In his Essay on the Human Understanding, Locke picks up where his predecessors in epistemological theorizing left off and proceeds to move the study towards a more empiricist approach. In the complexity of his theory, the notions of "substance", "nominal essence" and "real essence" are fundamental and serve, according to Locke, to explain the nature of the things we perceive. In this essay, I will aim to explain the theory that ties these three concepts together and, in turn, examine their role in the big picture. As often happens with early philosophical works, however, we find opposing interpretations of its meaning among commentators; I will try to examine the points of contention and, ultimately, to give an account of what seems to be the natural reading. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay To begin, I would like to consider Locke's conception of "substance." Locke gives us two levels at which we can talk about substance; at the general level (the 'notion of pure substance in general (Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II. XXIII, 2)) and at the level of particulars or individual things ('ideas of particular kinds of substance' (ibid. , II, XXIII, 3)) Apart from this distinction simply stated within the Essay, the rest of Locke's conception of substance is controversial and much debated. The way it appears at first glance in the Essay, and the way Locke's view has traditionally been interpreted, is that he conceives of substance as acting in a supporting role; the qualities or properties that an object possesses, both at a constitutional and observable level, must be anchored to something. The properties that come together to form an object cannot exist simply as a set of properties, they must be tied to something Locke calls a "substrate". This substrate would essentially be propertyless. As Locke explains: “The idea we have, to which we give the general name of substance, being nothing, but the supposed but unknown support of those qualities, we find existing, which we imagine cannot subsist, sine re substante, without something. to support them, we call that support substantia, which, according to the true meaning of the word, in plain English means to stand under or support. ' (ibid. II, XXIII, 2) It is open to debate how Locke actually regards this unknowable substance which supposedly anchors all qualities; Ayers puts the problem succinctly: "the question is this: Does Locke think of the 'substance' or 'substrate' of observable properties as an entity distinct from all its properties?" or "is the unknown 'substance' or 'substrate' nothing beyond the unknown 'true essence'?" (M. Ayers 'The Ideas of Power and Substance in Locke's Philosophy' in I. Tipton (ed.), p.77) Both interpretations appear to cause problems for Locke; if he wants to argue that the substratum exists as distinct from all qualities, can it really be said to be something? “How is an absolutely formless 'something' different from nothing?” (E.J. Lowe Locke on Human Understanding ch.4, p.75) Conversely, however, if the substrate were not distinguished by properties, it would have properties of its own which, according to Locke's framework, would require anchoring or support. (ibid.) Scholars have suggested numerous ways to support the idea that Locke regarded "true essence" as essentially interchangeable with "substance". Lowe, for example, suggests that Locke could use the notion of substance as a name for the basic microstructure of objects: "remembering...Locke's sympathy with atomism, we could not suppose that what he means by 'substrate' of aA macroscopic object such as a tree is the complex and organized set of material atoms that are its ultimate substantial constituents – what he elsewhere calls the “true essence” (ibid.). An interpretation like this can probably find textual support; Locke speaks of simple ideas arising "from the particular internal Constitution, or unknown Essence of that substance." (Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, XXIII,3) The conjunction 'or' here suggests an equality and interchangeability of the two notions. However, we cannot simply rely on grammatical nuances to establish a solid interpretation of Locke; it seems that if Locke believed that substratum was not simply a way of expressing the constitution of an object, he would be adhering to the Aristotelian notion of 'prime matter' which, taking into account the philosophical climate in which Locke was writing, may have been embarrassing. As Ayers argues, "It is improbable to the point of impossibility that Locke, who is an anti-Aristotelian corpuscularist of the Boyle school, could himself, using the term substratum, advance a view so analogous to what Berkeley describes as "that antiquated and much ridiculed of raw material that is found in Aristotle and his followers.' (M. Ayers 'The Ideas of Power and Substance in Locke's Philosophy' in I. Tipton (ed.), p.78) Locke seems to speak of a characterless substratum in a rather derogatory way: 'Those who first stumbled upon in The notion of Accidents, as a kind of real Beings, who needed something to inhere in, were forced to discover the word Substance, to support them. If the poor Indian philosopher (who imagined that the Earth also needed something to support itself on) had thought of this word Substance, he would not have needed to go to the trouble of finding an elephant to support it, and a tortoise to support his elephant. : The word Substance would have done this effectively.' (Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, XIII, 19) It may be, however, that this comparison simply indicates the level at which substance is unknowable. As much as we would like to argue that Locke was not inconsistent with his own rejection of Aristotelian raw material and that of his contemporaries, we cannot deny that it seems so. Locke often reinforces the need for something to support the qualities: “…we cannot conceive how they should subsist by themselves.” (Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, XXIII, 4) And, as mentioned above, something intended for the qualities of support cannot have qualities of its own that require support. If substance were substantially comparable to the real essence or constitution of objects at the atomic level, Locke would certainly have made it more explicit. An undeniable distinction is made. As Lowe points out, the distinction is necessary for Locke's theory; the substratum has a "metaphysical role to play beyond any merely scientific explanatory role that might be offered by the doctrine of atomism." (EJ Lowe Locke on Human Understanding ch.4, p.76) Atoms themselves have qualities and properties that require support. Therefore, it seems to me that the most obvious reading is one in which Locke espouses the idea of ​​an underlying, solid and characterless substance. While this is disputed, however, it is undeniable that whatever Locke is attempting to convey by speaking of substance, this substance is entirely unknowable. According to Locke, substances have two essences: their real essence and their nominal essence; this recognition of two distinct essences is crucial to how Locke constructs his theory of how we come to classify objects. Locke defines "real essence" as that which exists at the level ofconstitution; the true essence of a substance is what causes the qualities we can observe, but the true essence itself is not observable. As the name suggests, true essence has its basis in reality and not simply in human conception. The nominal essence, in contrast, includes the abstract, observable qualities of a substance, those that allow us to classify substances into different species or genera. Locke uses the term "nominal" to demonstrate that noticing similar abstract ideas in a substance is an exercise in naming things. Locke offers many examples of how the real and nominal essences interact; its most common example is that of Gold. The nominal essence of gold is the idea we have of gold that allows us to call it gold; certain substances will have certain qualities that correspond to the nominal essence of the thing we have called gold, for example weight, malleability, yellowness etc. and we would also call this substance gold. Meanwhile, the true essence of gold allows it to have the properties that constitute its nominal essence. It has been noted that in postulating his theory of essences, Locke reacted against his scholastic predecessors, and also against their predecessors, especially Aristotle. He believed their investigations were futile; as Mackie says, they had an approach to essences that was "not merely erroneous but seriously misleading, which had for centuries led thinkers to pursue wrong and fruitless methods of inquiry and made them" pretenders to knowledge they did not have. J. Mackie Problems From Locke chapter 3) He firmly refutes the idea that in their classification of objects into categories, his predecessors actually had some knowledge of their reality, that is, of what he would call their true essence, "the true essential nature". of things." (ibid.) Locke is firmly convinced that what we perceive in objects is simply an abstract idea of ​​what they really are; we classify them according to these characteristics; the scholastic method, according to Locke, gives rise to the double misunderstanding that we can have knowledge of the fundamental nature of things and that nature itself organizes substances into separate species. Although nature provides the fundamental constitutions of substances that allow them to have the power to produce certain perceptions in us, it is humans who make them. they organize according to these perceptions. Sometimes it seems that Locke is arguing that the existence of natural species is an empirical question and wants to state that our knowledge of the nominal essences of substances is not sufficient to deduce that natural species actually exist (J. Mackie Problems From Locke ch.3). However, it also appears that Locke opposes the denial of natural kinds on numerous occasions. For example, he argues that if nature were responsible for separating substances into species, we could not explain the number of cases in which substances do not appear to fit into any species; he states, that the view 'which presupposes these Essences, as a certain number of Forms or Molds, in which all natural Things, which exist, are wrought, and equally participate, has, I imagine, much perplexed the Knowledge of natural Things. The frequent productions of monsters... mutants and other strange problems of human birth bring with them difficulties which cannot be reconciled with this hypothesis: for it is equally impossible that two things, partaking of exactly the same real essence, should have different Properties, as that two participating Figures of the same real Essence of a Circle have different Properties.' (Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, III, III,17) Furthermore, he argues that the fact that human beings must be selective in deciding the necessary and sufficient conditions for a substance to fall into a species.)