Person, Substance, Mode and ‘themoral Man’ in Locke's Philosophy

Abstract

In 1769, the English bishop and theologian Edmund Law published a Defence of Mr. Locke's Opinion concerning Personal Identity. In this work, Law attempted to ‘explain and vindicate Mr. Locke's hypothesis’ (301) by offering a new account of Lockean persons. Law's account centers around three key claims. First, persons are modes — very roughly, properties — rather than substances. Second, the relevant properties are those that make moral evaluation appropriate, thus taking seriously Locke's insistence that ‘person’ is a forensic term. And third, the fact that persons are modes is what makes a demonstrative science of morality possible.I am not convinced that Law's interpretation actually vindicates Locke, though it does make his theory come out rather better than is typically imagined. I am, however, convinced that Law's interpretation provides the best available account of Lockean persons.

Locke on the Ontology of Persons

“…These include Antonia LoLordo ( and ), Udo Thiel ( and ), William Uzgalis (), Ruth Mattern (), and arguably Galen Strawson () though this interpretation can be traced back to Edmund Law ().…”

“…See LoLordo: , 651–52. Also, 2012, 123: “Only some consciousnesses are persons, then because only some consciousnesses have the idea of the self required to think of themselves as beings who exist through time and thus as beings whose future pleasure and pain matter in exactly the same way their present pleasure and pain do.” I take it that this means that some consciousnesses are persons—in the identity sense of “are.” Persons are consciousnesses (of a certain stripe).…”

“…For more information about the nature of consciousness and its relation to other mental states see Shelley Weinberg (), Mark Kulstad (), Coventry, A. and Kriegel, U. () and Antonia LoLordo ().…”

“…Given that we never see Locke employing names of substances to stand for anything other than ideas of substances, and particular substances in the world, it seems that once LoLordo accepts that the name “moral man” is the name of a substance, she has to also accept that this marks an idea of a substance, or that moral men are indeed substances. In addition, we should note that LoLordo herself claims, “… if the moral man is a substance so is a person” (, 655). It thus looks as if we not only have good reason to think that Locke thinks the moral man is a substance.…”

Locke's Place‐Time‐Kind Principle

“…Uzgalis () takes this to be evidence that persons, plants, and animals are not substances but modes . LoLordo (/2012) takes this to be evidence that persons are modes, even though plants and animals are substances. Bolton () sees this as additional evidence that persons, plants, and animals are substance‐mode composites.…”