Abstract

Chapters I-III constitute preliminaries for Chapter IV. In Chapter I, I argue that though it is generally assumed that the different things Locke says about ideas cannot be reconciled with each other, this view is mistaken. Locke gives a functionalist account of the nature of ideas; he is vague rather than confused; and, the vagueness is intended to suggest recognized ignorance about the nature of ideas. This chapter also contains the general outlines of Locke's account of the formation of our different kinds of ideas. ;In Chapter II, I consider Locke's classification of ideas into clear and obscure, distinct and confused, real and fantastical, adequate and inadequate. ;In Chapter III, I argue for the claim that Locke's idea of substratum is a real but inadequate idea of each and every individual substance, and against various alternative interpretations. It is a consequence of my interpretation of Locke's notion of substratum that his use of the expressions 'thinking substance' and 'material substance' cannot be taken as evidence that he shared a dualistic Cartesian ontology of thinking immaterial substances and non-thinking material substances. ;In Chapter IV, I argue that as a consequence of his refusal to accept a Cartesian metaphysics, and of the topicality of discussions about natural and conditional immortality, Locke was distinctly aware of the inadequacy of the immaterial substance theory of personal identity which is implicit in the Cartesian position. This was the main motivation of his discussion of the identity of persons. His discussion is the development of two principal considerations: an acceptable theory of the identity of persons needs to be based on our personal experience of the identity of the person that we are; and, ability to think isn't the essential property of persons. Persons are conscious thinking things--they are consciously aware of their memories. ;Based on these considerations, Locke gives a functionalist account of the identity of persons that is analogous to his account of the identity of oak trees. He held that the identity of persons consists in the identity of the things responsible for the conscious awareness persons have of their experiences, where at least some of these experiences are memories of past experiences