Locke on Essence and Identity

ISBN-13: 9789401037655 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 212 str.

C.H. Conn

Opis

I first became interested in the relationship between Locke's anti essentialism and his theory of identity in a first-year graduate course on metaphysics taught at Syracuse University by Jose Benardete. I had until then approached Locke as a "safe," commonsense philosopher, whose metaphysical agenda-constrained as it was by his concept empiricism was largely geared towards upholding a scientifically enlightened, broadly Christian worldview. I am greatly indebted to Professor Benardete for disabusing me of this understanding of Locke's work. Benardete's Locke was not the Locke that I had been exposed to as an undergraduate, not the Locke that I had found in Copleston's History of Philosophy. Rather, he was a profoundly creative and audacious metaphysician, who was justly perceived to be a tremendously dangerous philosopher by his more traditional contemporarie s. And as much I had admired Copleston's Locke, I have become positively enthralled with Benardete's. The topics of identity and essentialism have become mainstays of contemporary metaphysics, and it is no understatement to say that Locke's contribution to modem debates on these matters is enormous. My early interest in Locke's work on essentialism and identity-through-time was motivated by two factors. First, although there are a number of obvious and significant conceptual connections between these topics, Locke's own theorizing about identity seems not to have been informed by his critique of essentialism or vice versa."

Spis treści

Preface. Introduction. I. Substances, Essences, and Kinds. 1. Substances and the Spatiotemporal World. 2. Substances and their properties. 3. Essential properties and natural kinds. II. Identity and Persistence. 1. Identity. 2. Persistence. 3. Identity, persistence and Lockean anti-essentialism. 4. A brief look ahead. Lockes's Critique of Essentialism. I.Locke on the Accidental/Essential Property Distinction. 1. The sortal relativity of essential properties. 2. Unsorted particulars and accidental properties. 3. Real essences of sorted and unsorted particulars. II. Locke on the Nature and Existence of Natural Kinds. 1. The 'second opinion' regarding natural kinds. 2. The 'first opinion' regarding natural kinds. 3. Locke's epistemological and semantic arguments against real kinds. 4. Locke's appeal to monsters and changelings. III. Locke on the Classification of Corporeal Substances. 1. Sorting particulars into kinds. 2. Forming sortal concepts. IV. Locke on Kinds and Particulars. Locke's Theory of Identity. I. Locke's concept of identity. 1. The psychological origin of this concept. 2. Diachronic and synchronic identity-statements. II. Locke's Principle of Individuation. 1. Locke's argument for the principum individuationis. 2. Three objections. III. Identity and Ideas of Things. 1. General ideas and persistence conditions. 2. A metaphysical dilemma. Locke on the Persistence of Organisms and Persons. I. Organismsand their Material Parts. 1. Atoms and masses. 2. Organisms, masses and lives. II. Locke's Organismic Theory of Personal Identity. 1. Persons, consciousness, and the nature of thinking substances. 2. Consciousness as the 'life' of persons. 3. What consciousness might do. 4. The temporal extent of Lockean organisms. 5. The temporal extent of human persons. 6. Organisms, persons, and their temporal stages. III. Locke's Thought Experiments and Problem Cases. 1. Cases involving lapses of memory. 2. Cases involving two persons and one man. 3. Cases involving one person and two men. 4. The case of the conscious, severed finger. IV. Conclusion. Objections and Replies. I. The Charge of Anachronism. 1. Initial response. 2. Some historical counterexamples to the charge of anachronism. 3. Locke's views on space and time. II. Four-Dimensional Bodies and the Corpuscularian Hypothesis. 1. The temporal extent of Lockean atoms and masses. 2. Locke and Newton on the creation of material corpuscles. 3. The temporal extent of Newtonian bodies. 4. The mobility of temporally extended bodies. III. Conclusion. Relativistic Anti-Essentialism and a Four-Dimensional Lockean Ontology. I. The anti-essentialist implications of a four-dimensional Lockean ontology. 1. The sortal relativity of four-dimensional persistence conditions. 2. Four-dimensional persistence conditions and the relative identity thesis. 3. Four-dimensional persistence conditions and Lockean anti-essentialis