Due, as an attachment, via the “Assignments” tool on ecommons, by midnight Tues., Apr. 22.
Identify a short passage — either one of those listed below or, if you prefer, another one of similar length — where Locke makes an argument or
states a view, but it is not obvious what argument is being made or
what view is being stated. Give two different interpretations,
indicating briefly what can be said in favor of each (on the basis of
the text itself and/or based on other things you know about
Locke’s views). No need to find a conclusive argument for one
interpretation or the other — if nothing else, you don’t have space
for that; just give each of them some reasonable support. (Needless to
say this should be your own original work.1)
Along with the suggested passages below you will find some hints as to why they might be difficult to understand. You need not follow those hints, however; please ignore them if you don’t find them useful.
Note that this is not a full scale paper — please do not write an introduction and conclusion, summarize other, irrelevant parts of the text, etc. Just focus on doing the above.
You can find answers to some commonly asked questions about my assignments and grading at http://people.ucsc.edu/~abestone/courses/faq.html.
1. “The senses at first let in particular ideas, and
furnish the yet empty cabinet: and the mind by degrees growing
familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the memory, and names
got to them. Afterwards the mind proceeding further abstracts them,
and by degrees learns the use of general names. In this manner the
mind comes to be furnished with ideas and language” (I.ii.15,
p. 65). (Hint: what kind of ideas do the senses let in? Or, in a
slightly different direction: which comes first, general names or
abstract ideas?)
2. “For if those innate ideas,
are not clear and distinct, so as to be universally known, and
naturally agreed on, they cannot be subjects of universal, and
undoubted truths, but will be the unavoidable occassion of perpetual
uncertainty. For, I suppose, everyone’s idea of identity, will
not be the same, that Pythagoras, and thousands others of his
followers, have, and which then shall be the true? Which innate? Or
are there two different ideas of identity, both innate?”
(I.iv.4, p. 92). (Hint: is an unclear innate idea impossible?
Why? Or is there something else wrong with it?)
3. “By this idea of solidity, is the extension of body
distinguished from the extension of space. The extension of body being
nothing but the cohesion or continuity of solid, separable, moveable
parts, and the extension of space, the continuity of unsolid,
inseparable, and immovable parts. Upon the solidity of bodies
also depends their mutual impulse, reistance, and
protrusionIf there be others, that have not these two ideas
distinct but confound them … I know not, how men, who have the
same idea, under different names, or different ideas, under the same
name, can, in that case, talk with one another, any more than a man,
who not being blind, or deaf, has distinct ideas of the colour of
scarlet, and the sound of a trumpet, could discourse concerning
scarlet-colour with the blind man … who fancied that the idea of
scarlet was like the sound of a trumpet” (II.iv.5, p. 127). (Hint:
what could we say to the blind man, in explaining scarlet, that would
be analogous to “upon the solidity of bodies also depends, etc.,” as
an explanation of solidity? If the answer is: nothing, then how are
the two cases still supposed to be analogous?)
4. “For division (which is all that a mill or pestle,
or any other body, does upon another, in reducing it to insensible
parts) can never take away either solidity, extension, figure, or
mobility from any body, but only makes two, or more distinct separate
masses of matter, of that which was but one before; all which distinct
masses, reckoned as so many distinct bodies, after division make a
certain number” (II.viii.9, p. 135). (Hint: how do we know so much,
in advance, about what one body can or cannot do to another?)
5. “To prevent [the need for endless particular names],
the mind makes the particular ideas, received from particular objects,
to become general, which is done by considering them as they are in
the mind such appearances, separate from all other existences, and the
circumstances of real existence, as time, place, or any other
concomitant ideas … Thus the same colour being observed today in
chalk or snow, which the mind yesterday received from milk, it
considers that appearance alone, makes it a representative of all of
that kind, and having given it the name whiteness, it by that
sound signifies the same quality wheresoever to be imagined or met
with” (II.xi.9, pp. 155–6). (Hint: what idea(s) does the name
“whiteness” signify? Is the abstract idea of whitenss the same as
idea the simple idea, white, or is it a different idea, and if
so how is it different? What two ideas are combined in the
proposition, that snow is white?)
6. “And I believe we shall find, if we warily observe the
originals of our notions, that even the most abstruse ideas,
how remote soever they may seem from sense, or from any operation of
our own minds, are yet only such, as the understanding frames to
itself, by repeating and joining together ideas, that it had either
from objects of sense, or from its own operations about them”
(II.xii.8, p. 161). (Hint: what operation(s) of the mind is/are
involved in “warily observing the originals of our notions”?)
7. “For the several modes of numbers, being in our
minds, but so many combinations of units, which have no variety, nor
are capable of any other difference, but more or less, names or marks
for each distinct combination, seem more necessary, than in any other
sort of ideas” (II.xvi.5, p. 196). (Hint: so do we really have clear
and distinct ideas of very large numbers?)
8. “By pleasure and pain, delight and
uneasiness, I must all along be understood … to mean, not only
bodily pain and pleasure, but whatsoever delight or
uneasiness is felt by us, whether arising from any grateful, or
unacceptable sensation or reflection” (II.xx.15, p. 218). (Hint: is
this a definition of pleasure and pain? But I thought simple ideas
could not be defined.)