Substances, Substrata, and Names of Substances in Locke's Essay

Bibliographic Data

ID10695482
AuthorsMartha Brandt Bolton (corresponding author)
Year1976
Volume85
Issue4
Pages488
Publication date1976-10-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Philosophical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-8108 • E-ISSN: 1558-1470
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2184276
OpenAlexW2335300854
LanguageEN
Citations received6

THE distinction between ideas of substances and ideas of mixed modes is an integral part of the theory of ideas in Locke's Essay. Roughly speaking, it differentiates natural kinds of things from conventional kinds, and this is central to Locke's theory of knowledge, his division of the sciences, and his semantic theory.1 The distinction is unfortunately difficult to understand. It is very obscure what features distinguish ideas of the one sort from those of the other sort. In the account of substances, it is the notion of substratum which predominates; in contrast to ideas of all other sorts, ideas of substances always include the idea of an unknown support in which qualities are supposed to inhere. This doctrine of substratum is itself obscure and it has often been said to be misguided. As a result, the difference between ideas of substances and modes, so important to the theory developed in the Essay, is usually discussed with little or no mention of substratum.2 This distorts Locke's view; whatever the doctrine of substratum involves, Locke took the inclusion of the idea of substratum to embody the most outstanding characteristic of ideas of substances. In this paper, I develop an account of the distinction between ideas of substances and of mixed modes, and an account of substratum and its function in differentiating those two kinds of ideas

Analytic philosophy · Art · Contemporary philosophy · Epistemology · General interest · Literature · Historical Philosophy and Science · Philosophy

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