PHIL 202 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Microstructure
4 May 2018
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History of Modern Philosophy
3.02.18 Lecture Notes – Locke, Personal Identity
- Do we think that there are primary qualities?
o Primary qualities are independent of perception – such as mass and extension
- Related to the question of real essence – internal micro-structure
- Locke rejects the idea that the essence of the soul is thinking because he thinks there
are degrees of thought
o We don’t alwas in fat think, suh as in sleeping
o Does not think that we can discover the real essence of something (in traditional
metaphysics, substances have essences)
o Locke believes that we can only know the nominal essence – that set of sensory
qualities that we use to identify a thing as belonging to a certain kind
▪ Not really what gives rise to the causal properties of the thing
- Modern day – we have the problem of actually locating the real essence in the
investigation of the fundamental thing
- Knowledge is the perception of the connection and agreement, or disagreement and
repugnancy of our ideas
o Repugnancy – that two ideas are incompatible
o Connection in terms of cause and effect
o We have an idea of a certain cause and a certain effect – all these connections
are contingent connections (contingent is the opposite of necessary)
o All these connections could have been otherwise – for him, there is no necessary
relationship between the cause of something and its effect
- Hume is going to explore this problem (the problem of induction)
Personal Identity
- When it comes to general ideas (space, time, motion, body)
- If empiricists are right, we have to give an account of how our mind is able to create
these general ideas just from the input of the external world
- How do our experiences form the concept of these general ideas?
- Locke thinks about how our experiences form the idea of identity and diversity
- We compare the thing are time1 and time2, and if they are the same, they are the same,
and if they are different, then they are different
o Plato gives the argument of knowledge are recollection
- Section 3 – Locke develops an insight about metaphysics
o Principle of individuation – idea that only a single thing can occupy a location at a
given time, and it can only occupy a single location
o General criterion of identity – the way we judge whether an object at one time is
the same thing as an object at another time
o Different sortal terms have different criteria of identity
▪ Sortal term: any kind of term that tells you what kind of thing a thing is
▪ To say something is a rock is a sortal term
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
Do we think that there are primary qualities: primary qualities are independent of perception such as mass and extension. Related to the question of real essence internal micro-structure. Modern day we have the problem of actually locating the real essence in the investigation of the fundamental thing. Hume is going to explore this problem (the problem of induction) When it comes to general ideas (space, time, motion, body) If empiricists are right, we have to give an account of how our mind is able to create these general ideas just from the input of the external world. We compare the thing are time1 and time2, and if they are the same, they are the same, Locke thinks about how our experiences form the idea of identity and diversity and if they are different, then they are different: plato gives the argument of knowledge are recollection.
