Primary and Secondary Qualities in Locke

In Book II chapter viii of the Essay Locke provides two related criteria by which primary qualities are to be distinguished from secondary qualities: first, primary qualities are inseparable from the bodies in which they inhere, whereas secondary qualities are not. Second, secondary qualities are merely the observable effects of primary qualities and not real in the same sense in which primary qualities are, indicating an ontological dependence of the former on the latter. Locke uses these two criteria of demarcation to argue to a conclusion about our ideas of primary and secondary qualities, namely that ideas of primary qualities resemble those qualities but our ideas of secondary qualities do not. I will argue here that Locke’s two criteria are flawed and that he is inconsistent in applying them to qualities, and that his mistakes in correctly drawing the ontological distinctions between primary and secondary qualities result in his misapplication of those distinctions to the epistemological realm.

Uneasiness and Desire in Locke

The relation between uneasiness and desire in the chapter on power in the Essay (chapter XXI of book II) is at first glance unclear. The reader is told at one point that desire is uneasiness (II.xxi.32, 251 in the Nidditch edition), but at another the implication is that the instead of being the same thing as uneasiness, instead desire is what causes uneasiness (II.xxi.46, 262). Resolution of this tension is important to understanding Locke’s theory of the will, since uneasiness is taken to be the immediate cause of the will producing action (II.xxi.29, 249, II.xxi.31, 251). I will attempt here to explicate Locke’s concepts of uneasiness and desire in such a way as to highlight this tension in his theory, and will offer a speculation as to the theoretical motivation which may have prompted Locke to offer the account in such a way as to make it susceptible to this tension in the first place. But I don't have a solution on his behalf.

The World Is Only (In) The Mind

In what are probably his two most famous works, the Principles of Human Knowledge (P) and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (D), George Berkeley argued for his most infamous doctrine--the idea that the objects of everyday experience are in fact ideas in the mind, not material objects that exist independently of their being perceived. Berkeley's theory--known as Idealism--seems obviously absurd (insane, frankly) but is notoriously resistant to refutation. It belongs to a long tradition in philosophy in which no idea is too crazy to put forward in an effort to achieve one's philosophical goals. In this way Berkeley's Idealism belongs in the same corner of the attic as Parmenides' monism, Plato's forms, Pyrrho's universal scepticism, and Leibniz's monads. The sorts of things you dust off and look at with great interest once in a while, but that don't really have an impact on the way you get around in the world.

Hume on Freedom of the Will

Hume recognized that any account of free will has to be made compatible with our knowledge of the causal operations of the world around us. Given that his Treatise is an attempt to detail a "science of man" we should expect that Hume's explanation of human freedom to fit within his naturalistic and empiricist philosophy of nature. This is, in fact, exactly what we get. Hume puts his theory of the will within his general casual account and in doing so offers an interesting solution (or rather, dissolution) to the problem of the compatibility of free will and determinism.

Locke on Freedom of the Will

Locke defines liberty as the ability to act or refrain from action according to the will. The will, for Locke is our capacity to “order the consideration of any Idea” or the ability to “prefer the motion of any body to its rest.” The will is a faculty of the mind, not an independent agent, and we should take care not to mistake faculties for agents, or we'll fall into confusion. Only beings capable of thought or volition can rightly be said to possess liberty. Liberty is not possible for inanimate objects. A tennis ball, for example, is not taken by anyone to be an agent with volition; we do not attribute its motion or rest to its acting according to choice.

Of Elephants and Tortoises: Locke on Substance

There is an apparent tension in Locke’s Essay regarding the idea of substance. On the one hand, Locke spends a great deal of time discussing the origin of this idea and detailing how it fits into his overall taxonomy of our ideas. On the other hand he seems at times to dismiss the idea as having little utility, even to the point of ridiculing it at times. I think the tension is the result of Locke’s attempting to reconcile the idea of substance with his "corpuscularian" view of how bodies are constructed, which leads him in the end to substitute the notion of real (or hidden inner) constitution and real essence for the substance/accident model of Scholasticism.

The "Critique of Pure Reason" in 10 words or less

Kant’s slogan “[t]houghts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind” is the core idea of the Critique. By unpacking this ten word phrase we can outline all the key ideas necessary to understanding his whole critical project. The slogan indicates what components Kant thinks are necessary in order to have a cognition that leads to knowledge while setting limits on the scope of what we can claim to know. It also serves as a summary of Kant’s critique of both the Rationalist and Empiricist traditions and provides the foundation for his own philosophy of Transcendental Idealism.