Great Ideas of Philosophy

Lecture Twenty-NineLocke’s Newtonian Science of the MindScope: If all of physical reality is reducible to elementary “corpuscular” entities, might not mind itself be but therepository of comparably corpuscular elements? And might these not be held together by something akin togravitational forces? Is mind anything but a unitary record of experiences? And are there not, in this,profound implications for morality and politics?John Locke (1632–1704) is one of the “fathers” of a British Empiricism that will come to include some ofthe most influential philosophers in modern history: George Berkeley, David Hume, John Stuart Mill.Satisfied that Newton’s science and method were both applicable to the mind itself, Locke set out in AnEssay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) to defend a naturalistic account of mental life and areductionistic strategy for studying and explaining that life. He developed arguments against theories of“innate ideas,” insisting that the mind becomes furnished solely by way of experience. Accordingly, notonly knowledge but also self-knowledge is derived from experiences and the memory of them. One’s verypersonal identity is but that collection of entities in consciousness entering by way of experience.OutlineI. The age of Newton also hosts the first Newtonian psychology—developed by John Locke, a young admirer ofNewton who would become his friend. Locke was also a physician and a man well-trained in the sciences of hisday.A. Locke entered Oxford in 1652 and remained there for about 15 years, until he became personal physicianand friend to Ashley Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury, in 1667.B. During his time in Oxford, Locke discovered Descartes’s work and recognized its clear superiority over theScholastic philosophy that had been a staple of his own education.C. Trained as a physician, Locke was one of the few people elected Fellow of the Royal Society during thatbody’s early decades chiefly on the basis of philosophical contributions, rather than those of anexperimental or scientific nature.II. Locke was committed to a scientific approach to the mind and society. His Essay Concerning HumanUnderstanding makes it clear that progress in this area must be slow and deliberate.A. Such progress will occur only when we adopt the methods and perspectives characteristic of Newtonianscience. This view makes Locke a central figure in that part of the history of philosophy called Empiricism,which begins with Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum.B. The scientific method of analysis established by Bacon and Newton called for the particularizing ofcomplex phenomena—reducing them to some “ideal” state, then determining the principles by which theycome to have their complexity and dynamics.1. Newton develops a simple model, in which only one or two variables are operating, to see how thephenomenon comes out in the ideal case. Then, he will try to approximate ever more closely the actualphysical situation through observation and experiment.2. Newton also begins with the assumption that the ultimate constituents of reality are obviously not inthe visible, palpable form presented to the senses but in a more elementary, ultimately atomic, form—to use the Newtonian term: corpuscles. This ontology is not unlike what is defended by PierreGassendi.III. What are the most elementary ingredients of the human understanding? The central question of Locke’s Essayis how the mind comes to be furnished.A. There are some things that we obviously do not need experience to know. An example is the law ofcontradiction: A thing cannot simultaneously be and not be. There are some things we know immediatelyand certainly on first examination, indicating a mental power that is generally called intuitive.12©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership