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" [Dans le True Intellectual System] Cudworth discusses the principle that nothing can come from nothing, and its relevance to debates about atheism and theism. He first identifies three senses in which he thinks it is true that nothing can come from nothing. First (P1), no thing that begins to exist can do so without an efficient cause, which is distinct from itself (TIS 738- 9). Second (P2), “Nothing can be Efficiently Caused or Produced, by that which hath not in it at least Equal, (if not Greater) Perfection, as also Sufficient Power to Produce the same” (TIS 739). This is clearly related to a principle that Descartes relies on in the central argument of the Third Meditation, and the similar one at work in his argument for God’s existence in part four of his Discourse. The third good sense, according to Cudworth, is about material rather than efficient causes. Thus (P3), “in all Natural Generations and Productions out of Preexistent Matter, (without a Divine Creation) there can never be any New Substance or Real Entity brought out of Non-Existence into Being” (TIS 740). Only divine creation can produce a new substance.
Despite his belief in those senses of the principle, Cudworth denies other senses. In particular he denies (P4), the view that no real entity can ever be made to exist which did not previously exist (TIS 746). Against the most general notion that nothing can come into being, Cudworth argues from experience. We come to have new thoughts, for example. So the principle would have to be restricted to “Substantial Things” (TIS 747). Still, Cudworth thinks even this revised P4 is not well grounded, and offers a sort of diagnosis of why people believe it, including the claims that people confuse senses of the principle, that they overgeneralize from what is true of artificial things (which are always made from pre- existing matter), and that they overgeneralize from that fact that we and other imperfect created beings lack the power to create new substances.
The further arguments of the section, beyond the initial discussion of principles, have a complex overall structure that I cannot hope to capture here. I do, however, want to pick out an example. Cudworth at one point considers an atheist view according to which (1) only new modifications, not new substances, can be made ; (2) matter is the only substance; and (3) everything else in the world is made out of matter (TIS 757). Here we see how, for Cudworth, atheism and materialism are intertwined issues. We also see an example of his thought that the denial of creation ex nihilo is a central issue for his opponents— claim 1 is denying the possibility of creation ex nihilo, as indeed was P4.
Against the view summarized by those three claims, Cudworth offers several reasons. One objection is that this view has things being made without efficient causes. They clearly have material causes. But they do not, Cudworth thinks, have efficient ones— all there is, is matter, and there is no “Active Principle” (TIS 758).
Even if we ignore that (say by allowing matter to be self- moving), matter and motion together could not produce any new thing. For this to happen “would be to bring Something out of Nothing, in the Impossible Sense” (TIS 758). I take it that the relevant sort of impossibility here has to do with P2: matter and motion are simply not perfect enough to give rise to sense and knowledge. Thus, a principle about the causation of perfections drives this aspect of Cudworth’s rejection of materialism." (pp.132-133)
"That basic argument for God’s existence is a sort of cosmological argument. Given our knowledge of our own existence, and the principle (of which we are supposed to have intuitive knowledge) that “bare nothing can no more produce any real Being, than it can be equal to two right Angles” (Essay 4.10.3), Locke concludes that “from Eternity there has been something” (Essay 4.10.3), which he calls an “eternal Being” [...] The principle on which Locke relies here is roughly equivalent to Cudworth’s P1.
It is well known that there is a gap, or at least a significant unstated premise, in Locke’s argument. Perhaps Locke’s premises allow him to establish that at any time in the past, there has been some being or other. Locke concludes more strongly, however, that there is one being that has existed at all past times. [...] Locke seems to think that everyone agrees that there is an eternal being. Even atheists think this— they just think the eternal being is matter. Perhaps this helps explain the weakness of Locke’s initial argument— the existence of an eternal being is just not, he thinks, a contentious claim that one needs to worry about establishing. The real issue is what that eternal being is like. That, indeed, is the focus of most of Locke’s chapter.
Locke’s cosmological argument manages to be noticeably Cartesian while departing from Descartes’s own cosmological argument. Locke and Descartes both proceed by observing something we know of, and then looking for a causal explanation of that thing. In Descartes’s case, that thing is “the idea of a supremely perfect and infinite being” (AT 7:46). Locke begins, however, from each individual’s knowledge of their own existence: “it is beyond Question, that Man has a clear Perception of his own Being ; he knows certainly, that he exists, and that he is something” (Essay 4.10.2). Though Descartes was not the only philosopher ever to think about our knowledge of our own existence, there does appear to be a notable echo of the cogito here." (pp.134-135)
"One might compare Locke’s argument to the discussion in the Third Meditation of “whether I possess some power enabling me to bring it about that I who now exist will still exist a little while from now” [...] That, like Locke’s argument, starts from the existence of the individual arguing. But unlike Locke’s argument, it proceeds by asking about the power of existing in the future, rather than about what (in the past) explains my present existence." (note 7 p.205)
"Section 7 criticizes the practical utility of arguments for the existence of God that depend crucially upon an idea of God. Locke does not consider the quality of the arguments themselves. But he does say that it is an ill way of establishing this Truth, and silencing Atheists, to lay the whole stress of so important a Point, as this, upon that sole Foundation: And take some Men’s having that Idea of GOD in their Minds, (for ’tis evident, some Men have none, and some worse than none, and the most very different,) for the only proof of a Deity. (Essay 4.10.7)
This seems to be directed at Descartes. Locke’s claim is not that it is bad to give an argument for the existence of God that begins from the idea of God, but that it is ineffective to rely only on such arguments if the goal is to confute atheists. Descartes, with his two arguments from the idea of God, seemingly does just that. One might suggest that Locke’s criticism also applies to Cudworth, who gives at one point a cosmological argument that focuses on the explanation of the existence of the idea of God (TIS 766– 7). However, Cudworth seems also to be concerned there with the causal explanation of understanding more generally, and elsewhere endorses a more general version of the cosmological argument (TIS 727). The near-constant focus on arguments from the idea of God that we see in Descartes’s work is not present in Cudworth’s." (p.135)
"Locke’s argument for the existence of God appears late in the Essay. In book 1, Locke rejects the claim that religious knowledge is innate. In book 4, he is finally in a position to give his own account of religious knowledge, including knowledge of the existence of God. That placement of the argument for the existence of God is in contrast to Descartes’s procedure. Descartes gives arguments for the existence of God as part of first philosophy, in the Meditations and early in the Principles. For Descartes, one ought, if proceeding systematically, to start by proving God’s existence and move forward from there.
That is not to say that Locke’s Essay before 4.10 is a purely secular work, making no reference to God. Indeed, quite the opposite seems to be true.9 Locke relies on the existence of a providential God who designed the world when making various arguments, from book 1 onward. Here are several examples, just from book 2: the argument about whether the mind is always thinking relies on a belief about what God would not do, which is grounded in a view about the wisdom of God (Essay 2.1.15); the argument of Essay 2.2.3 relies on a claim about “the Wisdom and Power of the Maker” ; the discussion of pain in Essay 2.7.4 notes a “new occasion of admiring the Wisdom and Goodness of our Maker”; the “proper Functions” of the sense organ considered later in the section provide another example, for they are the functions for which it was intended and designed by God ; Essay 2.21.48 on determination and freedom has an argument “else he would be under the determination of some other than himself” that appears to rely on the view that God would not have placed us in such a situation (see Essay 2.21.53 and 2.21.65); and Essay 2.23.12 remarks on what the “infinite wise Contriver of us” has done in designing our senses and faculties.
One might then suggest that Locke is proving in Essay 4.10 what he earlier relies upon. It is not clear, however, that Locke could do that, or that he tries to. Even if all the arguments of Essay 4.10 work, they show the existence of God, and something about his attributes. Locke does not try to prove claims about God’s wise and providential design of the world.
One further question about the early sections of Essay 4.10 is how much Locke thinks he has established in them. Clearly he thinks he has shown, by the argument he reiterates at the end of Essay 4.10.7, that there is a first cause, which is an eternal being. This knowledge is demonstrative, and thus of a high level of certainty: “we more certainly know that there is a GOD, than that there is any thing else without us” (Essay 4.10.6). But how much are we supposed to know, at this point, about what God is like? On the one hand, Locke has argued that God is “the most powerful” being (Essay 4.10.4) and that (because we have perception and knowledge) God must be a “knowing intelligent Being” (Essay 4.10.5).10 On the other, as we will see, he begins soon afterward to defend his view against the suggestion that the first cause is actually incogitative." (pp.135-137)
"The main task of Essay 4.10.9–10, indeed 9– 12, is to answer the question, could the first cause have been an incogitative material being ? Locke’s answer is a firm “no.”." (p.137)
"Though it is not obvious that Locke is attacking some particular philosopher here, one might think of him as criticizing Hobbes. At least until the 1651 Leviathan, Hobbes believed in a first cause, the nature of which we do not know. He made no claim about that first cause being a thinking thing. Indeed, he said that knowledge and understanding could not be attributed literally to God (L 31.27). Thus, one might think that Hobbes’s first cause is an incogitative being, which is somehow the ultimate cause of the thinking beings in the world." (p.139)
"In his discussion of “the Achilles of the Atheists,” Cudworth offers an argument similar to that of Essay 4.10.10:
if Matter as such, have no Animal Sense and Conscious Understanding, Essentially belonging to it, (which no Atheists as yet have had the Impudence to assert) then can no Motion or Modification of Matter, no Contexture of Atoms, Possibly beget Sense and Understanding, Soul and Mind; because this would be to bring Something out of Nothing, in the Impossible Sense, or to suppose Something to be Made by It self without a Cause. [...]
Cudworth argues that matter and motion cannot give rise to sense and understanding. He supports this claim with a discussion of the principle that you cannot get something from nothing. In particular, Cudworth thinks the atomic materialism he is discussing violates a principle (P2) about the causation of perfections. Sense and understanding are more perfect than motion and the modifications of matter, so the latter cannot cause the existence of the former.
Cudworth’s argument relies on a hierarchy of perfection, and a principle about what can cause what, given their levels of perfection.
There is good evidence that Locke has something similar in mind in Essay 4.10.10. Look at how Locke ends the section:
Since therefore whatsoever is the first eternal Being must necessarily be cogitative ; And whatsoever is first of all Things, must necessarily contain in it, and actually have, at least, all the Perfections that can ever after exist ; nor can it ever give to another any perfection that it hath not, either actually in it self, or at least in a higher degree ; It necessarily follows, that the first eternal Being cannot be Matter. [...]
Here Locke is giving something like Cudworth’s argument. Of course, one might take Locke to be giving two arguments in the section, one based on inconceivability and the other on degrees of perfection. I suggest it makes more sense to think of the section as unified. The reasoning about perfection is, on this reading, the underlying support for the claims of inconceivability. Thus, we cannot conceive of the less perfect causing the more perfect, because such causation is impossible. If we read the section this way, we also avoid concluding that Locke here gave the sort of simple inconceivability argument he criticized elsewhere." (pp.142-143)
"The Essay illustrates Locke’s commitment to two related hierarchies of perfection: a hierarchy of beings, and a more fundamental hierarchy of features of those beings. The hierarchy of beings stretches from God, to spirits which are superior to us, to us, to other animals, and on down. Those are the ways in which kinds of things generally line up, but we should think of Locke’s hierarchy of beings as fundamentally a hierarchy of individuals, not of kinds. Locke thinks that human individuals are usually more perfect than non- human animals, but he is not committed to that always being the case. That hierarchy of individuals itself depends, however, upon a hierarchy of features.
God is atop Locke’s hierarchy of beings. He has “perfect Wisdom” (Essay 1.4.21). More generally, the “Degrees or Extent, wherein we ascribe Existence, Power, Wisdom, and all other Perfection, (which we can have any Ideas of) to that Sovereign Being, which we call God” are “all boundless and infinite” (Essay 2.23.34). The perfect being’s features are perfections or excellencies, each of which he has to that boundless extent. Moreover God “is infinitely more remote in the real Excellency of his Nature, from the highest and perfectest of all created Beings, than the greatest Man, nay purest Seraphim, is from the most contemptible part of Matter” (Essay 3.6.11). As we see there, Locke talks about spirits which are inferior to God but superior to us: “Cherubims, and Seraphims, and infinite sorts of Spirits above us” (Essay 4.3.17).
Humans rank below angels in the hierarchy of perfection, but above many other creatures. The reason for our place in the hierarchy of beings is our mental capacities’ place in the hierarchy of features. Humans have “the perfection of rational thinking” (Essay 2.1.16). Memory is another perfection, though it may be possessed in a greater degree by higher beings: “For who can doubt, but God may communicate to those glorious Spirits, his immediate Attendants, any of his Perfections, in what proportion he pleases, as far as created finite Beings are capable” (Essay 2.10.9). God’s perfection here is omniscience, and the memory of created beings is their lesser version of this. Meanwhile, the power of abstraction is another excellency that non- human animals lack (Essay 2.11.5). More generally, “the most excellent Part of his [God’s] Workmanship” is “our Understandings” (Essay 4.18.5).
It is clear that Locke is committed to hierarchies of perfection.That itself does not commit him to the principle about causation and perfection that is needed for the argument of Essay 4.10.10. Locke was familiar with such principles from the work of Cudworth and Descartes. Cudworth, as we saw, thought that for a less perfect thing to cause a more perfect one “would be to bring Something out of Nothing, in the Impossible Sense, or to suppose Something to be Made by It self without a Cause” (TIS 758). If this happened, then nothing would explain the existence of the perfection of the new thing— the cause could not explain it, and nothing else could either. Moreover, a principle about causation and perfection had already been at work earlier in Locke’s chapter, when he argued in sections 4 and 5 that the first being must be the most powerful, and also knowing and intelligent. Locke’s stated principle in section 4 is that “what had its Being and Beginning from another, must also have all that which is in, and belongs to its Being from another too. All the Powers it has, must be owing to, and received from the same Source.” “Received from” is key here— Locke wants to rule, out, for example, the case in which an unthinking first cause gives rise to a thinking being. How exactly he proposes to do that is not exactly clear in section 4, but the reasoning about perfection that becomes more explicit later would make sense of that too. Though the principle about the causation of perfection is not visible throughout the Essay, it is something that Locke is clearly committed to in Essay 4.10." (pp.144-146)
" [Locke] distinguishes and considers versions of the material God view. The question used to distinguish the options seems to be, how could a material first being be a thinking being ? The options are that matter is essentially and irreducibly thinking (either all of it, or just one atom), or that the material God is a material system, the thought of which emerges from the structure and motion of its parts. Ultimately Locke thinks that neither of these options is acceptable, and thus answers “no” to the guiding question of these sections, could the first cause be a cogitative material being ?
Locke might seem just to be working through possible things one might think in this realm, but there were, in fact, philosophers of the time who believed that God was material. Hobbes, as we saw in Chapter 2, held in the 1660s that God was a corporeal spirit. One might also wonder whether Locke had Spinoza in mind here. Several of Spinoza’s early English readers understood him to think there was exactly one substance (which he called God) that was material in the same way that familiar bodies are (only larger). Spinoza, thus understood, was a materialist about all creatures, nature as a whole, and God as well. More had offered such a materialist interpretation in 1679, saying that “Spinoza means by God nothing more than infinite matter necessarily acting by itself.” Though we do not know how Locke understood Spinoza, More’s reading gives us a way to see that Locke’s arguments against a material cogitative God might have been aimed in part at Spinoza." (p.147)
"In section 14, Locke considers the view that every particle of matter thinks, and has always done so. He notes that his opponents are unlikely to accept this, because it involves many eternal thinking beings, not one single material God: “there would be as many eternal thinking Beings, as there are Particles of Matter, and so an infinity of Gods.” If the material God theorist is aiming for a view on which there is a material God, one single first thinking being, Locke seems right that holding this position is not a good option for them, as there is nothing to distinguish any one of the particles as the material God. Despite that, Locke does suggest that this is the best way for his opponents to explain how the material God can think: “if they will not allow Matter as Matter, that is, every particle of Matter to be as well cogitative, as extended, they will have as hard a task to make out to their own Reasons, a cogitative Being out of incogitative Particles, as an extended Being, out of unextended Parts, if I may so speak”." (p.148)
"Locke distinguishes and rejects two versions of this view in Essay 4.10.15.
The first version holds that the single thinking atom was the first being, and that it produced the rest of matter. Locke notes that there is creation ex nihilo on this account, and argues that the materialist should reject this option because they reject such creation. Indeed, it is striking how much Locke takes the materialists he is engaging with to be worried about creation ex nihilo. [...]
Spinoza, meanwhile, does explicitly criticize talk of creation ex nihilo, but he does this only to argue that the ‘ex’ is misleading, its use suggesting that there is a thing called ‘nothing’ from which new things have been created. He argues that one should instead understand creation as “an activity in which no causes concur except the efficient” (Spinoza 1985, 334).38 Spinoza did reject creation, at least as others understood the notion. Maybe Hobbes did so too." (p.149)
"The second version of the single atom view holds that all matter is eternal, but that only one atom of it can think. This avoids the alleged problem about creation, but there is now a question as to why this one atom can think when the other parts of matter cannot. Locke says this is absurd, and that there is no reason to say it— even if this might be possible, why think it is true ?
In addition, Locke seems to argue that all matter has the same nature, so there cannot be one atom with a different nature: “Every particle of Matter, as Matter, is capable of all the same Figures and Motions as any other; and I challenge any one in his Thoughts, to add any Thing else to one above the other” (Essay 4.10.15). It is unclear, however, why one should not say that the special atom, as matter, “is capable of all the same Figures and Motions as any other” atom, but because it is also thinking matter, is also capable of thought. Consider an analogy: a dog, as an animal, is a living thing, but as a dog is capable of barking. Locke may well be right that it is hard to find reasons and evidence for the one thinking atom view, but his explicit arguments against it are questionable." (p.150)
"The second version of the single atom view holds that all matter is eternal, but that only one atom of it can think. This avoids the alleged problem about creation, but there is now a question as to why this one atom can think when the other parts of matter cannot. Locke says this is absurd, and that there is no reason to say it — even if this might be possible, why think it is true ?
In addition, Locke seems to argue that all matter has the same nature, so there cannot be one atom with a different nature:
“Every particle of Matter, as Matter, is capable of all the same Figures and Motions as any other; and I challenge any one in his Thoughts, to add any Thing else to one above the other” (Essay 4.10.15).
It is unclear, however, why one should not say that the special atom, as matter, “is capable of all the same Figures and Motions as any other” atom, but because it is also thinking matter, is also capable of thought. Consider an analogy: a dog, as an animal, is a living thing, but as a dog is capable of barking. Locke may well be right that it is hard to find reasons and evidence for the one thinking atom view, but his explicit arguments against it are questionable.
These versions of the material God view take some or all matter to be fundamentally and irreducibly thinking. That was —despite what we saw of Cavendish’s view in Chapter 4— an unusual choice for a seventeenth- century materialist. The more obvious, mechanistic approach was to say that a properly organized material system gave rise to thought. In Essay 4.10.16 Locke discusses a version of that view, on which the organization of a material system is used to account for the thought of the first being, the material God.
Locke disapproves: to suppose the eternal thinking Being, to be nothing else but a composition of Particles of Matter, each whereof is incogitative, is to ascribe all the Wisdom and Knowledge of that eternal Being, only to the juxta- position of parts; than which, nothing can be more absurd. For unthinking Particles of Matter, however put together, can have nothing thereby added to them, but a new relation of Position, which ’tis impossible should give thought and knowledge to them. (Essay 4.10.16)
According to Locke, the wisdom, knowledge, and thought of the eternal being cannot be explained by the arrangement of the parts of a material being. Indeed, Locke thinks that no amount of wisdom, knowledge, and thought, no matter how small, could be explained this way— it is not the high degree of God’s possession of these features that is at issue. Why does he think this ?
I suggest that thoughts about degrees of perfection are again at work in the background here, supporting the impossibility claim. Reading the argument in this way, Locke’s claim of absurdity would be explained. This argument would be like that in Essay 4.10.10, though there would still be a difference between them. The argument in section 10 is about the efficient causation of thought. The argument in section 16 appears to be about a synchronic grounding relation, which one might want to distinguish from efficient causation. Locke seems inclined to assimilate the two cases though. Indeed, his final comment about a new relation of position, a rearrangement of the particles, not giving thought to them, suggests an inclination to think about this as an efficient causation case.
Section 17 offers a further argument against the view of God as an organized material system. Either, Locke says, the parts of that system are at rest or they are in motion. If they are at rest, then this system cannot think any more than an atom can: that is, merely having a number of atoms, or even a structure of them, cannot introduce thought. The second option is that (some of) the parts of the system are in motion. Against that, Locke offers an argument that turns on the regulation and guiding of motion. The core idea is that thought cannot be produced by unguided motion —how could the parts possibly move in the right way if they do not know which way to move ?
Here Locke does not quite argue that it would be impossible for such a system to think. Rather he argues that, even if it were able to think, it would not be able to think well— there would be no rationality or wisdom in such a system. Locke’s reason concerns the regulation of motion. Even according to the materialist, only the right motions will produce thoughts. But, Locke argues, the right motions will only be produced if the matter is suitably guided. That guiding cannot happen in this particular materialist picture though, for there is nothing to guide the particles of the system.
Locke is once again echoing Cudworth, among others. The idea that matter needs some external, immaterial guide to produce the features of the world we live in is a prominent one in the True Intellectual System. Recall, indeed, that it is Cudworth’s central reason for the existence of plastic natures, the immaterial beings he thinks guide the workings of the material parts of the created world. Moreover, there are again connections to Descartes: consider his comment in the First Meditation on what we would be like as epistemic agents if there were no God (AT 7:21). According to Descartes, if I were merely the result of a chance combination of material objects, I would be extremely imperfect epistemically, no good at all at forming true beliefs about the world. I would, that is —and here we see the connection to Locke— not be able to think well, if I were such an unguided material system." (pp.150-152)
"The metaphysical machinery of Essay 4.10 sits a little oddly in Locke’s book." (p.158)
"It might be the case that we are able to think because we have incorporeal minds, and it might be the case that we are able to think because God made matter in us think. We do not know either of those options to be true, but we also do not know either of them to be false. Thus, Locke is in an important sense agnostic about the nature of the human mind. He is not agnostic about every question about the mind, and is certainly willing to reject views about its nature, but thinks that two radically different views of its nature are possible, as far as we know.
The most obvious place to see that agnosticism is Essay 4.3.6, where Locke says that God might have made us think by superadding thought to matter. The agnosticism also fits well with much Locke says elsewhere in the Essay. Essay 2.23 emphasizes that mind and body are both, indeed equally, mysterious. When Locke gives his famous account of personal identity, in Essay 2.27, he gives an account in terms of psychological connections, which is compatible with the mind being either material or immaterial. [...]
Locke’s position, then, is that some immaterial minds exist, but we do not know whether human minds are immaterial." (pp.159-160)
"Though we do not know our nature, the analogy with God suggests that our minds are immaterial. This is far from a proof, and does not contradict Locke’s claim that we might be wholly material, but it could still give some reason to think the dualist account is the more probable one." (p.161)
"Human minds are better than those of non- human animals because humans have the same cognitive abilities (perception, memory) and some more (abstraction, reason). In this respect, at least, Locke’s picture is more Hobbesian than Cartesian. Moreover, when talking about the hierarchy of perfection, Locke suggests “that there is a gradual connexion of one with another, without any great or discernable gaps between” (Essay 4.16.12)." (pp.165-166)
"Locke shows he can give his explanations of the mind without first committing to the view that the mind is immaterial. Here we can once more contrast Locke with Descartes, who thinks that establishing the immaterial nature of the human mind is an early and basic part of his philosophical project. Indeed, we can also contrast Locke with Hobbes, who seems to base his psychological account on a materialist presumption." (p.174)
"There are, then, several places in which Locke’s work could have helped a seventeenth- century reader to see how materialism is a genuinely possible account of the nature of the human mind. Immaterial minds may have seemed to be needed to account for innate ideas, for example, or non- imagistic ones. If those things simply do not need to be accounted for, the apparent need to believe in an immaterial mind goes away. This is not to say that Locke believed in the truth of materialism, or that he argued for it. But it does seem correct that one thing Locke’s Essay does, is show the reader that materialism is a possible position." (p.175)
-Stewart Duncan, Materialism from Hobbes to Locke, Oxford University Press, 2022, 233 pages.
