Year: 2007
Type: article
Abstract: Let me first acknowledge the justice of Matthew Stuart's criticism of my earlier treatment of Locke's semantics for secondary-quality words and offer a revised account in its place.I'll then argue that Locke's thesis that secondary qualities are powers to produce ideas in us is not offered as a careful description of a being in the world but rather as a corollary to his semantics.I'll go on to criticize some of what Stuart writes in defense of his own interpretation, according to which Locke believes that objects are only colored when they are seen.Finally, I'll try to show that emphasizing Locke's denial that secondary qualities are real beings helps us understand his flexible use of secondary-quality predicates.1. Concessive Remarks I had thought, and I still think, that in order to make sense of Locke's semantics of secondary-quality words we need to understand his statement that "Flame is denominated Hot and Light; Snow White and Cold; and Manna White and Sweet, from the Ideas they produce in us" (2.8.16).In earlier work (Jacovides 1999, 492-93), following Michael Ayers (1991, 1.63-64, 207), I had said that Locke's use of secondary-quality words fit the Aristotelian pattern of focal meaning.In focal meaning, a word is used in a primary sense for one kind of thing-as with 'being' for substance or 'healthy' for living things-and in a derivative sense for things merely connected to the primary referent-as with 'being' for qualities or 'healthy' for food (Metaphysics 4.2, explained in Owen 1986).On my old analysis, Locke believes that ideas are called 'red' in the primary sense and that apples are called 'red' in the derivative sense of producing something that's red in the primary sense.'cold' derivatively from the names of those ideas.This fits better than my old view not only with Locke's use of the expression 'denominates' but also with the theory of Essay 3.8 ("Of Abstract and Concrete Terms") and the practice of Essay 2.8 ("Some farther Considerations concerning our simple Ideas").Locke presents a partial semantics for term endings at Essay 3.8, where he distinguishes 'abstract' and 'concrete' terms.Abstract terms include 'humanity,' 'animality,' 'rationality,' and 'whiteness.'They are set off by the suffixes '-ity,' '-ness, ' '-ice,' and, in some Latin examples, '-itas' and '-ietas'.Locke borrows the distinction from the scholastic textbooks that he assigned to his students at Oxford.In the opening pages of his Compendious Philosophy, Christoph Scheibler distinguishes among simple words as "either 1.Concrete, which expresses something fusedly, that is to say, jointly, for example, 'expert' or 2. Abstract, which indicates something separated off from all other things, for example, 'expertise'." 2 Scheibler's point is that concrete words such as 'doctus' refer to a fusion of human being and learning, while 'doctrina' indicates the learning on its own. 3 On Locke's account, abstract words are "Names of abstract Ideas" (3.8.1).As a consequence, he writes, "every one, at first hearing, perceives the falshood of these Propositions; Humanity is Animality, or Rationality, or Whiteness" (ibid.).According to Locke, these are false because they assert that one idea is identical to another.In ordinary assertions about external things, we therefore use concrete terms, such as 'man,' 'animal,' 'rational,' and 'white'."All our Affirmations," Locke writes, "are only in concrete, which is the affirming, not one abstract idea to be another, but one abstract Idea to
Source: The Philosophical Review
Author: Michael Jacovides
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2000324802