Lock Treatment Research Articles

Locke’s Humean conventionalism

ABSTRACT This paper shows that Locke anticipates key features of Hume's more celebrated analysis of convention. It does so by developing Lenz's account of Lockean (linguistic) convention and its normativity, as presented in Socializing Minds. Locke's account of linguistic convention shares structural features also visible in Locke's treatment of the convention of money and property. The paper shows that Locke's ‘Humean' account of convention responds to a lacuna in Pufendorf’s treatment of linguistic convention that Lenz argues is significant to Locke.

Locke on measurement

Like many virtuosi in his day, the English philosopher John Locke maintained an active interest in metrology. Yet for Locke, this was no mere hobby: questions concerning measurement were also implicated in his ongoing philosophical project to develop an account of human understanding. This paper follows Locke's treatment of four problems of measurement from the early Drafts A and B of the Essay concerning Human Understanding to the publication of this famous book and its aftermath. It traces Locke's attempt to develop a natural or universal standard for the measure of length, his attempts to grapple with the measurement of duration, as well as the problems of determining comparative measures for secondary qualities, and the problem of discriminating small differences in the conventional measures of his day. It is argued that the salient context for Locke's treatment of these problems is the new experimental philosophy and its method of experimental natural history.

The capacity contract: Locke, disability, and the political exclusion of “Idiots”

Underlying Locke's social compact is a capacity contract that hinges political membership on rational capacity. Unlike the sexual and racial contracts that enforce domination, Locke's capacity contract promises both exclusion and democratic solidarity. This twofold interpretation follows from Locke's treatment of disability and, in particular, his construction of idiocy as both fundamentally human and analogous to nonhuman animals. As a domination contract, the capacity contract marks some bodies as more vulnerable than others and strips them of political membership to safeguard political legitimacy. The democratic capacity contract, however, sees vulnerability as an essential marker of human life that prompts men to form the social compact to counteract everyday injustices.

Songs and Intellectuals:

Songs and Intellectuals:

The Grounds of Moral Agency: Locke's Account of Personal Identity

AbstractFor Locke, the personal identity problem was a moral problem from the beginning, an attempt to pin down the conditions for responsibility and accountability. This article discusses the implications of Locke's consciousness theory of personal identity for thought about the continuity of moral agency, arguing that Locke's treatment of personal identity is best understood in connection with his expanded discussion of liberty in the Essay and with his interest in the proper grounds for assessing responsibility for action. By grounding personal identity in an agent's ability to recognize her actions as her own, Locke presents a picture of moral life compatible with skepticism about substance while not skeptical about morality. I argue that this description highlights some important features of self-awareness and personhood without resorting to any metaphysical suppositions such as soul, essence or spirit.

Taking the Prerogative out of the Presidency: An Originalist Perspective

Claims for the inherent authority of the executive over issues of national security imply that the adopters of the Constitution relied on prior British definitions equating executive power and royal prerogative. These claims cannot survive the scrutiny of key sources, including Locke's treatment of the federative power in his Second Treatise, the Federal Convention's debates over the presidency, and the famous 1793 exchange between Hamilton and Madison over the nature and sources of presidential power. When Hamilton relied on the Vesting Clause to stake his claim, he was engaging in interpretive innovatio, not providing a historically faithful account of how the presidency had been contrived.

A Chartalist Critique of John Locke's Theory of Property, Accumulation, and Money: or, is it Moral to Trade Your Nuts for Gold?

The focus of this paper is John Locke's theoretical defense of economic inequality. It is well known that Locke identified labor as the original and just foundation of property. Succinctly, Locke's was a labor theory of property. Now, while Locke saw private property as legitimate, he proposed that the state of nature within which people interact is part of a social system that is regulated by distinct rules that limit accumulation. There is nothing in Locke's initial argument that allows for unbounded accumulation and consequent inequality. The justification for unbridled accumulation comes later, and rests squarely on Locke's treatment of money as a non-exploitive institution. For Locke, money allows unlimited accumulation while still adhering to the rules he established to govern morally correct behavior. In this paper, we challenge Locke's position by contrasting his exchange-based view of money with the debt-based or Chartalist theory of money. We demonstrate that when money is properly conceived, Locke's own moral strictures regarding property are violated, and his theoretical defense of the accumulation process is undermined.

Locke on the Idea of Substratum

Locke's treatment of substratum is notoriously difficult. Accordingto one commentator, ‘nothing else in the writings of any philosopher matches the doubleness of attitude of the passages about substratum in Locke's Essay’ (Bennett 1987, 197). The aim of the present paper is to render consistent Locke's seemingly divergent strands on the subject. My efforts are organized around three levels of apparent duplicity. At each level, I argue that the doubleness of attitude in Locke's treatment is merely apparent. I argue further that Locke means to ground an empiricist‐friendly idea of substratum in the customary experience of simple ideas that ‘go constantly together.’