Locke and Malebranche
Locke and Malebranche
Intelligibility and Empiricism
This chapter addresses the issue of whether Locke’s own empiricist theory of ideas offers, as Locke often suggested, a more intelligible way of explaining human understanding than Malebranche’s doctrine of Vision in God. Drawing on Locke’s statements about the corpuscularian hypothesis, it argues that although the empiricist theory may satisfy some criteria of intelligibility, it is forced to recognize the existence of processes that are ‘incomprehensible’; to that extent, Locke’s theory of ideas runs parallel with his mature philosophy of matter. The epistemic status of the empiricist theory of ideas is thus more problematic than it is often taken to be.
Keywords: empiricism, vision in God, corpuscularian hypothesis, theory of ideas, matter, incomprehensibility
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