How do we form our general concepts?
Are ideas images?
Does Berkeley understand Locke�s account?
How do Berkeley and Hume�s accounts differ?
Given Berkeley�s interpretation of Locke, are his
criticisms valid?
Greg Detre
Monday, February 26, 2001
Lucy Allais, History of Philosophy VI
Locke, Berkeley and Hume are usually classed together as the British Empiricists of the 18th century, yet their respective approaches are very different. Ultimately though, they all ascribe some sort of primacy to experience in our acquisition of knowledge.
Locke asks how we come by our ideas, �by �ideas� meaning �whatever it is, which the Mind can be employ�d about in thinking� (I i 8). They come from experience, of external sensible objects and internal observation of the operations of one�s own mind � sensation and reflection. Locke�s much-cited characterisation of the mind as a �blank slate� upon which experience is written is misleading, since it underplays the active role that the mind surely plays. He has to allow for a weak sort of innatism, where we are born with the capacity and processes for receiving, storing, contrasting and reasoning about experience as it is inputted to us. He does reject strong innatism that there are propositions that we are born knowing to be true. This was also important for his political views, in allowing him to deny the divine right of kings. His finished view is that our concepts derive from experience, and knowledge consists in grasp of relations between them.
In the fourth and final edition of the Essay, Locke considers the classification of complex ideas to be based on combination, comparison and abstraction. For Locke, there are no purely intellectual ideas and the task traditionally assigned to intellect � universal thought - Locke assigns to �abstraction�. By abstraction, Locke means a process of associating ideas on the basis of resemblance, singling out the shared properties and stripping away from it everything else to leave a determinate, abstract idea. For instance, having seen a multitude of large green and brown vertical objects with lots of small attachments that rustle in the wind, I have formed a general, abstract idea of them that contains only what is shared between all of that group of particulars. This idea of �treeness� consists of �ideas taken from particular beings [to] become general representatives of all of the same kind�, or:
��ideas become general, by separating from them the circumstances of
time and place, and any other ideas that may determine them to this or that particular
existence. By this way of abstraction they are made capable of representing
more individuals than one; each of which having in it a conformity to that
abstract idea� (Essay, III iii 11)
The last aspect of Locke�s position involves language, which he discusses in the third book of the Essay. Words become general by being made the signs of general ideas. We can see here that he is thinking primarily about nouns, excluding proper names which simply refer to particulars. Nouns are universals, expressions of kinds and generality, and each noun corresponds to an abstract, general idea that we have, for instance �tree� refers to our abstract idea of �treeness� based on our experience of lots of trees and our abstraction from them. This very basic account of meaning, though interesting and influential, should be considered separately from the preceding discussion about abstract ideas themselves.
In his Introduction to the Principles, Berkeley attacks Locke�s straightforward account of abstraction vehemently. We might already have sensed trouble for Locke, since his use of the term, �idea�, is notoriously vague and ambiguous. I think that a great deal hinges on how we interpret Locke�s abstract, general idea. Before we examine Berkeley, I am going to turn to the five broad senses in which Grayling[1] identifies Locke as using �idea�:
i. states of mind such as feelings and sensations
ii. acts of thinking, such as considering and paying attention
iii. images or pictures in the mind�s eye
iv. concepts � Locke sometimes appears to mean the act of conceiving and sometimes the concept itself
v. the �most notorious use� � intermediaries between minds and objects
Berkeley seems to be interpreting Locke as meaning (iii), �images or pictures in the mind�s eye�. Many of the difficulties he raises can be resolved if we take Locke as meaning (iv) instead.
Berkeley argues that we cannot really come up with a sort of determinate, abstract idea in the way that Locke is claiming. He talks about the idea of a triangle, and quotes a rather mystical-sounding passage from Locke: our abstract idea of a triangle is �neither oblique nor rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once�. According to Berkeley, when we try and come up with an abstract idea of a triangle, we really imagine a particular triangle, complete with the trappings of colour, determinate extension etc., which we tag in our minds as standing for all triangles. When I try this, my mind hazily cycles through a selection of triangles superimposed upon each other, but I certainly can�t imagine a truly abstract, general triangle. When I consider a proposition that must be true of all triangles, I apply it to my imagined, generally-representative triangle, and it works, and I extend the scope of its application to all triangles. This explanation is reminiscent of Ockham, that �a universal is a particular thing functioning as a sign that can stand for any one indifferently of a set of particulars� (Kilcullen).
Berkeley criticises Locke, claiming that this �opinion that the mind hath a power of framing abstract ideas� is the main source of confusion in philosophy, especially in logic and metaphysics. Indeed, he uses this attack on abstract ideas to support his claims for immaterialism and the irrelevance of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. However, although Berkeley talks of �framing an idea�, and �conceiving� an idea �by any effort of thought�, he is really talking about what his faculty of imagination.
We might understand the problem in terms of the Cartesian distinction between imagination and conception. We can imagine a pentagon, i.e. picture it in our mind. We can conceive it, that is, understand its properties. In a similar way, we can conceive a chiliagon (a thousand-sided figure), but our mind supplies us with a hazy image of a sort of knobbly circle if we try and imagine it, that is to say create a sort of sensory image of it.
So Berkeley is criticising Locke for saying that we can form an imagistic abstract idea, whereas it makes more sense to read Locke as saying we can form a conceptual abstract idea. This would be a weaker claim, and corresponds to the fourth sense of �idea� as �concept� in Grayling�s classification. Then, when he describes abstract ideas as �something imperfect, that cannot exist�, he means that there could never be a sensory impression that corresponds with an abstract idea. Ultimately then, abstract ideas are grounded entirely in experience, but are formulated in such a way by the mind that they are qualitatively different from any experience we could have.