What is Locke's Theory of Representation?

British Journal for the History of Philosophy 20 (6):1077-1095 (2012)
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Abstract

On a currently popular reading of Locke, an idea represents its cause, or what God intended to be its cause. Against Martha Bolton and my former self (among others), I argue that Locke cannot hold such a view, since it sins against his epistemology and theory of abstraction. I argue that Locke is committed to a resemblance theory of representation, with the result that ideas of secondary qualities are not representations

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10.1080/09608788.2012.731234

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Walter Ott
University of Virginia

Citations of this work

‘Archetypes without Patterns’: Locke on Relations and Mixed Modes.Walter Ott - 2017 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 99 (3):300-325.
Lockean Empathy.Colin Marshall - 2016 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 54 (1):87-106.
Locke on Knowing Our Own Ideas.Shelley Weinberg - 2015 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 97 (3):347-370.
Locke on sense perception.Walter Ott - 2021 - In Jessica Gordon-Roth & Shelley Weinberg (eds.), The Lockean Mind. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 116-126.

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An essay concerning human understanding.John Locke - 1689 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Pauline Phemister.

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