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Locke's Triangles
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
One of the most frequently discussed passages from Locke's An Essay Concerning the Human Understanding is that which occurs in IV.vii.9, where he writes:
… the Ideas first in the Mind, ‘tis evident, are those of particular Things, from whence, by slow degrees, the Understanding proceeds to some few general ones; which being taken from the ordinary and familiar Objects of Sense, are settled in the Mind, with general Names to them. Thus particular Ideas are first received and distinguished, and so Knowledge got about them: and next to them, the less general, or specifick, which are next to particular. For abstract Ideas are not so obvious or easie to Children, or the yet unexercised Mind, as particular ones. If they seem so to grown Men, ’tis only because by constant and familiar use they are made so. For when we nicely reflect upon them, we shall find, that general Ideas are Fictions and Contrivances of the Mind, that carry difficulty with them, and do not so easily offer themselves, as we are apt to imagine. For example, Does it not require some pains and skill to form the general Idea of a Triangle, (which is yet none of the most abstract, comprehensive, and difficult,) for it must be neither Oblique, nor Rectangle, neither Equilateral, Equicrural, nor Scalenon; but all and none of these at once. In effect, it is something imperfect, that cannot exist; an Idea wherein some parts of several different and inconsistent Ideas are put together.
I shall not pretend that what Locke is claiming in this passage is wholly clear, nor shall I try to defend the views expressed in it. My intention is to show that what he says here has been widely misinterpreted. It has become common to treat the contents of the passage as aberrant; as presenting a ridiculous variant on his main thesis on abstraction, or that very thesis elaborated with a foolish rhetorical flourish. But what is said in this passage is not something said elsewhere, nor is it an alternative to something said elsewhere. Here, and nowhere else, Locke shows awareness of implications for his doctrine of abstraction, of views he holds about simple ideas.
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References
1 Locke, John An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Nidditch, Peter H. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1975)Google Scholar
2 See, for example, Warnock, G. J. Berkeley (London: Pelican 1953), 66–9Google Scholar.
3 See, for example, Mackie, J. L. Problems from Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1976), 116CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 It is not always realized that Berkeley was not the first to attack Locke on this point. He was in large measure anticipated by Lee, Henry in Anti-Scepticism (London: R. Clavel and C. Harper 1702), 274Google Scholar.
5 Berkeley, G. The Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction, §13, in The Works of George Berkeley, Vol. II, Jessop, T. E. ed. (London: Thomas Nelson 1949), 32Google Scholar
6 Other examples can be found in Copleston's, F. C. History of Philosophy, Vol.5 (London: Burns and Oates 1959), 216Google Scholar, where he wrongly takes Berkeley to be interpreting Locke thus, and in the interpretation of Locke favored by Taylor, C. C. W. in ‘Berkeley's Theory of Abstract Ideas,’ The Philosophical Quarterly 28 (1978) 97–115, esp. 99-104CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 Warnock, 66 (original italics)
8 Ibid., 72-3
9 Ibid., 73
10 I shall not take up the question of whether Locke might have been more consistent if he had taken the idea of a triangle as a mixed mode, on the grounds that it involves modifications not only of the simple idea of extension, but also of unity.
11 There is an ambiguity in the way Locke talks of ‘combination.’ In the case of simple modes the combination is of multiple instances of one kind of simple idea, e.g. extension, whereas in the case of mixed modes like adultery, the combination is, at least in the examples he cites, of one each of several different kinds of simple idea.
12 Locke need not be committed to holding that an abstract idea of triangle as a simple mode of extension must supersede a more directly obtained abstract idea of triangle, for the distinction he makes between the ‘civil’ and ‘philosophical’ uses of a word (in III.ix.3) would seem to allow the possibility of associating a different abstract idea with the one use, to that associated with the other.
13 See, for example, Pitcher, G. Berkeley (London: Routledge 1977), 65–7, and Mackie, 115-16Google Scholar.
14 Why Locke fails to acknowledge that the abstract ideas of white and man may also have such features is discussed below.
15 Descartes, R. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol.I, trans. Cottingham, J. Stoothoff, R. and Murdoch, D. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985), 44CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16 Arnauld, Antoine and Nichole, Pierre La Logique ou L'Art de Penser (Paris: Flammarion 1970), 65–6Google Scholar
17 Arnauld and Nichole, 83-5
18 For a discussion of this point see, for example, Staniland, Hilary Universals (New York: Anchor Books 1972), 34–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
19 I am very grateful to two anonymous referees of this journal who, by pointing out serious faults and infelicities in a previous version of this paper, led me to revise it substantially.