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Locke and Substance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 1969

Douglas Odegard
Douglas Odegard
Affiliation:
University of Guelph
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Extract

Two uses of the word “substance” are relevant in connection with John Locke, although he makes no effort to distinguish them. One use is such that a man, a cherry and (a piece of) lead all necessarily count as kinds of substances. That is, “A man is a substance” and “A cherry is a substance” are necessarily true simply in virtue of how “substance” is used. Given that “a man” is used in an ordinary way, the claim that a man is a substance is no more contentious than the claim that a man is human or that a red substance is a substance.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , September 1969 , pp. 243 - 255
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1969

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References

1 Locke's most important remarks about “substance” occur in E I iv 19; E II xiii 17–20; E II xxiii; E II xxvii 2; E IV vi 11; and in his correspondence with Stillingfleet, Works, Vol. IV, pp. 1–23. References to the Essay are to J. W. Yolton's two-volume Everyman's edition (London, 1961; rev. 1965).

2 Though there are collective ideas of substances. See E II xxiv.

3 Gibson, James, Locke's Theory of Knowledge and its Historical Relations (CUP, 1917), PP. 94–95Google Scholar; O'Connor, D. J., John Locke (London, 1952), pp. 73–88Google Scholar; Ammerman, Robert I., “Our Knowledge of Substance According to Locke”, Theoria (1965). Locke argues his case in the correspondence with Stillingfleet.Google Scholar

4 Yolton, John W., John Locke and the Way of Ideas (OUP, 1956), p. 136.Google Scholar

5 See E I ii 23.

6 See E III v; E III vi 27–28.

7 In G. E. M. Anscombe and P. T. Geach, Three Philosophers(Oxford, 1961), pp. 86–88.

8 In E I iv 19.

9 See E IV ii 14; E IV ix 3; E IV xxi 4.

10 See E II xxvii.

11 Note R. I. Aaron's parenthetical remark on p. 176 of his John Locke (2nd. ed. Oxford, 1955): “It might also be said that one thing which I experience, namely, my own body, is still more definitely a whole as experienced. I certainly experience my own body as one thing having such and such qualities.”

12 Points of this sort are suggested by Leibniz in New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, II xxiii 2, 11.

13 See his “Substance, Reality, and Primary Qualities”, American Philosophical QuarterlyII (1965), 1–2.