Conceptualism and Objectivity in Locke's Account of Natural Kinds The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Kuklok, Allison Sara. 2013. Conceptualism and Objectivity in Locke's Account of Natural Kinds. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:11181128 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA CONCEPTUALISM AND OBJECTIVITY IN LOCKE’S ACCOUNT OF NATURAL KINDS A DISSERTATION PRESENTED BY ALLISON KUKLOK TO THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE SUBJECT OF PHILOSOPHY HARVARD UNIVERSITY CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS JUNE 2013 © ALLISON KUKLOK ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Alison Simmons Allison Kuklok Conceptualism and Objectivity in Locke’s Account of Natural Kinds ABSTRACT Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding is considered by many to be the locus classicus of a number of influential arguments for conventionalism, according to which there are no objective, privileged ways of classifying things in the natural world. In the dissertation I argue that Locke never meant to reject natural kinds. Still, the challenge is to explain how, within a metaphysics that explicitly denies mind-independent essences, we can make sense of a privileged, objective sorting of substances. I argue that we do so by looking to Locke’s conception of God as divine architect of created substances. The account I provide is in keeping with Locke’s conceptualism, the view that universals or general natures that correspond to genus and species are to be understood, not as metaphysical constituents in numerically many particulars, but rather only as concepts in the mind. On the reading I defend, objective kinds, on Locke’s view, are grounded in divine ideas, ideas in accordance with which God designs natural things. My account also explains why Locke did not embrace what many consider to be one of the consequences of corpuscularian mechanism, a view about the nature of material bodies to which Locke subscribes. Objective kinds, many argue, have no foothold in a corpuscularian world. On Locke’s account, however, God makes material bodies by organizing their matter such that, I argue, they have the properties iii characteristic of a kind. God’s creative acts thus explain how there can be objective distinctions in kind between corpuscularian bodies. We do not have access to God’s ideas of kinds, nor to the hidden real essences of substances that answer to those ideas. In that case, do the objective kinds play any role in how we classify things? I argue that God places observable marks of distinction in things that reveal how we are to classify them. In addition, God makes us such that we are able to track objective kinds sufficiently well to promote our own interests and survival. I argue that this story is of a piece with Locke’s conception of God as the benevolent creator of man. iv Table of Contents 1. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE DEBATE 1.1 ANTI-REALISM AND LOCKE’S ACCOUNT OF KINDS AND CLASSIFICATION 1 1.2 REALISM, MODERATE REALISM, AND CONCEPTUALISM 4 1.3 FROM CONCEPTUALISM TO CONVENTIONALISM 8 1.4 LOCKE’S ROUTE TO CONVENTIONALISM, TWO READINGS 10 1.5 RECONSIDERING THE ARGUMENTS FOR CONVENTIONALISM 19 2. REAL ESSENCES AND TWO FORMS OF REALISM ABOUT KINDS 2.1 INTRODUCTION 31 2.2 TWO OPINIONS ABOUT REAL ESSENCES 35 2.3 THE TWO OPINIONS RECONSIDERED 38 2.4 REAL ESSENCES AND THE ESSENCES OF SPECIES 40 2.5 ‘SPECIFICK’ REAL ESSENCES 43 2.6 SPECIFICK REAL ESSENCES: THE ORIGIN OF THE CONCEPT 47 2.7 TAKING STOCK AND LOOKING AHEAD 50 2.8 SPECIES NAMES TAKEN FOR THE ‘REPRESENTATIVES’ OF SPECIFICK REAL ESSENCES 52 2.9 NAMES, SPECIFICK REAL ESSENCES, AND JARGON 55 2.10 CONCLUSION 59 3. METHOD AND METAPHYSICS IN LOCKE’S ESSAY 3.1 INTRODUCTION 64 3.2 ORIGINS OF LOCKE’S ESSAY AND ‘THE HISTORICAL PLAIN METHOD’ 67 3.3 CASE STUDY: PRIMARY AND SECONDARY QUALITIES 73 3.4 DIVINE LAW AND THE OBJECTIVITY OF MORALITY 79 v 3.5 CONCLUDING REMARKS 89 4. CONVENTIONALISM AND THE IDEA-THEORETIC ACCOUNT 4.1 INTRODUCTION 92 4.2 THE IDEA-THEORETIC ACCOUNT 94 4.3 ARISTOTELIAN REAL ESSENCES AND PROPERTIES 100 4.4 CONSTANTLY CO-EXISTING QUALITIES AND THE INFERENCE TO A REAL ESSENCE 103 4.5 PROPERTIES ARE DIFFERENTLY DISCOVERED BY DIFFERENT SPEAKERS 107 4.6 PROPERTIES CANNOT BE EXCLUDED FROM THE IDEA OF A SORT 109 4.7 VOLUNTARISM 114 4.8 ADAM AND ZAHAB: AN ORIGIN STORY 117 4.9 DEEP RESEMBLANCE 121 5. STRINGS, PHYSIES AND HOG’S BRISTLES: DOES CORPUSCULARIANISM ENTAIL CONVENTIONALISM? 5.1 INTRODUCTION 125 5.2 THE WATCH PASSAGE AND THE ‘NO OBJECTIVE KINDS’ READING 127 5.3 CORPUSCULARIAN MECHANISM AND OBJECTIVE KINDS 128 5.4 THE NECESSITY OF GENERAL NAMES IN ‘COMPLETING A SPECIES’ 135 5.5 ‘OUR MEASURES OF SPECIES ARE ONLY ABSTRACT IDEAS’ 139 5.6 WATCHES REVISITED 143 6. ARTIFACTS, NATURAL SUBSTANCES, AND GOD’S WORKMANSHIP 6.1 ARTIFACTS AND NATURAL SUBSTANCES 147 6.2 REAL ESSENCES AND THE NAMES OF SUBSTANCES 149 6.3 NATURAL SUBSTANCES AND GOD’S WORKMANSHIP 155 7. REAL AND NOMINAL ESSENCES 7.1 REAL ESSENCES NOT RELATIVE TO NOMINAL ESSENCES 161 vi 8. KNOWING THE REAL KINDS 8.1 MARKS OF DISTINCTION AND GOD’S WORKMANSHIP 167 9. CONCLUSION 182 BIBLIOGRAPHY 186 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation was written under the supervision of Alison Simmons, who enthusiastically encouraged me to go down this rabbit hole, while guiding me past many others. We spent countless hours in her office pouring (and puzzling) over Locke’s Essay, and she spent countless hours reading untold number of drafts that reflected halting progress towards the view I articulate in this dissertation. She asked the right questions, pointed me in the right directions, and often had a better sense of what I was aiming towards than I had the means to convey. She is that combination of grace, humor, empathy and intellect that is rare in an advisor. This dissertation would not have been possible without the guidance of Jeff McDonough, who shed much needed light on some of the more vexed questions raised by the project I pursue therein, questions I fear I have yet to adequately address. I owe a great debt to Bernhard Nickel, who was not afraid to coax me out of my shell. It is due to his persistent encouragement, attention, and generosity that I weathered – and survived! – the darkest, coldest seasons of dissertating. I cannot imagine a more helpful, sympathetic, and incisive interlocutor. My many conversations with Ned Hall on views on kinds and classification in contemporary metaphysics were enormously helpful for getting a sense of the lay of what is admittedly a still foreign land. Any errors are, of course, my own. viii Special thanks are due to Jiewuh Song and Jeremy David Fix – fellow night owls – for fielding last-minute queries. I am grateful to the founding members of the Harvard early modern reading group – Colin Chamberlain, Tom Fehse, and Charles More – for their friendship, encouragement, and conversation over the years. Many thanks to members of the Harvard job market seminar – Susanna Siegel, Matthew Boyle, Sharon Berry, Nico Cornell, Jon Litland, Eylem Özaltun, and Paul Schofield – for reading earlier drafts of chapters found here. Members of the Harvard workshop in metaphysics and epistemology offered helpful comments and raised challenging questions: Austin Booth, Cheryl Chen, Melissa Frankel, Marc Gasser, Rusty Jones, Enoch Lambert, Céline LeBoeuf, Arnon Levy, Doug Marshall, Elizabeth Miller, Dick Moran, Alex Prescott-Couch, Mark Richard, Zeynep Soysal and Kritika Yegnashankaran. I also wish to thank members of the early modern philosophy community beyond Harvard for their feedback at a number of conferences: Ruth Boeker, Martha Bolton, Patrick Connolly, Daniel Garber, Jessica Gordon-Roth, Dai Heide, Sam Levey, Ed McCann, Susan Mills, Lewis Powell, Don Rutherford, Matthew Stuart, Thomas Vinci, Shelley Weinberg, Aaron Wilson, and Kenneth Winkler. I would be remiss if I neglected to mention Marie Newhouse, Suni Hatcher, James King, and Melissa Machit, all friends who were there for me. Finally, I am grateful to my parents, and my sister, for their love and encouragement. ix Chapter I An Introduction to the Debate §1.1 Anti-Realism and Locke’s account of Kinds and Classification At the heart of a widely accepted reading of Locke’s metaphysics is the claim that we cannot be mistaken in regard to classifying things in the natural world because there are no kinds, on Locke’s view, apart from those reflected in our activity of grouping things together. Locke, the story goes, is an antirealist, and so thinks that there are no independent standards to which we can appeal in evaluating the accuracy of a classificatory scheme. That is not to say that Locke doesn’t tout the value, even the necessity, of the enterprise of classification. Locke would be the first to acknowledge that it promotes our understanding of the natural world. Nor is it lost on him that classification is necessary to the improvement of knowledge, for otherwise we would never proceed beyond claims about the particular things that come under our observation.1 Nevertheless, how we group things together into kinds is something to be determined on pragmatic grounds. When we have reason, then, to prefer one scheme of classification over another, it is only because it better serves our particular aims and interests, given the kinds of creatures we are.