ABSTRACT
Since the publication of the Essay, commentators have engaged in a series of debates as to what Locke meant by contending that ‘God can, if he pleases, superadd to [a system of] Matter [fitly disposed] a Faculty of Thinking’ (IV.iii.6). His contemporary critics read this remark as suggesting a materialistic view. In IV.iii.6, however, Locke affirms that, given our ‘Notions’ of ‘Matter’ and ‘Thinking’, it is epistemically possible for any type of substance, whether material or immaterial, to be granted the power of thought (IV.iii.6). Reflection provides ‘another set of Ideas’ (II.1.4) that are distinct from those we acquire through sensation. The ideas of mind and body that we derive from these two sources are both ‘primary’ ideas in that each is considered to be conceptually basic, neither being explainable in terms of the other. They are ‘distinct Ideas’ (II.i.4), but not contradictory in their content. Consequently, materialism and substance dualism are both conceivable ‘in respect of our Notions’: ‘[i]t [is], in respect of our Notions, not much more remote from our Comprehension to conceive, that GOD can, if he pleases, superadd to [a system of] Matter [fitly disposed] a Faculty of Thinking, than that he should superadd to it another [immaterial] Substance with a Faculty of Thinking’ (IV.iii.6).
