Locke's Claim Research Articles

John Locke and personal identity: an impasse concerning justice

In the chapter "Of Identity and Diversity" of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke claims that justice is based on personal identity and that personal identity is based on consciousness. However, this view of justice leads to an impasse when the defendant alleges that he has no consciousness of the crime and, therefore, that he does not identify himself as the person who committed the crime: if it is not possible to determine that he is the one who committed the crime, can we say that the punishment is just? This article seeks (i) to analyse the impasse exploring (a) its conceptual framework and (b) its development in the letters Molyneux and Locke exchanged in order (ii) to elaborate a criticism of Locke’s answer to it. Compared to the secondary bibliography, in which one objection to Locke’s answer is well established, the originality of this article consists in elaborating a new objection based on the distinction between the first and third person perspectives and in showing that, when questioned by Molyneux, Locke failed to discuss the conceptual issue necessary to give an adequate answer to the impasse. Keywords: Locke, Molyneux, personal identity, justice.

On Black, White, and the Possibility of Beauty in Locke

Locke claims that man makes a mistake by linking the perception of authentic beauty to nature, because beauty is argued to constitute a deliberate man-made fabrication. Specifically, man is said to emotionally wrap the ugliness, and brutishness, of a parsimonious nature within an extreme understanding of perception, where even apparent qualitative distinctions, between tone and hue, form one aspect of this fabrication. By becoming a slave to this emotional fabrication of beauty, Locke argues that the mind liberates reason, by freeing it from the debilitating influence caused by the overwhelming ugliness of nature. Being liberated in this manner, man can then secure the acquisition of property. Trusting the senses, so as to deliver an authentic rendering of external natural beauty, to the mind of man, as once presumed by older philosophy, therefore, becomes impossible. Hence, the prospect modern man ever experiencing authentic beauty, as provided by nature, is lost.

Personal identity and the otherness of one’s own body

Locke claims that a person’s identity over time consists in the unity of consciousness, not in the sameness of the body. Similarly, the phenomenological approach refuses to see the criteria of identity as residing in some externally observable bodily features. Nevertheless, it does not accept the idea that personal identity has to consist either in consciousness or in the body. We are self-aware as bodily beings. After providing a brief reassessment of Locke and the post-Lockean discussion, the article draws on phenomenological arguments that show the body as lived, that is, lived as one’s own body, but also possibly as “other” or “strange.” Against what has been claimed in recent writing, especially in literature on Merleau-Ponty, the author argues that the “mineness” of the body and its “alterity” are not two mutually exclusive features. In the final part of the article, the author suggests that the becoming strange of one’s own body may legitimately be considered as a prominent experience of what it means to be a person.

Locke's Theory of Demonstration and Demonstrative Morality

Locke famously claimed that morality was capable of demonstration. But he also refused to provide a system of demonstrative morality. This paper addresses the mismatch between Locke's stated views and his actual philosophical practice. While Locke's claims about demonstrative morality have received a lot of attention it is rare to see them discussed in the context of his general theory of demonstration and his specific discussions of particular demonstrations. This paper explores Locke's general remarks about demonstration as well as his claims about demonstration in natural philosophy, mathematics, and morality. Careful attention to these detailed discussions motivates a reevaluation of Locke's views on demonstrative knowledge of morality. Specifically, while Locke did believe that some demonstrative moral knowledge might be in‐principle available to us he also believed that facts about the difficulty of demonstration meant that this knowledge would in‐practice be largely unattainable.

The Idea of Power and Locke's Taxonomy of Ideas

ABSTRACTLocke's account of the idea of power is thought to be seriously problematic. Commentators allege (1) that the idea of power causes problems for Locke's taxonomy of ideas, (2) that it is defined circularly, and (3) that, contrary to Locke's claims, it cannot be acquired in experience. This paper defends Locke's account. Previous commentators have assumed that there is only one idea of power. But close attention to Locke's text, combined with background features of his theory of ideas, supports the drawing of a distinction between four different ideas of power. The paper describes each idea and its role in the Essay. It then argues that this distinction can help Locke to avoid the traditional criticisms.

Lockean superaddition and Lockean humility

This paper offers a new approach to an old debate about superaddition in Locke. Did Locke claim that some objects have powers that are unrelated to their natures or real essences? The question has split commentators. Some (Wilson, Stuart, Langton) claim the answer is yes and others (Ayers, Downing, Ott) claim the answer is no. This paper argues that both of these positions may be mistaken. I show that Locke embraced a robust epistemic humility. This epistemic humility includes ignorance of the real essences of bodies, of the causal processes underlying the production of natural phenomena, and of God's method of creation. I show how this epistemic humility offers strong support for an agnostic response to the question of superaddition. Locke did not intend to claim that bodies either do or do not have properties unrelated to their real essences. Instead, his primary goal in discussing the topic was to emphasize the strict limits to human knowledge.

Locke and the Primary Signification of Words: An Approach to Word Meaning

Locke's claim that the primary signification of (most) words is an idea, or complex of ideas, has received different interpretations. I support the majority view that Locke's notion of primary signification can be construed in terms of linguistic meaning. But this reading has been seen as making Locke's account vulnerable to various criticisms, of which I consider two. First, it appears to make the account vulnerable to the charge that an idea cannot play the role that a word meaning should play. I argue that the role Locke actually gives to signified ideas is not susceptible to this criticism. Second, it appears to make Locke guilty of at least some degree of semantic idealism. I argue that Locke is not guilty of this and that he makes a proper distinction between the non-referential relation that holds between a word and its primary signification and the referential relation that holds between a word and things the word is used to speak about.

Locke on Judgement and Religious Toleration

With the publication of Locke’s early manuscripts on toleration and the drafts for the Essay, it is possible to understand to what extent Locke’s ideas on religious toleration have developed. Although the important arguments for toleration can already be found in these early texts, Locke was confronted with a problem in his defence of toleration that he needed to solve. If faith, as a form of judgement, is involuntary, as Locke claims, how can one be held accountable for the faith one has? In answer to this question reason comes to play a more prominent role in Locke’s notion of faith and in his defence of religious toleration, and in his philosophy in general. This notion of reason is not the reason we use for mathematical demonstrations. It is rather reason as we use it in discussion, and is thus fallible. It is precisely this kind of reason that played a central role in the Remonstrant religion to which Locke was closely connected at the time he developed a new argument for religious toleration when he was in the Netherlands.

Anthony Collins on the Emergence of Consciousness and Personal Identity

AbstractThe correspondence between Samuel Clarke and Anthony Collins of 1706–8, while not well known, is a spectacularly good debate between a dualist and a materialist over the possibility of giving a materialist account of consciousness and personal identity. This article puts the Clarke Collins Correspondence in a broader context in which it can be better appreciated, noting that it is really a debate between John Locke and Anthony Collins on one hand, and Samuel Clarke and Joseph Butler on the other. Anthony Collins argues on behalf of John Locke's claim that it would be as easy for God to superadd the power of thinking to matter as for him to connect a soul to a body. Locke did not believe that matter could naturally produce thought or consciousness, but it was in God's power to make matter think. To defend Locke's claim Collins must defend the claim that there are emergent properties in the world – properties of a whole that are not possessed by the parts. Collins also defends a materialist version of Locke's account of personal identity against a variety of charges. Because the topics of debate in the correspondence are of such great interest to us, it deserves to be rescued from the neglect into which it fell and from which intellectual historians and philosophers have only recently and partially removed it.

Locke's Pineapple and the History of Taste

Locke's Pineapple and the History of Taste Sean R. Silver (bio) The problem with empiricism, the argument goes, is that it doesn't know that it is an ideology. Its mistake is to assume that the objects of sensation can be isolated from the cultural background of experience, that the matters of fact produced by the methods of empirical inquiry can be isolated from the ideological positions that those methods imply. On the contrary, one might object, matters are more than simply matters of fact; the empirical view of the object is far from being objective. As Bruno Latour puts it, "reality is not defined by matters of fact. Matters of fact are not all that is given in experience. Matters of fact are only very partial . . . very polemical, very political renderings of matters of concern and only a subset of what could also be called states of affairs."1 The contours of the fact, one might say, and even the qualities of the objectivity which it implies, are shaped by the demands and pressures of its historical context. Nor is this claim very surprising for one who is familiar either with the major themes of Latour's career, or, indeed, with the key claims of postmodernism in the humanities. Empirical science, we know by now, declines its own cultural investments; what we need, according to this line of philosophical inquiry, is an empiricism sensitive to its own assumptions as ideological choices embedded in particularized historical conditions. Latour is often summoned up as a champion of exactly this position. So it may surprise the student of Latour to hear that he has recently claimed that he is a champion of empiricism, of a renewed form of scientific inquiry which he calls a "second empiricism." While we are right to insist that matters of fact reflect the ideological states of affairs in which they are embedded, it is nevertheless wrong, Latour continues, to think these states of affairs describe the entire content of the fact. It is not right to think that "matters" are only "matters of concern." For the real world, so this argument goes, has a reality which is not reducible to the discourse about that reality. Facts attend to the failures, energies, and contingencies of a material world which [End Page 43] has its own potentials and limitations just as much as they are embedded in particular ideological fields. As such, the "next task for the critically minded" is "not fighting empiricism"—indeed, this seems to be the problem"—but, on the contrary, renewing empiricism." Latour's call is for an empiricism that can be savvy about cultural matters—that can be smart about its constructedness—but also for a humanism which is smart about the real conditions of the world it helps to structure. This is what the "second empiricism" is meant to accomplish.2 I'd like to suggest, however, that Latour's "second empiricism" may look very much like empiricism's first empiricism. I propose, in developing this claim, a return to one of the foundational moments in the empirical tradition, John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. I propose this return partly to clarify what I take to be one easy misreading of Locke's claims about the status of sensory experience; Locke, I will suggest, doesn't provide a very good model of what "empiricism" has come to mean, or even what Latour characterizes as the ontological status of the empirical fact as such. But I also hope a return to a specific and famous moment in Locke's Essay will help illuminate a point of intersection between two fields—aesthetic criticism and empirical science—which exist partly because they constitutively refuse to recognize their own moments of overlap. This famous moment, Locke's turn to the pineapple as an example of the object of sense, is a single historical gesture which might be thought to inaugurate both taste understood as an aesthetic faculty (indeed, an implicitly ideological aesthetic faculty) and taste understood as the effect of a chemical process. Inasmuch as empirical science and aesthetic criticism partly depend for their rhetorical force on disavowing the mutuality of their vocabularies, they are...

The Death-Bound-Subject: Richard Wright's Archaeology of Death (review)

Reviewed by: The Death-Bound-Subject: Richard Wright's Archaeology of Death Jeffrey Atteberry Abdul R. JanMohamed . The Death-Bound-Subject: Richard Wright's Archaeology of Death. Durham: Duke UP, 2005. 327 pp. Via a sustained engagement with the entire arc of Richard Wright's career as a writer of narrative prose, Abdul JanMohamed's The Death-Bound-Subject: Richard Wright's Archaeology of Death implicitly retrieves the moment when Western political philosophy articulates the ideological grounds for slavery and, through its critical reappraisal, rigorously works through "the agency of death," thus clearing the way for—as the title of the book's conclusion declares—"renegotiating the death contract." Although JanMohamed never points to John Locke as an explicit reference point, preferring instead to stick closer to Hegel and Heidegger, his project clearly situates itself on theoretical terrain that was laid out by Locke in his 1690 Second Treatise. Regardless [End Page 731] of where one stands on the question of Locke's philosophical position on actually existing slavery, his phenomenologically accurate description of slavery as a coercive institution sketches the basic structural outlines for a "death contract" theory of slavery that would rest upon the passive consent of the enslaved. In Book IV, Locke writes, Indeed having, by his fault, forfeited his own Life, by some Act that deserves Death; he, to whom he has forfeited it, may (when he has him in his Power) delay to take it, and make use of his to his own Service, and he does him no injury by it. For, whenever he finds the hardship of his Slavery out-weigh the value of his Life, 'tis in his Power, by resisting the Will of his Master, to draw on himself the Death he desires. (284) It is precisely this structure of slavery as a living under a conditionally commuted death sentence that JanMohamed will take up as the necessary precondition for both slave and Jim Crow societies. Of course, he does so with a difference, however; for whereas Locke claims that "no injury" is suffered by the slave under these conditions, JanMohamed's reading of Wright rigorously demonstrates how these conditions in their social embodiment violently produce a death-bound-subject. For such a subject, JanMohamed argues, a certain desire for death is the ineluctable result of the psychopolitical process of the subject's formation precisely because such a subject "can gain access to the potentiality of his life only via his willingness to risk the actualization of his death" (283). The central conceit of The Death-Bound-Subject is that with each successive work of fiction and autobiography Richard Wright excavates another layer in the psyche of a subject forged through a dialectic of death. JanMohamed plots the dynamics of this dialectic through a triad of terms: actual-death, social-death, and symbolic-death. In short, the ever-present threat of actual-death for both the slave and the black American in the Jim Crow South induces a terrorizing fear that results in a social-death, a condition in which the subject is denied any sociopolitical standing, including protection from the arbitrary execution of the suspended death sentence. By contrast, through confronting this fear and wielding the threat of actual-death on its own terms, the death-bound-subject undergoes a symbolic-death, which is a dialectical negation of social-death that confers a measure of agency that is otherwise foreclosed. The Hegelian resonances of this dialectic are duly noted, but JanMohamed argues that Wright's dialectic of death, with its emphasis on symbolic-death as a political and existential moment of sublation, constitutes a significant revision of Hegel's "uncritical valorization of 'work' as the singular avenue through which the slave can supposedly find his salvation" (13). [End Page 732] The unfolding of Wright's dialectic takes place in stages over the course of his career, and JanMohamed's book traces its coming to consciousness through a series of chapters, each devoted to an individual work and arranged in chronological order. According to JanMohamed, the dialectic initially comes into view over the course of Uncle Tom's Children, but the critical moment of symbolic-death begins to receive focused examination...

What Does Locke Expect Us to Know?

Locke claims that his moral and political teaching is capable of a fully rational demonstration. It would seem then that Lockean citizens are expected to grasp the rational bases of their regime. But Locke was notoriously vague or incomplete on what the rational demonstration entailed, in matters of theology especially, but in other matters as well. I examine this question in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the Two Treatises of Government, and Some Thoughts Concerning Education, and conclude that Locke did not expect most citizens to grasp the full philosophical demonstration of liberalism, but they would understand a simplified version of it. This, however, risks leaving liberal culture in an unsettled state.

Identity, character, and gender: Anna Barbauld and pope's characters of men and women

I address the relationship between Barbauld's and Pope's verse characters, exploring their common engagement in the eighteenth-century debate first sparked by John Locke's claim in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1694) “that self is not determined by Identity… of Substance… but only by Identity of consciousness”. I note that Barbauld expresses much less anxiety than Pope concerning the implications of Lock's theory of self-in-consciousness. Indeed, Barbauld's “Characters” suggest an attempt to develop some of the feminist implications of Locke's statements about the nature and identity of the self. In these poems the author challenges certain persisting hegemonic assumptions about the sexes, although there are also signs of resistance to the most radical feminist implications of the theory of self-in-consciousness. The “Characters” finally aim at stabilising the relationship between gender and identity in a way that affirms the sexual division of labour, even as they stress the value of women's work.

Peter Miller, Axiology and Environmental Ethics

Peter Miller has devoted much of his philosophical career to denying the metaphysical view that nature is value-free, aside from whatever use or exchange value human beings think it has for them. In particular, he has challenged the psychologizing of values according to which, were there no minds or conscious experience, there would be nothing of value in the world. This is not to say that Miller is against the position that some values are psychological and that psychological theories of value have embodied many important developments in our self-discovery. He readily acknowledges that psychological theories of value can teach us to respect important features of the mental life we share or aspire to, including dimensions of intelligence, feeling, imagination, sympathy and will. They can also teach respect for the particular nuances of these dimensions that constitute us as distinctive personalities and free us for responsible self determination informed by personal experience.1 By themselves, however, psychological theories of value place disturbing limits on the realms of value and the value of nature in particular. One of the clearest examples of this is Locke's claim: Land that is left wholly to Nature, that hath no improvement of Pasturage, Tillage, or Planting, is called, as indeed it is, wast[e] and we shall find the benefit of it amount to little more than nothing.2 Indeed, Locke calculated that, of the products of the earth that

Locke's State of Nature

T HE STATE OF NATURE is in many ways the central concept at work in Locke's Two Treatises of Govertnmnent. It is the concept with which Locke chooses to introduce the Second Treati.se.' And it is only against and by means of the state of nature that Locke offers us accounts of political obligation and authority, the limits on political power, and the occasions for justified resistance. But the state of nature is probably also, as John Dunn has observed,2 the most misunderstood idea in Locke's political philosophy. Progress has been made, of course, largely because of Dunn's own work' and an influential paper by Richard Ashcraft.4 It is, as a result, no longer fashionable to simply dismiss Locke's claims about the state of nature as bad history or bad psychology.f Nor is it as easy as it once was to accuse Locke of blatant inconsistency or deceptiveness in his descriptions of the social conditions men would endure in the state of In spite of this progress, however, widespread obscurities and errors persist in discussions of Locke's state of nature, mistakes that often conceal the nature and virtues of the concept with which Locke chose to work. Most of these mistakes, I will suggest, stem from two sources: running together (in various ways) Lockean and Hobbesian conceptions of the state of nature and taking as definiitions of the state of nature in Locke, his statements of mere coniditionis (necessary or sufficient) for men's being in the state of nature. I will try in this article to remedy those mistakes, but I have three more general aims. First, I want to (finally) present a clear account of and definition of Locke's state of nature. With this definition in hand, many of the familiar worries about Locke's account are much easier to unravel. Second, I will point to what I believe are Locke's true confusions about the state of nature, which lie in rather different areas than is generally supposed. Third, I hope to cast some light on the point and the virtues of the particular concept of the state of nature we find Locke employing in the Two Treatises.

Mary Astell's Critique of Locke's View of Thinking Matter

Notes and Discussions Mary Astell's Critique of Locke's View Thinking Matter of In 4.3.6 of the Essay, Locke contends that it is impossible for us to know whether God has not given some systems of matter a power to perceive and think. As Yolton points out, most supporters of the immateriality of the soul have argued from the inconsistency of thought and extension to the denial that matter can think.' In her work, The Christian Religion, Mary Astell (1666-1731) not only argues from this supposed inconsistency , but also attempts to show that passages in the Essay and letters to Stillingfleet are inconsistent with Locke's claim. Although Astell's reputation in philosophy did not survive the particular metaphysical and religious controversies of the seventh century, her work is of historical importance. In this paper I present a short account of her work and her criticism of Locke's view of thinking matter. Among books in Locke's personal library are An Essay in defense of the Female Sex 0696), A farther essay relating to the Female Sex 0696), and Some Reflections Upon Marriage (a7oo). The first two works have been attributed to Mary Astell, the latter is unquestionably her work? Astelrs metaphysical and epistemological works, which are highly critical of Locke, were published in 17o5, after Locke's death. Smith reports that "the great Mr. Locke she knew and respected, however much she might refuse to accept his opinions. ''3 Mary Astell was born in Newcastle on November 12, a666. Although she was a well-known Platonist during her time, little has been written about her life and works. A short account of her influence is presented by Ballard in his Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain (1752). 4 According to a letter from Thomas Birch to Ballard, after the breakup of her home in 1684 she settled with Lady Catherine ' John W. Yolton, John Locke And The Way ofldeas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 16x. ' The authorship of An Essay in Defense of the FemaleSex is still a subject of controversy. In 19x3 Professor A. H. Uphan contended that the subject matter of the essay was inconsistent with ideas expressed in Astell'sother works. The work has also been attributed to a Mrs. Drake. s Florence M. Smith, Mary Astell (New York: Columbia University Press, a916). This was the only major biography of Mary Astell at the time this essay was written. Since then, a new biography has appeared: Ruth Perry, The CelebratedMary Astell: An Early English Feminist (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1986). 4 George Ballard, Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain (printed by W. Jackson, 1752). [43~] 434 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 25:3 JULY 198 7 Jones in Chelsea. 5 Astell's home was frequently visited by prominent people in court circles. Philosophical discussions usually concerned religion and education for women. In 1694 she published her first work, A Serious Proposal To The Ladies For the Advancement of their True and greatest Interest. This was followed by Part Two in 1697. The work was well received and went through several editions. At the request of John Norris her correspondence with Norris was published in 1695 under the title of Letters Concerning the Love of God. Astell was a moderate Anglican. Her disagreement with Norris ranged from criticism of his extreme Calvinism to criticism of his metaphysical views. In 17oo she published Some Reflections Upon Marriage. Several of her pamphlets concerning political and religious controversy appeared in print between 17o4 and 17o5 . In 17o5 Astell summarized her religious and educational theories in The Christian Religion as Profess'd by a Daughter of the Church of England. In 1729 her health began to decline. Mary Astell died from cancer in 1731. Given the disrespect with which women were held in the seventeenth century, Astell preferred to remain as obscure as possible. Ballard notes that even though her works were published anonymously, her name was soon discovered and became known to several learned persons. Her work was generally respected by most scholars and held in high regard by Norris and theologians who found Locke's doctrine of thinking matter dangerous to...

Locke's Theory of Sensitive Knowledge (review)

254 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Kathleen M. Squadrito. Locke's Theory of Sensitive Knowledge. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1978. Pp. iv + 187. $8.50. Squadrito's book is critical but constructive. Aaron, Collins, Copleston, Jackson, Mandelbaum, O'Connor, Yolton, and others are taken to task for ascribing to Locke views on a variety of topics that Squadrito thinks are misguided or false. She attempts to provide an interpretation of Locke consistent with the Essay and his exchanges with his contemporaries. Beginning with the celebrated definition of knowledge as "the perception of the connection of and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our ideas," traditional interpreters conclude that on Locke's view one cannot substantiate any claim concerning sensitive knowledge of the extramental existence of physical things, that one is limited to having ideas and perceiving their relationships to each other. One never perceives physical objects but only ideas which (presumably) are produced by such things. Since one can never break out of the circle of ideas, one can never be assured of the reality of sensitive knowledge or of the existence of physical objects. Arguing that Locke was perfectly aware of the difficulties of such a view--having himself raised the obvious objections against Malebranche--Squadrito shows cause for rejecting such an interpretation of Locke. Positively, it is argued that Locke advances a representative theory of knowledge according to which, in sense perception, one is directly acquainted with physical objects and their properties. Squadrito ascribes to Locke the view that all ideas are signs. For a sign to signify one must be aware both of it and of that of which it is the sign. Since ideas are signs which make objects known, one does not have to deal with the traditional quandary of how to break out of the circle of ideas. This interpretation of Locke is viewed as consistent with his rejection of traditional and Cartesian philosophy. To support her criticism of the traditional interpretation of Locke, Squadrito re-examines his account of ideas both their ontological status and epistemic function. In doing so she argues that for Locke (I) ideas are not modifications of the mind; (2) ideas do not stand as a screen between the mind and physical things; (3) the passive character of the mind in receiving simple ideas is a guarantee that such ideas correspond to the properties of real things in the world; (4) complex ideas of substances are determined by how our minds combine and organize such simple ideas; (5) some complex ideas do not adequately represent things, thus allowing for scepticism concerning what things are; and (6) a re-examination of the distinction between real and nominal essence is a necessary condition to understanding the type of scepticism inherent in the Essay. It is sometimes claimed that if Locke holds a representative theory of perception his distinction between primary and secondary qualities cannot be justified since primary qualities are necessarily imperceptible. Squadrito argues that such a view is not warranted by what Locke says about primary qualities and perception. It is argued that Locke's claim that ideas of primary qualities resemble primary qualities in things really means that such qualifies belong to bodies non-relationally and that our perception of such qualities reveals them as neither ideas in the mind nor as mere powers in objects. Secondary qualities are construed relationally as powers in things to cause ideas in the observer. A traditional criticism of Locke, early raised by Stillingfleet, is that his definition of knowledge as the perception of agreement or disagreement of ideas does not account for sensitive knowledge of physical things. Squadrito argues that the definition given in Book IV is elliptical and can be given the precision needed to accommodate such knowledge. Disregarding the text of the Essay and citing Locke's reply to Stillingfleet, it is argued BOOK REVIEWS 255 that sensitive knowledge involves the perception of the agreement between an "idea of actual sensation" and the "idea of actual existence of something without me that causes that sensation." The passivity of mind in receiving such ideas and the mind's inability to create simple ideas is the guarantee that such...

Locke and the “Ancient Hypothesis”

John Locke sometimes claims in An Essay Concerning the Human Understanding that secondary qualities are qualities of bodies and not simply ideas. Few commentators, however, have taken that claim seriously. This is at least partly because Locke also claims that ideas of secondary qualities do not resemble the secondary qualities of bodies and the commentators have taken these two doctrines to be irreconcilable. In this paper I shall briefly present the traditional reasons for thinking the two doctrines incompatible, and then present Locke's neglected attempt to reconcile these two claims.Thomas Reid in his Philosophical Works tries to explain the traditional interpretation of Locke's claims about the nature of secondary qualities. In doing so he cites an “ancient hypothesis“:… the mind, like a mirror receives the images of things from without, by means of the senses; so that their use must be to convey the images into the mind.

A Note on Locke's Theory of Self-Knowledge

Notes and Discussions A NOTE ON LOCKE'S THEORY OF SELF KNOWLEDGE One of the standard objections to I.x~cke's epistemology is that he is inconsistent when he claims that we have intuitive knowledge of the real existence of the self. He has defined intuitive knowledge of real existence as the immediate awareness of the agreement or disagreement of ideas, and in talking about intuitive knowledge of the self he must talk about the immediately perceived agreement of an idea with something which is not an idea. But such a criticism is too simplistic. 1 I show that this criticism is incorrect since Locke's distinction between adequate and inadequate ectypal ideas is not taken into account by the critics. His claim that we have intuitive knowledge of the real existence of the self is based on this distinction and by taking it into account the charge of inconsistency can be met. There are, however, difficulties with Locke's claim based on his distinctions between archetypal and ectypal ideas, and adequate and inadequate ectypal ideas. Locke distinguishes archetypal ideas which are not original patterns and not representations of something else from ectypal ideas which are copies or representations of something else. Ectypal ideas could be representations of substance or of the operations of the mind, or simply the copies of other ideas. A complex general idea is a nominal essence which is not a copy of any particular thing. Because general ideas are not copies of anything they are archetypal ideas. "The abstract idea for which the name stands, and the essence of the species, is one and the same.''2 "Every distinct abstract idea is a distinct essence; and the names that stand for such distinct ideas are the names of things essentially different" (III, iii, 14). When an idea is archetypal, the real and nominal essences are identical (III, iii, 12). In certain cases such as simple ideas and modes and relations, the real and nominal essences are identical (III, iii, 18). Although for simple ideas and modes the real and nominal essences are the same, the real and nominal essences are always different for our ideas of substance (III, iii, 18). We can know the nominal essences of substances such as gold (the ectypal idea) but we cannot know the real essence (the archetype) of this substance . The nominal essence of gold is an abstract idea, whereas its real essence "is the real constitution of its insensible parts, on which depend all of those properties.., which are to be found in it" (III, iii, 18). Locke is claiming here that in the case of material substance the real and nominal essences are distinct. In the case of substance, the abstract idea or nominal essence is an ectypal idea and there is no knowledge of the original archetype. However, the nominal essence or mental construct is an archetypal idea and is not a copy of some extra-mental thing in the case of general terms, abstract ideas, simple ideas and modes. We have corn1 D. J. O'Connor, 1ohn Locke (New York: Dover Publications, 1967), p. 163. W. T. Jones, Hobbes to Hume (New York: Harcourt, Brace &World, 1969),p. 253. 2 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, A. C. Fraser, ed. first edition, Oxford , 1894 (New York: Dover Publications, 1959),III, iii, 12. All further references are to this edition. [2,39] 240 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY plete knowledge about these archetypal ideas. There is no archetype or real essence which is hidden from us. We can have certain knowledge if the real and nominal essences are identical, i.e., if the ideas are archetypal and not ectypes or copies of some extra-mental archetype. But this certainty is a very limited form of certainty in that it only affords us knowledge about our own ideas. However, in Book Two Locke contradicts his claims in Book Three about the archetypal nature of simple ideas. In Book Two he says that simple ideas are ectypal (II, xxxi, 12). These simple ectypal ideas are the effects of the powers of substances. The powers are the archetypes of these simple ectypal ideas. This raises the problem about the degree...

A paradox in Locke's Theory of Natural Rights

There are certain recurring objections to Locke's theory of legitimate government and the conception of natural rights on which it is based. These objections generally take the form of showing that most of Locke's claims in the Second Treatise stand largely as ad hoc assertions, defended—if at all—not by philosophical argumentation but by appeals to theology or intuition. These criticisms might be called external criticisms of Locke's theory because they focus, not upon the coherence of the theory or the perplexities which prompted Locke to adopt it, but rather upon the justifications (or lack of them) for that theory. Important as these criticisms are to an ultimate evaluation of Locke's success, my purpose here is neither to reiterate them nor to defend Locke against them. Rather I want to develop a purely internal criticism of his view. For I shall argue that upon any acceptable interpretation of at least one of Locke's central natural rights claims, this claim will not be able to perform the crucial task envisioned for it by Locke—namely, provide a key premise for the moral justification for passing from a pre-civil society to a civil society that is responsible to its citizens.