Abstract

Philippe Hamou claims that Locke played a decisive but underappreciated role in inventing the current notion of mind, and in setting the agenda for contemporary philosophy of mind. These provocative theses, even when qualified as Hamou does, strike me as strained. It is hard, for example, to imagine the convoluted route by which one might identify Locke's secondary qualities with contemporary qualia, as Hamou does ; surely, there must be qualia associated with primary qualities too.However, for most of his book, Hamou is concerned to advance his own intriguing interpretation of Locke himself, rather than engaging with contemporary philosophy of mind. The first and larger half of the book deals with Locke's...