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... f the operations of bodies on us (sensation) or the observation of the workings of our own minds (reflection). In a famous passage (II, XI, 17), Locke compares the mind to a "dark room" (in the Latin, "camera obscura") with only a narrow inlet. Ideas are analogous to the images projected onto the back of the room. Locke classified the various simple ideas according to the following scheme. Those that come to the mind by one sense only, such as color or odor.
Those that come in to the mind by more than one sense. These include extension, figure, rest and motion. (Note that these will later, for another reason, be called "primary" qualities. ) These that come to the mind by reflection only. Perception (in the broad sense of sensibly perceiving, thinking, imagining, remembering) and willing are the two simple ideas of this type. Those which accompany all our other ideas: pleasure and pain, unity, existence, power, succession.
Pleasure and pain will assume importance later because of their role in the motivation of human action. Power is a most fundamental idea, as will be seen. In II, VII, 8, Locke notes that we get this idea both from our thinking and from the effects of bodies on one another. Now let us consider the kinds of powers bodies have. Locke sometimes identifies the qualities corresponding to our ideas as powers. Thus the sun has the power to melt wax, and heat is the quality which brings this about.
Call a bare power one by which a body can bring about a change in another body, such as the heat of the sun, which melts the wax. (The wax also has the power to be melted by the heat of the sun. ) Other powers of bodies are such as can produce ideas in our minds. There is are powers in the sun to produce the idea of light as well as the idea of heat and that of roundness and that of yellow. Locke divided these powers (or as he puts it, the qualities of the bodies) into two kinds, the primary and secondary. The basis of the division is our ability to conceive bodies in general.
There are some qualities without which we cannot conceive a body. Thus we must conceive a body as being solid and extended, as having a figure, as being in motion or at rest. These qualities are primary. Other qualities are dispensable. Locke said he can conceive a given body as being neither warm nor cold, as having no color at all (as when it is in the dark). The distinction between primary and secondary qualities is, at root, a conceptual distinction concerning how we can represent bodies.
A primary quality is one which must represent a body as having in every possible circumstance. No matter how small a body is, it has some extension. No matter how fluid it is, it has some solidity, no matter where it is at a time, it must be moving or at rest at that time. Secondary qualities come and go, depending on whether they are in the right relation to a perceiver. An object has color only insofar as it can be seen. If there is no light, there is no color.
To be sure, a body always has a power to produce ideas of colors under the right circumstances, but this power is nothing more than a function of its primary qualities. Thus a body always has a certain texture, due to the arrangement and solidity of its component parts. Locke subscribed to the "corpuscular ian hypothesis, " according to which bodies are made of indivisible particles. Each of them has all the primary qualities, but they lack secondary qualities.
They do not even have the power to produce ideas which we could call their color. Locke made the further claim that our ideas of primary qualities resemble the qualities, while those of the secondary do not. Berkeley will raise the question how Locke can make any claim of resemblance, given that he has no data other than the ideas themselves, and hence cannot compare them to their supposed originals. Locke seems to have held the resemblance view because he could not conceive of bodies any other way. The claim of the non-resemblance of the ideas of secondary qualities and their originals requires further argument.
Even if there are conditions under which bodies lack the qualities, why say that when they do produce the ideas, say of their color, what produces them is not colored? Locke appeals to a relativity shown by the ideas of secondary qualities, not had by those of primary qualities. No matter what the conditions under which I perceive a body, my idea of it always includes extension. But the perception of bodies can yield, under some conditions, an idea of heat, and under others, an idea of cold.
Worse, at a distance from a fire, I have an idea of warmth, which is replaced by an idea of pain when I mistakenly place my hand in the fire. I have skipped various peripheral material to turn to the idea of power, one of the most important of all. I have already noted that his idea includes that of the ability to bring about change (active power) and to suffer it (passive power). Locke claimed that experience shows that the mind has the active powers of beginning or ceasing its own operations and of initiating or inhibiting motion in the body.
This power is activated by a preference. He claims that if a mind can, merely on the occasion of a preference, affect the operations of the mind or the motion of the body, that mind is free to do so. If it cannot, it is necessitated to do something else. Suppose we call the preference for a state of affairs the motive.
My motive for typing these notes is my preference for my students to suttee them. I need not do so; I am free to go play golf instead. Locke says that my preferences are determined by the pleasure or pain I project as the result of the contemplated act. But then it seems as if my actions are determined by what is pleasurable for me and what is painful for me. Locke' response is that the situation is more complicated than it would seem.
I am at liberty to ignore, say, an intense, immediate pleasure because I understand that it would in the long term produce more pain. So ultimately, it is our ability to reason about pleasures and pains which constitutes the foundation of our freedom. Locke' view of human liberty is directed forward in time. It does not matter how one gets to the point of choice, so long as the mind is able bring about the desired event, the act is free. Many people find this kind of freedom to be of small comfort.
They think that how one' preferences are determined is the key to liberty. If my preferences are determined by pleasure and pain alone, then I am no better than a robot with no control over my destiny. The next topic of interest is that of substance. Given his starting point, Locke is able to pronounce that in many cases we observe certain ideas to go together constantly. A certain bulk, shape, array of colors, speech patterns, etc. , go together so constantly that we give them one name, say Bill Clinton. Calling this collection of ideas by a single name need not have any significance beyond the mere co-existence of the qualities, as Berkeley pointed out.
But Locke made the further claim that the co-existence can only be understood if there is something which is the reason for their co-existing in just that way. Call this the "support" or "substratum. " Then our idea of a substance in general is that of co-existing qualities supported by something. Of course, it would help the explanation if Locke could go beyond mere metaphor. The word 'support' cannot be taken literally (again as pointed out by Berkeley), since it then would be just another observable thing, like the foundation of a building.
But there is nothing more to be said. Locke says that we are in the position of children, who can only say "something" when asked what is responsible for an event. Or, we are like the philosophers of India who, when asked about the support of the world, say that it rests on an elephant, and when asked further what supports the elephant, say that it rests on the broad back of a turtle. Finally, when asked what supports the turtle, he says, "something, I know not what. " Suffice it to say that Locke's doctrine of substance was a weak point in his system. The same story goes for mental substance. Our minds contain ideas and operations upon them.
But the spirit which is responsible for these ideas and operations is also an unknown something. Thus although we know what spirit does, we do not know what it is. This leads to skepticism about whether the spiritual substance is absolutely immaterial. Bishop Stillingfleet, in particular, attacked Locke for leaving open the possibility that matter thinks. The skepticism about mental substance spills over into the issue of identity over time. Could the same spirit be connected to different bodies or different personalities?
Locke claimed that the criterion of identity over time is the same beginning. A rock is formed out of molten lava. Its existence begins at that time and it continues until the rock is broken. So long as there is continuity from the beginning, it is the same rock. The breaking constitutes a new beginning for each of the fragments. The most simple case of identity is that of identity of mass.
A mass is the same when all the particles making it up are the same. Substitute one for another, and it is a different mass. This notion of the same mass is not very useful, however, since very few masses in the universe are so stable that they are not adding or losing parts, and hence becoming new masses. A more complicated case of identity is that of a vegetable. We acknowledge that vegetables need not have exactly the same particles in order to be the same. What is the same, rather, is the dispositions and organization of the thing, which Locke seems to identify with its life.
A tree sheds its leaves and grows new ones, all the while remaining the same tree. By extension (and with an extended use of 'life') we can say that a machine is re-identified by its dispositions and organization. Animals are too, the only difference being that they are self-moving. Insofar as a man is an animal, a man is subject to the same-life identity condition. Given this condition, it seems that Locke can solve the old problem of the identity of a ship which is wholly rebuilt.
In its original location, a part of the ship is removed to another place, then replaced by a new part. An adjoining part is removed and transported, attached to the first removed part, and replaced. Eventually, there is a ship in the original place which has all new parts. It seems to be the same ship as the original, by Locke' criterion. (Compare the claim that all the cells in the human body are replaced in ten years. ) We move now to Book IV of the Essay, wherein Locke presents his theory of knowledge. The material discussed in the lecture is tied to the handout distributed in class.
The handout provides a matrix. The content of the cells is the extent of what is known for fifteen classifications of knowledge ( (4 x 4) - 1, due to a consolidation of two classifications). One dimension of the matrix is the degree of knowledge. Actually, the lowest degree of "knowledge" is not knowledge at all, but mere opinion. The lowest degree of knowledge proper is sensitive knowledge, which is based on sense experience rather than merely on ideas.
Knowledge not based on sense experience is intuitive (in which ideas are compared directly with each other) and demonstrative (in which they are compared indirectly, via intermediary ideas). The presence of intermediaries in demonstrative knowledge introduces an element of slight uncertainty not present with intuitive knowledge. The second dimension is the objects of knowledge and opinion. Identity and diversity is the simplest sort: two ideas are known to be (qualitatively) identical or different from each other. Black is not white and white is white, etc.
All are known intuitively. Relations among abstract ideas are all known either intuitively or demonstratively, if they are known at all (mathematical speculation is a matter of opinion). Since they are abstract, knowledge about them is not sensitive. Co-existing...
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