Canadian Journal of Philosophy

A Note on InterpretationAuthor(s): Jonathan BennettSource: Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Dec., 1982), pp. 753-755Published by: Canadian Journal of PhilosophyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40231291 .

Accessed: 16/06/2014 22:58

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Canadian Journal of Philosophy is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toCanadian Journal of Philosophy.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.250 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 22:58:47 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

A Note on Interpretation

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY Volume XII, Number 4, December 1982

JONATHAN BENNETT, Syracuse University

In John Campbell's treatment of Locke's views on primary and secon- dary qualities there is a point of method which ought to be taken up.1

Concerning Locke's statement that ideas of primary qualities do while those of secondary ones don't resemble (qualities of) bodies, I once wrote:

Since ideas cannot resemble either bodies or qualities of bodies, this must be either discarded or transformed. The only plausible transformation is into

something like the following: in causally explaining ideas of primary qualities, one uses the same words in describing the causes as in describing the effects

(shape-ideas etc. are caused by shapes etc.); whereas in causally explaining ideas of secondary qualities one must describe the causes in one vocabulary and the effects in another (colour-ideas etc. are caused by shapes etc.) If this is not what Locke's "resemblance" formulations of the primary/secondary con- trast mean, then I can find no meaning in them.

1 John Campbell, 'Locke on Qualities, Canadian journal of Philosophy, 10 (1980) 567-85

753

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.250 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 22:58:47 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Jonathan Bennett

Campbell says:

I have little to add to this. The need to resort to the method of interpretation- by-transformation is in my view prima facie evidence of misreading of Locke,

(p. 583 n.)

I should have said that the alternative was to declare the 'resemblance' thesis not meaningless but false: the Interpretation by transformation' to which Campbell objects is an attempt to preserve the truth of this part of Locke's doctrine.

The place of this in Campbell's whole discussion is unclear. In this matter he brackets Mackie with Alexander, in contrast to me, whereas, in fact, Alexander's interpretation and mine are closely similar and Mackie's quite different from both. But Campbell's insensitivity to detail in those he criticizes is not my main point.

Compare my attempt to preserve the 'resemblance' thesis with

Campbell's own. His rests its whole weight on attributing to Locke the view that 'our idea of a quality "resembles" that quality just in case it is a

quality fundamental in causal explanation' (582). Are we supposed to take '...resembles...' in its normal meaning, and to accept the thesis that, thus construed, it holds between the very same idea-quality pairs as does '...is of ..., the latter being fundamental in causal explanation'? Campbell offers not a word of defence of this astonishing thesis, or of the attribution of it to Locke.

I don't think Campbell is attributing that absurdity to Locke. Rather, I think he holds that when Locke says that an idea 'resembles' a quality all he means is that the idea is of the quality and the latter is fundamental in causal explanation. That is a vast deformation in the meaning of 'resembles' - a clear case of interpretation by transformation - but

Campbell doesn't call attention to that fact about it. Earlier on that page he writes:

We are now asking whether to each simple idea there corresponds one fine

structure, underlying the appropriate quality. A natural way of expressing this

relationship, closer than conformance, is, I suggest, in terms of resemblance. So we should not be surprised to find Locke insisting that "the ideas of primary qualities of bodies are resemblances of them (etc.)." (582)

Thafs all. Campbell doesn't say why he thinks it natural to use the word 'resemblance' in this way. He has announced that 'the crucial test of any interpretation of Locke's primary/secondary split is its ability to cope with the "resemblance" thesis of ll.viii.15' (579), and ends up claiming that his interpretation 'adequately and easily copes with Locke's "resemblance" thesis' (582). But the trick has been worked purely by the

754

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.250 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 22:58:47 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

A Note On Interpretation

unargued suggestion that It is natural to use 'resemblance' to mean something which it patently doesn't mean.

Campbell and I both have to transform 'resemble' in order to make Locke's resemblance thesis possibly true. One difference between our transformations is that mine takes the resemblance thesis to have something to do with 'resemblance' in its normal sense, whereas Camp- bell makes it mean something which, though he finds it 'natural,' has nothing to do with the normal meaning of the word. That is why I can explain how Locke might have come to use 'resemblance' as I suggest he did whereas Campbell couldn't do the same for his interpretation. Not that he tries: he thinks that he has nothing to explain, and that the use of 'resemble' he attributes to Locke is sufficiently established by his 'sugges- tion' that it is 'natural' - so natural, presumably, that it doesn't count as interpretation by transformation at all.

If that is Campbell's way of applying that 'principle of charity in ex- egesis' which he criticizes the rest of us for flouting (585), then ifs a prin- ciple more honoured in the breach than in the observance. The princi- ple of charity which I recognize says that we should make the philosopher under study true where we can, and otherwise reasonable, subject to the condition that our account of him not be slippery, evasive about difficulties or based on special pleadings, and to the further con- dition that we don't purchase truth for him at the expense of making him tame or boring. I don't know what Campbell's kind of charity is, but it isn't that one.

April 1981

755

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.250 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 22:58:47 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions