Locke

Aims of ‘An Essay Concerning Human Understanding’

• Determine what is knowable for humans before enquiring about other issues

• “to inquire into the origin, certainty, and extent of human knowledge” (1.1.2)

Concept Empiricism

• The notion that all concepts are derived from sense experience (whatever this may be) but not that all knowledge is derived from experience

• Locke, Berkeley, and Hume are concept empiricists

Innate ideas in Locke’s historical context

• The notion of innate principles was widespread in the 17th century where they were used to stabilise morality and religion

  • Innate principles were generally formulations of the existing values of society (John Yolton, 1956)

• Matthew Hale (1677) lists congenite truths like ‘God exists’ as innate truths ‘written by the finger of God’

  • This is why Locke thinks innate principles would constitute knowledge if they existed

What does Locke think ideas are?

• Ideas are simple concepts obtained from experience which are the building blocks of propositions and complex ideas

• They are private and mind-dependent, the objects of both sense perception and thought

  • Critics point out that using ideas to designate seeing-x and thinking-x is misleading as these are different processes

• He bolsters this point by pointing out that one doesn’t have ideas without the sense that corresponds to their perception (2.2.3)

• Without innate ideas, there cannot be innate principles

• “the object of the understanding when a man thinks” (1.1.8)

What is ‘General assent the great argument’?

1. Some principles are universally assented to by mankind

2. If a principle is universally assented, it is innate

3. There are innate principles

• Locke thinks such principles would be things like ‘it is impossible for the same thing to be and not be’

• He points out that since ‘idiots and children don’t assent to these principles they are not innate

A stronger formulation of the general assent argument

1. Some principles are universally assented as soon as they are proposed and understood

2. If so, then the principle is innate

3. Therefore, there are some innate principles

• Locke argues that if we accept (1) and (2) we overgenerate innate principles — any principle which is agreed to becomes innate

• He also argues that a principle cannot be innate if it is not thought — to possess something in the mind which is not thought is absurd

  • “No proposition can be said to be in the mind which it never yet knew” (1.2.5)

How does Leibniz argue experience can’t give knowledge of necessity?

• Sense experiences only gives instances which can’t establish a general truth despite confirming it

• Necessary truths must be sense-independent principles

• However, it is questioned how damaging this argument is for Locke — he is a concept empiricist, not a knowledge empiricist

  • This is only an argument for a priori knowledge, not innate knowledge

The analogy of Hercules and the Block of Marble

• If humans have no innate knowledge then they are like the shape of Hercules in a block of marble where his shape is not clearly defined

• Leibniz argues that humans might have innate knowledge in the way a block of marble might have veins that outline Hercules’ figure despite it needing to be chiselled from the stone

  • Innate knowledge is dispositional and not ready-formed principles; this principle might manifest in action and not thought

• In many cases, people will use principles without explicitly outlining them, like the principle of contradiction

  • Question whether this constitutes knowledge — for Locke, knowledge is the perception of the agreement of ideas, so if someone can’t do this, he would not call it knowledge even if they use it implicitly

Types of ideas

• Sensations aren’t the only thing we experience, these are outward, but we have inner perceptions of the operations of our mind like doubting and willing too

• Despite (passively) receiving complex representations, ideas enter the mind simple and unmixed

• Complex ideas are compounded simples

• Modes are complex ideas which depend on substances: simple modes are collections of the same type of idea (the colour red) whilst mixed modes are compounded of many kinds of simple ideas, like beauty

Problems with Locke’s account of ideas

• Although he contests all ideas are simple or complex, he confesses that some ideas like relation and abstraction seem to fall into neither category (although he doesn’t abandon the categories)

• Ayers (1977) points out that when we observe a ‘pink patch’, it is not as a duality of shape and colour but rather as a unity

• Locke struggles with the idea of ‘substance’, which he believes we cannot have but is required as a support for qualities (this is vague and denotes nothing)

Locke on language

• Words merely signify an idea in the mind, thought is prior to language which is just a tool for communication

• Most words in languages are general, leading Locke to argue there must be general ideas

Locke on abstraction

• We obtain general ideas through abstraction, the separation of ideas from all the particular ideas which accompany them in existence

  • “Wherein does his idea of man differ from that of Peter, and Paul, or his idea of horse, from that of Bucephalus, but in the leaving out something, that is peculiar to each individual…?” (3.3.9)

  • “there general nature being nothing but the capacity they are put into by the understanding, of signifiying or representing many particulars” (3.3.11)

Berkeley’s critique of abstract ideas

• We are unable to generate an abstract image of something, since any idea must have a particular shape or colour

• Since ideas are mental images which are determinate, we cannot have general ideas:

  • “whatever hand or eye I imagine, it must have a particular shape and colour” (§10)

• Points out that words don’t signify just one idea, but one word may be used to represent many ideas

• P.J.E Kail (2014) argues that for a mental image of a stripy cat, there might be no fact of the matter about how many stripes it has showing they are indeterminate

  • Of course, this has limits, a triangle must have three sides

Different versions of Locke’s abstraction

Elimination - ‘Man’ is formed by eliminating from my idea of ‘Father’ any qualities which are particular to him

Selective attention - ‘Man’ is formed by considering features of my father common to all other men

What are bodies?

• Bodies are tiny ‘corpuscles’ which possess a few basic primary qualities (terms he borrows from Boyle), where primary qualities are those which secondary qualities can be explained in terms of (heat is the frenzied motion of objects with extension)

• Bodies only operate on other bodies by touch (impulse) it being impossible to conceive of affectation without touch — secondary qualities are powers to produce sensations but not in an object itself

  • “the power to produce any idea in our mind, I call quality” (2.8.10)

What is the separability criterion?

• A condition which states that primary qualities can’t be separated from an object whilst secondary qualities can be

• This is problematic: some qualities are determinables with determinate instantiations like colour, where although red is determinate, a thing cannot be colourless

  • Locke argues that even the broader determinable ‘colour’ (c.f the determinate ‘red’) is a secondary quality and thus is separable — uh oh

What is the resemblance criterion?

• A claim by Locke that primary qualities, although only ideas, resemble the things which actually exist in an object (shape, although only an idea, actually resembles a property of the mind-independent object)

• Although there is no perceived link between our sensations and physical objects, since our sensations provide such an intelligible grasp of the workings of external objects then they probably actually resemble those objects

  • Only primary qualities resemble external objects

What are powers, dispositions, and grounds?

• Fragility and solubility are dispositional qualities which have their grounds in how the primary qualities are arranged

• To show secondary qualities are mere powers, Locke outlines the instance one puts a hot and cold hand into the same body of room temperature water and experiences different temperatures (2.8.21)

  • “these ideas are not in objects, but effects of its operations on us, and are nowhere when we feel them not.” (2.8.18)

Berkeley against the resemblance and separability criterion

• “an idea can be like nothing but an idea.” (§8)

• If primary qualities are inseparable from secondary qualities in thought, it is inconceivable to abstract primary qualities away from secondary qualities meaning secondary qualities aren’t separable either

  • Therefore, these objects are just ideas, or secondary qualities are primary

    • Primary qualities are therefore also mind-dependent, a faster succession of ideas in the mind leads to slower motion (§14)