Study Guide Worksheet #4
Locke on Qualities, Substances, Consciousness and Personal Identity
Please put your answers on additional pages, identifying them using the question numbers below.
1. Locke makes a sharp distinction, in Book II, Chapter VIII, Paragraphs 7 and 8, between ideas and
qualities. Explain the distinction (you may simply define each, if you prefer).
2. Give some examples of what Locke would say are primary qualities and some examples of what
he calls secondary qualities.
3. Given what Locke says about primary qualities and secondary qualities in Book II, Chapter VIII
Paragraphs 9 through 26, and given his definition of ‘quality’, what is the difference between
primary and secondary qualities (here you must go beyond the lists of primary and secondary
qualities Locke gives you…you are now giving a definition of each that explains why some
properties of objects turn out to produce ideas of secondary qualities, while others produce
ideas of primary qualities).
4. How do we come to have the idea of a substance, according to Locke (Book II, Chapter XXIII)?
5. In what does the general idea of substance consist, and is it something knowable according to
what Locke says in Book II, Chapter XXIII?
6. In Book II, Chapter XXIII, Locke explains that the human mind generates the idea of God (which
is a complex idea of a substance)? How does this idea come into existence in the human mind,
and what powers or faculties of mind are required in order to make it?
7. Given what he says in Book II, Chapter 1, Paragraphs 10-25, can a sleeping, nondreaming man
nonetheless be thinking?
8. Given what he tells us about the difference between the identity of persons and the identity of
individual human beings in Book II, Chapter XXVII, Paragraphs 1 thru 29, what is the proper
definition of a person and what is the proper definition of a human being for Locke?