John Cottingham - The Rationalists p.179 | |
| A reaction: This seems to me a much more plausible conception of God than the anthropomorphic one of him as the perfect parent who dotes on his offspring. |
| 7609 | God is the sum and principle of all eternal laws [Spinoza, by Armstrong,K] |
| Full Idea: For Spinoza God is simply the principle of law, the sum of all the eternal laws in existence. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Karen Armstrong - A History of God Ch.9 | |
| A reaction: This seems at variance with the usual view, that Spinoza identifies God with the single substance which makes up nature, and that he is hence a pantheist. Compare the above idea with Idea 4829, for example. Spinoza's God seems close to Aristotle's. |
| 19435 | God is not loveable for producing without choice and by necessity; God is loveable for his goodness [Leibniz on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: There is nothing loveable in a God who produces without choice and by necessity, without discrimination of good and evil. The true love of God is founded not in necessity but in goodness. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 28) by Gottfried Leibniz - Comments on Spinoza's Philosophy | |
| A reaction: This responds to Spinoza's claims about an 'intellectual' love of God. But why do we love people. It is possible that it is always for their goodness, but might we not love a great mathematician, simply for their wonderful mathematics? |
| 21859 | God has no purpose, because God lacks nothing [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If God works to obtain an end, He necessarily seeks something of which he stands in need. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: The point is that a being with infinite attributes cannot be in need of anything, and hence God merely exists, but does not have a purpose. Hence falling in line with God's purposes cannot be an aim of a human religion. |
| 4825 | To say that God promotes what is good is false, as it sets up a goal beyond God [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Those who maintain that God acts in all things with a view of promoting what is good are very far from the truth. For they seem to set up something beyond God, which does not depend on God, but which God looks to as an exemplar or goal. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: That is, Spinoza agrees with Euthyphro, and disagrees with Socrates (see Idea 337). Personally I agree with Socrates, but then I am not 'intoxicated with God' as Spinoza was. If God isn't good, why worship Him? |
| 12570 | The finite and dependent should obey the supreme and infinite [Locke] |
| 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 [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 21856 | Spinoza says a substance of infinite attributes cannot fail to exist [Spinoza, by Lord] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza does not argue from the concept of God to his existence; he argues that a substance of infinite attributes cannot not exist. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 6) by Beth Lord - Spinoza's Ethics 1 P11 | |
| A reaction: Lord is explicit that this is NOT the argument used by Anselm and Descartes. I'm not clear why there has to be a substance of infinite attributes, but presumably that is explained somewhere. |
| 17178 | Denial of God is denial that his essence involves existence, which is absurd [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: God, or substance consisting of infinite attributes, each one of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists. If this be denied, conceive that God does not exist. But then his essence does not involve existence, which is absurd. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 11) | |
| A reaction: Not a very powerful version of the ontological argument. Gaunilo offered an island which has existence as part of its essence, which would pass the same test. |
| 21858 | God is being as such, and you cannot conceive of the non-existence of being [Spinoza, by Lord] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza argues that you cannot conceive the non-existence of God because you cannot conceive the non-existence of being. God, or a substance of infinite attributes, is being as such. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 11) by Beth Lord - Spinoza's Ethics I P11 | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear why I cannot conceive of nothing whatever existing. I can conceive of my fridge being empty, so conceiving non-being is not off limits. Not that inconceivability is an infallible guide to impossibility… |
| 4820 | God must necessarily exist, because no reason can be given for his non-existence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing necessarily exists if no cause or reason be granted which prevents its existence. No cause can be given which prevents the existence of God, or which destroys his existence, so we must conclude that he necessarily exists. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 11) | |
| A reaction: I can't think of any reason why there shouldn't be a giant rat which fills a large proportion of the universe. Indeed, it may be the missing 'dark matter'. So presumably it has necessary existence. Proving non-existence is obviously tricky. |
| 17169 | Some things makes me conceive of it as a thing whose essence requires its existence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By cause of itself, I understand that, whose essence involves existence; or that, whose nature cannot be conceived unless existing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 1) | |
| A reaction: Obviously he has God in mind, but might this apply to abstract existence. Can I conceive of the number seven, while also conceiving that there is no such number? Compare Pegasus. |
| 4817 | If a thing can be conceived as non-existing, its essence does not involve existence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If a thing can be conceived as non-existing, its essence does not involve existence. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Ax 7) | |
| A reaction: This points straight at the modern question of whether conceivability is a sufficient test for possibility. Personally I am close to Hume on this one. Necessary existence may not be ridiculous, but it is beyond human capacity to assert its occurrence. |
| 12566 | We exist, so there is Being, which requires eternal being [Locke] |
| 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). |
| 4827 | Priests reject as heretics anyone who tries to understand miracles in a natural way [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Anyone who seeks the true cause of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is denounced as an impious heretic by those whom the masses adore as interpreters of nature and gods. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: A rather bitter personal remark, by someone who was driven out of Amsterdam as a heretic. Presumably the heresy is not aggressive a priori naturalism, but mere openness to the possibility of natural explanations of miracles. |
| 12571 | If miracles aim at producing belief, it is plausible that their events are very unusual [Locke] |
| 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. |
| 12757 | That God is the substance of all things is an ill-reputed doctrine [Leibniz on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: That God is the very nature or substance of all things is the sort of doctrine of ill repute which a recent writer, subtle indeed, though profane, either introduced to the world or revived. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I) by Gottfried Leibniz - On Nature Itself (De Ipsa Natura) §08 | |
| A reaction: This is clearly a comment on Spinoza. Leibniz seems to have spent his whole life in shock after his meeting with Spinoza. |
| 4829 | The human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 11) | |
| A reaction: What is the difference between being a part of something which totally fails to communicate with the whole, and being separate from the whole? Spinoza's proposal strikes me as daft. |
| 17181 | God is the efficient cause of essences, as well as of existences [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: God is not only the efficient cause of the existence of things, but also of their essence. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 25) | |
| A reaction: This is close to Leibniz's view that the so-called 'laws of nature' are not imposed by God from outside, but are rooted with nature, in the essences of what has been created (which is modern scientific essentialism). |
| 17180 | Everything is in God, and nothing exists or is thinkable without God [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can either be or be conceived without God. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 15) | |
| A reaction: Presumably atheists are not very good at conceiving, because they don't understand properly. This is the pantheism for which Spinoza became famous, or notorious. Critics said he was a closet atheist. |
| 7836 | In Spinoza, one could substitute 'nature' or 'substance' for the word 'God' throughout [Spinoza, by Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: In Spinoza's 'Ethics' one can substitute the word "Nature" (or "Substance", or even simply an X) for God throughout, and the logic of the argument changes little, if at all. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.13 | |
| A reaction: This claim, if correct, is the clearest statement of why we should really consider Spinoza one of the first atheists, despite his endless use of the word 'God'. |
| 7831 | Spinoza's theory of mind implies that there is no immortality [Spinoza, by Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: A final (and for his contemporaries, dreadful) consequence of Spinoza's theory of the mind is that there is no personal immortality. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: For Spinoza's view of the mind, see Idea 4308. The denial of immortality would also seem to be a consequence of modern emergentist views of the mind, which is espoused by religious people looking for a compromise between dualism and science. |
| 21876 | After death, something eternal remains of the mind [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but something of it remains which is eternal. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 23) | |
| A reaction: This sounds contrary to Spinoza's monism of mind and body, but he seems to mean little more than that minds are reabsorbed into the whole. See Beth Lord's commentary [p.146]. Compare stoics on the subject. |