Résumés
Abstract
In this paper I examine Locke’s criticism of the view that some species of natural objects are determined by real essences, a view I call species realism. Most commentators have focused either on Locke’s putative objections to the realist’s claim that species determining real essences exist or on his semantic case against the assumption that our species terms can refer to real essences that determine species. I identify another objection, which, I argue, is independent from both of these lines of criticism. This objection is essentially practical. It is based on the claim that adopting species realism has detrimental practical consequences: it undermines, Locke believes, our ability to sort particular natural objects into species. This alone, he argues, is already sufficient to set aside and ignore species realism when trying to sort objects into species.
Keywords:
- Real Essence,
- species realism,
- Locke
Veuillez télécharger l’article en PDF pour le lire.
Télécharger
Parties annexes
Bibliography
- Alexander, Peter. Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
- Ashworth, E. Jennifer “’Do Words Signify Ideas or Things?’ The Scholastic Sources of Locke’s Theory of Language.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 19, no. 3 (July 1981): 299–326. https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2008.0250.
- Ashworth, E. Jennifer. “Locke on Language.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 14, no. 1, (March 1984): 45–73. https://doi.org/10.1080/00455091.1984.10716368.
- Atherton, Margaret. “Locke on Essences and Classification.” In The Cambridge Companion to Locke’s “Essay Concerning Human Understanding,” edited by Lex Newman, 258–85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
- Atherton, Margaret. “The Inessentiality of Lockean Essences.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 14, no. 2 (June 1984): 277–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/00455091.1984.10716382.
- Ayers, Michael R. Locke: Epistemology and Ontology. Vol. 2, Ontology. London: Routledge, 1991.
- Ayers, Michael R. “Locke versus Aristotle on Natural Kinds.” The Journal of Philosophy 78, no. 5, (May 1981): 247–72. https://doi.org/10.2307/2025955.
- Bennett, Jonathan. Learning from Six Philosophers. Vol. 2, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
- Bolton, Martha Brandt. “The Epistemological Status of Ideas: Locke Compared to Arnauld.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 1, no. 4 (October 1992): 409–24. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27744035.
- Bolton, Martha Brandt. “The Relevance of Locke’s Theory of Ideas to His Doctrine of Nominal Essence and Anti-Essentialist Semantic Theory.” In Locke, edited by Vere Chappell, 214–25. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
- Boyd, Richard. “Kinds as the ‘Workmanship of Men’: Realism, Constructivism, and Natural Kinds.” In Rationalität, Realismus, Revision, edited by Julian Nida-Rümelin, 52–89. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012.
- Boyd, Richard. “What Realism Implies and What it Does Not.” Dialectica 43, no. 1/2, (June 1989): 5–29. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1746-8361.1989.tb00928.x.
- Burgersdijk, Franco. Institutionum logicarum libri duo. Vol. 2. Amsterdam, 1659.
- Conn, Christopher H. Locke on Essence and Identity. Dordrecht, NL: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003.
- Crane, Judith. “Locke’s Theory of Classification.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 11, no. 2 (2003): 249–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/0960878032000104859.
- Downing, Lisa. “Locke’s Ontology.” In The Cambridge Companion to Locke’s “Essay concerning Human Understanding,” edited by Lex Newman, 352–80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
- Downing, Lisa. “The Status of Mechanism in Locke’s Essay.” The Philosophical Review 107, no. 3 (July 1998): 381–414. https://doi.org/10.2307/2998443.
- Goodin, Susanna. “A Refutation of the Possibility of Real Species in Locke: A Response to Phemister.” The Locke Newsletter 28 (1997): 67–76.
- Goodin, Susanna. “Why Knowledge of the Internal Constitution Is Not the Same as Knowledge of the Real Essence and Why This Matters.” Southwest Philosophy Review 14, no 1, (January 1998): 149–55. https://doi.org/10.5840/swphilreview199814117.
- Guyer, Paul. “Locke’s Philosophy of Language.” In The Cambridge Companion to Locke, edited by Vere Chappell, 115–45. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
- Jacovides, Michael. “Locke on the Propria of Body.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 15, no. 3, (2007): 485–511. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608780701444923.
- Jacovides, Michael. Locke’s Image of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
- Jolley, Nicholas. Leibniz and Locke: A Study of the New Essay on Human Understanding. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984.
- Jolley, Nicholas. Locke: His Philosophical Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
- Jones, Jan-Erik. “Boyle, Classification and the Workmanship of the Understanding Thesis.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 43, no. 2 (April 2005): 171–83. https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2005.0117.
- Jones, Jan-Erik. “Lockean Real Essences and Ontology.” Southwest Philosophy Review 32, no. 2 (July 2016): 137–62, https://doi.org/10.5840/swphilreview201632246
- Jones, Jan-Erik. “Locke on Real Essences, Intelligibility, and Natural Kinds.” Journal of Philosophical Research 35 (2010): 147–71. https://doi.org/10.5840/jpr_2010_12.
- Jones, Jan-Erik. “Locke vs. Boyle: The Real Essence of Corpuscular Species.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 15, no. 4 (2008): 659–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608780701604955.
- Kaufman, Dan. “Locke on Individuation and the Corpuscular Basis of Kinds.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75, no. 3 (October 2007): 499–534. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2007.00091.x.
- Kornblith, Hilary. Inductive Inference and Its Natural Ground. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993.
- LaPorte, Joseph. Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
- Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. “Meditationes de Cognitione, Veritate et Ideis.” In vol. 4 of Die Philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, edited by C. I. Gerhardt, 422–26. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1880.
- Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. New Essay on Human Understanding. Translated and edited by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
- Locke, John. An Essay concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Peter H. Nidditch. The Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke. Oxford: Clarendon, 1975.
- Locke, John. “A Letter to the Right Rev. Edward Lord Bishop of Worchester, concerning Some Passages Relating to Mr. Locke’s Essay of Human Understanding, in a Late Discourse of His Lordship’s in Vindication of the Trinity.” In vol. 4 of The Works of John Locke, new ed. corrected, 1–96. London, 1823.
- Milton, John R. “The Scholastic Background to Locke’s Thought.” The Locke Newsletter 15 (December 1984): 25–34.
- Ott, Walter. Locke’s Philosophy of Language. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
- Owen, David. “Locke on Real Essences.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 8, no. 2 (April 1991): 105–18. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27743968.
- Pasnau, Robert. Metaphysical Themes 1274–1671. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2011.
- Phemister, Pauline. “Real Essences in Particular.” Locke Newsletter 21 (December 1990): 27–55.
- Phemister, Pauline. “The Possibility of Real Species in Locke: A Reply to Goodin.” The Locke Newsletter 28 (1997): 77–86.
- Pritchard, Timothy. “Locke and the Primary Signification of Words: An Approach to Word Meaning.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21, no. 3 (2013): 486–506. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2013.771611.
- Rickless, Samuel C. Locke. Blackwell Great Minds. Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2014.
- Rozemond, Marleen and Gideon Yaffe. “Peach Trees, Gravity and God: Mechanism in Locke.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 12, no. 3 (2004): 387–412. https://doi.org/10.1080/0960878042000253079.
- Shapiro, Lionel. “Toward ‘Perfect Collections of Properties’: Locke on the Constitution of Substantial Sorts.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 29, no. 4 (December 1999): 551–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/00455091.1999.10715991.
- Šmiglecki, Marcin. Logica. Vol. 2. Ingolstadt, DE, 1618.
- Stanford, P. Kyle. “Reference and Natural Kind Terms: The Real Essence of Locke’s View.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 79, no. 1 (December 1998): 78–97.
- Stuart, Matthew. “Locke on Natural Kinds.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 16, no. 3 (July 1999): 277–96. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27744822.
- Stuart, Matthew. Locke’s Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
- Vienne, Jean-Michel. “Locke on Real Essence and Internal Constitution.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 93 (1993): 129–53. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4545170.
- Wilson, Margaret D. “Superadded Properties: The Limits of Mechanism in Locke.” American Philosophical Quarterly 16, no. 2 (April 1979:): 133–50. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20009751.
- Winkler, Kenneth. “Locke on Essence and the Social Construction of Kinds.” In A Companion to Locke, edited by Matthew Stuart, 212–35. Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2016.
- Woolhouse, Roger. Locke’s Philosophy of Science and Knowledge. Oxford: Blackwell, 1971.
- Wörner, David. Im Namen der Dinge. John Locke und der Begriff des Wesens. Basel: Schwabe, 2019. https://doi.org/10.24894/978-3-7965-3938-1.
- Wörner, David. “Locke on Fixing Ideas.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 103, Nr. 3 (September 2021): 481–500. https://doi.org/10.1515/agph-2018-0101.
- Yolton, John W. Locke and the Compass of Human Understanding. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970.