Can There be Spatially Coincident Entities of the Same Kind

2003 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
David B. Hershenov
Keyword(s):  
Human Understanding ◽  
Essay Concerning Human Understanding ◽  
Coincident Entities

The majority of philosophers believe that the existence of spatially coincident entities is not only a coherent idea but that there are millions of such entities. What such philosophers do not countenance are spatially coincident entities of the same kind. We will call this ‘Locke's Thesis’ since the denial goes back to An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. It is there that Locke wrote, ‘For we never finding, nor conceiving it possible that two things of the same kind should exist in the same place at the same time, we rightly conclude that, whatever exists anywhere at any time, excludes all of the same kind, and is there itself alone.’ It is not clear to me that the believer in spatially coincident entities can draw the ‘ontological line’ where Locke does. Many of the reasons that lead Locke and others to maintain that there exist spatially coincident entities of different kinds would also suggest that there are spatially coincident entities of the same kind. To illustrate this claim, a scenario of spatially coincident roads will be presented.

JOHN LOCKE ON THE CARE OF THE NEWBORN INFANT (1684)

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-237
Author(s):  
T. E. C.
Keyword(s):  
Olive Oil ◽  
Newborn Infant ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Red Wine ◽  
Weak Condition ◽  
Newborn Baby ◽  
Almond Oil ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Essay Concerning Human Understanding ◽  
Medical Interest

John Locke (1632-1704), physician and philosopher, is best known for his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). His reputation as a philosopher has overshadowed the extent of his medical interests. Locke's journals between 1678 and 1698 contain thousands of items of medical interest. An entry in his journal for September 1684 contained the following recommendations for the care of the newborn infant.1 1. Soon after birth the baby can be given 1 or 2 spoonfuls of syrup of violets with almond oil, to loosen the bowels and keep it from convulsive colic. Or else distilled olive oil can be mixed with sugar. 2. If the newborn baby is in a weak condition you can blow on it the smell of chewed onions and cloves; smear its nostrils and lips with Cinnamon water; press warm slices of meat on its head and anus; wrap in bandages soaked in red wine and place in a bath composed of water or beer and fresh butter. If the baby is lively give a little after a mixture of 1 spoonful of distilled almond oil and syrup of Cowslip flowers and ½ spoonful of wine tempered with sugar, so that it can purge itself properly. 3. As soon as it begins to feed on pap, give it for the first few days a little powder of Marchion. 4. If it is weak apply to the region of the heart a cloth coaked with warm Embryon. The best ways to stimulate its strength are baths, putting warm wine on its head, placing hot meat on its chest, smearing its nose and lips with cinnamon water, putting onions near its nostrils, etc.

Locke—Religion—Equality

2005 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. Zuckert
Keyword(s):  
Proper Understanding ◽  
The Past ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Essay Concerning Human Understanding ◽  
Philosophical Writings

Jeremy Waldron's much noted book, God, Locke, and Equality, has put the topic of “God and Equality in Locke” at the center of many perhaps most, discussions of Locke these days. I am going to raise some critical objections to Waldron's interpretations, but all the more reason to begin by noting the very many things about this book that I admire.First, he rejects the insistence by many of the most outspoken Locke scholars that a proper understanding of Locke—or any philosopher of the past—must be purely historical—that it must have nothing to do with us or our concerns, questions, or problems. Professor Waldron cuts through this claim as mere arbitrary assertion.Second, many Locke scholars, often some of the same ones, insist that Locke's political writings must be understood in isolation from his philosophic writings, especially from his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke's editor, Peter Laslett, set the tone long ago when he pronounced judgment: “Locke did not write as a philosopher, applying to politics the implications of his views of reality as a whole.” Rather, according to Laslett, Locke appealed to or drew off of preexisting “modes of discourse.” This approach makes it very difficult to understand Locke as an integral personality, much less as a coherent author or as a thinker to be taken seriously. Waldron thus reopens the lines of communication between Locke's political and his philosophical writings and makes Locke a significant thinker, not just a corpse for the historians.

Jonathan Edwards and “The Way of Ideas”

1966 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claude A. Smith
Keyword(s):  
John Locke ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
History Of ◽  
Essay Concerning Human Understanding ◽  
The Way

That Jonathan Edwards was greatly influenced by the writings of John Locke scarcely needs asserting. Edwards himself regarded his reading of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding as the major intellectual event of his youth. His major writings and private notebooks abound with comments and reflections on matters discussed by Locke. What is fascinating concerning the history of Edwardsean scholarship, however, is that the decisive significance of Locke, for Edwards, has been elucidated only very recently, in the writings of the renowned Puritan scholar, the late Perry Miller.

Locke’s Experiential Persons

2020 ◽  
pp. 51-94
Author(s):  
Anik Waldow
Keyword(s):  
Human Understanding ◽  
Accessible Domain ◽  
Human Capacity ◽  
Essay Concerning Human Understanding ◽  
Self Formation

The second chapter examines Locke’s account of self-formation as it is presented in Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693). It will be argued that, for Locke, the evaluative perspective that arises when confronted with other people’s expressions of praise and blame crucially underpins the human capacity to think of themselves as persons. The second half of this chapter applies the results of this discussion to Locke’s account of personhood, as developed in the second edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1694). The aim of this is to demonstrate that even here it holds that the contents of what figures in our self-conception as persons are determined by the actions we perform in the publicly accessible domain.

Harmony of the Senses in English, German, and French Romanticism

PMLA ◽  
1932 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 577-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika von Erhardt-Siebold
Keyword(s):  
Combined Effect ◽  
Loud Sound ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Scientific Foundation ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Essay Concerning Human Understanding ◽  
French Romanticism

LOCKE'S mention in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) of the blind man who thought he understood what the color scarlet was because it was represented to him by the sound of a trumpet, startled people, like the trumpet blast or glaring color referred to, or even more like the combined effect of both loud sound and loud color. This unbelievable speculation was, however, soon substantiated by other similar observations and, henceforth, became a much repeated paradoxon of literature. The analogy between sound and color was first given a scientific foundation with Isaac Newton's Opticks in 1704. Newton in his comparison between sound and color went so far as to proclaim that the spaces occupied by the seven primary colors were similar to the relative intervals between the notes of the octave.

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