Locke: Thinking Matter

Draft for Wolfe and Symons (ed.), History and Philosophy of Materialism. This chapter looks at the discussion of materialism in John Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding, and then at parts of the Anglophone reaction to those discussions. It considers the early criticisms of Locke by Edward Stillingfleet and the anonymous author of three sets of Remarks on Locke’s Essay. It then looks at some other ways in which readers reacted to Locke’s discussions: the views of Anthony Collins and John Toland, (...) which one might be tempted to think of as Lockean materialism; William Carroll’s reading of Locke as a Spinozistic materialist; and the dualistic Lockeanism of William Duncan’s Lockean logic textbook. (shrink)

Stewart Duncan’s excellent book Materialism from Hobbes to Locke offers an insightful study of the debates concerning materialism during the seventeenth century. When we hear the expression ‘materialism’, we often associate with it the question of whether the human mind is an entirely material entity. Although the question of whether the human mind is material plays an important role throughout the seventeenth-century debates examined in this book, Duncan offers a broader understanding of materialism that is not restricted to the human (...) mind. According to Duncan, materialism is ‘a view about some object or a group of objects. Often that object is the human mind’ (2), but materialism can also concern other objects such as animal minds or God. This leads Duncan to introduce materialism as ‘the view that the thing in question is wholly material, and has no immaterial part’ (2). He deliberately leaves open what it means to be material, because different philosophers featured in his book disagree about this question. (shrink)

Are human beings purely material creatures, or is there something else to them, an immaterial part that does some (or all) of the thinking, and might even be able to outlive the death of the body? This book is about how a series of seventeenth-century philosophers tried to answer that question. It begins by looking at the views of Thomas Hobbes, who developed a thoroughly materialist account of the human mind, and later of God as well.

Locke’s argument for God’s immateriality in _Essay_ IV x is usually interpreted as involving a principle that in some way prohibits the causation of thought by matter. I reject these causal readings in favor of one that involves a principle which says a thinking being cannot be composed out of unthinking parts. This Composition Principle, as I call it, is crucial to understanding how Locke’s theistic argument can succeed in the face of his skepticism about the substance of matter and (...) the cause of thought, as well as his belief in the possibility of thinking matter. It also explains why Locke held the soul’s immateriality to be highly probable. (shrink)

Ruth Boeker offers a new perspective on Locke’s account of persons and personal identity by considering it within the context of his broader philosophical project and the philosophical debates of his day. Her interpretation emphasizes the importance of the moral and religious dimensions of his view. By taking seriously Locke’s general approach to questions of identity, Boeker shows that we should consider his account of personhood separately from his account of personal identity over time. On this basis, she argues that (...) Locke endorses a moral account of personhood, according to which persons are subjects of accountability, and that his particular thinking about moral accountability explains why he regards sameness of consciousness as necessary for personal identity over time. In contrast to some Neo-Lockean views about personal identity, Boeker argues that Locke’s account of personal identity is not psychological per se, but rather his underlying moral, religious, metaphysical, and epistemic background beliefs are relevant for understanding why he argues for a consciousness-based account of personal identity. Taking his underlying background beliefs into consideration not only sheds light on why many of his early critics do not adopt Locke’s view, but also shows why his view cannot be as easily dismissed as some of his critics assume. -/- . (shrink)

This paper investigates Locke’s views about materialism, by looking at the discussion in Essay IV.x. There Locke---after giving a cosmological argument for the existence of God---argues that God could not be material, and that matter alone could never produce thought. In discussing the chapter, I pay particular attention to some comparisons between Locke’s position and those of two other seventeenth-century philosophers, René Descartes and Ralph Cudworth. -/- Making use of those comparisons, I argue for two main claims. The first is (...) that the important argument of Essay IV.x.10 is fundamentally an argument about the causation of perfections. Indeed, Locke gives multiple such arguments in the chapter. My second main claim is that my proposed reading of IV.x is not merely consistent with what Locke says elsewhere about superaddition, but also provides reasons to favor a particular understanding of what superaddition is. (shrink)

Commentators almost universally agree that Locke denies the possibility of thinking matter in Book IV Chapter 10 of the Essay. Further, they argue that Locke must do this in order for his proof of God’s existence in the chapter to be successful. This paper disputes these claims and develops an interpretation according to which Locke allows for the possibility that a system of matter could think (even prior to any act of superaddition on God’s part). In addition, the paper argues (...) that this does not destroy Locke’s argument in the chapter, instead it helps to illuminate the nature of it. The paper proceeds in two main stages. First, Locke denies that matter can produce thought. A distinction between two senses of “production” shows that this claim is compatible with the existence of thinking matter. Second, Locke denies that God could be a system of randomly moving particles. Most commentators take this to mean that such a system could not think. But Locke is better interpreted as denying that such a system could have the wisdom and knowledge of God. (shrink)

The transparency thesis – i.e. the doctrine that every mental state is necessarily conscious – was a widespread view in early modern philosophy. In this paper, I inquire into the role of mental transparency in the philosophies of John Locke and René Descartes. I begin by sketching a shared Lockean-Cartesian picture of mind as it pertains to the psychological or structural aspects of consciousness. I then distinguish mental transparency from the closely related concept of epistemic transparency and argue that the (...) thesis must allow for different degrees of conscious awareness, which is needed to address some of our uneasy intuitions. Afterwards, I examine Locke’s and Descartes’s reasons for adopting transparency in their respective philosophies. In the case of Descartes, I present consciousness as a necessary condition for knowledge of our own minds in the larger context of his epistemological goals in the Meditations. In the case of Locke, I examine three of his arguments in order to illustrate the indispensable role of transparency in his polemic against central Cartesian doctrines such as innatism and the thesis that the soul always thinks. (shrink)

My topic is the materialist appropriation of empiricism—as conveyed in the ‘minimal credo’ nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu. That is, canonical empiricists like Locke go out of their way to state that their project to investigate and articulate the ‘logic of ideas’ is not a scientific project: “I shall not at present meddle with the Physical consideration of the Mind”. Indeed, I have suggested elsewhere, contrary to a prevalent reading of Locke, that the Essay is not (...) the extension to the study of the mind of the methods of natural philosophy; that he is actually not the “underlabourer” of Newton and Boyle he claims politely to be in the Epistle to the Reader. Rather, Locke says quite directly if we pay heed to such passages, “Our Business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our Conduct”. There would be more to say here about what this implies for our understanding of empiricism, but instead I shall focus on a different aspect of this episode: how a non-naturalistic claim which falls under what we now call epistemology becomes an ontology—materialism. That is, how an empiricist claim could shift from being about the sources of knowledge to being about the nature of reality.. Put differently, I want to examine the shift from the logic of ideas in the seventeenth century to an eighteenth-century focus on what kind of ‘world’ the senses give us, to an assertion that there is only one substance in the universe, and that we need an account of the material substrate of mental life. This is neither a ‘scientific empiricism’ nor a linear developmental process from philosophical empiricism to natural science, but something else again: the unpredictable emergence of an ontology on empiricist grounds. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider Isaac Newton’s fevered accusation that John Locke is a ‘Hobbist.’ I suggest a number of ways in which Locke’s account of the mind–body relation could plausibly be construed as Hobbesian. Whereas Newton conceives of the human mind as an immaterial substance and venerates it as a finite image of the Divine Mind, I argue that Locke utterly deflates the religious, ethical, and metaphysical significance of an immaterial soul. Even stronger, I contend that there is good (...) reason to suspect that Locke is a crypto-materialist, at least with respect to human beings, and in this respect, could reasonably be labeled a ‘Hobbist.’. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the controversial issue around Locke’s account of a “superadded” power of thought. I first show that Locke uses the term “super­addition” in discussing the nominal distinction of natural kinds. This general observation applies to Locke’s account of thinking matter. Specifically, I attribute to him the following three theses: (1) the mind-body distinction is nominal; (2) there is no metaphysical repugnancy between them; and (3) their common ground—namely, substratum—can only be characterized in terms of its functional (...) role. Examining each thesis and their interconnections, this paper casts light upon the Lockean type of mind-body union in “a system of matter fitly disposed.”. (shrink)

Locke's insistence on the limits of knowledge and the ‘mediocrity’ of our epistemological equipment is well understood; it is rightly seen as integrated with his causal theory of ideas and his theory of judgment. Less attention has been paid to the mediocrity theme as it arises in his theory of moral agency. Locke sees definite limits to human willpower. This is in keeping with post-Puritan theology with its new emphasis on divine mercy as opposed to divine justice and recrimination. It (...) also reflects his view that human beings are essentially material machines. (shrink)

This paper offers a new approach to an old debate about superaddition in Locke. Did Locke claim that some objects have powers that are unrelated to their natures or real essences? The question has split commentators. Some (Wilson, Stuart, Langton) claim the answer is yes and others (Ayers, Downing, Ott) claim the answer is no. This paper argues that both of these positions may be mistaken. I show that Locke embraced a robust epistemic humility. This epistemic humility includes ignorance of (...) the real essences of bodies, of the causal processes underlying the production of natural phenomena, and of God’s method of creation. I show how this epistemic humility offers strong support for an agnostic response to the question of superaddition. Locke did not intend to claim that bodies either do or do not have properties unrelated to their real essences. Instead, his primary goal in discussing the topic was to emphasize the strict limits to human knowledge. (shrink)

Nicholas Jolley shows that the mind-body problem and the nature of personal immortality are more central to Locke's philosophy than has been realized. He argues that Locke takes up unorthodox positions in both cases, and holds that Locke's criticisms of Descartes were controversial responses to challenging metaphysical and theological issues.

In the early years of the eighteenth century Leibniz had several interactions with John Toland. These included, from 1702 to 1704, discussions of materialism. Those discussions culminated with the consideration of Toland's 1704 Letters to Serena, where Toland argued that matter is necessarily active. In this paper I argue for two main theses about this exchange and its consequences for our wider understanding. The first is that, despite many claims that Toland was at the time of Letters to Serena a (...) Spinozist, we can make better sense of him as a sort of Hobbesian materialist. The second main point concerns reasons for materialism, and in particular a story Locke tells in the Essay about materialists' motives. Toland defends his materialism by arguing that matter is active, and argues that matter is active by using a conceivability argument. But this is not the crude conceivability argument that Locke suggests motivates materialists. This (together with reflecting on some of Hobbes's arguments) suggests that we might well tell a Lockean story about reasons for early modern materialism, but not Locke's story. (shrink)

This is my response to Sam Rickless's review article on my book, Locke's Moral Man.

The wide range of conflicting interpretations that exist in regard to Locke's philosophy of mind and body (i.e. dualistic, materialist, idealistic) can be explained by the general failure of commentators to appreciate the full extent of his nominalism. Although his nominalism that focuses on specific natural kinds has been much discussed, his mind-body nominalism remains largely neglected. This neglect, I shall argue, has given rise to the current diversity of interpretations. This paper offers a solution to this interpretative puzzle, and (...) it attributes a view to Locke that I shall describe as nominal symmetry. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Locke is not in fact agnostic about the ultimate nature of the mind. In particular, he produces an argument, much like Jaegwon Kim's exclusion argument, to show that any materialist view that takes mental states to supervene on physical states is committed to epiphenomenalism. This result helps illuminate Locke's otherwise puzzling notion of 'superaddition.'.

In this their fourth conversation the 17th century philosopher, John Locke and the 21st century linguist, Terence Moore, consider a question not fully answered even today: what might count as the key distinction beween man and animals, or in Locke's phrase what In the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke considers two possible linguistic candidates: the ability to use language appropriately, and the ability to . As Locke and Moore explore these possibilities they come to see that the distinction between man (...) and animals is not as clear-cut as previous generations have believed. Locke tentatively posits a third possible distinction based on a central idea in his Essay – one however Moore is compelled to dismiss, though he, in return, also tentatively, offers a fourth. (shrink)

This landmark study examines the role played by the rediscovery of the writings of the ancient atomists, Epicurus and Lucretius, in the articulation of the major philosophical systems of the seventeenth century, and, more broadly, their influence on the evolution of natural science and moral and political philosophy. The target of sustained and trenchant philosophical criticism by Cicero, and of opprobrium by the Christian Fathers of the early Church, for its unflinching commitment to the absence of divine supervision and the (...) finitude of life, the Epicurean philosophy surfaced again in the period of the Scientific Revolution, when it displaced scholastic Aristotelianism. Both modern social contract theory and utilitarianism in ethics were grounded in its tenets. Catherine Wilson shows how the distinctive Epicurean image of the natural and social worlds took hold in philosophy, and how it is an acknowledged, and often unacknowledged presence in the writings of Descartes, Gassendi, Hobbes, Boyle, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley. With chapters devoted to Epicurean physics and cosmology, the corpuscularian or "mechanical" philosophy, the question of the mortality of the soul, the grounds of political authority, the contested nature of the experimental philosophy, sensuality, curiosity, and the role of pleasure and utility in ethics, the author makes a persuasive case for the significance of materialism in seventeenth-century philosophy without underestimating the depth and significance of the opposition to it, and for its continued importance in the contemporary world. Lucretius's great poem, On the Nature of Things, supplies the frame of reference for this deeply-researched inquiry into the origins of modern philosophy. (shrink)

Trinity College, Hartford, CT 06511, USA.

Dans cet article, on montre que l’hypothèse de la « matière pensante » introduite spéculativement dans le livre IV de l’Essai sur l’Entendement humain, n’est pas seulement l’instrument d’une critique épistémologique destinée à souligner les limitations de notre connaissance, elle est aussi révélatrice des inclinations métaphysiques réelles de Locke. S’il est impossible de s’assurer par la connaissance de la nature de la substance pensante, il est permis néanmoins d’entretenir à son égard une opinion fondée sur des arguments probables. La croyance (...) est en effet aux yeux de Locke un champ d’exercice légitime de la rationalité, un champ qu’il sera particulièrement nécessaire de cultiver lorsque la connaissance manquera et qu’il s’agira de se déterminer sur des questions cruciales – au nombre desquelles il faut compter assurément celle de la substance et de la destination de l’âme. On examine ici les textes et les arguments qui ont conduit la plupart des interprètes de Locke à lui prêter une croyance « dualiste » de type cartésien, favorisant l’opinion de l’immatérialité de l’esprit humain. On montre que ces textes et ces arguments non seulement ne sont pas concluants mais peuvent même être mis au service de la thèse adverse. Que Locke ait cru en la probable matérialité de l’âme humaine est d'autant plus plausible que les arguments donnés dans la troisième lettre à Stillingfleet en faveur de la concevabilité de l'hypothèse, fonctionnent aussi tacitement comme des arguments de probabilité : l'hypothèse ne contredit pas le message scripturaire, elle permet une meilleure conception de l'analogie générale du vivant, elle est mieux conforme aux requisits ontologiques de l'existence et de l'identité. (shrink)

Locke claimed that God superadded various powers to matter, including motion, the perfections of peach trees and elephants, gravity, and that he could superadd thought. Various interpreters have discussed the question whether Locke's claims about superaddition are in tension with his commitment to mechanistic explanation. This literature assumes that for Locke mechanistic explanation involves deducibility. We argue that this is an inaccurate interpretation and that mechanistic explanation involves a different type of intelligibility for Locke.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.3 (2001) 505-522 [Access article in PDF] Mary Astell's Ironic Assault on John Locke's Theory of Thinking Matter E. Derek Taylor Mary Astell (1666-1731), most famous today for her call for the establishment of Protestant nunneries in Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part I (1694) and for her acute Reflections Upon Marriage (1700), has lurked for years at the edges of that infinitely (...) contentious category "feminism," but she is only now beginning to receive her rightful inheritance as a theological and philosophical thinker, probably the title she would most have preferred. 1 This is not to say that Astell's Christian-Platonism has been ignored. In her 1986 biography Ruth Perry gave cogent expression to the centrality of Astell's idealist Christianity to all aspects of her thought 2 and in the same year, Bridget Hill thoughtfully warned her readers against attempting to force Astell, a religious conservative, "into some preconceived idea of what late seventeenth and early eighteenth century feminism ought to have been." 3 More recently, Patricia Springborg has written two significant essays that rely in part on Astell's more neglected theological-philosophical works, Letters concerning the Love of God (1695), a collection of Astell's correspondence with John Norris of Bemerton (1657-1711), and The Christian Religion, As Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England (1705; 3d edition 1730), far and away her most developed theological-philosophical [End Page 505] statement. 4 Despite these important forays, however, both Letters and Christian Religion continue to be largely ignored, as is suggested by the relative dearth of scholarly work on either text and the short shrift each receives in anthologies of Astell's works. 5 Despite the great popularity of Letters throughout the eighteenth century and despite the fact that, as Springborg points out, Astell considered Christian Religion "her magnum opus," neither text has found new life in a modern edition. 6This omission creates a rather vexing problem for would-be scholars of Astell's philosophical and theological ideas. The major primary texts themselves not being available, we have little choice but to rely on the limited accounts of other scholars for our information. Over a decade ago, for instance, The Journal of the History of Philosophy published a long note by Kathleen M. Squadrito on "Mary Astell's Critique of John Locke's View of Thinking Matter," and hers has since been the standard (if not quite only) account of this historically fascinating and important philosophical comment in Christian Religion.7 Squadrito wants, she writes, to "present a short account of [Astell's] work and her criticism of Locke's view of thinking matter." 8 Unfortunately, Squadrito's account of Astell's "work" is significantly flawed, which leads her to serious mischaracterizations of Astell's "criticism" of Locke's hypothesis. Briefly put, Astell's "own philosophy" in Christian Religion does not, as Squadrito claims, emerge "as an attempted reconciliation of the views of Norris and Locke" 9 ; because she supposes it does, however, Squadrito is able to present Astell's critique of Locke's theory [End Page 506] of thinking matter as a respectful, even-handed philosophical analysis, a theoretical bridge, as it were, between the Platonism of Norris and the Empiricism of Locke. As we shall see, Astell's critique of Locke's hypothesis actually amounts to a bitterly ironic assault, wherein Astell does not so much build bridges as burn them. Just why Astell in Christian Religion decided not to strike a middling position between Locke and Norris, and how this decision invigorated her attack on Locke's materialist hypothesis, are the primary questions this essay seeks to answer. In order to arrive at such answers, however, it is necessary first to examine the text in which Astell does attempt to carve out a position between Locke and Norris, namely Astell and Norris's Letters.The basic history of Letters is well enough understood. Mary Astell, a well-read young woman of significant perspicacity, first wrote in... (shrink)

In ‘Animalism versus Lockeanism: a Current Controversy’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 48 (1998), pp. 302–18, Harold Noonan examined the relation between animalist and neo‐Lockean theories of personal identity. As well as presenting arguments intended to support a modest compatibilism of animalism and neo‐Lockeanism, he advanced a new proposal about the relation between persons and human beings which was intended to evade the principal animalist objections to neo‐Lockean theories. I argue both that the arguments for compatibilism are without force, and that Noonan’s (...) new neo‐Lockean proposal is inadequate. (shrink)

This book is the continuation of a project begun by the author in his Thinking Matter: Materialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain. In that work Yolton showed that Locke's suggestion that God might have given the power of thought to matter itself had significant effects in Britain. The present work makes clear that Locke's passing comment also had significant and quite varied effects in France. Yolton himself characterizes this book as telling the story of "the adventures of Locke's suggestion in France." These (...) adventures are for him "picaresque because of the way this suggestion appears, reappears, is attacked and defended in so many places and in such different contexts". (shrink)

This book tells for the first time the long and complex story of the involvement of Locke's suggestion that God could add to matter the power of thought in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding in the growth of French materialism. There is a discussion of the 'affaire de Prades', in which Locke's name was linked with a censored thesis at the Faculty of Theology in Paris. The similarities and differences between English "thinking matter" and the French "matiere pensante" of the (...) philosophes are also discussed. (shrink)