Locke's Abstract Ideas

Willis Doney

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 16, No. 3. (Mar., 1956), pp. 406-409.

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 DISCUSSION

LOCKE'S ABSTRACT IDEAS

I t is not my intention to defend Aaron's account of Locke on abstract

ideas. In general I share Mr. Linnell's dissatisfaction. I agree that Aaron
does not make clear in just what respect his second and third strands
differ and that his account of strand three, of abstract ideas as meanings or
essences, is not a t all clear. Yet I cannot agree with Linnell's statement,
that "a careful reading of Locke makes it difficult to see why Aaron
claims to find three strands in the Essay." I see a basis, in the Essay and in
the drafts of the Essay, for distinctions on the lines of those that Aaron
draws, though I agree with Linnell that Aaron does not succeed in dis-
entangling these strands.
A first distinction, similar to Aaron's strands one and two, can be made
on the basis of Locke's equivocal use of the terms simple and complex. In
some places Locke suggests that a simple idea is one that is given in
experience, a complex idea one that is framed or formed by the mind.l In
this vein he speaks of simple ideas as originals or materials given which
the mind sets about the construction of its complex ideas.2 Taking simple
to mean given in experience and complex to mean formed by the under-
standing, Locke cannot consistently hold that abstract simple ideas are
formed by the understanding's separating them from other ideas. If they
were, they would not be simple ideas according to this meaning of simple
and compkx. Being simple (in this sense), they would be given separate and
uncompounded in experience, and there would be no occasion for the mind
to separate them from other ideas to which they are attached.
Locke is of course inconsistent. He does not keep to this sense of simple
and complex. He says that combinations of ideas, simple ideas "going
together," are given in experience: in Draft B of the Essay he says, "a
certain number of these simple ideas go constantly together" (pp. 120-
1 As in Section 20 of Draft B of the Eeeay (edited by Benjamin Rand, Cambridge,
Harvard University Press, 1931, p. 66): "For it is to be observed that all those ideas
whioh either sensation or reflection imprints upon the understanding are all pure and
unblended, and therefore I call Simple Ideas; as are those of whiteness, blackness, heat,
wld, softness, length, or extension, unity, and all the particular tastes and smells, and
other sensible qualities for which we have no names, and also thinking in all the several
modes of it; which the understanding, when it is stored with, has the power and faculty
to join together, enlarge, compare one with another, and consider them with reference
to others, whioh is but a sort of comparing, and unite even to an almost infinite variety
and so make a t pleasure new complex ideas."
For example, Section 21 of Draft B and in the Essay 11.i. 24-25 and 11.ii. 2.
121), and in the Essay, "simple ideas are observed to exist in several
combinations united together." (II.xii.1). Taking this view of what is
given in experience, Locke can and in fact does hold that abstract simple
ideas are formed by omission, but then he cannot mean by simple given in
experience and by complex formed by an operation of the mind.
I agree with Linnell that Locke invariably says that combinations of
simple ideas are given in experience and that abstract ideas of these
simple qualities are formed by separating them from the circumstances in
which they are given. Locke's explicit and official view is what Aaron calls
strand two: the abstract idea of white, for instance, is a part removed
from the experiences of milk or chalk. Yet, if Locke were to hold consist-
ently to the distinction of simple and complex mentioned above -if he had
adhered to what Aaron calls the compositional theory - he would have
been forced to take a different view of the formation of abstract simple
ideas, one like Aaron's first strand. He would have to say that the abstract
idea of white is not taken from a complex: it is the idea, of white given by
itself in experience and considered just as it is in the mind.
There is also a basis for Aaron's third strand. In Aaron's terms, a
general idea in this strand is an essence or a meaning, and not, as in the
first two strands, a particular image or part of a particular image. Linnell
is justifiably bothered by Aaron's rather obscure account of this strand.
What exactly is a meaning? And does a meaning in Aaron's sense necessari-
ly differ from the truncated image of the second strand? Although Aaron
does not answer these questions to my satisfaction, I see a basis in the
Essay for his discerning a theory of this sort. To bring this out, I shall
mark off two functions that general or abstract ideas serve in the Essay. I
shall call them A and B.
A. General ideas enable us to rank things into sorts, to classify, to
distinguish species and genera, and to apply general terms to particular
things. They are "the measures of name, and the boundaries of species."
(III.iii.14). This function is described in the following passage: "abstract
general ideas . . . [are] set . . . up in the mind with names annexed to
them, as patterns or forms, . . . to which, as particular things existing are
found to agree, so they come to be of that species, above that denomina-
tion, or are put into that class." (III.iii.13). B. General ideas are also the
meanings of general terms. As a proper name signifies a particular idea, so
Locke says a general term signifies a general idea. A general idea is the
entity signified, designated, or named by the general term. Entities of this
type, moreover, exist only in the mind. And it is the presence of a general
idea in the mind of a person using a general term that makes the term
significant. Locke speaks of this function in the following passage: "so far
as words are of use and signification, so far is there a constant connexion
between the souhd and the idea; and a designation, that the one stand for
the other: without which application of them, they are nothing but so
much insignificant noise." (III.ii.7). Just before this Locke says that,
unless ideas are attached to our terms, we speak "no otherwise than
parrots do"; and he adds that a person will fail to understand us - our
words will have no meaning for him - if they do not excite ideas in his
mind. The presence of a general idea in someone's mind is then a necessary
condition of the significance (for that person) of a general term.
When Locke is thinking of general ideas serving function A - as
patterns or standards to which we look to see if particular things conform
or agree -it is natural to take him to mean by a general idea some sort of
picture or model or image, something which more or less resembles the
particulars that it represents. Locke uses words like print, image, inscrip-
tion, and picture when he speaks of ideas. And it is natural to assume that
abstract ideas, which he says are particular in nature, are not altogether
unlike pictures, although of course they are pictures without details.
When we pass to the second function of general ideas - conferring
meaning on discourse and accompanying the significant use of signs -
they seem less palpable and more diaphanous than any kind of picture.
For it is all too obvious to us, as it must have been to Locke, that we need
not form images or pictures of any kind in our minds when we say some-
thing or when we understand what someone says. In the passages relating
to this second function Locke's general ideas seem more elusive and
rarefied than even the partial images of the second strand would be. Since
they appear less representational and pictorial in this capacity, I can see
why Aaron is inclined to call them meanings or essences, in this way
contrasting them with images, and to find a third strand in Locke's
discussion of abstract ideas.
Granted that there is a third strand and that in the third strand abstract
ideas are unlike images, are Berkeley's criticisms applicable to or effective
against this aspect of Locke's theory? Aaron thinks that they are not. I t
is not difficult to see why he thinks this. I t seems as though Berkeley took
Locke to mean by an abstract idea an image of some sort and directed his
attack against what Aaron calls the second strand. The argument against
Locke's absurd triangle is based on the premise that ideas must have deter-
minate properties and cannot have incompatible properties ;it is absurd, Ber-
keley says, to speak of an idea of a triangle that is "neither equilateral, equi-
crural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once." (Introduction to
the Principles, 813). But would it be absurd to say this of an idea that is
not an image but something non-pictorial - in Aaron's terms, an essence
or a meaning? Aaron seems to think that it would not be absurd. For what
cannot be said of an image may properly enough be said of some other sort of
mental entity. According to Aaron, then, if Locke meant by an abstract
idea something other than an image, Berke1e;y's argument misses the mark.
 Berkeley's attack on abstract ideas is not limited to one argument,
however. I t is broad enough to take account of the third strand disting-
uished by Aaron as well as the second. Whether Locke means by an
abstract idea an image or something other than an image, Berkeley's
criticism is certainly to the point. He questions two underlying assumpt-
ions of Locke's theory. By showing that these are mistaken, he exposes and
destroys a fundamental reason for Locke's thinking that there must be
abstract ideas of any sort, whether images or essences.
According to Berkeley, Locke assumes (a) that "every name hath, or
ought to have, one only precise and settled signification." (S 18). This
assumption inclines him "to think there are certain abstract, determ-
inate ideas, which constitute the true and only immediate signification of
each general name." (S 18 - Berkeley's italics). Locke also assumes
(b) "that language has no other end but the communicating our ideas, and
that every significant name stands for an idea." (S 19). Against (a) Berkeley
argues that "a word becomes general by being made the sign, not of an
abstract general idea but of several particular ideas, any one of which it
indifferently suggests to the mind" (S 11) and that "there is no such thing
as one precise and definite signification annexed to any general name, they
all signifying indifferently a great number of particular ideas." (S 18).
Berkeley also attacks (b): "a little attention," he says, "will discover, that
it is not necessary (even in the strictest reasonings) significant names
which stand for ideas should, every time they are used, excite in the
understanding the ideas they are made to stand for . . ." (S 19). In short
Berkeley denies that there must be abstract ideas serving what I have
called function B ; that is, to be what is named by a general term and to be
what makes the use of a general term ~ignificant.~
I t is in connection with function B that Locke's abstract ideas seem less
pictorial. And it is in the passages of the Essay describing abstract ideas as
the significations or meanings of general terms that Aaron finds evidence
for the third strand. Berkeley's attack against this strand can now be
explicitly stated: Locke was led to postulate the apparently non-pictorial
and mysterious ideas of this strand because of his two basic and mistaken
assumptions about the nature of language; when these assumptions are
destroyed, there is no reason to think that there must be meanings or
essences named by general terms and accompanying their significant use.
Berkeley's attack on these lines is certainly a relevant criticism of Locke's
abstract ideas, no matter which of the strands we consider.
WILLIS DONEY.
OHIOSTATEUNIVERSITY.

There is an excellent discussion of this aspect of Berkeley's attack in Geoffrey

Warnock's book on Berkeley in the Penguin series.