Naturalization of the Mind after Locke

Locke’s career has been increasingly recognized by historians as contributing not only to the history of philosophy but also to the history of science and medicine. Over his life Locke engaged with medical practice (working with the prominent physician Thomas Sydenham) as well as with natural philosophy more broadly (he studied with Thomas Willis at Oxford, and was an active member of the Royal Society, working closely with the likes of Robert Boyle). While this does not make him a natural philosopher per se – his best-known work, the Essay concerning Human Understanding, explicitly rules out “physical consideration of the mind” and has a strongly practical and moral focus – it is nevertheless the case that Locke’s investigations of the mind, particularly his "logic of ideas" and associationist psychology, were immensely influential in programs for scientific study of the mind in the next generations, in England, Scotland and on the Continent. In this symposium we begin with Locke himself, and continue with several examinations of different Lockean and post-Lockean projects in the history of the sciences (or ‘anatomies’) of mind. We especially emphasize eighteenth-century appropriations of Locke that push his empiricism further towards a neurological account of mind, which Locke himself might not have countenanced. This panel has participants from five different countries, includes participants from all stages of their careers (from a graduate student to a professor emeritus) and has a gender balance of four men / three women.