Locke’s argument is that contrary to the belief that “men have native ideas, and original characters, stamped upon their minds in their very first being” human nature is in fact similar to a “white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas.”
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The reason that we nevertheless "perceive these original [i.e., primary] qualities" lies, in Locke's view, in the fact that according to his thought-experiment with the grain of wheat, even imperceptible particles must be thought of as having primary qualities.
Locke here sets out the constituent ideas that make up the complex idea of the mind. He also launches an attack against Descartes’s claim that thought is the essence of the soul. Most famously, he denies that we can be sure that what thinks in us in an immaterial substance. (From II.xxiii.18.
Locke does much to distinguish between human beings (or men)—which are animals—and persons, and Blatti and Snowdon assert that this sets the stage for how the personal identity debate plays out for the next several hundred years. In other words, Locke is the reason that animalist views do not emerge until later in the twentieth century.
(II viii 15) Locke hopes to reach this conclusion by setting out to explain how bodies produce ideas (= perceptions) in us through a series of transferences of motion.
John Locke For him, human nature is guided by tolerance and reason. The State of Nature is pre-political, but it is not pre-moral. Persons are assumed to be equal to one another in such a state, and therefore equally capable of discovering and being bound by the Law of Nature.
Beyond self-preservation, the law of nature, or reason, also teaches “all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, liberty, or possessions.” Unlike Hobbes, Locke believed individuals are naturally endowed with these rights (to life, liberty, and ...
There Locke states that apart from ordinary causal properties or "powers," material objects possess five primary qualities—extension (size), figure (shape), motion or rest, number, and solidity (impenetrability)—and many secondary qualities, such as color, taste, smell, sound, and warmth or cold.
Locke says individuals have a duty to respect the property (and lives and liberties) of others even in the state of nature, a duty he traces to natural law. Natural law and natural rights coexist, but natural law is primary, commanding respect for the rights of others.
Locke and Hobbes had very different views regarding human nature. Locke claimed human nature as reason and Hobbes claimed it as power and appetite. Locke believes that reason is the primary attribute of human nature. Hobbes, on the other hand, thinks that people only care about power and appetite.
The primary qualities of objects produce ideas in our minds that “resemble” the corresponding qualities in the objects that caused us to have those ideas. The secondary qualities of objects produce ideas in our minds that do not resemble the corresponding qualities in the objects that produced those ideas in our minds.
The ideas which resemble their causes are the ideas of primary qualities: texture, number, size, shape, motion. The ideas which do not resemble their causes are the ideas of secondary qualities: color, sound, taste, and odor.
Whereas primary qualities—such as figure, quantity, and motion—are genuine properties of things and are knowable by mathematics, secondary qualities—such as colour, odour, taste, and sound—exist only in human consciousness and are not part of the objects to which they are normally.
Objections & Locke’s responses. Locke considers two potential objections to his theory of personal identity. Objection 1: Memory loss. The objection: Locke’s theory of personal identity cannot cope well with cases of memory loss.For example, imagine your grandmother has severe dementia and can no longer remember when she gave birth to your mother.
2.3 Persons and immaterial souls One of the competitors to Locke’s view is the view that personal identity is guaranteed not by connections of memory, but by sameness of immaterial soul.
If someone in class today was asked what their personal identity was, they would likely respond with an affiliation to one or several groups that would reflect physical appearance or the perception they had of themselves.
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equal to the thing that is known; or, as Reid puts it, Locke has “confounded the testimony with the thing testified.” In other words, the definition of “me” is what
Nevertheless, Locke’s treatment of personal identity is one of the most discussed and debated aspects of his corpus. Locke’s discussion of persons received much attention from his contemporaries, ignited a heated debate over personal identity , and continues to influence and inform the debate over persons and their persistence conditions.
In other words, Locke’s views on the substantial nature of finite thinkers opens the door to materialist views of persons and their persistence conditions.
What makes each of these views Lockean (at least according to their authors) is that, as Locke does, they take personal identity to consist in the continuity of psychological life, and they take this to mean that personal identity is relational. Moreover, like Locke, they emphasize the forensic nature of personhood.
1. Locke on Persons and Personal Identity: The Basics. Locke’s most thorough discussion of the persistence (or diachronic identity) of persons can be found in Book 2, Chapter 27 of the Essay (“Of Identity and Diversity”), though Locke anticipates this discussion as early as Book 1, Chapter 4, Section 5, and Locke refers to persons in other texts, ...
Many who objected to Locke’s treatment of persons did so because they objected to the decreased importance Locke places on the soul for personhood and personal persistence (see Joseph Butler, Thomas Reid, and Samuel Clarke, for example).
John Locke (1632–1704) added the chapter in which he treats persons and their persistence conditions (Book 2, Chapter 27) to the second edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1694, only after being encouraged to do so by William Molyneux (1692–1693). [ 1] . Nevertheless, Locke’s treatment of personal identity is one ...
The most popular, or well known, version of this line of objection comes from Thomas Reid (1785). In the “brave officer” objection, Reid poses the following challenge to Locke’s theory of personal identity.
Locke also raises the possibility of third qualities: the power to produce an effect, as the power of the sun to bleach wax, or the power of the match to produce a fire. They are generally regarded as powers, not as qualities of the object. But in fact, that these are secondary qualities.
Locke devotes an entire chapter of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding practice principles, to show that none of them is therefore innate universal. Indeed, if morality was innate, we would all moral, and we would all have pangs of conscience for violation of murder or theft, which is not the case.
In the first book, Locke attacks the doctrine of innate ideas, found in Descartes. This doctrine says that man is born with ideas already formed in the mind, like God, as he argues in his Meditations. Locke shows that man can discover all the ideas by the mere use of his natural faculties.
This helps to refute materialism: although we have no idea what a spiritual substance. But we have no longer that of a bodily substance. Locke reduced the Essay on Human Understanding good and evil to pleasure and pain: the good is what increases the pleasure, the evil which produces pain.
Locke shows that an idea is innate means that the soul naturally sees this idea is the meaning of this doctrine . So it can not be any innate idea unnoticed.
While Descartes had used the example of wax, used in Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding that of almonds in a mortar color and taste changes. Or no change on the kernel has been produced by the ram other than its shape and extent. So the only real thing, these are the primary qualities in the object.
The primary qualities are those that are “wholly inseparable from the body in a state it is, so it keeps them always, any change or alteration that the body comes to suffer.”.
Against Innate Knowledge. Given Locke’s project, it makes sense that he begins by attacking the doctrine of innate knowledge. This attack was partly responsible for the Essay ’s being banned at Oxford in 1704.
John Locke’s (1632–1704) Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) As Locke admits, his Essay is something of a mess, from an editorial point of view. What follows are what I take to be some of the most important passages from the book, grouped under topical headings in an attempt to make a coherent and systematic whole.
He also launches an attack against Descartes’s claim that thought is the essence of the soul. Most famously, he denies that we can be sure that what thinks in us in an immaterial substance.
Whatever idea is in the mind, is, either an actual perception, or else, having been an actual perception, is so in the mind that , by the memory, it can be made an actual perception again.
The one may be called active, and the other passive power. Whether matter be not wholly destitute of active power, as its author, God, is truly above all passive power; and whether the intermediate state of created spirits be not that alone which is capable of both active and passive power, may be worth consideration.
Nevertheless, Locke’s treatment of personal identity is one of the most discussed and debated aspects of his corpus. Locke’s discussion of persons received much attention from his contemporaries, ignited a heated debate over personal identity , and continues to influence and inform the debate over persons and their persistence conditions.
In other words, Locke’s views on the substantial nature of finite thinkers opens the door to materialist views of persons and their persistence conditions.
What makes each of these views Lockean (at least according to their authors) is that, as Locke does, they take personal identity to consist in the continuity of psychological life, and they take this to mean that personal identity is relational. Moreover, like Locke, they emphasize the forensic nature of personhood.
1. Locke on Persons and Personal Identity: The Basics. Locke’s most thorough discussion of the persistence (or diachronic identity) of persons can be found in Book 2, Chapter 27 of the Essay (“Of Identity and Diversity”), though Locke anticipates this discussion as early as Book 1, Chapter 4, Section 5, and Locke refers to persons in other texts, ...
Many who objected to Locke’s treatment of persons did so because they objected to the decreased importance Locke places on the soul for personhood and personal persistence (see Joseph Butler, Thomas Reid, and Samuel Clarke, for example).
John Locke (1632–1704) added the chapter in which he treats persons and their persistence conditions (Book 2, Chapter 27) to the second edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1694, only after being encouraged to do so by William Molyneux (1692–1693). [ 1] . Nevertheless, Locke’s treatment of personal identity is one ...
The most popular, or well known, version of this line of objection comes from Thomas Reid (1785). In the “brave officer” objection, Reid poses the following challenge to Locke’s theory of personal identity.