Abstract Summary
How does Locke contribute to the development of projects for a science of the mind, even though he seems to reject or at least bracket off such projects himself? A canonical empiricist, Locke nevertheless goes out of his way to state that his project to investigate and articulate the ‘logic of ideas’ is not a scientific project: “I shall not at present meddle with the Physical consideration of the Mind” (Essay, I.i.2). Locke further specifies that his analysis of mental processes will not engage with knowledge of the brain (even though he had been the student of Thomas Willis). Now, Kant seemed to make an elementary mistake, given Locke’s clear statement, when he claimed that Locke’s project was a “physiology of the understanding” (KRV, Preface to A edition). If Locke’s project was not a physiology of the understanding, what might this have been? Thus I examine, not the well-studied fortunes of Lockean thinking matter, but Locke’s impact on scientific treatments of the mind, including in the sense of a ‘naturalization’ of the mind. Because if Kant made this charge, many 18th-century thinkers in fact positively treated Locke as their great forerunner in psychological fields, Charles Bonnet and Joseph Priestley among them, just as some prominent physicians such as Cabanis claimed to be ‘finishing the job’ that Locke had started in, e.g. their materialist theories of the passions. The ‘Locke Problem’ here is: how can one reconcile empiricism and claims about cerebral processes, while seeking to remain a Lockean?
