Great Works of Western Philosophy Part 2 ● Today: More Locke – Mental operations and Complex ideas. ● Ideas of Mixed Modes ● Ideas of Substances – Identity ● For Next Class (After “Slack Week”) – Locke , (IV.2.14 – IV.3.6), – Berkeley Three Dialogs Between Hylas and Philanous. pp ● Papers returned this week in my office (HH 366). – Thursday 1:00-3:00 – Friday 1:30-2:30

Simple Ideas and Mental Operation ● Simple Ideas: The Building blocks of our thoughts. – Simple ideas of sensation are ideas of sensory qualities like colour, shape, solidity, extension, sound, smell, texture etc. (“Un-compounded appearances”). – They include ideas of both primary and secondary qualities. ● How do we get from these simple ideas to the complex ideas we have of the various things we sense. The simple ideas are not organised in any way yet. ● Ans: Mental Operations (Ideas of reflections). The mental operation are what is used to make these simple ideas into complex ideas and systems. – One such operations: Compounding/Composition: We build complex ideas out of various simple ideas of sensations and reflections. (II.11.6) – e.g.: The idea of “a dozen”. Idea of “one” combined repeated and compounded to create the idea of a “dozen”. – e.g.: The idea of God. (By compounding our ideas of our own mental operations into infinity).

Complex Ideas: Mixed modes and Substances ● Mixed modes are complex ideas of artificial kinds. (II.22) – The kinds are products of human conceptualising activity. – OR ideas or modes, that involve a complex construction of various simple natural ideas: like human volition, morality, shapes etc. – Essentially anything that someone must have thought of first to be existing. ● Some of Locke's Examples: – drunkenness, a lie, fencing, printing, murder. – All these are complex constructed ideas, made of various natural ideas. ● The ideas are complex, because they combine a variety of different ideas drawn from different sources in sensation and reflection. ● Comment: – Ideas of mixed modes are mere concepts, until someone decided to make it reality. – But they were originally thought of first. – They are usually invented, or learned from conventional definition

Complex Ideas: Ideas of Substances ● Not all kinds are “conceptual” in this sense of mixed modes: – e.g.: gold, tree, fire, human being etc. – These kinds occur in nature, we don't make them up. They were not conceptual in origin. They were there whether or not someone thought of it. ● These are Ideas of Substances, as opposed to Mixed modes. – How do our ideas of each (substances and mixed modes) differ if they are different in reality. ● The general idea of substance (“pure substance in general”) – The idea of a “substratum” or “support” for collections of qualities which recur in our experience. ● So our idea of a substance is something that is of certain qualities that are bound together in a substratum. ● As opposed to our idea of mixed modes that have qualities that are bound together because someone made it so, not due to a “substratum” that brought it qualities together. ● We “suppose” that such a substratum is needed in order to “support” the qualities, but we know nothing about its nature. ● The idea of a substance is therefore “obscure and relative” (Even childish; a mere “something” that “upholds” or “supports” qualities).

Categorisations of Substances ● Categorisations of substance ● Generic substance: bodies (corporeal substances) vs. spirits (thinking substance). – The idea of substance is the same in both (a mere substratum). The difference is only in the range of qualities we believe to be supported. – e.g. mind is a substratum that hold the qualities of perception, thinking etc. ● More specific kinds of substances (“sorts”) – e.g.; trees, fires, gold, water, human beings. – These are natural kinds or “species”. – The various sorts of substances are defined strictly in terms of the simple ideas of qualities associated with them. ● The lesson (II.23.6) – The various sensible ideas we use in categorising substances is all there is to know about them. (Contrast Descartes' essentilism).

Another story about substances ● Ideas of powers play a big part in defining our substance ideas. – e.g. it is an “active power” of fire to melt or immolate certain other substances. – e.g. It is a passive power of gold to be soluble in “aqua regia”. – e.g. The colour yellow itself is a power; since secondary qualities like colours are defined as “mere powers” to produce sensations in us. ● For Locke, powers derive from the motions and corpuscular micro-structure of bodies (Locke's mechanism). ● Q: Why not identify the sorts of substances in terms of their microstructure and their associated powers? ● Locke's Answer (II.23.12) – We don't have adequate knowledge of the micro structural constitution of bodies. Our senses are not sufficiently acute.