Locke's theory of perception

246           Public Lectures

Locke rightly believed that the Cartesian doctrine of the
“nowhereness” of the mind made it impossible to conceive
how the mind communicates with the body, which obviously
is somewhere. In other words, one might say that Locke
holds to what we have called a “smear” theory, not of the
atom, but of the mind, which argues that though mind is in
space and moves through it, no clear-cut boundaries can rea-
sonably be assigned it, as they can be attributed to material
objects. I think we could say that the mind accompanies and
is in the body much in the same way that the sound of a rac-
ing car accompanies and is in it. Though this sound seems
to move with the car and is generally where it is, yet, like
the mind, it cannot be said to have a shape. The mind can-
not be definitely circumscribed, because it is a kind of ethereal
substance capable of subtle dilations as when it expands into
all parts of the organism flooding it with warm feelings and
sensitizing its peripheries, and also capable, as when one
sleeps, of “retiring from the senses, out of reach of those
motions in the organs of sense.”¹ Hence Locke would en-
dorse the statement that the more incorporated or embodied
a mind becomes, the more definite become its position and
shape in space ; whereas the more purely mental it becomes
in retirement from bodily existence, the less definite become
its spatial properties; such that God, for example, who ac-
cording to Locke is pure incorporeal mind, is simply every-
where at once, without delimited position or date.

Though it is true that many of Locke’s teachings in this
regard seem to locate the human mind within—or near—the
organism as a whole, yet most of his description tends to-
ward concentrating it, if not confining it, in the brain, which
he calls the “presence room” or audience chamber of the
mind. Into it, messengers from the external world of matter
ɪ ii, 19, 4.

<<   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   >>

More intriguing information