Concepts and Reality in the History of Philosophy

Tracing a Philosophical Error from Locke to Bradley

Fiona Ellis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781134312580
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This book traces a deep misunderstanding about the relation of concepts and reality in the history of philosophy. It exposes the influence of the mistake in the thought of Locke, Berkeley, Kant, Nietzche and Bradley, and suggests that the solution can be found in Hegelian thought. Ellis argues that the treatment proposed exemplifies Hegel's dialectical method. This is an important contribution to this area of philosophy.

1 A philosophical syndrome

Locke on substance: some tensions

In the various disputes between Locke and Berkeley, the concept of substance plays a major part. Berkeley takes Locke to be identifying substance as a supporter of properties, where this latter notion is equated with ‘being in general’. He claims that this identification is incomprehensible:

If we enquire into what the most accurate philosophers declare themselves to mean by material substance, we shall find them acknowledge, they have no other meaning annexed to those sounds, but the idea of being in general, together with the relative notion of its supporting accidents. The general idea of being appeareth to me the most abstract and incomprehensible of all other; and as for its supporting accidents, this, as we have just now observed, cannot be understood in the common sense of those words; it must therefore be taken in some other sense, but what that is they do not explain. So that when I consider the two parts or branches which make the signification of the words material substance, I am convinced there is no distinct meaning annexed them.¹

Locke himself argues against the charge that he is committed to this conception of substance, and much of what he says in the Essay – in particular, in the chapter on space – serves to echo Berkeley’s disparaging remarks in this context. For example, in response to the question of whether a space ‘void of body, be substance or accident’ he claims that ‘I shall readily answer I know not, nor shall be ashamed to own my ignorance, till they that ask show me a clear distinct idea of substance’. ² And further on, having retold the story of the Indian philosopher who claims that the world is supported by an elephant, and the elephant by a tortoise, he remarks that the notion of substance would have done just as well as a support in this context. He then adds, somewhat sarcastically, that this latter response is no worse than that which is given by European philosophers when they claim ‘That Substance without knowing what it is, is that which supports Accidents’³, concluding in an equally sarcastic tone that:

(w)ere the Latin words Inhaerentia and Substantia, put into the plain English ones that answer them, and were called Sticking on, and Underpropping, they would better discover to us the very great clearness there is in the Doctrine of Substance and Accidents, and shew of what use they are in deciding Questions in Philosophy.⁴

Edward Stillingfeet interprets Locke as being a sceptic about substance, claiming that he had ‘almost discarded substance out of the reasonable part of the world’.⁵ In his third letter to him, Locke makes reference to the above quoted passage about the elephant and tortoise, claiming that his remarks:

were not intended to ridicule the notion of substance, or those who asserted it, whatever that ‘it’ signifies; but to show that though substance did support accidents, yet philosophers, who had found such a support necessary, had no more clear idea of what that support was, than the Indian had of that which supported his tortoise, though sure he was it was something.⁶

And in his first letter, he complains that:

It is laid to my charge that I look at the being of substance to be doubtful; and rendered it so by the imperfect and ill-grounded idea I have of it. To which I beg leave to say, that I ground not the being but the idea of substance, on our accustoming ourselves to suppose some substratum: for it is of the idea alone that I speak there, and not of the being of substance. And having everywhere affirmed and built on it, that man is a substance, I cannot be supposed to question or doubt of the being of substance. Further, I say that sensation convinces us that there are solid and extended substances, and reflection that there are thinking substances.⁷

These extracts from Locke are not easy to interpret. At first it looks as if he is agreeing with Berkeley that there is ‘no distinct meaning annexed to the notion of substance’, and that he would be happy to dispense with it. Such is the most obvious implication of his remark that the notions of substance and accidents are of little use in deciding questions in philosophy. By contrast, if we turn to his responses to Stillingfeet, we find Locke insisting that he is not to be read as wishing to ‘question or doubt of the being of substance’ – a response which tells against a sceptical interpretation of his position. What is less clear is where he stands with respect to the questions of what the notion of substance signifies, whether it is meaningful, and whether it is of any use to philosophy.

In his first letter to Stillingfeet, Locke draws a contrast between the being of substance and the idea of substance. He tells us that the being of substance is involved when we are concerned with solid and extended substances and thinking substances, and it is something we can neither question nor doubt. The further claim – implicit in his remark that the being of things does not depend upon our ideas – is that the being of substance is mind-independent. The idea of substance, by contrast, is grounded on our ‘accustoming ourselves to suppose some substratum’.

One way of taking these remarks is to suppose that Locke’s sceptical worries are directed not at the idea of individual things such as cats and men, but rather at that of a substratum or supporter of properties. Certainly, there is evidence in the remarks I have quoted to suggest that Locke was concerned with the ambiguities surrounding the notion of substance. In his third letter to Stillingfeet, for example, after having insisted that he does not wish to ridicule the notion of substance, or those who assert it, he adds ‘whatever that “it” signifies’. According to the present interpretation then, Locke is complaining that those who have wished to accept the notion of substance have been unclear whether they are talking about individual substances or substrata. The further claim is that if they are talking about substrata, their position is unjustified.

A difficulty with this interpretation is that it fails to explain why Locke continues to insist that our idea of substance is obscure and confused, doing so in a manner which suggests that he is not concerned with an idea it is his purpose to reject. This difficulty could be avoided by allowing that our ideas of individual things can be obscure and confused even if they do not involve the idea of a substratum. However, the problem with making this move on Locke’s behalf is that there is evidence in his writings to suggest that he is, after all, committed to accepting the idea of a substratum, and that he takes it to be inextricably involved in our ideas of individual things.

Such evidence is to be found in the extracts I have cited already. For example, when explaining the true import of his tale about the elephant and the tortoise, Locke tells us that his aim was to show that:

though substance did support accidents, yet philosophers, who had found such a support necessary, had no more clear idea of what that support was, than the Indian had of that which supported his tortoise, though sure he was it was something.

The implication here is that substance is to be understood as a supporter of properties, that it is an indispensable notion, and that our idea of it is unclear.

Further evidence of a commitment to the notion of a substratum and an acknowledgement of its importance is to be found if we look elsewhere in the Essay. Thus, when discussing our ideas of distinct sorts of substances – of men, cats, horses, and so forth – Locke claims that these ideas are to be understood as complexes in which the ‘supposed or confused Idea of Substance, such as it is, is always the first and the chief’.⁸ These complexes are composed of the various sensible qualities characteristic of the kind of thing in question, and it is made clear that it is the role of substance to lend support to the relevant qualities. Elsewhere, Locke identifies this supposed or confused idea of substance with ‘substance in general’, claiming that:

Whatever therefore be the secret and abstract nature of substance in general, all the ideas we have of particular distinct sorts of substances, are nothing but

several combinations of simple ideas, coexisting in such, though unknown, Cause of their Union, as makes the whole subsist of itself.⁹

The idea that substance in general is the unknown cause which makes the whole subsist of itself suggests a move away from the claim that it is a supporter of qualities to the claim that it is the causal ground of those qualities. To use Locke’s more familiar terminology, it functions as the real essence of the thing to which the qualities belong. On this way of thinking, the idea of substance is of considerable importance. A substance is now claimed to sustain in existence the relevant complex of qualities, allowing this complex to exist as a self-subsisting, mind-independent thing which can undergo change. Yet Locke believes that this important idea is, at best, confused and unknown, and at worst, one we do not really possess. Pursuing this more sceptical line of thought, the obvious conclusion to draw is that our ideas of things do not really involve the idea of substance – that our ideas of the things we perceive are nothing but ideas of collections of sensible qualities. As Locke puts it in the Abstract of the Essay:

substance … is but a supposed but unknown substratum of those qualities, something we know not what, that supports their existence; so that all the idea we have of the substance of anything, is an obscure idea of what it does, and not any idea of what it is.¹⁰

Finally, if we return to the opening sections of Chapter xxiii of Book II of the Essay, we find Locke giving expression to a rather different line of thought. For in addition to the sceptical worries he expresses about the idea of substance, he seems to be suggesting that, construed as the idea of a substratum, it is merely a human construction. The following extract gives expression to this way of thinking and serves also as a continuation of the theme according to which the things we perceive are really just collections of qualities:

(w)hen we talk or think of any particular sort of corporeal substances, as Horse, Stone, etc. though the Idea, we have of either of them, be but the Complication, or Collection of those several simple Ideas of sensible Qualities, which we use to find united in the thing called Horse or Stone, yet because we cannot conceive, how they should subsist alone, nor one in another, we suppose them existing in, and supported by some common subject; which support we denote by the name Substance, though it be certain, we have no clear, or distinct Idea of that thing we suppose a support. ¹¹

Thus far, there have been a variety of potentially conflicting themes in Locke’s arguments. One theme is that our idea of substance is to be called into question – a theme which compels philosophers like Stillingfeet to conclude that Locke is a sceptic about substance. However, even if we concede the presence of this scepticism in Locke’s position, it is unclear how strongly it is to be interpreted and what its true target is intended to be.

Problems pertaining to the target of Locke’s scepticism arise when we try to clarify his conception of the relation between ‘substance’, ‘substratum’, and ‘substances’. Much of his scepticism is directed towards the idea of a substratum. His further remarks, however, suggest not merely that the idea of a substratum is of some philosophical significance, but that it is that without which there would be no individual things. If this is what Locke is claiming, then we are left with the problem of explaining why he feels compelled to call into question the idea of substance.

In fact, even when Locke expresses scepticism at the possibility of our having an idea of substance, he is adamant that his sceptical arguments are not intended to call into question the being of substance. However, his suggestion that the idea of substance is a construction of consciousness sits rather awkwardly with the claim that the being of substance is not affected by our inability to entertain ideas about it. At least, this is so on the assumption that the object of the relevant constructed idea converges upon the being of substance. However, and more in line with Locke’s occasional insistence that we have no idea of substance, he may wish to deny that the constructed idea of substance corresponds to anything in the world. In this way he could continue to insist that the being of substance eludes us, whilst allowing nonetheless that our cognitive powers yield a surrogate idea by means of which the experience of things is secured. Yet on this interpretation it is difficult to see how Locke can continue to defend the claim that our idea of substance is obscure and confused. For this latter claim implies that we have some kind of grasp of substance, in which case there need be no implication that the being of substance eludes us, nor that the idea thereof is a construction of consciousness.

Real and nominal essence

Locke sometimes suggests that we treat the unknown substratum which supports the sensible properties of a thing as the causal ground of these properties, ‘causal ground’ in this context being a placeholder for real essence. We must consider then where he stands with respect to the question of whether real essence is knowable and how he views its relation to the idea of a substratum. The most helpful place to begin is with the distinction he makes between real and nominal essence. Real essence, he claims, is ‘taken for the very being of any thing, whereby it is what it is’, and constitutes the ‘real internal, but generally in Substances, unknown Constitution of Things, whereon their discoverable Qualities depend’.¹² Nominal essence, by contrast, applies not to the ‘real constitution of Things’, but rather to the ‘artificial Constitution of Genus and Species’.¹³ Thus understood, the nominal essence of a thing comprises the various sensible qualities by means of which we recognize things of the relevant sort. These qualities figure in our complex abstract idea of the thing, and it is this complex abstract idea to which we refer when we talk about the substance kind in question. To use Locke’s familiar example, the nominal essence of gold involves the qualities of being yellow, of a certain weight, malleable, fusible, and fixed, these qualities figure in the complex idea of gold, and it is this complex idea that the word ‘gold’ stands for.¹⁴

Locke claims that the nominal essence of any substance is to be distinguished from its real constitution, and that its real constitution serves as the ‘foundation and cause’¹⁵ for its nominal essence by virtue of being that upon which ‘any collection of simple Ideas co-existing, must depend’.¹⁶ He insists, however, that ‘Things are ranked under Names into sorts or Species, only as they agree to certain abstract Ideas, to which we have annexed those Names’, and that it is wrong to suppose that such ranking is based upon ‘the supposition of Essences, that cannot be known’. He concludes that we should ‘content ourselves with such Essences of the Sorts or Species of Things, as come within the reach of our knowledge’,¹⁷ claiming that in the case of substances, these respective essences are ‘always quite different’.

The idea that a concern with real essence is a concern with the being of any thing calls to mind the contrast Locke makes elsewhere between the being of substance and our idea of substance. It will be remembered, however, that his use of this terminology is not entirely clear. At times he seems to be suggesting that the being of substance is a placeholder for the individual things which belong to mind-independent reality – things which are to be distinguished from our ideas of them, which latter involve the unwarranted notion of a substratum. Elsewhere, the implication is, rather, that the being of substance is to be identified with this substratum, and that our inability to form an idea of it in no way impugns its existence.

Certainly, if we look carefully at Chapter vi of Book III there is evidence to suggest that this ambivalence is replicated at the level of Locke’s understanding of the notion of real essence. For much of what he says seems expressive of a wish to question the usefulness of this notion. We are told, for example, that real essences are such that we ‘only suppose their Being, without precisely knowing what they are’, that they are the ‘supposed foundation and cause’ of nominal essences,¹⁸ and that it is the nominal essence alone which determines substances into sorts.¹⁹ In support of this latter claim, Locke insists that ‘our Faculties carry us no farther towards the knowledge and distinction of Substances, than a Collection of those sensible Ideas, which we observe in them’.²⁰ Thus, he compares the plight of one who seeks to sort things by reference to their real essences to that of a blind ma...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1: A Philosophical Syndrome
• 2: Concepts and Reality
• 3: Concepts and Reality
• 4: Concepts and Reality
• 5: Truth
• 6: Philosophy and Dialectic
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography