Locke's Real Essence - Essay Example

Why is Locke concerned with the question whether our terms for substances are terms for items with a real essence The fundamental principles of Locke's philosophy are presented in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), the result of two decades of contemplation upon human issues and the origin of thought. He was a hardcore empiricist; the notion that human behavior could spring from anything other than innate experiences was the pride of his concept. Factually speaking, he is the forerunner who helped revolutionize the cause of psychology, to be taken as a separate entity other than philosophy. "He was an adamant propagator of the cause of the sensory processes, claiming that human ideation is formulated only as a consequence of the experiences that are undertaken" (Wikipedia). Subsequently, he pragmatically thought over the concept of knowledge and language formulation, the core of which shall be discussed hereunder. The Interpretation of 'Substances' According to Locke, what we know is always properly understood as the relation between ideas (the learned concepts of experienced reality), and in the said essay, he explained at length the stance that all of our ideation is a consequence of experience. The outcome of this objective method is that the human mind seems to get somewhat undermined in its abilities. While describing the domains of human capabilities in terms of knowledge, ideas and the like, he endeavors to challenge certain basic and traditional norms of communication, language and interaction constructs. Here, the issue of contention is the fact as to how Locke tackles the term of 'substance'. Locke describes or rather differentiates the qualities of substances into two divisions: primary and secondary. The primary attributes deal with those traits of an entity, which forms its existence - the integral constituents of the object. However, the secondary attributes are those, which are qualified by our perceptual reality and which may be taken in a relative term depending upon the observer. "The primary/secondary quality distinction gets us a certain ways in understanding physical objects, but Locke is puzzled about what underlies or supports the primary qualities themselves. He is also puzzled about what material and immaterial substances might have in common that would lead us to apply the same word to both" (SEP). Such contemplations gave him the impetus to coin the relative and obscure idea of substance in general. He referred to the ever dynamic use of the word 'substance'. Locke claims that substances support the substances support qualities - these may be as infinite as one can imagine. For understanding of concepts, he believed, simply information about the object was not enough. There had to be some linkages in the information that we receive in clusters. These linkages had to be the essence of understanding the concept to its fullest. This is a result of the fact that he himself cannot purport a rationale for the existence of tropes (tropes are properties that can exist independently of substances). Hence, he could not use of a concept in lieu of 'substance'. He seems extremely cautious about our limitations of the ideas of substances. He has been understandably criticized for blowing this substance debate out of proportion, yet the importance that he appreciates within this concept is what produces the entire basis for his conviction. It troubled Locke to consider the substance as being something without having any properties - this in effect would be unscientific and hence impossible according to the doctrine presented by him. On Essences He attempts to give ideas of substances, simple modes, mixed modes, relations and so on. Here, he intends to clarify the difference between real and nominal essences. Due to his obvious passion with empiricism, his primary interest always seems in defining the attributes of an entity before he can look at its functions. Locke admits that not all words relate to ideas. Though an adamant campaigner against innate experiences, yet he confesses that there are certain internal processes, that are understood in terms of feelings and ideas alone, and are not directly related with the senses. In addition to the kinds of ideas noted above, there are also particular and abstract ideas. Particular ideas have in them the ideas of particular places and times which limit the application of the idea to a single individual, while abstract general ideas leave out the ideas of particular times and places in order to allow the idea to apply to other similar qualities or things. There has been considerable philosophical and scholarly debate about the nature of the process of abstraction and Locke's account of it. The idea to be identified with lies in the fact that his primary association remained with relating everything with empirical phenomena. Upon Knowledge and Language In his discussion of names of substances and in the contrast between names of substances and names of modes, a number of interesting features of Locke's views about language and knowledge emerge. Physical substances are atoms and things made up of atoms. But we have no experience of the atomic structure of horses and tables. We know horses and tables mainly by secondary qualities such as color, taste and smell and so on and primary qualities such as shape and extension. So, since the real essence (the atomic constitution) of a horse is unknown to us, our word 'horse' cannot get its meaning from that real essence. What the general word signifies is the complex of ideas we have decided are parts of the idea of that sort of thing. These ideas we get from experience. Locke calls such a general idea that picks out a sort, the nominal essence of that sort. This is simply due to the reason, that it helps in identification of the same factor as was being sought. Classification It is basically the issue of classification and the qualification of issues, objects and entities that generates this viewpoint in Locke. Previously, it was thought that if a set of essential characteristics is shared by a number of individuals, then that set of properties constitutes the essence of a natural kind. But then there would also be some accidental properties, which may appear or vanish but still the essence of a substance would remains the same. Locke does not agree with this stance. "He rejects the notion that an individual has an essence apart from being treated as belonging to a kind. He also rejects the claim that there is a single classification of things in nature that the natural philosopher should seek to discover. He holds that there are many possible ways to classify the world each of which might be particularly useful depending on one's purposes" (SEP). Locke's realistic account of language and the distinction between nominal and real essences attempts to clarify the classification concept. He claims that there are no set limits in nature to be discovered; that is there are no clear discrimination points between species. There are always intermediate cases. This in turn generates the debate whether Locke's view is that this lack of fixed boundaries is applicable on both the level of appearances and nominal essences, and atomic constitutions and real essences, or on the level of nominal essences alone. Concept Formation Firstly, he believes that there are no natural kinds on either the level of appearance or atomic reality. Secondly, he thinks there are real natural kinds on the atomic level; it is simply that we cannot fully appreciate their existence. On either of these interpretations, the real essence cannot provide the meaning to names of substances. On the contrary, the ideas that we use to make up our primary essences come to us from experience. Locke claims that it is the function of the mind to formulate the ideas of sorts and that there are so many complex characteristics to choose from, that it is justifiable for different people to make quite different ideas of the essence of a certain substance. Upon this, certain critics argue that the making of sorts is entirely subjective and conventional for Locke, and that there is no basis for condemning a specific nominal essence. However, Locke elucidates "that the making of nominal essences is constrained both by usage (where words standing for ideas that are already in use) and by the fact that substance words are supposed to copy the properties of the substances they refer to" (SEP). The difference between modes and substances is surely central in Locke's beliefs. In contrast with substances, modes are reliant entities; they can be thought of as the ordering of substances. When we make ideas of modes, the mind is again active, but the prototype is in our mind. The question becomes whether things in the world correspond with our ideas, and not whether our ideas relate to the disposition of substances. When we make ideas of modes, the mind is again active, but the archetype is in our mind. The question becomes whether things in the world fit our ideas, and not whether our ideas correspond to the nature of things in the world. Our ideas are adequate. Thus we define 'bachelor' as an unmarried, adult, male human being. If we find that someone does not fit this definition, this does not reflect badly on our definition, it simply means that that individual does not belong to the class of bachelors. Modes give us the ideas of mathematics, of morality, of religion and politics and indeed of human conventions in general. Since these modal ideas are not only made by us but serve as standards that things in the world either fit or do not fit and thus belong or do not belong to that sort, ideas of modes are clear and distinct, adequate and complete. Thus in modes, we get the real and nominal essences combined. One can give precise definitions of mathematical terms (that is, give necessary and sufficient conditions) and one can give deductive demonstrations of mathematical truths. Locke sometimes says that morality too is capable of deductive demonstration. The terms of political discourse have some of the same features for Locke. When Locke defines the states of nature, slavery and war in the Second Treatise of Government, for example, we are presumably getting precise modal definitions from which one can deduce consequences. It is possible, however, that with politics we are getting a study which requires both experience as well as the deductive modal aspect. His Thought as a Whole As a philosopher Locke insisted on the dominance of experimental science and philosophy over the subtle hedges of conventional modes of thought. He believed, that man had once existed in a state of nature, and hence man was possessed of reason, and therefore capable of cogent behavior, which permitted him to cooperate with other men to form societies and to determine the laws of nature, the most important of which guaranteed him living, freedom, and possessions. Man acquired knowledge not by means of extrasensory means, or because he had intrinsic ideas, but because his senses allowed him to learn from the external world, and put him in true perspective with the world. Nevertheless, Locke held that we have no grounds for complaint about the limitations of our knowledge, since a proper application of our cognitive capacities is enough to guide our action in the practical conduct of life. Locke spent much of the rest of his life responding to admirers and critics by making revisions in later editions of the book, including detailed accounts of human volition and moral freedom, the personal identity on which our responsibility as moral agents depends, and the dangers of religious enthusiasm. References Locke, J. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. (1690). 13 Dec 2005. . Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. John Locke. 13 Dec 2005. . Wikipedia. John Locke. 13 Dec 2005. . Read More