Origins. One of the first of such texts would be John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (), where he says, "I conceive that Ideas in the Understanding, are coeval with Sensation; which is such an Impression or Motion, made in some part of the body, as makes it be taken notice of in the Understanding." George Cheyne and other medical writers wrote of "The English Malady," also Nov 12, · The goal of Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (), then, is to establish epistemological foundations for the new science by examining the reliability, scope, and limitations of human knowledge in contrast with with the pretensions of uncritical belief, borrowed opinion, and mere superstition. Since the sciences had already John Locke, in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, defends the fundamental belief that humans are born without innate ideas, P 1 and thus must derive their knowledge entirely from “external, sensible Objects perceived and reflected on by our selves” (EU: II.I, § 1, emphasis mine). P 2 This
John Locke (filosoof) - Wikipedia
In this supplement, we consider some of the most interesting and controversial claims that Locke makes in the Philosophy of Mind. These claims and suggestions, along with a number of others, turn out to be connected in interesting ways and raise important questions about the degree to which Locke is willing to endorse substance dualism and the extent of his commitment to Boylean mechanism.
In giving us his estimate of the limits of human understanding, Locke made some claims which surprised his contemporaries. In IV. He writes:. We have the Ideas of Matter and of Thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know, whether any material being thinks, or no; it being impossible for us, by the contemplation of our own Ideas, without revelation, to discover whether Omnipotency has not given to some System of Matter fitly disposed, a power to perceive and think, or else joined to matter so disposed, a thinking immaterial substance.
In Book IV of the Essay Locke makes a distinction between what we can know and propositions that are only probable. In the passage quoted above he is telling us that we may never be able to know whether dualist or materialist theories of mind are true. But, in fact, even though we may never know which is true, this leaves entirely open the question of which view is more plausible or probable.
What Jolley has in mind is form of materialism that is compatible with a dualism of properties Jolley 11— Jolley claims that as a theologian Locke deals with with issues in both natural, and perhaps more surprisingly, revealed religion.
In the passage from Book IV quoted above, Locke is telling us that both possibilities, thinking matter and immaterial thinking substance, are beyond our comprehension and require in either case God to add the powers of perception and thought to matter or to the immaterial substance—which is then joined to the fitly disposed matter.
This is because, as the dualist claimed, from motion all you get is motion, from figure only other figures. Let us call this the Homogeneity Principle. Since perception and thought are not motions or figures, locke essay concerning human understanding cannot be caused by matter.
Indeed, it would seem that his suggestion in IV. Locke, however, explicitly denies this. In another part of the discussion of thinking matter, he writes:. For I see no contradiction in it, locke essay concerning human understanding, that the first Eternal Thinking Being, should, if he pleased, give to certain systems of created, senseless matter, put together as he thinks fit, some degree of sense, perception and thought: Though I think as I have proved, Lib IV c.
What Certainty of knowledge can anyone have that some perceptions, such as v. pleasure and pain, should not be in some bodies themselves, after a certain manner modified and moved, as well as they should be in an immaterial Substance, upon the motion of the parts of the Body: Body as far as we can conceive being only able to strike and affect body; and Motion according to the utmost reach of our Ideasbeing able to produce nothing but Motion, so that when we allow it to produce pleasure or pain, or the Ideas of Colouror Sound, we are fain to quit our Reason, go beyond our Ideas and attribute it wholly to the good pleasure of our Maker.
For since we must allow that he has annexed Effects to Motion, which we can no way conceive Motion able to produce, what reason have we to conclude, that he could not order them as well as to be produced in a Subject we cannot conceive capable of them, as well as in a Subject we cannot conceive the motion of Matter can any way operate upon?
Locke claims that it was no farther beyond our comprehension that motions of the body could give rise to pleasure and pain, colors and sounds, than that an immaterial soul could feel pain or see colors after the occurrence of some motions in the body.
Plainly, he is using the mind body problem to suggest that their are features of substance dualism that are just as puzzling as the fact that the standard corpuscularian mechanism cannot explain thinking matter. Locke is putting the dualist and materialist positions on the same footing. He immediately draws the theological conclusion that follows from the two hypotheses being equally plausible:.
In this passage about the great ends of morality and religion Locke is claiming that the issue of whether the soul is material or immaterial is of no great importance for morality or the ends of religion.
There will be a resurrection of the dead, judgment and just rewards and punishments will be meted out, whether the thing that thinks in us is material or immaterial. By showing that on either account the ends and purposes of morality and religion will be served, Locke is reconciling the contestants on either side by showing that what is at stake will be gained either way.
The idea of matter is an extended solid substance; wherever there is such a substance, there is matter; and the essence of matter, whatever other qualities, not contained in that essence, it shall please God to superadd to it. above the essence of matter in general, but it is still but matter: to other parts he adds sense and spontaneous motion, and those other properties that are to be found in an elephant.
Hitherto it is locke essay concerning human understanding doubted but the power of God may go, and that the properties of a rose, a peach, or an elephant, superadded to matter, change not the properties of matter; but matter is in these things matter still. Locke,Vol. III: ; quoted in Jolley It would appear from this account that, in respect to material bodies, superadded properties are those God adds to matter to create certain kinds of things beyond the essence of matter, that yet leaves the essence of matter unaffected.
So, the addition of motion to some parts of matter previously at rest is a superaddition. So too is the organization of matter into vegetative life such as roses and peach trees. The organization which produces the sense and spontaneous motion of animals, such as the elephant is also superaddition. It is but a further step to perception and thought. So, why object to the last step, Locke says, when everything leading up to it is unproblematic? It suggests that God creates matter fitly disposed, locke essay concerning human understanding then adds something to it to make it perceive and think.
This model of superaddition makes one wonder what exactly locke essay concerning human understanding is that God is adding to the matter fitly disposed.
It seems that there are no very good answers. This should lead us to try to hang on to the model that says God creates the organization of a rose, and elephant and a man and the creation of these are the superadditions with no further addition necessary.
But if something in addition is required we might think of putting the machine in motion. The simplest case is, perhaps, motion. Here, presumably, all God has to do is give certain parts of matter a push and they move. With peach trees and elephants, there is more of a puzzle. Locke holds that all of vegetative life can be explained mechanically. Still, the starting of the plant machine comes from within. Perhaps whatever it is that sets the peach tree machine going is that thing superadded.
Perhaps the organization and the push are both superadditions. Perhaps one can say the same of the elephant and man. Given all this, how does Locke avoid the contradiction between his adoption of the principle of Homogeneity and his assertion that thinking matter is possible?
There is a clue in the passage from his correspondence with Stillingfleet quoted above. It is this claim that the dualist Principle of Homogeneity is aimed to counter, locke essay concerning human understanding.
Let matter be eternally in motion, it will still never produce anything other than motion. So, locke essay concerning human understanding, Locke uses the Principle of Homogeneity in its strong dualist form to block the creation of a material God. But once God is recognized to be necessarily immaterial, Locke has a different account of the essence of matter than the ancient materialists.
As we have seen in the passage of the correspondence with Stillingfleet, motion is not an essential feature of matter, it is superadded. God can and does make things which are quite different from one another cause one another.
Motions in the body cause pleasure and pain and the ideas of secondary qualities such as color and sound. So motion can cause perception and thought. The problem is just that the locke essay concerning human understanding together of pieces of matter cannot explain perception and thought.
So, God must employ some other means which go beyond our ideas to make this happen—and thus it is incomprehensible to us. Locke also claims that God locke essay concerning human understanding perhaps the angels know how the apparent qualities of man arise from atoms III.
This is because on a corpuscularian mechanist basis, the connections between motions and colors, for example, are arbitrary. But, given that God is using some other way to connect motions and colors, locke essay concerning human understanding, it does not follow that the connections are arbitrary, though they seem so to us.
So, a divine understanding of nature might still be possible. Instead of the locke essay concerning human understanding conclusions about immaterial versus material substance that Locke is arguing for, his remarks were sometimes treated as proposing that matter can and does think, locke essay concerning human understanding.
It hardly matters however. Clarke sought to show that from our ideas alone it would be possible to show that matter thinking would involve a contradiction. If Clarke is right, Locke even on the weaker interpretation explored here would be wrong.
There was an explosion of refutations of the claim that for all we know matter can think and the discussion of this issue lasted at least three quarters of the way through the eighteenth century. For accounts of this debate see Yolton and Martin and Baresi His account of personal identity is embedded in a general account of identity.
McCann 54—7 But the general account is linked in important ways with the main topic of the chapter, which is personal identity. When we see anything in any place in one instant of time, we are sure, be it what it will that it is that very thing and not another, which at that time exists in another place, how like and undistinguishable it may be in other respects.
And in this consists identity when the ideas it is attributed to vary not at all from what they were that moment, wherein we consider their former existence, to which we compare the present, locke essay concerning human understanding.
Locke then goes on to state that two things of the same kind cannot be in the same place at the same time and to draw a corollary from this principle:, locke essay concerning human understanding. For we never finding nor conceiving it possible, that two things of the same kind should exist at the locke essay concerning human understanding place at the same time, locke essay concerning human understanding, we rightly conclude that anything that exists anywhere at any time, locke essay concerning human understanding, excludes all of the same kind, and is there itself alone.
From locke essay concerning human understanding it follows that one thing cannot have two beginnings of Existence, nor two things one beginning, it being impossible for two things of the same kind to be or exist in the same instant, in the very same place; or one and the same in different places.
That therefore that had one beginning is the same thing, and that which had a different beginning in time and place is divers. II, 27, 1 N. Substances are independent existences, while modes and relations depend on substances for their existence. Locke claims that we have the ideas of but three sorts of substances: God, finite intelligences and bodies.
He goes on to distinguish and explain the difference between the identity of a single atom, masses of atoms and living things. Each individual atom is the same at a time, and stays the same over time. So, there is no problem about the identity of atoms.
Masses of atoms are individuated by their constituent atoms without regard to the way in which they are organized. If such a mass gains or loses a single atom, it has a new set of constituents and so is a new mass, even if the organization of that mass stays the same. Living things, by contrast, are individuated by their functional organization. This organization is instantiated at any time by a collection of atoms. But the organization can persist through changes in the particles which make it up—at least gradual change which continues the functions which the organization performs.
Clearly the most important of these functions is the continuation of the same life. It is the continuation of the same functional organization and thus the same life which is the criterion of identity for sameness of living thing, be it an oak or a horse. But were that the case a horse and an elephant, which locke essay concerning human understanding different nominal essences, could be in the same place at the same time!
Instead of a horse and an elephant, one could have a horse and an oak tree in the same place at the same time. This suggests that Locke was perceptive in making bodies one kind.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
, time: 14:28John Locke - Quotes, Beliefs & Definition - Biography
John Locke, in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, defends the fundamental belief that humans are born without innate ideas, P 1 and thus must derive their knowledge entirely from “external, sensible Objects perceived and reflected on by our selves” (EU: II.I, § 1, emphasis mine). P 2 This Origins. One of the first of such texts would be John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (), where he says, "I conceive that Ideas in the Understanding, are coeval with Sensation; which is such an Impression or Motion, made in some part of the body, as makes it be taken notice of in the Understanding." George Cheyne and other medical writers wrote of "The English Malady," also The two most important of these are Locke’s remarks in Book IV, Chapter 3 section 6 of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding that for all we know God could just as easily make matter fitly disposed to think as He could add thought to an immaterial substance; the second is the revolutionary theory of personal identity that Locke added in
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