Locke on Mixed Modes, Relations, and Knowledge

Abstract

Locke on Mixed Modes, Relations, and Knowledge DAVID L. PERRY JOHN LOCKE'S TREATMENT Of mixed modes and relations is of interest for its own sake as well as for its role in his account of knowledge. According to Locke, our ideas of relations and mixed modes do not owe their validity to an empirical origin ; indeed, it is doubtful that such ideas can be considered to have an entirely empirical source in Locke's account. Locke sometimes claims that mixed modes and relations are creations of the mind having no reality outside the mind. Ideas of mixed modes are not intended to conform to an external reality; ideas of mixed modes and relations are themselves archetypes which are real and adequate ideas just because they conform to themselves. These features are the basis for Locke's attempt to account for a portion of our alleged knowledge of absolutely certain, yet instructive propositions, specifically, our knowledge of general propositions that do not assert the existence of any substance nor the actual occurrence of any combination of qualities. Locke evidently intended many of his epistemologically crucial observations regarding mixed modes and relations to apply to simple modes as well. His explanation of geometrical knowledge presupposes that ideas of figures, which are simple modes, have the status claimed for ideas of mixed modes. But since Locke frequently mentions only ideas of mixed modes and relations while discussing the features in question, and since his treatment of simple modes involves great additional difficulties, I shall restrict detailed investigation to the mixed type. In what follows I shall critically explore Locke's views concerning mixed modes and relations, and his corollary effort to explain in part the possibility of the kind of knowledge known since Kant as "synthetic a priori." Locke consistently classifies mixed modes as complex ideas, i.e., ideas formed by the combination of several simple ideas. Of modes in general Locke writes, "... Modes I call such complex ideas which, however compounded, contain not in them the supposition of subsisting by themselves, but are considered as dependences on, or affections of substances .... ,, 2 Simple modes are defined as those "which are only variations, or different combinations of the same simple idea, without the mixture of any other;--as a dozen, or score .... ,, 3 Other examples of simple modes are distances, figures, places, durations, and even tunes. 4 On the other hand, mixed modes are "compounded of simple ideas of several kinds, put 1Research for this article was made possible by a summer grant awarded by the Long Beach State College Foundation from funds provided by the College Foundation and the National Science Foundation. 2John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Alexander Campbell Fraser (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1959), Bk. II, chap. xii, sec. 4. Subsequent references to Locke's Essay will be cited by book, chapter, and section, e.g.,II. xii. 4. aII. xii. 5. II. xiii. 4, 5, 7; II. xiv. 1; II. xviii. 3. [219] 220 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY together to make one complex one .... ,, 5 They are "such combinations of simple ideas as are not looked upon to be characteristical marks of any real beings that have a steady existence, but scattered and independent ideas put together by the mind .... ,, 6 Examples of mixed modes given by Locke are beauty, theft, obligation , drunkenness, a lie, hypocrisy, sacrilege, murder, appeal, triumph, wrestling, fencing, boldness, habit, testiness, running, speaking, revenge, gratitude, polygamy , justice, liberality, and courage. ~ An awkward feature of Locke's discussions of mixed modes is the careless manner in which he vacillates between writing of mixed modes as complex ideas and writing of them not as ideas, but as objects of which we have ideas. 8 In defining mixed modes, 9 Locke identifies them with complex ideas of a certain sort, and in discussing their reality, he considers them a kind of idea. 1~ But when he treats adequacy and truth of ideas, he regularly, though not invariably, uses such phrases as "complex ideas of modes," "ideas of mixed modes," and "complex ideas of mixed modes." il In his discussion of the names of mixed modes, Locke employs the additional phrase "complex ideas or essences of...