Tag Archives: John Locke

The Imprisoned Mind and the Disengaged Self: How Personal Identity Was Separated from the Created Order

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Today’s post is the third in our series examining how the statement, “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” (Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, p. 19), came to be taken seriously by millions of intelligent people. In previous posts, we examined the differences between pre-modern and the modern ways of experiencing the created order. Before the modern scientific revolution, people experienced the appearances as revelatory of the inner reality of things; they used such concepts as substance, essence, soul, beauty, goodness, purpose, and meaning to designate real qualities of things that could be known by contemplating the appearances. Galileo and other early modern scientists drove a wedge between the appearances and the inner reality of things. Things may appear meaningful, good, beautiful, hot, cold, sweet, loud, etc., but these qualities exist only in the human psyche as caused by—but in no way resembling— material impacts on the senses. The only knowable aspects of the reality of things are those that are mathematically measurable. In other words, the only truths our minds can know about things in themselves are mathematical expressions and equations. All else is mere appearance.

As I read the history of modern philosophy—not being an expert but a well-read non-expert—the new empirical/mathematical/mechanical science set new standards for what counts as genuine knowledge of nature. Indeed, it set a new bar for what it means to know anything. In this way, the scientific revolution set the agenda for all areas of study—political philosophy, moral philosophy, philosophy of mind, theology, history, biblical studies, etc. Every area of study measured itself by the gold standard of mathematics. Because mathematics can be applied to the mechanical aspects of nature there is a tendency to reduce nature to material atoms (or quanta) organized and interacting in a mechanical way.

We see here two of the central challenges the new science posed to philosophy in the seventeenth century: (1) It must develop a new epistemology for the empirical age—what does it mean to know and how can we attain knowledge within the limits of empiricism? (2) It must work out the implications of the new science for all areas of study. For this series, I am interested in philosophical anthropology and theology. How shall we understand the nature and operations of the human mind, if we assume that the entire world outside our minds—including our bodies—is a material machine with which we make contact only through sense perception and can know truly only in mathematical categories?

John Locke and The Imprisoned Mind

Though he wrote at the end of the seventeenth century and many thinkers had already worked on the two challenges mentioned above, John Locke’s book Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1698) proved a watershed in the philosophy of mind and epistemology. Many leading European philosophers for the next century—until Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason—wrote either in support or in opposition to Locke.

I will again quote Locke’s statement about the distinction between primary and secondary qualities:

“These I call original or primary qualities of body, which I think we may observe to produce simple ideas in us, viz. solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number. Secondly, such qualities which in truth are nothing in objects themselves but powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities, i.e. by bulk, figure, texture, and motion of their insensible parts, as colors, sounds, tastes, etc. These I call secondary qualities” (John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1698, II. 8).

Locke’s self-appointed task is to explain how the human mind gains understanding of the external world, given the new science. From where do the mind’s ideas come? Locke rejected the traditional belief that the human mind comes into being furnished with ideas that refer to the external world, morality, and God. Locke asserts, instead, that the mind begins as an empty slate, ready to receive sense impressions from the empirical world through its mechanical causality.

If the mind is an empty slate, as Locke contends, how does it receive, interpret, and organize ideas into the vast system of concepts, categories, memories, and laws that constitute our mental life? What are the native powers of the mind. As far as I can tell—as a well-read non-expert—we are endowed at birth with the passive power of sense perception, an active power of reason, and an instinctive drive toward pleasure and away from pain. The external world possesses primary qualities (powers) that strike our perceptive organs and cause the mind to form simple ideas. For Locke, an “idea” is any intelligible object within the mind. As a reasoning power the mind associates compatible simple ideas to form more complex ideas and so builds up our conceptual world. Notice that it is not already existing ideas, forms, and essences that are communicated from external things by means of the senses to the mind. Locke is agnostic about the existence of such things. External things contact the senses only as mechanical/material impacts. In a way Locke never explains, the mind receives these physical impacts and the physical changes they make to our sense organs as intelligible ideas.

Locke’s Disengagement of the Self from Its Body and Soul

As I said above, Locke is agnostic if not skeptical about the existence of forms, substances, and essences. In any case, we cannot attain scientific knowledge of them. We gain all knowledge from the senses as I described above. Locke applies the same empirical limits to the human person. Our knowledge of ourselves and our minds must also come—at least indirectly—from the senses and the ideas impressed on our minds through them. What is a person, and what is personal identity? How do you know that you are the same person you were five years ago? Previous thinkers argued that persistence of personhood (or continuity of personal identity) presupposes the existence of the immaterial, substantial soul. But Locke contends that we cannot experience the substantial, immaterial soul so as to be able to use it as a guarantee of persistent identity.  Hence Locke disengaged the two and made personhood a matter of continuity of consciousness, which we can experience as an activity of mind in awareness of its ideas as its own. I am the same person because I am conscious of being the same self. Consciousness, not substance, constitutes the self. Consciousness (the self) is not a substance. To illustrate, he imagines the same self (a person) inhabiting different bodies and different souls at different times and finds no contradiction. On Locke’s premises one can imagine a person, that is, a consciousness of being oneself, inhabiting a male body/soul at one time and a female body/soul at another—though to my knowledge Locke did not conduct this thought experiment.

Takeaways

1. John Locke applied the methods and assumptions of the new mechanical/empirical science to the human mind and its workings. He rejects the belief that the human mind possesses inborn ideas, forms, or any information in common with the external world or that it receives such information from outside the mind by way of our senses. Our minds construct the world we know out of simple ideas created by mechanical impacts on our sense organs. Creation is thus silenced.

2. It would be too much to say that John Locke invented the modern self. But he disengaged the personal identity (the self) from both body and soul. The self or person refers not to the human as a biological being or to the soul understood as a metaphysical substance or form but to our consciousness of being the same self through time.

3. Locke’s view of personal identity is not exactly the same as such modern concepts as intersectionality or gender identity. However, these modern views presuppose something like Locke’s disengagement of the self from the human body and soul. Perhaps the modern assertion “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” could not have occurred to Locke as a possible combination of ideas because of the biological meaning of the word “woman.” On a biological level male and female are incompatible. However, if by “woman” one means “consciousness of possessing qualities usually associated with persons inhabiting female bodies” Locke’s definition of person/self would seem to allow its possibility. Possessing a male or female body could not be taken as a revelation of one’s created identity. Indeed, I am not sure Locke’s view of the person could accommodate the concept of a given or created identity communicated to us, for example, by means of the appearance of the human body or its reproductive function.

Next Time: Background to the progressive/liberal view of the authority of Scripture for Christian faith and life.

God and The Modern Self: The Me-Centered Self (Part 1)

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In this post I will address the theme developed in Chapter 1 of God, Freedom & Human Dignity, entitled “How the Me-Centered World Was Born.” I begin by quoting from the introductory comments to that chapter:

“As children we never questioned our identity or wondered about our place in life. Nor did we think of our “selves” as distinct from our relationships, activities and feelings. We just lived in the context we were born into and followed the natural course of our lives. But as we grew older we were encouraged to discover our own unique blend of preferences, talents and joys and to create an identity for ourselves through our choices and actions. In contrast to previous ages, modern culture denies that one can become an authentic person or experience fulfillment in life by conforming to natural or socially given relationships and roles. Instead, we are taught that our self-worth and happiness depend on reconstructing ourselves according to our desires. And the project of redesigning ourselves necessitates that we continually break free from the web of social relationships and expectations that would otherwise impose an alien identity on us. I am calling this understanding of the self “me-centered” not because it is especially selfish or narcissistic but because it attempts to create its identity by sheer will power and rejects identity-conferring relationships unless they are artifacts of its own free will. It should not surprise us, then, to find that the modern person feels a weight of oppression and a flood of resentment when confronted with the demands of traditional morality and religion. In the face of these demands the “me-centered” self feels its dignity slighted, its freedom threatened and its happiness diminished…

“How and when and by whom did it come about that nature, family, community, moral law and religion were changed in the western mind from identity-giving, happiness-producing networks of meaning into their opposites—self-alienating, misery-inducing webs of oppression? How was the “me-centered” world formed?” (pp. 17-18).

The modern “me-centered” identity, like the Christian God-centered identity, has a history. Ignorance of this history constitutes one of the greatest challenges to engaging with our contemporaries on moral and religious issues. If we don’t know this story we won’t understand how they think, and if they are ignorant of it they won’t understand themselves. Hence it is imperative that we answer the question in the italicized part of the above quote.

It is impossible to assign an absolute beginning to any era in history. Nevertheless, we won’t be distorting history too much if we say that the modern view of the self began around 1620 and reached maturity by 1800, at least among the educated elite. As articulated by Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and Francis Bacon (1561-1626), a new scientific way of thinking (the scientific revolution)  inspired a different view of humanity’s relationship to nature and a new optimism about human reason’s power to shape nature into whatever form it desired. René Descartes (1596-1650) brought this new attitude over into philosophy, placing human freedom and reason at the center of philosophy’s agenda. John Locke (1632-1704) applied the new human-centered thought to morality, politics and theology. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and the Romantic poets and philosophers who followed him gave human feeling and desire a central place in human self-understanding. Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), expressed a view that people today utter as if it were self-evident and indisputable. “Each human being has his own measure, as it were an accord peculiar to him of all his feelings to each other.” In other words, each individual is so unique that there can be no moral and religious rules that apply to all individuals: “Find yourself.” “Do your own thing.” “Question authority.”

The history of the formation of the me-centered identity can be summarized by saying that every rule and law, every power and right, and every ideal of what is good, true and beautiful was moved from outside the human being—from nature, God, moral law—to inside human consciousness where it could be brought under the power of free will. Human dignity became identical with the power to decide for yourself what is good and right. And human happiness became attainable only by following the inclinations of your individual self. The modern self evaluates every moral and religious idea by this standard. These ideas are accepted or rejected according as they enhance or detract from the individual’s immediate sense of self-worth and well-being.

Unless we understand how the me-centered self was formed we will find ourselves at a loss to understand or communicate with people immersed in modern culture. And we will be unable to help them understand themselves enough to gain the distance necessary to criticize the modern human self-understanding. If we are not careful we too will be swept away by what Augustine called the “torrent of human custom” (Confessions, 1.16; trans, Chadwick).

 Questions for Discussion

 1. To what degree and in what areas does Chapter 1’s description of the me-centered self fit people of your acquaintance or resonate with your self-understanding?

2. In what ways do you think a review of the history of the formation of the me-centered identity reveal modern identity’s limits and flaws?

3. What light does this chapter shed on contemporary culture’s knee jerk criticism of Christian faith and morality as oppressive, intolerant and judgmental?

4. If this chapter’s description of the modern self is accurate, how can we begin to engage people who have this self-understanding in productive discussions?  What strategies should we employ and which should we avoid?

Next week we will look at the first of three common attitudes toward God taken by the modern self: Defiance.

Thinking and Thoughtfulness (Part 1)

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Since a major theme of my blog is “thoughtfulness in religion,” I owe it to you to explain what I mean by thoughtfulness and why I believe it is so important. Today I begin a short series on thinking and thoughtfulness. So, think with me for a while about thinking.

 

To understand a concept thoroughly it is not enough merely to define it. We must grasp its relationships to other concepts in the neighborhood. Only by bringing to light how it differs and resembles to those nearby ideas can we locate it on a conceptual map. The larger the scope of our vision, the more precise will be our sense of its location. Hence I plan to consider thoughtfulness in relation to such concepts as intelligence, reason, observation, common sense, critical thought, introspection and thoughtlessness.

 

A few years ago I read Bernard Lonergan’s huge book Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957). This book stands in the long tradition of books with similar titles: John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) and David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748). Lonergan surveys the map of concepts and activities that orient us to the human act of insight, which is the act of understanding. I will not attempt to summarize his study here. But I want to acknowledge that my thinking about thinking and thoughtfulness has been influenced by this profound book. Specifically, the distinction I make below between common sense and critical (or scientific) thought comes directly from Lonergan (p. 181).

 

Intelligence and Reason

Intelligence is a more encompassing concept than reason. Intelligence is the power of a living being to perceive and respond appropriately to the information it receives from its environment. Billiard balls and hydrogen atoms do not possess intelligence even though they respond to physical contact by other things. Intelligence involves interpretation or processing of information by internal systems capable of such activity. Many intriguing questions arise at this point. What is information? Is information always the product of intelligence? Is it possible to construct an intelligent machine? But I won’t pursue them here. Human beings are not the only living creatures to possess intelligence. Horses, rabbits, mice and even one-cell creatures are marked by intelligent behavior.

But human beings possess a higher form of intelligence we call reason. Reason is not simply more intelligence; it is a qualitatively different kind of intelligence. In brief, reason is intelligence combined with freedom. Human beings not only respond intelligently to information in the automatic ways animals and plants do, they are conscious of their intelligence and partly in control of its application. We can initiate the processes of thinking and imagining apart from external contact with information bearing systems. We can resist being determined by the information pressing in on our senses, and we can anticipate several steps ahead to future states of our world. Reason is the power to see, understand or comprehend relationships— spatial, temporal, mathematical but especially causal and logical relationships. Information is always encoded in a system of relationships, and reason can see the relationships and read the information written therein. Only reasoning beings can attain insight or understanding.

Observation

All intelligent beings can receive information from their environment but only reasoning creatures observe the world. Observation is an intentional act designed to raise mere perception to a higher level by giving the object the kind of attention that will allow it to show itself in its fullness. In ordinary life it usually suffices to see things as images in their wholeness. To avoid hitting the car in front of us, it is enough to see the image as a car. We need not observe it in detail. In that situation, observing would be a foolish thing to do. Observation is the skill of focusing intently on the appearance of something. It is taking note of the details of its parts and shades and activities. If you don’t notice something you can’t think about it or take into account how it might affect you. So, observation precedes serious thought and analysis. To become a good observer you have to train your mind to notice things that we ordinarily overlook. Description is the way we communicate the results of observation.

Common Sense

As I said above, reason is the power to see all sorts of relationships. Common sense is reason’s power to grasp relationships between things and us; that is, common sense enables us to anticipate how things will affect us in practical ways. It learns from personal experience and the experience of other people how things work, how to adjust to them and use them for our benefit. It also works to avoid danger, to make a living or to achieve success in our activities.

It reasons like this: when you do this, that happens; or when that happens, it affects us like this. It is the form of reason used in learning a skill: auto mechanics, bricklaying, getting along with difficult people, or playing basketball. It is not directly interested in theoretical explanations. It gets impatient with any line of thought where the practical relevance is not evident.

Clearly, common sense is very important for daily life. We are related to everything in our environment, and to act wisely we need to anticipate how our actions will affect other things and how those things may affect us. Common sense conforms to the general pattern of reason; it sees connections, analogies and relationships of all kinds. It is especially sensitive to causal relationships. It can use this knowledge very creatively to solve problems. To be continued…

Next: critical thought, introspection and thoughtfulness