建国以来洛克哲学研究综述

正确评价洛克哲学思想,对于正确认识哲学史上唯物主义传统和正确理解辩证唯物主义认识论,都有积极的意义。五十年代末六十年代初,我国哲学界曾对洛克哲学的若干问题作过一些研究,特别是对洛克的“两性质说”是否是与辩证唯物主义针锋相对的机械论和形而上学、第二性质学说是否是贝克莱的理论源泉等问题进行过一些争论。粉碎“四人帮”以后,随着忻学界学术研究的逐步深入,洛克哲学的若干问题又重新提出来了。现将建国以来我国哲学界关于洛克哲学的研究作一综述。     

洛克论“名义的本质”与“实在的本质”

名义的本质与实在的本质是洛克形而上学的核心概念。名义的本质是各种可感性质的抽象观念,洛克以此反对经院哲学以实体形式作为个别事物的实在本质来规定事物的存在。实在的本质等同于个别事物的内在结构,在原则上是不可知的,它可被视为名义的本质在内在结构上的投射。洛克并不是一个本质主义者,他也不认为存在着自然种。洛克也未曾断言内在的结构就是波义耳式的微粒说,洛克只是将微粒说看作是较之于亚里士多德的本质说更为合理的解释。     

洛克德育心理思想浅探

英国十七世纪著名的哲学家、思想家、教育理论家洛克(1632—1704),是一个唯物主义的感觉经验论者,在《人类理解论》一书中,他用一切知识、观念来自经验的观点,逐条批驳了笛卡尔的天赋观念论。在此基础上,洛克阐述了著名的“心灵白板说”和知识起源的感觉经验论等观点。他说:“让我们假定人心是白纸,如我们所     

洛克的观念论

洛克是英国经验论的集大成者，对西方哲学史最大的贡献就是系统总结了经验论的认识论。其核心思想就是他的观念论，他认为观念来自感觉和反省，观念分为简单观念和复杂观念，为了说明观念与外在事物的关系，他提出了第一性的质的观念与第二性的质的观念，第一性的观念以第一性的质为原型，第二性的质的观念与第二性的质是不相似得。     

《自然法论文集》

这里,洛克讨论了两个主题:是否有自然法?如何认识自然法?经验向人类表明,如果没有自然法,则无良心、善恶之分,甚至不会有人类社会的存在。但是,如果的确有自然法,又何以并非人人受其约束?这表明自然法绝非人人知晓的天赋观念。显然也不可能经由传统、教育和普遍同意来获得自然法的知识,因为传统、权威学说千差万别。所以,在洛克看来,人唯有依凭其本性,即感觉经验与理性这两种天赋能力的共同指引获得自然法的知识,它之普遍性寓于共同的人性中,即寓于洛克所认为的人之共有的感觉经验与理性领悟中。而对如何认识自然法的论述也初步表达了其经验知识论的思想。     

自然种类与洛克的约定主义

近年来,洛克是否主张种类自然主义,成为洛克研究中的热点问题。在传统解释中,洛克既反对类本质的实在性,又反对自然种类的实在性,主张彻头彻尾的约定主义。新兴评论者们提出,对于种类划分,洛克不主张约定主义,而主张自然主义。本文从洛克哲学的本体论、知识论和哲学文本三个维度考察洛克的约定主义与自然种类的关系,认为洛克的文本既不能决定性地支持种类自然主义,也不能决定性地支持种类约定主义,因为,将自然种类归给洛克哲学,既缺乏本体论和知识论的根据,又缺乏决定性的文本证据。     

洛克论信念合理性的伦理之维

信念是否以及在多大程度上具有可靠的认识论根据,是洛克宗教哲学所致力探究的最为重要的内容之一。洛克在阐释人类知识的起源和范围的基础上,对信念形成的心理机制及其认知特性进行了分析。他认为,与拥有可靠证据的知识不同,信念,特别是宗教信念,表现出的是一种赞同,但这种赞同不是建基于其内容的证据可靠,而是源自于对信念提出者的信任。在洛克看来,这种因信任而表达的赞同,不可能是知识,充其量是一种具有可能性的"猜测或想象"。因此,信念必须受到理性的管控和引导,在证据基础上进行检验和评估。这是作为理性动物的人类不可舍弃的道义责任。洛克通过证据原则和评价原则等对信念的规范以及由此提出的伦理责任之要求,在现代思想史中产生了广泛的影响——虽然既有赞成也有对其证据主义原则提出批评和修正,但洛克的看法无疑是现当代学者们探究信念认知合理性问题的最富有启发意义的思想源泉。     

麦考密克:“休谟、维特根斯坦和怀疑论的影响”

一个哲学家是否有可能既是怀疑论者,又从事建构性的哲学(文中建构性的哲学是指那种目的在于为知识的进步提供一种建设性的贡献的那种哲学性的理论化,或者那种不是纯粹批判的哲学方法)?本文将论证,休谟和维特根斯坦正是这样的哲学家。他们的怀疑论与他们关于哲学探索的本性和目的的观点是相容的,并且具有从他们的形式相似的怀疑论而来的相似的元哲学。休谟认为,我们最基本的信念并没有奠基于我们的理性之上,而且理性自身也是不可信赖的。例如,他在《人性论》中论述了我们天赋能力的可错性,想象在形成我们的重要信念中的重要作用,我们信念的自…     

洛克手稿

译者手记：洛克的经验知识论与实践哲学的许多论题都形成于他对自然法的讨论,但是,他关于自然法的系列论文却一直被湮没在馆藏中。这些自然法论文是洛克在1664年前用拉丁语撰写的,     

洛克的自然权利说

在洛克的政治哲学中,自然权利说占有一个重要的地位。他的自然权利说内蕴于他的自然法理论之中。洛克的自然法理论有着很深的自然法传统的因素,而与霍布斯的相关理论既有继承又有重大区别。他的自然权利说既有对传统思想的继承,也有自己的创新,尤其是表现在他对财产权的论述中。在政治权威的合法性论题上,洛克将保护人的不可剥夺、不可转让的自然权利论贯穿到底,合乎逻辑地回答了政治权威存在的功能问题。     

Locke on the Idea of Substratum

Locke's treatment of substratum is notoriously difficult. Accordingto one commentator, 'nothing else in the writings of any philosopher matches the doubleness of attitude of the passages about substratum in Locke's Essay' (Bennett 1987, 197). The aim of the present paper is to render consistent Locke's seemingly divergent strands on the subject. My efforts are organized around three levels of apparent duplicity. At each level, I argue that the doubleness of attitude in Locke's treatment is merely apparent. I argue further that Locke means to ground an empiricist-friendly idea of substratum in the customary experience of simple ideas that 'go constantly together.'     

Boyle's corpuscular hypothesis and Locke's primary-secondary quality distinction

Locke denied that ideas of secondary qualities resemble their causes. It has been suggested that Locke denied this because he accepted a mechanical corpuscular hypothesis about the constitution of objects. This paper shows that this and other usual explanations of Locke's denial are mistaken. Further, it suggests an alternative relationship between the scientific account and Locke's philosophical views, and finally it provides Locke's real justification for his claim that ideas of secondary qualities do not resemble their causes.This paper was prepared with the assistance of a SUNY UAC/JAC Faculty Research Fellowship.     

Locke and the Primary Signification of Words: An Approach to Word Meaning

Locke's claim that the primary signification of (most) words is an idea, or complex of ideas, has received different interpretations. I support the majority view that Locke's notion of primary signification can be construed in terms of linguistic meaning. But this reading has been seen as making Locke's account vulnerable to various criticisms, of which I consider two. First, it appears to make the account vulnerable to the charge that an idea cannot play the role that a word meaning should play. I argue that the role Locke actually gives to signified ideas is not susceptible to this criticism. Second, it appears to make Locke guilty of at least some degree of semantic idealism. I argue that Locke is not guilty of this and that he makes a proper distinction between the non-referential relation that holds between a word and its primary signification and the referential relation that holds between a word and things the word is used to speak about.     

JOHN LOCKE AND THE PROBLEMS OF MORAL KNOWLEDGE

Abstract:  In this paper, I argue that John Locke's account of knowledge coupled with his commitments to moral ideas being voluntary constructions of our own minds and to divine voluntarism (moral rules are given by God according to his will) leads to a seriously flawed view of moral knowledge. After explicating Locke's view of moral knowledge, highlighting the specific problems that seem to arise from it, and suggesting some possible Lockean responses, I conclude that the best Locke can do is give us a trivial account of moral knowledge which cannot avoid problems with subjectivity and relativism.     

Hume,a Scottish Locke? Comments on Terence Penelhum's Hume

Where Terence Penelhum sees a deep continuity between John Locke's theory of ideas and David Hume's theory of perceptions, I argue that the two philosophers disagree over some fundamental issues in the philosophy of mind. While Locke treats ideas as imagistic objects that we recognize as such by a special kind of inner consciousness, Hume thinks that we do not normally recognize the imagistic content of our perceptions, and instead unselfconsciously take ourselves to sense a shared public world. My disagreement with Penelhum over Hume's debt to Locke helps to explain our disagreement over the nature of Hume's scepticism.     

Makers' Rights

This paper examines the thesis that human labor creates property rights in or from previously unowned objects by virtue of labor's power to make new things. This thesis is considered for two possible roles: first, as a thesis to which John Locke might have been committed in his writings on property; and second, as a thesis of independent plausibility that could serve as part of a defensible contemporary theory of property rights. Understanding Locke as committed to the thesis of makers' rights has seemed to many of the best known recent Locke scholars to explain and unify Locke's various claims about property in a way that more traditional labor-mixing interpretations cannot. This paper argues that there is in fact no convincing evidence in Locke's texts to suggest any commitment to the thesis of makers' rights for humans. Further, not only does a version of the traditional labor-mixing argument yield a much superior interpretation of Locke's writings, it is an argument that is far more convincing than makers' rights arguments, quite independent of its usefulness in the interpretation of Locke's theory.     

Davidson on the Identity Theory

Abstract

… if we bear well in mind the scope of our senses and what it is exactly that reaches our faculty of thinking by way of them, we must admit that in no case are the ideas of things presented to us by the senses just as we form them in our thinking. So much so that there is nothing in our ideas which is not innate to the mind or the faculty of thinking, with the sole exception of those circumstances which relate to experience, such as the fact that we judge that this or that idea which we now have immediately before our mind refers to a certain thing situated outside us. We make such a judgment not because these things transmit the ideas to our mind through the sense organs, but because they transmit something which, at exactly that moment, gives the mind occasion to form these ideas by means of the faculty innate to it. Nothing reaches our mind from external objects through the sense organs except certain corporeal motions… in accordance with my own principles. But neither the motions themselves nor the figures arising from them are conceived by us exactly as they occur in the sense organs, as I have explained at length in my Optics. Hence it follows that the very ideas of the motions themselves and of the figures are innate in us. The ideas of pains, colors, sounds and the like must be all the more innate if, on the occasion of certain corporeal motions, our mind is to be capable of representing them to itself, for there is no similarity between these ideas and the corporeal motions.     

Animalism Versus Lockeanism: A Current Controversy

My purpose is to explore the possible lines of reply available to a defender of the neo-Lockean position on personal identity in response to the recently popular 'animalist' objection. I compare the animalist objection with an objection made to Locke by Bishop Butler, Thomas Reid and, in our own day, Sydney Shoemaker. I argue that the only possible response available to a defender of Locke against the Butler–Reid–Shoemaker objection is to reject Locke's official definition of a person as a thinking, intelligent thing and replace it with the concept of the self – the object of self-reference – and that this response is equally obligatory for the neo-Lockean in replying to the animalist. I explore other possibilities, including the position that there is no sense in talking about personal identity at all.     

Lockean Empathy

This paper offers an epistemic defense of empathy, drawing on John Locke's theory of ideas. Locke held that ideas of shape, unlike ideas of color, had a distinctive value: resembling qualities in their objects. I argue that the same is true of empathy, as when someone is pained by someone's pain. This means that empathy has the same epistemic value or objectivity that Locke and other early modern philosophers assigned to veridical perceptions of shape. For this to hold, pain and pleasure must be a primary quality of the mind, just as shape is a primary quality of bodies. Though Locke did not make that claim, I argue that pain and pleasure satisfy his criteria for primary qualities. I consider several objections to the analogy between empathy and shape‐perception and show how Locke's theory has resources for answering them. In addition, the claim that empathetic ideas are object‐matching sidesteps Berkeley's influential objection to Locke's theory of resemblance. I conclude by briefly considering the prospects for a similar defense of empathy in contemporary terms.