How We Know #4: Concept-Formation

I think Binswanger misrepresents John Locke and misclassifies him as a Moderate Realist. "Locke's version of Moderate Realism tries to avoid positing non-specific universals, but implies them nonetheless. ... Here, "whiteness" is the universal. It has some non-specific attribute, such as is found in the slightly different shades of white characterizing chalk, snow, and milk. ... On any Moderate Realist Theory, we grasp the non-specific attribute by abstraction, which is conceived as a subtractive process, as a process of disregarding differences. Locke, for instance, writes that "the mind, to make general ideas comprehending several particulars, leaves out ... those qualities that distinguish them " [Locke, III, VI, 32 (my emphasis)]" (p. 103-4).

I disagree with Binswanger's interpretation. Locke neither implied nor posited imperceptible and precisely identical fragments (essences) that exist within every particular regarded as a unit of the same concept. Locke is usually classified as a Conceptualist. Regarding him as a Moderate Realist is bizarre, considering his remarks about real essence in Essay Concerning Human Understanding (ECHU). He contrasted real essences (metaphysical) to nominal essences (epistemological). For Locke the real essence of physical objects is the imperceptible micro-structure that causes the observable qualities of the object. Nominal essences are formed by abstraction, are "the workmanship of the understanding", and are based on similarity (e.g. ECHU, Bk III, Chap III, 14-15). Also, see sections 1 and 2 here.

See ECHU, II, XI, 9 and ECHU, III, IV, 15 where Locke writes about whiteness. Contrary to Binswanger's claim, Locke did not posit a metaphysical universal of whiteness that is identical in each instance. Indeed, the second paragraph denies the existence of a known real essence of whiteness. "There is neither ... nor a supposed, but an unknown, real essence, with properties ... But, on the contrary, in simple ideas the whole signification of the name is known at once, and consists not of parts, whereof more or less being put in, the idea may be varied, and so the signification of name be obscure, or uncertain."

"Abstract ideas are the workmanship of the understanding, but have their foundation in the similitude of things. I would not here be thought to forget, much less to deny, that Nature, in the production of things, makes several of them alike: there is nothing more obvious, especially in the race of animals, and all things propagated by seed. But yet I think we may say, the sorting of them under names is the workmanship of the understanding, taking occasion, from the similitude it observes amongst them, to make abstract general ideas, and set them up in the mind, with names annexed to them, as patterns or forms, (for, in that sense, the word form has a very proper signification,) to which as particular things existing are found to agree, so they come to be of that species, have that denomination, or are put into that classis. For when we say this is a man, that a horse; this justice, that cruelty; this a watch, that a jack; what do we else but rank things under different specific names, as agreeing to those abstract ideas, of which we have made those names the signs? And what are the essences of those species set out and marked by names, but those abstract ideas in the mind; which are, as it were, the bonds between particular things that exist, and the names they are to be ranked under?" (ECHU, III, III, 13).

Locke scholar Michael Ayers (1991) wrote:

"Locke really believed that nothing on earth could possibly perform the function that the Aristotelians ascribed to their specific essences or forms. Although the Aristotelian essence and Locke's nominal essence both define the boundaries of a species, the former does so ontologically.  ...  But the Lockean nominal essence is intrinsically an epistemological essence and nothing more, a criterion by reference to which we mark off the members of the species. The boundary marked is a precise one which owes its existence to our drawing it: reality itself simply could not, in Locke's view, supply such a boundary. Reality can supply resemblances, but resemblances do not constitute natural boundaries. Resemblances do not draw lines" (Locke: Epistemology and Ontology, Vol. 2, 67-68, my bold).

About Binswanger's quote from Locke (first paragraph above), how is Locke saying "leave out" (neglect or ignore) specific qualities of particulars so different from Ayn Rand's "omitting measurements"? How is Ayn Rand's "omitting measurements" not “disregarding differences” (Locke's phrase), at least different measurements or numbers? How is "omitting measurements" not subtractive? Omit means "leave out," despite Binswanger (and Rand) insisting that it doesn't. "[O]mitting measurements is not a process of deletion or excision" (p. 115).

Locke recognized how little men knew about real essence or the substratum of substances in his time. Binswanger is off-base when he says: "The Realists' separation of existence and identity reaches its clearest expression in Locke. His concept of "substratum" in which a thing's qualities supposedly inhere is a "something I know not what" -- i.e. an existent without any identity (since the identity pertains to the qualities not in the substratum)" (p. 105).

I disagree with his interpretation. Corpuscularianism was a physical theory that supposes all matter to be composed of minute particles, similar to atomism. The theory became important in the seventeenth century. Among the leading corpuscularians were John Locke and his scientist-friend Robert Boyle. Locke lived before scientists discovered sound empirical evidence of atoms, molecules, elements, and chemistry. Ergo, he did not know then-unknown details about the "substratum" underlying objects that we can perceive. Locke can be read as saying nothing stronger than that, via perception, we can receive no clear, distinct, positive idea of substratum; that the only concept of substratum of which our experience affords us is an obscure one. If Ayn Rand had said she knew nothing about subatomic particles and the nature of chemical bonding and how those things relate to everyday perception, would Binswanger have turned Ayn Rand into a Moderate Realist? I highly doubt it.

My essay Pursuing Similarity is here.