Locke on essence and identity / by Christopher Hughes Conn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Conn, Christopher Hughes.

Series:

Philosophical studies series ; v. 98.

Philosophical studies series ; v. 98

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Locke, John, 1632-1704.

Locke, John.

Essentialism (Philosophy).

Identity (Philosophical concept).

Genre:

Academic theses.

Physical Description:

x, 207 pages ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Dordrecht ; Boston : Kluwer Academic Publishers, [2003]

Contents:

I. Substances, Essences, and Kinds 1

1. Substances and the Spatiotemporal World 1

2. Substances and their properties 8

3. Essential properties and natural kinds 10

II. Identity and Persistence 12

3. Identity, persistence, and Lockean anti-essentialism 22

Locke's Critique of Essentialism 25

I. Locke on the Accident al/Essential Property Distinction 26

1. The sortal relativity of essential properties 26

2. Unsorted particulars and accidental properties 28

3. Real essences of sorted and unsorted particulars 30

II. Locke on the Nature and Existence of Natural Kinds 32

1. The "second opinion" regarding natural kinds 33

2. The "first opinion" regarding natural kinds 36

3. Locke's epistemological and semantic arguments against real kinds 40

4. Locke's appeal to monsters and changelings 44

III. Locke on the Classification of Corporeal Substances 47

1. Sorting particulars into kinds 47

2. Forming sortal concepts 49

IV. Locke on Kinds and Particulars 53

Locke's Theory of Identity 55

1. The psychological origin of this concept 56

2. Diachronic and synchronic identity-statements 57

II. Locke's Principle of Individuation 62

1. Locke's argument for the principium individuationis 63

2. Three objections 71

III. Identity and the Ideas of Things 74

1. General ideas and persistence conditions 75

2. Locke and the relative identity thesis 83

IV. Does Locke have a Consistent Theory of Identity? 92

1. Two accounts of persistence 93

2. A metaphysical dilemma 96

Locke on the Persistence of Organisms and Persons 101

I. Organisms and their Material Parts 102

1. Atoms and masses 102

2. Organisms, Masses, and Lives 103

II. Locke's Organismic Theory of Personal Identity 113

1. Persons, consciousness, and the nature of thinking substances 113

2. Consciousness as the "life" of persons 123

3. What consciousness might do 126

4. The temporal extent of Lockean organisms 133

5. The temporal extent of human persons 135

6. Organisms, persons, and their temporal stages 136

III. Locke's Thought Experiments and Problem Cases 139

1. Cases involving lapses of memory 140

2. Cases involving two persons and one man 141

3. Cases involving one person and two men 142

4. The case of the conscious, severed finger 143

Objections and Replies 147

I. The Charge of Anachronism 148

1. Initial response 148

2. Some historical counterexamples to the charge of anachronism 150

3. Locke's views on space and time 155

II. Four-dimensional Bodies and the Corpuscularian Hypothesis 161

1. The temporal extent of Lockean atoms and masses 161

2. Locke and Newton on the creation of material corpuscles 163

3. The temporal extent of Newtonian bodies 168

4. The mobility of temporally extended bodies 170

Relativistic Anti-essentialism and a Four-dimensional Lockean Ontology 175

I. The Anti-essentialist Implications of a Four-dimensional Lockean Ontology 176

1. The sortal relativity of four-dimensional persistence conditions 176

2. Four-dimensional persistence conditions and the relative identity thesis 177

3. Four-dimensional persistence conditions and Lockean anti-essentialism 178

II. Two Objections 181

1. A three-dimensionalist alternative 182

2. An alleged essentialist implication of four-dimensionalism 184.

Notes:

Revision of the author's thesis (doctoral)--Syracuse University.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 193-203) and index.

ISBN:

1402016700

OCLC:

53132390