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Locke and Mind-Body Dualism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Douglas Odegard
Douglas Odegard
Affiliation:
University of Guelph, Ontario
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Extract

The word ‘dualism’ can be used to pick out at least four different theories concerning the relationship between mind and body.

(1) A mind and a body are two different entities and each is “had” by a man. A man is thus a composite being with two components, one “inner”, the other “outer”. You, for example, are a man and your mind is “inner” in the sense that you alone can reflectively experience yourself thinking, or feeling pain, or seeing colours (or at least that you alone can reflectively experience your own thoughts, feelings and visual experiences). I can in a sense observe you thinking, but only by observing you use your body in certain ways—e.g. to make certain sounds, write certain things, look at the pages of an open book and frown. My “experience” of you thinking (or of your thoughts) is thus not a reflective experience. Your body is “outer”, on the other hand, in the sense that you cannot experience it or its (non-relational) properties in any exclusive way. That is, in whatever sense you can be said to experience your body, someone else can equally be said to experience it.

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Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 45 , Issue 172 , April 1970, pp. 87 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1970

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References

1 See II, xxiii, 19–21, 28 (i.e., An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2 vols. ed. Yolton, J., Everyman's Library, 1965, Book II, chapter xxiii, sections 19–21, 28).Google Scholar

2 See II, xxi 14–20.

3 See also II, xxiii 18–20, 22, 28.

4 See II, xxvii, 6, 14, 15, 23, 27.

5 For the first alternative, see II, xxvii, 6, and for the second, see II, xxvii, 8.

6 See II, xxvii, 15.

7 See II, xxiii 19, 20. His remarks in section 19 contain a third argument, but it is strictly defensive. It is that ‘An unextended mental substance exists in space and is at a distance from other unextended mental substances’ is no more absurd than ‘An unextended geometrical point exists in space and is at a distance from other points’. A dualist who thinks ‘geometrical point’ is in some sense necessarily “ideal” would find this argument unconvincing.

8 This point meets the type of challenge otfered by Locke in II, xxiii, 21.

9 See II, xxiii, 106.

10 See Works, 1823 edition, Vol. IV, pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

11 Indeed, he thinks that a materialist fates special problems of his own, since a finite body is infinitely divisible (II, xxiii, 31) and the cohesion of its parts is fundamentally inexplicable (II, xxiii, 23–27).

12 See HR I, 319 (i.e. The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 2 vols., eds. Haldane, E. S. and Ross, G. R. T., CUP, 1931, Vol. I, p. 319).Google Scholar

13 See HR I, 137–38.

14 See HR I, 151–52.

15 See HR I, 141.

16 See HR I, 152.

17 See III, vi, 4–6.

18 See II, i, 9–19.

19 See II, xxvii, 27.

20 It is interesting to note that even in this context Locke still retains the dualistic locution “something in us which thinks”.

21 See II, xxvii, 27.

22 See II, xxvii, 4.

23 See II, xxvii, 13.

24 See II, xxvii 15, 23.

25 See II, xxvii 22.

26 See II, xxvii, 26. Flew, A., in “Locke and the Problem of Personal Identity”, Philosophy, XXVI (1951)Google Scholar, and Allison, Henry E., “Locke's Theory of Personal Identity: a Re-examination”, Journal of the History of Ideas, XXVII (1966), both acknowledge the forensic nature of ‘person’ and Allison appeals to it in an effort to show that a person is not a distinct entity but merely an “aspect of the concrete man”.Google Scholar

27 See Flew, A., “Locke and the Problem of Personal Identity”Google Scholar, and Ryle, Gilbert, The Concept of Mind (London, 1949).Google Scholar

28 Flew's subsequent remarks about not meeting “the fleshy houses in which they are living or the containers in which they are kept” (p. 59) clearly indicates that he has compositional dualism in his sights.

29 See Flew, , pp. 60–61Google Scholar, and II, xxvii, 20, where Locke does seem to be making such a mistake.

30 Bernard Williams argues for the necessity of bodily continunity in “Personal Identity and Individuation”, Proc. Arist. Soc., LVII, (1956–1957)Google Scholar and is supported by Greenwood, Terence in “Personal Identity and Memory”, Philosophical Quarterly, XVII (1967).Google Scholar

31 In “Descartes' Proof that his Essence is Thinking”, Philosophical Revitw, LXXIV (1965).Google Scholar

32 See Armstrong, D. M., A Materialist Theory of the Mind (London, 1968), pp. 32–35.Google Scholar

33 See Vesey, G. N. A., “Volition”, Philosophy, XXXVI (1961).Google Scholar