SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY

TANGAZA UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN AFRICA

TOPIC
THE IDEA OF SUBSTANCE THAT ALLOWS MOST OF OUR INTUITIONS

SUBMITTED BY
Charles Irumba

REG. NO. 20/00718

LECTURER

Fr. John Maina

COURSE
Seminar on modern philosophy (Locke, inquiry on human understanding)-PHS 235

23rd SEPTEMBER,2021

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 Table of Contents

Introduction....................................................................................................................................3

1.0 General ideas and their origin...........................................................................................3

2.0 Complex ideas in general..................................................................................................4

3.0 Complex ideas of substances according to John Locke....................................................6

4.0 Intuition.............................................................................................................................8

4.1 Intuition according to John Locke.................................................................................8

Conclusion......................................................................................................................................8

References.......................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction

In this chapter, Locke begins his discussion of the complex ideas. The first modes he

examines are those related to space, which is itself regarded as a simple idea under Locke's

rubric. Locke also uses this chapter to launch into a complaint against the unclear and poorly

defined terms used by many European philosophers. In particular, he criticizes two longstanding

philosophical terms, substance and accidents. Broadly speaking a substance is a thing in itself,

while accidents are outward or inessential characteristics. Such terms, he concludes, are "of little

use in philosophy" because they are circularly defined, substance is merely a term for "that

which supports accidents." In Locke's view, the substance or accident confusion is illustrative of

a wider problem with language. People have essentially the same simple ideas, but they "perplex

themselves" by using different words for the same concept, or by using the same word in

different senses. This paper will discuss the idea of substance that allows most of our intuitions.

1.0 General ideas and their origin

According to John Locke, Ideas, come from two sources. Sensation, meaning our sensory

experience of the outside world, is one source. Reflection our mind's awareness of its own

operations is the other. Locke says that a sign to the ongoing, empirical nature of idea formation

may be found by observing how people think at different stages of life. Children have ideas that

reflect their own limited experience of life, while adults tend to have more varied and complex

ideas. Simple ideas, he argues, are passively received by the mind.

Locke also considers a related question: are we always thinking? He answers no,

dismissing the idea that a person could think and not be conscious of it. For example, “If a

sleeping man thinks without knowing it," he says, "the sleeping and waking man are two

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persons." In other words, our thoughts are not really our own if we have no way of consciously

accessing or remembering them. Locke's discussion of this issue and his refutation of the idea

that "the soul always thinks" are entangled with his treatment of sensation and reflection.1

2.0 Complex ideas in general

There are ideas that the mind receives passively, namely the simple ones that come to it

from sensation and reflection. The mind can’t make any such simple idea for itself, and can’t

have any idea that doesn’t wholly consist of them. But while the mind is wholly passive in the

reception of all its simple ideas, it acts in various ways to construct other ideas out of its simple

ones, which are the materials and foundations of all the rest. The acts in which the mind exerts its

power over its simple ideas are mainly these three; The first is combining several simple ideas

into one compound one; that is how all complex ideas are made. Secondly, bringing together two

ideas, whether simple or complex, setting them side by side so as to see them both at once,

without uniting them into one; this is how the mind gets all its ideas of relations. Lastly, by

separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence; this is called

abstraction, and it is how all the mind’s general ideas are made. This shows that the power a man

has, and his exercise of it, are pretty much the same in the intellectual world as in the material

one. In neither realm has he any power to make or destroy any raw materials; all he can do is

either to unite them together or set them side by side, or wholly separate them. For example, he

cannot make or destroy rocks, but he can assemble them to make a wall, or dismantle a wall that

has been made from them· Let us begin with uniting, and then, we shall come to the other two in

due course.2

1
John Locke: an essay concerning human understanding; Pennsylvania state university,1690,287
2
Ibid, 279

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 As simple ideas are observed to exist in various combinations united together, so the

mind has a power to consider several of them united together as one idea; not only in

combinations that exist in external objects, but also in ones the mind makes up. Ideas thus made

up of several simple ones which become complex. Examples are the ideas of beauty and

gratitude. These are all complex ideas made up of simple ones, but the mind can, if it wishes

treat each of them by itself as one unified thing, signified by one name. By being able to repeat

and join together its ideas, the mind has great power to vary and multiply the objects of its

thoughts, infinitely beyond what sensation or reflection provides it with. The basic raw materials

of all its compositions are simple ideas received from those two sources, the mind has no other

way of getting any but once it has acquired these simple ideas it can by its own power put

together the ideas it has, making new complex ones that it never received united in that way.

Complex ideas, however combined, are infinitely numerous and endlessly various. Still,

one can think that they can all be brought under three headings; modes, substances and relations.

First, modes are complex ideas that don’t contain within them the supposition of existing by

themselves, but are considered as dependences on or states of substances. Examples are the ideas

signified by the words like, triangle, gratitude etc. These words stand for dependences on

substances because; if there is a triangle that is because something is triangular, if gratitude

occurs that is because someone is grateful. Here we are using the word ‘mode’ in a different

sense from its ordinary one. Two sorts of modes deserve to be considered separately. Some are

only variations or different combinations of the same simple idea, not mixed in with any other.

For example, the ideas of dozen and score are nothing but the ideas of so many distinct units

added together. These are called simple modes, because they are contained within the bounds of

one simple idea. Other complex ideas are made up of simple ideas of different kinds, put together

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to make one complex one. Examples are beauty a certain composition of colour and figure,

causing delight to the beholder, and theft the concealed change of the possession of something

without its owner’s consent, which obviously combines several ideas of different kinds. Call

them mixed modes.3

Secondly, the ideas of substances are combinations of simple ideas that are taken to

represent distinct particular things existing by themselves. In such combinations the supposed or

confused idea of substance, such as it is, is always the first and chief. Thus, if to the idea of

substance, we join the simple idea of a certain dull whitish colour, and ideas of certain degrees of

weight and hardness, we have the idea of lead; and a combination of the ideas of a certain shape

with mobility, thought, and reasoning, joined to substance, makes the ordinary idea of a man.

Ideas of substances also fall into two sorts; ideas of single substances as they exist separately, for

example the idea of a man or of a sheep; and ideas of several of those put together, such as the

idea of an army of men, or of a flock of sheep. An idea of the latter collective kind of an idea,

that is, of several substances put together is as much one single idea as the idea of a man.

Thirdly, the last sort of complex idea is the one we call relation, which consists in considering

and comparing one idea with another.4

3.0 Complex ideas of substances according to John Locke

According to Locke, an idea is ‘the object of the understanding when a man thinks’

where thinking includes all cognitive activities. Ideas form the materials of knowledge. The

meaning of ‘idea’ can be understood as;

1) The immediate objects of understanding

3
John Locke: an essay concerning human understanding; Pennsylvania state university,1690,281
4
John Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, An analysis of Mr. Locke's Doctrine of ideas; S marks
publisher,1825,195

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2) Signs or representations of the world of things.

3) The modifications of the mind.

4) Caused by experience.

Our ideas are derived from two sources, the first is sensation and the second is reflection or

perception of the operation of our own mind which may be called internal sense. Our senses

convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things. This is what is called sensation. This

is a process through which the mind receives ideas from external objects. By means of inner

sense or introspection the mind gets the ideas not from the existing objects but by reflecting on

its own operations within itself. This is the process of thinking, doubting, believing, willing, etc.

The mind has powers of analyzing and reassembling the raw materials received.

Locke makes a distinction between simple ideas and complex ideas. Sensory experiences of the

uniform character are called simple ideas. Color smell, sound, numbers, extension, etc. are

simple ideas. They are the contents of actual experience. Locke says that the mind uses some

kind of liberty in forming those complex ideas, in contrast with simple ideas where the mind is

passive. The simples, Locke insisted can never be created nor destroyed by the mind. The mind

has power to repeat, compare, and unite simples thereby creating new complex ideas. But the

mind cannot invent simple ideas that it has not experienced. Simples in Lockian theory of

knowledge are building blocks from which all of our complex and compounded ideas can be

constructed and accounted for.

According to Locke, Substances are, first, just objects in the world, things; but substances are,

second, the underpinning and support of the sensible qualities we perceive. Ideas of substance

depend upon our sensory modalities; our ideas of substance don’t represent substances as they

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really are; they present us with the picture we need in order to get around in the world.

Substance, for Locke, is just a “something-I-know-not-what.”5

4.0 Intuition

Intuition in philosophy is the power of obtaining knowledge that cannot be acquired

either by inference or observation, by reason or experience. As such, intuition is thought of as an

original, independent source of knowledge, since it is designed to account for those kinds of

knowledge that other sources do not provide. Knowledge of necessary truths and of moral

principles is sometimes explained in this way. Some necessary truths for example, statements of

logic or mathematics can be inferred, or logically derived, from others

4.1 Intuition according to John Locke

Intuitive knowledge involves direct and immediate recognition of the agreement or disagreement

of two ideas. Intuitive knowledge is that which we get by the mere consideration of the ideas

themselves. This knowledge is self-evident. If we will reflect on our own ways of thinking, we

shall find that sometimes the mind perceives the agreement or disagreement of two ideas

immediately by themselves without the intervention of any other, and this is philosophically

referred to as intuitive knowledge. This is perceived by the mind just as the eye doth light. In this

form of knowledge there is no place for doubt, hesitation or examination.6

Conclusion

According to John Locke, all our ideas of the various sorts of substances are nothing but

collections of simple ideas, together with a supposition of something to which they belong and in

which they exist, though we have no clear distinct idea at all of this supposed something. All the

5
John Locke: an essay concerning human understanding; Pennsylvania state university,1690,280
6
John Locke, James Augustus St. John: The Works of John Locke: Philosophical Works, with a Preliminary Essay
and Notes by J. A. St. John, Volume 2; Henry G. Bohn publisher, 1854,134

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simple ideas which, when thus united in one common substratum, make up our complex ideas of

various sorts of substances are received from sensation or reflection. Even those ideas must be

constructed out of the simple ideas that we originally received from sensation or reflection. Most

of the simple ideas that make up our complex ideas of substances. These complex ideas of

substances also lead to most of our intuitions because intuitive knowledge involves immediate

recognition of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas of substances which affect most of

our intuitions.

References

John Locke: an essay concerning human understanding; Pennsylvania state university,1690

John Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, An analysis of Mr. Locke's Doctrine

of ideas; S marks publisher,1825

Locke J, James Augustus St. John: The Works of John Locke: Philosophical Works, with a

Preliminary Essay and Notes by J. A. St. John, Volume 2; Henry G. Bohn publisher, 1854,134