HKB
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Often appears with: reason and the intellect · language, naming, and meaning · doubt, skepticism, and certainty · real essence unknown · real essence · gold example · words as signs · word essence meaning · universal certainty · substances vs modes · substances and language · substance definitions
Usually: detachment (7) · argument (6) · skepticism (6) · reflection (5) · crisis of belief (1) · curiosity (1) · resignation (1)
“The essence of anything in respect of us, is the whole complex idea comprehended and marked by that name.” John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 2 · insight
“THE SORTING OF THEM UNDER NAMES IS THE WORKMANSHIP OF THE UNDERSTANDING, TAKING OCCASION, FROM THE SIMILITUDE IT OBSERVES AMONGST THEM, TO MAKE ABSTRACT GENERAL IDEAS, and set them up in the mind, with names annexed to them, as patterns or forms” John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 2 · insight
“Because, not knowing the real constitution on which sensation, power of motion, and reasoning, with that peculiar shape, depend, and whereby they are united together in the same subject, there are very few other qualities with which we can perceive them to have a necessary connexion.” John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 2 · insight
“For man or gold, taken in this sense, and used for species of things constituted by real essences, different from the complex idea in the mind of the speaker, stand for we know not what; and the extent of these species, with such boundaries, are so unknown and undetermined.” John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 2 · observation
“But fixedness, for example, having no necessary connexion that we can discover, with the colour, weight, or any other simple idea of our complex one, or with the whole combination together; it is impossible that we should certainly know the truth of this proposition, that all gold is fixed.” John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 2 · insight
Locke says sorting things under names is understanding’s work, based on perceived similarities, and that the essences of the species we rank are these abstract ideas tied to the words we use.
13. They are the Workmanship of the Understanding, but have their Foundation in the Similitude of Things. I would not here be thought to forget, much less to deny, that Nature, in the production of things, makes several of them alike: there is nothing more obvious, especially in the races of animals, and all things propagated by seed. But yet I think we may say, THE SORTING OF THEM UNDER NAMES IS THE WORKMANSHIP OF …
Locke explains multiple meanings of “essence,” distinguishing real essence as a thing’s being or internal constitution from nominal essence as the constructed essence used in genus/species disputes.
17. Supposition, that Species are distinguished by their real Essences useless. Concerning the REAL ESSENCES of corporeal substances (to mention these only) there are, if I mistake not, two opinions. The one is of those who, using the word essence for they know not what, suppose a certain number of those essences, according to which all natural things are made, and wherein they do exactly every one of them partake, …
Locke argues that common names for substances function as labels for “sorts,” formed from collections of complex ideas shared by particular things, and that these sorts depend on human abstraction rather than real natures.
OF THE NAMES OF SUBSTANCES. 1. The common Names of Substances stand for Sorts. The common names of substances, as well as other general terms, stand for SORTS: which is nothing else but the being made signs of such complex ideas wherein several particular substances do or might agree, by virtue of which they are capable of being comprehended in one common conception, and signified by one name. I say do or might agr…
Locke argues that we cannot form species of substances by knowing their real essences, since we do not know the real essence and thus cannot know all the properties that must cohere for gold or any kind.
19. Our Nominal Essences of Substances not perfect collections of the properties that flow from the Real Essence. Fifthly, The only imaginable help in this case would be, that, having framed perfect complex ideas of the properties of things flowing from their different real essences, we should thereby distinguish them into species. But neither can this be done. For, being ignorant of the real essence itself, it is i…
Locke illustrates that the word “man” answers to its nominal essence: animals may resemble humans in shape and lack or have traits like language and reason, yet only the nominal definition decides whether we call them men.
22. Our Abstract Ideas are to us the Measures of the Species we make in instance in that of Man. There are creatures in the world that have shapes like ours, but are hairy, and want language and reason. There are naturals amongst us that have perfectly our shape, but want reason, and some of them language too. There are creatures, as it is said, (sit fides penes authorem, but there appears no contradiction that ther…
Locke examines the term “gold,” showing that different people include different properties (color, fusibility, weight, solubility) and that no one can justify the chosen “essence,” making the word’s meaning uncertain.
17. Instance, Gold. How much this is the case in the greatest part of disputes that men are engaged so hotly in, I shall perhaps have an occasion in another place to take notice. Let us only here consider a little more exactly the fore-mentioned instance of the word GOLD, and we shall see how hard it is precisely to determine its signification. I think all agree to make it stand for a body of a certain yellow shinin…
He argues that certainty about general propositions requires knowing the precise bounds of each species, which is easy for simple ideas but uncertain for substances with supposed real essences we do not know.
precise bounds and extent of the species its terms stand for, it is necessary we should know the essence of each species, which is that which constitutes and bounds it. This, in all simple ideas and modes, is not hard to do. For in these the real and nominal essence being the same, or, which is all one, the abstract idea which the general term stands for being the sole essence and boundary that is or can be supposed…
Locke maintains that if substance terms rely on unknown real essences, universal judgments cannot be certain; even with nominal essences, universal certainty is limited by lack of discoverable connections among qualities.
5. This more particularly concerns Substances. The names of substances, then, whenever made to stand for species which are supposed to be constituted by real essences which we know not, are not capable to convey certainty to the understanding. Of the truth general propositions made up of such terms we cannot be sure. [The reason whereof is plain: for how can we be sure that this or that quality is in gold, when we k…
Using gold as an example, Locke says we cannot certainly know universal propositions like 'all gold is fixed' unless fixedness is contained in the nominal essence, because no discoverable necessary connection links such qualities.
8. Instance in Gold. 'All gold is fixed,' is a proposition whose truth we cannot be certain of, how universally soever it be believed. For if, according to the useless imagination of the Schools, any one supposes the term gold to stand for a species of things set out by nature, by a real essence belonging to it, it is evident he knows not what particular substances are of that species; and so cannot with certainty a…
He concludes that because we lack knowledge of real essences, our nominal essences give only scant universal knowledge, while any further claims about substances rest on probability or opinion, not certainty.
its neighbours; and we must not confine our thoughts within the surface of any body, but look a great deal further, to comprehend perfectly those qualities that are in it. 12. Our nominal essences of Substances furnish few universal propositions about them that are certain. If this be so, it is not to be wondered that we have very imperfect ideas of substances, and that the real essences, on which depend their prop…
Locke claims that because we lack knowledge of substances’ real constitutions, we can make only very few certain universal propositions about things like humans, hemlock, and nourishing materials.
15. Whilst our complex Ideas of Substances contain not ideas of their real Constitutions, we can make but few general Propositions concerning them. This is evident, the abstract complex ideas of substances, for which their general names stand, not comprehending their real constitutions, can afford us very little universal certainty. Because our ideas of them are not made up of that on which those qualities we observ…