1. Modern Philosophy PHIL320
Locke – Essay II
Charles Manekin
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Modern Philosophy PHIL320

2. Modern Philosophy PHIL320
Topics of Discussion
On the Origin of Ideas
Simple and Complex Ideas
Qualities and Powers
Substance and Causation
Personal Identity
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3. All Ideas Come From Experience
External Experience (Sensation) and Internal Experience (Reflection)
No Innate Ideas
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4. Modern Philosophy PHIL320
Sensation
Sensation = an impression of motion made in some part of the body as produces some perception in the understanding
Sensation is a physical process; perception a mental one.
Corpuscular theory
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5. Does the Soul/Mind Always Think?
Sensation produces simple ideas which can be retained and combined with others in the mind. The mind can neither invent nor destroy them.
Simple ideas can be defined but not explained.
Solidity
The mind does not always think, nor does it always perceive.
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6. Some simple ideas of sensation
Space, Extension, Figure, Rest, Motion, Color, Sound, Taste, etc.
More accurately, specific examples of these, e.g., red, square, etc.
What is an idea?
“Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself or is the immediate object of perception, thought or understanding”
Note BOTH that perceptions are called ideas, and that ideas are called the immediate object of perception.
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7. Modern Philosophy PHIL320
Qualities and Powers
External objects have powers to produce within us ideas, and to affect external changes in other objects.
The power to produce within us ideas are called qualities
Redness and circularity of the apple are qualities.
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8. Primary vs Secondary Qualities
Primary qualities reside within the external object (solidity, extension, figure, mobility, rest, number)
Secondary qualities reside within the mind but are produced by the primary qualities of the external object.
Primary qualities are immediately perceivable
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9. Modern Philosophy PHIL320
The Molyneux Puzzle
"I shall here insert a problem of that very ingenious and studious promoter of real knowledge, the learned and worthy Mr. Molyneux, which he was pleased to send me in a letter some months since; and it is this:- "Suppose a man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere of the same metal, and nighly of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and the other, which is the cube, which the sphere. Suppose then the cube and sphere placed on a table, and the blind man be made to see: quaere, whether by his sight, before he touched them, he could now distinguish and tell which is the globe, which the cube?"
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10. Modern Philosophy PHIL320
The Answer
To which the acute and judicious proposer answers, "Not. For, though he has obtained the experience of how a globe, how a cube affects his touch, yet he has not yet obtained the experience, that what affects his touch so or so, must affect his sight so or so; or that a protuberant angle in the cube, that pressed his hand unequally, shall appear to his eye as it does in the cube."- I agree with this thinking gentleman, whom I am proud to call my friend, in his answer to this problem; and am of opinion that the blind man, at first sight, would not be able with certainty to say which was the globe, which the cube, whilst he only saw them; though he could unerringly name them by his touch, and certainly distinguish them by the difference of their figures felt.
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11. Simple Ideas of Reflection
Perception and Willing; faculty of understanding and will.
Modes of these simple ideas: remembrance, discerning, reasoning, judging, knowledge, faith
Passive operations vs. active operations of the mind.
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12. Modern Philosophy PHIL320
Abstraction
ABSTRACTION, whereby ideas taken from particular beings become general representatives of all of the same kind; and their names general names, applicable to whatever exists conformable to such abstract ideas..Thus the same colour being observed to-day in chalk or snow, which the mind yesterday received from milk, it considers that appearance alone, makes it a representative of all of that kind; and having given it the name whiteness, it by that sound signifies the same quality wheresoever to be imagined or met with; and thus universals, whether ideas or terms, are made.
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13. Modern Philosophy PHIL320
Complex Ideas
Modes, Substances, Relations
Modes: dependencies on, or affections of substances: triangle, gratitude, murder. Even thieves know that they should obey contracts. How do they know this.
Simple modes, space, distance, place, capacity, figure
Space/Extension distinguished from body.
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14. Modern Philosophy PHIL320
The Idea of Substance
We have an idea of various ideas coexisting and subsisting in something which we call a substratum; but we have no experience of the substratum. The reason is that we experience properties (or qualities) of substance, but never that underlying substratum. So we can call the idea of substance that which underlies or unites various ideas into one thing, but we don't know what that it -- we cannot get at the underlying substratum; made up of primary and secondary qualities, and powers.
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15. Modern Philosophy PHIL320
The Idea of Causation
"That which produces any simple or complex idea we denote by the general name cause and that which is produced the effect. A cause is that which makes any other thing, either simple idea, substance, or mode, begin to be; and an effect is that which had its beginning from some other thing.
Definition but not an explanation. "That which produces any simple or complex idea we denote by the general name cause and that which is produced the effect. A cause is that which makes any other thing, either simple idea, substance, or mode, begin to be; and an effect is that which had its beginning from some other thing.
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16. Modern Philosophy PHIL320
Identity
Distinction between man and person
A man is a sort of living organism whose identity depends on his biological organization
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 only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking and essential to it…as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person…Consciousness makes personal identity”.
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17. “I tell you I AM the Prince”
Should the soul of a prince carrying with it the consciousness of the prince's past life enter and inform the body of a cobbler, as soon as deserted by his own soul, everyone sees he would be the same person with the prince, accountable only for the prince's action.
Problems with the memory criterion.
Possibility of different persons in the same man.
Does personhood depend on the reliability of memory
What one actually remembers? What one could remember?
Does identity of consciousness/memory become constituitive of personal identity, or a criterion of it.
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18. Reid’s “Brave Officer” Objection
Suppose a brave officer to have been flogged when a boy at school, for robbing an orchard, to have taken a standard from the enemy in his first campaign, and to have been made a general in advanced life: Suppose also, which must be admitted to be possible, that when he took the standard, he was conscious of his having been flogged at school, and that when made a general he was conscious of his taking the standard, but had absolutely lost the consciousness of his flogging. These things being supposed, it follows, from Mr LOCKE's doctrine, that he who was flogged at school is the same person who took the standard, and that he who took the standard is the same person who was made a general.
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19. Reid’s “Brave Officer” Objection
When it follows, if there be any truth in logic, that the general is the same person with him who was flogged at school. But the general's consciousness does not reach so far back as his flogging, therefore, according to Mr LOCKE's doctrine, he is not the person who was flogged. Therefore the general is, and at the same time is not the same person as him who was flogged at school (Essays, 276).
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20. Williams’ Guy Fawkes Objection
Say that the soul of Guy Fawkes, at the moment of his death went into the body of another man. According to Locke, that man would be Guy Fawkes, for he would have memories/consciousness of Guy Fawkes. But suppose that the soul emerged in two other bodies simultaneously. Both would claim to be Guy Fawkes. But how can they both be Guy Fawkes?
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21. Person as a Forensic Term
How is moral responsibility attributed.
You are not morally responsible for acts committed by a different person.
But what about acts you forgot?
The idea of morality. “Good and evil are nothing but pleasure or pain…morally good or evil is only the conformity or disagreement of our voluntary actions to some law, whereby good or evil is drawn on us, from the will and power of the law-maker; which good and evil, pleasure or pain, attending our observance or breach of the law by the decree of the lawmaker, is that we call reward and punishment.
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