Slavery and Absolutism in Locke

Russell’s Absolutism vs.(?) Structuralism

Along with Frege, Russell maintained an absolutist stance regarding the subject matter of mathematics, revealed rather than imposed, or proposed, by logical analysis. The Fregean definition of cardinal number, for example, is viewed as (essentially) correct, not merely adequate for mathematics. And Dedekind’s “structuralist” views come in for criticism in the Principles. But, on reflection, Rus...

John Locke and Modern Life

Locke on Consciousness

Locke’s theory of consciousness is often appropriated as a forerunner of present-day Higher-Order Perception (HOP) theories, but not much is said about it beyond that. We offer an interpretation of Locke’s account of consciousness that portrays it as crucially different from current-day HOP theory, both in detail and in spirit. In this paper, it is argued that there are good historical and phil...

Locke on measurement.

Like many virtuosi in his day, the English philosopher John Locke maintained an active interest in metrology. Yet for Locke, this was no mere hobby: questions concerning measurement were also implicated in his ongoing philosophical project to develop an account of human understanding. This paper follows Locke's treatment of four problems of measurement from the early Drafts A and B of the Essay...

Treponematosis and African Slavery.

The so-called unitarian (or unicist) concept of treponematosis emphasizes the evolutionary relationship of yaws, pinta, endemic syphilis, and sporadic syphilis, regarding them all as varieties or syndromes of one disease caused by one parasite, Treponema pallidum (Hudson, 1946). The unitarian view accepts the fact that there is no known test by which the parasites of these treponemal infections...